ALIENWARE 15 HYPE?! leaked video

pff, with all the negative talks about alienware 15 making sense (such as BGA, weak PSU, ...) affecting me and the 4K displays getting delayed, and them being extremely expensive in europe (also 980m and 4K not even a choice in eu.). I more and more lean towards not wanting to buy it, and continue with my still perfectly working alienware m14x.
The downside is that I still am using a 900p screen and cannot play the latest games, (though I can still use my 5.1 surround setup with no extra usb audio card, which is not possible on the alienware 15).

pff, I'm too hesitant. can't decide.

 

The AW 15 is way more powerful than the M14x. Neither are upgradeable at this point. Just go for it.

I'd avoid the 4k display, though, unless you plan to grab the Amplifier.

 

Does 1080p scaling on a 15 inch 4K display look really that bad?
But getting the graphics amplifier might be a possibility for me as the gap between the desktop GPU's and the 980M in that laptop grows to become significant, which is totally not the case at the moment with 980M being quite close in performance to the 970 GTX

 

I was going to order the new Alienware 15 (I don't care for GPU upgrade as I will probably buy another laptop in 3 years), until I visited the french website.

This is complete nonsense:
- I cannot choose any graphics card or screen (the only choice is 970m (except for the base model with a 965m, no 4K screen),
- The price of base models are quite high compared to US even after considering exchange rates and included VAT,
- Pricing is very inconsistent (the top model is at 2300€ with 16gb RAM, GTX 970m and 256GB SSD, you can get the same by configuring the lower model for 270€ less !)

I can't order by phone (service seems to be closed in France) and online chat is a joke.

 

All of their systems are overpriced. I'll be waiting for a "Mystery Coupon Sale" before purchasing one. They usually have one around Spring and Fall.

 

I was expecting their systems to be consistently overpriced though

 

Garache: maybe the top model has better CPU, so the 270€ extra. I suggest to wait some days, i think the configurations are still under construction for european site.

 

Nah, they're charging $300~ for some M.2 SSD. It's laughable at best.

Don't buy that crap. Just grab a Samsung 850 PRO and throw it in there.

 

The samsung 850 EVO m.2 have been announced at CES, so you could grab one of those and still keep 1TB hard drive in it. But yeah getting SSD from dell is stupid.

Though I don't have those coupong thins in my country so widespread. I tend to check at the hope page of dell, there is a section for "dell deals". There you have a section for gaming computers, and from time to time you can get a hundred or 2 off of the price.

 

Nope, the configurations are exactly the same.

But yeah i'll wait at least a few days :x

 

Dell did the same thing with the Area-51 pricing. It ended up being a mistake and it even looked like one. Bought mine for a steal.

 

You call 5000 CAD a steal lol?

 

A "steal" is buying a maxed out Alienware for 30% off. Gotta love those Mystery Coupons.

"Hype-buying" is wasteful spending, period. Doesn't matter if you're an enthusiast or millionaire. These machines are no longer worth it.

 

i am really debating giving me 13 up for this but the size is massive anyone know how much performance i would gain going from the i7 4710hq over my i5 ulv and going from the 860m to the 970m

 

About twice the CPU power and up to 40% higher FPS (@1080p) depending on the game. You also get another GB of VRAM.

 

wow this is really tuff im so torn on all this stuff. Man the size just scares me my last laptop was the m11x lol

 

I might get this as I find myself wanting an e-gpu rather than playing around with mxm upgrades every few years. I think that mobile cards will always be a good 20-30% slower than high end desktop cards and being much more ridiculously expensive, but can't stand using a desktop anymore. I also like the idea of having the gpu heat and noise away from the laptop.

But how can they endorse overclocking when the graphics amp is connected, when they are using bga soldered cpus? Also, are bga cpu's likely to throttle more? It's like they are engineered to failure after the warranty, so they can force you to buy a new laptop.

 

Edited: See below...

 

When the GA is connected the internal graphics card is disabled and not producing heat. So instead of the heat sink & fans having to cool both the CPU and GPU, they are only having to cool the CPU which gives it more headroom to be overclocked.

