Why are dell completely useless????

Hey all. Anybody have any experience with upgrading R3 17 HD screen to 4k? Looking into doing it but dell seem to just point to external monitors!

I could do this myself but cant seem to find what I need to buy

Dell technical online just takes you round in circles

 

There are plenty of reasons to complain about Dell/Alienware, but them not providing support for ripping out your notebook's built-in panel to upgrade it isn't one of them.

 

It's not an "upgrade" that is offered. The machine is either specced with the 4K panel or not. If you wanted to go the DIY route the you would need to replace the eDP cable as the FHD panel has a 30 pin connector whereas the 4K has a 40pin connector. You would then of course need to source the panel.

And you could forget about Dell maintaining the warranty after that.

 

Thats fine. Does anyone know where I can source these parts?

 

You may also regret doing it because 4K isn't that great on such a small (17 inch) LCD panel. Some people like it fine, but others do not. So, unless you've already used a 4K laptop and know 100% for certain that you can put up with it over the long haul, I'd recommend steering clear of it. Text is super tiny unless you jack the scaling to 200% and that screws up other things.

 

Thats something to think about. Thanks

 

Text isn't super tiny. Fox, I read a lot of your comments on the new Alienwares. I have no idea where most of them come from. The only time text will be tiny is in an application window not produced for 4K. Never on the Internet or under normal circumstances.

 

I appreciate the 4k just because it results in text being much more crisp. I don't game on it, ant 4k, I game at like 2xxx by 11xx (I forget the exact resolution) and there are times that scaling is not done properly and I get a very small hard to read popup, but I find it definitely worth it in the long run.

He is referring to using 4k native resolution and not using the scaling set to 200% as it is default in Windows. Without the scaling turned up imagine that text and applications would be very small

 

Yes... exactly. It's not too small if you adjust the scaling to make it larger. However, at 100% it is SUPER TINY and almost unreadable. The trouble is, if you jack the scaling up to 200% then it screws up lots of stuff (as @jpowell490 said... anything not designed for 4K, which is a TON of stuff) and you lose screen real estate because it makes everything larger. If text would scale properly without scaling anything else then I think 4K would totally amazing. The problems are worse with Windows 8.1 and 10 because Micro$lop took away so many customization options. With Windows 7 you have far more control over text size, button size, etc. You have less with Windows 8.1 and almost nothing in Windows 10.

 

@Mr. Fox is right about loosing screen real estate, on a 4K display, with the default Windows scaling, you end up seeing columns A through X and at 100% scaling 1920x1080, you can see columns A through AB in Excel. While gaming full screen won't really be affected by this, everything else you do will be. Having two windows side by side, etc. Heck with the current trend of website design that favors anything but efficient use of screen real estate, every extra bit of info you can display on your screen is a godsend.

I like the 4K display in my XPS, don't get me wrong, but the loss of screen real estate would nag at me if I wasn't running a dual monitor setup at the office.

 

I never could figure out the fascination with 4k on screens smaller than 32".

 

Indeed, 1440 on my 27" is perfect for me!

 

I got mine not because it was 4K, but because its other characteristics such as color accuracy, saturation, etc. were better than the 1920x1080 option. Heck, worse case, I'll run it at 1920x0180 since 3840x2160 will scale down perfectly at 1920x1080.

If you ask me, the current trend of high dpi is like the GHz war of the early 2000s, entirely useless, but if it gets me a display with better viewing angles, color accuracy, etc. I'll take it.

 

Pictures are worth a thousand words here. Attached are some examples of 17" 4K screen on the EUROCOM Sky X9E at 200% and 100% scaling. Notice not only the text size is almost unreadable at 100% scaling, but everything else gets larger at 200% and you cannot fit anywhere near as much stuff on your screen. Half as much at 200%, so you're not really gaining as much in terms of usable screen real estate. It looks awesome at 100%, but I get a massive headache trying to read such tiny text.

I like 175% scaling better than 200% with 4K, but for some reason forcing 175% on Windows 10 causes Windows explorer to crash and you cannot navigate the content on your drives very well. It does work on Windows 7 without crashing.

 

I run at 200% scaling and have no qualms with the screen. Very sharp, very bright. It's nice that I can play some games in 4k and it's insanely sharp. The only instance I can no longer use a program due to 4k is winamp. But of every other program I've installed and regularly used, there's no scaling issue. Dunno who would use no scaling on a 4k 17" screen anyways.

 

Meh... yeah, it looks nice. To each his own though. Looking at it from another angle, if you have a high performance V8 and no compression on 4 cylinders and it ends up producing half the horsepower you are not using it to it fullest potential. I like 4K, and I think it looks really nice, but don't like scaling to the point it is nothing more than a high-pixel-density FHD display once you scale things to make text large enough to read. Based on my own personal preferences, I think all laptop screens are just way too small to take full advantage of 4K and you sacrifice a lot to make it livable. With 200% scaling, you've got basically the same size usuable desktop space as 1080p screen and a pixel count that basically kills your game framerate. Not only do you need a huge screen to use 4K and realize every benefit it has to offer, you also need a super powerful GPU or multi-GPU to use high quality settings for gaming. No matter how you slice it, there is some compromise involved here. Not saying it's wrong or anything like that, but anyone thinking about going 4K needs to do it eyes wide open or they are very likely to be disappointed if their expectations are not adjusted beforehand. And, even if they do adjust their expectations, it's definitely not something everyone will enjoy.

