Just switched to M18x from M17x R2, Comparison/Initial Thoughts

I just got it yesterday, purchased "manufactured refurbished" from Dell Outlet for $2800 out the door (CA Tax $200, free shipping).

Black (not Nebula Red as I thought, still beautiful)
2960XM
580 SLI
16GB RAM
Single 500 GB HD.

The first thing I noticed was that it, aside from the power brick, feels lighter than my M17x R2 which doesn't even have the battery in. I'm not kidding. I was totally and pleasantly surprised by this. It may be the subtle weight of the additional HD missing but this is not heavier.

The PSU is a bit bulkier and heavier, but excellent quality and it just looks like it is powering a beast of a PC, which it is fair to say, IS.

Upon booting up, I went into BIOS, and there were so many options available that I didn't initially play with anything except switching to Dell's 3rd and most aggressive factory CPU clock settings.

Boot up time is comparable, this is non SSD.

Now I was already expecting to see a decrease in screen resolution and color compared to the RGB and yes at first it looked so bland and lame that I immediately began to feel buyers remorse and was disappointed. BUT, upon tinkering with the color settings in the Nvidia Control Center, particularly the "Digital Vibrance" option, increasing it from 50 to 70, there was a restoration of color richness, and I have to be honest, having both systems in my possession, I CANT REALLY SEE A DIFFERENCE. Im sure there must be a loss of resolution, but I really cant tell.

After downloading some apps, and a nice overclocking program for Nvidia cards, Nvidia Inspector, I overclocked my cards to a mild 1450 Shader and 1500 Memory.

After this I deleted all of the factory supplied bloatware, like McAfee etc. and cleaned up the start-up processes.

After a few hours of taking care of the basics I decided I was ready to see what the fuss was all about and perform a 3DMark Vantage Run.

During the "Jane Nash" portion of the test, monitoring an abysmal 30-50 FPS, the first thought was "manufactured refurbished"....damn. But then I placed my hands behind both exhaust vents and noticed that one of the cards wasn't being utilized. I terminated the test and checked confirmed through Hwinfo 64.

I opened the Nvidia Control Center and SLI was disabled. Enabling it, I restarted and started up Vantage again.

Vantage did its thing and well, I was blown away, 27,747 in GPU...

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P26325 3DMarks

And this is really a mild overclock, the temps didn't exceed 72 C.

As you can see the CPU score was only 22k, as I still haven't begun to exploit the full potential of it.

From what we have seen from other similarly configured M18x's, this thing has 30+k potential, but I wont be pushing it that hard, I will be leaving the GPU clocks as is and will only use a moderate overclock on the CPU, likely via Throttle Stop.

Build Quality. WHOA, this thing is fabulous, great quality, you've likely seen the videos on youtube, spot on, and although what I received was refurbished, it arrived with a plastic screen protector etc without not a single scratch or blemish to be found anywhere, makes me wonder what really happened. The Dell rep said that any returned hardware is sold as refurbished, so maybe someone purchased this and didnt want it for any number of reasons and returned it immediately, I have no idea.

All I know is that if you look you can get these similarly configured for under $3k, just be patient.

I have no regrets whatsoever.

 

Nice write up. Makes me want one!

 

Thanks for the write-up! I came to an R3 from an R2 (w/ RGB) and was too a bit disappointed by the bland colors. However, your little tip about using Nvidia's Control Panel to boost the colors really made a huge difference! The colors on my R3 look great now! Thanks!

Enjoy the M18x!

 

Congrats on your new beast! want one too

 

Glad you like the M18x, and thanks for the writing up the great review! Even after 8 months sometimes I'm still regretting not going with the M17x R2 just because of the screen... you sure you can't see a difference and it's not psychological? Hahaha

 

Agreed, the digital vibrance setting is amazing.. Doesn't work on Optimus though.

