AW 13 R2 M.2 PCIe Speed

Hi, 

How are you able to determine that it’s running at x2?

Samsung Magician will typically tell you how many PCIe lanes are being used.

That is exactly how I determined the speed.  Magician says 2x.  Anyway to get it up to 4x?

Thanks

Thank you very much for the reply and info.  I was originally told that the M.2 would run at 4 times but that was by a low level tech who really didn't sound like she knew what she was talking about.  I hope someone from Dell will address this.  I don't know why they wouldn't.  It is what it is. If it's only x2, then just let us know so we can move on. 

I've been disappointed with Dell's engineering to this point.  I had some level two techs emailing engineering and they insisted that the AW 13 R1 M.2 board was the same as the AW 13 R2 board.  Well I found out that was completely incorrect.  The two boards are completely different.  They wouldn't believe what I was telling them until I actually sent them pictures proving the differences. 

It would be great if somebody would jump in here and renew our faith in the engineering department.  Just level with us and explain the architecture of the buss for the M.2 cards. 

That would be a wonderful thing.  Thanks.

I don't think that's something one can change. Dell reps have mainly avoided answering these questions as to how many PCIe lanes are present in the Alienware's M.2 slots, and the info is not surprisingly absent from all the Alienware tech documents.

From what I can gather, at least on my X51 R3, there are only two PCIe 3.0 lanes dedicated to the M.2 NVMe slot. I would guess that it's the same for your motherboard. Would a Dell rep on here care to confirm or clarify?

Thank you very much for the reply and info.  I was originally told that the M.2 would run at 4 times but that was by a low level tech who really didn't sound like she knew what she was talking about.  I hope someone from Dell will address this.  I don't know why they wouldn't.  It is what it is. If it's only x2, then just let us know so we can move on.    I've been disappointed with Dell's engineering to this point.  I had some level two techs emailing engineering and they insisted that the AW 13 R1 M.2 board was the same as the AW 13 R2 board.  Well I found out that was completely incorrect.  The two boards are completely different.  They wouldn't believe what I was telling them until I actually sent them pictures proving the differences.    It would be great if somebody would jump in here and renew our faith in the engineering department.  Just level with us and explain the architecture of the buss for the M.2 cards.    That would be a wonderful thing.  Thanks.

Agree that this kind of obfuscation is annoying, applies to video configuration as well, where the numbers (GTX970m) don't really match up to expectations.

But look here, on my 17r3 :-)

That's interesting.  I wonder why mine is only running at x2. I also wonder why mine at x2 says it's maximum speed is 10 Gbps and yours at x4 is also 10Gbps.

Thanks for the info.

I think you have a 13r2 and he has a 17r3. Probably different motherboards causing the difference.