M17X R3 First Impression Dr. J

Box comes with a hat, alienhead sticker, Nvidia 3d glasses with usb powercable to charge, two discs and a booklet in addition to the powerbrick.

The laptop comes in a nice fleece cover with alienware logo.

The laptop (red in my case) is a dark blood red, not orange.

It feels like a rubber leather on the outside and the keyboard section surronding the touchpad is of same/similar rubber material. No fingerprints.

The outside cover has a large alienware head that lights up white.

The keyboard is particularly nice rubbery keys that have rather long travel of a laptop.

The screen as a very small border and is quite bright but not quite as vivid as my RGB LCD on my XPS 16. Just as brite or brighter than XPS 16.

I posted my Windows experience test on another thread, please search results.

There does not appear to be an Optimus enabled mode in the Nvidia software at this time.

After unplugging my machine with power saving mode with 100% charge, the display shows 3 hours and 23 minutes of power left.

Downloading some benchmark programs now and will follow.

I will try to answer questions into the evening.

 

Excellent, excellent!

 

Photo's taken and uploaded to photobucket.com

Someone wanted an ArcSoft Total Media benchmark. I downloaded the program but don't know what you want me to run. Please advise.

Pictures of 3dmark 06, Window's experience and DPC latency check as requested.

External case and keyboard photo's of R3 as requested.

Any further requests.

 

Pics pics pics. Snap. Photobucket. Link. Takes 2 minutes !!! Sorry I'm just dying to see some actual pics.

 

Lol just as I was posting ! Link to photobucket page?

 

Try this:

http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g402/MX17R3/MX17r3/?start=all

 

If you click on the picture on your photobucket there will be a list of links etc. There should be one that starts like

 

Copy and paste. Thats all you have to do, I think

 

You can see the 3D glasses and powerbrick in the second to last photo.

Requests?

 

Your 3D Mark06 score is very low. Make sure you had the system set on max performance.

 

Thanks will run it again. You mean under the battery settings "High Performance" ?

I also might have been burning a recovery disc or something...

 

Great info! What's your overall impression of the quality of the case? So the lid is plastic right? How about the base, does it feel like metal? Is there a lot of flex? How does the soft touch feel?

 

Can you show a picture of the BIOS page that detects the video card to see if the integrated graphics is available?

 

Reminder -

Please do not post huge images. Anything over 500x500 should be thumbnailed or linked only. See our guide for where to host images here and how to resize images here.

Thanks

 

Hello Dr. J. Could you download ThrottleStop from my sig, run it and click on the TPL button and post a picture of that. This will show the Turbo Power Limits for your CPU and whether these values are locked or not. The 2630QM probably has these settings locked so they can't be changed.

You could also try running a benchmark like wPrime.

Downloads | wPrime Multithreaded Benchmark

Post a picture of ThrottleStop when you are about half way through a benchmark run so we can see what speed it runs at when fully loaded and if there is any turbo throttling going on. Thanks for sharing.

 

unclewebb, does ts work with any of the new cpu's???

 

Very good quality. Seems like they did their best for weight v. solidity. There is a hit of flex compared to my XPS 16. I cannot tell if the lid is plastic or magnesium covered with a leathery rubber. The encasement feels like rubbery skin. Soft almost if you touched someone's hand with a latex glove on...

Love the feeling. Smell previously commented on by Mandrake has disappated.

The inside of the laptop under the keyboard and around the touchpad is also rubbery...

 

Downloading now....

 

From the two reviews we've had so far even though the PC is not aluminum it seems that has positive reviews. Can't wait until benchmark are run so we can see exactly how things run on this PC.

 

Pictures by MX17R3 - Photobucket

<embed width='480' height="360" src="http://static.pbsrc.com/flash/rss_slideshow.swf" flashvars="rssFeed=http%3A%2F%2Ffeed1100.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fg402%2FMX17R3%2Ffeed.rss" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" />

 

Set my nvidia control panel to performance and battery to high performance but still got only 12767 on 3Dmark06. Any suggestions?

 

Play some game now, for example crysis, metro 2033 etc

 

Sounds about right though.

 

Im wondering if perhaps the 120 hz LCD would cause the gpu score to be lower than the chinese tested m17xr3 which if I remember right had a 60 hz screen?

You dont have automatic updates or anything running do you ?are you sure all programs/downloads etc are off?

 

lmao does not sound right. i have a roommate sitting next to me. with i7 740qm and ati 5870 he got 13500 marks... are u kidding me?

edit: Dr.J, did you run 3dmark on default settings or did you modify anything like resolution or something else?

 

Can you give us a GPUZ screen snap?
GPU-Z Video card GPU Information Utility

Might they have underclocked the GPU?

AMD's cards get inflated in 06, and 2630 isn't the highest CPU in SB line-up neither. That said i7-740 + 460M should get that score - With SB M1730 should do a fair bit better.

 

in all fairness, you do remember that gtx460 +2820 is supposingly 17000 pts?

btw, Dr.J , how many points does CPU get on 3dmark score when you can view points separately?

