Hi All Im Noob And I Need Your Help

Hi All Im Newbie And I Want Your Help Please
I Just Buy An Alienware M17x Laptop


1- I Want To Know What Is The Differance From M17x R1 And M17x R2
2- I Want To Know Can I Upgrade Any Part In My Laptop
3- If I Can Upgrade Any Part Can Anyone Suggest To Me Some Website That I Can Buy From Them
4- I Want Some Body To Post A Toturial Video Of How To Upgrade Part


And By The Way My Laptop Spec:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4
4 Giga RAM
Nvidia 260 GTX SLI (1Gig)


And Thanks For Help In Advance
And Im Sorry For My Bad English Its Not My Language

 

1) Different (better) Graphics Cards, Different (faster) Processors, RGB LED 1200P Screen, acutal dual channel ram, Lack of Integrated Graphics for longer battery life
2) yes, you can upgrade the processor, graphics cards, wireless card, hard disc drives and ram, other parts(LCD, and cd-drive) are upgradeable as well, but require a bit more involvement
3) the NBR market place, or several ebat sellers specilize in Dell parts, otherwise the best way is to google search for the dell part number you're looking to upgrade to.
4) there are several already avaliable, if you can't easily find them, search via google within the domain name Alienware M17x

 

Thank You For The Help But How Can I Get DELL Part Number

 

Dell website...

Might have to actually go through the build new system and review process to get the part numbers you are looking for.

 

Thank You For Your Help

 

Check out the M17x tear down video. If you need more detailed instructions Dell provides electronic versions of their manuals. This is the main page with multiple languages, look for the service manual.

See this link for R1 vs R2

Regarding parts, you can get them from DELL directly, at a premium, or from ebay. I'd only go with highly rated ebay pros for the parts.

Mike

 

Thank You Mike I Appreciate Your Help

 

Wait Lozz, only R2 have actual dual chanel? Why?

 

the PM55 has acutal dual channel ram support, the MCP79 will list dual channel as being active, however it acutally only has 1 memory controller(which makes it impossible to have dual channel mode) and benchmarks relfect this.

 

Actually the PM55 doesn't have a memory controller at all. The i Core chips for example i720qm have built in memory controllers.

Mike

 

I guess either of you or Lozz are correct And yeah, in PCMark Vantage my R2's Memory Suite is 1.7x higher than that of R1 despite both have exactly the same RAM config.

Sorry for hijack OP's topic

 

If you have a pm55 chipset, you have dual channel support, what I said was correct and that was as far as I was willing to explain. my hope was that everyone was aware the mch was ondie in the r2, it looks like that assumption was incorrect.

 

Could you point me to where the pm55 dual channel support is described/explained?

Most articles I've read like this one don't mention it. I'd like to learn more about how the CPU interacts with the PM55 to address the memory.

Mike

 

@Lozz: Just a general thank you.. Been browsing this forum a lot last days, and you offer a lot of very good advice and knowledge.. Thanks !
(You even made me keep my 285m sli config, rather than making a switch )

 

If you have a PM55 chipset laptop, you have a Clarksfield processor, by extension of which means you have dual channel ram support, it's as simple as that. It's a good enough explination for most people, but not everyone..

 

Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers. I'm just trying to understand why some systems are capable of addressing more than the 8gb of RAM and I haven't seen much good info. on that subject.

I know there has been some success with the G51jx, 12GB, that one also has a 5 series chipset.

Mike

 

It depends on the number of RAM slots in the notebook. The m17x has 2, the G73JH has 4. The Intel memory controler offcially supports up to 8gb, but it in reality seems to be able to handle up to 16GB. The problem for the m17x is that there are no single RAM chips above 4GB, so 2X4GB = 8GB. When they come out with 8GB sticks, we can test and see if it works, but dont get your hopes up.

 

There's no problem, it wasen't worded as well as I would have liked, I believe the problem is Intel believes that all laptops have only 2 Ram DIMM's(and since the highest density is 4GB=8GB of ram), there's no hard lock in the Intel MCH that limits it to 8GB, which means any 4Dimm laptop like the G73 or M6500 ect.. can support more ram with sufficient BIOS support. Intel's 36bit address extension means the MCH can theoretically address up to 64GB of ram acutally. In their defense, there really are only a hand full of >2Dimm laptops, so it's probally just a bad case of the mundays typo.

 

Pretty interesting because the Intel i7 specs sheets I've seen say 8GB limit. I know a guy on the ASUS forum has successfully added 12GB of RAM, but has trouble with 16GB. I'm aware the system has 4 slots, but didn't know how these memory slots where being managed.

I was curious to know if an 8GB part came out if that would mean 16GB of support. You'd think a 64-bit architecture would mean quite a bit more ram of addressable RAM.

264 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
18,446,744,073,709,551,616 / (1,024 x 1,024) = 16EB (exabytes)

However, as you guys have said, we'll know when it happens.


Regards,

Mike

 

The processor can adress 16EB of physical/virtual ram, however the Intel MCH is limited to 36bits of addressable physical ram (64GB)

Single 8GB dimm ram chips using lower density modules has been proven to work, so the MCH and Bios can physically see that amount on a single dimm.
http://forums.vr-zone.com/news-arou...le-8gb-ddr3-module-running-nehalem-setup.html
the problem is that sodimm's are limited to 16chips, which make's hynix's translation unrealistic in an SODIMM form factor. Though the technology proves that the Intel MCH has no problem with 8GB/module. The game right now is that high density 8gb dimms in a 16chip form factor do not exist at a realistc price in the desktop market. 8GB DIMM's in 16chip form do exist, but only when you're willing to spend $370-500 per module on ordinary Cas9 PC10600 ram. Then you'd need a justification to have 16GB of ram in a gaming laptop when 4GB is more than enough for almost any game.