Which Alienware is this?

Alienware's naming system has gotten me totally confused. I wish they used the m17x r3/r4 etc naming or went by year name like AW 17 (2015) etc..

1. Anyway I have the model with gtx 880m, 256 gb m2 ssd and 1 tb hdd. Is this the r1, r2, r3 or some refresh variant?

2. I have read on this forum that installing Windows 10 on laptops with gtx 880m causes the screen to go kaput? Has it been fixed? Is it safe to upgrade now? If not, why does support.dell.com still recommend that I update? Is Dell officially aware about this issue?

3. Also, I have been thinking of upgrading my laptop. My current laptop allows me to have an ssd and 2 hdd, which is how i am currently configured. What about the latest models? Do they have 2 slots or 3?

4. I saw that some laptops can be configured with pcie ssd and some with m2 ssd? Does the latest model have slot for both, such that I could have an ssd in both the slots?

5. Lastly, the screen on my current laptop is horrible even though it is the 3d version. Glossy TN panel with terrible terrible viewing angles? Are the screens much improved now?

Phew, that is a long list of questions. I hope some of you fine folks here will help me out.

 

AW17 or AW17R5 we call it.

You need windows 8 or windows 10 in dedicated mode for the screen because it uses a digital connection i.e eDP and is not supported by legacy.

the newer models will allow you to use M.2 NGFF/2280 SSD's which make use of a pci-e x4 speed, i.e like a Samsung 950 or SM951 as an example

Screens have improved, some are matte some are glossy. Some are 120Hz like your and most are not.

Your welcome/.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply.
So is it safe to update to windows 10 or not?
How many hdd slots are there in the latest AW?

 

The AW17 R2 and R3 have 1 2.5" slot and 4 M.2 slots

 

Can you imagine 4 x 950Pro. That would be 10 GB/s bandwidth.... the CPU would be a bottle neck. HAHA

Safe, sure. Wise, not so sure.

Let me explain the screen thingy. DO NOT USE EVGA PRECISION ON YOUR ALIENWARE/ OR OTHER LAPTOP.

It has known issues that might make you lose your screen.
It was the reason why we had all those screens die.
You can all thank EVGA for that one.
(or correct me if I am wrong)

 

And nGreedia and M$, since none of the above care enough to fix a fatal flaw.

 

The flaw was with the hardware manufacturers too, for doing a sloppy job of QA and making sure the I/O pin needed to access the EEPROMS on the LCD's were inaccessible,too, if I am not mistaken.

 

It takes a village (more than one village idiot) to ruin everything. They've got an effective "partnership" with Micro$lop and NGREEDIA. Seems that most of the big players in computer technology are shysters now, but what do we expect when they take their ques from the Redmond Mafia?

 

whats the redmond mafia......

 

Micro$loth. Their world HQ/campus is in Redmond, WA.

 

Not all is correct. DELLIENWARE upgraded rebadged AW17 R3. From 4 M.2 Slots in 17 R2 to massive 2 M.2 slots in their newest rebadged Model. It's called an improvement Aka total 3 disk slots vs 4 in their older BGA model. But remember that people who purchase the newer model can probably upgrade to bigger disks yourself when Samsung release new bigger ssd's

 

All I can say is: lol

The joke gets better every time. Reduction in ports, no reduction in size footprint. Excellent engineering there.

 

Maybe late this year I will correct you also when you talking about next rebadged AW model. You will probably say the new models have 2 ram slots. Then I will chime in and tell you the new models have soldered ram HaHaaaaa

 

R2 had M.2's at SATAIII and new ones have at PCIe / NVMe but less number of ports.......Meh.

 

Yeah, losing port(s) and calling it progress on account of what's left is NVMe is a really jacked up mentality. But, it is consistent with the direction everything else is headed with the product line-up, so my surprised look isn't on my face.

