BGA only??, is it true?

http://ark.intel.com/products/88969/Intel-Core-i7-6820HK-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

 

Some info for you bro. Maybe you understand a little more about BGA and its limits. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/page-388#post-10128458
Can you please run your BGA turd with stock voltage in new wprime 1024 stress test. Next round wprime can you stress test your processor with allowed 2bin Oc. All i7-47xxMq/Bga can Oc 2 bin all cores. Some with stock,decreased or increased vcore voltage. Monitor all power limits + multi with Xtu in both round wprime stress tests and post pict. Hope you have time.

 

Out of curiosity, what is the excuse they are offering for not repairing what you have? No parts available? There is always wiggle room on a system exchange if you're willing to put up a fight to get equal or better.

As others have pointed out, you're not getting equal or better. You are being offered a disposable machine that cannot be affordably serviced, upgraded or overclocked like the machine it is intended to replace. This is not a statement about the replacement offered, just an observation of clear facts as to how significant their differences are.

You can upgrade your machine from 2012 to outperform the one you are being offered, and the replacement offered has fewer features. In addition to all of the above, it is more fragile and a nightmare to work on compared to what you have now.

If you plan to let it go down without a fight, sell the replacement machine in the unopened factory-sealed box as brand new, never-opened, at put the money toward a real high-performance machine... One with sockets, slots, much higher stock performance, fully overclockable and without any crippling firmware or TDP limitations.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/88195,88972,88969

Here's a good example of a real high-performance notebook by 2016 standards, and it's about the same size as what you are being asked to give up, with more robust feature than what you had or what you are offered.

https://biosmods.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/sky-x9/

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10415872

http://valid.x86.fr/vp0t7t

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...oenix-has-arisen.781814/page-68#post-10128793

 

First of all, dell CAN repair my laptop, but it's taken 2 months now and replacements parts failing, it would literally need to have most of its components replaced to get it working again, but they have offered me a replacement which i am more than willing to take advantage of, plus it comes with a years warranty.

Secondly, I don't plan to upgrade nor do i have the capacity to do so, if anything it's due to the stale pc market in my country and the extreme cost of purchasing and importing components (it gets compounded in shipping and additional tax and customs).

I only plan on using this as a desktop replacement without any type of overclocking or repasting.

All i want to get a good machine that will operate at its advertised specs (i.e 3.5ghz cpu runs at max turbo for extended periods of load) without throttling while being same or better than what i had (which according the the specs in my quote is quite better where it matters).

 

Stop using the term BGA it is a cpu with certain specs and it runs within specs. It has nothing but really nothing to do with being soldered to the friggin board. If you use this CPU in a socket it would perform the same way. Stop comparing it to a desktop grade cpu. If I find time i can post som eoverclocking results. But I am clocking to a lower energy usage because it is a laptop which I bring around.

 

Yes, because the BGA chips are designed to be crappy performers. MQ chips did not have this limitation, and thus, IRRELEVANT OF THEIR SOCKETS, were superior for anybody who had performance demands, whether you cared for it or not.

If all the BGA CPUs suck at doing the job of being a high performance part, then they suck and we will continue to say they suck... and this is irrelevant of the fact that they are disposable should anything happen that requires a change, especially if a soldered GPU so much as hiccups.

And yes, I will compare them to "desktop CPUs" because I've always compared mobile CPUs to desktop CPUs, because their IPC and performance potentials have been the same since Sandy Bridge, and stopped being the same with Haswell when BGAtel made BGA-only a requirement and decided to gimp every last chip.

 

So that's why Alienware implemented full BGA design! They calculated that when their monkeys try to fix laptop replacing each components of the machine and ship it there and back until they finally find the culprit OR give new laptop (oftenly happens) they lost even more money than they would just replacing with new motherboard with soldered GPU and CPU!

That's PATHETIC. When you bought Alienware 50% of the price you spent investing in monkeys who are too stupid to learn how to fix laptops under warranty... and investing in management who didn't do a thing to solve that!

That's the same when you go to very expensive hospital thinking it's for high quality doctors but it's because employees put whole surgery under fire after each operation because they don't know how to disinfect it in the proper way.

 

You make no sense. IF what you said was true then they wouldnt have gone with BGA, (although technically they use FCBGA) because that costs way more money and requires a lot more intensive training to reball something than it does to swap out a standard socket CPU or to swap a PCIe card. Alienware sends you a new laptop 1. because its faster to get you up and running vs having to send your machine off for repair and 2. they can take the broken one and refurbish it and sell it to somebody else without having a deadline to meet returning it to the customer.

 

Way out of proportions. a low end AMD cpu would suck. THis is just a mainstream performance cpu and is sold as is and priced as is. TOo bad Intel doesnt provide higher class CPU's anymore but thats just how it is. Do not blame Alienware, MSI, Asus etc for that. Now everytime new Alienwares get bashed for something that Alienware cannot control. Only Clevo is circumventing that by offering machines with desktop sockets now. but these are barely even laptops and a while different type of machine. Buy those instead of complaining, it will be better for you, it will be better for the Alienware brand which is fully depending on Intel.

 

It's not. It's priced exactly as the older, better MQ chips are, even with the lack of a socket.

