What kind of refresh is that? Still the 4th gen Haswell CPUs..
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, 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.