When are the new Alienwares with Maxwell coming?

I'm more than happy to admit I'm wrong, if I am. We're all speaking hypothetically right now, so any of us can be wrong.

To change all of that in one year, and sacrifice entry into a large market (18" gaming notebooks) makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The 15" market is dominated by cheap gaming computers (MSI, Clevo, etc.) and the Alienware will be more expensive, therefore, will not sell as well as you think, especially because the AW 17 will only be a few hundred dollars more. A 15" laptop would not sell well because of the 17".

As I've said a dozen times before: We have already seen leaks of benchmarks with HQ processors and 970M's/980M's in Alienware systems. More likely than not, these are just the current R1's with upgrade hardware inside.

 

I seriously doubt the difference between a 14 and 15 would make that much difference in cannibalizing 17 sales; if anything the 15 market is more popular by what you are saying so a 15 offering there will attract more buyers, not less. On paper a lot of customers will skip right by a 14 to a 15 just on that, a 15 does make more sense these days.

 

They would not skip the AW 14 if the 13" only offers ULV processors and 800M series GPU's with no optical drive.

 

Its pretty well known the rumors about AW13, AW15 and AW17 now J.Dre.
One of the reasons why they rather use 15inch instead of 14inch could be more accessability to a vast selections of displays because everyone sell them. Plus its bigger than 14inch which means they can pack in more power and perhaps concentrate on getting it cooler and more quiet than a 15".

Ditching AW18 makes zero sense unless what the other user said on the previous page, they are trying to sell more of the external GPU box that can use both GTX 980 as well as beastly GM200 GPUs. But if they go that route they are essentially pushing people towards desktops imo.
Im buying notebooks not notebooks plus other boxes with cables going everywhere, more power consumption, more noise, heat etc etc

 

I fully endorse this opinion - while I find the idea of a docking station itself somewhat useful, an add-on card setup to me just defeats the need to design a decent laptop to begin with. I predict this whole "Graphics Accelerator" will persist for time then fade off like 3d gaming has.

 

So, if someone has the 4940 installed there will be little point in upgrading to the first release of Broadwell?

 

If you've seen the roadmaps you'll know that Intel isn't even planning on releasing socketed Broadwell M chips, and the only so-called "high performance" parts will be the H chips, which will all be soldered BGA junk.

So yes, if you have the 4940MX just forget Broadwell even exists.

 

Guys,

I think some of you might find this exchange insightful.

 

Did Eurocom say that GTX 970M/980M doesnt support 120Hz displays in notebooks? That's weird. Well that settles it then, since display makers have stopped making 120Hz and Nvidia doesn't support 120Hz, there is no hope for 120Hz for Alienware 17.

Also sounds like Eurocom is ready with 900M cards next week then. Even with SLI.
Meanwhile, Alienware doesnt give a damn...

 

I totally agree with this rationale. It makes perfect sense to me as well.

Having a soldered CPU and GPU(s) in a laptop will never, ever be acceptable to me. If the laptop in not a beast in its own rights with what it has under the hood, cannot be upgraded like a REAL computer, then it's not a beast at all. If I had to rely on an eGPU to have a beast, then the laptop becomes pointless to me and I am better off just having a real desktop with all of the things that are better about desktops except for lack of mobility. The loss of mobility and performance having to rely on an eGPU to stake a claim to fame makes having that kind of laptop way too silly, and too expensive for what little you get in return.

The 18 is a desktop replacement and with the maxed out configuration it is also more powerful than many gamer's desktops that have reasonably impressive specs. That will never be something that can be said of an Ultrabook with an eGPU. A monster like the 18 with an eGPU as a freakish add-on is kind of a cool idea for something weird and unique. I think a lot of us like freakish novelties, but that's really not the point. An Ultrabook that needs an eGPU to be impressive actually isn't an impressive Ultrabook. The eGPU might be impressive in a geeky kind of way, but the computer itself remains an unimpressive performer apart from the eGPU.

As soon as I found that out Broadwell instant became a totally meaningless artifact on the technology map that is unworthy of being noticed. Intel could change that if they perceive a loss of cash flow and popularity might result from going only BGA. Intel's love of money and monopoly eclipses everything else. With greed serving as their primary motivation, things could turn out differently than expected right now.

 

It's confirmed on the nvidia website that the 900 series doesn't support 3D Vision.

