Pre purchase Questions

Hey there!

I have been looking at purchasing an alienware m17x and after looking around I have been somewhat overwhelmed with information and questions.

Heres a few of my questions:

If any of you could answer these that would be excellent! Also, How do you all like your m17's?

Oh and, Hello!

 

some upgrades are worth it and some are not. Premium warranty service is worth it, $150 for 1TB raid 0 500gb HDD's is worth it, the upgraded LCD is worth it. $1000 for a 920XM when it's $500 on ebay is not. In any case you're guaranteed 4GB of ram, a 5870 and a lot of room for expansion.

no product has 100% satisfaction rates, otherwise we wouldn't have a forum to talk about and post problems in nor customer service.

The only way to purchase a R1 is used these days, as dell has acutally removed it from the purchase list officially sometime earlier this week. It was the Revision 1.0 of the M17x which had Nvidia graphics cards and a C2D processors. The Revision 2.0 (or R2) is the current version.

the Core 2/nvidia is the R1 model mentioned above. There's absolutely no reason to purchase this laptop unless you need it asap (since they're NOS and are ready to ship)

if you can afford it, the i7 720 is the ideal choice. Four cores, and a 1333mhz fsb.

No, also, the 1200p is a RGB screen, compared to the 900P which is a traditional LCD, which translates not only into a higher resolution, but better in nearly every aspect, from color gamut, to light bleed. the $200 for the RGB is the best upgrade for the whole laptop some would argue. It would also cost *a lot* more to upgrade in the future than $200.

 

Hello there:

Heres a few of my questions:


Quote:
Ive been seeing allot of reviews that have m17x's built on prices around four thousand. Now, that is quiet large and I want to stay below 2500. (I have gotten what i believe a nice built planned already at 2200). Is going that high necessary or is the base price still decent?

Well it all depends on what you want to do with your machine! The base M17X is plenty powerful in my opinion and going Crossfire or going for the ultimate CPU really wont make a HUUGE difference granted you are not trying to squueze out every last drop of FPS out of it. Other things like HD, RAM can be upgraded later anyway so depending on your needs, should be completely fine.

Quote:
Also, I have seen some problems here and there, most people are absolutely happy with this product, yet every once and a while I see one or two people just pissed off and disappointed. Should I worry at all?

Well this is the nature of Forums. When people are uber happy, they wont bother posting most of the time, only people with issues will start researching on the internet and post issues, complain etc so take it with a grain of salt! Mine so far is completely fine

Quote:
Ive been hearing allot about different models (revisions?). What is the R1 and R2 and so on about?

R1 = Revision 1 and R2 = Revision 2 etc. It had a different motherboard supporting different processors and a Geforce onboard video card for saving battery life etc. It also had a CCFL screen as opposed to the RGB one. Go for R2.

Quote:
Whenever I go on online to build an idea of my laptop, I only get the i series of processors mixed with ATI (Which Iam perfectly fine with) yet while shopping on the site, I see two m17's. One with Core2/Nvidea and the usually i series/ATI. Whats going on here? Is there any major improvements to this? (Most reviews deal with Core2/Nvid builds)

Go with the ATI i-series, if you can go with the i7 720 as it is a quad core cpu and will handle mult-tasking beautifully.. .

Quote:
Also, What processor should I go with when building a system? (I will not go for the extreme option.)

See above:

Quote:
And lastly, Should I go for the the 1900 resolution for extra? Is there any significant performance drop because of this?

Well I would def go for the 1920 x 1200 screen as I intend to watch Blurays on it and the extra screen real estate is awesome. Also remember that upgrading the LCD later on in the future is not gonna be cost-effective and may not even be able to. the RGB LED screen is amazing!!!

You will def hit a performance drop in games as the GPU has to render that many more pixels, but then on the other hand I havnt played a game which was unplayable at native resoltuion. I play WOW, MW2 and BFBC2 at maxed out, full res and it works like a charm.

 

In my opinion, a base configuration is actually good, provided you have at minimum a dual-GPU configuration. There's no point in having an M17x if you're not going to utilise a dual GPU config; go for the M15x instead if you only want one GPU. Apart from that the other parts have little weighting on gaming; a CPU upgrade will only yield a very minor performance bump in most games, and that's where a lot of the extra cost comes from. Some games will see a big benefit from a stronger CPU however. The screen is a personal choice really, depending on what you want. I WOULD recommend the LED screen though, even though it is a little pricey.

Don't be worried because just a few people don't like it. Keep in mind that for every person who comes on the internet to rant, there are many others content with their laptop and have no issues; hence they never come online to speak about their issues. As there are none.

