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

Is there much diff in Intel core 920 & 940 ?

 

I checked the site and it was fine aristotelh, try again maybe there was a temporary problem.

Thanks for posting this mfractal, this is a serious issue and people should be aware of it, not only those who already have an SSD but also those who are planning to buy one and I believe it worths five minutes of your time to run a test and post your results.

 

done! it seems it was a temporary issue as you said. stamatisx whats the difference between 4K and 4K QD32? they both suck on my configuration though.

 

Queue depth is how many requests are waiting in the queue in order to access the disk (either read or write). You will never achieve that kind of depth on a regular basis unless you run a server so you should be concerned only for the lower queue depths like 0-4 and this is what the R2 is affecting.

 

well waiting for you and other experts to fix that as again all those are like chinese to me.

by the way Dell uploaded an intel turbo boost technology but when i try to install i get that the system doesnt meet minimum specifications.

is it a faulty upload by Dell? it seems its for intergrated graphics and R2 hasnt those...

 

that fixed it. thanks.

 

Just got off the phone with Hans, the Supervisor of the Alienware phone tech support for Americas.

Mentionned to him the PM55 problem with SSDs, as well as the fact that they don't ship thermal paste with motherboards when they change them. He said he'll bring the info to who can fix it.

Hope this will help some people somehow.

Cheers !

 

anyone know the point of the turbo boost driver dell added to the r2 driver page? is it suppose to install properly? i get an error saying system does not meet requirements.

 

I just thought I'd mention I've added to the thread on SSD issues.

Also curious if anyone is seeing any DPC latency issues on their R2?

I noticed audio stuttering in various games and kind of ignored it but lately I've been playing music while working and noticed the glitches just playing audio (from SSD in Windows Media Player).

Sure enough I am seeing the odd red line in the latency checker.

See here: Whoops! - TinyGrab

It's by no means frequent and seems to happen even with wireless disabled.

I am starting to suspect it may be a side effect of using Input Director and am about to try plugging my keyboard/mouse in directly to see if that improves things at all.

 

ive noted that ive noticed a huge red spike does appear even when idle but its very very rare and apparently it does not affect audio or gaming in anyway for me

 

i said that before too. even Dell thinks R2 has intergrated graphics or they just upload all intel drivers there. IMO

 

I had the same issue, I believe this driver support the Intel Turbo Chip, I have one in my Gateway P-6800 FX, it does nothing special, no noticeable performance gain either. I highly doubt anyone who has a M17X has this chip installed in their system, it takes up a wifi shot. It's like Itals version of ready boost, but on a internal card. Nothing to do with graphics

 

You mean their turbo cache thing that completely flopped?

 

Well I did it - I ordered my M17x "All Powerful"
Config:
M17x Space Black
Intel i7-740QM
4 GB DDR3 1333Mhz Ram
2x ATI5870 CF
256GB SSD
BluRay Combo (BR read only)
RGBLED 1920x1200 Screen
Intel Ultimate N6300WiFi
Windows Professional 64Bit

Expected date of delivery Aug. 20th. 2010!

 

Hi all!
i'm passing here to let you know that HWiNFO had been updated to monitor fans speeds and lots of other sensor readings from the EC (Embedded Controller). It's still in beta stage, but for me it's working great.
We need help decrypting the temps that are reported there, as it seems that they vary between M17x-R1 and M17x-R2.

Please rep the author ( Mumak) for that, he spent lots of hours trying to figure out how to access this data, and he ended up reverse engineering parts of the BIOS to do that.

 

Guess I should have looked here first, tried to install this and couldn't as well. I also tried to install the Intel Rapid Storage thing they uploaded to the list and it installed but then my system would BSOD at the Windows screen with the colored orbs that turn into the Windows logo. Had to do a system restore or whatever so that one seems worthless as well.

 

Running BIOS A05 or A06 right?

