M17x-R2 with 740 and GTX 285m ?

Typo or what? I don't see it on the configurator page.



Really interesting..

 

Someone else mentioned that before. Could be something they plan to offer though I think at this point a GTX 460M would be preferable.

 

I agree wth yah. Do you think there will be a makeover of the current m17x-R2 design chassis or they going to redesign the internal design to accomodate the new nVidia GPU?

 

I can't see them doing a redesign for a GPU , and the cooling mod thread has proven the HSF units are a lot better when they're acutally applied correctly.

agreed, although, afaik, the only OEM using the 460 is medion, and they haven't shipped yet. Although it's peculiar, as no M17X (or Dell laptop for that matter) has used a 285M, so somone specifically put a 285M on there. If it's a typo, it's still up there. Infact the only Dell laptop to use a 28X GTX is the M17x, so I can't see there being any confusion on the matter.

 

Yeah, if the 460m proves to be more efficient than the 480m I would probably SLI them in my R2.

-Ash
EDIT:

Just did some googling. Only 192 shaders? yeah... welcome to slowtown.

No thanks.

-Ash

 

460m's would definitally work in the R2. The catch being that it would still only be about as fast or slightly slower than 5870s. The 460M has 192 cuda cores, and based on it's clock speeds and memory bandwidth should be a bit better than 285s.

 

I would buy it in a heart beat lol R2 with Sli 460's Sweet

 

If sli 460m is as fast as the 5870s then I'd take those over ATi any day.

 

ok don't make me nervous - that would be the best thing to happen to the M17x if it would get 2 GTX460M in SLI.
My question - I just ordered mine with 2x 5870 and can still return it without reason for full refund. Should I do this or keep it and wait and than ask Dell for a change of the GPUs???
Can / Will they do that - would this be much more expensive??

 

ditto and agreed, The problem is getting Dell to give us an 'upgrade' that's only 'just as good'. We both knew that though.

 

You seem to be too fast to abandon the REDs, guys!
Have you perhaps forgotten how badly the 2xxM's suked not long ago?
What's wrong with ATI's anyway? Driver limitation for OC'ing?
What about games?
I don't see any problems with 4870's and M7820 (5870).
But I did see a lot of issues with the 280's back then and to force me back to the green camp would require some huge effort from Nvidia.
As someone stated before - if Nvidia charges 2x for their cards , - I expect it to be perfect in terms of hardware/software and to be 2x the ATI's performance.

 

it's part of the driver, but mostly because they're easier to work with, work a bit better in SLI and ocassionaly the Physx support is nice. FFXIV is looking like an nvidia optimized game, so that would play a big part too, espically since they released that the reccomended PC have a GTX 460.

 

Wait, are you saying that the 460's are better than the 480's? Also, as I understood is, the ATI's were better cards than both of those (5870's).

Or, is it just an issue of driver support? I expect that at some point in the near future, they'll get the drivers right for these ATI cards. It seems like they're trying pretty damn hard anyhow.

 

For me the biggest selling point for nVidia is drivers. ATi Crossfire support for 5870s is broken at present.

 

I'll wait and see. In 3 months 6870 will be here anyway.
I'm sick of jumping on every new tech and being a full(fool? )-time-beta-tester.
This time, I let others be the first

Also FFXIV doesn't look as good as I expected from FF series.

 

although not related, the whole Master bios on secondary cards issue doesn't help either.

graphics or game play wise? In all Honesty, XIV is really just a XI refresh, the same fundamentals are in XIV from XI, but the community is so end-game now it's very hard to get new users to wade through the long wait times for parties and put up with the poor graphics and tedious (by modern MMO standards) leveling System. Part of the reason I stoped after a few weeks trying to restart on XI was that my P8700 SLI 280M laptop could bearly manage 20fps on this 8 year old game. XIV fixes almost all the problems XI has, and is a major graphics API update that just couldn't be done with XI.

