When are the new Alienwares with Maxwell coming?

Broadwell isn't here yet, so that is not a valid excuse for building cheap garbage Haswell BGA machines. That's like knowing a bitter enemy is coming to your house sometime next year and deciding to just go ahead and hang yourself tomorrow to avoid conflict. Intel will be deserving of a boycott if they stop selling socketed mobile CPUs at any point in the future, but papusan is right. Alienware is responsible for everything about the new systems and cannot use Intel as a scapegoat for bad decision making.

 

Not so sure I agree (at the risk of your wrath Mr Fox!).

Yes, they could have gone at least another year and it is frustrating to see the path Dell has taken but I can roll with it - I have to. I worked in the standards production industry for 20 years. The last 10 were in the US helping US (and S American) companies achieve certification for products and services to the EU. At one time when it comes to consumer products nobody cared about how a factory in China made their goods, only the quality of the output.

With international OEM's it requires CE and ISO certification. ISO forces supply chain audit and certification. I believe this started with a demand to the far-flung factories to clean up their act. Going soldered is less intensive, requires less power, and saves on rare metals, so it begins. For the OEM production costs go down and less material is used.

What do Dell do when they are told that the mobile chip market is pretty much only into small, thin power saving, chips? The market size to production costs is simply not large enough to have it's own enthusiast line.

The desktop market on the other hand does have a large and vociferous following so I can't see that going away for a few years without a fight.

I have to think that AW are scrambling to change to a direction taken for them. Like I said there is still another year in socketed components, and when the competition has to follow they can blame AW for starting the trend.

It's an international conspiracy driven by politicians chasing the green ticket. It's illegal here to sell a coffee maker that does not fully power down after 45 mins. 'High power vacuum cleaner sir? Sorry, not allowed.' /rant_off

If we see any MXM chips above the 980m I will be very surprised. AW decided to go early and at least capture what will be the future for enthusiasts. Desktop PCI cards are so popular that this is where the consumer gets to choose - so they introduce a 'box' to plug in a desktop unit. I'm going to give it a go and see if it gives me some future after one year?

Of course whether it's a self-fulfilling prophecy or strategic, if the competition can hang on and force manufactures to supply what their consumers want then that would be just great.

Personally I'm fed up with waiting and watching things I like about AW disappear. I'll keep my baby and see what comes along and try one of these things out. After all, all it has to do is play games very well . My major disapointment is in the panel but i will be able to do side-by-side just to judge how bad it is.

 

Nice point there Micky.

I get the whole tree hugger thing that the larger companies are being forced to comply.
This could be somehow related to the carbon emission limits our beloved countries signed up for.

Dell being a leading industry retailer may have been forced by the government to comply with their green initiatives.
Smaller companies that make the other gaming laptops need not succumb to this pressure and this may be why we still see socketed cpu/gpu in them.
As the smaller notebook retailers are not regulated, they can provide bigger PSUs to anticipate what the buyer may upgrade into in the future.

 

I think there will be support for MXM for at least another 4 years. When MSI showcased their GT80 Titan they said it would support GPU upgrades for the next 2 generations. So there is still hope for everyone who has the older systems.

 

That's how it (carbon emission limits) start and then become law. The Energy Star rating on all household electrical items is sold to the public as, 'helping the consumer identify the best products'. Once the manufacturer is forced to submit their equipment for a barrage of tests it's a simple step to introduce legislation without massive disruption. The manufacturers are told what is expected of them and have time to comply or refuse and see if it becomes law.

You're right about the smaller companies not having to comply at the moment but the factories supplying them will have to. I saw a laptop advertising that it uses a desktop CPU. Can't recall the make/model but that may be their tactic? I have no idea how you can get a desktop CPU cool in a laptop but for sure it's going to be running on a low voltage and poor comparable performance. BUT it will (or should) mean that they can drop-in newer CPU's?

 

Cant exactly recall but it looks like it was Clevo / Sager selling those notebooks with desktop CPUs.

