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

Buttons are SOOOO 2007....

 

I am just glad my touchpad buttons actually click

Had an HP DV9260nr before the whitebook before this and its buttons didnt click, they depressed and it was WEIRD. The touchpad surface was also REALLY grippy, hard to use.

 

I see they finally added RGB option to the m17x, now can anyone tell me what model screen? I own an M6400 with an LG RGB LED screen (which is beautiful) so I'm just wondering if they're using the same manufacturer or not.

 

It's a Samsung:

K1NFP LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY..., 17WUXGA, RED/GREEN/BLUE..., LIGHT EMITTING DIODE..., AG, SAMSUNG...

 

Thanks, interesting they went with samsung. I wonder if any retailers have the R2 on display with the RGB screen.

 

you cannot possibly be mad at that RGB. It actually burned my eyes ...

 

Yeah the RGB is a retina torch .... Great screen though ...

 

I did not appreciate what you all were complaining about with the M17x not being so bright until the other day, I had it up next to my FHD2400, thought I had the brightness on the laptop turned down or something

Nope, just aint that bright. By itself it is not bad, but compared to a good monitor....it is weak sauce. I FINALLY see what all the complaining was about haha

 

Hey, guys! Here's a heads up. I checked with my Dell rep again since he was the one who told me that the M17x will be released with the ATI 5870 this month (March). He said that he confirmed with his product engineer again and that Dell has a change of mind because it is now refreshing the M17x with the Nvidia 285 instead (presumably because of all the flickering issues you guys are having). However, this will only happen in May or June, 2010. Unfortunately, I can't wait that long so I am opting for the Precision M6500 instead, which is assembled in Malaysia (where I'm from) instead of China (where the Alienware is from).

 

Considering the amount of B.S coming out of Dell's reps, can't say i 100% trust this prediction.

 

So, I was looking through my BIOS options and see I can increase the voltage on my memory...since I am pretty clueless about overclocking and alll, what effect would that have and is there a downside ?

 

I will be joining this distinguished thread in 6 hours

 

Well if what you are saying is true then get it with the 4870. There isnt really that much difference between the 285m and the 4870. I seriously pray though that you are wrong because tomorrow battlefield 2 is being released and its being optimised by directx 11. Alieanware if you are out there please please we do need 5870 crossfire!!

 

HD4870 flickering issue is BIOS related (Due to poor QA testing). If they are going to replace HD4870 with old G92 based GTX285, I think they got better deal from nVIDIA (nVIDIA might want to keep hi end market share until they release DX11 parts + with ATI driver program nVIDIA have nothing to offer).

BTW If AW not going to release HD5XXX based cards untill May, I'm walk away.

 

I work with a pretty senior business systems rep and the head of his department is coming to visit my office next week. (My company gives Dell a LOT of business). I will email my reps and see what they have to say on it since my M17x isn't expected to arrive until the end of March. I definitely wouldn't want it showing up with 2x4870 if the 5870 will be appearing within a few weeks and i don't think they will want me unhappy (you'd all crap if you knew what i paid for my m17x fully loaded). I will let you all know when i hear back.

 

Please let us know mate, because it is a matter of life or death for some of us!!!

I WANT TO PLAY BATTLFIELD 2 WITH DIRECTX11!!!!!!! NOW ALIENWARE!!!!!!!

 

Mad at which RGB? Are you talking about the samsung one burning your eyes? The LG one I have doesn't burn my eyes so maybe I'll hold off until I can afford to go blind.

Oh and for the record I always wanted an M17x with an RGB LED so I settled for an M6400 but maybe not anymore.

 

He has got back to me with an initial response that sales staff has not been informed of any changes and there are no internal notes on the subject whats so ever. Nobody in his department have heard anything of that change or any other video card change in the m17x but he is going to ask around and see what he can find out.

Will let you know as soon as i know!

 

Where is the 5870! I'm letting Dell and Asus race each other. Will Dell offer the 5870 (or a new Nvidia part, or whatever) before Asus makes more than 10 G73jh-A1s?

Seriously, I haven't preordered the latter because I'd sort of like the Dell...but I really don't want to spend more on a 4870 than what I could get a 5870 for...

Ugh. I hate how everything is "touch" or "motion" or whatever now, for no reason other than it's new. Buttons...work. Stange, that.

Why would getting a 285 take that long? I mean I'd go for those too, but...it's just their current part. Why on Earth would it take Dell until JUNE to do that?

Now if they're going to Nvidia's Direct X 11 part (assuming they have a notebook part quickly), I could totally see it taking until June But why not offer the 5870 in the mean time?

And my understanding is the 5870 isn't much more complex in terms of transistors than the 4870, but is on a smaller die process, so should have LESS problems than the current issues, which are really a BIOS problem anyway, and supposedly getting fixed...maybe.

 

Are there any post anywhere that detail what people typically do or what benchmarks to run when they first receive their machine to check for defects and issues (dead pixels, etc).

Thanks

 

Bios A02 is already available. The 4870s in crossfire are still a lot faster than a single 5870. The 285M's are about on par with a 4870 so I don't know why you'd be okay with that but not 4870 xfire? Anyway, I doubt this rumor of 285M coming to the R2 is true. The system is already reaching it's power threshold with dual 4870s and the nVidia cards tend to consume even more power, especially a 285M which is just an OC'd 280M. I'd expect to see 5870m crossfire in the near future, probably the end of march. The chances of mobile fermi coming in June seem real enough because it wouldn't be very difficult for nVidia to use cut down bins of their desktop card for the notebook market. The problem is that the power consumption on those parts may be pretty high as well.

Personally I'm okay with the dual 4870s, I get awesome performance in every single game I play at native resolution. I probably would prefer SLi fermi over an ATi solution but we'll have to wait and see what nVidia has up their sleeve.

