When are the new Alienwares with Maxwell coming?

It could of course just be really aggressive fan profiles but I hope not.

 

Intel said the engineers at Alienware figured out something with the cooling system, and I hope its not some number change in the firmware lol

Nah I don't think so.

 

Really, all they need to do is use a metal thermal paste/pad to tame the Haswell blast furnace and remove the stupid fan speed limitation from the EC. Maybe they did one or both of these things. I use the stock fan profiles for everything except benching with a heavy CPU overclock, and temps are never an issue for me like that. It would be nice to be able to use HWiNFO64 manual controls and be able to achieve full fan speed capacity when I need it.

 

I've seen it before somewhere, but it would be shooting themselves in the foot. Maybe another heatpipe, or it could get interesting with some sort of vapor chamber.

 

I got some news.

spoke to HIDevolution and kudos for them for doing this. This is what they are telling me.

"our team is working on creating a compatible vbios so that alienwares will recognize the 900m series cards"

"we hope to get this done by next week"

 

smashin update, but i think HIDevolution has managed to get or build vbios which work with Aw18 system. Otherwise why would they sale system with Dual 980m.

 

I dunno about that, mate. I was inquiring to upgrade my AW 18 and they told me they can but they are doing testing at the moment. If it really works, they should have asked for my cash already and I could have gone to their office to work on it.

 

There is only way to find out that someone got to buy Aw 18 with dual 980m from their Ebay listing. i bet it will work.

 

I'll bet they haven't abandoned it... give it time.

The pictures from China are simply displaying what is out now... it's not a final statement on where things are headed.

 

Well, if 14/15 is really the highest selling form factor, I am not convinced there is a great deal of wisdom competing for market share in an already over-saturated segment. Guess what happens when you put too many fish into the same pond? It also diminishes the uniqueness factor. It is difficult to be distinguished if you become just another pretty face in the crowd. If you cater to the fringe in either direction, there is less competition and more brand loyalty.

 

I'm pretty tempted to pull the trigger on an Aorus X7 plus. Only thing that is holding me back is that the next 17 will be thin like the 13 (maybe tad bigger) and have the eGPU option and hopefully SLI 980 m like the X7 plus. Add touch screen option and my money goes back to Alienware (X3 doesn't have touch but of it did I would have bought thay already).

 

So, you felt dropping the 14 for the more unique sized13 made sense then? In one post you say they should drop the 13 tomorrow and reissue the 14, but an indication they might continue in that space is now bad, so which is it?

I wonder how many folks here would have cried foul even if they issued the AW 13 with awesome specs but dropped the 14 just due to the step down in size alone...

 

No, I'm not advocate of anything. Just trying to rationalize why they may have released a 13 and may ditch the 14. I say they should drop the 13 only because of the poor choices they made for CPU and GPU. I wouldn't buy it for myself no matter what it had under the hood. My rationalization is that perhaps it would make more sense from a business perspective to capture a large share of a less tapped out market segment that would be easily dominated instead of taking a small sliver of the slice that is said to be the most popular. Whether 14/15 is most popular simply because that is the most common size that can be scooped up at WalMart or Target for $299 a pop, or something else is perceived as making it superior compared to other sizes, I do not know. But, the wisdom of releasing a 13 Alienware assumes that great choices in components would have equipped it to be properly armed and ready for battle. It's simply too wimpy to get excited about.

 

Next year gtx 980m already old :laugh:, and (gtx1080m ?) goes on sale perhaps 3 quarter. Will Dell that we should buy old hardware?

 

Do you have a link to the X7 plus with SLI 980's?

 

Opps I meant 970m (but 980m might be in January)

http://www.aorus.com/x7pro.aspx

The more I look at the X7 pro, the more I'm on the fence vs Alienware (but I've had my m11x for a long time now and dig the build quality).

 

Same here, patience is running thin and I keep looking at a Sager with dual 970's, but then I consider that I usually don't have prolonged gaming sessions so long term heat issues with an Aorus x7 Pro may not be as significant, and portability is phenomenal. However with the sager I would have the option to upgrade CPU or GPU but I'm not the biggest fan of the red stoplights, chrome grill, and plastic construction; no matter how heavy duty it may be.