Yes, BGAtel doesn't provide them anymore. Know who has enough clout to rectify that? OEMs like Dell, ASUS and MSI. But ASUS were using BGA the whole time, and MSI's marketing doesn't let people figure out they are overpaying for crap. There's other OEMs that have told BGAtel they want back sockets, and Clevo has been pushing for MORE desktop CPUs in laptops, even making the N350 models with low power desktop CPUs for modularity, because that's important to many users and to businesses which are their largest market.

We bash Alienware for multiple things. One being the fact that they didn't fight and use desktop CPUs in their performance notebooks, and some of the others being the fact that their machines are FUNCTIONALLY INFERIOR to their previous models. No MUX switch. Less BIOS options. No chance of unlocked BIOS. No upgrade-ability even in GPUs. Poor "guaranteed" overclocking for those unlocked BGA chips. Worse cooling. You cannot argue these facts against me, because they're facts. They have taken so many steps back that they're not even recognizable anymore, and the people who know it jumped ship to where the better machines now lie, which is with the Clevos.

Again, with the N350 series models that will be out soon, they will be very much normal machines, albeit slightly thicker. I don't see what part of "barely laptops" these machines are. As far as I'm concerned, with all the options Alienware had and the size and cooling they had, for these new performance models from Clevo, we're right where we need to be, and they're just fine as laptops. Because Clevo did it many years ago, and they only changed when mobile CPUs caught up to desktop chips in functionality properly.

And finally, do you see me in here complaining all the time? I'm not. But what I AM going to do, is I'm going to inform every single person who wants to spend money on disposable, inferior, new-gen hardware that better exists elsewhere... for the same price to boot. Because when somebody wants performance, or they want a machine that works properly, you don't tell them to get a piece of crap BGA CPU. The last gen BGA chips, both Haswell and Broadwell, all had immense issues hitting and holding their performance targets. Why? They were clocked high, and FIVR increasing TDP consumption posed them a threat, and many of them had ridiculously high voltage for no reason (I will always bring up the time someone opened a stock laptop to find a 4720HQ at 3.4GHz using 1.402v by default). What's BGAtel's solution? Reduce clockspeed like crazy. Let's check. Last gen we started with 3.2GHz, 3.5GHz, 3.6GHz and 3.7GHz for the i7 on 4 core loads. Then we went to 3.3, 3.6, 3.7 and 3.7, and during this time we ended up with HQ. And even then, there was a 3.8GHz HQ chip, the 4980HQ. Want to know what Skylake is? 3.1GHz. Two 3.2GHz chips, including the unlocked one. 3.4GHz. THEIR BEST CHIP IS 3.4GHz. That does not even match a stock 4900MQ, far less a 4930MX, is borderline equivalent to a 4800MQ, and ALL those MQ chips can be overclocked to murder the life out of those skylake HQ chips.

Know what that means? THE PROCESSORS RELEASED BY INTEL THIS GENERATION ARE AT BEST EQUAL TO AND AT WORST INFERIOR IN PERFORMANCE TO THE LAST GENERATION CHIPS. But they won't throttle anymore right? No FIVR and lower clockspeeds mean it's harder to get them to pass their TDP limits. But that doesn't mean we have a boost in performance. It means we have equal or worse, and thus anybody who cares about performance or wants a system that'll do its job properly for heavier workloads should never buy what you consider "laptops". And that's a large part of the problem.

 

Skylake has a lower clock speed because its on a 14nm process vs the 4980HQ which is on a 22nm process. The smaller the process the more efficient the processor aka it can do the same or more work with less effort. That and the fact that Skylake has huge memory bandwidth advantage over it.

 

Also while Clevo does offer desktop class processors, its only on 3 of their highest end model ranges. They use the same " crappy" BGA skylake processors as Alienware on all of the rest of their lineup.

 

Again the largest part of this story is the Intel part of the story. It is already well known that Intel cpu;s nowadays do not clock as easy as for example the Sandy bridge generation. SImply because they made a smaller die size and filled it up with a larger integrated GPU. WHich is also the case in these laptops. Better iGPU performance but only similar CPU performance while be a bit more power efficient. This is also the case on desktop CPU's. Alienware is a business and has to earn money. Offering desktop CPU's in a laptop chassis with their business size is not feasible. Clevo is not that big and speak towards a niche market. Dont expect them to sell as much as Dell does and that is why they can choose to offer these type of machines. Again do not blame Alienware for it or any other brands for that matter. That Clevo does it, good for them and good for you.

But another part of the story is, and this is what irks me the most on this forum. The lack of proportions. When I read your post you it comes across to me as if the CPU performs like something from 10 years back. No it doesnt. It is very sufficient as advertised. Gaming laptops perform now up to 75% compared to their desktop counterparts. In the past even with your proposed specs it only performed like 50%. SO yes their has been a big improvement. It came at a price though and that is the ability to customize the machine full to your liking. These are real facts and there are some Nvidia charts floating around.

Sacrificing performance? Maybe some render time. But I doubt most of you here do actual renderings for eample which I do for my work and get paid for. Game performance is great and it is advertised as such. Is it perfect? No it is not, but it is better than in the past with more gimped GPU's. Did the CPU market make a performance jump? No it didnt at all and that is why I am still rocking a 6core Sandy bridge in my desktop overclcoked to 5ghz because there was nothing worth upgrading for all these years. Blame the lack of competition.

 

Doubleposts make no sense, not me.

