M17x R3 RELAUNCHED! (w/460M/6870M/6970M)

You know you can order it in red, right?

 

geting an m17x r3!!!!1

 

They have red as color option.

 

Its vaild. The catch is you need to purchase 3 years ( i am not sure basic or advance) warranty to receive international warranty
status. Just double check with Dell US site.

 

the warranty is valid internationally, if you want reasurance ask Ted at HIDEvolution, he will confirm as he has many customers overseas

 

Today I saw the GTX465m being listed in the tech spes list. Not offered to configure. Typo.

 

where ????? on dell website

 

It's here in the 'Tech specs' list:

Alienware M17x Laptop Details | Dell

 

i believe that's a typo..maybe it shouldve been the gtx 460m

 

Yea, it obviously is. I just wanted to show where it came from.

 

Yeah it's a typo, the driver for the 460m did or still does show as a 465m as well lol. Dell does that kind of stuff all the time.

 

well it's very interesting that a typo got 2 figures wrong as in 85 instead of 60, not saying that the 485 is correct just thinking it must be a feature on spec sheet that the editor got wrong for now lol

 

They can be dumb sometimes

 

Or, Just teasing us.

 

could somebody plz tell me about temps?

 

In general, during regular usage such as streaming news or playing my emulators, the temps don't go high, and the fans barely kick in. As you may be aware, my fan only kicked in last nite cuz I guess the updater for BFBC2 relies on cpu usage. Even then, the temps prolly went high cuz it was like 80something degrees last nite, here in Cali. You don't have anything to worry about. A few hours ago, during 2nd quarter of the lakers game, I was streaming and using it on my lap on top of my calculus book, and the fan never turned on. Maybe it was on super quiet mode, but nothing noticeable.

Hope this helps in your purchase Also, I see you've only got 2 posts. Welcome to NBR, and +1rep for (finally) signing up (cuz I'm sure you've been reading, but never registered )

 

haha, thanks. nobody replied to my last post. my m17x r3 should be here this week. but others using furmark say that it never even touches anywhere above 70 degrees. w/e maybe its really hot in Cali. ill probably post a couple temps. i had another one which wast mine here for liek 2 says and it was thinner than my m15x and much more beautiful the the m17x r2

 

Dang, I've got a bit off the R3, and today's the last day.

No one's had audio crackling/hissing through the headset port, right? Paranoid about that after my returned M15x.

And supposedly it ships with the caddy needed for a secondary hard drive, even with one drive?

I just can't make up my mind, and I really need something (had another video RAM related crash today, and have weird little pauses probably caused by that).

Right now with my double discount the R3 is actually competitively priced. I like HDMI in. I like the hardware. I'm sure the cooling rocks as the M15x's cooling was fantastic. I think it's ugly as heck, but oh well. Would rather have a Geforce 485, but the Radeon 6970 will get the job done, I guess. And Dell's selling spare AC adapters for it, which is cool.

Just...so ugly, and I don't trust the audio. Sounds like there are sleep issues with it too with AMD's drivers, although I never use sleep (just occasionally hibernate), so that's not really an issue so long as it's 100% stable otherwise.

Yes, I am the most indecisive person ever, but I've had to return my last TWO Dell notebooks after they had serious issues out of the box, and I feel like if it happens again, they'll either not give me my money back, or refuse to sell to me :-O Well, it's not my fault the M15x had ridiculously terrible audio, and I wasn't alone

 

it's audio is amazing and it also has optical out. it looks a lot better then the R2. and if u think the R2 or the R3 are ugly. then many people are going to hate you LOL. it just looks awesome and im guessing that u don't even have the R3 yet. i have an m17x r3 which was a replacement for my m15x and the audio was amazing and it didn't give me any problems. if it gives u problems maybe urs was defective.

 

Optical out doesn't help me-I just need clean audio on the headphone jack. So long as there's no hissing/popping/crackling I'm happy

Yeah, the M15x was defective, but it's a well known problem with it, and sometimes develops over time too. There's something wrong with that model, so I'm hesitant about the M17x too (and for that matter, I've never heard hissing/crackling problems on anything but Dell notebooks, so...just nervous about that).

Personal preference on the looks of course, but I wasn't a fan before I had an M15x, and hated how it looked after that. Looks aren't even secondary for me, but still, I wish they'd lose the grill, the lights, and the alien head. They could sell an identical model without the Alienware styling!

 

many brands were/are affected with the headphone jack 'popping'... there have been no reports of this issue with the M17x R3 thus far.

well, if that's the case, you're sure in one heck of a quandary then!~

 

Dang, that's having problems with *USB* headphones?!? That's super weird...I mean it's doing the DAC in the headphones, right? So how does that happen? I don't have any USB headphones, and assumed something like that would solve a crackling problem...just use normal Sony "over the ear" headphones.

At any rate, that's excellent the R3 doesn't seem effected! Naturally I didn't notice the threads about the M15x until AFTER I was already experiencing the problem :laugh:

Oh well, dang, I need to order SOMETHING already. I've been dithering for a month, and my notebook's crashed TWICE today :laugh:

 

just google: [insert oem name here] popping headphone jack

and you'll see just how widespread that issue was/is.

so long as you're willing to overlook:

then the M17x R3 is somewhat the successor of the M15x R2, so...

 

As long as no one at work can see it :laugh:

I don't want anyone to get the idea I'm playing at work. Heaven forbid!

 

chuck Norris approves NBR this is awsome

 

If you mean the metal thingy that the HDD would slide into, I think it does come with a 2nd one, cuz when I opened up my computer to show Dane the innards for the gpu, I noticed that my hdd is on the left side, while towards the middle there was a shiny metal thingy with holes in it where a 2nd hdd could slip into. Please reference my picasa page for the photo and lemme know if I'm talking nonsense or not, and educate me while you're at it Thx!

 

i am going to stick with 6970

 

Oh cool...that's picture 9? Yeah, I guess that looks like an empty drive bay! That's excellent.

Missed this before!

The R3's really about perfect, other than I don't like the looks.

 

So it does have an extra bay for ya'll rich guys, right? Goody! I'm happy for you all (seriously I am, cuz the Asus peeps always complained that they had to order or get custom/modded ones or something, which is pretty sad).

IMO, the R3 is almost perfect (if you are lucky to get a non-defective one). The only thing personally that I find imperfect besides any factory-defects/glithces, is the fact that I cannot find a suitable backpack for mine LOLZ. Also, I did notice the other day after playing about an hour of Dolphin with the R3 ontop of my calculus book, that when I turned it off to go to bed at night, the bottom/base was SUPER HOT. The nameplate section specifically couldve prolly scorched my hand if I hadnt been careful. Therefore, I'm thinking that maybe getting a cooler like the Thermaltake Massive23 ST ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Notebooks/Tablet+PCs-_-Thermaltake-_-34991042) or something similar might be beneficial. We seriously do not need cooling for the left and right sides. The middle could definitely use a cooler though.

 

Excllent to hear the sound's fine, and that apparently it even includes the drive bay...caddy...thing! (someone correct me if I'm wrong about that...it LOOKS like that's what that is...)

So what problems have some people had? I didn't know some had had issues.

DANG does having 24 or 32 ROPS sound awesome after looking at notebooks with 8 ROP GPUs!

 

I suggest you getting the u3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834997872&Tpk=U3 or if you are willing to spend, get the cm sf-19. It really looks good.

 

Do any of the R3's GPUs use any sort of "switching" with the Intel video?

I'd been potentially looking at several HP models, only it turns out all of them use some sort of switching with the Radeon GPUs, which causes driver issues...I do NOT want Optimus or any other kind of switching, and need to be able to install normal drivers.

 

The 6970 and 6870 R3s switch manually to the IGP.

 

Switching occasionally gets stuck on one card or the other, particularly after sleeping your machine. A reboot unsticks it. In my experience, its been this way with all ATI graphics switching solutions. It just doesn't seem like using the sleep function on a Windows machine is going to be reliable anytime soon.

 

Hasn't happened to me yet. Usually it gets stuck while just using the computer normally. It's quite mysterious actually...

 

So does that mean they're in the same boat as the HPs? Can't use AMD's drivers?

 

Might be I wonder why we're unable to use AMD drivers, makes no sense! Where the heck is ATI when you need 'em?

 

Hi Dookie11,

Unfortunately it sounds all too familiar like the issues R2 users used to face back in the day. The inability to use AMD reference drivers. This was due to the fact that Dell's GPUs that they shipped out with notebooks had a different hardware id code that is not listed in the inf file of the standard AMD reference drivers suite. Therefore when you actually go to update or install the newest AMD drivers it doesn't detect your GPU hardware and it won't install or update anything in terms of GPU drivers.

I'm not to sure exactly however there are ways of getting around this with using modded INF files. Some quick searching might be able to point you in the right direction.
Hopefully there is a vbios update on the horizon for AMD 6970 GPU owners; that will allow straight out support for AMD GPU reference driver support.


Cheers.

 

Yeah they're just like the HP packages on the TM2 and the Envy; the driver packages include both Intel and AMD drivers together and trying to update them manually is possible, but a headache at best.

I'm going to shamelessly plug my own thread here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/572324-r3-color-flickering.html

Just like the HP TM2 and the Envy, the AMD dGPU suffers from lowered quality over the Intel chip. Certain color combos of black and grey get very noisy and grainy but are non-existent on the Intel IGP.

 

Ugh...well, that would just leave the GTX 460 for me. I really thought we were past the point (FINALLY) where notebooks weren't treated seriously be the manufacturers, but now with all these (for me worthless) graphic switching, we're right back where we started, with tons of unsupported hardware

Part of me is actually considering getting an AMD based system...apperently it has video switching too (80 core integrated or 400 core dedicated), but I *HOPE* since the chipset AND GPU are all from AMD, that the normal drivers would work just fine...

 

6870 is faster and better for m17x r3 if ur not willing to try 3D i tested it and will post benches later.

 

460m gave me on going blue screens

 

It's worse, since the GTX 460 can use regular drivers, and the AMD parts can't anymore, at least not on Sandy Bridge systems that are using integrated graphics

 

I have no problems using Catalyst 11.5 on my Sandy Bridge system. And switchable graphics is still working.

 

RESULTS ARE IN! 6870-
more score by 300 in 3d mark o6
no blue screens that happens every half hour on 460m
runs cooler
better dx11 because smoke affects are not choppy like the 460m (try drifting in shift 2 and you know what im talking about)

 

your wrong. Nvidia drivers do not detect the card and the only compatible drivers are the 266.08 that come with the CD and the optimus gives you on going blue screens. the radeon 6870 runs amazing with the new ccc and games give me a 20% boost with radeonpro so no need for overclocking which 460m is bad at because it runs pretty hot in comparison with the 6870m. if u really want 3d u can use 3d in amd cards but AMD thinks its a waste so u have to use 3rd party drivers and buy a 120hz screen. my opinion is that its a waste since these cards can barely run 3d. For the people who bought 3d, they will be fine because the screen is hooked directly to the GPU and optimus does not work so no blue screens and a pretty nice display with nice vibrance although the 60hz one has warmer colors. (have both systems beside each other) with the benefit of almost no vsync required. I love nvidia but when they screw up in a system, they screw up BIG. The amd drivers are improving so much that soon you will hopefully be able to use dual gpu's from amd without flickering. AMD cards have had so much power from before but the drivers were unable to make use of it but now they are. For 6870 vs 5870, the improvements make it faster even with the tiny under clock of 25mhz which could easily be changed.

 

Can you not double post and revive an old thread? The 460m does not give me any problems. I have yet to get 1 blue screen from it. And the 460m is better then the 6870m.

 

What system and what GPU? And to be clear, are you doing ANY sort of modifications or tricks to get them running? Or are you just using AMD's official method to get official drivers?

Can someone else confirm these can't use normal drivers? The official drivers don't mention any exclusions for the 460, though apparently the Sagar systems can't use them.

AFAIK though these do NOT use Optimus at all, which is a good thing.

 

im pretty sure u do not the or any idea about the card 6870m because i have benched them both and you're its the winner in every way. and just wondering do u have 3d? because the problem happened for me because of optimus which isnt on the the 3d model. or maybe it was just a faulty card.