Fellow M17x owners and Rengsey!

Firstly, I apologize for the long post!

My M17x just arrived. Let me start by saying that I'm not a very technical person. I have never owned such a powerful computer before. Why buy M17x then? well, I thought might as well as learn with the best! I'm probably the kind of person you guys laugh at for not knowing anything but I'm glad to say that I'm happy to join the Alienware family!

My M17x specs are i7 620M, Crossfire 5870, RGBLED, 4GB DDR3 1333mhz, 250GB 7200rpm. The rest are standard.

I have spend some time reading the forums. I'm completely overwhelmed by the amount of info on these forums. I'm gonna have to spend a weekend reading all this stuff.

I got some questions if you guys don't mind,

Bios: After figuring out how to get into bios , I see I got A08 version. As a user, am I required to update the bios every time Dell release a new one? I have never done this before. I will search the forums for some instructions but do I need to update? Is it for the better?

Screen: The screen is really something. I have noticed many users say they like Crylo's settings on CCC. I will try these and also Joker's profile! I'm sure every screen would be different but what settings or profiles do you guys use to achieve better color accuracy? As a side note, I have noticed a few users like Joker and others that are very active on this section and I just want to say I appreciate your posts.

Crossfire & vBios: okay!!! I never had a system with two graphics cards. Do games automatically recognize the two cards or do we have to do lot of manual tinkering for games to see the two cards? The 5870 vBios, how do I check if it's already installed on my laptop? Do I need this new vBios? As for graphic drivers, do I use the ones on the Dell support site or something else? Am I going to brick my laptops trying to do this? I read many users are having problems with avi playback with the new vBios. Is there a fix for this?

is it like install A09 - Uninstall current Graphics drivers - reboot - install newer Dell or other? drivers - reboot - and do the Vbios - and hope everything turns out okay?

Lastly, I noticed a post where Rengsey said he installed XP on M15x. I work with some ring0 software that's only for XP. I also do things that require 3D support so this rules out Virtual XP. Also, music industry never moved to Vista or Windows 7, so I still need Windows XP. Is there any way possible to dual boot Windows 7 and XP on M17x? If not, I'm looking at having to buy another machine with XP for work!

I once again apologize for the long post! I just felt like I need some guidance!

 

Gratz on the new system nice build. No questions are to dumb here, well some of mine are. I just did my first driver upgrade on my 5870 cards was a little worried about it with all I read. Did everything you just said except used driver sweep to clean the remains out. Just booted into safe mode to do it F8. And yes it is up to us to update drivers, if you feel you can and want too. As far as XP I installed an upgrade to Windows Pro from Home, Pro will run XP software in XP mode. Like 65.00 on Amazon. Hope this helps and I was right..lol And welcome to the forums there are a large number of great helpfull people here.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...70-september-2010-incl-vbios-flash-guide.html

Go to this link, I too am new to alienware, and the first thing i did was to upgrade to AO9, and also the 5870 CF cards etc, because if anything went wrong i have the right in the UK for the first 7 days to use the machine and if its not upto standard, or not to my liking send it back under the deistance selling act.

So these 7 days were used to get the updates done, I must admit that the link above was great in showing you how to do the cards update, very helpful indeed.

The only concerns i have is updating the ati catalyst suite, as i am not totally sure where to find my version number, as when i look its a very long number rather than a simple 10.10.

Anyway welcome aboard, I have had mine for 3 weeks now and its great.

So my story is if your thinking of changing the M17x to XP, i would try and keep it as it is and can you run the other stuff on a cheaper laptop that some companies still supply with the older systems if you request it?



Just need to reset my eye balls a bit after all the gaming and work being done on it

 

Basically rule of thumb is if its not broken don't try and fix it. If your laptop is running as fast as you expect it then you really do not need to change or update anything.

To answer a couple questions not in any particular order.

1. Crossfire should be enabled by default - To confirm go to your Catlyst Control Center (CCC) on advanced view. Click the crossfire option and ensure the Enable Crossfire is ticked off. What you can also do to ensure Xfire is on is right click on the CCC icon on the bottom right of your screen. Go to the crossfire options and enable the ATI Crossfire Icon. This will show in the upper right hand of your screen when playing a game or application that uses crossfire (I personally like it on ).

2. If you are unsure as to the performance of your computer and if it is up to par spend some time looking through the benchmark threads for the applications and scores of people with similar systems to yours. Remember a person with a 920/940XM will score quite a bit more the the 620.

3. BIOS - As mentioned before if it aint broke don't fix it but flashing the bios is pretty easy, just follow the steps. I think for the A09 it is a program run off the desktop and takes about 3-4minutes. However maybe someone can also correct me if I am wrong but I would recommend going to BIOS A09 or A07 as I believe A08 had down-clocked multipliers for all CPU's or something that reduced performance, and not sure if A09 requires the new GPU drivers and VBIOS.

4. GPU Drivers & VBOIS - I would assume if your computer came recently it would have the most up-to-date graphics drivers and VBIOS. If not, again as before if it isn't broke don't try and fix it. With that said the new GPU drivers and VBIOS if not installed on your system do give a significant boost in performance to the previous versions. Again to do this it is relatively simple. Unistall the current version of CCC run a drive sweep proram like CC Cleaner and clean the registry. Then perform the VBIOS flash (make sure you burn it to disk or flash drive before you do this) then install the new graphics drivers.

5. Questions about XP...This may be an option but someone else will have to confirm as I did this before when I had my desktop. You can put 2 HD's in the laptop, if you currently only have 1 installed then no issue, you may be able to buy a 2nd HD and instll XP on the 2nd drive, then whn the computer is booting up for regular use it will go to Win 7, or you can select the Boot from options and select the 2nd drive and it will boot in XP..Again I could do this on my desktop, should be the same as on the laptop!

 

The problem with installing XP is the drivers, dell does not supply XP drivers for the M17x R2, so the problem would be finding drivers.

On the R1 they managed to get XP working, but with a few small deviced disabled, this is because the R1 had and nVidia nforce chip set on the mother board and you could download the chip set drivers from nvidia.

But on the R2 you would need to find drivers for the intel PM55 chips set from intel, I have not tryed to hard yet but could not find any thing with a quick search.

Then you need drivers for the sound card, and grafix cards, but when I tryed to install ati mobility drivers directly they did not detect the cards.

So the main problem would be the lack of drivers, so far I have not read of any one that got XP running on a R2. (Like the one you have).

Great system by the way, try the win xp compatibility mod and let us know if it works out.