 

14089 3DMarks

Went back into Nvidia control pattern and set everything back to default and deactivated 3D steroscopic setting with the above result.

I am running everything normally, virus checker, updates. Did not disable anything.

 

khmz... still sounds pretty low though. cpu in turbo mode? also, can you please tell if 120 hz screen is available w/o 3d?

 

sorry for the big photo BatBoy. I understand what I did wrong now and won't occur again.

 

In all fairness, don't expect a processor with turbo 2.8GHz to bench close to 3.4GHz. Multiply those numbers by 4 cores (that's the beauty of SB CPU's) and your 3Dmark06 can be 1-2k apart.

 

120hz is available without 3d enabled.

do not know how to force cpu into turbo mode.

got to sign off for tonight folks. I will check this thread early in am and answer what I can before work. Keep posting requests...

 

Make sure when you run the vantage benchmark go into Nvidia control panel and disable Physx so GPU is not assisting CPU in benchmarks

 

Pretty low? It looks pretty good for a single card. I get around 16k on 5870 cf. I think the machine is pretty powerful as it is.

Let us know if you tested and how do you like the whole 3D thing.

 

can someone with experience help Dr.J to get processor into turbo-mode? that is a good stake to get

@ unreal25
there are people getting 23k benchies with cf 5870, worth a shot to change to a 920xm and do some clocking?

 

3DMark Score 14089.0 3DMarks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SM2.0 Score 5797.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HDR/SM3.0 Score 5705.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Score 5060.0

 

3D thing is utterly amazing. The pictures (no motion) demo blew my socks off as I never expected to see such substantial depth. You can increase the depth an additional 15% with the Nvidia drivers recommended once you get used to the 3D. I have not changed it from default yet.

Definetly worth looseing an hour or two of battery time with Optimus disabled for the 3D.

 

Thank you very much my friend!

So, according to chiphell's screens:

3DMark Score 16957 3DMarks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SM2.0 Score 6788
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HDR/SM3.0 Score 7202
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Score 5790 (-730 only)

so is it really CPU that matters in the difference?

 

Well, I don't plan on wasting $1000 to get 5k score more in 3DMark06. Anything I am or was running right now works great on ultra details (Bad Company 2, WoW, Fallout, Assassin's Creed,...). If things start to get slow at some point (it doesn't look like so now) I might pop a 940xm or whatever will seem good.

Good to hear about 3D! But each game needs to support it natively for it work?

 

why do u need to waste $1k? get a OEM, a lot cheaper... anyway, yes, for TODAY's games is quite enough. except for Metro2033 n Crysis ultra. but... who knows what can come next?


@ Dr.J thank you for spending your time on giving us, waiters some looks on what we'll get!

 

Well 940xm is $700 on eBay, so it's close enough. I think if he runs some games, things will fly with what he has right now.

If things start to get slow (and IMO, with his beast it won't happen any time soon), then I'll start thinking about the upgrade or OCing.

 

400 bucks for 920xm on ebay, and not much of difference with 940xm.
yep, @ defaults i agree, right now u need not more. but once you spend so much money on a laptop you wanna make sure it can serve you well and long. well, at least as promised. and i posed on p.4 how should it perform. even though its not Dell giving that up, still dont feel comfortable about seeing 17k pts and getting 14. though all tests dont really tell much about in game perfomance, statistics are still nice to observe

 

My understanding of the situation is you can force 3D in the drivers, much like you can force AA in the drivers on games that don't support AA, that kinda thing...

Dr. J thanks for all the information and benchmarks! Nice work man! Enjoy your new machine!

The latency in the DPC Latency checker is pretty low which is GREAT. That means it *shouldn't* suffer from any keyboard lag issues ( although lag issues have been reported once already, by Knocturne).

 

14000 and some change does sound about right to me. The GTX 460m is a bit weaker than the HD 5870 mobility. Some benchmarks show it's weaker than the HD 6870 mobility as well.

So since the cpu is inflating the score by quite a bit, 14000 seems very reasonable.

 

So your score is 14K not 12 like you showed previously. 14K is good and about right for a single GPU, sandy bridge CPU for 2006.

 

3D mark 2006 score is highly influenced by the cpu. Run Vantage and some real game run. Yes synth benchmarks are fine. But what about gaming?

 

I agree that synthetic benchmarks sometimes dint help matters. I have a bunch of ss's saved and have one of a members out of the box i740qm, 8gbddr ram, ssd and Xfire 5870s only getting 14500. Sounds cool but it's the CPU making it close.

Would running 60hz help scores? Thru way i think of it at 120hz the gpu is working 2x as hard no?

 

I am interested in the impression of 3D. Thinking about this for my HDTV setup

 

No 120hz shouldn't make an issue at all, it would only make an issue if you tried to run the benchmark in 3D which would be a joke. 120hz just makes it 3D capable and makes it less likely to exhibit screen tearing over 60fps.