 

What makes you think Nvidia does a better job in notebooks this time around?

While I agree that CF isn't perfect to say the least, I don't see how SLI is a magical elf with 0 issues...

 

This typo (or whatever it is) is really confusing me. Why buying an Alienware from Dell is always so hard

 

I suppose I just haven't had as many problems with them as I have my 5870s, granted neither are without their problems, just in my experience there were less of them with the 280s, and combine that with the other advantages, makes me prefer them to the red team. Can it be argued that more games work better with SLI than CF?

 

It wouldn't be hard to do better than ATi has done with 5870 Crossfire seeing how there isn't a single driver that works correctly for the 5870s at the moment.

 

I think the drivers are doing a good job at their primary task, which is making the cards render video games. The sleep/battery issues are really stupid. I wish I had the know-how to combine the performance of the 10.8 with the out-of-game functionality of the last driver that worked right.

 

Simply put there are some games that worked just fine in multi-gpu mode with my 4870's and 280ms that essentially were dropped and default to single GPU mode now with the 5870s. Also, while 10.7's would probally be fine if we didn't have a battery or liked to closed the lid I'm sure no one would complain, however seeing as we do, I would consider it a half-working computer most of the time. It may be a DTR laptop, but it's still supposed to be a laptop.

 

It's funny, but X8100 owners say the same thing. I remember trying to find a good driver for my 280's... The stock 179.85 had performance issues, 19x.xx had serious issues with one of the cards not downclocking properly. All in between were not too perfect except for the 186.8x? and those were modified by a third party developer. And all of them had stuttering/latency problems making it impossible to even enjoy movies.
Only recently did Nvidia present a driver that fixed the latency, it looks...

Dunno, I'm not to optimistic. Also, I don't like how Nvidia GPU's only have a single sensor. Stress testing in total oblivion of the memory temps would make me nervous. I remember, how @75C on 280's the keyboard on the R1 would get really hot, while with 4870's even @80C it remained just slightly warm.

Anyway, I wish both Nvidia and Ati a good luck and will observe.
With a single 5870 I can camp till Ivy Bridge

 

I'm not afraid to say that I'm a little bit of an Nvidia fanboy anyway and that it has some influence on my feelings twoard the matter, not so much as to pick the lesser performing system, but all things being equal I'd pick them.

 

^^ even when the price tag is 2x?


<<<< It's actually 3x for 480M vs MR5870

 

Of course not for the price tag, hence we are discussing 460M and not the 480M Lower power consumption, newer core. I think nVidia at it's worst is better than ATi during it's best in multigpu situations. Crossfire was always a tacked on afterthought for ATi. I remember back in the day when SLi was first brought back by nVidia and we all asked Catalyst Maker (Terry Makedon) if ATi had plans for a multi gpu setup. Their answer was something along the lines of, "We do not see the advantage in a multi gpu platform and have no plans for it". Then surely enough when R600 rolled around, we had Crossfire available albeit in it's buggy form that continues today.

 

I guess I'm just not playing the games where these bugs come out to play. I seriously have zero issues with the drivers accept the sleep/battery stuff.

 

I've got the 10.8's hacked to work in sleep/hibernate/battery mode but the cards are always clocked at 705/1000 which makes for added fan noise. I also had to do some registry changes to disable the 2nd GPU from going into power saving mode. Nonetheless, the 10.8's are still buggy, BC2 can be unpredictable and randomly crash at times. Performance has also gotten worse in that game and others with each driver release rather than teh other way around. If Dell does us a huge favor and brings out 460M SLi for the R2, I'll unload my system and reorder a new one.

 

Im not trying to start Sheet, but there have been a number of us without these issues, I think its unfair to just bash all the 5870 setups. I get that dell/ati did a horrible job with managing their cards and making sure the right bios was on the right cards. But some of us got lucky and they got it right for our systems. I am actually selling mine now on ebay, because a damn m17x is way to big for my travels, but I hope to have a fellow notebookreview member end up with it, hopefully a hard core gamer, who can confirm its problem free. None of this excuses Dell, but realize some people do actually have it working just fine.

