M17x R4 ...couple of tech questions need answering

New owner of a M17x R4, and got a couple of questions:

1. Put some Corsair Vengence RAM in (16GB - 2x8GB) which is supposed to be clocked at 1600mhz - but when I look in Speccy it shows RAM at around 700-800mhz mark...is this just showing what it's 'currently' doing and therefore I'm not taxing it too much (because the graph displayed looks like it's 'topping out' at this frequency range)?
2. Potentially looking for an aftermarket HDD for storage, are there any good SATA III drives anyone could recommend? I only seem to be able to find SATA II drives.
3. I have a vague understanding of what Optimus means for this system (I have the GTX675 card in mine) and I've played with the Nvidia control panel to set the card explicitly for certain apps etc... But is there any quick way to verify which card is being used at any time? And is Optimus automatically enabled on this laptop so it'll switch when needed?

Thanks guys.

Kam

 

Hello, I will try to answer your questions.

1. 800 is fine if you have 1600, I have also 800. I think its caused by the fact that memory modules are DDR (double data rate)
2. HDD are not so fast to take advantage of SATA III, but if you are looking for SSD then go for SATA III drive for sure
3. Optimus switches cards automatically and I think its enabled by default (although not nVidia owner so not sure ;-). If you want to turn off this auto switching you can use Fn+F11 combo.

 

airacutie pretty much covers everything.
but isn't the switchable key combo supposed to be fn+f7? or is in fact different in the older model of alienware?

 

Yeah it is different in the older models. You had to press the Fn+F7 to switch graphics, now you only have to do that with the AMD powered laptops because the nVidia ones use OPTIMUS.

 

I think M17X R4 w/ AMD card actually does not require Fn+F7 to switch card anymore, though you can still use 7970m only by doing so.
Catalyst has an option to assign either 7970M or HD4000 to the program you'd like to run, which seems a big step forward.

 

Congrats on the new beast.

About the best on the market right now that I've tried is the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB HDD/SSD hybrid drive. It operates on SATA III but the read/write speed is still not close to SSD (about 115GB/115GB IIRC). But it is just about the fastest operating HDD out there right now until competitors come out with something better. It uses an 8GB flash cache to simulate SSD speed. I used one on my MBP (SATA II) and it really was a nice drive.

Make note not to get the 500GB model though, if that's what you decide on. The 500GB has half the cache and only operates on SATA II. It also runs a little warmer and just doesn't compare in performance.

 

Kind of weird because I have an R4 3D and each time it turns to battery power there is a pop up box that tells me to switch on intergrated GPU by pressing Fn+F7.

It wasnt there in R3 3D.

 

it lies!!