*Official* Alienware Launch Discussion Thread

How bad is it? possible to take a pic?

It probably not noticeable in lighted room?

 

It's not that bad, you can only notice it with a very dark screen. It also depends on how well it's installed I guess. It bleeds more in one corner than the other.

 

I just opened it up and I do not think you are correct. The secondary SATA port is next to the Wireless card but not the mSATA port... It has to be under the keyboard I think. Can anyone whom has installed mSATA SSD in the 17 confirm?

 

Well that explains it. I have the 14. You have the 17. I have no idea where the msata is on the 17.

 

Apologies.. It is annoying that the mSATA is not listed in the teardown manual. Everything else is...

 

i've done a clean install of 7 on my 14 and i'm getting my full bandwidth. I believe it was the qualcomm lan driver from dell's website that installed killer's network manager for me.

 

Do you regret the purchase at all though? Do the keys feel good?

 

So I've flashed my vBIOS with svl7's 780OC and the throttling seems to be gone, for the most part. Now I'm just seeing how much higher I can clock my 780.

 

Hi is the vBIOS on this thread the one you used? NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks

I used to see that Sager/Clevo and Dell have different vBIOS mod for the same GPU.

 

Yup. Works fine. Saved a copy of my original if I have any issues, but so far, nothing.

 

No, it's all around better than the M18x R2. I can't comment on the keyboard yet because I'm not used to it.

OH AND I ALSO HATE HOW MUCH THE SOFT TOUCH FINISH FINGERS PRINTS RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It's only a matter of time before the soft touch starts wearing off and it looks like crap. The soft touch is already wearing off on my Alienware mouse and I've had it for a month. The soft touch is absolutely awful, the second you clean it there's smudges all over again.

 

Been stressing my 17 all night and the overclocks on the 780 are a bit disappointing, TBH. If I go over 100MHz offset, my 3DMark scores drop back down to 7100-7200 and I lose any stability. Got the memory clock offset up to 400MHz before I stopped though. Temps are limited to 80C and power is limited to 98%. Can't pass either one of those marks. Anyways, here's my latest 3DMark with stable clocks. Reasonable improvement, and my graphics score breaks 8k, up from ~7200. Not too bad for less than a day's ownership. Scores will certainly be higher in a month or two.

 

Well I just "benched" Metro: Last Light with every setting maxed except AA which I set at 2. On my 3.8Ghz and 680m SLI M18x R2 I was averaging 20-40 FPS. On this new one I'm averaging 50-60 FPS. The tests on the 780m are without any driver updates or tweaks while the tests with the 680m setup was with the latest beta drivers.

Pretty impressive. I can't wait for some good drivers.

 

I find those numbers incredibly hard to believe.

Sent from my GT-I9100

 

Unfortunately, that is a common characteristic of many IPS type panels. They are not always the best at reproducing very deep blacks, and they can also suffer from backlight bleed, especially when viewing a dark screen in a dark environment. Even my U3011, used in the same scenario, shows a small amount of bleed. The main advantages of IPS are viewing angle and colour reproduction. I guess if you find it that bad that you can't live with it, you still have the option to either return or maybe try a different panel.

 

People often refer to it as the "IPS Glow"

 

Guys quick question..
How long does standard delivery takes from shipped to the customer..
I searched everywhere for this information and nothing...
I'm at uk west midlands...

* found it.. From 5 to 7 business days..

 

Started to get a little panicky this morning after reading peoples new AW issues as i didn't purchase the 3yr extended warranty. Wasn't sure if i could purchase this after the original laptop order, i.e. 6 months down the line so I contacted my account manager and he told me it can be extended/purchased at any time. "Whenever it is needed" where his exact words, after I'd asked if there was a time limit on the purchase.

This might be a totally noob question but this is my first Alienware/Dell laptop so I have no past experience with the machines or Dell warranty. Is it worth buying the 3yr warranty or is not worth the paper/pixels its written on?

 

I've had an m17x R1, m11x R1, m14x R1, m14x R2, AW 14, so far the only issue i've had was the 2nd adapter for the m17x r1 melted. But that happened 2 weeks ago and the machine is close to 4 years old.

