Need buying advice on a M17x R1

Hello,
I've been reading the forums for about a week now and honestly there are tons of unhappy M17xR1 users complaining about laptop's noise, screen, shuttering, lack of Dell bios support and so on.

I have a chance to buy one of these 2 latops at a good price (probably used a little, don't know yet)

1. Alienware M17x, Intel® Core™2 Quad Q9000 2.0GHz, 8GB, 1TB HDD, UXGA 17 inch 1900x1200, 2xNvidia Geforce GTX 280M 1GB, Blu-Ray, Microsoft Windows Vista Home

OR

2. Alienware M17x Intel® Core™2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz, 4GB, 1TB HDD, 2x Nvidia Geforce GTX280M 1GB, Microsoft Windows Vista SP1

Now since i read a lot but i have a lot of unanswered questions (mostly becouse most of threads are incredible long and i have to take a decision in a matter of days) i will bother you guys with some questions.

1. Do they generate a lot of noise at stock clocks? (i have to play when people are sleeping in the same room where i play and a lot of noise matters)
I am concerned mostly when i play WoW (but this is not the only game that i play, love FPS's and play them a lot as well) becouse this game never ends and when u play long hours with a bunch of fans next to you head it's gets tiredsome fast.

2. At stock clocks they still shutter or only when i overclock?

3. From what i undestood the quad core is worse in terms or shuttering but is it by default or just when overclocked?

4. I will mainly play games with it and from what i have read the q9000 CPU (even overclocked) is not greater than T9600, did i get it right?

5. the keyboad backlit does it have multiple brightness levels ?

Thank you guys for all the help!
Now i will get back to reading the forums till u guys give me some feedback!

Hurray!

 

I would suggest you the T9600 (great for games), even on stock clocks under heavy load the fans are loud so if someone is sleeping next to you she/he probably will hear it.

I guess you mean stuttering but you need to be more specific about that (provide us with a specific post for instance).

The keyboard backlight can be either on or off, no brightness levels

 

I have a t9600 R1 and i'm very happy with it. Any stuttering i experience is with both the CPU and GPU's overclocked. This, however, is completely nullified with Throttlestop, I can finish Vantage runs with the CPU at 3.5 and the GPU at 675/1050 at 1.15v with no issues using Throttlestop. I don't know how much different it would be with the 280's but i imagine throttlestop would keep any stuttering from taking place.

If you want the least amount of issues, id go with the t9600 as it will throttle less and will be faster in 90% of games.

The fans are kinda loud, but I don't think it would wake someone up and they only kick in when the GPU's reach a certain temp (70C for the ATI GPU's)

 

Thank you very much guys for your fast feedback,

#stamatisx
Yes, shuttering in game, GPU or CPU lowering clock while u are gaming, the sound acting weird... from what i have read comes from drivers and power supply/bios issues and some specific Nvidia issues
I read so many issues and threads over the weekend that my mind is a huge random pack of infos, need to sort that out and i am sorry that my questions are not so clear.


#ttnuagmada
The fans are a lot more silent on stock speeds or they act just the same when it's overclocked?
I searched a lot and i did not find any information about the noise and heat... i looked for ways to quantify the level of noise... hard to figure out what loud means with this machine becouse most people overclock it and noise does not matter for them... tricky thing


New questions:
If i buy the M17x with T9600 and install an windows 7 on it and use it with stock speeds with it work ok in therms of stability?

A mild overclock to the CPU like 3.0-3.2 (just fsb not voltage bump) is ok or everything that is not stock brings issues to the stability to the system?

Are there any 3rd party softwares that can dim the keyboard?

Thank you for your time guys!

 

I had the t9600 in my r1 and it was perfectly stable at 3.4ghz on stock voltage so you should be fine up to that.

You can dim the keyboard and all of the lights on the latest command centre.

Generally the throttling issue kicks in only really when you overclock the gpus or fun a very resource heavy game like crysis etc.
But if you get the program throttlestop you'll have no problems.

 

# thank you oogamar

one more question for everyone :

If you were me, would you pick this configuration :

Alienware M15x MLK, Intel® CoreTM i7 720QM 1.6GHz, 4GB, 500GB, Nvidia Geforce GTX260M 1GB, Microsoft Windows 7, 15" 1600x900 wled screen

over this one ? :

Alienware M17x Intel® Core™2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz, 4GB, 1TB HDD, 2x Nvidia Geforce GTX280M 1GB, Microsoft Windows Vista SP1

In terms of screen quality, better cpu, lower noise...

Thank you!

 

If it were me i would till take the m17x because of the gpu horsepower and the screensize.

Noise wise the m17x isn't really loud unless ur pushing it to it's limits - even then it's no louder than an xbox. Most of the time it's silent.

Processor wise the t9600 when overclocked isn't that much worse than the 720qm. @ 3.4ghz it'll break even with it at stock.

 

# oogamar
Since u had the R1 and how u have the R2, may i ask if the R1 display is bad compared to the R2 new and improoved version?
(brightness, vertical angles, contrast)
Thank you!

 

The colours, contrast and brightness are about 50-75% better on the r2 screen. Angle wise was never really an issue on either screen, i found the viewing angles to be good on both. You can still read things looking at it side on.

The r1 screen wasn't BAD at all it just wasn't very special in comparison to the rest of the machine.

 

wow, that's a huge difference.... it;s kinda a shopping mood breaker for me...

 

I <3 my R1

 

I've had the RGB screen and the 1200P R1 screen, The RGB screen is better for sure, but not 50-75% better..color gamut tests make it ~ 15-20% better, and brightness is about the same, the RGB just lights the screen more evenly on top of maxing out slightly higher. It's actually the same LCD afaik, sans the CCFL lamps and plus the RGB LED's. It's not like the 1200P screen is some bottom bin LCD in the R1, it's still better than the screens in 95% of laptops.

for right now, pretty much. It's slightly better yes, but these processors do not have HT, so for system responsiveness the C2Q is going to be better. We're not talking about 20-25FPS difference either, think less than that. Also, I didn't have any problems with shuddering and overclocking my R1. I would get the first system, it already has 8GB of ram, plus the BLU reader and either way if you plan on keeping it for a good while, you're going to be upgrading to the QX9300 at some point. The T9600 probably plays games a little better, but the 9000 overall has much more features for the money.

no, it has adjustable zone control for the color, but the brightness is unisetting. I believe you can turn the LED's OFF though.

 

Yeah 50-75 might have been a bit generous. My thought behind this was that at half brightness the r2 is about the same level as max was on my r1(maybe i had an especially dull screen). and then i remembered the colour was better and decided to increase the percentage but the point is it is better for sure.
But as lozz said the r1 screen is great aswell, fantastic resolution etc its just not as "alive".

 

Assuming the GPU's stayed cool enough at stock speeds, its possible that the fans wouldn't kick up. Like i said though, I'm not really familiar with the 280's, the fans for my 4870's kick in at 70C and only one of the GPU's ever even hits 70C and thats with them overclocked. With no overclocking the fans never hit top speed.

my t9600 is rock solid at 3.4ghz, I ran Prime95 all night one night and it never errored, and i never have any sort of stability problems of any kind.

As for the keyboard, the M17x has software that will let you customize the colors and let you turn the backlighting off as well.

 

With the latest CC there is the option of either Dim the keyboard lights or Dim the keyboard lights while on battery.

 

First : I want to thank you guys for the feedback and help

Second : I want to apologize for my frequent spelling mistakes I made throughout the thread… I never pay attention and I am always in a hurry… :S

Third : I want to post how things went so far. After I read a lot of threads for the past 2 weeks and after I bothered in private several people with lots of questions I decided to go ahead and bought the option number 2 . I was so happy for unfortunately for a very short while. The laptop was brand new, untouched. After unpacking, I started it, personalized Windows Vista that came with it and noticed that the Alienware Command Center game me an error, cannot communicate with the hardware. In that moment I realized that ALL and I mean all my lights were off : power button, hdd leds the eyes of the alien, the touch panel buttons, the keyboard, the speakers…. Every single one was off).

First of all I did an upgrade to the Command Center to the latest version and during the installation when the flashing the chipset window showed up it says that he will flash 0 out of 0 devices or something like that… and I was like : oh brother  …. Nothing good happened

Pulled out the battery and the power cord, pushed the power button for 30 seconds, put everything back and…. Nothing good happened…

The laptop came with bios A02 and flashed it ro A04 but it did not solve my problem, and after some laptop restarts encountered the adaptor warning . I did not bothered to flash it to A03 (I was upset and also I did not find the bios and downgrading procedure)

During the testing of the laptop also noticed that the right GPU fan had some mild grinding noise that went away every time I tilted the laptop at a certain angle… for a brand new fan in a very expensive laptop that passed several quality control tests it’s disappointing

Found once again how bad the Vista is compared to the W7.

The good things now:
Because the lack of time I only tested the laptop with World of Warcraft (wow) and found out that the laptop remains silent, I would say _very_ silent… I was expecting way worse. By accident (forgot to turn on the GTX280 SLI) also found out that WoW can even be played on the 9400 (at 1900x1200 no AA) at a decent frame rate (around 28fps) with medium settings and no shadows and the laptop it remains incredible silent. WoW on SLI is running very good and the laptop still remains quiet. It’s true that I only tested the laptop for about 30 minutes.

I also liked the fact that the palm rest remained cold to the touch, big plus for long gaming sessions.

That’s about it for now, if u guys have questions or suggestions… shoot!

 

I just bought an M17x R1 from a forum member and I can say that I am a very happy M17x R1 owner. The computer is beautiful, works perfectly after some minor changes in the bios and I have it clocked to 3.2. I have no problem with the screen. It is gorgeous. I watched a blu ray movie on it and it looks 3D. Very happy camper here.

Contact Dell and get your computer taken care of. I agree with you, a new computer should be in perfect working condition.

 

Which screen did you get? RGB or WLED?

Mike