 

Yes maybe its psychological! I was playing Crysis 2 last night and reduced the Digital Vibrance from 70 to 65, it looks a bit better but I do believe it isn't as good as RGB, but it isnt as though the difference is night and day.

Other than that, for Crysis 2 I have downloaded DX11 and the "high res" texture pack and am playing with all of the settings on "ultra" and the GPU's just laughed, "thats it, thats all you got?" I mean, no stutter, solid 60 FPS everywhere, and after an hour or so thinking that I must be roasting the cards, I look and they didn't get hotter than 65 C!

AND I LOVE THE 16:9. Especially with racing games, like Need For Speed Shift: Unleashed as I use the helmet cam and can now see out of the right side of the windshield etc, and most movies fill up the entire screen.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, like I was saying If your'e thinking about switching just be patient and watch ebay and contact Dell Outlet from time to time, and don't be afraid of "manufactured refurbished"!

I was totally patient with this, I really wanted to pounce on an M18x back in October when I was up in Oregon attending a Permaculture Course (Permaculture is a Revolution designed as Organic Gardening) as there is no sales tax in that state, I was willing to spend upwards of $3800-$4k I believe for one with an extreme processor and dual 6990's new.

I'm glad I waited. Oh and I forgot to add that it also came with Killer Wireless, Windows Ultimate and a 2 year warranty, and Im not kidding it looks brand new, included a plastic screen protector and everything, I'm baffled. It didn't include the fancy boxing, but that's ok.

Good hunting.

Oh yeah, one more thing, I had to copy my steam folder which is like 80 GB onto an external drive to import to the M18x, it took about 2 hours last night to transfer the data from the M17x R2, and now with the M18x's SS USB ports the Western Digital Passport 1TB which is SS USB compatible is half way through transferring the files and its only been 10 minutes (22 Minute estimated total according to windows).

If I remember correctly it was like 16 MB a second and now 50-60 MB a second.

WOW.

Latest benchmarking results with my everyday OC:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P26934 3DMarks

CPU temps didnt exceed 86 C.

GPU temps didnt exceed 71 C.

Ambient temperature ~70 F.

I cant believe how manly these video cards are, makes me want to sing national anthem at rodeo in Texas!

 

72% Gamut vs 100+% gamut, is a pretty big dif, but congrats on the purchase. Enjoy it!

 

Yeah there is a subtle reduction in resolution, but again to my eyes it isn't as though it is night and day, aside from a few noticeable moments like the brake lights in Shift Unleashed aren't as vibrant.

Now playing Crysis 2 with DX11, all settings Ultra and the high res texture pack in 16:9 Widescreen without so much as a whimper from these manly cards, now that is a dramatic difference. And playing Shift 2: Unleashed with a solid 60 FPS, all settings highest including Anisotropic x16, you can really see the difference, it is dramatic. Whereas before, especially during the replays, you could see the wheels spinning as though there were frames that were being skipped etc and when there are more than 2 cars in front of you the FPS would drop to 35 FPS. Now its 60 everywhere. And again the 16:9 really accommodates racing games, even shooters, I like this ratio the best.

I mean I am now leaning in my chair as I enter some of the turns, whereas I wasn't doing that with the R2, so I know there definitely is a bodily felt improvement in immersive realism.

Playing Batman: Arkham City, everything max minus DX 11 (broken) in 16:9 widescreen what a beautiful game!

In fact for the past week while playing these games this has been my internal monologue:

"Why didn't I get this earlier?!" "Because it was $4500, its a good thing you waited so long."


Hopefully the R2 gets the M18x PSU working soon, then we can have the best of both worlds.

Oh and one more thing concerning the M18x, if the fuss is about the resolution, just get an external RBG monitor! When out and about you will take a hit in perfect resolution but still have the "All Powerful" processing capability that Dellienware is renowned for.

P.S., I used to think that my 5870 crossfire set-up was strong, the highest OC I could attain without constant BSOD (in Witcher 2, Shift 2: Unleashed, Crysis 2) was 800/1100 yielding an 18,300 GPU Vantage score.