 

I agree with rinneh, FWIW, but as others have said, Alienware "could" have held its ground against this trend. But the fact is that dumbing down the top end is a far better business plan, and that's where we are right now. As rinneh said, these are highly serviceable boxes, and most of us are buying the latest gen anyway, not keeping our old machines that are supposedly "better".

Just for gits and shiggles I had a look at the Sager lineup. The last Sager I owned ran Win95. I was quite surprised to see that Sager offers a model equivilent to my 17 r3 for about the same price. I was expecting to see slightly higher prices and slightly older parts.

Even so I'm not returning my Dalien and buying a Sager. However if I was going to spend eight grand on a laptop (high end laptops used to cost eight grand), it would be a Sager or similar, if only because there isn't an eight-thousand dollar Dalien laptop any more. We're getting more for less, but we're not getting everything we want any more. Sager is doing that, we know Sager is doing that, and we're standing here buying Dells. Can you blame Dell for selling what we want to buy, and for ignoring our whining about what they ought to do instead?

 

Even Sager/Clevo uses the BGA processors on all but the very top end of their range. I guess I am in the minority but if I need more power or ability to overclock beyond what Alienware offers in their laptops then I'll just build a desktop that fits those requirements. Its going to be less expensive and you have full control over what you put into it.

 

Good point about the desktop. I can't remember the last time I ran a laptop on battery, unless it was as and U.P.S., bridging between power supplies. I use a laptop because of the convenient package.

What really prevents me from lugging a desktop around instead of a laptop is the lack (AFAICT) of a truly bombproof case with handle. It doesn't even have to be a small FF board--in fact I'd WANT a full-sized board--but every case I've seen looks ready to spill open if you set it down crooked.

 

I would never lug a desktop around, the skylake i7 and 970m is enough to play pretty much every current game on high to ultra settings @1080p and if I really need to get any better than that there is always the GA or eGPU over TB3 that I can get a desktop class card for.

 

Dell's team and Mr Azor wanted Alienware laptops should be thinnest possible with ordinary performance and cheap. Only way to achieve this was to use full BGA package and of course delivered with a slimmer/weaker 180w psu and hybrid bios(slim PSU and a slim laptop fit together). Everyone knows how this went... Will Dellienware next year offer a 100 or even a more powerful 120w BGA variant of the 200w GTX980 laptop card in next AW models??? Remember its not possible to use a 180/200w Gtx980 card in the design Dellienware want to use on their " high end" Aw models. This means that the performance from next Aw models will be further exacerbated compared to other brand... Is this a step forward? Soon you might as well buy an Acer/Packard Bell or Lenovo because All other laptops can use a graphics amplifier.
Frank Azor says; The result is lower quality systems... If you buy "lower quality" system as "Clevo" and get much better performance than an CrApple thin Aw with fully package BGA... Is this a worse system than what Dell will offer you?
Mr Frank Azor does not want good performance in their new modern high end gaming laptops. Thinnest possible gaming laptops will usually provide lower performance but higher heat. Nice. No wonder that Dell want to use BGA hardware.

 

Spoiler: Two books. Not one. Two.

That means NOTHING. 14nm should mean it should run cooler, use less power and clock higher, rather than the opposite.

The CPU might be more efficient, but there is no upgrade. Skylake performs the same OR WORSE than available Haswell and broadwell processors in the mobile market. That's a DOWNGRADE.

What huge memory bandwidth advantage?

Hence the upcoming N350 models, which use socketed desktop CPUs that are lower power. You just don't see them selling yet.

There's a difference between not overclocking as high and not clocking as high. Haswell and Skylake desktop chips have had a base clock of 4GHz for their unlocked i7s, and speed has generally gotten higher since Sandy Bridge with turbo boost. That arguement is invalid. The problem is that we have a regression in the strength of the available chips for the "new" generation. Coupled with the inferior DDR4 RAM (speed to timings ratio), this is a flat downgrade. But as I said before: that's to "prevent" the CPU from hitting its turbo limits under load. So we have slower CPUs (both in clockspeed and in effective processing power) for the "new" generation. There is no reason to be happy, or defend it. They should be pushing for better products, not to gimp things until their pre-determined limitations suddenly work. That's my problem with INTEL, and like in my other post, they're facts. It's not opinion at this point. There are quadcore i5 chips without hyperthreading now. Why not use the i5s for these machines where they'd run cooler and use less power and let the i7s be more free? Even if BGA, it doesn't mean high performance computing is dead. There's businesses and every now and then users who come here who are looking for mobile performance and it just does not exist outside of exactly four machines right now, and two of them are not launched yet.

Oh, and if you think Clevo is not that big... Clevo is the BIGGEST laptop ODM. They even predate Dell, being founded in 1983. They're rebranded by more companies than I can ever remember off the top of my head. I am not blaming alienware for their use of soldered mobile chips. I'm blaming them for removing much of the functionality and creating very buggy systems that many many users have extensive issues with if they care about their system's own performance, and axing MXM. They didn't have to. But they did, and I don't accept low quality. There's very few good quality systems out there. Just because the market is saturated with low quality systems doesn't mean I have to accept them as "good".

