Alienware 17 R2 2015 - Thoughts and impressions

Background

Two months in with this unit now. So I felt I could share my own insight, and possibly offer some thought to those considering adding this model to their gaming / computing lineup. My background with alienware is not extremely deep. I never purchased into the ranger line or upgraded components, or know what the power of the 18 can be. In 2012 I maxed out an m14x R2 and it served me extremely well for 2 years of heavy gaming. Then it served an additional year with my friend offshore who used it heavily as well. The battery was busted by this point, the heat sink no longer working, and the CPU reached 96 C on a stress test - but thanks to my extended warranty, a tech came out last week, brought me a brand new fan / heat sink. Installed a new battery, and used my IC Diamond Thermal paste to redo the CPU / GPU - So my experience with alienware ends here before this PC (note: my wife is now the primary user of the m14xr2 which handles Elder scrolls online, and a few other things that interest her just fine).

Pricing

I set a price limit of 1750 USD for my new laptop. I wanted to shoot for 1500, but realized that since these components were NOT upgradable, I needed to give myself room for the future and hope to get 3 solid years out of this machine. After working directly with dell for the best deal I could get, I was set on the 15. However, after issues trying to change the screen to the 4k touch panel, and dell wanting to constantly add on the warranty and push with numerous calls this order was quickly canceled, and I replaced my order through Microsoft store for their 17 R2 signature edition (980m, 4710HQ, 1tb + 128gb m.2ssd, 16 gig DDR3L). Microsoft had a 100 off promotion going, as well as 2 years accidental damage / extended warranty for 129 with purchase. All in all the pricing came out to 1724 for this built with the 2 years of accidental damage / extended warranty coverage. Microsoft added on Overnight shipping after working with them over the phone, and I received my laptop 2 days later (this happened around 8 PM at night).

Base vs Overclock settings

Out of the box, with no overclocking on the CPU or GPU, firestrike would run approx. 8100-8500 depending on if it was from a cold start / variability of the processor to maintain turbo even for these short periods of time. I am running current drivers from Nvidia as well as bios A00 with a 240 watt PSU. I installed Nvidia inspector and set my 980m Overclock to +135 core / +360 memory after some trial and error in benchmarking / stress testing to finally find my stable point. After this, I installed intel XTU and applied max multipliers on all cores (37, 36,36,35). I opted to increase my max power boost and short boost to both be set at 90 Watt. And increased my current to 112 A. I applied an undervolt of -50mv to both the cache and dynamic offsets. I increased the max turbo boost window time from the default of 8 seconds, to 128 seconds. And applied a core clock of just over 101.5 (default 100). This gave me a STABLE overclock on the CPU at 3.757 Ghz which held around 3.61 when operating on 2-3 cores (average). Stability was tested in xtu and throttlestop multiple times during the process to find the best settings. Once these were all applied, firestrike was ran again, and the numbers broke the 9000 barrier, and eventually hit 9151 (see the benchmark thread).

Gaming Performance

The main games I run on this PC are the following: Witcher 3, GTA V, Far Cry 4, and Dying Light. I also ran Call of Duty AW, and Battlfield 4 as benchmarks. Witcher 3 with overclocks applied ran at a constant 60 fps with almost all settings on ultra (DOF turned off, hair works off, and shadows on Medium) running at 1080p full screen. Some frame drops occurred periodically, but monitors showed no drop in CPU or GPU performance during these lags. GTA V is extremely well optimized for the 980m and ran flawlessly. Again, most settings were on ultra, but a few things such as shadows, grass, and depth of field (as well as water effects) had to be turned down to medium in order to maintain the min 60 fps (v-sync on). Dying Light ran at ultra with everything maxed out and gave me 45-60 fps depending on the amount of action in the scene. If I were to throw some firecrackers in gas and cause an explosion around a large mob of zombies, I'd see slightly frame rate drops, but they would recover extremely fast, and for the most part stay around 60 FPS. Far Cry 4 required that Godrays be turned off, shadows lowered, DOF off, and a couple settings on high instead of very high (ultra) to maintain 60 fps. This game was far more demanding than the others mentioned, but was still very enjoyable graphically speaking running at 1080p.

