AW13 R2 & AW 15 R2 / AW 17 R3 BIOS 1.2.15

Fixes & Enhancements
[BIOS]
-Modify DeepSx Mode
Links: 13 R2, 15 R2 / 17 R3
There's always something hidden in these BIOSes, so post your findings.

 

First Notes on 13 R2 1.2.15:

• Keyboard Refresh Rate Sleep Bug and Missing RAM OC/XMP options in BIOS are still present
• In the Security page of the BIOS, options Computrace, BIOS Recovery, and something about TPM Firmware (?) are now present. I didn't see them in previous BIOS versions

Seems stable.

 

How's GA performance on 13r2?

@Game7a1

 

I don't have my GA with me at the moment (don't know when I'll get it), so I'm unable to test it.

 

No difference for me between 1.2.8 and 1.2.15 BIOS for the GA.

 

Yeah, GA is working as it should.
HDD light is still always on.

 

HDD Light bug only occurs with specific drives. I only have that issue when my Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) is connected. The 850 Pro (256GB) does not exhibit this issue. Both are on latest firmwares, both using the latest Intel RST drivers and Samsung Magician is installed (Rapid Mode enabled). Yes it may be a BIOS issue, but that's not the only factor here. This I doubt will probably never be fixed.

 

I just flashed my PC yesterday and have no difference in options, anything. Seems stable.

TPM status, BIOS Recovery and Computrace on 15R2 were available at previous BIOS
so I have no difference between these two versions and options (in)visibility.

 

looks like this fixed the PCIe connection for AW15 r2 to the AGA

 

That's good news. Let's hope for the 17 as well.

 

The 17 is the exact same laptop internally so it should.

 

What is this keyboard refresh rate bug? Is that what seems to be breaking virtual machines? IE: double, and sometimes triple letter entry on the guest system.

 

I don't know anything about that, but the bug is that when you put your laptop to sleep, the refresh rate slows down even though Windows recognizes it has the fastest rate. You have to go back into the keyboard settings to reset the refresh rate to fix the problem or insert a command prompt command to do this automatically every wakeup.

 

Did you mean Repeat Rate?

 

I do mean repeat, but I had refresh on my mind when typing.

 

Can you explain how to run a command on wakeup and what that command is please.

 

Ahh I have the problem again where my fans for either CPU or GPU are not spinning during idle. I cant correlate if this is an issue with bios 1.2.14 and beyond or something that hwinfo64 fan controls did. Previously I had this issue but in my windows power settings I had cpu cooling set to "passive" instead of active. My fans will kick on during high loads but system runs much hotter during idle and bottom gets hotter ~40-45c with fans running on idle it is like 25-30c.

Can anyone confirm if there fans are spinning during system idle? If you flip system on its side while on and shine a flashlight where fans are you can see if it is spinning or not. This is so frustrating that I have to use hwinfo64 just to get fans to spin on idle. Does anyone know if this could be an issue with windows 10 or intel ME or chipset drivers ?

 

I know someone in the 13's Owners Lounge posted about it, so let me find that post.

 

I thought this was the norm?

Mine has done this since day 1 and i have had multiple motherboard changes since new and it has done it on every one of them.

Fans usually come on when temps hit around 50c on mine.

I think it is normal.

 

My fans only spin when gaming and on self test.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

It is normal. The system is cool enough that it doesnt need the fans to run to cool it. My fans only speed up while gaming or under heavy load.

 

Yes, I can also confirm, that system even used (for browsing, listening music or videos)
is so cold, that do not need to spin fans. I noticed only, that when I am really gaming or
encoding videos - after few minutes (!) I hear, that fans are starting and spinning.

In my opinion, this is the proof, that computer hardware is HQ and do more of popular
tasks are not a "stress" for it and PC runs smoothly

 

Thank you guys for confirming that fans don't spin at all during idle! I was beginning to think something was wrong with my machine.

