When are the new Alienwares with Maxwell coming?

@Docsteel - Yeah, it's really sad. Ignorance is probably the main reason bad things happen. It's hard to care about something when you are oblivious to it. Most livestock don't know when they are being led to slaughter. The executioner makes it quick and painless and they "don't feel a thing." In a flash it's over. They are dead and don't even know it.

@Cloudfire - I agree that it might be compatible and something else is giving us the wrong impression. I will be happy to try it as soon as someone sends me the GPUs without any $1,000/no refund strings attached.

Glad you like that. It even makes me laugh when I am the one saying it. I find humor is an effective way for me to avoid depression and keep anger in check. It works pretty well most of the time. I'm sure it is obvious by now that sarcasm and irony are my favorite forms of humor. Sometimes we need to laugh to stop ourselves from crying. A merry heart is effective medication.

 

Isn't the guy from Upgrademonkey sort of helpful borrowing out cards for people to review/test?
It should benefit them as well if the word on the street suddenly become positive regarding upgrades are working.

Have you tried asking him Mr Fox?

 

You will go to a desktop 5 to 6 years from now?? By that time BGA will be ruling desktops too

 

Hey guys, im waiting for the 980m on the 18 since i heard about them, other laptops are not an option to me, its that or a desktop, on my college fair here in UK, i asked the guy from dell when the 980m will be on the 18, he told me that they would be available on november, i didn't believe him, i thought it would happen sooner than this, and here i am waiting...

About the option you guys have discussed, of buying the cheapest 18 with 860m and then replacing the cpu and gpu latter, you think its worth?

 

No. The 980M has been having issues with compatibility. Until we have a work-around, you're better off waiting.

The AW 13's aren't shipping until the second week of December. So, maybe by then we'll see something happen.

 

That's a route I may choose too.
Just a FYI: If you plan on upgrading to 980M you need a new heatsink. 860M heatsink got 2 pipes and is rated for 75W max.
GTX 980M is 100W.
You will need the 3 pipe version which is rated for 100W.
If you go with 970M SLI you technically don't need a different heatsink

 

My AW 18 has 780m SLI. Do I need a new heatsink too?

 

Nope, you got the 100W heatsinks. 980M should run cooler than 780M too, so you are golden :thumbsup:

 

Nice. Yeah yeah!!!!

 

Yes, i know about the compatibility issues, but i'm thinking when this problem is solved, and about this BGA problem, the 18 can be the last AW that can be upgradable, and im in need for a notebook for yesterday.

 

Probably need new pads though, since 980M has an extra inductor compared to 780M.

 

Yeah probably. I hope that's the only thing that is required

 

About 5-6 years is all Intel processors both desktop and laptop "BGA Filth". Perhaps (?) only extreme processors to Intel is not. :laugh:

Edit: And all extreme processors to Intel has a max TDP of 3-5 watts.

 

Little of topic.
But what's the max cpu you can put in the latest 17. Anything the 18 can take or not because of the heatsink.

 

The 4940MX is the best CPU, as of right now. It's identical to the 4930MX.

@Cloud: He'll definitely need new pads for that extra inductor. I think they're also a different size (depth/height).

 

If the only non-BGA desktop chips that Intel offers in 5-6 years are $1000 quad cores, I'm jumping ship to AMD and won't look back. This is assuming the BGA disease doesn't spread to AMD of course.

 

I just sent upgrademonkey a message tonight regarding testing the 980M in the M17x R4, waiting back to hear from him.

 

I think you are a bit heavy with the criticism here. Doc steel expressed his opinion, as is everyone's right here. There is no need to get personal about it. Relax a little, after all we are only talking about computers.

 

Alienware have just started sales again until the 1st of January 2015. Also someone got 980M SLi to run in the Alienware 18 and posted a benchmark with the 4930K:

Made a a stock run with 980M SLi

 

Thanks for answering my question.

 

Uhh correct me if I am wrong, but the 4930K is a desktop class chip....so there is no way that is running in a M18x or Alienware 18.

 

Where is the proof it is Alienware 18, brother?

 

Ooo good point didn't notice his processor, just assumed so because it was in the Alienware 18 sub-forum lol.

Oh well, must been to get us all excited

 

lol that's a Clevo P570WM, a might beast which has also been discontinued (of course )

 

Clevo owner must be rubbing it in our faces lol. Been waiting so eagerly for the 980Ms in an AW machine.

 

Haha, that got me excited too, brother.

 

That has to be a P570WM with 980M SLI. Yes, it is impressive. Everything impressive must be discontinued. It is a mistake for an OEM to do anything correctly. Their role exists for the sole purpose of ruining laptops.

 

And making profit. Don't forget the profit part.

