AW17 sata port and other questions

I will be getting an AW17 and had some questions. The Owner's manual link on dell website is not working so if someone has a copy of that, please share it.

1. I gather that there are 3 hdd slots on the AW17. 1 mSATA and 2 normal 2.5" slots. And we can remove the optical drive and add another hdd too.
Now, which all of the 3 slots are sata 3 and which are sata 2?

2. In my previous laptop, m17x r3, there was an issue that sata 3 only worked in hdd slot 1 and hdd slot 0 was sata 2.
Are there any such known issues with the AW17?

3. I am getting the 880m with 120Hz screen? Any feedback on the 880m? Any throttling issues like 580m had?

4. What is the general perception of the 120Hz screen? Same as the one on m17xr3, which i didnt like very much or is it improved?

 

I guess the new AW doesn't have any issues with SATA3 ports. Sell the 880M on Ebay and get a 780M + $$ as the 880M is the worst card, you are getting an 880M just because that one has 100W heatsink which is quite good for future upgrades...& for the last the 120Hz panel on AW17 is superb for all purposes iirc from the NBR forum...

 

120Hz is great. There's a thread about it. Read it.

All ports are SATA 3. Don't worry.

The 880M is fine for gaming but it does have some issues with heat. Re-paste w/ IC Diamond = problem solved/masked.

P.S. Sorry for the short answers. I'm not trying to be rude. These questions have just been asked a hundred times and I hate repeating myself, over and over.

 

Thank you for the responses!

J.Dre, i wasn't trying to spam the forum!
The m17xr3 had a very good owner's manual page with all the link to issues and the vbios fix as well as the clean install guides etc etc.. I couldn't find these topics on the AW17 page and wasn't able to find definitive solution by googling.

The problem is that the I am from a very hot region and hence throttling becomes a big issue for me. The 580m would throttle a bit at 62C and would then throttle heavily at 77C. There is a fix here by flashing the vbios which removed the 62c throttle atleast.


Does the 880m have similar temps at which it throttles?
Google tells me that yes there were a lot of issues, but i was wondering if they have been fixed?
I also came across a vbios by slvl on techInferno and i am still reading up on that. I am not sure what that does..

 

It's cool, lol. I was just letting you know. A lot of people don't know how to use the search properly - it's tedious, I don't blame you.

The heat will probably be an issue for you, especially if your ambient temperature is hot. You can re-paste using IC Diamond and keep the system lifted to allow air to flow beneath to cool the card - the intake vents are on the bottom of the laptop. That should mask any throttling issues the 880M has for a while, until you need another re-paste.

The custom vBIOS will not magically make throttling go away (it may help, but it won't vanish). The issue with heat still exists, it's just masked by a re-paste. You will need to be pretty good at lowering voltages and raising clock speeds if you want to overclock the 880M. That's the trick to overclocking the 880M, which will only create more heat.

 

I dont want to overclock. Gaming at medium settings at 1080p is fine for me. I just don't want the system to reach 77C and basically slow down to a crawl like the 580m.. Nor do i want bsods and shutdowns,,

I have tried ic diamond 24, artic silver 5 and prolimatech pk-1. I actually preferred the pk-1. And yeah, I always use a stand while gaming so I got that covered.

Any 880m users with 3d screen here? Is there any particular temps at which throttling kicks in?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/758711-120hz-3d-screen-upgrade-alienware-17-a.html

Did you see this thread? It answers your questions.

No throttling issues except with heat. IC Diamond masks it, as I've said a few times.