New Alienware M17x r3 RUNNING SLOW

Hi guys i have had my new laptop for about 3 weeks now and its not as quick as i thought it would be (maybe expecting too much) i have ordered 8Gb Kingston HyperX RAM in hope to speed it up a bit i dont do gaming just genaral stuff main example is boot time (about 2 min!!) any thing i should be looking to do?? any ideas would be welcome oh and i tryed Linux but no joy on install lol....


Alienware M17x r3, Intel i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.2GHz, 6.00Gb RAM, ect, ect

 

the biggest thing you can do to speed things up is install a solid state drive (SSD)

You can also type "msconfig" and see what is starting up on boot that could be slowing down your computer

 

thanks for quick reply i will be getting Kingston HyperX SSD 128 at the end of the month as for the ms config i formated and started again the day i got it so i knew i had fresh install, will the SSD make THAT much differance??

 

Whether you get an SSD or not, I highly recommend resinstalling the OS, or at least removing the crap Dell puts on there that you don't need. The boot time is probably so long because of all the background apps and services that are on there by default. You don't need many of them. First thing I did with mine is install an SSD and install Windows. I boot to desktop in under 20 seconds from pressing the power button.

 

boot time is not a good indicator of the computer being slow. You want faster boot times, get a SSD or remove everything from startup.

Don't be a fool like this dude,
DON'T buy Alienware... - YouTube

 

I was at first but after playing its getting better is the Kingston HyperX SSD the best one to get??

 

This forum recommends Crucial M4

I just ordered 1 from B&H yesterday.

 

Oh and broardband speed it not a problem

 

Thank you ALL for your help also check the read and write speeds the Kingston HyperX SSD = 555/510
AND
Crucial M4 410/4??

 

Crucial M4 is the most compatible SSD for the R3. It's been tried and tested by the alienware elites.

Some of those tests are synthetic tests and do not indicate real world read and write speeds.

Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

yes, the sandforce based drives (hyperx, ocz, patriot, many others) have better sustained sequential read/write eg 550 vs 410 but on other tasks like random 4k reads the m4 is faster (booting btw is a lot more random than sequential).

The other reason this forum tends to recommend the m4 over the sandforce drives (any of them) is that it appears about 3-5 computers out of 100 are incompatible with sandforce. Replacing the drives does not solve the bsod problems. No one (intel or sandforce or ocz or dell or whoever) has figured out what causes this problem yet. so if you're in the ~95% who have a computer that works fine with sandforce, they're great. if you're not (and there's no way to know ahead of time) you're in for a lot of wasted time and frustration with BSODs and RMAs.

 

Tigerdirect has it for $174.99

 

I just order one from B&H this morning =)

 

Here is my take on SSD's and which one to get.

Intel 510 and Crucial M4 are stable. They use a marvell controller...not the fastest, but stable.

IF you want to get a sandforce drive...go with the versions that use the more expensive 32nm (and in some cases 34nm) nand memory. The cheap sandforce drives that use 25nm have been known to occasionally crash:


These ones are good:
OCZ vertex 3 max iops edition
Patriot Wildfire
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe edition

PS....i have a Patriot Wildfire in my desktop and i can vouch for its performance and stability. However, the M4 is only $175 plus tax so at that price it was a no brainer.

 

A brief summary:

Things will load faster, but games will not run any faster

 

High FIVE!!

 

Huge difference. I booted off the stock drives the first 10 minutes and it felt fairly slow. It flew after replacing with the SSD.

 

This is not exactly right. Any game installed on an SSD that reads a lot of textures will run SMOOTHER (without stutter) and the loading screens will be faster. It will not improve framerates though (with the exception of frame drops from texture reads).

 

Intel 510 is just as stable but always cost more. 17-20 second boot times on a SSD so the difference is large.

 

i generally install all my games to the HDD anyways. I've only played a few games since getting my laptop a few weeks ago (Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2) both run smooth (i.e., no stuttering) installed to the HDD. I haven't gotten into deus ex too deeply yet, but it also runs smooth from what i've seen so far