Or the cost cutting areas.

 

I know this was in jest, but I am seriously starting to think that's what OEMs are doing these days. Anything that's <del>six sigma</del> just two sigma away from the mean gets neutered, gimped, or discontinued entirely. Because something that stands out that much, even in a good way is an abomination apparently. But somehow thin and light portable stovetops are totally OK, and gladly embraced by the OEMs (thanks to the thin and light numbnuts of course).

What is this world coming to.

 

Crippled by Intel's anti competitive business practices. Imo, we should possibly be looking for Nvidia to be a saving grace instead. Nvidia has been steadily growing in the processor field for years, and the last few generations they have had the most powerful (although not most efficient) CPU's in the mobile market while at the same time they are dominant in the desktop GPU market.

Meanwhile Intel has been steadily creeping with their integrated graphics capabilities. Obviously Intel's long term goal is the "perfect" all in one chip. Something that would threaten Nvidia's low and mid level GPU market position. Perhaps Nvidia will take the initiative and try their hand in the desktop CPU market. They certainly have the brains and the money to do it.

 

Word! +1 Rep. Idiots give birth to more idiots. Some can claim ignorance until they are told otherwise.

At the rapid rate of decline Intel is demonstrating with mobile BGA CPU feces, AMD will be able to take them out without firing a single shot across their bow. AMD won't need to get better at anything to be superior with all of these pathetic low-TDP crap processors being soldered to the board and puked out at such an alarming rate.

If we have to put up with such terribly crappy performance, at least the AMD chips are in a socket. I wish the OEMs would consider making a few high performance laptops with a FX-9590 desktop CPU to get their attention. At least that 220W CPU overclocked to 5.3GHz performs almost as well as a stock 2920XM 55W CPU. That would definitely require a dual 330W AC adapter setup, or one big power brick. I think those suckers might even run hotter than Haswell does.

Look: Result

 

There really should have been a XM 6 core laptop CPU out or coming out. What a blow. Instead we getting fed rubbish. Man oh man it's looking grim. Being forced to build a desktop because suddenly having a brute force laptop isn't fashionable.
This niche is for the taking right now. There is no uber crazy enthusiast machine being offered at all now.

 

That's a good point, maybe more cores at a slightly lower clock even would be quite thermally efficient - more surface area to distribute the heat, which is the whole problem of cooling these new Intel CPUs. So, if they went the core adding route then this could be a way of getting more performance without increasing thermals too much. Although the things stopping this from happening are probably cost & the fact that not many applications or games would benefit from 12 or 16 threads.

 

Too bad this doesn't improve performance in the majority of games right now and might even hurt it a little.

 

Haha, yep, true, I edited my post just before you pressed the send button!

 

Actually I don't oppose more cores at a lower clock speed IF it was a fully unlocked MX or K part. If your usage is pattern is such that the extra cores are useless, you could just disable the unneeded cores and get better thermals and eek out some more MHz. It's always nice to have extra cores on tap when you need them, because you could always choose to not use the cores, but you can't pull cores out of thin air when you do need them.

 

Yeah, I think Intel will have to go in this direction to make any significant gains. They need to start doubling up on the cores, making 8 core 16 thread CPUs the norm, while lowering the Turbo speed when all cores active, but keeping the high turbo speeds when 4 cores active - just increasing the differential between all core Turbo and 2 and 4 core Turbo. This way 4 core programs won't suffer in performance, and then game developers & program developers will have the hardware to start developing for more CPU cores too.

 

Yeah unfortunately AMD is taking the brute force approach to performance, which I don't exactly blame them ever since Intel stole like 5 years worth of revenue from them and destroyed their R&D infrastructure.

So my vision of what'll happen 10 years down the road with Intel chips is thus:

Desktops
-Mainstream stuff will all be soldered BGA junk
-K and X chips will continue to exist and use sockets, but will command a significant premium -- $600 for a quad core K part, and $1500 for a 6+ core X part
-Motherboards that support K and X will also likely carry a premium since they're now a niche product after the demise of the sockets

As for laptops, yeah I think it's pretty clear sockets and MX chips will cease to exist in the near future, and I can foresee that performance might be sacrificed for the sake of efficiency down the road.

 

We're entering the computing renaissance that comes full of BGA chips and proprietary junk. All the enterprise integration companies have spent billions on implementing in order to get rid of proprietary hardware and software incompatibilities as well as legacy systems is now reversing back into proprietary soldered on disposable junk.

If it isn't broken don't fix it. The industrial revolution began with interchangeable parts, now we're reverting back?

