yeah, and I'm saying they're not great. GTX 960 and R9 370? those aren't stellar options.
GTX970 or R9 380 at the very least, otherwise back to the drawing board, because you can fit a GTX 980Ti or R9 390X into one of silverstone's 11.5~12L mITX cases.
It's puzzling to say the least. They used to do a 670, I believe, or at least a 660 ti.
So the cooling oughta be able to handle a 970. Maybe they are trying to do 1080p gaming well and not overengineer it? I remember that was the concentration of the earliest x51.
dimensionally the case is big enough to hold a full length 10.5" card. Internal layout may prevent it however. If that's the case, they need to refresh with AMD's R9 Nano asap. It's short enough to fit anywhere that the various other cards currently would fit, and it's TDP is low enough to avoid any limits there too.
It's not a matter of card length, but rather the power supply needed. The device uses an external brick that does not have enough juice to push it harder.
It has a max 330W power supply. There is plenty of physical space for a Titan X if you really wanted one, but it's questionable if it could power the thing.
I don't see why they can't put a 500W PSU in the thing, at which point it could support nearly any graphics card.
Yeah, I don't see how this is even slightly competitive. starting at $1100 for an i5, a GTX 745, 8GB DDR4 and a 1TB HDD? Ok so that accounts for $500 of the price tag, so what are the other $600 buying? Seeing as they didn't bother with anything like M.2, USB 3.1, or HDMI 2.0, I'm wondering why they even bothered to refresh it.
Ah, I see now in the body text that the base model is $700, which probably means they'll mark it down to $500 to make it look like a good deal most of the time. I guess that's about right.
I'm sort of interested in the 13 inch version and if I were going to buy it, I wouldn't think twice about taking the TN panel over either other option since, at that size, everything would have to be scaled which makes the higher resolutions nothing more than a waste of money. Besides that, there's a penalty in workload for the GPU that rolls into demanding more power and generating additional heat in maintaining additional pixels that the eye won't be able to discern. Also, the GPU is well suited to pushing that lower resolution at otherwise maximum settings in most games whereas native panel resolutions on higher end screens may cause problems now and certainly in the future as games demand faster hardware. Low res panels are an inexpensive way of future-proofing your native resolution gaming experience.
That was my confusion at first too. But after giving it some thought, maybe mobile Skylake isn't so close. After all intel hasn't committed to a launch date yet and even if it surfaces, it may be as scarce as Broadwell was last year.
I hope not, I was really looking forward to a Skylake laptop with TB3. I'm hoping for the holy grail of thin and light with beefy graphics (external DGPU).
Considering the price of the AW13 didn't really go down at all, the least they could have done was put the i7 5600u in instead of the 5500u. They are the same price after all, and a dual core chip is a bottleneck on some newer games.
Isn't the 5600u also dual core? I thought it was just a higher-clocked version of the 5500U. Either way, it is strange to go for the lower end chip if they cost the same and have the same power consumption.
Looks like no update for the Alpha yet then? That's the one I have an eye on, especially with it's frequent sales driving it below 8th gen console pricing. I'd just need it to be a bit more powerful to be comfortable with it lasting a few years. A tad over 2Tflops on the GPU would probably suffice for console ports for a while.
Panel manufacturers have been screwing the industry and sitting on their laurels for far too long.
Can anybody remember when 1920x1200 was common? That was over 10 years ago. Yet in that decade-plus, notebooks at the 17" size have not gone past 1080P.
It's a crying shame, and makes me wonder why notebook manufacturers don't demand more from their panel manufacturers.
While common on the desktop monitor space, 1440P has been totally ignored on the notebook side, yet that resolution would provide perfect 100% scaling on a 15" screen or larger. Even better would be an 18" 4K display.
I have been a dedicated notebook user for 15 years, yet I made the decision this year to abandon the notebook and go back to building my own high-end desktop system (with a 3440x1440 monitor). Too many things today are holding notebook innovation back, and lack of choice in the display department is one of them.
A large-volume vendor like DELL should be able to easily source some nice 2560x1600 17" or 18" IPS panels - and use them in both Alienware high-end laptops as well as their Precision mobile workstations.
I really, friggin' don't get it. It would be such an obvious play and such a huge differentiator and marketing advantage.
