M17x "All Powerful" General Information Thread

No you are not wrong that is entirely correct. I think there might be also a small die shrink in between the 9800M and the 280M.

The 300M will share the architecture of the desktop 280.

 

Sorry, misread your previous post and thought you weren't aware of that. None the less as per previous posts the 300M is not due for sometime, I have heard rumors that it will be compatible, but cannot guarantee anything.

Either way SLi GTX 280ms are still quite beasty. \m/

 

Don't buy a notebook expecting you'll be able to just upgrade when new GPUs come out. They're not like desktops and there's too many extra factors involved with upgrading to make it a definite.

The 300 series will have completely new architecture.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14109/34/

 

I believe he actually meant the GTX 300M series, which wont be new architecture, but most likely the first GT200 high-end chip for the notebook platform. The article there refers to the "GT300" desktop chip that Nvidia hopes to get out by the end of this year because DAAMIT is already on track to launch their DX11 cards by year's end. I give it till the second half of 2011 till we see any "GT300" derivatives in a notebook platform.

 

Correct, but more precisely, it's a "slightly upgraded" 8800M. lol

Gotta love it that we're 3 generations into the name game and haven't even moved past the first generations chip...

-Nvidia big-wig: "I don't care that the architecture's the same, tell me... is it smaller?"
-Innocent lab tech: "Yes, it's smaller... but-"
-Nvidia big-wig: "NO BUTS! Raise the frequency and call it a GTX 280M!"

 

and now we see how the biz works and how marketing works....
wish others were more aware about this stuff out in the real world...
imagine how much backstock would never be retagged/rebranded if more people knew this....

 

Yes but you can't denie that the GTX 280M still are quite nice in terms of performance even with 3 years old technologie.

 

They're not likely to die shrink the G200 series GPUs at all. If they were they would have for the GT 210 & GT220 instead of going back to the 9500 and 9600 cards.

Rumor was they had no luck die shrinking the 55 nm GT 200 cards to 40-nm.

 

That's business. As long as they make slight improvements there will be no shortage of people who are happy to buy them.

At this level of performance even slight improvements, real or perceived, is marketable.

 

and there you have the caveat for benchers....

 

I know this has been discussed countless times but I am still having trouble installing the new Nvidia drivers. I followed the whole procedure shown in one of the post here.

 

you can either run stock or

disable your 9400m and hybrid support in bios, then re run the installer and they will run perfectly

 

Will try that today and let you know if it works.

 

Is this a Windows 7 fix, or Vista?

 

No Windows 7 still isn't working quite right... but with the release of the vouchers for Win 7, drivers can't be far behind

 

I wonder if people who purchased from AAFES will get these vouchers?

Wait a minute my inner voice is talking to me.

(Call and find out idiot!)

 

I need the numbers to ask for a hard disk bracket in the UK?? if anyone can help I will really be appreciative.

 

i have a question and i thought it wasn't big enough to make a whole new thread.

with the M17x, is it possible to turn off aliensense and just use password protection?

 

should be....
i dont have aliensense on my m15x, so i am not sure how....
but there should be a "disable" of sorts for the program, then just use the standard windows password logon.

 

ok. thanks. i just dont like the idea of aliensense, i prefer a good complicated password for protection =P

 

Yep, there's 4 AlienSense modes, the first one being "disabled". Passwords are enabled/disabled as usual through the windows control panel.

 

ok, thats all i need to know. thanks =)

 

There is an article out there that talks about Aliensense for security and they say it is better than password. They've tried to show the system a perfect photo of the same size than the person registered and the system would not allow it.

The only way to trick it would be to have a perfect 3D reproduction of your face and if someone is willing to do that to access your PC, a password is the least of your worries.

 

good piece of info Joebarchuck. that's usually the one thing that's wrong with many facial recognition tools, well known and widely fixed. but i didn't think aliensense had been designed to protect against that. i might try it sometime

 

well - a photo is 2 dimensional...so of course it wont recognize features from a 3 dimenaional face....

