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

Hi Guys, first time poster..(long time reader). Ive been poking about here since I was researching the M11X - but I have finally decided to go with the big boy (M17X). I see a lot of intelligent and informed members on here so I thought I'd pose a few questions that I would really appreciate some feedback on.

1: My main concern with the initial purchase is the M17Xs current inability to do the Directx 11 thing.

(This video has sold me on DX11) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ABeq7PEdRc

I understand there is rumors of a Hd5870 and GTX285 but is there any solid word when they'll arrive or is it all hearsay? Also, just to confirm, Hd4870s definitely aren't DX11 enabled right?

2: Is there a vast difference between the i7-720QM and i7-920XM? I understand most modern games are more dependent on GPU rather than CPU, so is the AU$1,460 upgrade entirely necessary for gaming (ie. Crysis, Bioshock 2, etc)?

3: The Australian Dell site currently doesn't list a SSD drive as an option. I was considering buying one off eBay and attempting to install it myself. Has anyone here done this and does it void Dell's warranty? (If so, what brand did you go with?)

4: Also, I was curious as to how much RAM you guys had in your M17Xs. 4GB should be fine for gaming right? I hear 8GB is just overkill.

Anyway, sorry if I've 'noob-ed' the place up a bit but I'm seriously itching to get one of these on my lap and it's getting close to online checkout time.

Again, much respect to all of you here as I'm sure many others, like myself, are 'silently' trawling these pages looking for info, so thanks.

 

So after ordering my r2 on January 14th it arrived yesterday... (canceled due to incorrect CD part number, then parts shortages etc) I was so happy till i fired it up.

I am getting a really annoying sound, sounds like its comming from both GPU's its like a click, click squeal. This is at idle. When i do anything intensive the squealing gets worse!! I also have 2 stuck pixels on the screen. I called Alienware support who initially suggested I get a replacement, however they transfered me to customer service who said they could not do a replacement and transfered me again. After 2 hours and 8, yes 8 different people I ended back at Alienware support (I was losing my mind). The last person I talked to said they would not give me a replacement until I had 3 parts replaced in 30 days?!?! I then got disconnected on their end... they guy hit something and i got ringing then an extension is not in use message... I lost it and started drinking!

So i have 2 questions for you all:
1. Are there any suggestions on the noise issue? i am running out of the box right now so drivers etc are stock. I could live with the stuck pixels as one is high enough on the screen it is almost always hidden.

2. Failing that how do i get a replacement with dell. I see many posts here of people who immediately got one shipped. I am dreading calling back so hoping there is a solution out there.

I am posting this on my old computer as the squealling gives me a headache... no joke!

I have a 920XM, dual 4870's, 2x 320 GB hard drives, 8 GB of 1333 ram, and the LED screen, which is amazing, almost too bright.

 

1. No dx11 on 4870

2. a 720 will run most games on max. Only very cpu consuming games (ie. GTA IV) will benefit alot from the 920. Go for dual GPU over a cpu upgrade

3. Just bought a Intel SSD myself, 3 minutes plug and play intervention on laptop. Very easy.

4. 4GB is enough. RAM is not a bottleneck in games (today)

If you go for it, you'll be satisfied. It is a great system!

 

Nope, definitely not Direct X 11. The 2 week rumor definitely SOUNDS plausible, and people say the Moo is always right, so...

It's definitely not necessary. If I get an M17x, I'm planning on getting the one in between-the 820 or whatever it is. Don't know that it's really worth it either, but I want more power, darn it

Does not void the warranty, and should be easy to do (and many people have). I plan on doing the same with an Intel x25 drive. Dell in the U.S. provides discs to reinstall from, so you can just swap drives, then reinstall the OS and it should be fine.

Yeah, 4GB is totally fine right now. I'm sort of getting used to the idea of 8, just because I'm also looking at Asus' G73jh that comes with 8, but realistically, even with some 20 programs open I've never gone over 60% of my memory used on my current system with 4GB. Someone correct me if this has changed, but I don't think there are games that use much past 2GB yet (the consoles with only 1/2 a GB INCLUDING video RAM probably keep that number down!)

