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

Regarding HDD configurations on which is most risky to lose your data sorted by highest risk to least risk:

1. RAID 0 (Data is spread across two drives; If one drive dies, data is lost and you cannot boot your computer.)
2. One HDD
3. RAID 1 (Data is mirrored; If one drive dies, you can still boot your system and access your data.)

Having a good backup solution is needed no matter which configuration you chose due to either hardware, software or user errror which can cause loss of data.

Regarding CPU, unless you are using very CPU intensive applications or games, I would buy the 820 or 720.

Graphics cards depend on your budget and your needs for gaming. What games do you plan to play on your laptop? Are you going to use an external monitor?

 

Not this year. Not the R2 model. Infact we haven't seen a single 480M yet.

 

Cooling the 480m inside a "portable" machine is not an easy task. They will run hot as hell

 

I will come back to Vietnam after I get this and it's difficult to upgrade my AW so I just want to spend money one time (I have to spend a lot anyway). And I think AW is worth for me to rock with it. Thank you for useful information

Thank you. I don't know if my understand is true: the 500gb Raid 1 = 1tb One HDD? If anything happens, is it difficult to partition Raid 1 to reinstall the Window?

 

RAID 1 requires that both drives be the same size. Therefore, it acts like one drive since the data written to one drive is mirrored to the second drive in case of hardware failure of one of the drives.

Therefore, 500gb RAID 1 option = 500gb.

I do not know the answer to your second question.

 

Here is the answer to your second question. Once you have your machine setup in RAID 1, you can merely reinstall Windows. Of course, you should backup as soon as you get your machine.

See these threads:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...create-recovery-cds-alienware-m17x-r-2-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/422486-how-configure-raid-1-0-m17x-didnt-come.html

 

Thank you so much for your enthusiasm. I ll choose the raid 1 hdd. Now I am ready to order and waiting my AW. yay!!

 

Thank you guys

 

To those who configured their m17x with an SSD, what brand SSD did you find inside? Are the 128gb drives speedy or is it worth buying one separately as it seems most of you have instead done?

 

they are samsung based drives (samsung internals) I think they are actually branded as Dell

 

Thanks- I had read mention of that on the R1, but I was hoping things had been refreshed. It seems an odd OE choice over Intel or some of the newer controllers.

 

i dont know if anyone posted this but 10.6 ati drivers behave really badly with many games like pro 2010 and flatout . i am back to 10.5

really hope this issues doesnt exist with 5870s

 

I saw similar results in some other games and rolled back to 10.5/8.732:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6384750-post176.html
One thing I have done which has helped is installed all the app profiles updates post 10.5.

 

hey i just got mine yesterday and it came with 10.5 i wanted to upgrade to 10.6 so i got rid of the old drivers and downloaded the new ones for my 5870 but CCC wont install any suggestions ??. Thank you.

 

came with 10.5 installed? they dont even have it on drivrs download page.

as for your issue:

Sometimes when installing the newest Catalyst drivers found on AMD's website, users encounter a problem where the ATi installer does not recognize the display driver. A very simple workaround is to first run the Catalyst installer, let it extract to C:\ATi and then cancel the installation. Next, navigate to the C:\ATi\Support\XXX Mobility Driver\Config folder and open the file called "InstallManager.cfg" with Notepad. One of the lines says the following: "WorkaroundInstall=false", change it to "WorkaroundInstall=true". Then run the setup file in the parent ATi directory and it should now detect the display driver and install fine.

 

Ty Ty Ty ......... Thank you. Worked like a charm

 

Folks, moving forward, please take the 5870 Crossfire discuss here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...river-issues-alienware-discussion-thread.html

For issues of course... thanks.

 

It'll be interesting to see if nVidia make a GPU based on the GF104 architecture, which is used in the new GTX460 range of desktop cards. This is less powerful that the original Fermi (GF100) architecture, but uses a lot less power. Performance falls between a Radeon 5830 and 5850.

GF104 looks a lot more suited for basing a mobile GPU on than GF100. If nVidia can create something like a GTX470M with a normal (<=75W) power budget then they may be able to get back seriously into the laptop market.

 

The gtx480m IS a gf104....it was so before the desktop parts were ever announced

 

Oh well, there goes my idea...

 

I ordered my new M17x R2 with the specs in my sig earlier this week, it's projected to arrive in about a week and a half. Looking forward to joining the Alienware owners on these boards. Can anyone tell me what kind of benchmarks and performance I can expect from this system? I was also thinking I should add an extra non-SSD for storage.

M17x R2 Space Black/i7 820QM/XF 5870/8GB DDR3/1920x1200 RGB LED/ 256GB SSD

 

Anyone using 10.6 on a single 5870? I'm currently on 10.5, so I'm curious about performance in games.

 

Hey
I found one Sager NP8850
with - Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M Graphics with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory & usb 3.0

 

He meant an Alienware Machine

 

Can someone explain to me why an ES QX9300 is still as expensive as an ES i7 940XM? This doesn't make an ounce of sense.

 

That's all because of Scook's benchmarking which kicks the price up!
He's probably paid by Intel

 

It's cooler/uses less power than other dual GPU setups though, so it should be very doable. Plus the idle power is low.