No. It's not "sufficient", because the high end laptops are still unsuitable for anybody who has performance demands. They're fit for a midrange machine, sure, but for a high end model, especially one with two GPUs or a solid overclock on that mobile 980 they've been selling? They're not good enough. My 4800MQ isn't good enough for my system, and mine was created in 2013. You're trying to tell me that all those inferior skylake CPUs are good enough? THEY'RE WEAKER THAN WHAT I HAVE. I never, under any circumstances, ever, said or acted like the current gen CPUs perform like what was available from 10 years ago. But while desktop CPUs are clocked higher out of the box, mobile CPUs are being TDP limited and clocking slower than ever. Don't tell me that's acceptable for someone who wants or needs high performance. If it's fine for you, you're fine with midranged systems, and that's fine, but it does not excuse the lack of high end systems available. And I don't know where you're going with 75% performance now and 50% performance before. In 2013, we had the 780M which could match the 680 it was cut from. In fact, in most cases, even in my hot room, I could run my GPUs at 1006/6000 without overheating. And my CPU could match an i7-4770 at 3.7GHz without fault. THAT'S NEAR 100% COMPATIBILITY. Now the CPUs are down, at 75%, and you're trying to tell me they're better? No. You are incorrect. It's not opinion, it's fact. As desktops got stronger branching off from Haswell/Broadwell into Skylake, laptops got weaker in comparison. Maxwell GPUs are also comparatively weaker than their desktop counterparts compared to the Kepler GPUs 680M/780M. In terms of overclockability as well. Yes, the GPUs are stronger, but they're in a different class. Ask almost anyone here who tinkers with them. MUCH more throttle flags and operating issues in general, and it's almost REQUIRED to use a custom vBIOS to have something like a 980M work without random power throttle.

It doesn't matter if *I* do it or not. What matters is that the chips can or cannot do it. Sometimes I do a decent amount of renders. Sometimes other people need high performance in mobile form factors. What about gaming above 60Hz? CoD: Black Ops 3 came out tonight. I just tried it.95% usage on all 8 threads. I have yet to see someone prove that a 6820HK holds its TDP... if it doesn't, then every single skylake mobile CPU is incapable of being "sufficient" for that game. Power remaining at a constant between generations or being reduced between generations is not progress, and it should not be lauded. Even if it's "sufficient" for you. Why bother downgrading your performance for a newer machine? And I still again don't understand where these more gimped GPUs that you remember are.

How exactly are these highly service-able boxes? Do you mean in performance? And I've never known most people to buy or use the best things. Most is not a good arguement.

Sager has generally always offered the best bang for buck as a Clevo rebrander. Other rebranders are a bit more expensive, but it seems the best value is from Eurocom, with official unlocked BIOS and vBIOS support. I don't get why you expected higher prices and older parts.

What I can't understand is why you are logically buying the Dells. Even if you had to go with the soldered machines, the Clevos are still the better models for performance and stability. It's just a fact. When the P370EM and M18x R2 was for sale, the M18x R2 was the better machine by far, even with the loss of the 120Hz panel functionality. I said it was better at the time. Now I'm saying Clevo is better, because they are. I can see no reason beyond the graphics amplifier as for why someone would even consider a current gen alienware, and even considering it, I still don't see it as a strong enough reason, due to the fact that the CPUs can't support higher clocked desktop monitors in many new games which is pretty much the only reason to use a graphics amplifier over a 980M with a decent overclock on a custom vBIOS. And if it's because you want the power at home and portability on the go, then the MSI GS30 Shadow is a much better balanced machine, and costs less.

Not only is that impossible for some people who need high performance laptops, but that doesn't help matters. That just says that you're perfectly fine with laptops being weaker and bad for high performance/overclocking. If YOU want power beyond what's available in a laptop, that's fine, and good for you. If you simply want to not own a laptop, that's fine too. But too many times people just say "just build a desktop if you want that kind of power/overclocking/customizing/modularity/etc". That's not a solution, and a couple years ago, we didn't have to say it. But now we need desktop hardware in laptops to compete. And I think people should voice their displeasure about it more, and get back some choice for high performance computing in laptops. Because if things get worse... when RAM and Storage are soldered, when opening the machine voids warranty... you know, like what many macbooks are like? That's going to mean the end of personal computers. And it's already going there with Windows 10 and nVidrosoft's driver plans. And too many people are accepting it.

 

Inferior DDR4 ram? Its just a different architecture with different strenghts Its not like a downgrade, or to be honest also not a real upgrade yet. DDR4 can be clocked further though in the future while DDR3 is kinda end of line. You totally lose sight of one side o the picture and that is also partly true with the CPU. Intel has been focusing on itnegrated GPU's for quite some time now and this was hampered by DDR3 memory. That is why DDR4 is like what it is now, to fix bandwidth issues for the reserved videomemory. Why this also has to do with the current state of CPU's is that Intel is not that focused on CPU performance itself but more adding better integrated GPU's Kinda useless for gamers though but it is what it is. Its their way of still keeping up with moores law to double the transistor count. But CPU's now might have a slightly lower clockspeed. The performance per clock is slightly higher so the CPU's are performing the same in the same class with less power required. Now this is a fact. You are constantly disregarding one part of the story to make a statement. No offence by the way.