So is it safe to say that at least for the 180W PSU, Dell is not the one to blame after all? =)

 

You won't incur my wrath for disagreeing. We're still friends. I'm OK with differing opinions as long as the opposition is not a stupid tree-hugger or gun control freak. You're obviously not one. It's disappointing that American political leadership has bought into the lies and supports this nonsense. Our current administration is super cuckoo about this environmental crap (and off-topic so we won't go there, gun control Satanists). Sadly, most of the lies and junk science were invented by imbeciles and weirdos in America. Cooperation from lousy American leadership is one of the major reasons an agenda like this one can actually start screwing with our lives in ways that matter.

The only kind of "climate change" I believe in is philosophical, and that starts with removing these retards from positions of power. Maybe the fires of hell will provide them a real life experience with the "global warming" lies they seem to worship so exuberantly. Who in their right mind would ever dream of injecting their cancer into our electronics and computer world? This demonstrates that these dunderheads will stop at nothing to make to shape a world that changes their lies into a pseudo-reality. It doesn't help things that most consumers, including those that don't drink the tree-hugger Kool-Aid, are as stupid as a box of rocks.

In the meanwhile, I will enjoy my hydrocarbon-emitting, gas-guzzling SUV and my watt-sucking beast computers until they pry my cold dead fingers from the trigger.

 

I concur. Alienware could have stuck with the 4710MQ - 4940MX if they wanted. Nobody forced them to design their systems with soldered components. Whoever decided it was necessary for cooling purposes is a fool. Having the 4710HQ is no different than having the 4710MQ (aside from the obvious socket). And having a soldered GTX 980M is not beneficial in anyway other than cutting cost. They wanted save money, and this is what we get. At least the system prices are not as high as before...

In the long run, I believe they'll have much less revenue from this lineup. Too bad Dell is private now. I'd love to see their earnings reports next year.

 

+1 Rep... I'm not cutting Alienware any slack on this. If they were stand-up guys they would be resisting, leading an assault against it, and publicly renouncing this anti-enthusiast BGA filth. They should at least telling us the sad facts driving their reasons for dumbing things down instead of pretending they are still making amazing products like they used to. They have a YouTube video channel that covers A to Z. There's no reason they can't have a few videos that give us an insider view of the dumb-dumbs that are affecting the industry so we can retaliate with an organized attack against this movement. Instead, they cloak things and lead us to believe that everything is OK. Maybe there are a few tree-huggers at the top of their corporate food chain that think this abortion of technology is somehow "good for customers" LOL. C'mon consumers, time for your daily dose of snake oil.

 

@ Mr Fox, We're definitely on the same page with our personal preferences! My view is that fossil fuels are going to run out and eeking them out for my kids or grandkids is not something I buy into. Use it while it lasts and find the alternatives when we have to.

I haven't seen any alternative fuel aircraft yet. Just getting more and more efficient at the expense of safety. Leaner running engines that stall easier and are slower to spin-up, and super light-weight new and untested (over time) materials is where it is going right now.

I do miss living in the US. Your personal freedoms are way more than pretty much anywhere else. It does have it's drawbacks but in the end as an individual it suited me.

My favourite quote (cold dead hands) yes I was a fully paid-up NRA member...think I'm getting a little O/T.

Hey Mr Fox, does the R2 get it's own owners lounge ?

 

It probably should. It's nothing even remotely similar to the previous generations. Maybe we should start a new sub-form specifically for the new BGA turd machines to keep them separate from the good stuff, just as we separated the older stuff in the Alienware Aurora & Alienware Area 51 Forum sub-forum. It's going to be tough to be excited and show the same level of engagement as a moderator when the new stuff is viewed as junk and I am driving a Clevo instead of an Alienware.

 

Hearty laugh! You might want to think of a little kinder title than 'for all you BGA turds' . If the market diverges it keeps the more technical groups focused on their own kit .

Foot clearly in both camps right now, beginning to sound like a fan-boy or an apologist but just a pragmatist (I think!) .

 

I'm kinda in the same boat. I need another machine here in a couple months and the 15 looks like the perfect machine for me minus the BGA/MXM and 180watt PSU. Haven't looked at the clevo's yet, but if they have a machine that is slim enough to easily carry around with decent Battery life and a good GPU I might have to jump ship as well. Really torn.

