Debate: is the M17x R2 worth a second life?

Background: Recently I purchased the following configuration for 1150 on ebay:
Alienware m17xR2
Intel x920
8GB ram
64GB SSD
500GB Hybrid
AMD 5870m in Crossfire
RGB LCD
DVD burner
Extra bag and cooling tray

Now, I have also seen on ebay some decently loaded m17x R4 for 1900 (one even had the 680m).

But I would ask you, would you rather have a fully loaded R2 or an entry/midrange R4?

Do you need a 680m more than 16:10 RGB, or the other way around?

Is the m18x too big to have crossfire?

I know we vote with our wallets, but a poll or two never hurt

 

I would upgrade, but i'm biased. I love my R2

 

R2 ftw, but I have not used other ones... I guess it depends on whether new GPU's continue to be compatible.

Once that stops happening, people will pretty much be forced to move on.

 

That....must....never....happen!!

but I agree, it is all about the GPU. I want to install a m7970 that I bought, but I'm still waiting for the bracket and screws to get to me. Bought the backup machine in case I accidentally fry the first one

I'm also really curious if Nehalem CPUs are that far behind Ivy bridge. Minus the integrated GPU is their Clock per Clock performance improvement really that good? Have the lower tier processors improved enough to beat the x920? What I am really asking is, can you "feel" it is faster? Is that possible anymore with today's tasks and activities?

 

i think GPU's will stick to MXM 3.0B in laptops for a longer time...another 5 years or so...

I think this laptop is the best/coolest thing i ever bought.

R3 and R4 plastic toys...No thank you.

 

Having worked on and played around with an R3 and R4, the R2's just seem to be built better. The CPU has it's own fan, each GPU has it's own heatsink and fan. It's got the 16:10 screen ratio (which you'll never pry away from my cold, dead, fingers), and...wait for it...NO GPU Switching! I know that using integrated and discrete graphics is supposed to improve battery life, but no one buys these laptops for the battery life, so WTH>?<

I will be buried with my Lunar Silver...

 

The M17xR2 still utilize a metal chassis, the last of the Flextronics chassis when Dell moved all Alienware to Compal for ODM outsourcing. The R3/R4 have a plastic chassis like the ASUS G series, so the build quality is hardly better.

My M17xR2 serves as my gaming DTR, and coming from a 6 core i7 970, and a GTX 580, it is still good for playing all my games (MW3, Dota 2, SC2, TF2).

 

i just installed 7970m in my r2, worth even 3rd life....fans working auto

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-950 Processor,Alienware score: P5786 3DMarks

BOUSE!!

 

Grats man. Glad to see that your cards are working. Where did you get them from? And can I hit you up for a copy of your vBIOS? I'd like to have as many resources at my disposal when I attempt to make go #2 into my R2 to get my cards going.

 

I just got a replacement R4 for my recently deceased R2...I miss the R2, the HD screen on the R4 pales in comparison...Keep the R2 alive as long as possible...

That screen is the best ever.

 

let's face it, the R4 definitely is wayyy more future proof, and if I believe correctly, Ivy Bridge i7s are better than previous gen. extreme edition ones. Now that's a lot to be said.. Also - SATA III & SSD options, much faster graphic cards like the 7970M... the (potential) performance of the R4s kind of speaks for itself.

But the R2...ohhh man. That display and that chassis are deal breakers. I'd stick with the R2 (if you managed to get the Lunar Silver, awesome dude!), especially if you can get cards like the 7970M to run on it (think I saw a thread.. around here.. )

 

Vbios for you

Zippyshare.com - Thames.rom

Card from eurocom

 

I have sata III in my R2

 

How'd you manage that?

 

don't know.. it came in mine I guess. let me grab a screen shot of hwinfo64

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/69/r2withsataiii.jpg/

let me know if you need any other info as it sounds like I might have a rare R2 or I am confused and thought sata III = 6gbs

 

Thanks flingin, thanks brooks! I think that counts as an extra point in the poll!

 

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

here is one of hwinfo64 looking at the motherboard

 

Huh...mine says the same thing under drive info. I wonder if that just means our SSD's are capable of SATA3.

 

the second pic I linked to show the motherboard and stats sata 2 and 3 supported. where else can I look to see if we have sata 3?

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/523/r2withsataiii3.jpg

crystaldisk info says sata/600

ok so I loaded hwinfo64 and crystal disk info on my macbook pro and it says the same thing as my alienware and my macbook (sata II) has the same drive. So its reading the disk and not the system. one strange thing though is under the motherboard on hwinfo on my mac it says sata3 unsupported and on my alienware it says its supported. Crystaldisk benchmark reads at 224mb/s where as my alienware reads 650 mb/s

 

Same info for my motherboard and Sata/600 in CrystalDiskInfo...except under standard mine says Revision 3, not Revision 6.

 

what does crystaldisk benchmark run at?

 

Haven't run it...ever. I will download it tonight and post later.

 

thanks. probably is sata 2 and I got confused by everything reading the disk and thought it was sata 3. did ATTO disk benchmark also and hit over 600 on that test also. either way I love my R2 and sorry for any confusion

 

Maybe the A10 BIOS unlocked something there...

On your screen-shots, brookss, I dont see any confirmation of SATA 3. The motherboard simply labels the sata PORTS numbers 2 and 3, not the speed. All the SATAIII confirmations come from checking the controler on the SSD itself.

 

Maybe. Definitely something worth looking into.