I really wish I could use hwinfo to have fans on during idle and make a fan curve for increased temps. However whenever temps spike up and down it causes the fans to constantly change speed which is annoying. Maybe I can play around with fan interval polling rate. Do you guys disable EC Support in hwinfo with the newer Alienware laptops?

 

I have never tried to change anything in external application. You can try (I think it will be better option)
to reset whole BiOS to factory settings. Of course you can restore some important settings, like RAID/AHCI
or Secure/Fast Boot, but other options should be now restored as well as fans... Maybe this will help

 

Currently on the newest BIOS with Win 10, Dell recommended drivers.

Still getting BSOD on resume from sleep while using VMWARE 12.
Keyboard behavior in VMWARE appears to be fixed, though I cannot explain why. As Game7a1 noted that the keyboard refresh rates from sleep are still broken. More testing is probably needed.
When fan "Performance mode" is enabled, fans slowly ramp up to 100%, hold, then immediately drop to 0 and start over.

I can't prove weather or no the VMware behavior is BIOS related, but this problem doesn't manifest itself on the 17 (ranger), or the 14. As such, I expect it is the BIOS. The fan behavior may be normal for all I know - but again, this is the only Alienware I have that does this.

 

@Game7a1 one more thing i found, its not mentioned on changelog , INTEL GOP is updated to 1039 from 1035. so i think both intel vbios and intel gop got updated on 1.2.15, i can confirm GOP updated, but for some reason GPUZ doesnt display intel vbios info..

 

The vBIOS I have for the Intel HD 520 is 1033.0 (can't find the GOP info on Intel's GPU panel for some reason).
If owners of the 13 R2 (for the HD 520) and of the 15 R2 / 17 R3 (for the HD 530) with an older BIOS can check their vBIOS / GOP info, that would be helpful.

 

on BIOS 1.2.8

my GOP is 1039 as well

 

I do not have any problems after updating to bios 1.2.15 it is working great. I have not been able to test the GA yet because I have no video card for it. My system fan profile is working as intended and can monitor fan speeds with HWiNFO which shows fans ramping up to 6200rpm on each fan during Witcher 3 with temps average 64c CPU and 62 GPU +100/+200 OC after about an hour of gameplay. This is with cpu performance mode enabled in bios and 3.6ghz custom overclock -100mv.

 

3 days ago Dell updated this BIOS

Fixes & Enhancements
Updated suspend/resume protections.

 

I use HWINFO to control the fans. Works a treat to keep the laptop cool.

 

My system fans are working correctly now after playing with bios settings and optimized defaults. Bios so finicky honestly couldn't say what fixed it.

 

Interesting.

 

I wonder if they re-released a new BIOS under the same BIOS number.
It says 1.2.15 but as previously mentioned now it says updated 03 Aug 2016 when it was originally released on 20 Jul 2016.
Did you reflash at all?

 

I noticed they changed the priority from Optional to Urgent.

However, the new verison is exactly the same size as the original and has a matching MD5 hash, which means there aren't any changes at all...

I guess they just corrected the priority.

 

Good Call!

 

I reflashed my PC and nothing happened. PC work like on previous release of the same BiOS

 

Guys, is 1.2.15 a stable version? i've suffered a lot with the previous versions, just wanted to confirm before i update to this.

 

Guys, is 1.2.15 a stable version? i've suffered a lot with the previous versions, just wanted to confirm before i update to this.

 

It definitely seems stable enough. There are several of us using it with no issues so far.

At present, it looks like 1.2.2, 1.2.8 and 1.2.15 are the most stable BIOS versions. Go for whichever one suits your needs. (I'd also list 1.2.3 if Dell hadn't removed from download.)

 

1.2.15 has been rock steady for me. It cured the issued with the AGA PCIe being limited to 2x only (now at 4x)

 

My Alienware came with this new bios and dont know why he still switching bus interface from pci-e to pci-express.

 

i have the same VBIOS.. my system is almost 2months old.. it just uses Nvidia GPU only when there is load, try opening Benchmark tool, it will be using PCIE lanes at full speed, when u don't use it reverts back.. so don't have to worry about that..