*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17x-R2 Edition Owners Lounge!

Reading this I would almost love for the issue to be a simple rgbled panel problem, but the test with the HDTV disproves that notion. I still wonder what the quality issue is though.

* Take everything below as thinking aloud and pure speculation and guessing.

The thing that bothers me is how people on the forum keep shooting others down who criticize AW for this utter failure of QA. When you buy something top of the line, Ferrari for example, you expect them to put the machine through all its paces and have no possible defects. If I am correct every single owner on this forum with a 920XM has flickering issues during gaming. I will place all the blame on Alienware QA since their only job is to make sure every laptop they send out is worthy of the Alienware brand. How could they not test every scenario possible before release? Apparently if only they had played games on it for 1 day the issues would have shown up.

Now from the other perspective. Since they are bringing Jokers computer in for testing this shows that they really didn't know what the problem was and are doing their best to fix it. For their sakes I hope they do everything possible or my r2 will go right back when I get it. Still their fault, but I will speculate as to how this kind of problem could happen. I am putting my money on a late decision to change the PSU which saved significant money, but was never fully tested. From my engineering background I know that new ideas are tested in lab-like scenarios first and only if they pass all the tests will real-world testing begin. I am guessing the PSU was tested in the lab and everything went pretty well and they put it in. Now the PSU is sending out spikes which damage components and thus laptops slowly deteriorate because the spec might have been too close to operating conditions or maybe even a bad batch of PSUs. Might be why some people like Rengsey got lucky and had a better PSU which lasted longer and others like Mandrake had the PSU crap out much quicker. Also explains why 820 owners, who would see fewer spikes in voltage took much longer to show symptoms.

My guess is they will recall the m17x, replace some damaged components, replace the PSU and send them back, try to fix the issue with a BIOS revision which throttles the entire computer to less than say 240 watts, or the most likely scenario is that it is something completely different and I have just been babbling.

* Take everything above as thinking aloud and pure speculation and guessing.

And in all seriousness please don't bash others or me for saying that Alienware failed their own QA goals because they did. I am still fairly confident that the issues will be addressed and that they will take an appropriate response which is why my m17x-r2 order is staying.

 

Does anyone know if you get a replacement do you get another 21 days from the time you recieve it?

 

New to here, the first question is anyone can tell me if M17x R2 with i7 720QM+Dual 4870 CF+RGB have any problem u guys discussing about here? Thinking to order one soon.

 

720 Doesn't have problems as of yet. But the 820s and 920s do.

 

Not yet.

/10char

 

thank u. i think 720 is enough for me.

 

yeah, haven't seen anything yet on the 720..unfortunately I won't have mine for another week or so, so won't be able to do any of my own testing until then.

 

Yeah, i wont have mine till god knows when.

 

I think why so many ppl are becoming upset and hating on AW is because we all wanted this refresh to be the success it should have been. The enthusiasts are always the first in line, and we were in it for the excitement and camaraderie of being a part of a somewhat exclusive club of enthusiast machine owners. After all, when you buy an Alienware (or a high end sports car for that matter), you're ponying up the cash for the quality and the -kicking proficiency these machines are supposed to have right out of the factory. The Alienware name doesn't just stand for a PC maker, it's the experience of quality combined with the bleeding edge of the best tech you can get.

It's very apparent that Alienware needs to step up to the plate, and get real serious about their QA, and fast, or their image is gonna get stained (at least for a while) by a sloppy showing of bad machines and all of those owners that got burned by them. After all, AW, or at least Dell's manufacturing, has failed it's market once more, hardcore, and needs to make good on it if it want's to retain it's image. Can you imagine if every Ferrari blew it's motor at high RPMs when used on the track as it's supposed to be? Yeah, that'd be a real PR nightmare for the Italians. People are tired of this crap, and they expect something to be done about it, properly, and with an acceptable level of professionalism.

I hope this all gets resolved, but lets face it - it shouldn't be our job to test these damn things, it's theirs. We pay them for it, we expect that they fulfill their end of the deal and supply us with machines that do what they're designed to do, and do it better than most.

