*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17xR2 Edition Owner's Lounge - Part 3

i dont have a RGB monitor just the lcd one, but i suppose the same reason would still apply.

 

So you ended up with an R2 that has a WUXGA LCD screen? That is painful

 

Yea it can be, that's why i am selling it on Craigslist and kijiji nanaimo if anyone is interested lol.

 

here is an interesting for you r2 owners.

 

I kinda already tried it with in the M17x r2. Fan and powerplay issues need to be addressed before it can operate fully. Don't know about the M15x. Also, I got the card from MXM-upgrade.com which are engineering samples. He'll need to flash it with the Dell VBIOS (which I did) to fix the driver crashing and the pixel issues.

 

thanks for the info, not really up to date with all the r2 stuff. yeah i tried to do a 470m mod on my M15x with no luck either.

 

Anyone notice the youtube vid of the keyboard flex on the R3? I know my R2 doesn't flex quite as much (although it still does flex). Anyway, I am saving up for a Xfire 5870 in my R2. I wanna see Tessellation!!! lol.

 

Anyone know if a 5850 vbios will work on 5870 cards. Something like the 285/280 cards work? i know flashing different gen cards wouldn't due to the architecture bit i was curious from a teaching stand point. Then maybe run 5850 crossing...

 

hey guys! my laptpop's vent just gone crazy, sounds like a propeller and is very distracting... i think sound comes from bottom-right corner, any idea of what could that thing be?

 

Sounds like something is touching a fan blade? My guess would be there's a foreign object of some sort. Have you tried a blast of compressed air to see if it changes or stops? If it does, you'll probably need to do a partial disassembly to remove whatever it is.

 

hm... it does sorta sound like its hitting something OR that the spinning fan makes not a round but rather "oval" spin, I doubt I have compressed air in here, think of disassembling it later on when i get a screwdriver

 

ok, figured out what it is.. turns out its GPU fan on the right side (gpu1)
sensors show 71C for it, whereas GPU2 temperature is 61C... well, i guess i gotta make a teardown...

 

Leo,

I would be more concerned about the sound of the fan than the temp discrepancy. 5-10*C is pretty normal as they both aren't working the same and are positioned differently.

 

yea man that damn sound takes it out of me...and for no reason it started yesterday morning... can it be that the fan itself is flawed/broken? i didn't turn off laptop for 3 days back then, yesterday it rested tho.

edit: there's no propeller sound at all once fans speed up. seems it has problems on low turns

 

I assume you have restarted the laptop? Mine makes a bad noise if I tilt it while the fans are running. Like a bearing gets off balance and grinds or something. Once the fan stops and starts again it is fine.

 

for sure i have turned it off for a whole night... and the sound got clearer this time (clearly it hits something) funny thing - when i tilt it UP or down, fans work as should...

 

dry disconnecting and reconnecting the fans if you haven't as that is the first easiest step without a tear down needed.

 

What's up with the slot load blu ray drive. Is it a standard form factor as other drives? I think I might want to swap mine out since they are so cheap on ebay. You can get like a blu-ray/dvd combo slot drive on ebay for like $70.

 

just disconnected both fans, no issue found whatsoever... gonna use vacuum cleaner to clean em up and then insert back n see what happens.
p.s. is using vacuum cleaner on the fans (only fans) appropriate? it'll clean em good

 

edit: system is back together again. the propeller noise staid... what if i call AW regarding this? it definitely comes from the right GPU fan...

 

I've had several fans that made noise. Called up Alienware and talked to a serv. rep. Told them the problem and said I am competent enough to change out the fan on my own (plus they have a set of records local service tech. messed up my system more than repair and I have done several near major replacement on my own). Cust. serv. rep. get authorization and sent me the fan(s) for replacement.
In other words, call them up and they send out a new fan.

 

thx man, I will definitely do that. this sound is ... ... I hear it even in my headphones!

 

Le0-,

Indeed, AW can send the fan directly to you; just tell them when you call that you are saving them the cost of sending a tech to your place...

On another note, you might wanna check this regarding different noises coming out of your unit...

Cheers !

 

seen that post! but am afraid that turning off voice options may result in troubleshooting with camera for me, as i use it a lot for skype)

 

Someone want to do a test for me? Play some music and then press the mute button on the laptop.

Does the left speaker seem to cut out .2seconds before the right? It does for me and its annoying lol.

 

haha... .2 seconds? Thats weird, but you use the mute button that much?

 

if you mean the R2 not R3, i checked couple vids with MediaPlayer Classic, couple songs on wmp, Fn+F3 works same for both speakers.
my suggestion: try doing it with your headphones (if got ofc) also try other files

btw, the thing with R2 i have is that since it got 2 HP jacks there, the one that is closer to palm rest is way louder than the further one. lOl no idea why, but thats just how they work on my machine

 

Not really, just something odd I noticed.

Meant to post this in r3 thread but I guess its worth knowing if it happens to R2 owners as well just for curiosity's sake.

 

I have a tendency of thinking that alienware machines were designed to fail in some period of time, and need constant look-up of owner.i gently took it apart yesterday first time myself, not that it helped though. on the bright side, there's always warranty that covers it.

 

I just take mine apart for cleaning.

Anyway, a side comment. I really don't like the way the forums are turning out. It seems moderators are closing topics left and right whenever some speculation on a new product starts, particularly on Alienware.