 

Whats the average life span of your machines or have they lived until you've upgraded?

 

What do you think of the 14 compared to your m17x r1?

 

I think the GTX 765m is better than GTX 260m's in SLi. I think the keyboard is nicer despite the fact its less flashy. Its much lighter. I mean we are comparing 2 very different products. However the AW 14 is better in every way except if you drop it on your foot your foot won't break.

 

Hey guys,

We are looking to feature some customer shots of your new rigs. If you have any good shots, please post them here or send a PM on FB with your shots. If you have a set of photos with different angles or a collage, we would love to highlight you. When submitting, make sure you call out your user name from NBR, so we can give you credit.

 

My point was '
Alienware 14: Standard screen as stock. Brand new IPS as an upgrade.
Alienware 18: Brand new IPS as standard screen
Alienware 17: Standard screen as stock. 120Hz as upgrade. No IPS offered. Both the standard screen and the 120Hz is not new and have been used by Dell for several years.

That is my only concern. Maybe I was hoping too much when I watched that video where they bragged about the screen on the new Alienware`s.

But don`t get me wrong, I`m not saying the screens used on Alienware 17 is bad at all. From the few reviews we have they say its better screen than the MSI GT70 which in itself was a pretty great screen, so its good enough, thats for sure

 

Pm me around 3:30 and i can post you some comparisions between an m14x R1 and an aw 14

Thats roughly when i get home from work.

Edit: I also have an m11x r1 and m17x r1 laying around too :hi2:

 

Mine was dispatched 9th July (well left china 10th July) and has an EDD of tomorrow and is "on track" and I live in the East Midlands

Edit: just arrived in Poland (after going through South Korea and Kazakhstan!!) so seems doable

 

So after playing Dirt3 and NFS Most Wanted on maxed settings for about an hour each, the 780M maxes out at 80C, but the games do play perfectly as expected.

 

Hey, how would you rate the noise coming from the 17 when gaming and when just surfing the internet? Loud? Quiet? Somewhere in between?

80C is a really cool temperature for a beast like 780M. Good cooling system in the 17 indeed

 

My AW 14 is silent while internet browsing.

 

Noise is nonexistent when surfing the internet. Noise while gaming is moderate, and a tad louder in CPU intensive games where the fan has to ramp up. Surprisingly quiet, TBH. Much, much better than my bro's M14xR1.

 

Sorry for digging this up, but are you sure? I got picture from Dell where it seems it is under palm rest, near left speaker. However photo is very low quality so I may be wrong.

 

Like the others said, there is basically no noise while browsing the web. It is also really quite while gaming and you can barely notice it. CPU intensive games can turn the noise up, but if your like me and play with headphones or with the volume turned if, you won't notice it. Overall, I think the new Alienware is a very quite system.

 

On the 14, its right next to the wireless card. They have the picture posted on facebook. On facebook its on the bottom right hand corner of the aw 14 picture.

 

Thanks mate, I'm not sure why I thought it is about AW 17, probably because I want one
So I afraid in AW 17 it is under palm rest :-(

 

The matte LCD on my Precision M6400 is a dust magnate. I use an air duster every night and in 3 days its coated with a layer of fine dust and only wiping with a microfiber cloth will remove it. My 24" Ultrasharp LDC does not have this issue. I am still going to wait for a better LCD to be offered on the m17X. Hopefully the other issues people are having will be fixed as well.

 

I'd love to... Unfortunately some b****rd at Dell screwed me over with my order. I ordered on the 11th which was the day it went up on the website. I waited 4 weeks and it was then cancelled on Friday just gone. I reordered it on Friday and it has gone into production but not due for over 2 weeks now.

I was looking forwards to taking a picture of it next to 3 M17x's, 1 M18x, 1 M15x, 1 M14x and 1 M11x... Plus a few older AW systems.

 

Me too but I saw it with my own eyes. I'm really impressed with the performance so far. The only dips I get is when there's a lot of lighting or 3+ enemies on screen, then it will quickly dip into the 30-40 range. Besides for that it's almost a constant 55-60 FPS where the 680m was almost always below 30 FPS.