Question, with the earlier 15/17 R2 2015 Alienware laptops, you needed to have the Graphic Amplifier plugged in (with a GPU installed) in order for the laptop to allow CPU overclocking, or at least beyond what Throttlestop/Intel XTU could do on it's own. Does this dumb rule still exist, or has it been lifted for this refresh, thanks to the Dynamic Overclocking System? A response from the Alienware Facebook page months ago said it is because of power requirements that you can't OC the CPU without the amplifier. But I explained with the temperature and power sensors in the laptop, it can allow CPU overclocking as long as it doesn't go beyond the 180w or 240w of the AC adapter and can respond very quickly. -Daniel Watkins
BTW, watch out for the quality of these laptops. They have been a lot of throttling issues with these latest laptops and be sure to get the 240w AC adapter if you get the 980m GPU or AMD GPU, otherwise the CPU will throttle like crazy when the GPU is fully utilized. Lastly, a BIOS update to the 15/17 R2 laptops, dated July 1st, a fix finally arrived after a stupid flaw was found that the CPU would constantly throttle to I think 800MHZ after resuming from sleep mode! Happens every time with all their laptops! What a crazy flaw to allow out the door! The icing on the cake was a incomplete, bad grammar description of the BIOS fix "Fix CPU haven't turbo frequency after S3 resume.". Argh. Alienware, you need to UP your game.
LOL at Alienware fighting against Intel, They are using old Haswell chips for now but there will be only soldered options in the future with both Broadwell and Skylake mobile chips being available in soldered-only option.
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33 Comments
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meacupla - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
So 10.6L for the X51. That's pretty small.I don't know about the video card options it gets, however.
UrbanBurger - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I believe the X51 uses desktop GPUs not the mobile variants listed.meacupla - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
yeah, and I'm saying they're not great.GTX 960 and R9 370? those aren't stellar options.
GTX970 or R9 380 at the very least, otherwise back to the drawing board, because you can fit a GTX 980Ti or R9 390X into one of silverstone's 11.5~12L mITX cases.
ImSpartacus - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
It's puzzling to say the least. They used to do a 670, I believe, or at least a 660 ti.So the cooling oughta be able to handle a 970. Maybe they are trying to do 1080p gaming well and not overengineer it? I remember that was the concentration of the earliest x51.
Flunk - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I think it's a matter of card length more than anything.DanNeely - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
dimensionally the case is big enough to hold a full length 10.5" card. Internal layout may prevent it however. If that's the case, they need to refresh with AMD's R9 Nano asap. It's short enough to fit anywhere that the various other cards currently would fit, and it's TDP is low enough to avoid any limits there too.meacupla - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Well, about that... GTX 960 is the same size as GTX 970. They both have a 6.7" size option too.Darkschneidr - Sunday, August 30, 2015 - link
It's not a matter of card length, but rather the power supply needed. The device uses an external brick that does not have enough juice to push it harder.Guspaz - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
It has a max 330W power supply. There is plenty of physical space for a Titan X if you really wanted one, but it's questionable if it could power the thing.I don't see why they can't put a 500W PSU in the thing, at which point it could support nearly any graphics card.
Darkschneidr - Sunday, August 30, 2015 - link
I wish they would put a bigger one on it, but it is external, so I'm not sure if that is a limitation that makes them go with something smaller.Brett Howse - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Sorry about that copy and paste error on the table.nmm - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Yeah, I don't see how this is even slightly competitive. starting at $1100 for an i5, a GTX 745, 8GB DDR4 and a 1TB HDD? Ok so that accounts for $500 of the price tag, so what are the other $600 buying? Seeing as they didn't bother with anything like M.2, USB 3.1, or HDMI 2.0, I'm wondering why they even bothered to refresh it.nmm - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Ah, I see now in the body text that the base model is $700, which probably means they'll mark it down to $500 to make it look like a good deal most of the time. I guess that's about right.secretmanofagent - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
That the Alienware 13 has by default a 1366x768 TN panel is shameful.BrokenCrayons - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I'm sort of interested in the 13 inch version and if I were going to buy it, I wouldn't think twice about taking the TN panel over either other option since, at that size, everything would have to be scaled which makes the higher resolutions nothing more than a waste of money. Besides that, there's a penalty in workload for the GPU that rolls into demanding more power and generating additional heat in maintaining additional pixels that the eye won't be able to discern. Also, the GPU is well suited to pushing that lower resolution at otherwise maximum settings in most games whereas native panel resolutions on higher end screens may cause problems now and certainly in the future as games demand faster hardware. Low res panels are an inexpensive way of future-proofing your native resolution gaming experience.SoulShadow - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Interesting choice to update with Skylake mobile about to launch. But they have the Alpine Ridge controller which is even more strange.I like how the 13" offers 3200x1800 and the 17" offers 4k, but the 15 and 18 are stuck at 1080, the world makes no sense sometimes.
Seems awfully high starting prices for no base SSD..
