*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R3/R4 Owner's Lounge Thread

I'm proudly anounce that i've became an M17x owner today. It came from Ireland, because it cost me 500 euro less from there than from my country's resellers. It's a beauty and i hope i won't have any issues with it.
Although i have one question. I will put in an SSD later then i will make a clean win install. I see there is a recovery partition on the original HDD. Should i erase it or not? Will it be useful later if i plan to restore the factory settings?
And another one. Which program can i use to underclock the 7970m more than the factory powersaver settings during browsing? I used Ati Tray Tools on former models, but 7xxx not yet supported.

 

just erase and install from the dvd + latest drivers from dell.com
use msi afterburner for the overclock

 

M17x R4
-------------------
Core i7 3610QM
Radeon HD 7970M
16GB 1600mhz ram
128GB Samsung 830 SSD
500GB 7200rpm HDD
1920x1080 60Hz screen
Win7 Home Premium
Stock everything else

$2008.48 (including tax,shipping)
Is this good or bad?

 

Cheaper than mine, though, I feel like taxes + region play a role here too.

 

did alienware included the 128gb ssd with 500gb hdd?

what was retail price on all that? and did u get such a big discount?

"edit"
heres me messing with alienware in chat,i chose...


PROCESSOR 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3820QM (8MB Cache, up to 3.7GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit edit
MEMORY 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS) edit
HARD DRIVE 750GB 7,200 RPM SATA 3Gb/s edit
VIDEO CARD 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 7970M edit
LCD PANEL 17.3-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED edit
WIRELESS CARD Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video and Bluetooth 4.0 edit
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BR-ROM, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)

all this comes total of.. through $2,614.00 if paid by website, THEN

Subtotal # $2,561.72
Taxtotal # $224.16
Shippingcharges # $0.00
TotalPrice # $2,785.88"

barely got anything off.... :/
what i need to say? i even ask for student/military discount they told me it was added already.

 

So from your opinion (of which it is far more educated than my own) what sort of settings do you think I should expect out of this card for Crysis 1 at 1080p? I mean, the default resolution (1024 or whatever it is) suggested mmy highest settings on the card were "high"... I was like: "What the fish! That can't be right!"

 

just run fraps and see what your FPS is. Start with everything maxxed and if the FPS is low start turning things off/down one at a time.

 

Crysis 1 isn't used for benchmarking simply because it's so unoptimised. Great game, but horrible code. They made some "improvements" in Warhead, but it still isn't perfect.

The 7970m should cope fairly well though. Definitely shouldn't drop below 25fps. I'd have to re-download my copy via Steam to check but I'd guesstimate you'd probably average 45-50fps in outdoor areas. I wouldn't use it as an indicator of how your card performs though. I have a GTX 680 in my desktop and that drops below 40fps at times playing Crysis.

 

So quick question. I'm enjoying the heck out of my M17xR4, but every time I unplug it I get pretty awful battery life. I don't have exact times, but I don't think I've made it more than 2.5 hours while on battery. I don't know if that is the expected time or not, but it does seem kind of low. Its usually enough to finish a blu-ray and not much else.

Now obviously I switch from running the 7970m to the integrated and dim the display, but what else can I do to extend battery life? I'm coming from a Mac, so maybe there are some settings that I'm missing?

 

No. The battery life on the M17X R4 is short. It's just the way it is for a high performance laptop with a giant screen and massive video card. You could buy a second battery if it's a major issue.

 

hey guys i keep trying to play battlefield 3 but it keeps crashing so i'm assuming it has to do with the throttling or something on my 460m? i saw that there was a vbios update for it so i burned the image to a cd but whenever i try to boot up from the cd it just loads windows instead. any ideas? i'm running raid0, don't know if that matters.

 

This is a gaming beast and as such, has a massive power draw. You're never gonna get anything close to the battery life of a Mac on the m17x r3/r4. Like the other guy recommended, you could get another battery.

There are some nice guides here at NBR on how to improve battery life.