 

Many times I thought about just buying the GT72 here as well. My patience is really thin and I`m in the need for a new notebook ASAP and I am a little pissed off that Alienware doesnt even put up a preorder page for AW18 with say ETA for mid November. Atleast then I could order and get it over with and have a approx date to wait for.

But nooo, absolutely nothing news from Alienware. They are getting too arrogant for my likes
"Who cares about the people at Notebookreview. Enough people will buy our notebooks anyway. Let them wait"

The Alienware rep was here one night answering questions after people started asking question about their customer service. Havent seen him ever since. I have to ask if this is related to their recent downcutting of jobs at Alienware. But if they start cutting down on customer service it can only go one way, down.

Exactly. To hell with Alienware if they dont issue out new notebooks until 2015. It suddenly become a matter of priniciple if that happens.
They can only stretch the line for so long before I`m blocking them out

 

So we have this dude, playing with Tomb Raider maxed out with GTX 980M SLI. He also have GTX 970 SLI in a desktop he sometimes post videos from.

This video however is from Alienware 18 with 4950HQ and GTX 980M SLI. It is Tomb Raider maxed out that gets about 90-100FPS.
GTX 970 SLI on Ultra get 121 FPS on 1200p according to this review.

GTX 980M SLI should perhaps be around 20-25% slower than GTX 970 SLI which happens to match the FPS the guy get in the video.
It makes me wonder if it is legit. What are your thoughts about this? Trolling or legit? If it is, then we are getting soldered HQ processors in AW18...

Temps for GTX 980M is 65-77C it seems.

<iframe width='560' height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NWPgxcQDzdI" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Specs for AW18 according to this guy:

CPU: Intel i7-4950HQ
RAM: 16 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
GPU: GTX 980m SLI
Secondary GPU: Intel® Iris™ Pro graphics 5200
750 GB HDD + 512GB SSD
18,4 inch screen 1920 x 1080 TrueLife Display

 

You have to keep in mind that it is captured on the same laptop if it is from a laptop. So it will cause a frame drop too. On the other hand. Like you said while 970M is supposed to get 120fps. This getting 80-90 with 980M sli. It's a little extreme that capturing the video causes that much frame rate drop. So I call troll on this

EDIT: Important note forget to add. The game is not even running on ultra settings. The TessFX for the hair of lara croft is not enabled

 

Yeah I also tip toward trolling/fake but the FPS isnt so far from what I imagine 980M SLI would get. The temperatures are typical for notebook GPUs too and not desktop 970 which run very cool. He could have used 880M SLI but no way in hell he would get so high FPS.

Look at the 970 SLI link I posted above. It was with TressFX disabled too

So who knows, it could be real..

 

That video of the AW 18 is fake:

1. It's extremely unlikely that Alienware would use a CPU from early 2013.
2. The 4950HQ has been revised twice: 4960HQ & 4980HQ. The 4980HQ is the latest (7/21/2014).
3. The game-play quality looks to be extremely low & laggy compared to anything I've seen of 980M's.

 

Bahahaha ********** great Alienware. Well done. Bravo.

Alienware 18 discontinued
Alienware 17 with 980M not coming until next year

The confusion continues

http://i.imgur.com/g5l1SkE.png
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftieba.baidu.com%2Fp%2F3384109134%3Fpn%3D1&edit-text=

 

This actualy makes me very sad. I realy wanted one as my next laptop (although that probably won't happen until 3-4 years from now on anyway. Perhaps by then they revived the 18).

 

Its sad as hell. The fact that Porras and the customer agents from Alienware refuse to comment on it means its most likely true. If they continued with AW18 they would have no issues saying "Dont worry, its not dissappearing". That wouldnt change a thing regarding their secrecy about hardware and cooling tweaks etc.

Most likely I will be jumping ship from Alienware to MSI already next week. Forced to do it.
Well done Alienware. Not just by this but the lack of communication from basically anyone working in your company.