Let me ask you, what are you doing with your laptop? All CPU's in the quadcore Intel range from past 4 years have not been inferior for gaming in anyway. It hasnt been a bottleneck for quite a while now. Are you rendering? Well the best mobile CPU might only perform up to 15% better compared what is being used in laptop nows but with a lot bigger power draw and overclocking. So again you are really overstating the performance degradation. Its not he best benchmark out there but it gives a bit of an insight in what I say here, CPU performance charts https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html & http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmark-List.2436.0.html. Old quad cores with 3ghz also do perform as well as 2ghz quadcores from this era. There is more than just clockspeed. Now I came with true facts and benchmarks to back my statement up. So you can overclock your machine, but it is also a lot thicker than the new machines because the cooling needed. So no it is no efficient.

Regarding the GPU's what I ment was that current configurations are much more effective for gaming than past generations simply because mobile GPU'are closer in performance to their desktop counterparts than in the past. See this photo for example with the relative performance as stated by Nvidia http://www.extremetech.com/wp-conte...lative-performance-desktop-class-graphics.jpg

So the AW15 for example now with a 980M is a much better machine for gaming than for example the AW17R1 from a few years back. Relative ofcourse.

I do agree with you on one part of the story, the new Alienwares are really crappy in terms of ability to service and maintain them. I wish I could just take the bottom panel of and remove the heatsinks so that I can repaste them when I want instead of fully taking apart the whole laptop to do this. Alienware definitely dropped the ball in that regard. So yes you can tinker a bit more with the old Alienwares. But is the performance now really worse? No it is not and I came with proof to back my statement up. Cant it be overclocked a lot? Not that much, that is the price we pay for thinner machines. It is something I chose for. Do you really need to overclock the system? Well if you only value benchmarking yes you might, but for real productivity and gaming its kinda useless in real world usage. Except for overclocking the GPU.

About Clevo, they where bigger than they are now, I know them for many years. But their spot has been taken by Foxconn for manufacturing laptops for a lot of brands for years now. Brands that use Clevo laptops systems are nowhere near the big boys that design their laptops inhouse or by Compal and manufacture them by Foxcon.

 

The speed of DDR4 is not the issue. It's the timing relevance, and these mobile platforms cannot handle them very high speeds (in fact, they claim to not officially support over 2133MHz and there's no telling how good the IMC is for RAM OCing on Skylake... Haswell had it fairly decent; 2400MHz was attainable even with DDR3L. At still better timings than DDR4 is capable of giving). It doesn't matter if that's the route that things are going to take now, as that's natural evolution of hardware. It's that the RAM is still inferior in performance to what's available with DDR3L no matter how hard you try... in the MOBILE sector. I've seen some decent DDR4 DIMMs for sale. Not SODIMMs though. And again, I'm saying this: The current mobile CPUs perform at BEST equal to last gen... and at worst inferior. IPC only stretches 100MHz or so from haswell to skylake. A 4810MQ is 3.6GHz by default, costs less than a 6920HQ (3.4GHz) and can overclock to 4GHz if one had the cooling for it. You just can't do that anymore.

What do I do with my laptop? Even though I haven't done it for the last couple months, I'm a livestreamer. The best you'll ever see, in fact. My title is no joke. I also game at 120Hz and I render videos, watch a lot of livestreams at the same time (pretty CPU intensive, believe it or not) and generally do whatever else I feel like on my PC. I've once done Folding@Home too to see what it was like, it's still installed for me. I don't think the available mobile CPUs now are sufficient. I wanted a 4930MX for this machine, and I want it at 4.3GHz 24/7 if I could keep it that high. I now want a P870DM because it's inherently better in design and in overclockability, but my machine is no pushover in potential. You are not considering high end. You are considering "acceptable". You are inherently looking for a generally midranged system, and I am comparing machines from 1-3 years ago, not back in core 2 quad days for performance. This is a very recent change with the soldered and power limited deal.

The fact that you could even hope to link such a thing means you have no idea what you're talking about. 480M (GF100) was based off the 480 (GF100). 485M and 580M were based off the 560Ti (GF114). They were closer in power to the 560Ti than the 480M was to the 480. The 680M was based off the 670, and had intentionally gimped vRAM clocks. With a modified vBIOS and some overclocking, they easily reached stock GTX 670 performance. nVidia could, if they cared, have made the 680M match a 670 at stock. They simply did not feel like it. And the 780M to the 680 was a full core downclocked card. GUESS WHAT? I can match a GTX 680's clocks with my 780M and have 1:1 performance. 980M cannot do that, because it is a smaller die than a 980. It's also a smaller die than a 970, and it has vRAM clocking problems too, meaning it's inferior by design to even the broken 970 card. Know what that means? That means that the GTX 680M, by design, was a better card in relation to its counterpart (670) than the 980M is in the heiarchy of maxwell GPUs. That graph means absolute jack if you knew the cards. Just because the card itself is stronger being from a stronger architecture does not mean the card itself is of a better quality in relation to past hardware. Compared to the 780M's quality at the time, the 980M is a joke. Everybody here who knows the GPUs will tell you the same.

And yeah, an AW15 with a 980M is better for gaming than a AW17 R1 released at the time... but what about with a 980M? Then the AW17 R1 with a 4.3GHz 4930MX and a 980M becomes a superior machine. And what about when the pascal refresh comes next year? The AW15 would need to be sold and upgraded to an AW15 R4... but the AW17 R1 will likely simply remove the 980M and put in a 1080M and STILL be better. The machines, are of two different classes. End of story. There's no competition. It's factual. Yes, what is available now is out of the box stronger than what was available 2 years ago... in terms of GPUs. In terms of CPUs, they're weaker. And what was there 2 years ago can use what's available now, and can likely use what's available in the future, so what's better? Even if they made soldered CPUs they could have kept MXM sockets. But they didn't feel like. And they offer nothing opposite, unlike say... both Clevo and MSI who offer soldered and socketed machines of different size classes.

