Potential purchase question

Hey all,

I am about ready to drop kick my Asus G73JH-A1 to the curb and am seriously considering pulling the trigger on a M17x-R2.

I wouldn't be getting crossfire so I am not so worried about the power issues I have been reading about. However I am curious as to the current status of the VBIOS.

From what I have been able to gleen reading through many of the threads here you can't run drivers from ATI on this machine currently, correct? I know there is a beta VBIOS out but I didn't see any indication as to if that actually fixed this.

Can someone confirm / deny if the beta VBIOS allows you to run reference 10.8 drivers from ATI? If it doesn't has there been any word on if Dell plans to actually fix this?

 

If you are not planning on getting a dual gpu setup no point going with m17x unless you want the 1200p RGB lcd. Usually for beta drivers that are not released by dell you have to do a work around to have the drivers install.


NOTE: The ATI drivers require a small modification to be installed properly. This can either be done manually by doing the following steps:
a) download the driver through the ati utility
b) let the drivert extract
c) at the installation window of the driver press cancel.
d) Now, navigate to the place you have installed the driver. This is usually "C:\ATI\Support\xx-x_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc", where xx-x stands for the driver version. In the case of the driver version 10.6 that path would be: "C:\ATI\Support\10-6_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc".
e) Once in that folder, go to the Config folder. Inside, you will find a file called "InstallManager.cfg".
f) Right click on that file -> open with... and select notepad.
g) Locate the line where it says "WorkaroundInstall=false"
h) change this line to "WorkaroundInstall=true"
j) save the file and exit notepad. Now go to the driver installation folder (e.g. the parent folder of the current folder)
k) Run set up


http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/488201-new-m15x-owner-information.html

 

Thanks for the reply.

Yea I would be interested in the m17x for the 1200p RGB screen (just too nice to not be).

So with the below hack you can run the reference drivers? Thats good news!