*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R1/R2 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 1

The mobility 5870 is actually better than the GTX 260M, plus it's a DX 11 card.

 

So i leave the gtx 260m, tha 9400 + the radeon 5870.. it will work together the gtx and the radeon?

 

it supports dx11 but it doesn't play dx11 very well.

 

No they won't all work together. You'd have to remove the 260m

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS CM9 via Tapatalk.

 

A posibility to leave de gtx 260 and tu insert another one? Ore i have to remove de gtx 260m, and replace with 2 graphic cards from a laptop witg gtx 260m SLi?

Do you now why i have just 5,9 windows experience with 4gb 1333 mhz, normal its aprox 7. Am i right?x64 win7

 

Without knowing what kind of other hardwares you have, I am guessing your mechanical hard drive is the limitation which is 5.9

To have SLI or Crossfire, both dedicated video cards have to be the same kind/type with one master and one slave and don't forget the cable between the cards.

 

Ok thanks. The ram on another m17x with 500 gb 7200 rpm is 7.2. On this one i have 500 gb 5400 rpm, windows experience is 5.8 of the hdd. So may i try with a 7200 rpm? This will change my ram win experience. The cpu is t9800

 

Going from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive won't help your score. The other computer with a higher RAM score may have a better CPU as they work together.

Now for the video cards, yes you can leave the 260M in the laptop and get another 260M. You don't need to buy two.

 

The higher score was with an i7 1.73 ghz, cpu, 4gb. The lower score is with a t9800 cpu 4gb ram.

On t9800 4gb, grx260m battlefield black ops 2 runs on high details and full hd resolution. Tomorow i will upgrade to 12 or 16 gb corsair .

Another question: I have the gtx 260m and the gforce 9400. When i start my m17x on Bettery, i hit f1 to change the setting for 9400 card.. you now what i say. The laptop starts, on device manager i see just tha 9400,a fter i rebot , or shut down the laptop, (now with AC on), he starts but the gtx is not visible, and i cannot use it. To start the card, i need to enter in bios to set Hybrid graphics on enabled. Is thsi normal, or something is going wrong? Tanks.

Something isnt good. I put a samsung 256 gb ssd sata2 and the windows experience is 5.9 at disk experience, and the 4gb ddr3 at 1333 mhz remains 5.9. Do you think, that my windows is not good? I instaled this on a lot of kaptops and the experience was very good. The speed is considerabily increased with the ssd. Any ideas?

 

Do you have and R1 or R2? Make sure you have installed all the necessary drivers.

Alienware M17x R1: Initial Drivers Installation
Alienware M17x R2: Initial Drivers Installation

Also, check you power settings and use it in high performance.

 

hi guys any chance you can tell me what the best spec for upgrading my laptop to is, i dont think my laptop is M17xR1 cose it just says M17-R1 underneath it i bought it before dell in 2009

M17-R1 BEFORE DELL.

OS : WINDOWS 7 64BIT HOME
GRAPHICS : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 version 8.97.100.3
MEMORY : 8GB OF DDR 3
CHIP : INTEL(R) CORE (TM)2DUO P8400 @ 2.26GHZ 2.27GH
BIOS: w841.b14


this is whats on it a mo

i just bought battlefield 3 and notice it needs a really good specs and abit gutted cose always played bf2 and bad company and now my laptop is getting old but is there anything i can do to improve it? or do i have buy a new laptop?

 

Based on your specs, you have an m17x R1. You can try upgrading the video cards to a pair of AMD 5870ms and install an SSD, but that is about all you can do.

 

I don't believe the pre dell M17 will take 5870s.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS CM9 via Tapatalk.

 

if you could give me details on chip and graphics card i can upgrade to next would be greatful. cheers and happy christmas btw.

 

DR650SE: Ahh. I didn't know there was a m17 model (as opposed to the m17x model). I always thought the Area 51 notebook was the precursor to the m17x line. My mistake.

Rockinred: scratch the dual 5870ms off the upgrade list. According to this thread ( M17-R1 Upgrade), there is a chance a pair of Nvidia 260ms will work in SLI in your m17 r1. But after looking up the specs for the m17, that model uses mxm 2.1 and all the GPUs they discuss in that thread are mxm 3.0. Not sure if you will be able to find an mxm 2.1 video card.

 

When will the win 8 drivers by dell be released for the m17xr2 any news on this ?