EDIT: I downloaded a lot of games overnight so I will be testing a bunch soon. I will report back soon and let you know how they all run.

 

I think someone expressed concern over the painted heatpipes, so I took some pics while I was in there and the bottom is left unpainted.



Looks like whoever was assembling mine forgot how to use a screwdriver though...



The charcoal lid is really growing on me as well. Looks killer with the orange AlienFX, IMO.

 

Is the tape normal?!

 

Here you go mSATA SSD Alienwar M17 , not be easy replacement.....

http://kepkezelo.com/images/13hfs2vff7pjmmcqrpbq.png

http://kepkezelo.com/images/g20gwor4z0eop4kwzbrn.png

OR YouTube New Alienware 17 - Inch Gaming Laptop E3 2013 # New Alienware Notebooks Ultimate Gaming 2013 - YouTube

4:04 u found

 

I got mine. AND IT'S AWESOME. One hell of an upgrade from my 8 year old Alienware m9750.
I also got the second one and if someone wants to skip the production line and cash in some savings on the haggling I did, check out the FS thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...-new-alienware-17-i7-4900-780m-3d-bundle.html

On the noise question. It can get pretty loud when the fan kicks into high gear while plugged in. I ran the Windows experience test thing and while it was testing the video performance the fan kicked into high gear. It usually doesn't do it for very long.

 

Okay so I tested Metro: Last Light some more, this time with Vsync off.

780m SLI average (without any driver updates): 50-70 (rarely breaking 80) FPS
680m SLI average (with the latest drivers): 20-40 (rarely breaking 50) FPS

The lower ends are with lots of action on the screen and/or a lot of lighting effects.

IS THIS REAL LIFE?



I really wasn't expecting it to be this big of an improvement, especially without newer drivers.

------------------------------------------

I also noticed a bug with the sound. If you go into the Alienware audio there's an option where you can turn off the sound if it's not being used to save power. Turning it off doesn't really work, there's still a slight delay sometimes when it goes back on but sometimes it does work. It's quite a bit buggy. You can tell when you get a message of Steam, the message sound sort of sounds funny because it has to turn the sound back on quickly and it misses the first millisecond of the message sound.

It's not a big problem, you can only tell when you get a quick short sound, like a message.

 

I'm loving the Lunar Shadow silvery anodized aluminum lid on my 14 too . Only thing that I would have wanted was to separate the alienhead and the 2 diagonal led lighting on the lid as different zones so if you want to be a lil stealthy, you can just turn on the alienhead without turning on the two diagonal leds on the lid.

 

Does your 14 have the IPS Glow bleed?

 

Well I called tech support to come to repair a couple minor things. One fan is making a weird sound, like a fast clicking when it's on high speed. And there is a screw loose somewhere near the bottom of the screen, I can hear it rattling around. Other then that everything is great so far, very happy with this machine.

Also my CPU fan (I'm guessing that's what it is) never goes on and always seem cools, even after gaming for a while. Speccy says it's around 50 degrees.

 

Thank you guys for responding about the noise from the Alienware 17. I wonder how it is compared to MSI GT70 without turbo boost on.

Its hard to compare when you dont have any decibel numbers to compare with. But your description was good enough. It sounds very good . All im asking is that it is quiet during web browsing and not so high during gaming that it drowns the sound from the speakers completely

@crazy08: too bad its 4900MQ and not 4700MQ because then I might have bought it from you. 3200 dollars is way too much for me.
Anyhow, are you satisifed with the 120Hz screen? Is it nice?

 

I just got my 14 and it sounds like there is a loose screw by the odd. Anyone have any ideas

 

Mine has a screw rumbling around in it as well. Open it up and gently try to shake it out.

 

My 14 IPS FHD screen is very vivid but it is somehow too warm and a little yellowish and unnatural. When viewing pics of people, the skin instead of having a natural look to it, it looks like it is oversaturated in yellow.

Did alienware change a setting somewhere where we can switch between color modes? I already checked color management and its icc profiles and everything is set to windows default so I know it is now Windows fault.

 

Could you use 3dm11 and show me how much you've got?