Alienware 17 R2 Notebook Review

[Redaktion]

Alien Lightshow. Alienware, who are very popular among gamers, jumped on the Maxwell bandwagon and presented their first notebook with the new and extremely fast Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M. Numerous manufacturer specific special hardware and software features should fulfill all wishes of gamers. It is just too bad, that precisely the core units did not work flawlessly.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Alienware-17-R2-Notebook-Review.140380.0.html

[Where's the Mojo!?]

This really is hopeless, Alienware were always touted as being the ultimate gaming machines with the highest performance (and yes for a price), but unfortunately this pathetic attempt at an Alienware notebook only has the price of an enthusiast machine without the performance to go with it. 

I mean really, the high end CPU 4890HQ cannot maintain it's turbo clock so ends up scoring lower than a cheaper 4710HQ in a competitors notebook.  It's not only that, it's the GPU performance too, the 980M performs slower than competitor notebooks with 980M, as seen in the benchmark scores - I think notebookcheck quote an 8% performance difference - that's really pathetic that this supposed high end enthusiast machine can't make full use of it's CPU & GPU - it's less than the sum of it's parts, and therefore an expensive mess.  Alienware used to stand for quality at a price, now it just seems to stand for marketing gloss & high price, don't buy this laptop because there are better alternatives when it comes to gaming notebooks.

[Circadia]

I've been reading that there have been performance issues on the 17R2 caused by insufficient power delivered by the 180W PSU. When Notebook Check did this review, was the system using a 180W supply or 240?

Thanks!

[Allen.Ngo]

Hello,

Our model shipped with a 180 W adapter, so this is what our data reflects.

[Will]

I've just ordered 1 with gtx980m and 4710hq refurbished - its comming with 180 power. Anyone know if the throttling issue resolved with bios update? I've heard some people receive a 240 power brick.

[danwat1234]

In the review you said with Furmark running and Prime95, the CPU would cycle between 2.8GHZ and 800MHZ! I have this experience too. Max power consumption of the AC adapter is about 171 watts, measured with a kill-a-watt meter. Meaning, about 154 watts max power draw from the AC adapter at full load, and that power consumption is maintained even if the CPU cores are idle the but GPU is running Furmark. In all cases the GPU throttles and if the GPU is running Furmark while the CPU is taxed, the CPU is throttled as well. This is shown on page 133 of the Alienware 17 R2 official owner's lounge on notebookreview and probably lots of other posts on that thread.



I am hoping a 240W AC adapter helps. It is hard to believe that Alienware would copy MSI's mistake of trying a 180 watt AC adapter on a 780m/880m/980m equipped laptop. The laptop easily costs more than $2,000, they should get the complete package.  Why harm your reputation like this?

And, no overclocking the CPU unless the Graphics Amplifier is plugged in? Marketing tactic!

[danwat1234]

"The values measured under medium load are not that easy to explain. However, the bigger power consumption of the G751JY under maximum load might be due to the fact that it can better use its Turbos and does not reduce the clock of the graphics card."

This may be a soft limit to protect the AC adapter so it doesn't have to deliver 180 watts of power. I hope users who use a 230w AC adapter can use nearly if not the whole capacity of the adapter, not having an artificial limit.

[warran]

My company has been using Alienware laptops for several years as a mobile demo platform for our graphics-intensive applications. In the past, we have been able to connect them (via their DisplayPort connector) to a Matrox TripleHead2Go adapter and drive 3 external monitors at 1920x1080 resolution (i.e. 5760 x 1080 across three external monitors).

Our latest 17 R2, even with the GTX 980M, will not supply this resolution. The best we can get is 3840 x 1024. It seems the laptop is using the NVIDIA gpu as a co-processor to the Intel graphics engine, disabling the 980M's direct output and crippling its maximum resolution.

I realize this is an unusual configuration for most users but since Alienware makes no mention of it anywhere in its specs for the machine (it took me a long time on the support forum to find it) I thought it might help. We are not happy.

[Fernando]

Please review the newer Alienware 17 R3 (1920x1080)

[Shah Rukh Khan]

Hello there! Should I buy an Alienware 17 r2 4th Gen with Nvidia 970m which is used regularly since 2016 and moreover, thermal paste applied on it recently. It will cost me 580 USD $. Kindly respond back ASAP @ [email protected]

[Iulian Gheorghiu]

Yeah the Alienware 17 R2 with 980M was and is a mess still, I have a 180W power adapter because was no option for one bigger, if you play a heavy game the power adapter go mute, when playing and power adapter gone mute it needed to re enter the power adapter into the wall to restart it, that kill two batteries till now, I change the batter one year after I bought it, the second last the same amount of time like the first one and give up changing it.
My bass speaker never worked, even the driver does not recognize that have 2.1, it detects it as 2.0, the speaker is there and wired but is silent :), I don't service it because I bought it in EU from US, was not available in EU at that time.
The USB ports are a mess as well due to a Intel bug in the USB hardware core IP.
The thermals were a mess as well.
I bought it in 2015, has 8 years and still works, the good side is that has support for five hard driver, one 2.5 inch and four M.2, is good as a UnRaid server at his age, I run it with 3% battery life :))), is like a server with a small UPS attached.