*OFFICIAL* M17xR3 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 1

I actually prefer Eyefinity to 3D, so, if I buy an R3, I'm probably going to go with the (supposedly more powerful) 6870 over the GTX 460 and the 120hz screen.

Rather run 3 monitors as one big game than have 3D on a single small 17" screen.

 

In this case I would wait for the 6970M. No one here has stated that the 6870M is more powerful than the 460M quite the opposite.

 

One other thing I forgot to mention of interest, the AW rep tried to sell me the r3 with the 6970 gpu. He said it was not on the site but could be ordered on the phone. He also said the 6970 is not available with the 120hz monitor so obviously no 3D.

 

Agreed.

Actually, the 6870 hasn't been reviewed yet or benchmarked yet. At least, not that I'm able to find. So nobody can accurately say.

According to Notebookcheck, the 6870m is a 5870m with a slightly slower clock speed. Being that the 5870m is much faster than the GTX 460m, I would assume the 6870m would be as well.

The increased VRAM on the 460m isn't going to help much in regular gaming, but in 3D I'm guessing it will be quite useful.

 

Are you sure it isn't the no interest for 12 months open contract? When dud you buy? The offer is there in the Canada site right now and it says it's a completely open plan. It can be paid off when you receive the machine in full with no penalty or admin fee.

 

I have the 12 month no interest/penalty/etc plan on my DPA or there is no way I would have stuck my R3 on it. Dell has gotten too much from me for me to pay them interest on top of it lol.

 

According to recent benchmark the 460M is on par or sometimes slightly faster in terms of FPS on most games such as Farcry2, GTA4, etc.

Therefore the 6870M being with slower clock speeds than the 5870M will most likely be not as fast and therefore not as good as the 460M.

It seems the 460M does less good on synthetic benchmark but better in games. Could be due to drivers.

You can see the results here:

Farcry 2

Call of Duty Black Ops

 

Interesting, it appears your right! I can't find any websites that I've ever heard of before that have benchmarked the 460m yet, but the tiny websites I see show the 460m about equal/better in some things. Toms Hardware shows 460m SLI outperforming 5870 xfire pretty significantly. That being said, the extra 512mb of RAM on the Nvidia cards is going to have more affect in an SLI configuration and increase its performance over the 1GB shared between the two 5870's. Which doesn't change the point, but explains some of the confusion I have over the 460m's in SLI beating the 5870's in xfire so significantly.

 

Oh, it's open?
That's epic. Thanks for shutting me up. I was getting annoyed with my whining!
Great savings still in tact then I suppose~

 

WRT to the 6870 the clocks can be upped of course, especially since they're not that much lower than the 5870(all of 25mhz), which scores better in many games over the 460. They're comparable cards and both nice. One could not go wrong in picking either.

 

I completely agree. I think both cards are fine (although it may seem I hate the 460m given my history in this thread). The biggest difference is going to be: Do you want 3D or Eyefinity?

Regardless, I'm going to wait until the more powerful cards come out (hopefully soon). See what Nvidia card they put in (if they put one in.. nothing confirmed yet) versus the 6970m.

 

That's so good! But something about 485m?

 

The 485m in the R3 is nothing but speculation at this point, the 6970 is confirmed we just don't know when. For all we know Nvidia may release something else, Alienware may scrap the idea of the 485m for some reason, or it may have just been a rumor on the card ever going into this rig. Right now the only 3 cards we know of for certain are the GTX 460m, 6870, and 6970.

 

Don't forget about Optimus, I haven't heard any such GPU/IGP switching with the 6870, something that is important for such a prospective buyer as myself.

 

Oh, theres that, too.. Although, from what I've seen in the M11x section, Optimus tends to be a lot of trouble. Lots of driver issues, Punkbuster issues, having to create profiles for each game you play to make sure it uses the right video card. This, to me, isn't worth the increase in battery life. I'm not buying a 17" laptop for the battery life.

Of course, all these problems with Optimus will be ironed out over time with better drivers and more support.

 

whats the IGP switch for on the R3 then? I'm sure dell can work out a way for us to turn off the ATI GPU via hardware(button).

