M17X R2 Mini-Review

Hello Guys, long-time lurker here, just thought Ill do a review of my M17X that just arrived on Tuesday (noone believed me when I ordered through the sales rep but anyway its really here).

I got the 820 CPU, dual 5870s, 4gb dddr3, Bluray, FullHD screen, 500GB HD.

Im gonna try and keep this short and concise as you wouldnt wanna read a full block of text but more to help people who may be sitting on the fence regarding whether to buy this machine or not, so here it goes...

My technical ability: I would say I am quite technically capable, the most advanced thing Ive done would probably be to build a 3 loop watercooling desktop 2 years ago so I am pretty capable with computers.

Background: So why did I buy this? Well I used to SWEAR by desktops, I used to think that gaming on laptops were a joke and that desktops were the way forward. But because I live in Central London and space is a real premium, I had to make a compromise and get a relatively smaller setup which requires far less maintenance, and can be stowed away if needed....

Just FYI I am currently using a Corei7920 Desktop maching with an ATI 5850 GPU with a 24 inch HD monitor as my current setup so everything will be compared in terms of my current setup.

Anyway for the machine itself:

Build quality: This thing is SOLID (and ofcourse heavy). It is built in aluminium on the outside as you know but what I didnt know was how THICK the aluminium is!! I mean this machine is built like a TANK. The thick metal gives it a solid premium feel and the lid is VERY stiff (almost to stiff) and has no wiggling or whatever. The screen is stunning and I thought (Coming from a 24 inch HD monitor) I would feel that it is too small but no, I play WOW with all my addons comfortably.

Keyboard does have some flex in the middle if you press down and also the arrow keys, thankfully the wrist rest is solid so it doesnt detract you from a good gaming experience. Ports are all well aligned.

9/10 -1 due to the keyboard.

Noise: This thing is silent if you are using it for everyday tasks, it makes no noise whatsoever but when gaming its a different matter, it is NOISY. Although I am glad the fans are blowing it and keeping the GPUs in good order but just a warning to those who want a super quite computer, this is quiet but not when gaming.

6/10

Performance: The games I play in order of how frequent I play them would be 65% WOW, 20% CODMW2, 15% BFBC2.

WOW (ALL settings MAXED OUT FULL RES) I get 20-30FPS in Dalaran on WildHammer Server EU which is quite heavily populated. I used to get about the same on my Desktop so very happy.

I have addons such as Perl, Bartender etc and they all display without clutter and runs very well. Outside dalaran, I get 70-FPS and over and runs ICC25 etc without any problems at all. VERY VERY happy that it works as good as my desktop and also my main worry the screen size is not a problem, Very comfortable to play with so if anyone was worried about screen size, this is not a problem (and I am coming from a 24 inch HD screen).

MW2(ALL SETTINGS MAXED OUT full AA etc) : On my desktop I was getting 90FPS over and on the M17X I get 70FPS over most of the time but slightly more variance as compared to the desktop but still well over any comfort level so I play without any problems.

BC2(All settings maxed 16aa etc): On my desktop was getting 70FPS over running very smoothly. My M17X also runs this very smoothly as well around 50-70FPS range fully maxed out. I would say though that I would maybe drop the AA slightly for 32 maps with tonnes of explosions but other than that, runs freakin smooth. Very happy.

The only benchmark I ran is 3Dmarkvantage which I have a licensed copy of and running it on performance mode, at stock without fiddling anything, I got 13000.

8/10

As you can see I dont play that many games, and other uses I considered was the BLURAY capability as I have a tonne of Bluray films and being able to just sit down anywhere and enjoy a FULL HD bluray film anywhere was a great plus and it runs great for that. Also I can hook this via HDMI and take it to a friends place who doesnt have bluray to watch etc as well so its awesome.

All in all, this is one hell of a machine and with major game developers all moving to console ports, the speed at which graphical capability improving isnt as huge as it was before (Im sure some of remember those days when the 8000Series Nvidia were released, compared to the 7900s, the 8800 were like a HUGE mile ahead) That kind of huge leap isnt happening anymore and it seems like games are becoming more Content oriented rather than just pure graphical proweness.

The Dual 5870s are more than great for my purposes and the corei7820 CPU gives me enough multitasking capability for me to do whatever i need, whether that be trading stocks or watching bluray films. And when I need some extra space, I can just fold this up and stash it somewhere to save space.

All in all a great machine which I dont regret gettiing. I paied £2440 on this machine with the 820 CPU, dual 5870, 4GB, Bluray and 500G HD. I had the EPP discount as well.


Any questions let me know!

 

+1

1. How do you play WoW, with or without crossfire? In crossfire mode I get very fluid gameplay but the screen flickers (as if someone is changing the brightness by 1-2 bars all the time), and with single 5870 I get annoying stuttering.
2. You haven't mention the touchad. Are you actually satisfied with it?

 

Thanks for your time to write this down Kaiser, early on the next month i will oder mine and info like this just push me to do it

 

unreal25: I play with crossfire ON and very fluid gameplay. There is no flickering but if I focus very closely on the screen, I do see some bars very very very faint bars but I think that is to do with the dual gpus rendering, and I hardly ever see it, in fact sometimes I dont know if its there or not, not noticeable at all. If I make my character stare at a wall and focus my eyes for 5 seconds I will see it, it is that faint.

Touchpad, yes forgot, I am used to the Macbook Pros touchpad so yes compared to that it is not good at all. I mean a touch pad is a touchpad, it could definately be better, but its not unuseable or too annoying or anything, it does what it should but could be far better, but I use a mouse anyway.

 

A quick 3DMark06 is possible.

 

What resolution were you running your games on? 1920x1024?

 

I was running them FULL maxed out 1920x1200 everything maxed out.

 

Oh and by the way, my 3DMark Vantage run was 13001. Pretty close to yours.

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7915/vatage13k.png

Interesting that your touchpad is OK. Mine is a disaster... I have to wonder how, since the polling rate is super-low.