Why is this? This is supposed to be a place to discuss this sort of thing, and now we are being told to wait for official releases. I miss how it was back in the day. We would all scramble with a new wallpaper and often find hidden stuff in them, including laptop designs, etc. We were like the place where leaks started.

Now we are becoming just another forum. Except this one is starting to become more prohibitive on this sort of findings and discussions. It's not like we are flooding the forum with useless threads, but if we can't discuss leaks, pictures, etc, of new products here, then were are we supposed to do so? I'm afraid our forums are becoming too... typical.

Anyway, enough of my off-topic rant. On with our scheduled show.

 

can any1 tell me if you guys can press W+E+Space Bar simultaneously? or W+D+SB? doesn't work over here and its annoying...

 

w+e + space makes "we" no space after though the other seems to be fine

 

I generally only play FPS games and not much into MMORPG types of gaming. But, I just tried this macro in Lord of the Rings Online and it worked OK all but a couple of times. W+E+Space and W+Q+Space makes a diagonal jump running forward. A couple of times nothing happened. I'm not sure if this works in most FPS games.

 

yeah, it is a diagonal jump, and a very useful one... plus, if you play a fighting game on your kb... need i explain more

 

Hello, what is the maximum default FSB of the R2's motherboard? Can 1600MHz RAM run at 1600MHz?

 

I think it's 1333Mhz maximum default.

 

Indeed !

10char...

 

Yeah its Crysis 2 beta and the Demo. I am running a res of 1440x900(unfortunately that's max for me). I have set everything to Quality in the CCC with the exception of the two smooth vision ones which I set to let application decide, and I enabled triple buffering. And of course the Xfire is enabled.

Crysis 2 runs way better that Crysis 1, I notice it uses less memory and load times are improved, and I read an article about the game a couple of months ago that said the game utilizes quad core cpus. The only drag is the beta does not fully support ATI cards. The demo I have no problems but its just a multi player.

 

Crysis 1 has a memory leak in 64-bit mode (and maybe 32 bit?) that gets pretty annoying. Would you call the graphics quality equal between the 2? Or better in Crysis 2?

 

For me trying to play Crysis 1 on the m17x is a pain the the donkey. The graphics load up but I get stutters and glitches and it plays in a window. I originally played crysis 1 on the old m9700 at medium settings and then I was impressed and the game did not have any issues, just took forever to load.

I will say that running Crysis 1 on DX10 is comparable to the Hardcore settings in Crysis 2. The upside is that Crysis 2 just runs so much better even in development and the game has a lot more secondary engine fun than the first, like agents picking there nose and suit abilities.

 

I was mainly interested in seeing if the PC version still looks good since many were concerned it is now a console port

 

i'm not asking which is better w/ that said, choices are between r3/new mbp 17/r2. i've looked into others such as sager, etc. but these are my top 3.
right now, i'm leaning towards r2.

i guess what i'm asking is even w/ dell phasing out r2, it is still pretty expensive (r2 xfire is still almost same as r3 6970 price). is it worth buying in an r2 now w/ extended warranty or should i just opt for a more current laptop?

 

Well if your leaning towards a r3 make sure you do all your research. I heard that Intel recalled some of there sandy bridge processors. Its a little bias but the r2 is a pretty stable machine that gets good fps on next gen games.

 

the r2 is rock solid. i love it. all problems have been addressed and fixed, and it runs smooth as butter.

Full TDP/TDC control over the XM cpus with TS, means these babies Overclock INSANELY HIGH...

And now that a modded bios is in the works, with OC'ing unlocked for non-extreme cpus as well... and with new gpu support around the corner (fingers crossed) ... i see this beast staying in the top ranks for a while longer that i had originally expected...

 

I highly doubt you will see official support for newer GPUs on the R2

I would get an R3 personally as it has alot of advantages over the R2 (the difference in 3D performance will not be much)

 

The incredible anodized aluminum chassis is my favorite thing about the M17x R1/R2 and it doesn't exist in the R3.

If Alienware would consider releasing an "R3.b" with essentially the identical chassis, then I would seriously consider an upgrade after they work out all the new system bugs.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the Silver on my R1, but I have an M11 as well and the finish on it is perfectly satisfying to me. You will also appreciate the drop in weight haha

 

hey guys, hoping you can help. I have an m17r2 w/ 4870 cf. Thing is I got dragon age 2 and hoping to be able to make my gpu's compatible with dx11 I downloaded what I thought was a correct driver. It seems that it was not. My screen was in an extremely small letterbox, long story short whatever i downloaded screwed up my system. So i went ahead and uninstalled the driver but in doing so it seems that it also uninstalled the CCC controller. Im pretty sure my system is not working in cross fire now and I cant find that program anywhere. How do I put my crossfire back and what should I do in terms of drivers ? Thanks...... Also it seems like you guys all have the 5870's now. What happened ? Is it possible to upgrade the 4870's to 5870's through dell ??

 

upgrading gpus through Dell is mostly impossible. Buy primary and secondary 5870s from 3rd party sellers like on ebay (but make sure secondary gpu is taken from working crossfire system).

As for your issue i guess you have to uninstall everything relating to ati (use driver sweeper) and then reinstall driver and latest amd crossfire profles. By the way f you dont want-use dx11 there is no need for 5870s.

 

If you already have 4870s, I would not bother with the trouble of getting 5870s. They offer DX11 but enabling the feature brings performance to a crawl.