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    Looking for advice on R2 M17x

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Fezziwig, Mar 14, 2011.

  1. Fezziwig

    Fezziwig Notebook Guru

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    Well, it finally happened and Dell has shipped me an R2 replacement with 5870 cards for my R1 M17x.

    Are there any tricks to the R2 machine that I should be aware of? Do I need to disable the PCI Gen 2 as suggested for the R1?

    And, is the machine more stable than the R1 overall?

    The reason I ask is that my R1 has been behaving a bit better recently after spending 2 years tinkering with it and having motherboards and graphics cards replaced on it, so I want to make sure I understand any cons of switching to the new machine. Thanks in advance!
     
    Fezziwig, Mar 14, 2011
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  2. steviejones133

    steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    The R2 is very stable now. I would imagine yours would ship with the latest graphics card vbios etc. You may want to check once you get it. easy enought to do - check the vbios version number in CCC and it should be the same as whats posted on this thread as posted by Grim on his initial post.

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

    Assuming you have the latest gpu vbios, just make sure you are up to date with drivers/downloads. You may want to do a clean install right away and there are several good guides out there to do this.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...d-your-m17x-r2-full-detailed-description.html

    You may also want to install the latest AMD drivers instead of Dell's own and this can be done quite easily. Check you have the latest vbios as in the first link. Once confirmed, you can easily swap out Dell gpu drivers for AMD ones. A good guide for the latest AMD drivers is here....

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...st-11-2-mobility-released-get-yours-here.html

    Other than that, download the usual - gpu-z/cpu-z/Hwinfo32 and make sure that everything is running nice by checking temps etc.

    Depending on your R2 spec, and if you are into OCing, you may want to look at using Throttelstop for extreme cpu's - really does unleash the power of the R2 if you are fortunate enough to have an xm cpu.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

    Thats probably enough reading for now LOL.....sit back and relish in your new R2...hope you enjoy it! :D
     
    steviejones133, Mar 14, 2011
    #2