17 R2 - Anyone else have buyer's remorse yet?

That's why I hate systems wiht Optimus. I like my Alienware 18 because there is no optimus, you have to do a full switch through the FN + F5 key to switch between graphics cards and when you do, the sytem doesn't see the stupid Intel Graphics crap!

 

Because my gs30 uses a desktop gtx970. Not a mobile 970.....
I posted my firestrike score in thread where i reviewed the computer if youd like to see it.

 

That's not quite accurate is it? What you meant to say is you have your MSI in a docking station that has a desktop GTX 970 installed - MSI 's version of the AW graphics amplifier.

So those scores are when you are docked.

Do you have them when you're just running on the laptops graphics card?

 

Those were the scores when his laptop was in a docking station using a desktop graphics card, if I'm not mistaken.

So in essence, he's comparing an ultra-thin laptop that doesn't even have a dedicated GPU (so its not even a gaming laptop) and requires a docking station to be able to game (MSI GS30), with an actual gaming laptop (AW17). Well, I guess the GS30 has an Iris Pro GPU, if you consider that a proper, dedicated gaming chip. And given the lack of dedicated gaming-grade GPU, the heat, noise and lackluster battery life of the GS30 are disappointing - but I digress.

This is an apples-to-oranges comparison, and not only is it detracting from this thread, it isn't adding anything really useful. People who buy a gaming laptop expect to be able game on it on the go, not need to be chained to a graphics amplifier/docking station to get any kind of playable frame rate. The GS30 is an interesting machine, and one I would actually have considered (since I had long thought of the exact setup of the GS30 as being perfect for me) , but it is a niche product, and passing off its docked scores as regular benchmarks without disclosing the fact is shady at best.

 

Wait the MSI has a desktop GTX 970????? how can you even fit it in a laptop????

 

@ecundiff: ahh right then that's cheating!! show me your laptop's Firestrike score without any extra impractical graphics amp then we're talking

 

Read my replies above.

 

Same score as my 780ti with graphics amp. Not bad I was looking at the gs30 but I decided to go with the amp because I like being able to use the laptops monitor and it's a little less bulky

 

very well said! a laptop is a laptop and should perform well without any extra crap attached to it. It's cheating comparing a normal / proper laptop to another which has handcuffs (ie. a graphics amp that immobilizes it)

 

I don't know if I'd say it's cheating - but it is somewhat misleading.

Regardless, seems like we've strayed from the initial topic - again.

 

you're right, not cheating but misleading... defeats the point of a laptop if you have to carry extra gear IMHO I`d rather just buy a small desktop rather than carrying such stuff to a laptop

 

Hey man- i am not comparing anything - the guy asked me why his 980m was producing a lower score - i simply answered the question. I made no comparison -
I know you are excited to find things to criticize me for being the AW pied piper
And all - but at least be fair - i merely answered a question.
Its kind of odd how you vehemently defend alienware even in the face of so much terrible quality and poor performance in their new releases. Do you work for them? (or does dell pay people to post in their favour forums?) you are almost making it my mission to inform people of the widespread problems that people are having with their 2-3 THOUSAND dollar laptops - and you just keep plugging away. Have you actually looked at the aw 13/15/17 threads over the last month. Its crazy! Just look at them - read them -
This is the last time i will be responding to you - please consider what im saying because seriously dude its irresponsible convincing people to blow their money on a known inferior product and you are HELPING dell to continue their downward slide and destruction of alienware. Dont let them turn it into vanilla garbage. Later man. And best of luck to you.

 

He's not a shill for Dell or Alienware. I've had bad experiences with the company myself (you can see the thread I made about it, if you really don't believe me) but I happen to also agree with what Ramzay has said about you and your posting. But whatever, you're entitled to post what you like.

 

The fact I sold my R2 and bought a R1, I would think, demonstrates clearly enough my feelings about the new AW models.

 

In the words of guys at the test and tune race track - "run what you brung" (yes i know brung isnt a word haha) but really its not cheating its how the computer is designed. Aw has a version of it using their graphics amp unfortunately the aw is bottlenecked via pciex4 - and last i heard was also giving lots of driver headaches. But aw does make a version of it too - is it not cheating as long as aw makes it but cheating if made by another brand?? No its how they are designed.