Here's to hoping we get some good news, and soon.

Cheers fellas.

 

Did anybody talk to someone inside Dell/Alienware and have some information about this issue?

When do you call them what they answer? They try to fix the problem or what?

 

AW is looking at Jokers m17x to see if they can find out whats causing the Issue.

 

NX701...Exactly how I feel!

 

Adjust the thermal table and power table in the bios and you should be just fine

 

Joker's system is at AW headquarters, they have a team examining it for defects and other issues which could cause flickering. Also, an Alienware quality assurance rep is lurking in these forums and was actively troubleshooting about 50 pages back. Believe me this thread will be the first to know information as it is received. Just have to wait patiently till Wednesday at which point there will be new info.

 

Wouldn't it be nice if it were that easy.

 

I have now installed and played Crysis, GTAIV, AoC, Dragon Age + vantage/3dmark without any signs of faulty components. Last night I raided in Age of Conan for 4 hours on max settings, no heat or power problems, only a very happy gamer

I hope it stays like this, reports of late arrivals of the flickering problem is worrying, but not making me loose any sleep. The 820qm setup I have has been great so far (+5days).

 

@bkvarsne could you run furmark please ? Mandrake says the flickering is most evident (and probably fastest to reproduce) there.

 

If only..

Lol@257 pages 99.99% being us talking about faults in the laptop.

 

Did a 10 min run on exreme mode, everything went well except for the fact that I am now hungry from staring at a donut for 10 minutes....

See http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5857598&postcount=298

 

my bad, i thought you're 2 different people

 

No worries, just manted to keep more people up to date what is happening, as it is starting to be an (mis?)understanding that the 820 setup has issues too. Not in my case so far.

Only issue I have is that the fans are LOUD when pushed to max... Not very Wife Friendly...

I L O V E this system so far! Feel sorry for the ones with issues though

 

I think people are jumping to conclusions on the 820 being included in this flickering problem. So far I have only seen one person say they had a problem (less of a problem than the 920) and multiple people say they have not. In that one persons case, it could be something different or an isolated case. What I would like to know from that person is if they used the same laptop but different CPU or was it a completely different laptop for each CPU?

I've seen more poeple complain about the 920s having a problem than those who have not. So, I tend to believe the systems with 920s definitely have a problem, but the 820s I'm not convinced yet.

 

There were at least two people and I remember Witcher being one of them.

 

i just hope that AW will give Joker a good solution by tomorrow and we will all be able to put this issue behind us.

 

After working with it for a few days I have my doubts but I'll try to be more optimistic.

 

Yes, Witcher is the one I was referring to. He said he had both CPUs? I was wondering if he used both CPUs in the same machine or not.

 

Yes he swapped them with the same system. I thought there was one other person.

 

This guy have 1066mhz memory, might change something... All others had 1333 i think

 

I have both, no difference.

 

I should have my system this evening and will check it out. I got the 1333 MHz RAM and 820 CPU.

 

Bastages at Dell changed my delivery Date on me to the 15th......gonna call today, besides the EPP rep is there an number I can call at corp to complain to ?

WOOT.......Just found out it shipped and will be here tommarrow....not sure what time but anyway. I have a 820 comming so any tests I can run for ya all.....

 

I followed this in the M6500 thread, it seems the mobile I7's don't fully support VT-d.

The discussion on it starts in this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5778900#post5778900

 

OH thats major suckage...I use that along with several VM's in vmware....

 

according to this it does support virtualization.

Seems very unlikely that intel will stop supporting it

 

So for the sake of arguement, Does the R2 Support SLI ?

 

I'm waiting patiently for an official response, but I'm growing more and more impatient. I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be a user resolvable issue and will likely result in some form of recall.

As someone mentioned a few pages ago, despite the fact that AW is looking into the problem, it should've never happened in the first place. That's what testing is for. The more I think about it, the more it aggrivates me. If AW booted up one of these 920XM R2's and loaded a game on a test system for even 5 minutes, they would've caught this. What does that tell you? And yes, in this case, it's really that simple. (It happens all the time, every time with Xfire enabled, meaning the problem is not difficult to replicate)

Also, if people with 820's are now starting to have issues, that means there has to be something faulty with the power that is slowly warping the hardware over time, or something.

