*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x Owners Lounge - Part 2

An interposer is just a bridge in between two connections. It's required for the second hdd bay. Call Dell to get one.

 

ok i think i found out how to make it work in hybrid. after you get the blank screen wait for a while and then force restart it. disable intergrated graphics. then open nvidia control panel and enable sli and physix (they are both disabled by default). press apply and restart. then enable intergrated graphics again and voila!

Ok the performance drop doesnt seem to be due to tuneup utilities! the performance difference is huge! with 195.xx driver i got initially 66 fps on 3dmark06 while after i installed 186.9 driver again it is initially 99fps. the driver is not optimized for the GTX280s or something else? i dont know. owners with GTX260s can test it too. its a pity. this driver seems to have it all.

 

Thanks for sharing your process. Very interesting - this will be the first driver so far which has not enabled SLI and PhysX at time of install (at least the first for me on the M17x) - they have always been enabled after the required reboot after the installer completed. Need to look into this more - could be one of the reasons why its glitching. The performance drop is most likely the driver and not the INF - lots of people are reporting performance hits with this one + higher thermals (stock INF as well). Not a good one to be sure.

Will post more on this in the M17x Driver thread after I research.

+1 for sharing! Thanks.

EDIT: If you haven't already dumped the driver - check the Global 3D Settings. See if there is a Performance option (pull down). If there is, set it to Performance. I can't recall when they added it, but its a new feature. I believe the options are "Power Savings" and "Agressive Performance". Something like that.... ahhhh brain fade. So nice.

 

yes the perfomance on this driver is horrible. With 3dmark06 it just crashed. It doesn't even run. However with a single gpu. The performance is up there.

with vantage. With Ali enabled stock. I got 3780 on the gpu. What kind of performance is that from 10200. I dropped the driver as well. To many problems with Ali. But single card has some nice performance.

 

i cant see this performance option in 3D global settings. only the sli performance mode as usual. So this drivers is a disaster then. and i have to repeat i still cant set frequency to 60hz. the driver recognizes that 60hz option is available but when select and apply it returns to 59hz. crap NVIDIA!


Finally the only reason i would recommend this driver is for pes2010. for unknown reason pes2010 works very well with it with minimum stuttering. but pes2010 is not a kind of gpu strength demanding game anyway.

 

4850's will be faster and i will say that until i DIE

 

lol. OK moo. We understand. I want some of that ati.

I think we need some more benchmarks. I can't think of any more. Unless we run fraps but people may just look at a wall and hit 90fps in crysis or something.


lmao

 

Hey guys need your help, I'm from Portugal but when I enter in the Portugal webpage of AW and costumize my m17x I get three problems:

1: I have to pay in pounds (but that isn't too serious)

2: I still receive a UK 2M 250V Power Cord

3: the Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard

I don't really mind the pounds and the keyboard, yes they can be a pain in the , but I do mind the powercord because I live in Portugal and it uses the euro powercord no the UK.

Can someone help??(I'm going to wait till it commes out whith the i7 and new graphic cards, so I have plenty of time)

 

Check out this thread. It may help some.

 

thanks mandrake

 

You're talking about the 195.39 Beta drivers, right? That's bad if they haven't fixed the 59Hz issue. I read in PES forums that these new beta drivers fixed it for them. But I think they are on desktops

 

the charger works in all countries of europe. you can buy an adapter costing 3 euros for the uk powercord. uk keyboard.. i have it too. you will get used to it as i did. and yes i always had a us type one. just remember to set to english united kingdom not us.

yes desktops. always desktop support. as i referred the only game i have seen performance to the good was the pes2010 even at 59hz without stuttering and fps drop and with sli support. all other games performace was really crap. i guess if you play pes2010 all day long you can use this one. the even worse thing is that this driver is optimized for desktops and i cant see the manage custom resolutions option. even on 186.xx that this exists i can set at 60hz but i doubt if its really at 60hz. look this pic below and tell me what you understand (its from the 186.9x driver)



the 59hz is something that really makes me anxious about the future. it may even be a reason to keep vista (i always get 60hz there). no 1hz is nothing but it can important for some games. i just keep waiting now as its the first months of win7. and sp1 of win7 seems to be on its way according to some first info.