Here's my CrystalDiskMark test results on my Kingston HperX SSD:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 259.902 MB/s
Sequential Write : 235.503 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 241.631 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 219.214 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 21.095 MB/s [ 5150.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 32.958 MB/s [ 8046.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 177.486 MB/s [ 43331.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 194.555 MB/s [ 47498.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 19.6% (39.4/200.9 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/07/17 1:40:53
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

In all honesty I cant tell either way. Some of radji's numbers match those on anandtech and they claim to be using a 6Gbps interface. So, someone smarter than me will have to comment.

 

M17xR2 only supports up to SATA 2. Of course with RAID 0, I get ~550 read with my RAID 0 array.

 

So is that a good thing or a bad thing?

 

In all honesty I forgot about the RAID speeds, but brooks didnt seem to have that setup. So it is very interesting to see what is going on there.

 

Probably is RAID speeds. At any rate, I know my R2's only running SATA 2 because that is what Intel RST is reporting to me.

 

2 x Intel 320 series 160GB SSD in RAID 0 (SATA 2)

 

yes intel rapid share says mine is sata 2 I thought it was but when I looked at HWinfo64 I thought well maybe they changed something.

Sorry for the confusion guys. I am running raid 0 but been running it so long I didn't think about it. Back to my hole now.

 

Ah, thanks brooks! You can come out of your hole anytime

Back on topic, after running the poll for just under three days, it seems we have just a few more R2 lovers than R4 lovers. Citing the screen size and quality being the most referenced feature that keeps the aluminum layered beast alive and kicking.

The interesting thing I noticed is that for the first day there were no m18x votes, and now they are almost on par with the R4 votes. Maybe it is because the post is in the m17x section and the 18x users aren't actively polling this forum. I wonder what the results would be if I posted it in the 18x section...

And I was very proud to see at least 2 votes on the first day for those that did not know the m17x comes in many, and very different, flavors. I feel my contribution to society has been fulfilled.

 

Love my R2. I plan on at least another 3 years with this guy. I would not trade the display for anything....

 

I'm with you guys. I was thinking if I upgrade my m18x (@home) to one (or two) 680s, I could put the 580s into my r2 (@office) and keep my m17xR2 alive even longer. I'm just waiting for prices to come down a bit first since one 680m GPU is almost the same price as a full size desktop 690 (dual GPU)! I can't in good conscience drop that kind of cash to buy one mobile gpu. At least not yet

 

First of all why did you buy this machine? The whole idea that one should not try to use one's m17x R2 system for five plus years, and instead buy a new system I find odd. Secondl that system is no more than two years old and the amount(introduced around 2009/2010) we pay for that machine should at least give us a five to six years lifespan. Sadly these machines are not made to last. They are made to last until our warranties have expired and then new models keep on seeing the daylight so they can call our "only" two years old machines for a legacy machine, which funny enough become very had to find spare parts for(hmmm... interesting little twist).

So here we have the incitement for us to either buy a second machine for spare part reasons or an incitement to "upgrade" to a new so called R3, R4, .... , Rx which never stops seeing the daylight.

Hence these machines more and more looks like a way to milk us the customers for more money.

So yes of course you should keep your R2 system and take care of it and use it until no spare part on ebay or amazon can be found. I mean think about it you have spent a great deal of cash on that machine and it will be able to run most of all games on the market for at least two or three years more.

Do not fall into the trap of changing a m17x system every second year(then one should buy a cheaper game notebook of another brand instead: go figure).

I utterly love my m17x R2 system and right now I am waiting for spare parts(under warranty) as the R2 system seems to be called a legacy system now... If my Alienware m17x R2 is not able to serve me for at least five years then their is no way buying this machine is worth it.

Also I heard that the R2 system should be the most flawless of them all until now(still many have seen heating issues and hardware failure here and there).

These systems should be planned to be used for at least five years before even considering a change or else it is simply not worth investing in such a machine.

So simply put, yes it is worth a second life and perhaps even a third life. Any other way would be waste of good money and mocking good craftsmanship.

Cheers,

 

I LOVE my R2. The screen...the glorious glorious RGB LED screen.

I plan to upgrade my R2 from 720qm and 4870 crossfire to 920xm and 5870 crossfire. And when that becomes obsolete, change to 6970 crossfire...and so on...

 

I think that if you are tech savy enough to upgrade individual components in the R-2's they will have plenty of life left in them. However, as a person who owned an R2 for over 2 years and now and R4 for over 8 months; I dont really feel like there is a build quality difference. I carry my R4 around in backpack everywhere I go and I dont baby the thing when I pick it up and set it down, and yet my R4 has held up every bit as well as my R2 did over 8 months.

I also much prefer one powerful 7970 to 5870's in crossfire. Often I didnt notice as big a of difference with Crossfire enabled and sometimes with certain games it either didnt work (Arcainia--Gothic 4) or made no difference (ME 2). Dont get me wrong, I LOVED my R2, but that doesnt make the R4 version a "plastic toy".

Oh and lastly, as a person who has owned both revisions for lengthy periods I really feel like the R2 vs R4 screen controversy is vastly overdone as well. Both screen look great, and I used both almost nightly for the past 3+ years...

 

I think its hard to compare the R2 against the R4. the M18x in my eyes is the true successor for the flagship anodized aluminum and dual GPU FTW. im tempted to get the R4 just because the 7970m is so much more powerful than my 4870M Xfire.

 

get that 7970 installed bro! it will definitely breath lots of life into your r2...plus the 920 is still powerful enough for most people

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk 2

 

Thanks Slick! I've installed the 7970m, but not without some bumps along the way. Because the default vbios on my card was not compatable with the LCD on my R2, it burned the LCD into a whitescreen mess. Found the right bios and bought a replacement LCD, but now I need to re-install the screen