SoulShadow - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Also seems like the R9 nano is perfectly designed for something like the X51.bug77 - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
That was my confusion at first too. But after giving it some thought, maybe mobile Skylake isn't so close. After all intel hasn't committed to a launch date yet and even if it surfaces, it may be as scarce as Broadwell was last year.SoulShadow - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I hope not, I was really looking forward to a Skylake laptop with TB3. I'm hoping for the holy grail of thin and light with beefy graphics (external DGPU).TheinsanegamerN - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Considering the price of the AW13 didn't really go down at all, the least they could have done was put the i7 5600u in instead of the 5500u. They are the same price after all, and a dual core chip is a bottleneck on some newer games.cfenton - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Isn't the 5600u also dual core? I thought it was just a higher-clocked version of the 5500U. Either way, it is strange to go for the lower end chip if they cost the same and have the same power consumption.DanNeely - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Probably because Dell's still using up a stockpile of 5500U's they bought in order to get a larger volume discount.testbug00 - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Hahahahaha. I misread this as "Alienware refreshes lineup with laptop updates and water cooling"Took me like 10 tries to read it right. Oops :)
tipoo - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Looks like no update for the Alpha yet then? That's the one I have an eye on, especially with it's frequent sales driving it below 8th gen console pricing. I'd just need it to be a bit more powerful to be comfortable with it lasting a few years. A tad over 2Tflops on the GPU would probably suffice for console ports for a while.hojnikb - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
>NVIDIA GTX 745 4GBWHY, just why ?
Darkschneidr - Sunday, August 30, 2015 - link
It's because only a handful of GPUs have a minimum power req. that is below what the system can deliver.hyno111 - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
No G-Sync support..?Notmyusualid - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
So happy to see the return of the 18.4" laptops.I've owned two to date, and just waiting on 1440p screens, and that will make three...
Luscious - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Panel manufacturers have been screwing the industry and sitting on their laurels for far too long.Can anybody remember when 1920x1200 was common? That was over 10 years ago. Yet in that decade-plus, notebooks at the 17" size have not gone past 1080P.
It's a crying shame, and makes me wonder why notebook manufacturers don't demand more from their panel manufacturers.
While common on the desktop monitor space, 1440P has been totally ignored on the notebook side, yet that resolution would provide perfect 100% scaling on a 15" screen or larger. Even better would be an 18" 4K display.
I have been a dedicated notebook user for 15 years, yet I made the decision this year to abandon the notebook and go back to building my own high-end desktop system (with a 3440x1440 monitor). Too many things today are holding notebook innovation back, and lack of choice in the display department is one of them.
boeush - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
Yeah, buggers the hell out of me too.A large-volume vendor like DELL should be able to easily source some nice 2560x1600 17" or 18" IPS panels - and use them in both Alienware high-end laptops as well as their Precision mobile workstations.
I really, friggin' don't get it. It would be such an obvious play and such a huge differentiator and marketing advantage.
Why, DELL?! Why not?!?
danwat1234 - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Question, with the earlier 15/17 R2 2015 Alienware laptops, you needed to have the Graphic Amplifier plugged in (with a GPU installed) in order for the laptop to allow CPU overclocking, or at least beyond what Throttlestop/Intel XTU could do on it's own.Does this dumb rule still exist, or has it been lifted for this refresh, thanks to the Dynamic Overclocking System? A response from the Alienware Facebook page months ago said it is because of power requirements that you can't OC the CPU without the amplifier. But I explained with the temperature and power sensors in the laptop, it can allow CPU overclocking as long as it doesn't go beyond the 180w or 240w of the AC adapter and can respond very quickly.
-Daniel Watkins
BTW, watch out for the quality of these laptops. They have been a lot of throttling issues with these latest laptops and be sure to get the 240w AC adapter if you get the 980m GPU or AMD GPU, otherwise the CPU will throttle like crazy when the GPU is fully utilized.
Lastly, a BIOS update to the 15/17 R2 laptops, dated July 1st, a fix finally arrived after a stupid flaw was found that the CPU would constantly throttle to I think 800MHZ after resuming from sleep mode! Happens every time with all their laptops! What a crazy flaw to allow out the door!
The icing on the cake was a incomplete, bad grammar description of the BIOS fix "Fix CPU haven't turbo frequency after S3 resume.".
Argh. Alienware, you need to UP your game.
danwat1234 - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I am glad the Alienware 18 has a socketed CPU though! Power to Alienware for fighting against Intel's soldered CPU army.BMNify - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
LOL at Alienware fighting against Intel, They are using old Haswell chips for now but there will be only soldered options in the future with both Broadwell and Skylake mobile chips being available in soldered-only option.