AW 17 r3 FHD vs UHD display panel overclock and battery life

Hi everyone,

I've googled and searched NotebookReview but haven't found the information I'm looking for on the Alienware 17 r3's display. (late 2015 skylake version)

Question 1:
Does the 4k IGZO display option provide better battery life? I've read igzo panels represent a significant step in terms of efficiency. But it is unclear to me if that means one would expect a bump in battery life versus the FHD 1080 screen. Perhaps the FHD panel draws less power because it has significantly fewer pixels?

Question 2:
Can the FHD screen be overclocked? Can the 4k display be overclocked? What kind of refresh rates beyond 60hz are possible for each one? I'm particularly interested in this subject. My work requires a significant amount of mechanical computer aided design and other 3d geometry manipulation. In my opinion 60hz provides rather poor motion resolution that makes it difficult to track high speed movement of the mouse pointer and other rapidly moving objects. This forces me to slow down.

Question 3: I've read at least one thorough review describing the 17.3 inch UHD 4k display as being a pretty awesome panel. Excellent color, etc. But I haven't been able to find out much about the FHD version. Leaving the resolution issue aside, how does the FHD panel look?

Thank you in advance.

 

Hey there,

1. I have enough AW's around me to know that the difference in battery life between the two is extremely minor to a point where it really depends on the usage. There are a lot of variables so it's hard to say....brightness, power options, tasks etc....it all depends. I assume that you already know this, but I also wouldn't hold my breath for getting any type of significant battery life out of these gaming monsters.

2. I'll leave this open to someone who can better answer this for you. As from my point of view, I do a lot of video and graphic editing and the 4k screen (image production wise) does a good job.

3. The 4k is an awesome panel. Some have complained about it being too yellow, which can be true, but it all depends on the luck of the draw. The panel lottery has become pretty common these days. Based on your type of work, it's a no brainer to go with the 4k Panel. It's well worth it. IMO the FHD looks okay, but not better than the 4k for sure. I work on two external 4k Samsung monitors daily along with my 5K iMac so my standards are pretty high, hence why I opted for the 4k option without thinking twice.

Also, keep an eye on this thread here.

 

Also want to know if its possible to oc the panel to maybe 75hz or something

Sent from my SM-N910S using Tapatalk

 

Hmm good question on the monitor overclock. On my desktop I could set a custom resolution in the nvidia control panel but on the alienware the control panel only has 3 options and is missing a ton (aspect ratio scaling is one). If we can overclock the screen, it probably wouldn't be through the nvidia menu, maybe through the intel HD side?

 

If you wanted to overclock the laptop's panel, you would have to do it through the Intel Graphics Control Panel; however, getting it to work requires certain driver (probably older ones that won't install on Skylake iGPUs) and some tricks, or so I've heard. Probably not worth the effort, in my opinion.
The feature for panel overclocking on Intel iGPUs, though, is coming Soon™.

 

This is indeed because the intel igpu is ontrolling the screen and functions as a passtrough when the Nvidia gpu is enabled.

 

Thanks for everyone's input.

Regarding the display panel overclock. It sounds like the intel igpu is the issue. I found many reports that it does not support EDID override. It sounds like one would have to reprogram the EDID chip. Or perhaps disable it somehow to allow a custom inf file to be utilized???? (I did read about someone disabling the data channel that the EDID is carried over.) This is kinda beyond me, though.

@Game7a1 I hope intel adds this capability.

 

I have both. IGZO consumes 6W more power at idle/regular usage (at same brightness leves). At idle (regular usage), my FHD consumes 13W, IGZO 20W. That translates into 4.5 hours battery life for IGZO, 7 hours for FHD. That is quite a power draw actually and I would not call this minor. This is pretty major considering the fact that battery usage would mostly be done at idle. Otherwise when you are running 45W CPUs + 5000Watt GPUs at full throttle... it is a useless point and I am positive OP did nto mean that.

 

THANK YOU CountingCrows!!

How does your FHD panel look? And how did you end up with two laptops, if you don't mind me asking?

 

Mileage may vary. Nonetheless.

Like I've said, not worth holding your breathe on the battery life. UDH or FHD. Doesn't matter....this is a power hungry gaming rig. Not a Prius.

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Hi unlock,

I'm torn between the two options. As much as I'd like to think I'm a true gaming and CAD power user, the reality is I'm simply internet browsing for most of the time I'm at home. (such as right now) So causal use battery runtime is a metric I'm definitely interested in. And it's one of the qualities of this platform that originally peeked my interest. Alienware really seems to have a best in class 980m 17'' in regards to unplugged run time for casual use or office stuff, etc.

 

I hear ya....If you'll be using it at home, having a power source shouldn't be an issue I'd assume. I think it'll boil down to what will please your retinas more....1080P or 4K ...

Definitely boils down to personal preference. Do you have a store near by where you could go look at some laptops with 1080p and 4K displays? Hands on time would help.



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Excellent idea!

I'm going to check into that.