Alienware M17x R2 advice..

Hi there,

I am looking to buy two of these sometime in the next few weeks from Dell, I know I will have to buy referb to get them, and I have a few questions from the owners / people who know a lot more then me.

1) Something I do not get is the R2 has SLI video cards, and the R3 does not... is that not a step in the wrong direction? Or does the R3 have a better card? Looking at the R2 it seems the best card I can get in this machine is the Xfire ATI 5870..is that correct?

2) Does the R2 have 4 memory slots (two under the keyboard) or is that just the R3

3) If I went with the R3, which is the best card on the machine? How is the Nvidia 460m in comparison to the ATI 5870 Xfire.

4) Will either of the machines take a 12mm 2.5 drive?

5) On the display is the hi-res one 1920x1080 to small for everyday use? I would imagine the icons being really small?

I am sure I have more questions, but will hold off for the time being.

Thanks for answering my questions, or even looking at the questions

 

1)The true successor to the R2 is the M18x the R3 replaced the M15x. Dual 5870's are the best cards you can get @ time of order, but because of our great community here we figured out how to install dual 6970's into the R2. These will have to be bought aftermarket though.

2)Just the R3.

3) If you go for an R3 your best choice now is a 6990m, but because of lack of benchmarks we won't know how it will compare to dual 5870's. A 460 though pales in comparison to dual 5870's.

4) you can fit a 12mm 2.5' drive in the R2 not sure about the R3. (R2)In bay 1 it will fit fine in bay two there is a little clip that you can just remove to fit one in there.

5) the icons can be small, but you can always increase there size while keeping the Native resolution of 1920 x1080. For the R2 the screen will be either a 1440 x 900 or 1920 x 1200. if you can get a hold of the 1920 x 1200 screen get it. One of the best laptop screens ever made.

 

Agree with all of the above

 

I hate to ask but how much is the video card upgrade to the 6970's that we do.. I imagine it is not going to be cheap?

 

To upgrade a R2 with 6970m's is about 400$ per card.

 

I can get the 6970ms for you.

 

I paid $305 + shipping per card

 

First off all allow me to thank everyone, and say how helpful this forum/community is, unlike a lot of online forum's I like the way people interact here and don't scream noob at people every time a question is asked.

I do have a few more questions

I have to admit I don't play a lot of games on the laptop, I have a high end gaming desktop to do that and also the 360,PS3 and Wii...

The games that I play are Battlefield Bad Company 2, DDO, Team Fortress 2, and a few other games.

I was looking at the R3's and like the fact that they have the new I7 in them, how much slower would the 460m be compared to the SLI 5870's in the R2, are we talking 10-15% or a lot more? How would the 460m be compared to what I have in my laptop right now I have a HD5400 series, and it runs games pretty well (computer is a Dell 1558)

Also does the R3 use all the same kind of memory, If I bought one with the two memory chips, would they be under the keyboard or under the pc as default?

This is the lamest question of them all... I know I can change the colors of the key's but can I change the individual color of the keys, ie WASD and other keys so they stand out?
Does both the R2+R3 come with the drive bay and interpol (may be spelt incorrectly) for the second hard drive?

Again thanks for taking the time to look at my "noobish" questions and I can't wait to join the Alienware club.

 

Hi Gallifrey

dual 5870's will be much faster than a single 460. The tech behind dual AMD cards is called Crossfire. SLI belongs to Nvidia ( SLI was introduced first by 3Dfx in 1998, few years later Nvidia purchased the tech. Voodoo anyone? )

How much faster? that depends from drivers and application optimization. Crossfire will scale usually from 30% to 80% increse performance.

Single 460m and single 5870m they are almost the same. Maybe with a little edge for the 5870.

On the R-2 you can change color of almost everything, keyboard has 4 lighting zones. Each can be personalized with the color of your choice. So to answer your question WSAD key cannot be iluminated alone, but the zone where they are yes.

The Alien head on the Lid of the R3 cannot be changed, it is white and iluminated from the backlight of the screen. On the R2 the alienhead can be also changed as all the rest.

Both R2 & R3 have 2 hdd bay. The one not used has already the adapter included.

 

1) 460m will be about half the speed of dual 5870's
2) 460m will perform about double of the HD5400.
3) r1/2/3 use Sodimm ram. It will come under the pc.
4) you cant select specific keys to stand out. You have 4 areas where you can change the color on the keyboard.
5) r2/3 come with 2 HDD drive bays