 

I figured as much. You wouldn't happen to have a link (links) to the guides, would you?

 

Here's one: How To Improve Laptop Battery Life
I remember seeing another one, but I can't seem to find it now. If I come across it again, I'll post it here.

 

Could you check your temps while gaming and see if that has somthing to do with it? also what drivers are you on?

 

guys anybody with the m17xr4 tried corsair vengeance 1866mhz ram on ur beast yet??? some ppl said the rams are note compatible with ivy bridge....and which webby sells it and ships internationally.... thanks

 

the temps are only like 60-63. well it looks like i can't update the vbios because i'm running raid. is there anyway to backup my windows install and everything before getting rid of raid0? because apparently all of my data will get deleted just to get rid of raid0. i'm on the newest drivers btw.

 

I don't think that new v-bios will help you out at all. I had it installed on my old 460m and there was no changes that I noticed.

 

This is almost certainly right but it's nice to start with the latest drivers and bios files when problem solving.

First, what happens when you press F12 on the BIOS screen? Raid should have no affect on booting from CD. If you get the option to boot from CD but your CD fails then try the original Windows CD to make sure you don't have some other problem.

Second, If you want to try removing RAID you could just try changing it over in the BIOS and see if it boots. For me Windows would BSOD but some people have changed over without a problem. If it does not start then just change it back. From what I have read there is very little benefit in removing the RAID when you don't use it so a complete reinstall is a lot of work for little or no return

Of course back up your data before messing with the drive access, I did see one guy that had data corruption that was attributed to changing it over

 

Just ordered my R4. I noticed some discussion of the R3 bios being unlocked for overclocking. Has the R4 bios been unlocked by anyone yet? I cant wait try overclocking on this beast.

 

you need to get the 3720 or 3820 to have limited overclocking in the bios

3720 will get you 40,39,38,38 (4ghz with single core in use, 3.9ghz with 2 cores in use, 3.8ghz with 3-4cores)

the 3820 will get you 100mhz higher 41,40,39,39

 

Just tap on F12 at the boot screen (large Alienhead) and select CD/DVD from the resulting boot menu. It should automatically boot from the CD and proceed to flash the vbios; answer Y (yes) to any inquiries. The fact that you are running Raid 0 has no effect on this procedure.

 

This isn't the case for me. I can clearly see the alien head doesn't change at all when I change the brightness. But if I do anything that causes the display to turn off, the alien head turns off with it.

I've tried 1) using an external display 2) closing the lid (set it to do nothing in the Windows power options) 3) trying to switch to projector mode with Fn+F6

What's going on? From what I can find, this isn't normal and it should stay on like Ferrari353 says. Looks like I should call Dell?

 

I just got mine a few hours ago and love it so far. How Can I disable the intel graphics? I dont want to use them at all!!!!

 

i thought the alienhead went off the backlight of the LED screen itself, there is no dedicated led light for the alienhead. They stopped that on the r3 and r4

 

i tried that 5 times... and i also changed my boot order and it still booted right into windows 7.

 

Aye, there's not much you can do to extend the time on battery. A full 2 1/2 hours is actually pretty good really. A second battery is an option, but they're not particularly cheap (though it's all relative and you chose to buy a 2k+ notebook so an extra hundred isn't so bad).

 

If that was the case, the alien head would change in brightness along with the backlighting brightness. And many people have confirmed that their R3's alien head stays on with the screen off.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/614474-problem-cover-light.html
Laptop Forums and Notebook Computer Discussion - View Poll Results

Judging from that poll, it seems like really bad quality control for this part.

Can anyone else with an R4 contribute to this? Does your alien head stay lit up with the screen off?

 

So is there anyway to make it run off the amd card only?

 

wth? my alien head increases/decreases brightness with the screen, i dont have a seperate LED for the head. Im ticked

 

Try fn + F7

 

Yeah, this is weird. Since mine doesn't change with the brightness, I'm gonna assume there's a separate LED in there. But the fact that it still turns off with the screen must mean it's wired wrong or something.