The R1 was the first M17x model that featured a Core 2 Duo processor and an nVidia 9400M integrated chip that could be switched to when you wanted extra battery life. The R2 model was released several months later featuring the mobile Core i7 processors as well as an LED screen option, and without the 9400M. The current model selling is the R2.

You're better off going with i7/ATi at this point. ATi have the strongest cards in the mobile market and at a lower price, for the time being at least. The Core2/nVidia models were the R1 models as explained above; the R2 has only been going with ATi cards as the best configurations.

In terms of the processor, if you're not going into high performance gaming then an i5 processor should perfectly suffice. If you have the money then I'd go for the i7 620 dual core processor which should completely satisfy you, and it's not that much extra, and should give the best performance for gaming at your budget.

The screen is a personal choice as I've said before. Playing games at the higher resolution of 1920x1200 will create a significance performance hit for higher quality, however the M17x with 4870 crossfire or 5870 crossfire should be more than enough to handle nearly all games out there at this level of detail. Of course you don't have the play games at this resolution; you could still for example play a game at 1440x900 on a 1920x1200 screen, if you wanted the extra framerates.

The 1920x1200 screen is more, really, for those who want extra screen room for normal Windows operation, such as when surfing the internet or doing office work and the such, as well as for watching blu-rays.

The RGB LED screen however gives a significantly better screen quality than a standard LCD screen so is definetely the option to go for if you have the money.

_______

I hope that answers all of your questions.

 

Wouldn't the i7 720 be a better choice due to it being a quad core and being the same price as the 620?

 

That's a decision I'm still debating. The i7 620M does have a higher clock, but the 720QM has, as Lozz said, four cores, a 1333mhz FSB and 6MB of cache.

 

It really depends on what you're using it for. Most games still use only 2 cores so will see more benefit out of the i7 620M, although in dual core usage the 720QM CAN turbo up, the 620M can turbo as well so the 620M can achieve monstrous speed for one- and two- core using games and programs.

 

Thanks for all the replys!

Though, I have another question.

Is it really worth getting two graphic cards? I'm sorry but adding over three hundred dollars for another card seems a tad overboard. For gods sake, the current 5870 is a true beast by its self.

I'm concerned with this as I really do want the higher reso screen, larger overall size, and 17inch display compared to the 15inch display of the m15x. And also, how customizable is these laptops? My friends and I build out own/sell our own desktops but laptops are a whole new spectrum. Is it better to go with base upgrades here and there and purchase the parts and install them separately and cheaper?

 

IMO if your planning on gaming get the Crossfire option. the 300 dollars extra is worth it.

You can always upgrade Hard drives, memory, and CPUs later if need be. but I would want the GPU's under Dells Warranty

 

QFT. By now I thought they'd have games that use those extra two cores, but they seem to be moving in the oposite direction. Less CPU more GPU.

Merk1b2, I highly suggest getting the 5870 CfX configuration. Well worth it.

 

Sounds great dave-p. Might wait for some sales (We got 4th july soon) and I will look at some SSD/Memory sets. I really want to manage all my cash and my budget to make this beast last.

EDIT:

Hey, is spending 2700 (pre-barter/discounts/etc) a good system?

 

If you're looking for the bigger screen then that is a reason to go for the 17".

But really, yes, one 5870 is a beast in its own right but still is fairly weak compared to two of them. A second card will seriously power it up. In comparison really...with one 5870, you could play Crysis on Very High at 1440x900 at around 30fps, perhaps more.. With two 5870s you could get 30fps on 1920x1200.

Getting crossfire for an extra $300 is not only well worth it but is actually a very good price for the massive boost you get. Any gamer will tell you this, except if you're on a very tight budget.

In terms of how customizable they are...well, they're about as customizable as a laptop gets. You can switch out the CPU, GPUs, RAM, and hard drive all yourself and WITHOUT voiding the warranty (providing you don't damage the machine in the process, and the part you add in yourself won't be under warranty from Dell). However, you won't be able to switch out the motherboard for a new one. Plus, buying GPUs for laptops aftermarket is very hard and very expensive especially for a crossfire config, you're much better off buying the two GPUs to start with.

Apart from the GPUs though you could essentially buy everything else base and add them all in yourself, as some people do. However, you would have to be very tech-confident to do this, and the saving (apart from the CPU, and even the CPU saving is little unless you're buying a very high end one aftermarket) won't be much.

 

@ the moment a computer doesnt need more then 3 cores to be up to date. So if you have four cores (core i7 620) your good for a while. if you want to be even more futureproof the core i7 720 (8 cores) is the best bet.