 

The theory on why this is occurring goes to the fact the PC, the tablet and smart phones are really becoming sides of the same equation, simply in different form factors. With the downward pressure on PC-use (and ergo laptops) by people using pads and phones, the need to maintain a margin business comes in. With fewer sales in general comes fewer integrators, and fewer minor price niches in the market to exploit... and less of a need for "match this CPU to this chip set for this consumer/price niche". Don't get me wrong, I don't like it either, I would prefer to have the option to upgrade whenever possible, but the reality is if the vast majority of the market doesn't and it is cheaper for production and maintenance in a more commoditized business, I can understand why they are doing it. Now, it's possible that there might be an interesting side-effect of this move: motherboards with soldered GPU's might push stabilization in the form factor and design of laptops at certain price points, meaning every generation past a point might have the same power requirements and port layout, etc so that you could get a full m/b+CPU upgrade in one shot.... and continue to use the rest of the laptop for even longer. No more being locked into a chip set with only one cpu upgrade path based on the socket design. This means in addition to CPU upgrades, you also get the benefit in a system of upgrades to the entire m/b. I think Intel is reading the writing on the wall - get prepared to build a mobile-like business or die. I am sure it's not lost on them that Apple is experimenting with using the same processors in their mobile devices as their laptops... that's around 5 years off from happening, but that's the direction it's all headed in. We can stamp our feet and throw pejoratives around and rage against the process but at the end of the day, it simply is what it is. Some would say it's inevitable given the ever dropping cost of computing coupled with the desire to be mobile. As something of a car enthusiast, I dread the day when all I can get is some POS econobox I have to rent from the State so it works with some grid-computing driven self-driving network... but that's the future one day on that front and all my raging and posturing won't change it, but there might still be raceways and special cars to drive them on, I suspect the PC-world is going to be much the same in time and the enthusiast will have options of some sort always... perhaps super-performance M/B+CPU options will exist... at a price of course, but I suspect that will always be there for years to come as long as the niche is large enough to justify production and sales volume.

 

Alienware 17 confirmed to work with GTX 980M :thumbsup:

Alienware 17 (r5) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M upgrade - YouTube

 

Sweet. I want one now!

They still want $1100 for it. Way too much.

 

That looks like it's fully sorted on the AW17 . Don't think they will want to give it all away quickly to avoid the 'me too' resellers?

A first for AW with iGPU enabled?

 

The Clevo card is only $720 (+ shipping) from RJTech, and the Alienware card is $1099 (+ shipping) from EUROcom.

What's up with that?

 

The extra effort it took to get it to market?

 

Doubtful. Maxwell is cheaper. They're just price gouging. EUROCom still sells 780M's for $800, lol.

Spoiler

This begs the question: What the heck is Alienware doing if the 970M & 980M work?!

 

So how about trying to work on the Alienware 18 this time?

 

I'm not fully sure how AW17 and the MUX work, but you may need to settle with GTX 980M enabled + Optimus enabled(it will automatically go to IGP when not gaming) with the one function. The other function with MUX will disable the GTX 980M and just use IGP.

That's what I get from watching the video.

So to remove Optimus you may need to wait for Dell 980M vbios. But atleast its working now

Alienware 18 may just work right off the bat without any problems. The one function with Optimus enabled won't enable Optimus anyway on AW18 since Optimus doesn't work with SLI.

But it could crash and not work as well. We will see

 

I meant the questions around all the people that have failed so far to get it working. If they have come up with some bios/vbios/driver config that works then get it out there at top price before the cut-price guys catch on? I think that if it just works out-of-the-box then for sure what the hell AW??

Until they reveal what is needed and what works for each of the AW models we are still in the dark.

 

Obviously its not working out of the box on Alienware MUX systems, which has me thinking MSI has a different implementation of the MUX switch. I read also on a chinese form that it works with the M17x R4 (muxless) with optimus enabled, but not PEG only (which means for those with the unlocked BIOS, leave it on SG only or else your system will not POST).

For those that need explanation of acronyms:
MUX= multiplexor
MUXless= no multiplexor
PEG = PCI Express Graphics (anything that is currently occupying the MXM slot)
dGPU = discrete GPU
SG = Switchable Graphics
iGPU/iGFX = Intel's GPU (Intel HD 3000/4000/4600)

I wonder if the M18x has a similar BIOS as the M17x R4, I think the key would be somewhere in the advanced menu pertaining to graphics. Obviously a bunch of settings need to be tested, but I don't have access to a M18x with an unlocked BIOS. Here's why I think this. It may be possible to fake the BIOS into thinking the iGPU is present, but have it configured to disable after POST. I know this from the M17x R4, where if you set your graphics setting to iGPU only and then decide to switch to PEG only, you get beeps and it won't post until you reset the BIOS. I think a similar situation may be occurring with the M18x