ATI also have switchable gaphics, it's just not automated. But with the power of SB IGP i would have it on IGP most of the time anyway.

 

Yeah I love 3D too. Not a fan of the active shutter implementation.

When Dell uses the autoparallax LCD for 3D I'm sold lol!

 

According to the Documentation which has been available for several days now and linked to in post#1, the 485M is NOT an option.

Will it become an option at a later date? Nobody but Dell knows.

Until its actually posted by Dell on the configuration page, its nothing but speculation and we wont be entertaining it here in this thread as it will only side track the thread with benchmark discussion based on other OEM GPU data listed on other sites.

Chat up the NVIDIA 485M here in the Graphics Card section of NBR - this linked thread is on the GPU itself and not limited to a specific manufacturer:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/545881-nv-gtx485m.html

Questions on this can be sent via PM to me.

Thanks.

 

seems like the sandy bridge CPu's really run hot. stock 2920XM got to 93c with the new clevo.

Tests - Schenker Notebook XMG P501 - Extreme: Core i7-2920XM + Nvidia GTX 485M auf notebookjournal.de

I hope the R3 will be able to keep the temp to below 80 at stock.

 

Batboy: Could we have a review section on the first post? And could you please put this in. took me ages to look for it again.

Spill - Dette er verdens råeste laptop - ITavisen


thanks

 

From DirtyScrubz @ M17x-R2 Wikia Forum • Index page

Throttlestop Killed

"They've created a new read only register in their SB CPUs that ultimately controls total power consumption. Read only means that it is impossible for any software to write to this register to increase the upper power consumption limit. Here are the official Intel docs that explain this new register.

Figure 14-19. MSR_PKG_POWER_INFO Register

MSR_PKG_POWER_INFO is a read-only MSR. It reports the package power range
information for RAPL usage. This MSR provides maximum/minimum values (derived
from electrical specification), thermal specification power of the package domain. It
also provides the largest possible time window for software to program the RAPL
interface.



I thought the old Turbo Power Current Limit register that I have been using was still there but after opening my eyes, this is fully explained for the older processors but for Sandy Bridge, this register is gone. The Turbo Power Limits will be adjustable in Sandy Bridge but Intel has now set the upper and lower limits and has the final say when it comes to how much power their CPUs can consume and therefore, how far you can overclock them.

....

Early clock modulation testing shows that this has completely changed too in Sandy Bridge. The multiplier drops in steps of 3 and when ThrottleStop requests that the CPU increases the multiplier, that request is ignored. Some more testing still needs to be done but this isn't looking very good at all."

There you have it folks, Intel has royally screwed the enthusiasts. I have previously expressed my concerns about Sandy Bridge before it's release and said that unless Kevin found a way to make TS work, SB would offer nothing to 920/940xm owners and unfortunately this has become a reality. For now, 920xm/940xm in combination with TS will remain the performance kings for the mobile market.

Sorry M17x-R3 owners, I hate to be the bearer of bad news."

 

TBH, never used it in my R2's so dont think I will miss it anyway

 

I used it when benchmarking but not outside of that.

 

Heya Mandrake, you gonna be doin the "official" review for NBR of the RR3 ?

 

i guess i wont be needing that 2920XM upgrade afterall.

now my hope lies on 22nm iby bridge chips being compatible with the R3 motherboard.

any reason why it wouldnt? would ivy bridge require a chipset?

 

If time permits. Maybe I'll do a video review.

 

HM67 = IGP/Extreme Procs <---fixed.
PM67 = Dual GPU/Extreme procs

I believe it's been confirmed that the R3 has HM67.

Edit: To make things a bit more confusing this doesn't mean an extreme proc won't work. Just not officially supported. Someone would have to try it and I wouldn't expect Dell to sell it with the R3.....I could be wrong.

Edit2: Intel does say it's supported: Intel HM67 Express Chipset - Overview

 

So the HM67 will have locked TDP while the PM67 wont?

do you think the HM67 will support ivy bridge processors? did previous intel 'ticks' require a new chipset and motherboard?

 

Are you confusing processor with the chipset? Normally (I don't expect it to be different) you need an extreme proc and bios compatibility (or software like throttle stop) to adjust TDP.