 

They are still top of the line CPUs and binned to help ensure some overclocking headroom. And as I have shown, they also still perform nearly as well as the newer extremes

 

Hey guys,

Just got meself an M17x, kitted with i7 820QM, Xfire Radeon HD 5870s and 6 gigs o' RAM....so would it be fair to assume that I should be able to run games like Portal and Bioshock from like 5 years ago with highest settings and expect to get more than 30-40 fps?

Since I've turned this thing on it's been rather random. Random crashes with various programs, most of the Alienware programs working when they want to, infinite reset loops...the tech support guys tried blaming it on a corrupt image being used to install everything, but I dunno. The infinite reset loops, even when holding down the power button seemed a li'l suspect.

Couple that with wheezing graphics that only start to perk up once I rip out the original drivers and then half-install (as in the install fails halfway though) the latest drivers, I'm starting to think hardware fault. Any ideas?

 

It requires a special "wrapping/encapsulating" heatsink with extra pipes like in Clevo's. So it's not easily doable. Plus, Dell had a lot of issues with the Nvidia GPUs in the past 2 years. I doubt they will let the Greens in any time soon.

 

So does this mean that the R2 is not upgradable further gpu wise?

I assumed that since the R2 was GDDR5 capable that it had the possibility of further upgrades?

 

If anyone is looking to buy a QX9300 but doesn't like the price then I think they should have a look at one of these.

INTEL CORE QUAD Q9200 2.40GHZ 12M 1066Mhz -best version - eBay (item 140425013319 end time Aug-06-10 22:00:06 PDT)

This is equivalent to a QX9200 but Intel never officially sold one of them at retail so this is an ES CPU. It is identical to the QX9300 except the default multiplier is 0.5 less than a QX9300. That's not a big deal these days because you can use ThrottleStop to easily boost that up to the same speed as a QX9300. Beyond that speed, when both of these CPUs are fully overclocked, these two are going to be very close in performance to each other. This QX9200 is an E0 stepping with the same 0x1067A CPUID as the retail QX9300 so there shouldn't be any problems with it like some early edition ES processors can have. The Extreme word in the CPU-Z Specification box guarantees that it has an unlocked multiplier for easy overclocking.

At $268 with free shipping, it's a steal compared to what the QX9300 is selling for on ebay and you won't see any significant difference in 24/7 performance compared to a QX9300 after both have been unlocked and overclocked.

 

talking about nvidias and specifically gtx480 on R2 dont forget they added support for it on A05 bios according to their release notes. i am almost sure they finally found that it cant handle heat finally.

 

for the peeps with 4870s, does your video memory get to 85 degrees in games ?

 

rarely or never. i personally have never noticed so high temps on my 4870s. usually after hours of gaming they are till 70-75 the most. but i guess it also depends on the game. but by no means reaching the extra high temps of 5870s

 

I am not talking about gpu sensor. I am referring to the memI/O sensor.

 

I get these temps when playing for 15 minutes or more. Fairly hot ambient temerature though, about 30 degrees Celsius here now.

It runs pretty hot, but I've never opened it up to clean for dust yet (about 6 months old now).

 

At room temp, the mid 80s are where all my gpu sensors max out if I run furmark for an hour. So I would consider that safe as it is the highest you will ever see.

 

here are my temps after playing COD MW2 at extra high for one hour

 

Thanks. I'll try to measure temps in cod and compare. The temps I saw were in me2. Maybe it warms the cards a little more.

 

When reading temps in gpu-z, are you supposed to run the cursor over the temp gauge where the red is to determine the actual temp? Just earlier when exiting a game my temps outside the red was 74-76 on my primary and 59-62 on the secondary. When I moved my cursor over the red the temps read different, 100-102 on my primary and 79-82 on the secondary? Is this normal when reading temps for you all? Secondly, my fan speeds for both gpu's stay consistently at 30%, even during idle. I apologize for the newb question I just didn't notice these high of temps in my R1, also I'm running the updated version of gpu-z 0.4.4 appreciate any help on this.

 

Mine never reached 85C during gaming ( even in Crysis with ambient ~30c I get a max ~ 78-79C on MEM I/O.
Furmark Hot As Hell brings them to 84-85C eventually.

 

Quick question guys. Is there anyway to disable the illuminated keyboard without installing Control Center? I'm looking to disable it through the device manager or by other means. Reasons is I'm setting up my benching SSD and don't want to install all the other stuff, but want to cut power to the LEDs. Thanks for any advice.

 

Just right click Alien FX icon and click go dark

 

I don't have any of that stuff installed. I'm going barebones for benching. All I have is Win 7 clean, most services disabled, GPU drivers, chipset drivers, and wifidrivers. Thats it. Trying to see if I can disable the controller through the OS

 

Sorry never read your post properly was distracted .

 

Unfortunatelly you can't (the changes have to be writen to the controller), unless you install the CC disable the theme and then uninstall CC. The other solution is to use ubuntu (install it on a USB flash disk) and the alienFX for linux to disable the theme without having to install CC on windows

 

Guess it's time to open it and clean the dust.

 

I am not sure where to post this but it concerns the M17X so here it is:

It makes no sense that the x40 processors are yet available. Many other companies offer these CPU and even Dell offers them. The bios update for them has been enabled.

What the heck is taking Alienware so long for those CPUs?

 

You can set alienfx colors in one os and the settings will stay until you set it again since values are set into registers of the controller chip