The thing about the Alienware machines is that the Clevo machines in similar (or actually a bit smaller) size classes using 180W bricks are generally more overclockable than them using 240W bricks. Hence why I say again: their quality is down. They should still perform better with what they have available. And I have reasons why overclocking CPUs benefit quite a bit, even though they may not apply to you.

It's not that any one brand is huge, it's the sheer amount of them that exist. OriginPC, iBuyPower, Sager, Eurocom, XMG, Metabox... they're all pretty big. But then you have AftershockPC, Pro-Star, M-tech laptops, AVADirect, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, CEG, CyberpowerPC (also use MSI whitebooks etc), Mythlogic, Venom Computing... and a whole bunch of other retailers that rebrand Clevo all around the world that I couldn't begin to talk about. Dell has the advantage of being one large company that has a fairly worldwide service, which is impressive, but I'll be damned if they directly sell more midrange to higher performance notebooks than clevo gives out ODMs. Compal and Foxcomm probably do get as much business though.

 

Clevo is small........the brands that you mention here are a really really really small fraction of the market. Not even available in Europe and Asia which are by the way larger PC markets. Except for XMG, they are from Germany. Clevo is really not that large and it shows. Almost all their laptops have some sort of compromise somewhere. But that is okay, the price is very reasonable.

About the GPU part. It is not about the architecture it is about what was the highest available at the time. Which is now closer to desktop class than a few years ago.

Again you only come with pure megahertz, I come with benchmarks that prove that without overclocking the newer CPU's are better. It is a fact. Overclockability depends highly on the cooling and power supplied to these CPU's.

Well at least you really use your machine, most here I suspect only to benchmark the **** out of it and then play a few games with hardly using their hardware to their full potential. I use it for my design work, 3d rendering stuff, professional music production and gaming when I am away from home which I am often.

A lot of these posts avoid the statement I make. So I say it again. The so called performance gap is neglible. In the end the machines we talk about are still laptops and their is only so much room with current technology. You really make too much powerful statements, thus coloring the truth into something different. You say you can overclock your 780M to a full size 670GTX? A geforce 970M is performing similar to a desktop 680. The 970M is around 40% to 60% faster than a 780M and you claim you can close that gap by overclocking it not even mentioning the architecture changes that Maxwell performs much better than Kepler in current gen games? That is simply not doable unless you seriously mod it with extreme cooling. Some benchmarks to strengthen my claim http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-970M.126694.0.html http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feat...erformance/nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-970m-put-test

So as I said you make powerful statement that these machines are just midrange laptops, now bring some evidence to back it all up. I came with benchmarks and everything I showed you the numbers that the differences arent as you have projected it in this thread.

This whole thread got derailed pretty much into another dimension. But my point is that these 2015 machines are not underpowered, they are not midrange machines in their size class, they perform and they do as advertised. The only downside is the tradeoff of upgradebility but that is something limited in laptops anyway you cant just swap out the mainboard to get the benefits of a new architecture. I came with facts and proof to show that these machines arent as gimped as some old school Alienware users claim it to be.

 

@rinneh @judal57
My "old" socket processor and Aw17 is now nearly 3 year. It can fine run +115w TDP unlike the new modern BGA aka HQ processors that are locked down to 45/47W TDP. Are these old/new HQ processors that only should be installed in tablets/routers a step forward???

Vs My 3 year old socket processor...
http://hwbot.org/submission/2852931_papusan_cinebench___r11.5_core_i7_4930mx_9.42_points
http://hwbot.org/submission/2852892_papusan_cinebench___r15_core_i7_4930mx_857_cb
http://hwbot.org/submission/3005419_papusan_wprime___1024m_core_i7_4930mx_2min_47sec_460ms aka 167.460 sec

@rinneh You say; Depends highly on the cooling and power supplied to these CPU's.
This is not the whole picture. Newest Aw laptops has a bios that cripple the entire processor performance. All access to the registry in processor is crippled of an rotten bios + that an BGA processor is a problem child who most likely is hardcoded with locked TDP. A bios with crippled power settings + various ways to throttle the processor is not a good solution in a so called "high end" laptop. This issue had not previously Aw/Clevo laptops with socket processors. In addition had also previous Alienware models a good cooling which
was customized to fit an extreme processor.
How will Dells engineers design the next Aw15/17 models so that they can fit the newest 200w high end cards from Nvidia in a thin laptop that Aw15/17 is? As thin or perhaps even thinner design than today? Probably comes next Aw models to have a down scaled 200w Gtx980. Aw15R2 and 17R3 use both the most powerful graphics card Nvidia could make earlier. How will DEllienware Achieving this, now as desktop cards are launched?

 

Huh? Clevo is huge. They sell more laptops than many other brands out there, just under different names. Several are available in Europe, you just don't know of them most likely.

Clevo laptops often have fewer compromises than the new Alienware laptops do. In fact, the only real compromise most Clevo laptops have is that they aren't as solidly built as the Alienware machines. In terms of performance? Features? Upgrade potential? Configuration options? They beat Alienware.

