When are the new Alienwares with Maxwell coming?

I'm waiting for the 980 ti to come out before I upgrade from my 780ti. Still pushes my games pretty much maxed out at 1400p. EVGA 780 ti still going strong and I only plan on buying EVGA in the future if I'm getting Nvidia.

as to the area 51 congrats on the new machine! Seems like a pretty good deal to me. I liked the look of the aurora much better, and I hope they go back to that style at some point.

 

I'd love to get a 980Ti or Titan II but I bought the Area 51 without the gpu to save some extra money lol. I'm planning to try and get a cheap gtx 480 or 580 if possible, if not I'll wait for the 980 kingpin. It's supposed to come out February. Who knows when a 980Ti model will come out. It could be summer or even fall of this year.

The Aurora ALX case is awesome. I think they'll bring it back maybe with a lower tier option like z97 instead of x79/x99. That would be good and it'd be a bit cheaper as well.

 

Yea good point. If the 980 ti came out this fall it would be perfect for me hehe.

 

IIRC aren't the kingpin models mostly for dry ice setups? They don't tend to be particularly great with stock cooling.

 

yea you're pretty much better off buying a classified if you aren't gonna go to crazy, but even then the classy tends to really shine when under water.

 

Ofc. EVGA non-reference coolers stink. Cheap plasticky ACX ROFL. And then there was that fiasco with the ACX cooler on the 970 where the direct-contact heatpipes were misaligned with the GPU die, causing the cards run loud and hot. Good thing EVGA's warranty is top-notch.

 

The 780Ti Kingpin was pretty good with stock cooling, I'm assuming the 980 Kingpin will, be as well. There's three bioses, one for ln2, you can use stock cooling, water cooling or ln2.

I've always wanted a classified/kingpin model. We'll see how it runs on air cooling. The factory overclock itself will be nice. I'm not planning to break any records, but I will push it as much as I can.

LN2 and water will allow even higher overclocks of course.

 

It was pretty quiet and ran with no problems back when I had my 770 with an acx cooler. I just like the look of the reference coolers more so I went that route this time. Plus I like having a blower cooler that exhausts out the back of my case instead of dumping it into the case which would cause my cpu temps to rise a couple degrees. I will agree on that 970 Blunder, but since then they have released a redesigned cooler that fixed the problem.

 

Yeah the Kingpin cards are binned for low ASIC (high leakage) such that they'll OC like mad under extreme cooling. They really were designed to be benching cards first and gaming second IMO.

 

Well, not sure if this is old new or what, but here Alienware sell their AW17-r2 with the current tie-in and cannot change the configuration:

1) 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4710HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) c/w NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970M with 3GB GDDR5 at $2100

2) Intel® Core™ i7 4980HQ (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 4.0GHz w/ Turbo Boost) c/w NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980M with 4GB GDDR5 at $2500

Im very disappointed in this config, because i want to save by having the 4710 pair with 980 with plans on buying the GA next year. Now they are like forcing me to buy this config without any regards to the consumer. Not to say it all BGA filth.
You broke my heart Alienware, you broke my heart!!

 

Look towards my Avatar. user title ...

 

If you are getting the GA next year the 970M will do the job until then, tweaked it's a very fast card.

 

@papusan: 100% agreed if they put it in High End/Performance laptop. LOL

Well, maybe AW will do a remake, maybe they don't. My biggest let down is still no 120Hz screen though.

 

I don't think there are 120hz eDP screens available at the moment.

 

The 3D/120Hz True Life from the previous A17-R1 has an eDP internal connector if I'm not mistaken.

 

You are correct, but I think Meaker is saying they are becoming scarce and none are being manufactured. Many of the 17" and 18" laptop screens in circulation were manufactured as service components two or three years ago even though they are installed in brand new products. If that is true, and I have heard it is more than one place, buying a new machine with a 120Hz display could turn out to be a bad choice if you ever break the LCD or something goes wrong with it and you cannot find a replacement part.

 

Hi guys, just wanted to ask what is the highest % discount that you have seen alienware put out? A 10% discount sale just ended and even then it was still more expensive than an comparable MSI or Asus in my country. If there is a possibly of seeing a 15% or higher deal on a 17 R2 I'd be all over it but is it wishful thinking?

 

It was not one of the new standard connector types in the very least and was just electrically 50 pin lvds IIRC.

 

For those interested in the new Alienware notebooks

R9 M295X
Description: Bus Interface: PCIe 3.0 x16, Max Memory Size: MB, Core Clock(s): 750 MHz, Memory Clock(s): 1375 MHz, Graphics API Support: DirectX 11.2 OpenGL 4.3 Max TDP: 125 W

GTX 980M
Description: Bus Interface: PCIe 3.0 x16, Max Memory Size: MB, Core Clock(s): 1038 MHz, Graphics API Support: DirectX 12 OpenGL 4.5 Max TDP: 100 W

GTX 970M
Description: Bus Interface: PCIe 3.0 x16, Max Memory Size: MB, Core Clock(s): 924 MHz, Graphics API Support: DirectX 12 OpenGL 4.5 Max TDP: 75 W

 

forgot mantle lol?