 

Yeah it realy seems MSI and Clevo are the only two left in the game. It doesn't help that MSI and Clevo are both god damn ugly in comparrison to the Alienware (although I do adore the "casual" look of the Clevo). God damn it this is why can't we have nice things. Might aswel go for an ultra quiet ASUS ROG laptop as my next one. These things are incredibly cool and quiet.

 

Its not that Porras "refuse(s) to comment", it's that he can't, that's two very different things. As a rep he can't say anything about new products until he gets the go-ahead from marketing or risk his job. OTOH, he did indicate that he is passing commentary on from here about the products. Now, that's not going to change much coming out now from the pipeline now but if the comments are from enough folks in other quarters, it could impact revisions coming up.

It seems very likely to me that they are reworking the AW 17 (who knows about the 18 or 14/15) to accommodate the Graphics Accelerator component (right or wrong). That coupled with the Broadwell release at the same time and it's delay, it all adds up to delays in release and the new blackout. The other angle is here again they released the AW 13 to get some buzz going (too early IMHO and that of most people) for the holiday season. Most of the previews made it clear that as soon as Broadwell becomes available there will be a revision; I expect a firesale around April/May on the AW 13 with the release of its revision along with whatever they have done to the other lines in time for a June release (wow just in time for CES 2015). I agree it sucks to high heaven.... I was banking on a quad-i7 powered option on the AW 13 or a revised 14 for Christmas.

 

Well can`t and can comment, you go and get approval to speak about certain things from higher ups when big discussions like this happens, like if Alienware 18 arrives or if Alienware 17 doesnt come until 2015, until you lose a crap-ton of customers to other OEMs.

The high end market is only this big and god knows how many customers they have already lost to other OEMs due to horrible communications and these rumors. If they had any respect for their customers they would have already listed AW17 and AW18 with GTX 980M on their homepage with an approx ETA so people could pay and be informed about how long they may need to wait.
People are not stupid, they know Alienware will get GTX 980M.
I dont even care about specifics about the upcoming notebooks. That secret they can of course keep. All I want to know is A) Are they discontinuing any notebooks? B) Approx ETA for these models

But instead its just silence. Why? Because they rather keep on trying to remove 880M/M290X inventory instead of helping their fans. If they listed 980M people would probably rather wait instead of getting the one with 880M.

But for god sakes, are they really that clueless they had no idea 980M/970M would be released and they bought way more 880M than they needed?

 

Marketing? Only those who need to know, know.

Technical Support doesn't need to know until the product launches. So, he probably doesn't know unless he has friends in higher places that told him.

 

@ doc steel. Totally agree on that! That's exactly what's going to happen!��

 

Oh he does know.

 

That's exactly my point He may have some advanced knowledge (you really don't know what he does and doesn't know) garnered through the internal grapevine, but he can't say anything either way. I suspect he knows a bit more than you give him credit for as a member of tech support.

 

This frustrates me so much.

Alienware is my favorite laptop brand. Even though I'm a computer scientist. In terms of every detail about the laptop I haven't experienced anything better with similar or higher gaming performance.
I simply refuse to go for a different brand.

So I'll have to aimlessly wait for a release of an alienware 14 or 15 with 900M series. If nothing comes, I might consider an alienware 17 if it gets thinner and get's an IPS panel, but still against my will, since I don't like 17 inch laptops.

This is really frustrating. I'd like alienware to be punished by making us wait so long, but in the end with my decision I'm doing exactly what they want unfortunately.

 

Well I just can`t wait til 2015. I`m already way overdue to buy something. Neither do I understand the strategy of waiting til 2015. Each passing day they are losing out on sales.
There is nothing new coming out early 2015 that they could wait for.