 

EDIT: Conversation removed as requested.

Eurocom have confirmed they will continue to support the P570WM/3 with the 980M SLI and are confident it will be updated to support Haswell E next year.

 

If they bring back the 15" and get rid of the AW 17 with 120Hz and toss out the AW 18, I am going to stop buying Alienware until they get their heads out of their you know what. That is the dumbest, most idiotic, absurd and moronic move, all to support soldered crap from Intel. What's next? Soldered 980M's? Give me a freaking break.

Desktops, here I come.

 

EDIT: Conversation removed as requested.

Eurocom have confirmed they will continue to support the P570WM/3 with the 980M SLI and are confident it will be updated to support Haswell E next year.

Also, adding 64GB of RAM.

 

To add to this: I guarantee you, if they go this route (13, 15, 17) they will end up right back where they are today.

That lineup did not work then, it will not work now. They should be adding to their lineup, not replacing good products with something that may work just because everyone else is doing it. They can have a 13", 14", 15", 17", and 18" or 19" laptop. Dell has plenty of money to fund an expansion of the Alienware product line. Manufacturing costs are nothing compared to the markup on Alienware products. They need to dominate every aspect of the market and stop fiddling around with weak, old generation hardware. They are falling behind (performance wise) because they're trying to be ahead of the curve with eGPU's and nonsense that they don't even need! Why? To be the "first" to do it... The worst part is...the Amplifier technology they just introduced doesn't even work. It does not "amplify" - it bottlenecks.

They need to be the aggressors in the market. They're freaking Alienware for Christ's sake... That's what they've been known for.

 

I didn't read the 46 other pages of this thread, but isn't it likely (considering Alienware takes longer than average to refresh products) that they will skip Broadwell and go straight to Skylake?

Broadwell doesn't offer much and Skylake will be available at the same time.

 

Nah, it looks like they're moving to HQ soldered crap like everyone else. It's ironic because HQ was originally designed for ultrabooks.

 

Thanks. I will be waiting and watching to see what is fact versus fiction here. It makes me feel good that there could still be some glimmer of hope for fans of extreme laptops. Never thought I would see the day I would be more interested in Clevo, but hey... at the end of the day, having something extreme is really more important that anything else. It's nice having a brand you have come to trust and has consistently provided excellent service, but offering a product for sale that you actually care about is a prerequisite to continuation of that business relationship. I needed something to feel good about with respect to the future of extreme laptops, so here's hoping it pans out that way.

 

Yeah their department indeed looks like is run by monkeys.
With AW13 featuring a freaking ULV processor and coming up with the bright idea of pairing it up with a desktop behemoth GPU plus what you wrote....
Its like they are aiming to be part of a silly episode with Monthy Python. Its like they are doing everything wrong. The interest for AW13 is at an all time low despite brand new, and I'm gonna use every free hour to backtalk Alienware if they remove AW18. Its childish, but they deserve it

Wonder if this new direction is a collective idea brought to you buy their finest engineering monkeys or just some CEO trying to save some money or invent new products like the GPU box to expand (and implode).

 

We should all "Twitter bomb" them. Twitter revolution.

 

Its kind of the the AW desktop situation. For some reason base full sized AW desktops come with a ridiculously OP i7.... and a really low end GPU. the AW 13 with the dock is like a reverse of that.

 

The VP of design at Alienware must be dyslexic.

P.S. I mean no offense by this. It just happens to be funny.

 

I realize you are removing names and emails, but this is still against forum rules. Please go back and remove those posts and summarize the message in your own words. The information you are sharing is still appreciated just as much. Thank you for letting us know what you learned.

This is to respect people that may not know about and may not appreciate their emails (private correspondence) being put on public display.

Here is what the Forum Rules state:

 

Here are benchmarks for Panther 5 running 980M SLI.

 

That's my personal name and e-mail address, I've edited.

Does that make any difference, and the people at Eurocom are fully aware my exchange with them is being shared on here.

 

It might not matter if they know and agree, but it's hard to say breaking the rules is OK for one person and not another one. I appreciated that you removed the email addresses, etc. If you are only posting your side of the conversation and removing the replies that's OK, but it's hard to tell from the posts. I'm OK with that if that is what you are posting. Seems like it might be easier to simply share what you learned from the email exchange, but I will leave that up to you. Thanks for clarifying.

 

Posts edited.