 

I don't think they'll release anything for the M17x R2 anymore. But all windows 7 drivers will install on windows 8. I'm running it myself with no issues.

 

Hey guys, I recently bought two WD Blue internal hard drives (1TB) to replace my old hard drives (raid 0). When I tried to install Windows 7 it gives me an error massage, "Windows setup could not configure Windows to run on this computers hardware." So I did a little research and I follow all step on method one on the website ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2466753). Method one is not working so far...
Note Advanced Format disks have a physical sector size of 4 kilobytes and a logical emulated sector size of 512 bytes. "Advanced Format" is a new technology being adopted by PC manufacturers to increase media format efficiency which will lead to larger capacity hard drives. If you are replacing a hard drive in an older PC, you may be more likely to encounter this issue."
I tried the load driver option and Windows is not reading the driver files for RST. What should I do? Exchange 1TB HHD for 750GB HHD?
Thanks guys

 

What did you do for the Free fall sensor? I can't find one that will work with Windows 8?

 

Hey everyone i have had a genuis idea for the m17x r2 gpu cooling.
If you look up a picture of an m18x primary gpu heatsink it looks quite similar to the m17x one.
I have ordered two of them and am going to try it out!
I am going to take one of the heat sinks and remove the heat pipes and swap it around along with the fins so hopefully it will fit in the secondary slot!
The m18x heatsink has 3 heat pipes and the m17x has only 2 so there should be a decrease in temperatures!

Wish me luck!

 

Hello Friends,

I need a little help with installing the latest nvidia drivers. I have a M17X R1 (with 2x gtx 260m in SLI) and I`m hoping for slightly better performance in some games. Whenever I try to install the drivers, I get the "no compatible hardware was found" message, so I modified the .inf files in the driver and installed it (this method has been working for me flawlessly for ages). This time though, with the last few updates, the SLI function disappears in the Nvidia control panel and games lag like hell (as if I was only using the integrated card). Any ideas?

The primary game for which I want better performance is Guild Wars 2, so if you have any other suggestions on optimisation please do share (although I have heard that it mainly relies on the CPU unfortunately)

Thank you in advance

 

I want to upgrade a my friends M17 R2 VGA to a GTX560M from Clevo.
Is it possible? Anyone already tried that?
Size? Specs? Drivers?

 

guys, i really need help here.
i have this alienware m17xr2.it has this spdif out on the jack.
but when i check on idt control panel,no spdif out displayed.
i've tried installed and reinstall back the idt driver, but still none.
i want to use the spdif to connect it to my headset.
Plz help me

 

I'm not sure what port you're looking at but the M17X R2 does not have an SPDIF connection

Check your manual to identify the port that you think is the SPDIF. If you really want SPDIF I'm sure you can find a USB->SPDIF adapter online.

 

Follow the instructions in post #2 in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/700176-m17x-r1-cant-install-new-nvidia-drivers.html

Dont forget to disable both integrated and hybrid graphics in the BIOS.

 

Greetings to all fellow R1/R2 users, I just want to say I think I finally fixed the BSOD issue with my usb controller. With that being say I freaking love this machine!!!!

 

What was the issue and how'd you fix it? Under what circumstances was the BSOD happening?

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS CM9 via Tapatalk.

 

Hi Doc, its good to see you still checking in, for the past year I have been plagued with random BSODs stemming from the file "USBhost.sys". This occurred randomly while connecting/disconnecting devices and during/after use of the usb device. This happened almost every day and in some cases two or three times in one day depending on how much I was using my system. The devices connected, sometimes all at once or separate, were an android phone (EVO 4G LTE), Seagate external HDD, and G5 mouse. posted this issue several months back and was given a vast amount of information from NBR users (Katalin and Grey Wolf especially), and from Luis from the Alienware support staff. During the information digging I came across an article that talked about portable devices having power issues when USB devices were connected to them. So this is what I did:

-Clean install Windows 7
-Driver install (used install order from Alienware-Luis_Pardo)
-Reflashed modded A10 Bios

After all was installed I went into the BIOS and set CPU OC to 5% (only have a 740QM ), set RAM voltage to 1.7, and changed the vcore to 150mv. I also ensured the windows power setting were on High Performance and checked to make sure everything was always on/never slept. I kept this configuration for about a week still using my USB devices as normal with no BSOD. So I decided to do an experiment and returned the BIOS to the defaults, and a day later a BSOD showed up while my external HDD was plugged in. I have since returned to the original settings and have been clear of BSODs for about a month (excluding the test one).

