Stealth Mode
This feature is only present in the m15x R2, m17x R1 and m17x R2. It is supposed to be used for lowering the power usage when the laptop is plugged -_-
The idea is not entirely bad enviromentally speaking but it causes to many problems and most off the times you won't know if this feature is on or off.- *First problem: Your game seems to be laggy and the mouse unresponsive, try pressing the stealth button, sometimes even when its off, stealth mode can kick in without any warning, so press the button twice for solving this issue.- *Second Problem: I can't OC my GPU! The sliders are disabled! Stealth mode atacks again. Like the other case Stealth mode is active, even if it states otherwise, so if its on turn it off and if it says its off then turn it on and off again.- *Third Problem: I don't know if stealth mode is on or off! As you can see in the image above its hard to tell when SM is on or off, so the other thing you can try is to Open your Command Center and a message should state if you are running on stealth mode in the Alien Fusion Tab.- |
Switching Graphic cards and Optimus
Unlike our friend over here Optimus technology and swithching graphic cards option do not perform how one should expect from an Alienware machine.
*Switching Graphic cards: This option is available in the last models introduced by Alienware the m17x R3 and the m18x. Just hit FN+F7 to switch between your graphic cards and this way save your power usage with the integrated one or prepare yourself for gaming with the dedicated one. The problem appears when you want to update your drivers, as a recomendation for Nvidia users, always enable the dedicated card before installing the newest driver and Install the Intel driver first if you are thinking in upgrading it. For ATI users please refer to the proper AMD/ATI driver update guide on this site, as the procces is to long and hard to explain. Just good luck with it.- *Optimus: While Optimus technology works great with Dell official Drivers, the lack of regular updates from Dell will push us users to use modded inf drivers in order to get the latest ones and be able to play decently the last released games. Most of the times games won't automatically use the dedicated card, so in order to force its use, you'll have to go to NVIDIAS CONTROL PANEL -> 3D settings and over there select the desired game from the list and force the dedicated card to run it. If the game doesn't appear on the list, then search for the .exe file to add it. If the avobe doesn't work, a more drastic measure needs to be taken, forcing the card to run in global ettings will get the job done, but all the power saving beneficts of having another GPU will be lost.- |
