M15x to 17 upgrade, advice!

Hi all,

So I'm coming over from the m15x forum, since my laptops LCD is becoming problematic and unreliable. I'm looking to upgrade. So I'm considering buying an Alienware 17. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My uses are mainly gaming and A LOT of video editing (premiere pro + after effects). I, like many people, enjoy eye candy so I like to be able to run recent games on pretty high settings. Can anyone suggest what specs I should go for with my 17? I'm trying to stay under $2000. And I currently have a a 7970m in my m15x, Should I take that out and use it in my new laptop? Will it out perform the gtx 770 and 780's that are coming with the 17s? Or should I just sell it? I'm trying to cut costs on this purchase as much as possible. I was planning on selling the 7970m and trading in my m15x to dell if they'll take it.

What d'you guys think?

 

The 7970M is better than the 770M, but is about 30% weaker than the 780M. I would suggest you get the 4800MQ and the GTX 780M. This will be perfect for gaming and video editing.

 

Thanks for the advice. D'you know if the 780M overclocks well?

 

It does, yes, but only with an unlocked vBIOS. You can find one on the TechInferno forums. The 780M exceeds 10,000 on 3DMark 11 with this vBIOS and a high overclock.

You can also use the AW 18's PSU with the AW 17 for extreme overclocking, but I don't think you'll need that unless you get the 4930MX.

 

And you think I'll be able to game steady with very high settings for whatever comes out in the next 2-3 years?

And can anyone tell me how reliable the AW17's are? I got my m15x start of 2011, and it still functions pretty well but some cabling to the screen is going out. 3 years seems a little quick for a laptop of this price to become unusable.

Anyone else here do any extensive video editing that can give me their 2 cents?

 

HI J.dre. Is aw 18 psu simple plug and play or have to do the chip mod in order to use it? Thanks

 

Just plug it in and it should work fine. Make sure you buy the right one, though. Probably best to go through Dell for that, but Mr. Fox has bought them on Amazon really cheap, too. I think he bought two of them for around $100 on Amazon.

 

Going through DELL is the gbest option for that as stated above. You want to have the original DELL PSU for it.

 

I don't think the 17 has a whole slew of issues, it's really luck of the draw. Just cause a XX laptop model is reliable, it's possible to get a lemon from the factory. My R2 was used for over 2 years, and in 2 years only a WLAN card went out (which was replaced under warranty by Alienware). YMMV

I would only buy OEM power equipment. Dell and many other OEMs have a eeprom chip in the charger. What that means is the BIOS can tell if its a genuine adapter, as some 3rd party chargers will not charge any Dell notebooks. It's to protect the internal circuitry and to make sure you don't buy 15 dollar AC adapters from China and fry your battery/motherboard. Sometimes you can get away with buying an actual OEM Dell adapter off of Amazon/eBay, just be careful.

 

Guys..Happy new year ! and thank you for your inputs on this one. I will be pulling the trigger on OEM 330w PSU. Do not want to take any chances at all. Can somebody please validate if its the right part? Thanks

Dell 330-Watt AC Adapter with 6 ft Power Cord for Select Dell Alienware / Vostro Laptops / Precision Workstations / Alienware Desktops : Computer Accessories | Dell

 

That's the right one, yes.

 

Why is it that the R2 needs chip swap to operate full power of a 330W and the later M17's dont?