Temperatures

The CPU would start to thermal throttle anytime the temperature reported above 80 C. This is unfortunate as the tjMax reported from intel is much higher than the specs allowed by Dell (alienware). Remember, this is running with an undervolt, and using A00 BIOS. Graphics card, running 353.30(?) drivers, never reached above 74 C even under the heaviest of loads, showing a ton of thermal room on this card, but limited by power and vBios not allowing more than 135 on the core in overclocking. My house is normally 23-25 C for an ambient where the laptop is being used.

Graphics Amplifier

I added the alienware Graphics Amplifer for $182 (plus 10% back) from dell to give the 17 R2 a dock that I could leave setup on a desk, as well as see how much performance I could gain from the CPU when you take away from power needs of the 980M. I picked up an Nvidia branded 970 reference card ($329 best buy), and after some reading, and playing with the overclock, ultimately reflashed the card with a custom vBios I made resulting in a very stable, 1503 MHz on the Core Clock, and 8100 MHz on the Memory! Running benchmarks again, firestrike jumped to 10869. In real world use, witcher 3 holds at 60 FPS running at 1080x2560 (UWS) on ultra with hairworks turned off. GTA V, holds at 60 fps with everything maxed out. With the 970 you are absolutely getting the best bang for the buck if you are gaming at 1080P or 1440P. There is no need to get a 980 unless you are going to do 4k gaming on your 17 r 2 then simply grab a 980 ti and be done with it which shows a significant increase. Here are benchmark score comparisons

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/9984608/3dm11/9995791
OC 980m vs OC 970 3DMark11

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5224553/fs/5189969
OC 980m vs OC 970 3dMark Firestrike

I did run Firestrike Extreme with the 970 and returned a score around 5889. Heaven Benchmark gets just over 2k on 1080p, and Valley just over 3k.

Conclusion

I have been an avid gamer for many years, and a long term player of World of Warcraft up till a few months ago. Getting back into modern gaming has been a joy with the AW 17 R 2. I have seen a lot of negative reviews out there, and they are with good reason. Some folks have very well received bad units. The BGA processor is not a good move on laptops everywhere. You may get a CPU that was pinned well, or one that was pinned poorly. You may experience power drops causing 800mhz max on the CPU during stress of the GPU, you may be able to OC to 4.0 Ghz with yours. It's the gamble of silicon. I would highly recommend this setup to anyone interested in portable gaming with desktop use provided by the graphics amplifier. For now a 970 pairs VERY well with a 980M for 1080p and UWS gaming. For those seeking 4k, a 980ti will be needed, and you may want to opt for the next processor in the lineup (4980 HQ). If you have issues with yours, be sure to request a replacement and keep pestering till they get it right. Current models are shipping with the 4720HQ which is rated at a boost clock of 3.6 ghz. In theory this should be able to reach over 3.8ghz with a stable OC.

Good luck, and any questions, please feel free to ask below.

Thanks

 

Thank you so much for your detail review, it helps more than any review i found on the internet! Thank you!

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'll make sure to refer

 

I have since added this information:

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5485283/fs/5485210/fs/5467039

For fun, I ran 3 benchmarks to compare
1) 980m 4710HQ Stock on 180 Watt PSU
2) 980m 4710HQ Overclocked (CPU / GPU) on 180 Watt PSU
3) 980m 4710 HQ Overclocked (CPU / GPU) on 240 Watt PSU

Each bump equaled around 7-8% performance increase, or around a 16% graphics increase from stock GPU on 180 watt to Overclocked GPU on 240 watt PSU

I have also been playing around with the graphics amplifier a lot more as of recently, and am thoroughly impressed with the performance of the 970 within it. Unless you are operating at 4k resolutions, there is no need to get any other card for this box. And for those curious, the difference between the OC 980m and the OC GTX 970 in the graphics amp is night and day.