 

LOL

 

Ok some pointers on this conversation.

ATI has traditionally done well in HT setups - and certainly if your notebook it being used as a blu ray player or HT item, that's something to weigh on the ATI side.

ATI has over the years had a lot of "issues" creep up. We've seen here some of the random shutdowns, the stuttering, and so forth, that often take months to fix, if they get fixed at all. This has happened over many generations, and the web is full of them. Driver updates are just required, but are not here quite yet. But they have to be in place to make the barely passing grade. But be aware that a ton of folks have tried ATI cards (my experience was many years ago) and often people have sworn off ever buying them again. It takes a lot of frustration to get to that point. And it's not just a single card or generation that has caused this. So weigh all that experience and frustration carefully before thinking you'll be fine for a few years of notebook use. And if you just plan to "sell it" if you get to that point, consider the heavily depreciated value you may receive (such as the R1 users are getting now) if the web is full of information on these "problems" at some future point.

DX11 is very important. It does promise to better use multicores by multithreading shader code which does not happen now. Visually games in DX10 vs DX11 aren't going to be hugely different, but Tesselation is a very useful feature. The real reason DX11 will be useful is that it will be widely available, once the next gen of consoles come out, because they are planning to use it for the successor to the 360 (and Sony will have to follow suit). So add the regular PC game development to all the "ports" and you have a large base of development that will fuel the DX11 selection. What isn't so widely heralded is that DX11 has an automatic fallback feature, so a DX11 game will run just fine on DX10 hardware, just without the unsupported features. So just because the world will be DX11 doesn't mean DX10 will be dead. This is an unusual step for Microsoft to have made an automatic fallback built into the DX11 engine, but it's a good sign since DX10 and 10.1 will not be forgotten for years to come.

Nvidia drivers aren't perfect. But even considering these faults they are miles ahead of ATI, and have been for years. This isn't new. ATI has had a long, long time, and a lot of OUR money to get this stuff fixed and working better. And where has that gone? Stuttering? Dead or nonworking desktop cards? http://forums.amd.com/game/messagev...121063&STARTPAGE=11&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear
Having a driver program may fix some of these, but the fact that for months problems still exist on desktop cards that "have" a driver program, isn't a good sign. DX11 and Eyefinity on notebooks weighs against this disadvantage, but having the fastest card and best features means absolutely zero if a year from now you can't play Diablo 3 for 6-9 months while they "fix" a bug. Look at how long it's taking to fix the stutter. And that is with Dell working on it (and they are better at getting things fixed than ATI is). People say "oh yeah it will get fixed" but don't realize that a few months of fixing is a frustrating experience for any card owner. Weigh that carefully.

There are some hints that Nvidia may well have a DX11 (Fermi based) chop down in a few months. Again, months is a long time in this business, so I'll absolutely understand that criticism and say "yep they are very late to the game". But questions of Nvidia folks as to whether they could build derivatives of Fermi that were smaller have responded with "absolutely". So the likelihood is that Fermi was built modular to build smaller chip derivatives off of it. In which case a mobile Fermi in Q2-Q3 is not impossible. In fact it might even be easier to build than the current Fermi because it's smaller and easier to get more fully working parts in a batch.

So if it's me spending my $$ right this second, I'd probably take a DX10 based 285M over a 5870, because I'm pretty certain ATI's age old "problems somewhere" will creep in somewhere. It's not always immediately obvious, but I'm positive they'll be there.

If in a few months time, NV hasn't responded and ATI's driver program responds well and deals with 5870 bugs quickly and the fixes actually "work" then I'd swing the other way and say the 5870 tech advantage (and working established driver program) outweigh NV drivers and stability.

A few months after that, if they are both on the same ground, both are stable (proven over months of use and driver updates) then it's down to price and performance.

So in the end DX11 is important, but it's useless if the GPU is buggy as all get out and those bugs surface after months of use, so given ATI's history I'm cautious at this point. Given the next to zero visual differences in actual games in DX10 vs DX11 mode and the automatic fallback of DX11 to DX10 or 10.1 mode I'm inclined to spend my money on NV cards in the short term, ATI cards in the medium term if there is good stability and no NV DX11, and either in the long term if they both prove themselves.

$.25

 

Gosh darn it FXi, don't remind me of ATi's crappy drivers right after I preorder something with them :-D

 

Not starting yet another ATi vs. Nvidia fight here... BUT...

I can tell you one thing, the visual quality of the ATi's with all settings beats Nvidia any day from my experiences. As for driver issues, saying Nvidia drivers are miles ahead of ATi is simply propaganda, easily as many mainstream games have issues as ATi. I will say they get fixed quicker in Nvidia, but... the one issue I really have with Nvidia's drivers is they are very contemporary. I have seen older games just have a ton of issues with Nvidia that run just fine with ATi. I agree that ATi needs to address it's driver issues faster.... but I think the trade-off in visual quality, legacy support, and an all around better architecture are worth it.

This video pretty much sums up the situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR45ja_fNzU

 

I'll highlight again, it is a choice, with pro's and con's on both sides of the equation. So Doc I agree, and Wolf, there is a chance things go just fine for you.

The driver's being miles ahead is an opinion widely held on the web, not just by myself. However, that's just a collection of opinions. But coming from users of both, I don't think it's purely propaganda at all either. I've used both, in the desktop arena, on a variety of cards from mainstream to all but the most recent high end ATI, and there is a difference. Remember that the world is more than just games.

Anyway, Doc you make very important points, and the power of this place is that we can highlight things "in use" which vastly outweighs simple benchmarks or a review site here and there. Real use counts for a lot. So thank you for your points

 

just received an answer from Blackhawk team regarding the availability of 5870 cards in m17x.

"Michael,
I talked to my technical guy and below is the response.

Right now I have no information that we are planning to ship the MX17 with the ATI mobility 5870 card. There is certainly a lot of talk about the card on the web right now and Dell is noticing the buzz.

ATI Mobility 5800 series GPU website
http://www.amd.com/us/products/note...ility-hd-5800/Pages/ati-mobility-hd-5800.aspx

Right now about the only notebook I found that has the video card is an Asus system. I imagine that we will have a system available soon but I don’t have specific information when."

No news there....

 

Man !! Just call them and tell them I wanna ship back this piece of junk you send me and I want a full refund ( provided you are still on your 21 days return period ). The end. But be careful because in some countries is not 21 days, have a check on that. When I received mine and it had 3 dead pixels I actually thought that I would rather eat the money than been left with this junk. Anyway your choice

 

Yo need some help here. I have a 920XM, dual 4870's 1.2T, 8gb of ram, and led screen. Well my problem is this: i tried staring my system just using the battery power no ac connected. once i get to the windows icon it turns off by it self. I contacted the alienware support about problem and was told it was a battery problem. Got a new Battery and the same problem persist. Does anyone have any ideas about this problem..

 

Sounds like what my Dell rep told me too. Still, I'm hoping Moo is right and the the M17x will come with the 5870 in 2 weeks so that I can get my order changed before it is shipped to me.

 

You may not be able to customize the M17xR2 with a 5870 just yet but you can surely customize it with a Dell mini 10v. They added this option right next to the video cards tab. Man, Dell really knows what gamers want...

 

285, 5870, mobile fermi, possibly a new m17x design completely for E3, June 15th, 940XM Q3, Sandy Bridge early 2011.. It's a never ending story

 

Then seems like it's safe to go with 4870s now especially after CEBIT. Dell will add 5870s for sure, but folks can not wait forever. Another one or two weeks is fine, but another three months.

 

Dell really doesn't know for sure. Its why its taking so long

 

You would think they know how sales and marketing works....

They cannot expect to stay competitive when 2 of their competitors now have newer hardware at a very good price

 

They are not trying to be competitive .....Just make it

 

Hey what happens to that two week story?

 

That is not good enough

I do not want to support or give my money to a company trying to just make it.....I want to support someone trying to lead the industry with cutting edge innovation

 

So because it doesn't have the 5870 yet makes it somehow behind the curve? Clevo just got their 5870m right now, it's not like we're looking at an Apple style 1-2 year delay. You guys are hilarious.

p.s. find me a notebook that has:

1. rgb led
2. dual graphics
3. latest chipset
4. cutting edge design
5. metal alloy chasis and lid.
6. backlit keyboard

I'll save you the trouble, you can't unless you look within Dell's own product line (M6500 which lacks dual gpu). Clevo is nice, but their X8100 is behind the times with a CCFL and dual nVidia 285. Nothing has the build quality or high end component selection of Alienware, end of story. Besides, dual 4870 > single 5870.

 

They sure are not but I know some one who is

2 week story is when its supposed to be out... But just look how long it took Dell to get jokers BIOS out

MAke fun of me all you want. I will just take what i know elsewhere

 

BTW does W870 support BIOS CPU OC ? (920XE)

 

No only evga works

 

I am not saying it is horrible, but I would at least like to hear them (officially) say that they are working on it and plan to release with the 5870m.....yes the performance difference is not huge from that to the 4870....but how often is there a huge difference from one generation the next? The point is they would be making progress

Now if they are taking their time to actually thoroughly test it and make sure it will work once delivered, that is a whole other story and quite ok with me, but they can at least give us something.....even if it is a picture on the website saying "let the wait begin"

lol

 

i dont really get the fuss over the 5870....its a marginal preformance increase in terms of hardware. The only real selling point imo is the DX11 support and really by the time that becomes an issue for gaming these laptops we're talking about now will be completely dated anyway. I suppose the smaller power consumption is an issue but i dont care about benching. meh......

 

smaller power consumption -> longer battery life
lower temps -> longer computer life and lower noise
higher speeds -> greater performance
DX11 -> better than DX10 or 10.1
smaller transistor technology -> tends to lead to the lower temps and power usage which help to result in higher overclocks

 

Too bad the lower temps part isnt holding true.

Do you think they'd really do that? It would cannibalize their existing sales. It's akin to Microsoft announcing the xbox 360 successor in 6 months..do you think that would be good for sales? I've never seen a large company ever do such a thing unless it was a major release that was due out within days.

 

that is more of an in theory one...until someone uses the exact same cooling on the 2 different cards we will not know for sure

And is the actual core hotter or the memory?

 

I'm pretty sure the memory is hotter given that it's GDDR 5 but the temps overall aren't cooler like you speculated earlier, even with Clevo's superior cooling over Asus. BTW one of the most sensitive components to heat tends to be the memory.

 

Dell/Alienware should revolutionize the gaming laptop industry by introducing liquid-cooled laptops in their new line. As GPU and CPU temps are going higher with each generation it's the only logical direction. Just image how sick that would be..

 

ho ho ho ..... They wont be first

Anyway that technology is not far away...

GDDR5 runs VERY hot even my alienware could not cool the thing... the core stays in 60's whil gaming and the ram hits 80's

Anyway

 

Well guys I can only say this. I ve been talking to some people and I found that we are going to see people releasing laptops with 5870's this week. As they told me they ordered them for their laptops and expecting to get them at the end of this week. Also something else they said is that they did not announce them earlier because as it seems ATI sometimes does not keep up with deadlines so they had to play sure. So if Dell have already ordered 5870's which it seems like because none of the reps I talked denied it they just said we dont know when.. then they should be available in the next two weeks at most. Oh and btw IFFFF they ordered them I repeat.

 

So what are the chances of dual 5870's option IF the 5870 becomes available in 2 weeks

 

So you ran the 5870 in your AW moo? It worked ok?

Interested to see how the cooling compared between the clevo and the AW

 

Hey I have a slight issue. The left side fan is making a sound like a car idling when the computer is at idle. At first it was a high pitched squeak and now it's just like a muted single-prop airplane. Is this something I could fix, or do I need to bug tech support?

 

you could ask them to send out a fan with or without a tech to install it (better for you to install it yourself)

 

I've had the exact opposite experience, and Nvidia is supposed to do heavy regression testing while ATi does little or none, not that I've followed every single driver issue or anything.

Still, at least mobile support is a HUGE step in the right direction!

To the person asking about the 5870 deal...well, who wants to spend just as much for an old GPU? The few things that have used Direct X 11 so far do benefit, it'll probably have been support for running other programs on the GPU, etc.

 

That's interesting. i guess ur people is in Dell supplier department? "Two weeks" is getting true, isn't it.

 

What makes you think its gonna be just as much? Do you really think Dell is just gonna drop the 4870's....a high preformance gpu completely ? They will pass the cost along to you the consumer probably at more then 400 dollars extra for the duel configuration. It seems impractical to me, given the small performance difference. Truthfully i considered waiting on the 5870's also but then after i had done some research and read up on the boards here I realized that it seemed silly to wait. Waiting for it seems like chasing a white rabbit. When it happens it happens but everyone swore up and down that it was gonna be announced at CEBIT and we also had posters talking about how their "inside" source told them this or that. Give me a break, this card has been comming out next week since the beginning of February. It seems almost certain to me that even if they are introduced this month you could well be waiting for your m17xr2 until May. If you need a PC and you want an alienware you can get a fantastic piece of equipment right now.

 

They are a significant boost. A single card hit 9500 in vantage

There has been issues with the machine with 5870's

Do keep in mind the m17x supports eyefinity

 

The delays in the new cards are probably the result of additional testing. They learned after the R1 and R2 issues that it is probably a good idea to test and retest the new configs to be sure it works well.

I think I'm a convert on this eyefinity thing. Read a lot about it and if dual 5870's ran 3 monitors (don't need 6) and Nvidia's next gen in June/July didn't run them, that would be a significant difference to me, one that could sway my vote.

The mobile drivers still aren't here yet though and they've been AMD "talk" for a long time. I want quality though, and understand if that takes time, but if there is no official driver program in place, even Eyefinity wouldn't sway my vote.

Hopefully in a couple of months (long time I know) drivers will be in place, cards with DX11 will be out from both parties, and the end customer can decide on features, price and support exactly which they prefer.

Win win I think.

 

that enfinity thing is the triple monitor right? why would you want that on a laptop?

 

Actually, why wouldn't you? It's the only reason I would upgrade my cards to 5870's. I don't care about DX11. To me more monitors i's worth more than the stock performance increase in games.

 

But you do not really benefit from eyefinity unless you have multiple monitors of the same size and resolution next to eachother....that is hard to do when you laptop has a 17" WUXGA monitor on it.....

 

Like I said, I couldn't care less about gaming in all three monitors. All I really want in native support for extra monitors. 2 (or maybe even 3) 24" 1920x1080 (or 1200) around my M17x would be the perfect setup for me and what I do.

 

No I am not saying something I got from a Dell employee. This comes from a friend who works at a customised pc's company. However he informed me a while ago that the 5870's that he got do not support crossfire ( ie they cannot be connected with each other ) . But I honestly dont know if Dell has an ace on its sleeve but this guy also builts laptops with dual video cards and told me that the configuration with dual ATI 5000 series is at the moment impossible since its not available from ATI. I do hope though that he missed something . I see that some people in this forum have an asus g73 or a clevo . Can you guys enlight us up with this

 

It is just a matter of building the card with the crossfire connector or not. The 5870m chip can do crossfire just fine

 

Probably a newbie type question, but if a game is played windowed, crossfire doesnt come into play then, right ?