 

Finally forum is Back YAY,

Anyway, still waiting for alienware 15 to be released in Belgium. And I'm so frustrated about the fact that 980M and 4K display is not an option in Europe. This is stupid.
I asked the support team of a few countries, all say the same "choice of the marketing department".

So they expect me to believe that the marketing team said: "Well let's give Europe less customization options, that will be a better marketing strategy." ?!? This is bs.

 

I was considering the i7 13 before but now the 15 seems like a more meaningful solution. The problem now is that the Dutch website is a mess and not all of the configurations are available. The 295x, 980m and 4k screen are missing while they are advertised on the front-page. Also the pricing here is ridiculous. Contacted sales and tried to get a better deal but it seems to have backfired. The offer that I got was more expensive than the website offer. Considering purchasing via a USA post address or at HID Evolution. Does anyone have experience with HID?

 

PM me , I can hook you up with a system.

 

Yeah, HID Evolution might be a solution for me too after all. These guys also have the option to ship from their warehouse in UK with an extra charge of 7%, and then you are free from taxes. And that still is probably WAAAY cheaper than the Europe versions of the laptops.

 

Hello, all.

Is anyone concerned that (unless you want to splurge for an SSD) all models only ship with a 5400 RPM HDD? I have always used 7200RPM drives or SSDs and maybe there is not much of a difference between the spinning of 5400 and 7200, but it seems as though this would make a difference, especially in load times, etc?

 

If you plan to use it to store files and steam games and run your OS on an SSD then you should not have any issues.

 

Do they even have a fix for the graphics amp driver issues, besides uninstall/reinstall driver every time you attach/detach the graphics amp?

Also, how do you guys feel about bga reliability nowadays? Seems to be there are still issues with bga cracking, and the likelihood of this laptop breaking in 2-4 years is higher than if it was a socketed cpu. At least if it was an mxm gpu, you could replace it without having to do the whole mainboard.

 

Well someone suggested (and it worked properly) to use the desktop 347.09 driver and some other things (the solution is not the first post). It did the trick, but we need more people to test to see if it is the solution.

 

Agreed. I can understand why they're doing it, or why they would do it for someone who games at home, but needs the battery life when out and about. Though I must ask why include a dedicated internal GPU if you're gonna get the amp thing and just use a more powerful desktop GPU instead?

I know MSI is doing something similar to this idea, cept they're doing it right. I.E. 13" machine that has only an i7 in the laptop and uses the iGPU until you plug in the dGPU dock. To me, Alienware had a good idea going with the Amp thing, but ultimately you must have a GTX 980M because you need it, right?

 

That would be a good solution for me too, they are a lot cheaper (~200€ than the french website. The US keyboard layout is even better for me.

Also, according to the person I talked to on customer service, private individuals are not able to order by phone anymore in France.

 

Ah that is bad. Well I've just seen the alienware 15 websites are available on the belgium, just no sale info yet. When they come out, I'm goign to bombard Sale "experts" with some question because they still advertise the alienwar 15 laptop on the belgium site with 4K display, and various nvidia and amd graphics solutions. So gotta see.

And I too contacted HID Evolution. They do ship to belgium to me, and also without taxes if you choose to ship if from the UK with &% extra charges.
And I too use an International US keyboard layout as my daily keyboard. Only thing is that they have US power cable, but the do ship it with power adapters for europe. And a cable shouldn't be that expensive if I were to ask from dell belgium.

Also nice extra: lifetime HID Evolution technical support. (though you need to pay extra to make the warranty global).

 

My next setup could well be a docked solution (though that may be some time off) since it would suit my needs.

 

Typical marketing: mention only what is good. Alienware laptop panel is defined as faulty when you got certain amount of faulty pixels:
* combination of bright and dark = 6 for standard warranty, or
* bright = 1 or more dark = 6 or more for Premium Panel Guarantee
Dell LCD Display Pixel Guidelines | Dell US
How about: XXI century product with XX century screen panel dead pixel policy? Care to compare with Clevo warranty?

 

I'm pretty new to this forum, it seems I haven't got the privileges to send a PM...yet

 

For those who are interested... the service manual

 

It is a standard 3 pin power cable don't buy it from Dell they will rip you off. You will probably even have 1 around from an old pc or laptop

 

I ordered my Alienware 15 on Jan 10 with the UHD display and I can't believe the wait time is almost two months!