 

There will be disgusting to see processor benchmark test results when someone crunching numbers from GARBAGE soldered processors in the Alienware 17r2 in the forum for Alienware 17. It will be unpleasant to see Cinebench 11.5, Wprime 1024 and Xtu bench test results. It's like watching processor tests four years back in time .. In the year 2015: new mobile processors got recession in performance since Intel started with processors for laptops .. The year Dellienware slaughtered Alienware as a brand ..

 

It will be interesting to see temperatures and see if the processors throttle and how long they keep their turbo speed for.

 

I'm assuming there will be some sort of "glass ceiling" in terms of performance, regarding wattage. The PSU's are inadequate.

 

Yes but it'll be interesting to see if the stock cooling and power can keep the cpu at load without throttling. Every bga laptop i've dealt with had throttling, overheating or not keeping turbo for more than a few seconds when doing a full load task,

I think since these laptops aren't as thin as the competitors, the cooling might allow the processor to run at full speed.

What's interesting is, the graphics amplifier automatically overclocks the cpu on the 15/17, does that mean the graphics amplifier is able to provide extra power in addition to the 180w adapter?

 

When the GA's running then the onboard NVidia graphics card in the laptop is gonna be disabled, not consuming any current, so there's extra overhead there anyway for the CPU overclocking.

 

It's not like the 4710HQ is unlocked, anyway. So, you're not overclocking much of anything. Like what... 200MHz? Big deal, lol.

The 4710HQ will bottleneck pretty much every desktop GPU from the GTX 770 and up (in terms of performance output) depending on the game. The new games coming out this fall are going to be extremely CPU-intensive. For example, The Division will have a new Snow Engine - which looks amazing, btw - that will chomp up resources.

 

Proof?

10char

 

huh? 4710HQ performs roughly the same as i5 4690k, and that CPU is not known to have bottleneck any graphics card yet

 

We're talking about the Graphics Amplifier.

 

Hmm actually from what ive seen on the notebookcheck benchmarks, the 970m is within the ballpark of the desktop 770 and it does not appear to be bottlenecking in any way, however there is a soft bottleneck of maybe <10% on the 980m, which is a bit less than the desktop 780 more or less. So supposedly you get a laptop with a 970m and a 47xxhq cpu, you should be more or less fine.

 

The 980M is more like an overclocked 770 or underclocked 780. Maybe I should have said, "anything better than the GTX 770." Either way, it's still problematic.

 

CPU bottlenecks have been discussed to death again & again in all sorts of Maxwell threads - the same view points go around & around - is a 4710HQ gonna bottleneck so & so card. Some people seem to think you have to match your CPU to your GPU, but I don't think they're really directly linked. It just comes down to how many fps you're aiming for in games. You can always turn down graphics settings & then become CPU limited even with a sh*tty GPU, so it's more about the target frame rate you're aiming for when you consider which CPU to buy. Pretty much all 60Hz (60fps) gaming you'll be just fine with a 4710HQ. If you have a 120Hz screen (hardly anyone does!), then it's good to aim for 120fps, and that can be tough on the CPU - then you want the fastest one you can get really if you can afford it. So, it doesn't matter what GPU you have when considering a CPU - it's about your target frame rate you want to aim for; the GPU just determines the graphics settings you can run to reach that fps target.

 

I don't consider extreme edge cases to be "problematic."

 

that has nothing to do with whether would 4710hq bottleneck the gpu or not. cpu bottlenecks come in the form of minimum frame rates and max frame cap. CPU handles the AI and setting up the frame while GPU fills the frame with content. so unless you are talking about 120fps then yes a better CPU would make the difference, but for as long you are stuck with a 60hz screen , it's not gonna bottleneck anything so far

 

You can get more than 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor unless you use v-sync. It will bottleneck certain games, especially new ones coming out soon.

You may not, and most probably don't, but I do, especially on a non-upgradeable laptop.

And the fact that you can only use Dell drivers makes things even worse.

 

But why would you want to.

And technically that's not correct. It's impossible to get over 60 whole frames per second on a 60 Hz screen. The tearing that is the result of several partial frames on-screen at the same time doesn't count.

 

On many (most) games, everything (input, physics, networking) is tied to the graphics rendering loop so disabling v-sync it can help reduce latency.

