*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x Owners Lounge - Part 2

. . .yeah man, I've got a Fatwa to my name because of certain 'short stories'. No kidding. Seriously.

Anyway, speaking of crazy Fatwas, I am glad that you understood and saw the point for what it is, and it would be great if others could be similarly cool about the topic.

 

You also have to appreciate that Johnksss is probably one of the most accomplished benchers on this forum....he can do things with hardware that other people don't/can't. If he was given a system with 4870s, I am confident he would surpass the numbers he got with his 9800m GTX by a decent margin.

 

Very true, but I've come very close with a similar setup and I don't think I am the only one.

All I am saying is that with all these factors, one can even make an older card look more than what it really is in comparison to a faster, newer card. Better to just take each experience as it is rather than use such scenarios to base very universally applied cut-and-dry quantified judgements. This takes away the appreciation and acknowledgement of different factors like system setup, condition. . . Johns and Mandrakes.

Link:
http://benchmark.tehpwnerer.net/attachments/files/4a8833d9-a340-4046-b003-744145591fc3.jpeg

http://nbd.tehpwnerer.net/benchmarks/view/23

Now this guy, Hikkoo, did quite a bit with hardware that is quite sadly. . . outdated.

 

Hi, first time here. i just got my m17x the other day. and thinking i should run some tests to see if i got what i paid for and stuff. anyone got any input on how i should start and what program i should use?

 

yep..exactly why we try to drop that percentage thing...way to many confusion theories are created from them.....ergo..benchmark threads. nice write up by the way.

i concur. quite a lot of factors involved.

thank you sir!

quite impressed with his vantage run! do you know when he ran it?

side note..nbd needs to have dates/times added...(just a suggestion)

 

Hey Johnksss,
Thanks for the kind words.

Now Hikkoo. Ah, man. This dude was all spirit about the M1730. He took what he had, and his goal was to get the most out of that machine. He even managed to run it stable at very high overclocks without issues thanks to the system fans running at 100%, constantly.

He did the runs around May-June 2009. I was very impressed. He did not even need to overclock that high, because I managed to just break that 11k barrier with the same GPUs by just overclocking the core to 625 and shaders to I think 1580.

Sadly, the guy's disappeared. I've tried to get a hold of him time and again, but no luck. He had pulled off a good one with his machine.

 

You have a Fatwa to your name? Man that is so cool....

Remind me not to sit next to you in public

 

I get the feeling that they'll probably prefer to capture me and torture me for days on end until I denounce my lord and master, Satan. You know, a more befitting approach as opposed to snipping me from the grassy knolls and then pinning it on the person sitting to my side. So you're good. . . and safe.

Anyway, I might be getting a Q(X)9200, since I can't find a decent QX9300. Impatient, as always.

 

Hey M17x owners, when I edit the lighting effects for games it wont let me hange the alienhead power button. Is there a fix for this?

 

I think Mandrake mentioned something about re-doing a new 'advanced' setup from Alienware Command Centre. Initially, I couldn't change the lighting on my keyboard and speakers; just didn't have the option in the command centre, so I created a new advanced setup and got access again.

 

darn...so about 3 months after i sold mine

 

do not get that cpu. Some of them don't overclock at all in the m17x. Trust me on this one.

i'l try to beat out johns scores but I need some of his runs to do so.

 

. . .that was directed at me, wasn't it? Heh. Okay, Don. I'll be patient.

I'll play around with the X9000 in the meantime.

 

i can't wait to see what you do with that x9000. and sell it to me.

also the qx9200 has a stupid low chance of overclocking in the m17. quad's(mines. thanks quad) didn't overclock at all with that cpu.

and a couple more people i know.

 

Very well, Don. I'll give it some serious thought. But I have to ask: Can't you just get a cheaper X9100 from the states?

 

i prefer the x9000 because of the lower fsb.

 

But Don it is less mature technology and will not OC as far....just like the low ceiling you had on your T9300

 

i didnt have a low ceil from 2.5ghz to 3.125ghz stable and 3.212ghz when benchmarking.

 

for the architecture, 3.212 is low....

The T9900 could go to 3.6

 

the santa rosa is the same CPU architecture ... just slight differences

nothing inferior about it

 

yeah but its stock at 3.07


moo

the differences between them is the new ones is the e0 and the old ones are c0.

 

wasn't assigning him decent voltage due to the string

So your saying my p8600 has inferior arch ?

My p8600 was based on the same as the t9600 ...

 

and your p8600 went to 3.4 if I remember correctly?

so sort of proves my point...the newer revisions OC better even though they have lower multipliers due to a higher default bus speed

 

i just said why. its because the centrino 2 with the 1066fsb is e0 stepping and the normal centrino with the 800fsb is a c0 stepping.

and it's not only clocks you need to worry about. c0 steppings are faster clock for clock then the e0 steppings becuase the l2 cache is closer to the core it self.

someone correct me if i'm wrong.

moo post your vantage and 06 scores for the cpu and if you can find them. i'll post mines.

 

Can't say I have ever heard of that clock for clock bit and the distance of the cache Don....physical distance is a non issue - the speed of light is fast (that is what electrons generally will move at)

 

co's are older tech...
while e0's and d0's are suppose to be newer and more efficient...so they say....
less voltage and heat to do more..(speculations of course)

 

I can say that I have never been dissapointed by the newer revisions....intel pretty much always has better OC headroom and features/performance from their new revisions

 

3.24 stable 3.3 at most

 

this is MY find X9000 we're talking about. I'm chiming in to take credit, it was delivered to me by a chinese man in a bamboo box.

 

This particular X9000 will fly at 3.4 GHz without so much as a single fail. I have put it through a closely-watched, but robust hell on the M1730.

Still, I had no idea that the lower FSB was something you were actually looking to exploit, Don. Wouldn't a good OEM X9100 be capable of being pushed to 3.5 by the unlocked multipliers, and then even further through the BIOS? I know of quite a few OEM 9100s that are going for a decent price now.

 

well this is how i based my research on.
in the whitebook
the x9100 hits 3.33ghz in the bios rock solid and if you want to push it up more you need to use setfsb and you can bring it up to 3.51ghz.

the x9000 m1730 just 3.4ghz on the bios. rockl solid as you said. with that. you may be able to push the cpu futher unless the c0 stepping is limiting it.

the w90 with the t9900 hit 3.9ghz with fsb alone

the w90 with the x9000 was 3.6ghz on multipler alone.

i dont remember the w90 with the x9100 hit,.

and i don't remmeber what mandrake hit with his x9100 in the m17x.

 

E8345 in the W90 hit 4.2

 

from what I have seen, just about all these chips go further with fsb overclocking instead of multiplier overclocking

I only raise my multiplier when I have the FSB maxed out

 

anyone with the ati 4870s and a 1920x4870 having the problem of not being able to select the option of using 1680x1050 ? anyone have any idea on how i can get the ati card to be able to do this?

 

well i will test that out and see what happens.

and yeah the e8345 was from the macbook right moo?

 

why do you want to run at the lower resolution? for your desktop it is pointless and for any game you can easily set the in-game resolution to 1680x1050

 

ya those were mac only chips

And the W90 is unique in the sense that it uses a very highend desktop chipset that is an OC demon. People were able to hit 550+ fsb on that chipset on desktops.....not like this crappy 9400m/730i lol

So it can FSB pump the bejesus out of chips, is how people got the Q9000 to 2.8 lol

 

for some things i like them better at 1680x1050 and others i prefer them to be 1920x1200 its personal preference and no i cant change it in any game to 1680x1050.... i tried.

 

That is odd, what driver version are you using?

now that I look at it, I only have the option for 1600x1200, but I always just use 1920x1200

 

the one off dells website.... 8.635.0.0 even with the other drivers off of ati website its still the same....

 

you neeed to mod the drivers to have that res

you need 9.12 anyway .... using dells is a performance downgrade

 

ok so i think im going to insist that dell brings in the ati 4870s into my country(singapore) swap out my gtx 280s since lots of people who moved to ati had no stuttering or spikes.

theres just a few questions on my mind.

1)i really like nvidia's digital vibrance and i have it on at 100% all the time. is there an ati feature that can create that vibrant effect as well? without vibrance all desktops look washed out to me

2)also, how do the atis behave on external monitors? any problems/incompatibility with external screens like screen tearing etc?


3)with hybrid on(with the gtx280s&9400) the systems go into power saving mode when the plug is pulled. with the atis, do i have to restart to get into integrated mode? or can i just press stealth mode or something?

oh and how do i install drivers for the 9400 and the atis? which do i install first?

 

any chance you can point me in the right direction to do this?

 

Winte420, you have a PM

 

Gotta say the new Core2Duo M17x that Dell sent me two weeks ago is running perfectly, none of the weirdness from the last one. I'm blasting the FSB at 1333mhz and the CPU seems to enjoy it. Games run butter smooth and no strange stuff so far.

 

So I see that there is an i7 refresh to the M17x. I have an unopened M17x here with Qx9300, GTX 280M SLI. Its collecting dust and I need to sell it soon. Has the market value for the non-i7 M17x decreased then? Not the latest and greatest anymore..

Thank you

 

yes, they are getting hard to sell, there are like 4 on sell in the marketplace here

 

If you want to upgrade to the i7 m17x, clean off that dust and get the sale tag up asap.

 

return it ?

 

Hey guys just wondering is the new i7 model still overclockable? or are we supposed to settle for turbo boost?