I give some of you a lot of credit, because your patience is remarkable. For this much money, I'm not sure how much more tolerance I can have with this issue, because if my system has to go back, I'm not getting another one.

I also think it's unfair to call someone a troll at this point because they're going with a different system. That's blatant fanboyism and is very immature. We're spending our hard earned dollars here, and it shouldn't make a difference to anyone where MY dollar goes. As the consumer, I have the right to decide which company deserves my money, and right now AW/Dell is on rocky ground with me. The consumer should NOT be the ones beta testing AW hardware.

My .02, take it as you will. I'd also like to point out, even though it's probably an isolated incident, that my system has BSOD'd about 7 times the past two days. I've made no changes to the system. Just getting sick of dealing with this, yet part of me wants to hold on because I've always loved/respected AW (before Dell got their evil, corporate giant, grubby paws on them).

I also like to remind you guys, in my case, I'm not as technically savvy as alot of you, making it that much more critical for me to purchase a system that, you know, works out of the box. I don't have the knowhow to troubleshoot this kind of crap like a lot of you.

I was so happy to order and receive this system. I can't even tell you. I've owned AW's before, but never top of the line. Always the base specs with a slightly upgraded card. Finally, for once, I decided to splurge on the best.

 

Recall? You have much to learn my disciple. Just be glad you were not in the M17x-R1 boat when it sank!

 

I am beginning to wonder if I should even bother unboxing mine when it arrives..I mean damm......

 

That doesn't make me feel better, that makes me feel like I'm more likely to ditch AW altogether. That clearly shows they don't know what the (yeah) they're doing.

I didn't really read much into the R1 issue, but the fact that, in the span of two refreshes, AW can't get it right is very disheartening.

At this point, I'm just waiting on Joker. He's amongst the most helpful here and if AW tell him good news and he conveys that there's light at the end of the tunnel, well, I'll hang on. If this turns into another months long QA nightmare, I'm outta here, but will wish you guys the best all the same.

 

welcome aboard! as WAR mentioned above we have it #th time already and it seems that u don't know about m15x owners and m17xR1 owners with "their" own issues lol

 

You have shown a lot of restraint and patience so far. Just hold out a little bit longer. It doesn't sound like they are going to just let this go. The fact that engineering has Joker's means they are serious about FIXING the problem, even though they failed to CATCH the problem before it shipped. You are set to have a very fast laptop if they resolve it. Having said that, I would be equally pissed that they shipped it to begin with, but hindsight is always 20/20.

I would say people are hinging their whole opinion on how AW handles this fiasco, and the smart money is on AW realizing that.

 

The issue is not that they don't support virtualization at all, it's that they don't fully support it due to the lack of VT-d support.

This was shown in this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5783083#post5783083

 

SaosinEngaged, I know how you feel, the frustration mounts each day. What I can tell you and others is that AW is taking this issue very seriously. They've got their engineering teams here and abroad working on the issue 24/7. Official word should come tomorrow so hang tight.

 

Hopefully they'll fix it ASAP. My first impression for Dellianware is not good. It seems like Dell is not testing systems properly and let first brave customers to do it for them.

 

Welcome to "bleeding edge"! haha

I have archos media players that were way ahead of the competition tech wise, but weren't quite ready for primetime. They eventually fixed them through updates, but it seems early adopters have to endure this type of occurrence.

 

Maybe they should hire these first brave customers on here to do their testing!

 

Maybe Dell's stuff redundancy went wrong ?

 

I want that box of yours fully probed by Alienware... man that sounds awful doesn't it

 

I am still hoping against hope that AW has some good news tomorrow, good news being that they isolated the issue and have a fix already or in development. Since this machine is actually a really good system for the price, what else would you guys consider if the news is not so great tomorrow?

Clevo x8100 perhaps?

 

Less chance of having these glitches with a single gpu solution.