 

Running what came on it when I got it, which is A06. Not sure why it causes the thing to BSOD every time, not that it seems to be needed anyways. Wasn't able to reinstall the old version either that came on the resource disk when I did my fresh install upon getting this thing, did the same BSOD at windows logo orbs.

EDIT: Correction, couldn't reinstall the Intel Matrix Storage Manager thing from the resource disk... which upon further reading is what the Rapid Tech replaces.

Either way they don't play nice with my system, do I need to be in RAID for them to install? Doesn't sound that way from the info Intel gives for them.

 

Reading about these SSD issues is making me glad I didn't outfit mine with one at the time i was configuring it.

I still haven't received mine yet, how much bloatware do they come with? Is it enough to warrant a fresh install?

 

I have already started a thread on the new drivers from Dell Support!

 

Most people say to format and start over. I simply did an inplace upgrade from home premium to Ultimate 7 x64 - been running with this build with no issues since i got it.

Dual SSDs too

 

The M17x I got from dell had next to no bloatware fwiw

 

The problem might be that your not using raid. Try usng raid then reinstall the rapid storage driver this might help from bsod'ing. Also, once you install the rapid storage driver it replaces the matrix storage driver indefinitely. It shouldn't matter what bios version your running as long as it's A05 and above. I installed the rapid storage driver and it works flawlessly on my system and even improves the read/write times and bumps DL speeds alot faster.

Note: The turbo boost driver is useless and shouldn't even be in the driver list as was told to me by a tech! Reason being, it relies on a actual card or chip and since the R2's don't have them the driver is useless spitting out an error message "your current configuration is not capable of handling the driver".

 

The one I got in Australia was filled to the brim.

Startup time was hiiiiiiiiiilariously long. Idle ram usage was terrible.

Alienware Australia doesnt have the "no bloatware" option when you build the machine.

And I wish they would stop shoving garbage antivirus software down our throats.

-Ash

 

So true. Formated mine the day I got it with windows 7 pro

 

Makes me glad I got mine from the USA

 

Yay! Finally got it. After waiting for 16 days, that is.

Nebula Red Cover
Default Processor
ATI Crossfire HD5870
8 gigs DDR3 RAM
640 gigs of hard disk space



Dragonage Origins runs without a hitch at max settings but Arkham Asylum chokes a little, plus the cursor is a little laggy. :/

Also, Crysis Warhead runs at 20-30fps at minimum settings with 1280x1024. Disappointing. =(

 

Your processor is likely holding you back. I get 35-40 fps in Crysis Warhead with all the settings on Enthusiast at 1920x1200: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5D8LEytN6g&feature=youtube_gdata

 

*sighs*

Is it possible to overclock it to increase performance? (Or is it already overclocked?) I'm a newbie when it comes to technical stuff, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, it is possible to upgrade the processor? I didn't know processors would affect performance by that much. :/

 

Crysis does benefit from a quad core (most games only need a dual though)

Since you just got the laptop, it would be easiest to just play with it for a couple weeks then return it and reorder with a better CPU. I recommend the i7 720qm for general gaming. You only need the more expensive stuff if you are benching

 

Just out of curiosity, how many people have Battlefield Bad Company 2? For those that *do*, I played my comp with 5% BIOS OC, 750/1100 overclocked setup, and All very high settings with 2x AA and 8x AF. Throttlestop was on 72W and 62A (then was at 66W and 62A), and the game continues to shutdown after like 15 mins gameplay.
Via HWmonitor, my temps never reached higher than 83C in the core temps, I'd say average top of 78 (without external cooling).
So my question to you is this, who else has had this problem (the game runs beautifully while it is running without and frame rate loss etc..), and if so what have you done to change this (short of putting down your BIOS OC to like 3% or something).

BTW Loading map times in multiplayer were fine.. 20 seconds tops.