 

Thanks. I do appreciate the link to that other thread, too. It's a discussion many of us are passionate about. Thank you for sharing that. It's very sad what we see happening with a brand that used to be regarded as the premier maker of high performance laptops. The numbing influence of average consumer interests has really taken its toll on their values from the looks of what they are selling now. I understand they want and need to make money. I think we all want them to be successful and profitable, but not at the exclusion of their devoted core clientele's passions and interests.

 

Benchmark for P570WM/3 running 980M SLI - Eurocom Benchmarks

View attachment 117158

 

Agreed........

 

Well my depression continues for a good outcome for new AW's .

After seeing that the 970m and 980m do not support 3D Vision ( GeForce GTX 980M Graphics Card | GeForce) might account for the delay on the 17 update? It looked like it was going away some time ago when they stopped advertising it. I was hoping that promoting the 120hz display on it's own capabilities would keep it in the line-up. Now I find that it's NV themselves
AW will drop the 120hz panel altogether - too much messing about and they can simplify the motherboard. That's my prediction...

I wish dell would let the guys that know what we want speak honestly and not stick to some esoteric, top-secret, marketing 'guru script'. I know Luis tried but as he said, they keep this stuff quiet and demand secrecy from staff.

But, hey-ho, The machinations of high level marketing guys is often unfathomable from the customer's perspective. Never had much respect for them myself in corporate America

 

I'm actually somewhat disappointed that 980M SLI in the Panther doesn't pull much higher 3DMark11 and Vantage scores than this. They're good, but not nearly as good as I expected. Maybe they're not trying hard enough.

Here is my M18xR2 3DMark11 result: P17205 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M SLI video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3920XM Processor Extreme Edition,Alienware M18xR2

And, here is my Vantage result: P48415 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M SLI video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3920XM Processor Extreme Edition,Alienware M18xR2

Edit: Ah! I see at least part of the problem. They partially crippled that poor beast with the pathetic Windows 8.1 operating system. That's going to ruin their results on CPU-intensive benchmarks like 3DMark11 and Vantage. It's probably not doing Cinebench R11.5 any favors either. It should be better in Fire Strike because CPU performance is almost irrelevant in the overall score running Fire Strike, and Fire Strike likes Windows 8.

 

Their engineering folks are not idiots, this is clearly a marketing-led move.

 

I'm so incredibly disappointed by this news. Do you think there might still be hope that Alienware include the option to get 120 Hz panels on its AW 17 with 980M, at least at the start and just to get rid of its remaining stock? I'm so disappointed, I don't care one bit about 3D but there seems to clearly be a world of difference between 120 Hz and 60 Hz... Ugh. All this waiting will have been for nothing...

edit: another question: do you guys think it might be possible that some resellers (shipping to Europe) include the option to customize the new AW 17 with a 120 Hz screen, IF the motherboard supports it, even if Alienware don't offer that option on their website?

 

Check out this video they sent me.

 

Feel the same. Waiting, waiting, waiting, POW, take that! You get what we think you want, or rather what we believe we can sell more of.
I very much doubt dell will include the 120hz panel with the 980m. If it was simply a case of plug in panel A or panel B then no problem. But there is so much more to it that it is a headache support can do without. Now 3D has failed miserably (due to a terrible TV implementation based on technology designed 10 years ago) it's become a gimmick that nobody wants. No selling point? No need to bother with it. They have decided the matte 60hz panel is good enough for the general population and the enthusiasts <del>can go whistle,</del> market is too small.
If enough people ask for it (and it works) I'm sure the big resellers will offer it but remember that the warranty will be out-of-the-window so they will have to support it themselves.

Personally I love the 3D and was blown away when I first saw it - I only bought the machine for 120hz but some of those games in 3D, you really can get the R2D2 projected image out of the screen, and even wave your hand through it, 'Help me ObiWan'... haha .

 

900 series doesn't support 3D, I think.

 

That's what I was getting at . It might still boot a 120hz native panel but until someone tries we will never know.

I believe (forum post not investigated) Eurocom have stated the 120hz panel is not supported so I'm guessing they have tried.

 

Look carefully... Eurocom Benchmarks

R.I.P AW.

 

Yea something isn't right here, your 780m GPU score is higher than the two 980m's

 

I think the bold part is why. I wonder what these will overclock like. So far I've yet to see anyone really wring their necks.