There`s gotta be some supply problems or something. Or some major revisions of current models. But why take so long. MSI, Asus and Clevo all have released completely new notebook models just in time for Maxwell which they are currently selling in full force

 

I am actually pretty much on-board here myself. I really don't want a 17 unless I have no other choice. The current 14 is highly available but the GPU is going to be so outclassed by the 900-series that I can bring myself to move on it, and the options (or lack thereof) on the AW 13 make it a no go currently because I tend to play CPU-bound MMO's more than shooters, etc. The system also has to do double duty as a work machine with enough oomph to also support say two virtual machines at one time with decent performance. I may be wrong, but I have faith that either a revised 14 or 15 is in the works, the gap between the 13 and 17 (particularly with 900-series cards in use) is just to glaring, something will fill that gap soon.

Wish I could just lease an AW 13 for a few months

I really, really suspect AW's timetable got screwed up with delays in Broadwell and possibly technical issues being ironed out with the Graphics Accelerator redesign of the other lines. No way can I see them going to the trouble to produce the GA's without making them possible to be used with at least the 17...

 

Unless they want to butcher the Alienware 17 like they did with the ULV processor inside Alienware 13, the normal Broadwell CPU isnt coming until mid 2015 like I said earlier.

Here are the next Broadwell CPUs that will launch at CES in January 2015. Broadwell Core M are currently being sold right now. High end gaming Broadwell CPUs which you (hopefully) will find in AW17 wont be here until April- June 2015.

So Broadwell shouldnt interfere with AW plans for notebooks.
Could be that graphic accellerator though.

 

So AW 18 discontinued hmm? That's not cool FYI

 

Who is communicating within the texts? Customer service?
So we'll trust Chinese customer service reps, but not Amercian/European? If it is not a higher up staff within Dell/Alienware, then we shouldn't be putting so much trust with this "evidence".

 

Even i don't like 17/18 inch behemoths and i am quite sure Alienware will release a model in 14-15 inch category as they are a business and they can't abandon the highest selling category and also can't leave such a big gap in their lineup. The only thing is how much you can wait, i am ready to wait few months instead of compromising with a 17/18 inch laptop.

 

Someone working for Dell China. You`re right, can`t fully rely on it but further down in the thread I read

Most information is gathered from China, and reps and resellers are more inclined to share inside stuff there than here.

We shall see though. I hate rumors but what else is there to read when nobody here or from AW tries to clear things up. This is why I am so vocal about the silence from AW :/

 

R.I.P. Alienware.

They even removed the image...

 

wait wait if they remove 18 inch,wth is going to happen with my 4 year warranty i pushed??!!

 

Nothing. They'll still support your laptop; it is just that if it breaks, you'll get a replacement SLI machine (a 17 in this hypothetical case).

 

If you send it in to them they will probably hold onto the laptop for 3 years and then send it back to you broken.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

What? That have never happened with imgur before.
Let me reupload it.

Exactly.
That IPS display may get downgraded to TN display if they no longer manufacture it.
Scratches on the palmrest? "Sorry we are no longer making it. Cant you just use some paint?"

If they can get hold of parts, it may take substantial longer to replace them if they need to reorder them from their partners.
Maybe they offer a AW17 with the wonderful Graphic Accellerator if they cant repair the AW18. "Here you go sir, SLI. One inside the notebook and one in that GPU box. Good as new"

 

Odds are you have no issues, they will honor it. Absolute worst case, meaning they can't replace it for some reason with like-for-like, you will get an equivalent system but more updated.

Dismiss the snarky, negative comments, you have little to be concerned with, or at least far less by going with Dell over their competitors in the space who keep far less in inventories going. The fact they haven't pulled the 18 from the lineup to stock up (the way they have the 14) makes me think it's still going to be around for at least one more refresh. I think it's 50/50 if they will go back to an SLI 17 or keep the 18 in time though. Unlike most folks I expect they will keep an 18 for some time as it creates a halo-effect on the cheaper lines and gets people talking about all the systems through reviews, much like 120,000 USD Lexus cars do for the rest of the line.

 

Sorry yea it was my bad attempt at injecting some humor into the situation. You will most likely be fine.

 

Dell/Alienware UK have even removed finance option.

Wow.

 

They obviously dont want our business

 

10 Char