 

Well, I don't have this exact problem, but I do have an issue where I'll get black screen randomly. It would flicker a couple times and go away or it would flicker a couple times and then go completely black but I would still hear sounds and see HUD information. Other times I would have random CTD after random amounts of playing time. My graphical settings are all "high" with AA and AS being at 2 and 4 respectively. These are annoyances that occur infrequently and don't really bother me at the moment. I am hoping that Dell's beta drivers will rectify this situation.

 

I have seen that random black screen on one occasion, it went away after turning left and right and then moving forward.. i thought the game had quit once again.

EDIT: Lowered my clocks to about 699/1001 and it seems to have done the trick so far.. played through a whole game (while noobishly) without any problems. I'll give it a longer tryout tomorrow.

 

I had jubbing test it out because the same thing happens to me. It's nothing to do with the system but rather our 940xm's. They simply do not like 5% OC with a higher TDP without additional voltage. Games like BC2 utilize all 4 cores and push them pretty hard so it causes a CTD if the CPU isn't supplied enough voltage. His test just confirmed what I knew but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just my 940xm that behaved this way.

 

Strange. All fps games have horrible framerates and dismal quality. Guess I'll go reinstall the drivers and see if that helps.

 

Make sure stealth mode isn't turned on. It's the touch key up top that looks like a speedometer. Lots of people inadvertently turn it on and get degraded performance.

 

Thats true, when i got my M17x i did format thinking about it was a faulty installation, after i did it, i got a light from some user and "yeah youre an speedy trouble maker", it was on Stealth mode

 

"Full Power Mode On, click any key to continue."

LoL. Thanks guys. That worked like a charm!

Hmm. But there's this thing that keeps bothering me, video playback for cinematics are very poor. Blurry and slightly pixelated, the colour is a little off too. Tips?

Also, something weird happened to my Crysis folder. Everything dissapeared save for a few notepad files. Can't even uninstall it. Anyone in the same predicament as I am?

 

LOL did you see, i dont know why people (including me) forgot about that button; about the video, did you update your codecs or something ? also your video drivers ?

 

Yup. Updated my video drivers. Haven't tried codecs though. Hmm. That might be the problem. Any reliable links Cma? The last time I tried downloading a codec, I got the win32 Virut virus instead.

:'(

 

Well, i use to play all my videos on VLC player, i have not problem with it . . .

 

Hi peeps,

This might sound like a really dumb question but i was just wondering about the M17x R2s.

I know that the R1s had a 9400m onboard gfx card and the other options of 260 and 280 SLi.
What does the R2 have? Is it just a single 5870 or crossfire? Or does it have like a intel motherboard gfx option it can switch down too as well like the 9400m used to offer? Or do the R2s run completely off the 5870s all the time? Cheers.


Thanks.

 

They run off the 5870's all the time.

 

Would have been nice if it had the Intel HD graphics or something aside from the ATI cards. I hear the ATIs can suck the battery extra fast, though I wouldn't know since I hardly use the thing as a true laptop.

 

Cool. it worked. :] Thanks! After deactivating stealth mode, framerates skyrocketed. Sweet.

 

Thanks for the quick responses.
Was also curious about the fan noise on the R2? With the 5870s running all the time does the notebook run quietly during normal usage ie. web surfing, typing up assignments and other light tasks? Cheers.

 

It runs very quiet on normal usage, on gaming is kinda noisy, but, with the speakers you forget about them, also is not too much

 

If the R2 had integrated graphics plus discreet WOW! Bring the rain on any games for real!! Ultra settings with AA, MSAA, and AF set to max on every game just for the hell of it, can you imagine the greatness?

 

Yup. I'm living in it. Been dreaming of this moment for ages. Ah, it's so good it feels surreal. <3
Can barely sleep last night, only managed to squeeze in 4 hours. xD

 

The day my R1 arrived, I just sat and stared at it soaking in the luxurious feel and new smell that comes with an expensive product. Sniff, ahhhhhhhh.....