M17x r-1 prices

my friend wants to sell me his Alienware m17x r-1 i'm just wondering what sort of price i should offer him its all working from wat i can tell here are the specs

intel core 2 q9300
2 gtx 260
8gb ram
dvd drive
1920x1200 screen

I was thinking £600. But I just wanted to make sure that there are no outstanding issue with the m17x r1 that i should no about.

also just on a side not is it possible to put better cards in this laptop and if so which one and how much are they

thanks

 

Assuming that there is no warranty left, aesthetics and working condition is flawless, that sounds about right. The processor is the extreme version right? If I was the seller though, I wont sell for less than $1,000. It is almost maxed out specs...

 

Hello, highfly, that's a great price if It's in good condition.
This model doesn't have major issues but bear in mind that with newer deivers you don't have the ability to switch between iGP and dedicated graphics cards without a system reboot.

Also,remember if you are going to run nVIDIA cards with reference drivers, disable PCIe Gen2 in BIOS > Advanced > Graphic Settings.

That CPU is a beast too.

As for GPUs, the best confirmed cards are the mobility 5870 with the latest Dell vBIOS.

 

well the seller has had some problems with it but he is not the most computer savy person he just has money coming out the wazoo. he has now bought a new gaming laptop asus with a single 560 gtx in it.

the laptop needs some cleaning and i will probably have to look at the fans and yes its now got no warranty but i dont mind that i ran 3d marks vantage on it and it gets 11000ish which is still a really good score and i just wanted to see how low i could offer and if there were any outstanding issues with it. Think i will ask if i can have a play with it for a week and i will see. and the idea of having two 5870s in that machine is awesome may offer him £500 $800ish but we will see.

now my 200th post and still loving this community

 

Sounds about right.

Although your friend should be seeing much worse performance with a single 560 over dual 260s... I guess he doesnt mind?

 

I think its more that he doesn't no or care. he says he's had problems with the laptop in that it crashs when watching videos online but I watched some the other day and it seamed fine. He also says its fine for gaming with. so that why i really want to test it for a week or so.

 

Follow what I said above and you won't have those problems. That's related to reference drivers pushing the cards to 16x bandwidth.

 

by reference drivers do you mean ones released by Nvida then modified or the ones released by dell

 

man 500 is a robbery for that machine

 

well yep but dont tell him that i will let you guys no what i get it for

oh one final question guys how does teh intel core 2 qx9300 stand up agains my i7 620m

 

MUCH better, specs wise, 12MB cache against 4MB cache... i7 620 has 2 cores 4 threads (hyper threading) qx9300 has 4 cores.. qx9300 is a real beast indeed, also they are supporting the same memory! 1066mhz (wow they are almost a year and half apart )

 

ye but the qx9300 was a £1000 upgrade when the m17x was new the i7 620m was no were near that. its just that the score on notebook check show that there is not much between the 2 cpus

 

Also the QX9300 is an unlocked chip that can go far with proper cooling

 

Hi Katalin, it seems new drivers solve the problem of change from I/D cards on the fly. fn+f7 works perfect using 285.62 drivers on my laptop. No need to reboot, but YES, PCIe gen 2 is disabled on bios.

 

Qx9300 is much better any time of the day. The thing is, you can op out a i7 xm, but as ivy bridges are coming around the corner, you might as well wait for a whole new refresh.

repaste, clean the fans, and overclock that processor. It will KILL your duo i7 like mashed potato falling off of a cliff.

The thing for you is, since you seem to be under a budget, going from dual 260m to dual 5870s you wont see a HUGE difference. Honestly if I were you, I would get a SATA III SSD (M17x R1 supports SATA II,, but you can use this SSD later) and wait for IVY Bridge updated models to be available at the Outlet. Your machine will get you going for a while.

I could say you are a one lucky man, but I picked up my machine in the sig for $950 straight from the outlet.

 

Wow, that's good news for you guys +1. It makes it more worth it.
I haven't got the chance to test this before selling mine.

 

You sold a nice green beast ... It's incredible how fast this laptops go down on price, I paid $2000 for my R1 last year w/ Q9000 and $400 for the QX9300.. this was 1 year and 9 months ago. Now as we can see you can get this machine for less than $1000. Good news are the M18x will be a lot cheaper next year

 

I know, right? It was hard letting it go though..

 

You are talking about a difference in vantage of 6k (~8k to ~14k GPU score between 260m's and 5870's) that is a pretty big difference, almost 2x difference in scores/performance + DX11 support.

 

it is acutely a difference of 3000K ~to 11000 on 2x260m and ~14000 on 2x5870 which is still a big leap and the DX11 would be nice it just depends on how much money the 5870s would be that is all really.

 

Are you sure??? My SLI GTX 280M can reach only 10K on Vantage. So Dual GTX 260M should be 1k under.. around 9k..

 

that is what i got when i ran it on the default level on 3dmarks vantage are you on old drivers or somthing? even on 3dmarks website ~11000 is what most people are getting. with your setup you should be getting up to ~12500 that what the 3d marks vantage website says

look here Search

 

Dual 280m's do only score around 10-11k @ stock clocks. You may be seeing OC'd settings, or you may be looking at the total score and not the GPU score like I was. Total scores can range from 14k to 19k with 5870's depending on CPU and if OC'd. Here is a comparison of the scores between the two the Highest vs the lowest.

GTX 260m SLI -Highest score w/ PhysX enabled(skews the CPU score)
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/2842610

3DMark Score 12000 3DMarks
Graphics Score 10197

GTX 260m SLI -Lowest score
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/3162355

3DMark Score 8621 3DMarks
Graphics Score 9099


ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 XF- Highest score
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/3625058

3DMark Score 18966 3DMarks
Graphics Score 19155

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 XF- Highest score
http://3dmark.com/3dmv/3749034

3DMark Score 15292 3DMarks
Graphics Score 15909


If you take those + these into account and account for lowest and highest GPU scores

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870-Crossfire.29486.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260M-SLI.18909.0.html

5870m XF
GPU score ranges from 13-19k. Avg: is around 16k (this is wrong it is closer to 14.5k really, but taking into account those crazy high 19k GPU scores skews it)

260m SLI
GPU score ranges from 8.7-10k. Avg: is around 9.35k

So there is a difference of 4.3k - 9k, and Avg difference: is 6.65k between the two GPU's in vantage.

This is all really irrelevant though, because these are not stock systems and most people are not really pushing 5870's or 260m's that hard on a daily basis unless using a chest freezer or DICE.


EDIT: I just wanted to add I purchased 2 x 5870's for about $515.

 

Maybe you were running with physx enable, that will increase your pxxxx score, but that will not show the actual raw power of the video card. I run all tests with physx off. And at stocks settings got: p10765 and GPU: 10359 w/ 197.84 drivers, which are old drivers but good enough for vantage.

 

If it's in good condition, that price is VERY very low.

 

oh right i completely forgot that physx throws off 3dmarks scores. to be honest im not really looking to upgrade its just an option in the future how hard is it to get ahold of 5870m's

 

Great machine, and synthetic scores are not all that relevant given the price and general gaming performance with the hardware. You'll still get a lot of performance from these cards.