 

Would you buy that fireball just for Mantle?

 

Mantle was junk when I tried it with BF4 + 7970M... It just lagged so badly compared to DX11..

 

Mantle is mostly only useful if you run a crappy CPU (AMD`s A10 APUs or i3s from Intel) that bottleneck the GPU (bad balance between them) or some CPU bound games that have support for it.
Give very little gains elsewhere

 

it's indeed useless for most of us here, but I just like to give AMD some credit for coming up with their own API. nevertheless it's nothing gaming changing, m295x is just more than pointless right now.

OT PS: AMD has the best upgradability of all, even for soldered components. my friend with an 8970m upgraded to m290x through a driver update, and now with omega drivers he rolled back again to 8970m
also all m290x with omega drivers gets automatically rolled back to 8970m on GPU ID

 

The reason AMD needs Mantle is that its DX11 driver has much higher CPU overhead than Nvidia's DX11 driver.

 

125W? In that tiny chassis? and BGA? Anybody who orders the M295X is screwed beyond belief.

 

I think part of that is inaccurate information. I believe the stock clocks are 725/1250 and 125W would be the TDP limit with an extreme overclock, not 125W running at stock clock speeds.

 

That video is also a good example of why crappy low-TDP BGA CPUs are not "OK" for gamers that want an amazing experience. Looks like it's even more true for AMD, but still... CPU performance isn't unimportant like some noobs think it is. A good GPU is important, but a lousy CPU makes the whole system a lousy one. Can't have something great if either one is lackluster.

 

Agreed, i think for any of us reading this forum who want true performance, the minimum for a good system would be something like an i7 4710mq/hq

 

Here is a nice video from our friend gumamike showing why the eGPU is not a satisfactory Alienware 18 SLI replacement. Of course, the lack of performance portability is the most obvious reason, but here are how the numbers pan out.

<iframe width='1280' height="720" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/t-E7FyV14E8?rel=0" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I want one!!!!

Big Maxwell is here

 

Wow, that's mahoosive...takes up the whole space!! I want one too!

 

Now if alienware offered one of those soldered I think people would not mind so much lol.

 

I would still mind. Soldered CPU/GPU = no sale. Sockets and slots or nothing.

 

Unfortunately that day always comes when no matter how powerful you though your GPU was... you want to upgrade.

 

Not gonna buy the titan version, but I'll be all over a 980 ti... especially if it launches cheaper than my 780 ti did.

 

I'd love a 980Ti , if only they'd release it within a month. Too bad we probably won't see anything for five-six more months at least.

 

If AMD comes out with that new GPU they have been working on it might be out sooner than you think.

 

I heard the BGA move was for reducing the power consumption to make the laptop more "eco-friendly"?

Can anyone provide a link that proves this?

 

If you look; Alienware 17 comes with only a 180w power supply .. Test Pages have benchmark tested laptops with gtx980m with a max wattage of +210W ....

 

I don't think there is much truth to this. I think its purely misinformation and damage control. Other companies are putting out socketed parts.

 

Were this to deliberately gimp the laptop's standalone power to force users buying the GA for more performance?

 

Dell save money on everything now. Both on a BGA processor and BGA GPU and a small Garbage = Bga 180w psu. They can even pick of the processor and graphics card use these again if the motherboard is completely destroyed ... Here is an example of price; " For those of you who don’t know, BGA sockets have been used in laptops for years and involve soldering the processor into the board using small ball joints underneath the board. Its not as costly as implementing an LGA (land grid array) socket like LGA1155" – Do Dell swap out the whole thing and re-solder the processor into another board for resale to someone else? Would Dell even mention that it’s practically a refurbished unit? HaHa

TBonesan: Remember that Intel made a Garbage bga processor such as R-series processors Core i7-4770R) soldered that consumes much less watts than a standard 17-4770 NOT K.

These processors have the (I7-4770 / 4770k / 4770R = 3.9ghz) same max turbo speed as standard. but different TDP. The Core i5-4570R, the i5-4670R and the Core i7-4770R they're all designed to fit under a 65W TDP (thermal design power), wooden meansthat they'll ask drawing less power and producing much less heat than Tre Archi socketed counterparts.

 

Price..Its not as costly as implementing an LGA (land grid array) socket.The same on BGA gpu and a cheep 180w ps.

 

Dang :/

Looks like the price is still roughly the same with the old 17R1, wonder how much Dell gained with this move.

 

Dell got rid of Optical Drive in every laptop too..

 

It's mostly intel's fault. Broadwell as far as I have read is only going to be bga. That means you either go z97 like some of the sager/clevo machines or you go bga. Alienware chose BGA.

 

Maybe Intel choose to offer BGA processors at a lower TDP to standard socketed CPUs to reduce failures & returns, afterall a failure on a soldered CPU is gonna have a lot more impact, in terms of replacement cost, than failure of a socketed CPU - I wonder if that's the reason for the lower TDP.

 

But it is Dell's fault that they chose soldered gtx980m

 

yup I'm pretty mad about that one.