 

Nothing impractical at all - i do my work on laptop on the go - and then when i get home it docks and connects to my large display/mouse/keyboard as i would do and have done during my laptop ownership over the last 15 years. Only difference is now all my accessories and wires get to conveniently be kept connected and ready for when im home with the laptop.
I have only ever gamed at home. No time to game at work or at school - so for me its truly an amazing solution that as a bonus has awesome performance to back it up

 

well looking at your usage needs, this is a perfect solution for j00 I guess.

BTW, when the new Alienwares with the Graphics amps were released, I read a lot of complaints about problems in games and micro stuttering, was this fixed with a driver or is it still the same? like how effective is this graphics amp?

 

Its nice that you have your graphic AMPs and all costing hundreds of bucks.

But with 50$ adapter and a PSU you can also have something like this. Its a Dell Precision M6800 hooked up to GTX 980

Yes I know I'm bottle-necking it, but it works for a fraction of price

 

No difference between running it on my laptop and running it in my desktop, just as smooth, and the benchmarks are exactly the same as well.

 

Not bad but you are showing a 30%+ bottleneck. Doesnt it pain you to bottleneck such a nice expensive gpu? I couldnt do it personally. To each their own i guess.
And i guess mydock cost me aboutan extra 150 bucks vs your solution but it works really damn well so im ☺

 

Docking is like absolutely the perfect solution for someone like me and I would assume many others.

 

What desktop setup are you running? Sounds to me like your desktop is bottlenecking the card then as well. Combing pciex4 plus mobile aw mobile low volt cpu anywhere from 10-30 bootleneck unless you compare it to a bottlenecked desktop lol
What does ur aw laptop with ga benchamark vs standard test runs for that specific gpu(run on a desktop with proper components)

 

Desktop is a 4770k and sli 780ti. Firestrike score with single 780ti is 10000 on the desktop benched the same with 4980hq and 780ti on the aw. Pcie x4 does not appear to bottleneck the card in any noticeable manner

 

I don't use low voltage junk lol

 

This is getting on my nerves.
The GA runs at PCI 3.0 x4 with the AW15 and Aw17R2. It only runs at PCI 2.0 x4 on the AW 13.
Looking at these graphs, the GTX 980 would lose, on average, 5% on PCI 3.0 x4 and 13% on PCI 2.0 at 1080p.
The bandwidth starts to become negligible at higher resolutions. It's only evident in low resolutions.
We can also look at these graphs for other GPUs (architectures).
Let's start providing found facts and not speculation and bias, if we weren't to being with.

 

Good to know! That would explain it. Thanks

 

Here is the scaling for the 980:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/21.html

 

It was for a series of eGPU articles - 3rd one will be out soon. If anyone wants to read about it Article 1, Article 2.

But it did hurt me - funny thing is: GTX 760 and R9 270X worked fine with it via external monitor.

 

Oh there is more.

I have turned off the boost on the cpu. The cpu never goes higher than 2800(normal cocks).
When I have the psu/charger inn, and the Nvidia gpu on, they both idle at 60c/60c.
When I take out the psu/charger, only the CPU runs, at the same speed but at idle 50c.
(hwinfo64)
This clearly shows that Dell/AW could saved us 10c if they designet the cooling seperatly, heck even 15c if they cared to use better paste on the gpu and cpu.

Makes me so sad!

My dream are as follow:
1. gives us the option to turn of HT on the cpu(save some .c. there)
2. make me control the fans

 

Nah thats it. I'm leaving. The noise from the fans, is just the top of the icecake. I fired up my "old! aw18, and the beast is dead silent if you where to compere them two between.

What I'm going for won't be anything better in performance, ASUS 751JY, but atleast they designet it around silent cooling. Yeah Iknow, asus can be harsh, but luckely I know some fixer if I would get any trouble. The main reason I love AW is the support, but I can't live with the noise. Ill return it tomorrow!

 

That's funny, I sold my AW 17 R2 and got a R1. Upgraded it to the 980m. Compared to my G751JY, the performance is slightly less and noise quite a bit more. The surface temps of the R2 were uncomfortable and the fans could get loud.

I agree that despite poor quality control, ASUS has made the superior machine (assuming you get one without any issues).

 

I understand the noise issues, but seeing you in the gaming community have options I with a workstation do not. My solution to silencing M6800 was to transplant fans from M6600, little bit of soldering wires to fit the connectors and 30$ for extra fans did the trick.

 

Fixing the noise on these machines would require thicker fans. They spin as fast as they do to keep the components cool.

 

All temperarurea are lower across the board. Cpu, gpu, vrm, pch and system is much quieter. Not as quiet as m6600 was but close enough.