The new Alienware machines are indeed gimped...relative to past AW models.

They don't perform as advertised, as they throttle a lot. Their BIOS is crippled and they ship with inadequate PSUs. It was proven many times in the past that an AW with a 980M needed the 240w PSU to perform on par with a Clevo P650SG with a 180w PSU. What does that tell you?

They're not bad machines, but don't kid yourself into thinking they're on par with past Alienware machines, or several of the Clevo machines currently out there. They're better than many ASUS and MSI models, and their keyboard is one of the best. They're just not on par with what AW used to be, and Clevo is offering far more enticing options at a better price point.

And I'm not some Alienware hater. I've owned two Alienware 17 R1, two AW17 R2, one AW 15, and one AW18. As well as two Clevo P650SE, one Clevo N150SD, a Clevo P750ZM and a Clevo W355SS.

 

Alienware's pinnacle was the M18x R2. Just an absurd amount of ports, high quality LCD panel with NO defects (my Alienware 18 has had 3 LCDs replace due to pressure/light bleed, AW17 R2 has bleed on edges as well), strong performance, and an unlocked BIOS. Really there is no comparison to what Alienware USED to be, which is why it bothers so many of us previous owners. The ONLY laptops on the market that can truely represent what Alienware WAS, is Clevo. If they decided to build computers with an aluminum chassis, they would have me hook line and sinker. As Ramzay said, the only gripe with Clevo is build quality. Performance and feature wise, they are the new kings.

 

It is a nice overclock but not really reasonable is it. TDP is over twice what was stock and you are running it on a coolermaster cooler. I understand you do it for overclocking sports but this is not really relevant to the normal usage of a laptop and also not reasonable as in you use external cooling to make this possible..

 

Don't need my U3 to use my processor 4.3Ghz at all 4 cores 24/7 but I use it if I bench of course and I like a laptop slightly tilted when I use it. + I almost never need to clean the inside for dust because of the fan filters on the cooler. Normal use newer push your processor with +115w. And no one will travel around with such a big cooler anyway . It's a enough with Clu to have decent temperatures on your hardware. But as I said; you can't do this with a BGAtel. A laptops with modern thinner design as newer AW haven't the cooling. Not possible.

 

The cooling isnt even bad, its only a little bit smaller than the A17 R1, The thing tha tmight hamper it is that the heatpipes are shared now. After a repaste I will do an overcllock run. Lets see how far I can take it. I have to arrange a larger powersupply though. Because I simply do not have enough juice for a large overclock in my system.

 

Shared heat pipes has no negative effect on total cooling if you just run CPU stress tests. You will actually get much lower CPU temperatures if gpu run idle speed in processor stress tests because of shared pipes. Nor need for a more powerful PSU if you only stress test/benchmark tests the processor Oc'd.

LOL. If you Google for image of Aw17R2 Cinebench score vs Bga. One of my Cinebench scores. HaHa.

Same if you Google Image of BGA hardware Cinebench 11.5 .

 

Ermmmm you are just comparing with non OC-ed systems and think it gives you status.......Shared heatpipes are always a due to the heatpipe length. It is ideal though for balancing a system with 2 higher powered components in a smaller space which arent fully stressed at the same time.

It is really starting to look like a contest who has the biggest E-penis... which is sad.

 

This is not a contest but shows only the difference between BGA vs Socket processors . I have seen lots of examples functioning socket i7-47/48/49xxMQ processors that work as intended but almost none of the soldered versions. The great majority of socket processors function as intended and can also be overclocked hefty. Hope this thread was a good explanation of the differences between BGAtel and socket processors from Intel. The intention was not to force on you other opinions . Happy clocking...
Ps: History of Dellienware's biggest mistake ever will never stop... http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...3-owners-lounge.770314/page-175#post-10131283

 

It doesnt show anything, it shoes a non OC-ed system versus a heavily OC-ed system.....

 

Rinneh the biggest failure you will see is when I stick a Pascal GPU into my 2009 M15x and it will completely outperform your new Alienware 15 in games.

It is simply pathetic what Alienware did. There are already plenty of 2009 Alienware M15x laptops that already sport the 970M with 6GB of Vram and if you can afford it the 980M 8GB works too.

It shouldn't be possible for a 6 year old machine to beat a new one. I guess Alienware feel a bit like Ferrari did when they released the F50. The old F40 was quicker and had more character...

 

Nice that you are stuck with USB2.0, old architecture etc. I just buy a new laptop after 3 years and have all parts fresh.

Nice you can upgrade your GPU, but the rest is still old and the machine is bulky as hell. In the end the money you ahve to spend on upgrades is the same as buying a new laptop.

 

I bought the new 17 R3 with every option including the GA. Let me tell you I went from the 17 R1 to this machine and it runs great the quality is outstanding the GA is just plain awesome. I am a gamer, I game on 34" 4k screen. Internal 980m is solid doesn't throttle, I do have the laptop on a gaming cooler. I did overclock the CPU to 4.0ghz manual overclock. I did install 2400 MHz memory My 3dmark score using firestrike for desktops is 13627 which is not bad considering its a laptop. I will admit at first the machine was buggy had lots of issues but the latest bios update fixed most of them. My advice to you go for the exchange enjoy a new machine. I did buy a 980 ti and it went from awesome to just amazing.

 

Not so my friend! I have had USB 3.0 for years 2 ports to be exact.