 

^Remember Vista had this problem too so I'm optimistic about it
The thing is with refresh rate being stuck @59Hz the Vysnc option in the game settings is greyed out! Is that the same case with you?
Pardon my ignorance but can we use desktop drivers on a laptop with modification? Maybe we can get 60Hz that way.

 

vsync option is greyed on me too. so this is a proof that even with manage custom resolution we cant set at 60hz. the drivers of the 195.xx driver are both desktop and notebook if i am not wrong. the modification is for the inf file that allows you to install on every gpu. so we can say this driver is for both desktop and notebook already.

 

So I can order a Euro power cord from DELL??

 

More ridiculousness from Dell on my replacement machine...

To catch people up to speed, I'm supposed to receive an m17x to replace my 1730 with fried graphics cards.

I was recently informed that there was a configuration conflict with Mcaffee (!!!) and they cancelled the order and resubmitted it--ridiculous and retarded. Whatever.

Now my replacement order has been changed without my knowing from having a 2.8Ghz T9600 processor and dual 280m's to the quad core QX9300 and dual 260m's.

So which is the better setup for gaming? I notice the quad core has a lower clock speed but 2x the cache (12Mb vs 6Mb). I'm REALLY hoping the answer is that the new configuration is better because I will be pissed otherwise. I mean, don't get me wrong--this is still a significant upgrade from my m1730 with the x9000 and dual 8800m GTX cards but still, after all this bull I've dealt with I'll be pissed if they downgraded the replacement without telling me.

 

get the qx9300. it's worth it.

 

what your getting is indeed better

 

Thanks guys--you made my day. Not that I have much control over what I'm getting at this point but thank god its better! Now if they could just finish building the damn system and get it shipped out already...

Seriously...a configuration issue with McCaffee?! And this was cause for the order to be cancelled? Something doesn't smell right.

 

they prolly notied what they were sending out and cancelled.

I think they are clearing stock on the qx9300, makes me think the refresh is coming sooner then later.

If something changes in the order they cancel and rebuild.

 

hmmmmmmmmm
why do i wana change my order and get the dual ATI cards now????

ordered with duel 260s

 

i would. i was an ati person but wanted to try nvidia also try sli.

 

Ive always been a nvidia fan boy
so hard to break away

 

This concerns me greatly. I had actually asked for the qx9300 due to the ability to easily overclock it and was told that there was no chance since it was ~$800 more than the processor they originally wanted to give me. And now once this issue came up it was swapped without even so much as an email to me.

Can you explain more about the clearing stock for the qx9300? Is it defective in any way? People seemed to think that the change they made to upgrade the processor and slightly downgrade the graphics cards is better than what I was getting before but now you have me scared that there are known issues with the chips and they are trying to dump them...

Really hoping its just because something newer will replace them and they need to get rid of them and its not because they have major issues.

 

i'm for any one that has better performance and that's ati right now.

 

If they are clearing stock, it is not due to a defect, just to make room for a newer product (Core i7). Given the marginal increase in the GTX 280m's over GTX 260m's I would say you are getting a much better all around machine.

You should be sitting pretty smug right now with that upgrade/replacement coming

 

Phew! And while I'm pleased with the specs of the replacement system, frankly with the ridiculousness of everything I've been through and all the delays (see my story that got posted to Consumerist although they got it wrong about it being a vacation), I will only be smug once the system actually arrives and those quad cores are sitting in my lap cooking my nuts.

 

Fear not, I am sure your nuts will be happily roasted

 

I've always had ATI or Intel in my Thinkpads and nVidia with my Dell gaming systems.

I feel a holiday song busting out soon.

 

Hey, I just installed Win7 Pro x64 with the most current drivers from Dell and I'm experiencing pretty bad audio skipping, I know there is an issue with DPC latency on these machines but I'm not sure if anyone has found a solution for that.