 

So I returned the AW17 R2, bought me a Asus G751JY same specs (- the lesser cpu in asus i7 4710).

This Asus is almost everything I wanted in the AW.
Things just work. No issues so far. No backlight bleed, no stuck pixel, no network issues etc.
The gaming power is there, the silence...

The only thing I miss is the AW support, the support that makes me feel safe if everything should go wrong, or anything died on me.

Crossing fingers for a AW comeback!

 

Only regrets is buying old 2013 haswell quad when boardwell quad is only a matter of a month or two away. Don't care about skylake that to far away to worry about

 

Alienware is not refreshing the 15 and 17 R2 with Broadwell CPUs. Only with Skylake.

 

I sure hope that is true? The other Dell model notebooks are already getting Broadwell dual cores! I read about this at start of year, but that was just from a tech site. Do you have anything official about that directly from Dell about the quad model actually not getting Broadwll and staying on Haswell?

Skylake is fine, that is a long way from now to, I not going to be waiting around for that at this stage. Broadwell however is to close for comfort.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2865...els-skylake-chips-in-second-half-of-year.html
Frank Azor said it himself. Broadwell, for full voltage CPUs, isn't going to make much of a difference. It did for ULV CPUs, though, which might be why Alienware updated the 13 with Broadwell-U CPUs.

 

Broadwell doesn't really give you much of a performance improvement with the high end CPUs. It's more focused towards the low end.

Skylake will be coming out in Q3 2015 because Intel shortened broadwells release cycle and that's right about the time Alienware refreshes their laptop line so the next upgrade will be Skylake.

 

True not much performance increase, therefore minimal for desktop users, many users don't use IGP.

Although for mobile, means huge improvements in thermals, battery life, IGP usable gains, and resell value will be better to jump over to Skylake without losing to much on this particular Haswell platform.

Even though Skylake is rumoured for Q3, I don't see it for being release for quads till after Core M and then Core U, therefore could be Q4 or even early 2016?

 

Agreed, the G751JY is a superb machine...assuming you get one without any issues. As long as you never have to deal with ASUS support, you're fine.

It's amazing how cool and quiet the G751 is.

 

Asus support is not so bad, just a 1 in 1000 chance of actually getting someone who can help you, then a 1 in 1000 chance that person can actually be understood.

I remember when I had to deal with Asus, I called so many times to get to a rep who could help me. Found him, couldn't understand him at all. Like literally I would have to ask him to repeat himself 10 times. It got to the point, I told him I would e-mail him my information because I couldn't understand him. I felt a little bad but it got done lol.

 

I went through two alienware 17 (2015's) and still had some issues I couldn't live with. I needed more portability anyways, being I have a beats of a desktop at home, which Im never in. I ended up getting the new razer blade with a 970m in it. I love alienware but I had massive throttling and random blue screens/lockups that started affecting my work.

 

I'm hoping we see some extreme editions with proper controls even if they are soldered.

 

Strange I sold my 2012 rMBP 15 and figured I use the money for an upgrade. Thinking AW are solid, would go with them, truth is there doesn't seem be a PC solution that covers all the bases. Apple giant might suck in many ways, the end product it freaking solid, hardware is near perfect on every single model. Can just buy with confidence, and in the unlikely situation something goes wrong, then is isn't a big problem to sort out. I think the industry isn't going to change much until the processor/chipset/dRAM type all changes. I feeling remorseful buying another Haswell all over again.

 

It's a lot easier to create a system with the performance bar set to a fraction of the level of a gaming system.

 

Especially when they charge significantly too much for it in most cases. They're that much more motivated to get it right I guess!

 

I got to say I am loving mine. But I have only had it for a short time now.

I did have a day one issue but it was something small. The speakers had an issue. Dell had someone at my house and had it fixed in under 24 hours. The speaker wires got pinched when the case was put together... a simple easy mistake and it could get pas the test because the woofer worked at half to low volume which gave it the sense they were fine.

I have to ask... what about Alienware specifically made those issues happen? I am not a big computer buff but from what I can tell if they all have the same parts and the same windows operating system how can those issues be brand specific?

 

Many things are brand specific, the motherboard and GPU are dell manufactured. The BIOS is also dell specific. The cooling is not that great on the CPU, the fan profiles are very slow. The blue screening / lockups were random and I could never figure them out. Both systems, original and replacement, had the same issue so Im sure its something specific to their setup. My desktop and razer blade have no such issues.