 

The cpu and 980m's are all running stock while the 780m's and the 3920xm are highly overclocked.

Overclock the cpu and 980m's and the gap will widen.

 

Yup, the part you bolded was just added to see what kind of response I would get. I am surprised nobody else noticed until you pointed it out. Although, I do admit that I was a little disappointed. In spite of having the two extra cores and four more threads, that 4930K wasn't doing anything all that amazing and neither was the 980M SLI.

But, it does raise a valid question. Since we haven't seen a decent example of heavily overclocked 980M SLI backed by a heavily overclocked Extreme CPU we don't really know what it is capable of. If it doesn't overclock like an insane banshee that leaves 780M SLI with a severe case of tremors, then I have no use for it. As far as I know, nobody has unlocked the voltage and removed the +135 core offset limit yet. If the playing field is level and everyone is theoretically crippled with the same +135 max core overclock running on stock voltage, then buying it now would be a waste of money. I only want it for number chasing. Number chasing gets old real fast if everyone using the same GPU can achieve roughly the same results... really ruins any incentive to have it. For something as simple as gaming, 780M SLI is still freaking awesome.

 

That's a good point. Having those vbios limitations would quickly take the fun out of experimenting with a new set of cards. So yeah, not being early adopter wouldn't be such a blow for 680m/780m SLI users right now.
I wonder if we'll see anymore Nvidia drivers flagging OC's like we've thought to of seen? Hopefully that's all behind us now.
I'd like to try and contact HidEvolution when I've time and find out if they've got a workable vbios. Wouldn't it be nice if they did and it was unlocked wishful thinking right there.

 

I have an inquiry pending with them about that. I'll let you know what they have to say about it.

Yeah, my days of early adoption are over. I want to have fun, not waste my time curing headaches. If there is any fun to be had with new tech, that usually comes a bit later. Plus, I don't like experimenting using my own money.

There have been too many things that turned out to be a joke in the past 3 or 4 years. Let's see... in a loose chronological order there was the NVIDIA solder defect, 580M vBIOS throttling, 6990M overheating and thermal shutdown, AMD bought ATI and in a short time decided they were happy to keep the bench warm and let Intel rule the roost in CPU and GPU superiority, the 7970M debacle, introduction of Secure Boot and Secure Flash filth, Windows 8 crippling CPU performance, the Haswell abortion, power-handling limitations on the 18 motherboard, crippled fan tables and capped off fan speeds for the sake of being quiet, 880M nightmares... now the flood of BGA garbage. The second and third issues got fixed and things turned out pretty sweet. The first issue and all of the other issues, not so much.

The bright spots in the laptop world were SSDs got a lot bigger and became affordable, 2920/2960XM, GTX 680M, 3920/3940XM, GTX 780M and you can finally get a 2TB 2.5" HDD. Thank God for those sunbeams... they're still bringing us lots of good times and give us a glimmer of hope that something might actually turn out right once in a while.

Unfortunately, I think we ain't seen nothin' yet. Just wait until we see the sewage-filled gutter that the next implementation of UEFI is going us drag us through, all courtesy of the little god of stupidity in Redmond.

 

According to their benchmark stats they were using a 4960 CPU.

 

The extra bonus to it all is that Alienware 18 wont even reckognize the GTX 970M or GTX 980M despite Alienware in the past almost accepting anything you put in it.
Its like they are determined to end all support for older machines and force people to buy their upcoming ones with the glorious GPU box and perhaps the lovely icing on the cake: HQ processors.

So I dont even have the option to go look out for a cheap AW18 and upgrade the GPUs.

Alienware, drifting further and further away from your fans by each idiotic plan after another.

 

Well spotted, glad I disclaimed my statement! So at least we know the card itself supports 120hz boot. Maybe even the latest intel microcode does and the machine does not need a bunch of hardware frigs disabling it?

Only the matte screen might affect gaming contrast? I need to follow this machine closely .

Just tried building one - £4K eek

 

I really don't understand how there's not more of a demand for 120 Hz screens, at the very least among enthusiasts... From what I've read it really makes a world of difference from 60 Hz...

 

What about this though?!

HIDevolution Alienware 18-HID19 NVIDIA Dual SLI GTX 980M Gaming Laptop

(link taken from this thread: Going to test clevo 980m in alienware m17x R4, m18x R2, AW17 - Page 5)