 

Beginning to look like another subtle M3 to M4 change - although still not what people want. My R3 just stays on at the same brightness as long as the machine is on.

It would be so much nicer if it was a separately controlled LED so we could configure it for things like sleep and charging.

Sadly it's looking like Dell are dropping some of the 'magic' of Alienware for cost cutting. First the leather(?) binder, now the hat and the SP/DIF converter. Don't know about the nice padded sticker (great back cover for the phone!) but I guess I'll find out as my replacement R4 arrives on Wednesday. At least they still have a stock of the mouse pads.

Of course none of these things make my machine 'better' but it's nice opening the box

 

for 7990m?

 

I say at least wait until Computex is over. Just 1 more week.

 

I would have to conclude that the burn failed to create the bootable disk. What did you use to burn the .iso to the CD?

 

Don't most gamers have padded mousepads with wrist guards of some sort?

 

I'd go for it. The rumor mill is saying the the 680m will fall short, either way though, you will have a very capable gaming card.

 

Go for the 7970, its the most powerful mobile graphic card out right now for a reasonable price, and you can't go wrong with getting it. It will serve you well for hardcore gaming, let alone casual work Well, unless you're ready to bank big bucks for something like 7990m or gtx 680m (which, as stated above, seems to fall short of the 7970m performance-wise according to rumors, and will definitely still be priced higher), go for the 7970m. you won't regret it.

 

I agree there nVidia pulled the gtx 680m back delaying the launch because the 7970m was so much faster, so I would advise go with the 7970m as well! Amd have done a great job with the 7970m.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

The latest rumor is that the 680m pulls 3k more in vantage compared to the 7970m and will cost $200-300 more

 

Yeah, just another posy acc that makes it look nice though.

I just got the Targus coolerpad that Dell sell now with the MX17. Amazon for half the price and I thought I'd give it a try (to replace the wood blocks!)
Well, works just fine. Same sort of temps as propped, maybe slightly lower but biggie... my laptop returns to my lap! it has a nice soft cover so is comfortable and I can put the wireless KB down.

 

Sounds better than recent reports, I just hope they (Nvidia) aren't pushing it too hard in the firmware to compete now AMD has taken up the flag...

 

Would if help if I let my battery fully die then get a full recharge on it.. to help increase life?

Thanks!

 

That technique isn't good for lithium ion batteries. There is no need to do that. Lithium Ion batteries like little charges all the time

 

Thanks

My R4 came in yesterday and everything is great! I'm amazed with this sytem.

 

As of yet that is still a rumour I some how doubt it would be that much better, if it is I will be highly impressed if they pull that off!! Till then 7970m still tops the log

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

My m17x R4 will be arriving tomorrow, and I have a few questions.

1. I want to install an SSD drive, so I need to put it in the second bay, clone the drive, then switch the boot drive to the SSD, correct?
2. I bought corsair vengeance 16gb 1600mhz RAM, Can I plug this in and go?
3. Will the SSD or RAM void my warranty?
4. If it ever needs to be sent in to repair, do I need to send it in with the original RAM and 7200rpm drive?
5. WHat kind of frame rates will I have with the 675 with 3d enabled. Lets say crysis 2.
6. I have a SLI GTX260 setup in my desktop, will the GTX675m be more powerful, or less powerful?

 

Do you have a cloning kit? This way you can clone your drive externally, be faster, the ram yes you can plug in and go, do you plan on taking the stock ram out, you might have to use the ram slots under the keyboard , in terms of warranty I'm not sure, maybe consider asking an alienware sales person, are you keeping your HDD as a storage drive? For the 675m performance here is a link you can check for the cards performance : http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-675M.70785.0.html
Hope I could help

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

So there are 4 slots for ram? Can I leave the stock ram in and add the 16gb ram sticks, or is that just a bad idea? I was going to use the 7200rpm to hold all my movies and install my games on, then use the SSD for all programs I use a lot.