Jon

 

@Joker:
As you think the same about the ATI drivers and CF situation what would you recommend - wait for a possible GTX460M SLI solution or keep my M17x-R2 and upgrade later/switch later to this configuration.
As I do not have much experience with Alienware - is this possible (later upgrade/switching) or what are the expected costs - I paid 3.100 Euro now and don't want to pay another eg. 2000 Euro in 2 months just to get ONE working M17x with nVidia cards.

Thx
Greets

 

Oh brother! It is not easy to be an Enthusiast

 

Not everyone can ditch systems every weak to jump on every new solution.
Some buy a laptop once in 2-4 years and stay with it.
For those my advice -
Wait and see if the upcoming Nvidia cards live up to your expectations.
And another piece of advice -
Unless absolutely necessary - go for a single GPU config.
A single 5870 will handle 99% of the games on maxed out settings and native res. It's also only 300$+, while a single 480M is 900$+ and is only 5-10% more powerful (which is still to be proven, btw).

 

Haven't seen pricing on the 460M, and the only pricing we've seen for the 480M are from systems that normally get the stuff on preorder before any formal pricing has been determined. I would be surprised if they end up acutally costing that much for Dell (or for Sager/Clevos'). If they do though, yeah, no thanks. Unless they'll massage my feet while running @ 90C, then maybe.

 

I think about single 5870M route already but problem is resale value

I actually intended to PM you Aikimox but then I think I will just post it here. I'm in the middle of buying an M17x but there are confusions regarding CF setup that hopefully you and/or other members can make them clear for me:

- In general CF ppl are playing most games out there w/ SINGLE card for the poor support from driver? Is that correct?

- Flickerring, wavy lines, unstable FPS during gameplay (and maybe alot more that I don't know yet) are issues that plagued the red camp?

- Various of other issues like SSD performance, sleeping mode etc... are what the red team are dealing with?

- Will those issues will be addressed in the near future? Or unlikely?

The first two are what matter the most for me since the only reason I buy Alienware is for gaming.

I know I haven't read enough but it's really time consuming to read through hundreds of pages that 5870M CF setup/Driver version release/BIOS updates etc... related.

So can you give me a highlight on what is going on here?

Thanks mates!

 

the SSD performance is related to the Intel PM55 chipset, not the graphics cards.

I don't own enough games to say 'most' I just know some worked in multi-gpu mode and now dont, the only difference being I'm on 5870s this time around, it's definitally drivers and not the cards, but the same argument applies regardless if the issue is Hardware or software related.

yes, although 10.7s seem to cure a lot of issues, the downside being that they only half work of course. Not that Nvidia didn't have equally disturbing problems with their drivers, DPC latency issues come to mind.

DPC latency was cured eventually, and We have a lot more community outreach techs looking on NBR these days, a driver for us is in the works, however that's not going to let us use reference drivers with our cards. Until a new Vbios with AMD default PP settings is released, we'll be stuck with Dell driver updates forever. The main issue hasen't been fixed however.

 

I'd go for a single 5870 and the cheapest CPU/RAM/HDD option (those can be purchased for less later on). Don't forget the RGB LED
I'd still go for M17X (bigger and better screen).

All the mentioned issues (plus the crappy TouchPad in Windows) are more or less temporary and should get fixed.
The only thing I don't see getting perfect - CF/SLI. My friends with desktop gaming rigs report that 480's in SLI are still pretty buggy in games and drivers suk as well.

Needless to say that I see no flickering/wavy lines or FPS drops in games with M7820. So far every game worked perfectly, except for King's Bounty, but the lag is almost unnoticeable there and probably related to the IPS screen, since the same game runs smooth with 4870's (both single and CF).

 

You can see un tal joker playing crysis warhead, en enthusiast sething and he get 40 fps, the m17xR2 with the 5870x2 is a real monster computer rigth!

 

Well, with a 5870 you don't have a problem - it costs 300$ and won't drop below 250$ any time soon. With 480M it could be different, especially when 6870 arrives

 

in november? That's still 3 months away if it's on time. Then AW likes to wait another 2-3months after release to put one in their laptop. So it'll be more like late Jan-march of next year before you see a 6000 series M17x. No longer or shorter than any other release we've had so far in this platform. If 480M makes it to us, it'll have a good 4months or so on the throne at least.

 

Err what I mean is the resale value of single card M17x. Normally people don't want single GPU M17x

 

If you want a 5870 based M17x, get the Crossfire now. Eventually Dell will release a driver that works correctly and is updated and you'll regret getting a single card machine. Even if the drivers are broken now, you can always use the older dell driver or in the worst case scenario, disable a card and run on single. Getting a second card, fan + crossfire cable can be a challenge.

 

I agree, eventually it'll be fixed, probally... just not soon enough for us not to complain about it hehe.

 

if its still to be proven?? how do u know its only 5-10% better, have u seen one in action??? is it not 2gb of sexy GPU?

i have a feeling you are wrong,,,, very very wrong,, u are prolly trying to compare to the the desktop versions..... ones 1gb ones 2gb,,, there no way in hell its only 5% diff.....

they would be retarded to charge double the price...

no one can really say until the is actually out,, what about the clevo guys,,, i though the 480 was out for them>???? cant they show us real benchies??

 

You just have to look at the numbers.

A GTX480m is the equivalent of a GTX460 with 192bit bus.

Its not all that fast. Price/performance ratio is a bit of a joke. Its nvidia trying to do what intel did with the pentium 4.
We all know how that worked out.

-Ash

 

As I remember, the pentium 4 was a big success, only to be trumped by k8.

 

Here you go.
Vantage: GPU score is 8k, roughly 100-200 pts above 5870.

While some gaming benchmarks show more than 20% increase others have no advantage at all. Notebookckeck already posted a review of 480M, their verdict was ~9% or maybe 10% performance increase over MR5870.
At the same time HellCry put a MR5870 into his D900F and having exactly same system as Notebookcheck, ran some gaming benches. Guess what? No advantage.
Now, I'm not here to convince anyone.
In fact, I'm more than eager to wait for your own benchmarks Then, after the goldrush is over, I'll wait for the problems to surface, stuttering, poor OC'ing stability, SLI issues, etc. And then I'll decide.

BTW, 2GB of memory is just another marketing BS.
And for those interested in some details,
search the Clevo boards. You'll be amazed to see the copper coffin HS with 3 pipes going to 2 fans to cool a single 480M (W880CU). And still nobody knows, how hot does the memory get
I'm sure Clevo does a great job at cooling those beasts, but looking at the failure rate of GTX8800/9800 in their older systems, I'm just not too comfortable about going Green anytime soon.

And it's not double, it's 3x the price.
Check RJtech prices, they are among the most affordable resellers out there.

Anyway, I'm quite comfortable with a single 5870 till 6870 or even further, to worry about 60 vs 80 FPS difference
As long as I see no dips below 30FPS in my favorite games (and I don't see them) - Red Army all the way

 

Commie!

10char

 

Your sig betrays you, Comrade, lol

 

Yeah 480m is nothing to get excited about atleast at the price Nvidia is asking... If they were priced equally to ATI or even a few bucks more things would be alot different but we know they are not and wont be....

As for a Single Vs double 5870m i grabbed a single 5870m M17x this go around mainly based on all of Jokers woes and figured i have been pretty happy with the past few single 5870 machines i have had so this should not be much different but if the mood strikes and they work out the kinks(and if i keep the system long enough ) im sure i can hunt down another card ...

 

Holy crap quad, didn't you just have an 8760 (again)? LOL and I thought I was a chronic laptop changer.