 

You're right about this, the display simply drops the extra frames. But, assuming tearing is not an issue, would higher FPS make on-line gaming better? I don't do it but often read about latency being the enemy of multi-user. That milisecond delay between you getting your shot in or not? Is this worse at lower FPS?

Dunno, just a thought...

 

Edit: Answer posted while I was typing! Cheers garache

 

This may have been true 15-20 years ago and more recently on consoles (and poor console ports) but certainly not true for the vast majority of PC games nowadays. In fact the only engine in recent memory I know of that has an absolutely locked 16.6ms tick rate is id Tech 5 where graphics settings and even resolution will adjust dynamically on-the-fly to stick to that 16.6ms update cadence. Some games will lock animation or physics simulation to either 30 or 60 FPS but those are not common, esp. on PC.

Input is again tied to the number of frames shown since it is updated per-frame so having a tearing 60+ FPS on a 60 Hz screen is of no benefit latency-wise, that's why competitive gamers get 120/144 Hz screens to run high frame rates. And most non-Source Engine games' network frame rate/tick rate is detached from client frame rate. CS:GO is the only one I know of that does 128 tick (with disportionate server costs to real-world benefits). Other Source games are 66 tick and most other online MP FPS are well below 60.

Edit: IW Engine (CoD) might still have the old Quake Engine glitch where super high FPS causes certain physics events to happen faster/more exaggerated (e.g. movement speed and jump height/distance). Not that it matters anyway unless you're on a CoD4 bunnyhop server since online MP is locked to 91 FPS. Not sure if Source is the same way, wouldn't be surprised though since IW, Source, and GoldSource are all descended from Quake Engine.

 

I suppose that's true as well. When I'm referring to a bottleneck, I'm always talking about the absolute best settings possible. Obviously, lowering a setting or two will give you better frame rates, and some people are absolutely fine with that. But when I drop $3k~$4k or more on a gaming rig, I expect it to be able to handle the best for a while.

Can't expect that anymore. BGA filth has infested the enthusiast market. And the worst part of it is: Alienware is misleading its customers by throwing white lies in your face and providing misinformation. For example, in the Alienware 15 video they released, they claim that you can game at more than 60 FPS on the 4k display, then there's a slight pause and he says, "thanks to the Alienware Graphics Amplifier." In other videos they say their new systems are for people who don't want to "compromise" or "sacrifice" performance. That's just as misleading. Their employees and sales are marketing "maintaining performance" or "best performance we've ever had in this form factor," and it has nothing to do with Alienware. Of course new hardware components will perform better. NVIDIA will not release something that performs worse than previous generation components.

 

On the contrary, piling on the graphical settings (incl. resolution and antialiasing) has the opposite effect, making a game more GPU-bound and the CPU a less important/limiting factor for performance.

 

With >60 FPS on a 60 Hz screen, the display doesn't simply drop the extra frames, it shows them as multiple partial frames on-screen at the same time, resulting in tearing. Same goes for <60 FPS w/o V-Sync, because even though frame rate is lower than refresh rate, it is not perfectly synced with the screen's refresh cycle, so there will still be partial frames and tearing.

There are no real (non-placebo) input latency benefits to >60 FPS on a 60 Hz screen. "1337 pr0 gamerz" get 120/144 Hz screens and run their games at those FPS for lowest input lag.

 

I am a developer in a company doing virtual reality where one of our main concern is reducing latency and what i'm saying is still very true today for commercial game engines (Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Unity)
Basically the engines' game logic is mono-threaded because there are things which must be done sequentially. They do offload more and more stuff on multiple cores (Player logic, AI, Physics), but this is still looking like this kind of oversimplified main loop :

The problem is that when V-Sync is enabled the graphics rendering actually waits for the screen's vertical blanking interval (even if it's not that relevant to modern LCD screens). Waiting results in latency.

Now, there's actually a new feature in modern engines which is multi-threaded rendering. As a good example, in Unreal Engine 4, the game logic does not have to wait for the rendering to be finished, this means that the game logic can be ahead of the rendering by 1 or 2 frame. While this will improve fluidity, it also increases input lag (what you're seeing is what happened 2 frames back...).