When I installed Windows 7 and all the Dell drivers the co-processor driver was never installed, I don't think that is an issue but I could be wrong.

Any suggestions would be nice.

 

I've been messing around w/dpc latency checker. I completely reinstalled Win7 yesterday and only installed graphics drivers and bluetooth (I use a bluetooth mouse). I let windowsupdate install infared and ricoh card reader, which I have since disabled in device manager.

Before I started clearing out stuff, DPC latency was rather high all the time. It's gotten much better with the occasional spike at idle. Strangely enough, I've found that I get spikes whenever I type into Internet Explorer - with the worst spikes being if I hold down a key so it repeats. I've disabled tons of other devices to see what would happen - most of the bluetooth stuff like hands-free audio for example. I'm thinking part of the problem is bluetooth/wifi/lan. I also had lower latency with the GPU's disabled (go figure).

I also installed the audio drivers and it seems to have done nothing to help w/audio stutters... Additionally, I removed some of McAfee's stuff, only leaving virusscan installed. That definitely helped. Disabling McAfee completely does not yield much for results, however.

I'm wondering if getting an x-fi sound card would fix the audio stutters completely? Seems kinda sucky if I have to disable a ton of devices in order to get decent-sounding audio...

 

Does anybody know if there is a backorder on batteries for the m17x? I just got a lovely automated voicemail telling me my part is on backorder and since they said "part" and not "system" I'm assuming its the battery since that order was placed as a separate dispatch so it didn't hold up the system.

 

I wouldn't do it. I actually played COD5 this morning. It looked horrible. Sounded like there was a turbine trying to keep the cards cool. I am returning it. I've tried the 280's and they did a much better job and were a lot quieter.

 

Funny thing is Phinfan, one of the guy at Dell told me the same thing. That he played on the M17X with the ATI cards and they were really noisy.

I wonder if it is your system that has a fan or temp issue or if it is really more noisy than the 280M.

Looks like ATI really screwed us on this... First the DDR3 issue then the noise and temps...

 

ATI cards have always been hot. The fans are just trying to keep up lol (and will die sooner as a result )

 

fascinating remarks #ati

 

I just received mine yesterday and got 7 all loaded up.

I am having a problem though, GPU-Z is showing crossfire as disabled. I can't find anywhere on CCC to enable crossfire like you had to do with the 280's SLI.

I am using the 9.10 driver.

Does anyone have any solutions?

 

make sure you have cataylst A.I. Enabled on standard.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I don't use McAfee or IE so I wouldn't know about problems with it, but I'll try disabling some of the Bluetooth features (I also use a bluetooth mouse) and see if that helps.

Could you maybe post a screen of your DPC latency checker at idle?

 

Lets keep the DPC Latency Issue here.

Thanks.

 

Well my co-worker and I went into the settings. The cataylist A.I. was set to standard, tried advanced. That didn't help, but when we into the game setting for COD5 and shut off the dual video setting. The game was operating flawlessly. The fans on the video cards were still screaming. I will try installing Crysis later and see if the fans are howling tonight.

No patches have been downloaded for COD5

 

I wouldn't have to back up my whole hdd if I upgrade from Vista 64 to Win7 64 right?

 

I think it leaves your personal files alone, but any installed programs will be deleted/uninstalled.

 

I think someone also posted a link to a benchmark test on here where they were comparing a Windows 7 upgrade install to a clean install and the clean one outperformed the upgrade install (although not by a ton).

My only concern about doing a clean install is having a way to get the Alienware software panel back on there so I can control the machine lighting. Do they typically provide a disk that has the install for that app versus just the respawn disc which is a complete system restore?

 

They give you a CD called "M17x Resource CD" which has all the installed programs that came with the laptop including the AW Command Center.

 

please record temps.

 

Thanks, did that and kit is on the way. This forum rocks!

 

Got my issue fixed, don't use the 9.10 you can get from laptopvideo2go's forums.

The Dell ones fixed things up for me. Off to Dragon Age!

 

what driver number does dell have?n

 

Honestly I don't know. The Alienware tech remoted in to my unit and fixed it.