Debating on returning my M17xR2

So I received my Alienware about 2 weeks ago. I found out about this video driver issue from experience then searched it and found this site.

Basically I'm debating on sending this back. Yesterday I was playing Borderlands on it, and after about 20 minutes the game freezes up, I open task manager and see the game is taking 3 gigs. So after a little searching I find out that the new 10.7 drivers cause this with the 5xxx series video cards.

It seems like ATI has issues with good drivers, and it seems like Dell can't keep up decently with ATI drives anyway.

I would really like to get another laptop with the GeForce 480M in SLI but from what I can tell, no laptop manufacture has it yet. If there is one, can someone let me know?

I really love the look of the Alienware and how solid it is otherwise, but I will never get another ATI video card again.

Thanks,

 

i returned mines after 4 months of yell! i wont be order a alienware laptop again, well i might get a m11x just for portability, but as far as m17x no.. im now going to order the new area 51 alx! looks gr8 and wont ave divers issues! i think u should do same m8

 

how did you return it after 4 months? How many times did a techie come out?

 

itts actually more like 9 months.. had r1... got a refund after 9 months threatening legal issues as my dads a lawyer.. Purchased a R2... bluetooh wasnt working, dead pixels... they refused to refund that, even tho it was treated as a new order, 1 phonecall from my dad soon changed there mind... now im planing on getting a alx but its £5200 total price, seeing how much discount i can get by phoning my old friend frm dell, who got me my r2 from £4200 to £3400

and to answer ur question had tech guy come out 3 times for R1. and about 2 times for R2 within a week.

 

doubt you'll ever see 480's in sli in a "notebook" and i doubt dell will go back with nvidia cards after the ginormous uber fail that was the 9400/260/280 mess of the R1... if your not happy send it back, but you wont get a better laptop IMO, every manufacturer has issues, all of them.

 

Don't you doubt, m8! x7200

 

Why not pick up a PC magazine and build your own gaming rig? Start with a good motherboard with several 16x slots and toxic 5970 4Gb in Crossfire if you have £ to play with. The problem is not ATI it is Dell. I don't own an Alienware desktop but I would not place a bet regarding smooth sailing with catalyst. If you really want Catalyst guaranteed to work everytime you need to buy a card directly from ATI.

 

I do have a gaming rig PC that I have built myself, but I can't build a laptop.

It looks like Dell is going to be releasing some beta drivers for AW tonight so I'll see how that goes. It may not fix the issue with Borderlands because it was a problem from ATI already but oh well. I still have until Saturday to decide lol.

 

Sadly, you can't buy a card 'directly' from ATI or NVIDIA for that matter. Its always going to be another company. Now, granted with desktop cards you can go straight to AMD or NV for the driver... with mobile its going to be a different story.

This has always been the case.

Recently, NV and AMD have realized they need to truly push on the mobile driver front - was not always like this. This is why sites like laptopvideo2go and tweakforce - even the Mobility Modder tool are around...

Display drivers have always presented an issue for mobile users. You have to remember that with mobile GPUs, the manufacturer, be it HP, ASUS, Dell - any of them, they have to verify a driver meets various requirements to keep their platforms in line (EMI, etc.). This translates into a delay with drivers.

As I mentioned, always been the case on mobile systems. At least as far back as I can recall. Hell, I remember when we never saw updates from the OEM and had to rely completely on laptopvideo2go for drivers which did not fully work with the system.

Thankfully, much of this has changed. NV and AMD are slugging it out and are cranking out the drivers. NV was the first with the updates and then AMD followed in response to NV's Verde Program. Now AW has risen to the ranks and is cranking out updates.

A welcome change to be sure...

 

So I went ahead and did a return for this. Looks like I'll get a full refund after I explained (dumbed down) what the issues were. I may wait a little longer to see what happens before I order another laptop from anyone for now.

 

why are there more and more people returning this laptop? the reputation of M17x is very good and i dont understand what's really going on here. i just ordered mine and i really hope i dont have to return it because i've been dreaming about owning an alienware for a very long time. but now my confidence in this machine has somewhat shakened..

 

like others have said no laptop is perfect, and everyone will have some sort of issues with it. that being said I think alienware offers a very competive product and my experiences with them have been positive. when I get my m17x ill post my impressions on it.

 

I have spoken with numerous persons who have had almost no problems with the m17x. The only issue is with the drivers and if you don't mind using your laptop tethered or putting it to sleep (untill new revisions are released) you should be just fine. Some people get lemons, others get gold nuggets. Luck of the draw.

 

very very good point

 

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Thanks.

 

i have to agree with SkyCake in this matter. we dont spend thousands of dollars or pounds to gamble. i personally expect the machine to work as it should right out of the box and continually getting driver updates from time to time. i'll just have to experience this myself when i get my M17xR2 (in production now). will post feedback (hopefully good ones)

 

I have a thread somewhere called "post here if you've never had issues with your m17x". There are a good amount of posts. You're right in saying that it should work right out of the box, though. It's ridiculous that we have to research video driver work arounds just to allow a GAMING machine USEABLE. What happens to the kid who just wants to game and can't figure these things out? It's unacceptable and they shouldn't be selling non functional products. The m15x has throttle issues hardcore with the 260GTX and even with the 5850 the CPU still throttles. I feel like I'm taking stupid pills sometimes when talking to Dell, asking them how they're selling products that don't work.

 

From what I've seen in my many years of computing experience, you'll get these sorts of issues no matter which big-brand manufacturer you use. They pump out the product in numbers so large that it's hard to test them all to any serious degree, then take their time releasing new versions of officially supported/modified drivers.