I'm not sure I like NVMe all that much. I mean, sure, it is insanely fast, but it's also massive a pain in the butt to have to deal with if you're not a Windows OS X fanboy. After having NVMe in the Sky X9 for the past 6 months, I would never waste my hard-earned money paying extra for NVMe. Their benchmark scores definitely are extremely impressive, but not worth the hassle IMHO. I also cannot tell any difference in terms of "feel" compared to a normal 6.0GB/s SSD. Conceptually, the idea is much like a gamer-boy blowing money on an upgrade from 16GB of 1866 to 32GB of 2133... basically a waste of money that won't do diddly-squat to enhance the game. It is nice for bragging rights, if that floats your boat... but, not particularly useful for gaming. If having insanely fast SSD benchmarks is a source of personal joy, then NVMe is really awesome. I would much rather use the money wisely for a higher capacity, although totally ordinary, M.2 SSD. Or, something else more useful.

 

And Win7 compatibility with NVMe + Legacy CSM, I bookmarked your old post on X9 + Windows installations on multiple drives, mr. fox...

New tech regressed with most of the things...

 

I know you usually don't care about power consumption, but the NVMe SSD power consumption figures are completely nuts compared to SATA III drives. I've seen some go up to 30W under load/writes. That's absolutely nuts, not worth it IMO. That 30W vs the 5W for SATAIII could be dumped into something more useful, like CPU or GPU

 

You can add that to the concerns mentioned in my previous post. If you have more than enough power to go around it probably does not matter. Not much reason to care if you have a system with ample power handling resources. For most people with notebooks, having enough power is a concern, so point well taken.

 

17 R2 has 4 msata port
17 R3 has 3 msata port

wat?

 

A very nice upgrade, but not totally correct info R3 = 2x M.2 + 1x 2.5". Of course with crippled speed on 1 NVMe ssd if you use both M.2 slots Innovative?

 

That is a limit for any laptop out there. There are only so many pci express lanes available on a consumer grade core i5 and core i7 CPU. dont act like it is different on other laptops because it isnt. there is no laptop out there that can handle 4x pci express nvme drives in combination of a dedicated GPU, thunderbolt and the Graphics amplifier port .

The ****ty thing of M2 type connectors is that they are all different as well.

Dont blame Alienware/Dell on this but the industry as a whole. NVMe is nice though as a boot drive. My systems is fully loaded within 15seconds. But those drives do get warmer than traditional M2 Msata drives.

Oh and Windows 7 will soon be unsupported so why wanting to install it on a brand new system?

 

Because W8/8.1 isn't windows and I don't want W10 sending my hentai reading history back to M$

 

There is a lot of controversy surrounding Windows 10 regarding that. But....Windows 7 sends telemetrics back to homebase as well.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8...crosoft-from-collecting-more-of-your-data.htm

 

i'm happy to see that i'm not the only one confused by their naming system. i still don't get how i see r4, r5 here when my brand new pc is an r3... i think.

 

Thats because some use unofficial names here. The M17R1,2,3 are the old pre-tron style Alienwares. The AW17R1 that some call the R5 here is the first 17inch tron style non BGA Alienware. AW17R2 and AW17R3 are the BGA 17inch tron style Alienware's.

The Tron style newer Alienware's dont have the M preffix.

Tron style is actually the name Dell uses internally and it is because of the light stripes that are inspired by the tron movies.

 

Wasn't AW17(R5) ranger and AW-bga is echo?

 

AW M15/17X Rx vs AW17Rx (Tron series).

 

so if i were to add my new R3 to my signature i would call it either an "R7" or a "Tron style R3" ? -just curious.

-robert

 

Alienware 17 R3
Alienware M17x R7

take your pick

 

Why can't you just call it by the year it released instead if the presence/absence of the "m" and "x" confuse you. M17x R7 is going to spin more heads and make your life worse (with support, and you really don't want a confused representative).
Alienware 17 (Late 2015). There. Easier for people to understand.