M17x R2 Arrived !!! PICS !! Review... and questions !!!

Well, Forgive me for the pics i used my iphone and it still has the oem plastic covering the front and back so the camera quality is still suffering lol.. I will get some sweet pics up when I get time tomorrow to get the SLR out and pose the machine somewhere nice

I know everyone loves pics so here's a few but questions first..

1. I go to ATi GPU properties and driver version is 8.763.0.0

is this the latest from Dell? I see AMD has a different latest one on their site. WHich one should I use??

2. Im not sure if this is my MB or Bios but under Computer I see ACPIx64 Driver as 6.1.7600.16385 is this my bios or do I need to reboot to see it ?

Should I do anything else update wise? Whats this about losing respawn etc How do I back it up? Sorry Ive NEVER backed anything up before Im clueless here...

Heres a few pics:





I mean seriously... save the cost of ALL this fanciness and drop the price or put in better hardware. I could care less what all this crap comes in but it HURTS to see SO much effort on an instruction manual and my keyboard has flex....



Nice little sleeve. I always worry about a backpack not having a liner that would prevent scratches and I no longer have to. this will do the trick.


Like a baby opening its eyes for the first time LOL





Nice, a little blemish on the tip where the lazy worker probably bumped it during assembly.



LOL I mean I dont know what to say.....

Bad

Will take off the plate soon and have it custom engraved for me GRAND MARSHAL PRYDEREI (wewt wow nerd lol)


Not really my desktop replacement .... I'll actually be hauling this sucker to and from work every day. Playing @ work ftw !!


I just installed CS and did the windows updates etc. Gonna install Cata and wow while I hit the sack because I know it will take a while. I'll report back tomorrow with some thoughts and feelings so far of this machine coming from an optioned out Macbook pro 17.

Added specs:

Specs are:

i7 740QM CPU
Dual ATI 5870 Crossfire 1GB
128 GB SSD
8GB RAM
RGB 1200p LED Screen (19x1200)
BluRay
All the usual std stuff

 

Review tomorrow

 

congrats on the setup but post up your specs and here is some good links for you to read up on to get to know the system better and where to find updated drivers.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/6935480-post22.html

 

Added to main post. thanks for that link thats lots of stuff I had to find over the last few weeks all on one page. THANKS !

 

get started on setfsb to OC the CPU and add a 500gb or 640gb 7200rpm drive in the second slot and put your secondary games and media on that. Games that you play all the time put on your ssd for faster load times.

 

I only really play 3 games and not much else. I don't think I'll vsf go back to a hdd again. My Mac had a 128 gb SSd and I had for a year and a half and never got close to filling it up. My desktop has 2 10k rpm raptors and I cringed at thinking of putting a 7200 rpm in any of my machines! If I go need more storage I'll get another ssd. I like the machine silent.

So is there anything I NEED to do with regards to vbios drivers, bios and all that jazz?

 

It came with mcafee 3 year... Is this junk? How much system resources does it eat up?

 

Mcafee eats up a TON of resources. Go purchase Webroot Spysweeper and Antivirus, it is the best out there no matter what anyone tells you.

 

Hmm dam I didn't know that. Can it be disabled during gaming?

I haven't updated anything at all but I turned on wow cats set most things to high and shadows off with nothing on ultra and was greeted with a dissapointing 20 fps... Haven't had time to use it much yet still

 

Can Webroot or Mcafee? Both can be of course, Webroot has a gaming mode you switch on.

My notebook has been ordered for a little over a week now, seems like months It comes with 15 months of Mcafee, that will be the first thing I remove.

Check your vbios and your drivers. Numerous posts about that on here.

 

Don't worry, that is not the expected performance. One thing that may catch you out of the box is the dreaded "stealth mode". That would cause terrible performance like that. Also some of us have had problems getting WoW to run better in xfire mode, so you may want to try one card just to see if it's better on one.

 

ancient. I think those were CCC 10.6? 7?

Get the latest drivers from AMD.com

they should be called:

Catalyst 10.12 / 3D driver 8.80 (the number you listed correlates to this one).

 

Ok so the amd drivers trump Dell drivers no matter whAt? I always thought vbios was the bios and realized that it's (vbios) probably the bios for the video card? Does that make sense?

So basically I need to update vbios AND drivers for the ati cards? Just trying to be sure I don't want to screw anything up. Also I'm positive my stealth mode is off I enabled /disabled it to make sure.

I wish one day pcs can be like macs... I turned on my MacBook and for a year and a half .. No bios junk, no updating drivers, no spyware or antivirus crap... I'm not regretting my purchase it's just frustrating having to learn doing all this on a $3k machine. I wish at the very least alienware could do all the latest updates before they ship out.

 

You do not need to update anything. 8.763 are fine and you have the latest vbios already from the factory.

 

Macbook > Alienware


Back on topic

you are correct VBIOS is Video card Bios and you will need to install the drivers first use dell drivers and then you can load the Vbios. After the VBIOS has been flashed and you verify it has been flashed then you can update to latest Ati drivers. Go back to the link i sent you for the video card section and you will have everything you need.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...5870-gpus-5870-vbios-discussion-non-beta.html


Edit: Joker is correct if it is already updated to the latest VBIOS no point in reflashing it just verify that the VBIOS is current and just load up the drivers that you feel benefit you the most.

 

Much appreciated guys. I do like to add the usual macbook comment here and there but it's just sad that my macbook with a 9600gt 512mb, slower core2duo cpu and half the ram will double the fps of an out of the box alienware

 

I haven't turned my R2 on for a while I'm just using my desktop but does my r2 have Catalyst ? i keep reading about ATI catalyst program but I dont think I saw it anywhere. Do i d/l it from ATI site?

 

Amds ati Catalyst is the video driver and catalyst control panel is where u adjust the properties of it. You can right click on the desktop and select the first option to go to catalyst control panel. And you already have it as u have the dell video driver 8.763 installed which is in reality ati 10.9 catalyst driver.
Cheers. Merry Xmas

 

Can I uninstall mcafee safely or do I need to wipe everything and start fresh?

 

No no, just unistall Mcafee and reboot. Yes, I have had MACs before and they are fantastic. However, the hold back on the MACs is that they use terrible graphics cards. The newest MacBook Pro uses the 330 Nvidia card. Now you would think they could put in a better card than that for the long run.

I haven't received my new Alienware yet, but I absolutely love a macbook we have here in the house. I would have went that way if it supported PC games.

 

Ya I actually sold my 17 mbp with 8gb ram 3.06 c2d and 128 ssd for this r2. The 330 might be weak buy it's probably the reason for its decent battery life and thin deck height.

 

If all you played was world of warcraft I would tell you to stick with the MBP. However, if you love to game, then the MBP is pretty useless really.

 

I do miss it to be honest but I havent given my aw a chance even. I haven't turned it on in 2 days Ill get some time tomorrow for sure. I do play cs sourse alot and watch movies etc and I also want to get more serious about adobe photoshoppe so I figured this system will walk over the mac (based on specs).

The one HUGE factor however was the mouse acceleration. I tried as hard as I could and tried numerous programs and stuff... just cant get the pc feel from a mouse on my mac. Just because of that Apple lose a customer.
I wonder though.. was my core 2 duo at 3.06 ghz faster than my 1.7ghz i740 ?