It's nice having a choice to go with 4K if that's one's thing, but regrettable decisions are never much fun for anyone. I'd at least go get something like a 4K notebook or tablet from Best Buy and "test drive" (rent it in other words) it for a week or so and make sure you can put up with it, then pay the restocking fee and return it if you end hating it before buying something really expensive that is very difficult or impossible to return. 15% of something cheap standing face-to-face with someone at the Best Buy customer service desk and an immediate refund is a lot better than 15% of a $4000 high end gaming notebook, plus shipping costs and then waiting a while to get your money back.

 

then just set it to say 150%. Best of both worlds.

 

I had 4K on my XPS 15 9550 while it was a very nice screen it was mostly useless for me.

There is very little 4K content, laptops dont have the horse power for 4k gaming, CS6 didn't scale at all so it was unusable at 4K due to tinyness (this was the case with a few things), drains battery like crazy and dell charge quite the premium. The only time I really saw a positive difference was in 4k desktop backgrounds and the very occasional 4k YouTube video.

So once both the XPS's were returned (both were faulty) I bought the alienware and opted for FHD.

 

Just to throw my two cents in here - I originally went with the 15 R2 with the 4k screen. I used it for about 2-3 weeks and ended up returning the unit and targetting a FHD panel instead.

Many of the things Mr. Fox raise if not all of them i found true

1. there just isn't, much, or any 4k content out there. i found that with the 4k screen, I was dealing with upscaling more than enjoying 4k content. Browsing the internet is basically hd content upscaled, many apps are not designed for it so actually would look worse / strange when i opened them.

2. The only thing i did find really were youtube videos online or netflix 4k content - and my adsl connection was not able to stream it and was just choking on it so i wouldnt even be able to view streaming content.. and the entire PC is just stuck taking FHD content and upscaling it... made no sense to have this crazy high resolution window that is just upscaling content..

3. I also found some games totally bugging out when your desktop res is set to 4k. I would have to set my desktop to 1080 in order for the game to recognize / process 1080p res correctly (assasin's creed for example) and i DID notice the blurry effect of 1080-4k upscaling - many 4k screen owners have been adamantly saying that you dont notice but i strongly dissagree and I don't like gaming non - native res, it is distracting and blurry - what was the point of the machine again? This was really when the regret was hitting me. So far no pros except for nicer text on internet browsing, and frankly text on FHD at 15 inch is pretty sharp anyway.

4. It seemed to put loads of strain on the machine - with the 980m gtx i had a great graphics card that was designed to struggle for its lifetime with the 4k screen vs being able to master the FHD resolution.

5. at the end it was really just giving me nicer text vs all the above tradeoff. at the 15 inch resolution 4k made no sense. My note 5 has a great display and if i want high ppi text i can enjoy it there where i read articles and ebooks quite often. My pc is for gaming / being a desktop replacement that does everything right. 4k res was not doing it right for me!

All those problems dissapeared with the FHD screen. I had to mess around to get a 300 nit LG screen but the screen is excellent and i'm really happy with the machine now.

QHD would have been workable and preferable to me vs FHD, the 980m could game on that res and it would have been the dieal compromise but they decided to just go FHD or crazy 4k ..

But for 15 inches FHD is working fine, movies and shows, and games run great and I'm not missing on anything. My plan is to do 4k through the AGA and an external monitor when pascal hits.

 

I am an advocate for 4K and I found scaling to be hardly any problem for productivity. I am a professional designer and I use applications such as photoshop, illustrator, notepad+, Cinema 4D etc everyday. If you use the latest software it wont cause a real problem. Only the login screen of EA Origin was a bit of an issue for example.

What you get back when you put it on 150% or 200% scaling is a far more crisp image similar to the crispness of a modern smartphone, With 150% scaling more screen real estate compared to 1080p 100% scaling and in general a higher quality screen with these machines. 4K movies are becoming more common soon.

 

That one really depends on your display's actual native resolution. 3200x1800 native set to 1920x1080 will have some blur, it's inevitable. 3840x2160 however, should not. It is exactly four times the number of pixels that 1920x1080 has (twice the number of pixels in width and length both). That should mean that 4 pixels essentially count as one pixel when set to 1920x1080. That means no pixel interpolation which is what causes the fuzzy/blurry effects you normally see when you set a 1920x1080 display to a 1366x768 display res.

The Haswell/Broadwell Dells/Alienwares used 1800p displays, the current Skylake hardware however uses 2160p (as far as I know) which shouldn't result in any kind of blur.

I've set mine to 1920x1080, no upscaling at all and I am not experiencing any kind of blur.

 

mate 100% It was blurry for me. To each his own - it was very much obvious to me, it was very noticeable as you are still filling 4 pixels with 1 color so then the 4k loses its effect, it still is blurry as you dont have each of those pixels working seperately on a crisp image. I did not enjoy gaming at 1080 on that screen and I find the 1080 is far cripser. sorry

 

I have yet again been in touch with Alienware and I have ordered the 4K screen. Got the manual to install it. Looks very easy! Not fussed about warranty as I only have 6 months remaining.
My 980ti should run most games on high settings at 30fps and if I run my monitor at 30hz for gaming, it get rid off any stutter or frame rate issues (tested on my tv running 30fps at 30hz).