What actually helps for conventional pc games here is adaptive syncing like NVidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync. You still cannot get over the screen's maximum refresh rate, but at 144 fps on a gaming screen input lag should be low anyway.

Hope this was not too technical

 

Don't worry, I understand about V-Sync making GPU wait for vblank, causing latency, and CPU pre-rendered frames. But what about limiting to 60 FPS (no V-Sync) on a 60 Hz screen, that's what the question was. I wasn't advocating for V-Sync in any way since I hate latency.

So by "why would you want to" I meant why would you want to get more than 60 FPS on a 60 Hz screen w/o V-Sync, aside from netcode in certain games where server frame rate/tick rate is greater than 60.

And yeah 120/144 Hz monitors w/o V-Sync or with G-Sync/Adaptive-Sync is where it's at if you want lowest input lag possible for competitive gaming.

 

Because independently of any server tick rate, if you can render 2 frames in an interval of 16ms instead of only one then waiting for VBlank, you may have reduced your input lag by up to 8ms (depending on your input devices refresh rate, for example if you have a standard/crappy mouse don't even bother ). This may not matter for most games but I there are still some games where this can make a difference, albeit small.

Anyway, the real problem is that apart of overpriced exceptions, most screens can't do any sort of adaptive sync at all, which is sad.

 

But how does this work on a standard 60 Hz screen w/o V-Sync if it can't even display a whole frame every 8.3ms (can't show 120 discrete frames per second on 60 Hz display). Even though user input is taken at beginning of every frame you are not seeing the benefit of the visual output at the end due to tearing/overlapping partial frames so there is still that 8.3ms of additional input lag?

 

It depends on the frame rate. Tearing can be bearable if you're rendering at a really high frame rate so that there's little to no gap between partial frames. However this will look bad at framerates only slightly higher than the screen's framerate.

 

So is there any real input lag benefit from running 120 FPS vs. 60 FPS on a 60 Hz screen (V-Sync off in all cases)?

 

I'm can't wait for a gsync laptop monitor panel. I used to think it was all marketing, till I got my swift. Even with occasional frame drops down to 30-40fps due to the crappy Planetside 2 optimization in intense firefights The game is 100% playable and plays lag free with no stuttering. It Would be good tech to have in a laptop minus the markup that panels equipped with the tech seem to have.

 

It's hard to quantify if it's better to run a game above the refresh rate in terms of fps. Titanfall is locked at screen refresh rate even without V-sync on, but I found a work-around to bypass that. I think I play better with an unrestricted framerate where the average frame rate is above my screen refresh rate. It does reduce latency, as the game is updating all the inputs quicker, and I guess you could argue you can use those extra frames that aren't displayed to improve your accuracy - if you can predict a players ultra fast movement when close to you (where high refresh rates are more important due to huge & quick changes in the 'view scene') then your inputs will be registered more accurately & precisely even though they're not faithfully displayed on the screen (due to the refresh rate being lower than the game is running at) - that's my theory anyway! I seem to play better with unrestricted frame rate - it's subjective though!

 

This GA looks like a disaster to me with all this rebooting nonsence, NVIDIA not officially supporting it and having to wait for Dell to release drivers etc... Really, Dell has screwed the ball completely up on this..

 

It's on the way, it requires a bit of work as you don't just want to add in more chips that sap more power if possible.

 

Really, that's rubbish, being restricted to Dell version of NVidia graphics drivers in order the GA to function properly is not good, unless Dell release new drivers as often as NVidia release their current drivers.

 

I keep checking the Dell website for drivers... still not there. I'm interested to see how the 980m part fares on my cards.

 

Are you serious? RIP AW notebooks. Bunch of idiots running that company.

 

Hmm, that's unfortunate. The more I looked at it, the more I realized I was one of those rare people (fools?) who would actually find good use for the GA. I had been looking at eGPUs for a while, but they were just too finicky. This GA actually seemed to fit the bill nicely. I really don't feel like maintaining a desktop and a laptop, but I also don't feel like paying the premium necessary to get desktop-like power in a laptop - not to mention the fact that I much prefer gaming on a 23" + display. But since I don't often get to sit down for extended periods of time...A decent laptop + this GA would've been sweet.

But not if it ties me to Alienware laptops and iffy drivers.