 

I was wondering what the highes overclock that anyone has gotten stable on the 940XM
the highest i can get stable is 3.72 ghz.
that's with a 28x multiplier.
30x and it will crash imediatly
29x and it won't crash until the CPU is doing something pretty heavy
28x i haven't crashed yet.

i have in the bios to add the 150mv of power
i have it so the cpu can use 70a and 70w instead of 62.

 

Wow, that sounds like it was PITA to figure out. Glad you got it figured out. I wonder why that would cause the issue.

Yea I still frequent the forum and post when I can. I spend most of my time around the Alienware forums and Windows forum. Can't really get interested in the Clevo section. Not much activity from X7200 owners lol. Just been enjoying the X7200 for some light gaming and regular use.

I was also having lots of BSOD issues and tinkering in the bios finally solved it. I was going insane with them lol. Now that I have it figured out, it's awesome having a stable reliable machine. Glad you get to enjoy the same with the R2.


@Necrotopsy, I think I kept my 940XM at stock settings, but with 90W TDP and 5% bios OC. Made for a good boost when fully OCed. I mainly OCed when benching.

 

Yeah it was a pain, for a while I thought the usb board (think that's what its called), was going bad on me. I spent many of hours with Alienware support just to be told call back when it happens again. Who would of thought just boosting the power would help.

Since you mentioned it, how is the X7200 doing for you? Its been a while since I messed with clevo/sager the specs look amazing.

 

The system is a beast and I have no regrets trading the R2 for it. I love having a he core processor. The GPUs are great for the gaming I've been doing recently. Not much time to game though. I love having four HDDs too. The only issue I have is that it seems a ram slot doesn't work. Windows sees all 24GB but only 16GB is usable. I've swapped ram and it appears the middle ram slot is the issue. May get a new mobo at some point to fix that but its not a huge priority at the moment. But so far its been a great system.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS CM9 via Tapatalk.

 

Well that good to hear, I am in the market for a portable laptop to do some minor gaming and office work. I was looking at the m11x but they are to much for my taste so I have been researching Clevo/Sager 11" systems. They are a little cheaper but I have not messed with those companies in almost 10 years.

 

Is anyone having problems installing ati drivers 12.11 beta8 and up, on an M17xR2 running crossfire hd 5870s? For some reason i cannot get any drivers to install on my system after 12.11 beta8. Today i tried installing ati mobility version 13.1 and beta 13.2, but they will not install. Right when the installer is about to finish my system crashes. I am running windows 8 x64.

Thanks

 

Skatehouse, try installing the Dell drivers first, enable crossfire, reboot and install the newer ones on top of them.

 

Here you go

Dell Official AMD Mobility Radeon HD5870 driver

 

Thanks for the tips guys, but I still get a blue screen right at the end of the driver installation. Also, the Dell 5870 driver will not install on windows 8. After troubleshooting all day today, i think that maybe one of my of the graphics cards is failing because when i run gpuz, it gives me some weird information for one of the graphics cards. For example, it is saying that one of the graphics cards has 4294967295 mb of video ram.

Under event viewer, the error i get for the BSOD is a bugcheck, it says the error occurred at 0x0000007e.

 

Skatehouse;
Well if its a lowercase "m" and "b" then that will be in bits so that would put it at about 536 MB of memory, anyway. I tried going to the great and powerful Google and came up with little results, but I did find a site from ATI referring to driver installation and Windows 8 Release Preview which can be found here. I hope this helps, while searching this seems to be a problem with a lot of ATI users and with Windows 8 with the results I found.

 

Does anyone else have ty game performance on windows 8?
I think it must be the amd driver (12.something). Anyways im running win7 now ...

 

Psyloid;
I have not experienced this personally, but looking up some stuff for another user, AMD/ATI has come out and said game performance, more specifically graphic performance, will be less/slower when using Win 8 than when using Win7. In the same article they have related this to the drivers and the way that Windows 8 handles them. I will try and dig through my history and try to find the site that said this.

 

Finally parting with my M17x R2, my M11x is more convenient to travel with and figured it was time to build a new desktop. Selling the M17x-R2 on EBay to recoup some of the $1800 I spent on the parts for my new desktop.

