*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17x-R2 Edition Owner's Lounge - Part 2

Not sure about the first two problems but the problem consisting the keyboard being higher, isn't that the infamous flex issue? I think it should be around the key "G" area. I'll post up if mine does/looks the same as yours when I get home.

 

So will I. Starting Monday.... If I am not happy with what Alienware has come up with regarding my 4870 Crossfire replacement system.

Otherwise, what else does the 5870HD M17x have? USB 3.0? Is that even a confirmed spec?

Otherwise, if Alienware can get my system to me quickly (within a week) then I will accept two working 4870HDs and upgrade the cards further down the road.

I just want to be able to do something with my Alienware already. I haven't really done much due to the fact that the Crossfire flickers a lot.

 

The 5870 is just a gpu. It's not going to change the specs of the system board.

 

Guys, i wanted to direct your attention to the new HWiNFO32 thread (also in my signature).
A while back I created a similar thread but during the last forum update it somehow disappeared.
Today, Martin - the author of this great soft, created a new thread for it.
The purpose of it is for the community here to report bugs, request new features, ask for support or any other issue/question related to HWiNFO32.
There really aren't many competing products that are free and have such excellent level of support (we have the author answering our questions and requests right here on the forum, what more can we ask) so I suggest we use this opportunity to tune that soft to our needs.
Since i contacted Martin about a month back, he added support for reading the sensors of ATI crossfire cards, a windows gadget and today per my request he improved startup times by x4 (!!!).

 

drive spoolup is loud. is it the same with all discs or just CW?

my M1730's keyboard was like that. One of the tabs wasn't fitted into its slot properly. i had to unscrew the kbd and reseat it. Maybe the same thing?

 

It was just CW and it never happened again. My internet went down tonight so of course I can't update or activate FSX so there's not much gaming to be done. I am so tired of time warner and their supposed road runner service. I wish we had FIOS where I live.

Next question: is there any way to get my older games such as FSX to play full screen? I even hooked the pc up to the tv using hdmi and it looked like it was in windowed mode, which I made sure it wasn't.

 

Bah! I've used ebay since it first started and I just had my first "experience". I bought an M17x off there last night and paid for it. Just got an email from ebay saying that they had removed the listing 'cause they find something odd about the user. His account now says it's not registered. Awesome. Guy had nothing but 100% positive feedback, even received some today (23 in the last month). I'm not super worried 'cause paypal automaticaly opened a dispute since ebay removed the listing, but now I believe I have to wait 10 days before paypal will refund the money, meaning 10 days before I can order a replacement. Very weird situation.

 

Do a local sale or from a trusted NBR member next time.

 

Yeah I was just going to order through Alienware, but the price was too good to pass up. Too good is apparently the correct term...

I guess on the plus side, the 5870's will hopefuly be available by the time I get my money in ten days.

 

That's why i advoid e-bay like the black death lol.

 

Set up is done and I'm currently typing on the new M17x! So much installation and updates to do!

 

Just got back from my meeting with Joker, took us almost two hours to take apart the thing, replace CPUs and reassemble. Much thanks to Joker for helping me out with that. Doing a fresh install of windows now

 

Your welcome man. That damn control cover was tricky to remove. Did you get the laptop all cleaned up? It had tons of smudges on it when I left haha.

 

If you don't live in an area committed to get FIOS it is highly doubtful you ever will. I'm about 10 miles too far away myself....

No idea on the other...

 

Guy's account got pwned and he wasn't really selling it. If you funded the pp transaction with a credit card (which you should ALWAYS do), you should be fine. Just call and explain the situation and they should immed. remove the charge via dispute.

 

I just ran Crysis with 10.4 Driver and it has box issues on clouds. I maintained about 25 Avg FPS with Very high setting and 1920 by 1200. Is that normal? I'm going to roll back to 10.3 and try again.

**And holy crap... You guys weren't kidding about the jet sounding coolers. I didn't notice it until I took off my Megalodon headset.**
***Nevermind. System Restore fixed it.***

 

Using 1333mhz RAM with an i5, HWinfo32 is showing my max memory clock at 533.3mhz, is this normal?

 

i am not sure whether it's a processor limitation or dell's decision but the i5 only supports 1066 memory. (thus the 533MHz you're seeing)

EDIT: it's intel's limitation

taken from http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47341

 

Ya. So I think its working as intended.

 

Sorry for the 21 questions guys lol, but is it normal to be hearing a constant "eeeee" from the left gpu? Even when the system is idle? I googled CPU squeal/squeak and found that it has to do with coil noise. Just wondering if everyone else is experiencing the same thing or should I do something about it.

 

Coil noise is normal but it does vary.

 

I didn't even have to do that. Paypal has really impressed me here. I literally did nothing, and I have my money back already. As soon as ebay flagged the user, paypal automaticaly opened a dispute. Two hours later they said that since the ebay listing was completely removed, the case was closed, and I have my money sitting in my account with no sign of the purchase in sight. Paypal gets a big thumbs up from me.

Now on to buying a laptop for real...

 

When you say jet sounding coolers, do you mean loud like a ventilation system, airplane fuselage loud, or loud white noise?

 

I thought I had flickering issues but I think it was just with Crysis. I was at about.. 40-70 FPS On BC2 High setting 1920 by 1200 and 4xAA 2xAF. L4D2 ran at max setting with 60 constant FPS. However, SC2 Beta ran about.. 30 FPS on heavy combat and Ultra high with max resolution. Is that what people usually get? Or is it because SC2 is not yet optimized for XFire/SLI set ups?
I also have couple problems.. Not sure if it's normal.
1. My power button is glowing red and blue sometimes when I have set it as blue.
2. If I play any game, let's say L4D2, then quit and run another game, it shows up a bits of L4D2 broken images and runs the game fine. Is this normal?

**Using 10.4 ATI Driver**

 

cool. sometimes they do that and sometimes they need a kick in the pants. one of the benefits of eb & pp being the same company.

 

Weird. I have coil noise even when there is 0% load on the GPUs. Could it be coming from somewhere else?

 

If when you scroll a window up and down the pitch changes, it's something called CPU whine. If not the gpu coils that are making the noise.

 

Hmm, its gpu coil noise then. Oh well, its usually canceled out by the fan noise anyway. Just hope nothings wrong.

 

You have nothing to worry about. It's normal.

 

Gonna get this laptop, is it any good? How fast does it overheat?

 

Probably the best cooling system you will find in a laptop. I have had no problems with overheating and if you use any kind of cooling pad you are fine.

 

Hey guys whats the longest battery life i could hope for with the i7 720 processor, a single ATI 5870, and one 7200rpm hard drive? Would be on low brightness just basic web surfing or just microsoft word. Whats the longest anyone has gotten period?

 

80-90 minutes if you're lucky...

 

for some reason my fans go up to max speed randomly even though im not gaming. it usually happens when my cpu turbos up to above 3ghz(also for no reason). even when im web surfing or just chatting on msn, the fans go max and then back down randomly.. temps are fine though, at constant 60s i know its a bit hot but its about the same temps i got with my qx9300.

so is this normal? with my r1 the fans only become audible when i game.. now it comes on and off for no reason

 

It could be an scheduled application running on the background such as an antivirus, an scheduled defragmentation etc. Do a 3 finger salute ( ctrl-alt-del) to bring task manager when you hear your fans go up, then click on processes and then once there click the cpu tab to bring up the application that is using the most cpu at the moment to the top of the list, and that will be what is triggering the fans, chances are it is a an scheduled scan or maintenance app..

 

It could also be a glitch in the video drivers or a bad BIOS flash.

 

Hi There !

Used both R1 and R2 myself, just confirming that the fans of the R2 flavor shall start rushing as soon as even only one of the four cores of my 920XM will hit 3GHz or so, and even if it reach that frequency for only half a second.

Take it for what it's worth, but this is BIOS controlled and my guess is that Dellienware calibrated it so the R2 doesn't fry like they had to deal with when the R1 flavor was born.

 

THIS "EEEEEE" NOT NORMAL !!!​

And I am actually glad you bring this up since I was about to jump in with this matter...​

BACKGROUND: Whenever I enter a place where there's an "old-version-of-a-TV", not those new plasma or LCD ones, you know, the old-fashionned TRANSISTORED TV ? So whenever I enter a room where there's one on, even if the sound is muted, even if I can't see the TV is on, I HEAR IT !!!​

Basically, I can hear the transistors working if you will, I actually do hear a kind of permanent eeeeeeeee, most likely, similar to what you hear from under your M17X's hood.​

Now, almost no one can hear that, therefore, this eeeeeee hasn't most likely never been reported to manufacturers of any kind. Now, althought most people can't hear it dosen't mean it's not any harmful in any way...​

However, because the vast majority of the humans on earth do not hear this sound, which is for the ones who do indeed hear it much more than annoying, well, no company never ever gave a siht or try to fix it.​

I am assuming that you could yourself hear some noise coming out of a transistored TV as well as me, would be curious for you to confirm this or not...​

Thing is that there's 3 different noise coming out of my M17X:​

1. CPU Whining;​
2. GPU's coil;​
3. Transistors (capacitors, what you will).​

1. I can hear my CPU whining if it starts working hard, just before the fans kick in so loud that I can hear only them;​
2. I can hear the GPU coil whenever I scroll a web page or a pdf file up&down quickly;​
3. I CAN HEAR THE TRANSISTORS NOISE AS SOON AS I POWER UP MY M17X, NO MATTER WHAT I DO, NO MATTER IF I DO SOMETHING OR NOT ACTUALLY... Believe it or not, try it if you want, but if you plug the A/C adapter WITHOUT powering the system on, you should hear the eeeeeeee most clearly...​

Those 3 different sounds are indeed... different; there's really, indeed, 3 DIFFERENT sounds..​

I, for one, reported that to Dell, cause I was actually getting headhaches because of this sound. So they replaced the mobo; it was better at first, but it came back after a couple of days.​

I am a little desesparate, as my current M17Xr2 is a replacement of my previous M17Xr1, and it looks like all the Intel boards are emitting this sound...​

I would be most interested to read about others who might suffer from this noise, and I am sincerely convinced this sound is if not harmful at least so annyoying that it deserves a fix.​

Your thoughts ?​

 

Lol death from eeeeeeeeeee. Too funny.

 

Happy to make you laught Joker...

 

I know exactly what you mean by the eeeeee sound. Drives me nuts more so than my dogs who are scared of ringtones which makes no sense. When I get my m17x ill be sure to let you know if I hear it

 

Well if you're also hearing it too then that makes me feel better as theres nothing wrong and its nothing a replacement would fix. I'm just going to deal with it.

 

I guess I'm too old (32) to hear the dreaded eeeeeee. Lucky me.

 

I hear the eeeeeee too, both from the TV and th m17xr2. Even if the TV is muted i can hear the annoying sound, and i end up leaving the room. I never noticed the eeeeeee at first but the only thing im doing right now is copying files from a hard disk to another

EDIT: Joker might be right about the age.

 

GTA EFLC - Degradation of performance during gameplay on m17x R2 i820, 4870 CF.

Drivers: Catalyst 10.4

Ok, the game is a significant improvement on the Xbox/PS3 versions in terms of gorgeous graphics. However, after 10 minutes of gameplay or so, things start to lag and I see intermittent frame drops characterised by a transient black/blue frame. The lagging seems to correct but the frame drop continues until “exit os/restart”. Anyone else experiencing a similar problem? If not what drivers are you using?

 

Hum...scrub double post. so this phone isnt as perfect as I thought.

 

Yeah age does make a difference. Most adults don't hear the mosquito noise...probably why our tv is so old .

Is.the noise coming from the m17x the same pitch as th eeeeee?

 

Its a constant eeeee. If you 're not listening for it then you won't hear it. I have a *slight* case of OCD and it bothered me, but I think I'm over it now. The machine is perfect

 

It's one of those things where it only bothers you when you think about it

 

Hey everyone I have tried starting a thread about this, but still no one has helped I can't update my 4870 drivers I have tried everything 10.3, 10.5, 10.6, and 9.12 modded can't install anything, but the dell drivers I have installed windows 3-4 times and have used driver sweeper between driver installs.

Is it possible my GPU is bad? and why don't the drivers recognize my card?