 

Argh! I just...hate ordering dual 4870s when the 5870 is in people's hands right now.

Waiting stinks! :-D

I actually just preordered a G73jh-A1, but I can cancel if Dell hurries up :-D

 

With trembling hands I enter the realm of M17x r2 owners as of 11:36am. Apparently a rather elite bunch!

 

Welcome to the elite

 

From benchmark results which currently stand for dual mobile graphics cards the top 3 are as follow,

1. 285GTX SLi
2. 280GTX Sli
3. 4870 Crossfire

due to the current market the 5870 in mobile version do not match but ATI drivers have aways been an issue in the past.

 

HOPEFULLY that's going to end this month when ATi finally starts supporting their GPUs. I wouldn't be considering any of these if not for that. I still think ATi's drivers are sub par, but at least you're getting support.

Although dang it, if those goes on long enough I may just get a last gen G72-A1 :-D Just hate paying that much money for a Core 2 and worse cooling.

 

I wonder what this list would look like with the new ATI 10.3 driver? Haven't folks seen an increase in the 4870s with it?

 

What benchmarks have YOU been looking at? I have never seen 280m outperform a mobility 4870...

 

After having both 280s and 4870s I'd put the later on 2. hands down. The difference in performance is very noticeable both in benching and gaming. Assuming 285s are just slightly OC'ed 280s, they should also be slightly behind the 4870s. So to me the 4870s is the winner.

 

Just to confirm since i'm new to following Alienware laptops but if they do confirm the 5870's coming soon can i assume that there will be a dual 5870 crossfire right away? if not then i'd rather dual 4870s, but if dual 5870 is coming soon then i will ask him to wait that extra 2 days for that system.

Put it this way, my expected ship time is March 31st. If it ships March 31st and April 1st they announce dual 5870s i will be very unimpressed. Which is why i'm trying to find this out ASAP.

 

You can return your system withing 21 days and get the new one with 5870s, but I doubt the cards will be there anytime soon.

 

Dude we are just a forum of alienware fans/owners. We don't have the inside info at Dell. You are better off calling them (probably dont know either) than getting predictions from us

 

From what I have been reading, even if they come out with 5870s it may be some time before they are able to go crossfire. But I could have misread this in various places.

 

Guy from xotic pc told Joker the cards didnt come with crossfire or something. So they might have only produced the single versions right now, at least thats the vibe I got.

 

Hey guys, so I'm returning my old system since it's been 20 days since I requested a repalcement and still hasn't entered the build stage. The rep was horrid and told me the only option I had was hope the new system works or return the old system today (my last day of the return policy).

So I may reorder. My current model is the Black one but the back ended up being a finger print magnet. Is the Silver any better?

 

heh.. yeah working on that. I have my Dell peeps looking into it but i only asked them if 5870 was coming out I didn't bother to ask if 5870 will come in Crossfire right out of the gate. if they confirm 5870 then i guess my next question will be if they will be avail in crossfire.

 

I probably need to jump in the asus thread to see benchmarks of the 5870, but i can't imagine its that much better than a 4870 (except direct x 11). The 4870 mobility is just a slower clocked desktop with a 256bit bus from what I see. The 5870 mobility is nothing like the 5870 desktop and only has a 128bit bus. Maybe the core is that much better?

 

The 4870 is beat easily by the 5870 due to the clock difference. Although they are both 800 cores with the same memory bandwidth, the stock clock of the core in the 5870 is 700 MHz.....the HIGHEST anyone has OC'd their 4870s to is 675.....so at full tilt for the 4870, the stock 5870m beats a 4870. And the 5870 has OC'd past 850 MHz......so that is case closed, when 5870s come out, they will be faster end of story (but 2x 4870 > 1x 5870)

As for the GTX 285m vs the 4870. Considering the GTX 285m is a heavily OC'd GTX 280m, the GTX 285m should be on par with the 4870m, lame that that is how nvidia is trying to even up though

 

but a bus of 128bit is limiting is it not?

 

not when paired with the faster GDDR5

the 256 bit GDDR3 of the 4870m is virtually the same as the 128 bit GDDR5 of the 5870m

 

Guys I have a quick question. When using my new M17x I can't seem to turn the brightness down with Fn+F5, the brightness is already set to maximum so when I try to turn it up the pop-up shows, but not when I try to turn it down.

 

I'm still new to all these lappy issues, but if it were me I might have the system re-detect the keyboard, or try having Windows 7 reload the driver for the keyboard as a first fix.

Another thing is to remove the battery and allow the system to discharge the put it back and see if the touch-strip was in some weird state that got cleared. Either the OSD is really as bad as they say or the strips are just glitchy with the keyboard drivers.

I've had a couple touch-strip issues and these steps seemed to work to clear them.

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

Although this is what the site says after benchmarking scores i still perfer the ATI cards over Nvidia.

 

How would I do the redection of the keyboard? I haven't really used it much yet, but I will try to restart as a first measure.
Can anyone tell me what the function of the OSD is?

 

The OSD controllers what the shortcut keys including the function F* options and display a status onscreen. Hope this explains.

 

Heya, noticed in the BIOS I can up the voltage on my memory, what exactly does that do and what are the drawbacks ?

 

Amending/turning the memory voltage can improve preformance but also can cause major issues if done incorrectly. With the build and stable performance of the M17xR2 in my eyes tweaks/overclocking is not required as the CPU is turbo enabled.

 

Well, its in the BIOS, so I wouldent be useing a 3rd party program or anything....hmm

 

I completely agree, 3rd party overclocking apps are damaging. If you do decided to amended the memory voltage check on the net for a guide or if someone has already done some testing and there experiances

 

So, what you think about the options in the BIOS ? would be safe to assume there safe since there included ?