 

Well after my experience with windows 8, i don't think i have a need for returning to it
Another $60 in the trashbin

 

Psyloid, you are not alone, I hear a lot of complaints with Windows 8. I am completely satisfied with Windows 7 and think its the best OS that I have used (besides Ubuntu of course ). I plan on using the $39.99 upgrade to get Windows 8 while its cheap and hopefully they work out the bugs with a service pack, and developers start doing the same. I just hope Microsoft doesn't solve the problems with a whole new OS like they did with Vista.

 

My experience with Windows 8 since November has been great but you have to invest time in getting to know the system, Learning the new keyboard shortcuts, what a charm is and so forth. Adding for example a start menu application when you really don't need it after learning the win 8 way, is counter productive and lessens the value of the upgrade.

I am using Office, Sonar X2, Adobe CS 6, Capture One 6, Visual Studio 12 without a problem on my M17xR2 as well as my desktop and M4400, benefiting from skydrive integration and not having to care if I have synchronized this or that file.
Compatibility is almost 100% with all usual suspects working: winrar, peerblock, vlc, Firefox, nova backup, utorrent, mumble, ts3, roland audio interface, wacom intuos to give a few examples.

As for games the experience has been great so far, but I'm only playing Wow and SC II, also mass effect 3 (don't like the game). I like free games such as pinball fx2. Wordament is outstanding but only if you have a touch screen.

Some Windows Store apps are good such as the finance / news / contact apps, some not that great but bring huge value, such as the ms music app that give access to lots of music for free, some should be avoided at the present time: Skype and Skydrive are excellent "desktop apps", their Windows store counterparts are absolute crap if you ask me.

Regarding R2 compatibility, while there is officially no support from Alienware I was quite pleasantly surprised that I could make everything work, including Alien Command Center and stealth mode. The only driver I couldn't get to work - don't need it anyway- was the IR device.

I also recommend that those hesitating purchase the Windows 8 Pro upgrade before January 31st at the dirt cheap price, after that it will be quite expensive. No need to install it right now.

 

Well, I just upgrade my system to Windows 8, I used the below thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...d-your-m17x-r2-full-detailed-description.html
and after all, you will no believe! NONE, CERO, NADA of devices not recognized on the system.
I am very happy with it. I will play around with this new OS and will let to know of it going.

Regards

 

I have an R1 running Windows 8 and I've only had good experience thus far. I upgraded after getting BOGO for Windows 8 keys (got two for $40!), so I upgraded my wife's inspiron first to test the waters (of course!) I literally did NOTHING in terms of drivers for her computer, as Windows 8 recognized and did everything on it's own.

Her system, though, is very basic in comparison to my M17x R1.
I upgraded mainly due to the fact I was installing a brand new SSD into the system and wanted a fresh start. It was a bit messy getting a few small things going, there was the issue of finding proper nvidia drivers and then I restored the Alienware look and feel.

My benchmarks went admittadely slightly down after the transition, but not to a remarkable level.
Currently, my system has good ol' Penryn 2.4 ghz core 2 duo, 8gb ram, and 260m in SLI. Yesterday in the mail I received thermal paste,thermal pads, and 2 m5870 cards. On the way, arriving in a few days according to FedEX, is a QX9300 and a crossfire cable.

I'm excited to see what Windows thinks of that. Should go smoothly. I'll probably do a detailed post on it. Does anyone know if there would be an issue if I installed the CPU and both GPUs at the same time? After that I'll be letting everything settle for a bit before I start messing around with overclocks.

 

You should have no problem if you're going to consider precaution measures during the installation.
I know it's rare and it never happened in your 20 years of IT but it takes only once to fry your cards other than that, remember to clean the heatsinks and fans, properly apply thermal paste while you're in there and rearrange the thermal pads.

Congrats on your new upgrades!

 

Hi my name is Nikolay and I have decided to upgrade my Alienware MX17 R1 with a new video card Radeon 5870 . I have bought Dell slave version of the card. I have removed the crossfire cable and have installed the old heat sink from my GTX260 and Radeon card is running great but fan is spinning very slow and card is overheating, do I need to change slave bios of the video card to the master one to solve the problem with the fan and from where to take such a bios.

 

No slave or master BIOS for the video cards. The GPU VBIOS of the 5870 needs to be the most current though. They are available on the M17x R2's driver page on the dell support site. There is also the possibility of your fan not working properly.

 

My fan was working great with GTX260 . I have tried to upgrade to newest bios but there is a message that this upgrade can not be performed on my system