My 2nd and likely last Vantage run with the M18x 580 SLI with a truly mild OC yielded 28,300 GPU Vantage. (see post above). The temps didn't get above 71 C! In fact they have yet to go above 68 C while gaming for hours on end!

That is a massive improvement.

To each their own, the M18x R2 may satisfy all of the shortcomings of both the R2 and M18x R1 but with what will be at first a considerable price-tag. One would have to wait at least two years from now to expect to purchase one without donating a vital organ or two.

While contemplating modifying my R2 over just getting the M18x R1 one of the facts that played so heavily into my decision is that upgrading to 580 SLI was going to be a $1300 modification in itself! ($500 per card (used, ebay) minus hardware etc, $200 for PSU). And the modification is not without its risks, more than a few people have received faulty cards (AMD 6990's etc).

Update: I just got Skyrim working again after the steam transfer.....WOW, no stutter, everything maxed, I actually had to put the game down as it was unplayable on my AMD configured R2 after the most recent auto-update through steam, now I can get back to this epic masterpiece.

Oh and the Nvidia driver updates? Guess what the process is now? I just click on one item, be it an "update driver" button or a link on the internet, no more 16 step process involving 3 system restarts in safe mode and invariably a system restore to revert to the last working driver taking at least 3 hours of my time.

 

That's odd, the M18x with 330 watt brick is supposed to be heavier than the R2, it still utilizes a metal chassis. I've been debating selling/trading up R2 to M18x, but the RGBLED WUXGA panel to WLED 1080p screen is my last objection..

 

Agreed, RGB 16:10 is the main reason I'm hanging on to the R2 as long as I can. Never needed to do a system restore and 6990 is working perfect for me

 

I want an m18x as well. Might be getting one for this Xmas season. Hopefully by then, well have Kepler cards, in sli of course, and possibly a refresh of the m18x platform. Actually, if/when they put Kepler in it, I'd guess that's be when a refresh would happen. Duh.

 

Yes, thats what I meant to convey, that the Laptop itself is actually lighter but that the PSU is most definitely bulkier and heavier and is what as contributed to increased overall load-out weight.

Another update, I have been playing around with the color settings in the Nvidia control panel and reducing gamma down from 100-86 seems to help bring out the contrast and enrich the colors quite a bit.

So for those who have already jumped ship and are using Nvidia, or R3 owners, I have really improved the colors by increasing Digital Vibrance from 50-65 and reducing gamma from 100-85.

Doing some side by side comparison last night with a few games and images, with the settings mentioned earlier I really couldn't see a difference in color richness and or color bleeding, although there is a noticeable loss of resolution that is related to the loss of vertical lines of resolution (1080 vs. 1200).

I recommend anyone who has access to both systems to see and judge for themselves:

The settings I used pertain only to Nvidia hardware, what I have done is increase the "digital vibrance" slider bar from 50 to 65 in the Nvidia Control Panel and reduced gamma from 100 to 85.

Again, before these adjustments the M18x did seem bland in color representation and contrast, after the changes any difference is beyond the ability of my eyes to tell.

 

Take a picture of them with an rgb pic. The same one on both systems and post it up. That would be neat too see.

 

I can't figure it out! Maybe someone who has access to both systems can.....The RGB IS a better screen, but the quality of the M18's can approach it with some simple adjustments, but not exactly duplicate it.

Again, the real difference to my eyes, is not so much color saturation, or bleeding etc. but the loss of lines of resolution, like even right now I can actually see the lines forming the written text on this page, whereas before I could not. Imagine taking the 1920x1080 portion of the R2's screen and blowing it up significantly, you will actually see the lines of resolution.

This following video is good comparison of the two systems form another owner who has both. In the 2nd part of the comparison, this owner explores the resolution difference between the two screens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrguKVnmBn8