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

Ok, I was guilty of this too, but search the forum before asking if you can put a 485m in the M17x R3.

To answer one last time (I hope);

No one knows. If the bios supports it, then yes. In the past AW has had supported cards that they did not offer during the launch of a new laptop. BUT- that dose not mean this (the R3) will have the 485m in the bios. In the end, you may be able to upgrade/flash the bios to support it in the future, but no one can tell for sure how long it could take for a "fix" like this.

I ordered my R3, and soon after it comes in I will try putting a 485m in it. I will document, photograph, and maybe even film a youtube video for other people. You should not have to wait too long to find out. Give me a month or so.

 

I did ask the Alienware reps about this. They of course said, no, but maybe in the future. My biggest concern would be the added power the card takes, is it gonna be enough from the machine?

 

With a quick google search I found a few laptops that have 240 AC adapters that support the 485m. So, I would think yes- the power cord that comes with the R3 "should" be able to handle a 485m

 

Thats what I wanted to hear

How much of a difference is there between the 6870 and the 6970 in terms of battery life and performance? For battery life, I'm assuming none, since both are switchable to intel gma 3000?

Also, when it comes to the CPU, are there any sandy bridge Engineering sample CPUs floating around with unlocked multipliers? I can't seem to find a 2920xm, so I'm hoping these engineering samples will be as good to me as my ES q9100 was.

 

ahh good call. I did see that a couple other manufactures are offering 2x 485s... but they actually have to have 2 power cords!

custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks

 

As the R3 holds only one GPU we will never have to see that much power go in to it =^_^=
Here is one of the many sites I found that has a laptop with a 485m, and a 240 AC adapter so people don't think I am talking out of my "blank".
MALIBAL's Lotus P150HM: GeForce GTX 485M Gets Its Game On : Bigger Bang In A Smaller Package?

 

how could you get that price with 3 years accidental warranty?

 

Thats before taxes with student discount. (You don't include taxes since I believe they calculate with your billing address... which is 9.8% where I am at)

Also Dell negotiates on price... call them!

 

student discount?I dont know if we can ask for that..crap I have to call them again then..how big is the student discount?

 

yeah i'd like to know too, i'm entering college this coming fall.

 

what you need to do is talk to a EPP sales agent, and tell them you need a student discount. Dells discount for my configuration was $53... Which I said was BS on a $2500 computer. So they adjusted the price down to what I quoted, which of course is before taxes.

Remember calling is always better. The regular sales guys aren't always authorized to give you much more then $100 off

 

i got quote for $2410 for

2720
6970
1080p
blu-ray
4 yrs advance care
everything else stock for
$2410

what do you guys think.

 

Sounds right about where I had mine... other then I didn't have blue-ray or 4 years

 

So does anyone know if this has static/hissing through the headphone jack like the M15x and other Dell systems?

 

Most people are ordering theirs at the moment... so a bit soon to tell.

 

I still don't see the wireless hd option. Is this standard or just not available yet?

 

inap, did you buy it through the EPP program or not?

 

Just let u know M17X R3 is also showed up in aafes website.
10% off (start price 1349) and also 10% off on all options.
plus no tax and free ship

 

You can contact our EPP Department at 1-866-257-4711 or visit them on this link for assistance. They are open 8AM CST on weekdays and are closed on weekends."

Just FYI for you guys

 

Oh, okay, thanks!

 

Nope, my pre-recall R3 doesn't hiss. Will check on the post-recall one upon receipt.

 

Neither does mine, I'm gonna be seriously ticked if they go from a bad chipset to annoying un-needed sounds like the "HP Hiss/Whine" that the Envy's had. Mine starts hissing and it's going straight back to AW even if it's been 6 months.

 

OMG, I just checked out the new m17 here and I'm impressed

Looks like I found the perfect laptop for my bro xD

 

Waaaaait, wait wait...the ENVY's had hissing through the headphone jack?!? The main reason I was looking at it instead of Dell is the M15x I had had very very obvious hissing/static (and there are threads about it on here...had I seen them ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have risked it). The Envy's cooling is worse AFAIK, and of course the GPU is 800 cores instead of 960, so it's basically just that I thought the headphone jack worked.

I'm just SUPER paranoid about ever buying another Dell, given I've had to return two systems now (and heard hissing on other Dell notebooks at work too from different lines). Can't imagine if they saw me buy another one and returned it too!

But geez, if there's a known problem with the Envy 17 also...well I guess I'll have to skip it too

Geez, my Asus N series is completely fine...my $140 iPod is totally fine...

 

Can someone tell me how much faster raid is exactly? I use crystal diskmark on my regular 500gb 7200rmb hardrive and I get about a read/write speed of around 60-80mb/s. How much would u get in raid?

 

Personally I would never use RAID 0 (which by definition isn't really RAID) at all...though I'd order a system like that just to get the second hard drive bay.

If you want faster performance, I'd either throw in a Seagate Momentus XT for the boot drive (if you want to go cheap...it's plenty fast IMO) or throw in a largish quality SSD for the boot drive.

Random reads and writes are what really hurt you, and any mechanical drive just tanks when doing them.

Though if you've got a G73...that's almost as powerful as a brand new M17xR3 configured to max!

 

except I don't have sandy bridge

But I take it alienware is more flexible with hardware configuration? Is it easy to buy an internal hardrive and just stuff it in there? Where as my asus, I have to go though hell (well, HDD/ram is easiest to get to but everything else is hell). Don't remember if there were any stickers on the Hardrive to void warranty.

 

Thanks for mentioning this. I totally forgot about going through AAFES. The exact same spec system was almost $200 cheaper not to mention no tax.

 

i ordered around mid-day and got a esd of 3/24. did anyone get anything sooner? the last R3s shipped about a week early as i recall.

 

My ETA is the 29. I didn't push for overnight, though. Just 3-5 day.

 

OCZ is releasing their Vertex 3 SSD soon. Wicked fast. SATA 3, 500+ Mbs reads, and only a very small price premium from the Vertex 2.

The intuitive leap one should make here is to go cheap on the HDD, and then buy the Vertex 3 from Newegg or Amazon and clone the stock HDD to the SSD, then use the HDD for data storage.

I'm waiting to hear from the AAFES rep if Dell will honor the 30% discount I got on the R3 I cancelled because of the SB chipset. If so, I'll cancel my XPS 15 order and go with the R3.

 

Got the same here

 

29th here man

Also someone suggested I call and demand to change my order or cancel it and see what they say.. I'm going to call first thing tomorrow and demand they cancel the order as "its just too much money".. Hoping they give some money back, LOL.

I can afford the $3140 or whatever mine came to... I just want to save where I can.

Also didn't push for overnight, pushed to get money off though.. Got -$100 from my price, tried hard to get another 50 but the rep was claiming the system physically won't let him go lower than that multiple times.

 

30% discount? tell me more plz

 

Xellon, that was through AAFES (military) and only for a limited time when the R3 first came out. Now it's only a 10% discount (still not bad) and as usual no tax or shipping.

 

i hope this eventually comes out with the 485m, i want 3D but better then the 460m.

 

aight, thx man. the $50 off is nice. my price is $2,021.00. My bro saw how cheap that price was and was like.. screw sager lol.

 

Subscribed. Read about my updates in the R3 if you're at all interested in my usual drama

Shoutout to my boiz Gryph and Viking

 

You can bet these will be the standard offerings for at least a couple of months. No point in Dell having the initial rush of buyers trying to return their machines because they were daft enough to offer a better spec within a month.

 

EDIT:

What is this about it being available with both 6870 and 6890? It's the 6970 is it not?

 

LOL yeah it should have been the 6970 dookie, no such thing as the 6890. You get an update with a faster ship date yet dook?

 

Nah. Cancelled voluntarily through dell, and then I notified aafes, who notified his "point of contact" at dell, who is supposed to call me tomorrow to get my order config and sent the quote to aafes, who will then bill me for the remainder (the upgraded gpu and warranty). EDD according to aafes right now is 3/24, which is same EDD as when you configure an R3 through dell.com. Visit the Intel R3 thread to read more about my adventures!

 

Dookie, are you trying to fenagle the original 30% discount on this new R3? I emailed the AAFES rep today about mine, hope to hear something tomorrow.

 

No I'm not fenagling. <--- how come spellcheck marks it as spelled incorrectly? Weird.

Anywhoo, I spoke to aafes today. He said they are going to carry over my 30% discount. It was an option that was offered to me a couple weeks ago when they emailed me to ask if I wanted to cancel and order the R2 instead, also.

 

Yeah, but personally I wouldn't bother upgrading between single generations like that. Sandy Bridge doesn't seem that impressive (despite it being supposedly the first non 686 derived chip since the Pentium 4)...I mean it's faster at the same clock speed, but for most stuff it's just like any other bump between generations. Biggest thing is just that it's clocked roughly 300Mhz faster since for some reason Intel never made the last generation quad core at 32nm, and these are...so that's really a bump from the process and not the architecture.

Anyway, Core 2 is still fine, so...

I THINK the hard drives should be basically equivalent to change on the G73 and M17x...the G53 looks like a total pain though (same for Dell's XPS 15 for some reason), but the G73 looks as easy as pretty much anything else.

There's more things you can stick in an M17x, but only because Dell sells more GPUs for it, so technically if you bought an R3 with a lower end GPU, you could buy a higher end one made for it and upgrade, but of course that would cost a lot and be a HUUUUGE pain to swap in. Makes sense to just buy the GPU you want to begin with IMO.

Besides, the best GPU in the R3 is a 960 core part, and yours is 800 core...better sure, but not night and day. (Plus the Geforce GTX 460 is available too, but it's 192 core which is roughly like an 800 core AMD part.)

Personally I really wouldn't feel bad about yours...it's within spitting distance of being as fast as you can buy, really.

 

guys do a search alienware R3 485m and you will see it has been reviewed already, also when buying ask rep to include the option to upgrade from Dell as soon as it is officially available so you don't void warranty, UK here waiting

 

So, any word on the release date of the 485m? 'Cuz I want that so bad.

 

Damn, I was excited to see it back on the website. Sadly have to wait for the Uk one to be released.


I really hope I don't have to wait a whole week for it come out here.


Anyway going to get the 3d for sure. I just love 3d along with hdmi input to play my PS3. Going to be my first Alienware product.

 

Just get your rig Dell may support the 485m down the road, but I doubt they will release it as an option. I get mine on the 28th and I already have the 485m sooooooo.... since everyone talks about it but no one has done it I WILL >

 

This thing has HDMI *INPUT*?!? Like you can connect a game system to the M17x through HDMI and play it on the internal screen? That would be really awesome if true...just extra flexibility.