 

@garache and other french people around here. If you're a student (or affiliated, see conditions on web site), i strongly suggest you to look at the "op-rentree" website (just google it, i'm not sure I can put a link here...).
They have all alienware with 3year J+1 warranty, at relatively good prices, just not as much customizable as on dell website.

I looked at it today, and may pull the trigger right after I see a decent review...

 

Alright... I finally remembered my login credentials for the site after it came back up. I've been away for a long, LONG time!

I purchased the new Alienware 15 (managed to get 200$ off the mid model) and a GPU Amp off amazon (hooray for being 25$ cheaper and having a 50$ giftcard)

I had crawled pretty much ever notebook vendor trying to find what I wanted and finally landed on this. I know the GPU amp has its issues, but It'll help me with production alot at work. I do a ton of video/photo editing and figured I could leave it at work and then use my desktop when I'm home, or something to that effect!

I've never owned alienware, nor have I ever really considered it. For the money I spent, I feel like I got a solid deal. Mine came to right at $1300 before shipping after a couple promocodes.

I plan on dropping an m.2 256GB SSD into it as well and cloning the OS over too it.

Ordered on the 8th, and mine went to "In Production" today at some point. w00t

 

Welcome to the brotherhood!!! Let us know how you like it. I've been looking at the 15 myself.

 

When will they make a AW 16 , so we can complete the series...
??

 

How did u manage to save 200 ? Ot is 75 after promo code

 

i ordered mine on 12th, and status changed to 'in Product' on 13th morning. it took only one day.

 

It's funny how the alienware-rep always disappears when ppl are not satisfied with alienware, which is almost always the case right now.

 

it will all blow over. There was a similar pushback when they totally changed the design with the alienware 17.

 

There was a $100 off when I did it and my work is some kind of premiere partner and we got another $100 off.

 

I sure hope it doesn't blow over. The last thing we need folks to do is shrug their shoulders, say "oh well" then go ahead and buy the new crap in all of it's glorious lack of excellence. That will just give them a green light to produce more crap instead putting things back on track again. The people that decided going BGA CPU and GPU was the right thing to do are messed up. They need to be terminated and replaced by people that understand what most Alienware customers value. There are plenty of BGA-powered thin and light options for anybody that wants to buy a jokebook. If they wanted to do a social experiment, then they could have released the new jokebook product line and kept on selling the better machines for those that don't want to buy trash. I'm tired of hearing that it's Intel's fault. The 4900MQ/MX CPUs have not been discontinued. There is no excuse for this level of lameness.

 

Anyone knows what are the screen refresh rate for both AW15 (4K) and AW17 (1080) ?

 

What about the other MQ CPUs?

 

To my knowledge, none of the CPUs that Alienware used in the 17 and 18 have been discontinued. You can buy a new Clevo with them and I have seen no announcement from Intel that they stopped production of MQ and MX CPUs. I think that chatter got started by "plans" for Intel to push BGA, which was a distraction from the fact that Alienware made a bad decision to use crappy low-TDP BGA CPUs in the new jokebooks. Just because Intel has a design "model" for jokebooks doesn't mean everyone (as in Alienware and other OEMs) needs to automatically jump on the sucky CPU bandwagon. They can choose do the right thing and use good parts. It also doesn't excuse the stupid decision to ditch MXM for BGA on the GPU. They went all out on striving for the lameness factor. It may help them churn out mass quantities of cheap garbage that they can sell for the same prices as the machines that cost them more to build, but that's not going to help much if enough customers make a conscious decision to reject the new product.

 

Im tempted to buy the AW 15 with Amplifier as we have this 10% off code in th UK. Not discounting the Amp itself though, just the machine. Just chatted with the rep and he said the system cant let him enter any bigger discounts although he tried, and there is no codes for the amplifier itself.
Does anybody have experience with AW sales rep and their system? So if i decided to wait till tomorrow and this code is gone, do you guys think they will be able to give me a bigger discount? Wats your experience with them?