 

what i meant was - i'm surprised the camera/software is able to make the distinction between seeing a person's 3D face and 2D picture. and it's not a bifocal camera, so it doesn't have depth perception. that would have to be built into the recognition s/w.

 

Um... so, I made a video. It wasn't really intentional, but it turned into this...

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The more I use this PC the more I believe it is the best built laptop of all times. Not sure if everyone that owns one here agrees or not.

 

For it's size it's definitely the best built out of the notebooks I've used.

 

Nice little video. M17X has the nicest looks when it comes to those lights. Plus the fact you can change there color is even better.

I assume blue is the brightest? As blue LED's are by nature the brightest.

 

Ha I'm getting it with purple lights on, don't ask me why

 

I dont know what color I would use, probably red. But I was really digging the yellow when I saw it.

 

in silver i really like to see the blue light's.. but in black all red makes a one of a kind effect ... really POWERFULLL

 

Fala isso pra um touro

I prefer blue TBH

 

yellow n green here

 

Blue and Green will look nice with Black chassis. Red is also not bad. Got to experiment a bit with all the colors once I get the machine, before I discover my taste of AlienFX

 

Blue and Green looked nice, I've been a fan of the Red and Green recently. Kinda has a spawn feel to it . Only thing that sucks is the blue light around the AC plug, any other color but blue on the lid and it contrasts. I've found myself changing the alien head on the lid to blue and everything else I can to a different color. Too bad you can't change the alien head and power button zones independently

 

If gaming is not my main goal, but rather just having a powerful and fast notebook with no bottlenecks for 'normal' applications..is this m17x still a good choice or would you consider it to be overkill? I just want Windows and everything else to run fast. So that's stuff like a fast working Photoshop, smooth webbrowsing with a lot of tabs opened, smooth blu-ray playback, compiling (programming).

 

you mean compiling like video rendering? You would want a quad then, but you definitely do not "need" the M17x, the sager 8662 would be a good choice for you as well... However the M17x is an investment and IMO a good one

 

No, compiling of programming code. I'm still in doubt about the duo vs quad core thing. What's the difference in performance between a higher mhz clocked duo-core vs a 'lower' clocked quad-core?
And how's the screen's glossyness? Has it still good visibility in daylight conditions? (so not looking at your own reflection&stuff behind you all the time)

And that sager 8662 is interesting too, thanks for the suggestion. It's just so difficult to decide on this. A definite pro-argument for the m17x would be its backlit keyboard.

I definitely consider my new future notebook to be an investment. I'll be using it as my only computer (it will replace both my old current dekstop and notebook). So I want a powerful system, capable of everything for the next few years.

 

Join us, and bask in the glorious light of the M17x's keyboard! Will you take the covenant? lol

 

Compiling will have a much better performance in quad (gcc, g++, vsc#, vsc++, every compiler out there use SMP like a champ).

I would take quad over any dual core.

 

Are any of you guys experiencing any over heating? I haven't seen any posts of any over heating issues.

A mod closed a thread about a conversation I had with a Xotic Pc rep because he said I was "flaming" and you can't post live chat sessions. Even though I've seen them posted many times. I posted it cause I thought it was funny that an Xotic PC rep would say that the new M17x has over heating issues.

 

OMG that was sooo funny, that guy was absolutely clue-less and wanted to sell... but I know all about sales, it sucks sometimes

And no, I haven't seen or heard anything other than when people are OCing immensly

 

Only seen a bit of talk about the chipset getting hot.

 

I thought is was funny that reps do that, but as you could see, I only asked him about the bios to see if we might have another option for the M17's.

Getting info about the bios is why I went to live chat. He's the one who offered up the overheating issue.

 

Yea I guess you are right... for some reason due mostly to the drivers think the 9400M gets a wee bit warm... I'm wondering if it is not turning off like it's supposed to due to the lack of drivers for this system

 

Going for two threads locked? Or are you feeling secure because this is a sticky?

 

CPU has never gone above 69c and gpu never above 73c. I've been over clocking both. I do have a cheap cooler but I tested it and it has not changed the temps for me.

 

Yeah, the M17x seems to have effective cooling.

Are you using the factory thermal paste or did you use a higher quality paste?