1st gen and 2nd gen i7 procs use different chipsets, I expect ivy bridge to have a new chipset also.

 

Wow, so no TDP Adjustment for the new SB mobile CPUs? Without that the 920XM with TS will walk all over the 2920XM. I think. I mean being able to run all cores at 26x takes a lot of power. For bencmarking I was using 120W+ So near desktop CPU TDP. It's going to be interesting to see some benchmarks, especially from you Mandrake. Hopefully they are not as locked down as they seem to be. Single GPU with limited OC ability doesn't sound like mch fun to bench. Though I only OC anything when benching, but still like knowing I have the option.

 

If there is anyway to cut production costs (and you know money is always involved) then I'm sure Intel will stick it to the "enthusiasts". We are only a small percentage of users.

 

I would not get all doom and gloom just yet

You never know what someone is going to find to increase overclockability

 

I could br wrong but I believe intel said ivy bridge will share the same socket as sandy

 

Socket is not the same as chipset. Chipset is the chip on your motherboard. They can share the same socket but use different chipsets.

 

But the same socket doesn't always mean it's going to be compatible/usable 5abivt. There are too many factors that Intel could change to require new hardware to use Ivybridge. And I'm with scook on not getting gloomy for OC'ing yet, when the i7 first came out most people had no idea how the chips were going to overclock, a lot of non extreme CPU's in the Arrandale line are now OC'able. Give it time and I'm sure someone will find a loophole.

 

Ok I don't know if it's just me but I must be reading the numbers wrong. 6850 is slightly underclocked from the 5870 and the 6970 will be much better?

Anyone talking about the wireless hd streaming. Does that come with the system yet?

 

The 6850 is supposed to be a slightly underclocked 5870 with better DX11 attributes/performance, but until someone actually gets one in their hands there's no telling what it will be for certain. The 6970 is supposed to be a decent amount better but who knows when it will be available for the R3. The wireless hd streaming is another one that isn't available yet and no one knows when it will be available.

 

Here is the English translation.

Google Translate

 

Well Dell has something up their sleeve. Looks like benchmarking heaven. They even allow XMP memory profiles....too cool.

 

The 6870 is the card you guys are talking about. 6870 (at least in desktops) is a 5850 replacement card. 6870 mobile card is a 5870 with slower clock speeds. 6970 mobile (and desktop) is the replacement card for the 5870 which should be much more powerful than the 5870.

Wireless HD Streaming is supposed to be built into the R3. According to the video on Alienware's website at least. I don't see it in the tech specs or anything, though. Weird.

 

I also noticed the XMP profile support, I agree, very cool indeed.

 

http://i.imgur.com/lcUSe.png


Some basic numbers for those hung up on GPU choice. As you can see, the surface differences between the 6870 and 5870 are minimal and all three (with the 460) fall in around the same with each other. You could think of the 68 as a 58 with more support.

 

Your chart means nothing since it has no benchmark numbers for the 6870. It positioned it there just because of the clock speeds being close to the 5870. Please do NOT mis-inform the novice. Until we have numbers for the 6870M and since in games the 460M tends to be somewhat faster than the 5870M it is safe to say the 460M is a better bet than the 6870M.

 

My 1600 memory is XMP. I'll be able to test the functions right away.

 

If that works as intended, it's very cool and many will like this feature.

 

I think you are being a little harsh......I completely ignored the benchmark scores and just used it as a reference for architecture and clock speeds......for that purpose it is a pefectly suitable table

 

I was thinking 1866 actually

Have you looked at Thaiphoon Burner Mandrake? John turned me onto it - can be very valuable for memory overclocking

 

Showing the particulars of the cards (clock speeds, memory, etc) does nothing to misinform novices. It does, however, show a ball park figure. People have been saying that a 6870 is slower than a 5870, the graphic shows how much (little) slower it is.

 

I looked at it early on. Besides needing to buy a license it only worked in XP. I don't know if they've upgraded it since.

 

It works in windows 7 now. I have used it on my laptop (sadly though the FSB limitation appears to be voltage and not memory )