The only way you can guarantee any kind of quality is to use a boutique/mom'n'pop assembler, who then builds a system from off-the-shelf components. These companies rely on repeat business and good customer reviews, and generally produce systems in low enough volumes to have time to test.

Sadly, we haven't got to a point yet where there's a standard size and layout for most laptop component, like there is for desktops. The only standards so far are ExpressCard, mini PCI-E and MXM. Until such time as some kind of system-wide standardisation happens, we're going to be stuck with a gamble on the quality of any laptop we get.

 

well if that is true then dell need to be turned in to the BBB. With the money some people spend on these rigs say $4000 you want something that works not is constantly haveing to be fixed. Every one should get a gold nugget. This is not Vegas...

 

having run one of those store even using componets you knew and tested were good a new driver would out and mess it all up or you would get a bad batch of motherboards that just created havoc.

IMO the only manufacterer I expect to hold to the letter was IBM was that was almost there unwritten rule and in all my years of selling thier desktops and laptops the (small) amount of returns were due to user ignorance or virus's

 

You keep saying "work right out of the box" I agree! But I see a lot of people posting the first thing they do before anything is put a fresh install and go for the updated drivers on Ati site.
Not all because I know there are people very informed on the forum. But we all know just how messed up you can make one of these become if you do it wrong. Just think, IMO Dell then takes the heat for what they might not have really caused. Now mine did work out of the box and still is I left it that way except for hardware updates.

 

Mine works fine do and mine was used. And I did do a fresh install even change the Processor too but I guess I know what I am doing. Sucks this guy had to get lawyers involved in the issue..

 

Thank you! Finally someone else realizes that if you mess with something like crazy then complain when it breaks and say that you expected the $XXXX system to "work right out of the box" you're fooling yourself.

These are high-end gaming machines that have the latest and most powerful hardware in them, all stuffed into a tiny space. If you want it to work, DON'T MESS WITH IT!!!!!!!!!! You may think you know about computers, but if you do then you'd know that computers are highly complex and you can break something even if you do everything "right."

I have not messed with mine, and it works 100% as I expected it to. I've seen many others who are the same.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

I also agree. The only reason I did a fresh install on mine was because I did install an Intel SSD in it as the boot drive. I never could get cloning to work. Other than that, I have done nothing else. I have everything on here running stock and have only done some minor tweaks as far as services that autorun. I couldn't be happier with my machine. I have had no issues using the stock dell drivers and playing any games so far.

 

The main Reason I purchased this laptop was to play the Final fantasy XIV beta. After I received the laptop, the 1st thing I tried was that and it would crash immediately.

I then found the Dell drivers were the problem. So I had to do the workaround to install 10.6 ATI drivers so I could play it. That was the only thing I did to my laptop.

I then found out the ATI drivers didn't work because Dell had to modify the ATI drivers because they modified the video cards.

I just know it's going to suck fighting with Dell every time ATI releases new drivers and Dell will have to modify them again. After a while they will get sick of it lol.

 

The game is in beta.

 

Interesting point.

 

lol true. But the 10.6+ drivers did allow the game to play.

 

I agree and disagree with the "leave it alone" theory. Why? Because sooner or later you do have to mess with it, say for an OS upgrade. And it's better to discover sooner (while you can return it) rather than later, that there some "special modifications" done to make the system run.
If it doesn't run correctly on a fresh install, straight from the factory then you know something is up. No overclocking, just straight basic windows install, because you'll never know when you might have to do one down the road.
I do think there is risk in doing this. And that you can't necessarily expect on a brand new machine to be able to run out and grab every driver all over the web and expect them to work (video drivers being the exception, but again not necessarily if the model is a brand new design and hasn't been incorporated into the standard driver system).
Anyway, while you might have been disappointed in what you learned, I think you know enough now to decide what you will do.

 

I would agree except its not the fresh install of the OS that is the problem. Unlike 4 and 5 hundred dollar Best Buy systems, these have to have the right Drivers installed in the right order. And you really need to keep up with the forums to know when there is a Driver issue. Like with CC on the 15x or the Ati driver problems. Two many people don't check and think no prob I'll redo everything and then come here asking anything I should have known. That's all I am saying. You have a point if they truly have researched and know what they are doing. These are made for gamers and enthusiasts not your average Best Buy customer.

 

Anyone buying the Alienware M17x should and will experience overall august performance with stock drivers in most scenarios. It is when these drivers are tampered with that the performance often suffers in other areas. As you recall when Crysis came out(2007) it took near a year for all the bugs to be worked out and new patches made available from Crytek. Even three years later the game has marginal performance on the worlds fastest desktops relative to new games. If you are prepared to use Dells Stock drivers and be patient and wait for game titles to issue their own patches most people will be very happy. I think the happiest purchasers are those where the owner is realistic and understands what to expect from a gaming laptop. This is currently the best gaming laptop on the market, if it does not meet your expectations than you will probably not be happy with any other gaming laptop. I could tell you the brands of laptop where Catalyst will work but those brands have single 5870CF and any gains from Catalyst will far less than what you have given up by running with only one GPU.

 

Agreed. I did a lot of research before settling on Alienware, and there is very little competition at this level of hardware. Most of the so-called "gaming" laptops from the likes of HP run no better than a single 5830M GPU, meaning that while you can play most of the older games, the newer ones will suffer.

The only brands to offer decent GPUs are Alienware, Sager, Eurocomm, Asus (and probably some other smaller brands). Asus are right out of the question due to frequent problems and lower quality laptop bodies. Of the rest, no matter what brand you go for, the prices are usually around the same. The difference with Alienware is that Dell give you on-site support, and you get a sturdy aluminium body (not plastic).

While the Alien is far from perfect, it's probably the best of a bad bunch. You could go for something else, but you're going to sacrifice looks, build quality, or tech support.