Upgrading process isnt so expensive. You wait for correct time to buy and sell the old parts.

I havent spent a fraction of what the Alienware 15 costs.

The machine is bulky but it is quality. It is what Alienware used to stand for. Quality!

 

You're absolutely right. + Rep. Not all want thin laptops... I associate them with CrApplebooks. Imagine how a +200w Gtx980 desktop card had worked in these new "modern" Aw laptops. It had burned up or exploded. LOL
It is possible to buy a Gtx970m to around $ 430-450. I call this a cheap upgrade. If you also sell your old card becomes the upgrade even cheaper. There are not many new gaming laptops you get at this price with Gtx970m.

 

The build quality is fine on the new machines. So that is a non issue. Less easy to disassemble though.

Regarding the USB3 ports. Thats my mistake then I thought the M15X never had those ports.

Lol that is one third almost of what I paid for my laptop. I do not call that cheap. I call that overpriced for what you get. I have the money to spend but i rather spend it wisely.

 

You are not getting the point Rinneh. We aren't out to insult you or the choices you made. We are simply pointing out facts! Unfortunately Alienware knows only the enthusiast base will notice the crap they produce. The same way mobile GPU manufacturers stick too much vram on low end cards to make them look powerful when all it does is make the card run hotter and never gets used. It's all about marketing to the ill informed masses and it usually works!

FYI $430 minus say $200 from selling your old GPU it becomes very cheap!

The point we are trying to make aside from costs and good for the environment is longevity and quality.

Whereas the M15x with upgradeable parts can still play top AAA titles well 6 years into it's life the Alienware 15 will not. Let's see how many Alienware 15s are knocking around in 2021 with the ability to play latest games perfectly....

Not just the upgradeability but also the build quality. If something is even able to last for 6 years heavy use the chassis and components have to be top quality. Alienware build quality has been going downhill ever since the first generation of Dellienwares 6 years ago.

This is why the M15x is still kicking with plenty of users running 3.6ghz+ on the 920xm 4 cores and 970M's and the M17x R2 with it's fantastic screen and dual card possibilities.
The M14x came out since 5 years and never (even though it has been refreshed 3 times) has it been able to stand toe to toe with the M15x. The 1st generation of M14x is basically trash to most people at this point! Fantastic!

 

I'm sure there will be plenty, mine included. Pretty simple either I buy the graphics amp from Dell or utilize eGPU over TB3 once Intel enables it on the Skylake boards. Can your 15x do that?

 

So you will sit 24/7 at your desk when you game? Pretty portable system you want . I thought a laptop was meant as portable. Why not buy a desktop pc instead?

 

Then you disconnect your GA?

 

Sooo, how's Dell's replacement for your laptop coming?

 

If you want to overclock and mod your computer why not buy a desktop PC and not have any of the limitations of a laptop? I dont need Ultra settings on my laptop when im out and about, I'm running Battlefront on high with my 970m and 6700hq and it is plenty for me.

 

Great that you want such high standards . Some laptops are in fact upgradable . However not if they use BGA hardware as some enjoy today. It is more important for some that the laptop is thin and light than raw performance. Everyone can not have the same desire. That's good. Many enjoy the Apple book, Chrome book and some enjoy Aw book. You buy what you want. This is just the way it must be.

 

Again and I have stated it before that 10% (at most) extra performance is not "raw" performance. You want raw performance? By a X99 system with a hexacore.

 

Hmm Pascal MXM 3.0B card when it hits (if it hits which is very likely in about 6 months) will be alot more than 10% faster than even the 980M.

I will take my portable machine when I have to travel for work and have performance that you will only be able to attain when chained to your desk at home (unless you intend to take a BIG suitcase) lmao.

Thin and light is for Crapple books not Alienware. The concept takes on a new level of stupidity when they then supply a big fat lump of a GA to sit on the desk with your laptop to deliver good gaming for years to come...my machine may be fat compared to the 15 but it is more portable with more gaming potential as a laptop without having to add bits onto it to get the full performance...

For the record I use a thin and light brand new Lenovo Thinkpad and it sucks. It has an I7 5xxx chip but performs like my M15x when on battery (lock it to 1.2ghz) pathetic. Thin and light means throttle and slow...

You defend the Alienware brand of now. I on the other hand reject the crap they have released as it is an affront to what the brand used to stand for.

I would say pretty pointless to argue further. You bought hopefully knowing what it was you were buying and therefore are a happy customer. Enjoy your Macbook pro with e-GPU.

 

I fix it for you

@rinneh This is is the future if yoy want raw power. Soon also with Gtx980 desktop card in Sli. http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...enix-has-arisen.781814/page-116#post-10142269 This is a more portable system than a Awbook with the G/A.

If some want to spend 450$ on their *old* Aw 17R1. Expensive? http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...k-thread-part-4.561350/page-412#post-10142815

 

"raw" power its a 5kg machine. Thats the same weight as my sli equiped mATX case fully loaded. I dont call that a laptop anymore to be honest. The powerbrick for that machine is already the weight of some laptops. And then still only about half of the performance of a desktop.

Yeah and new laptops with pascal gpu's will not arrive? Always throwing with words like crap this and crap that. There are not many people that want to carry 5kg+ around everyday for a laptop. People rather carry 2 or 3kg while having almost all of the benefits.