M18x Owners - Are You Pleased with Your Purchase?

Are you pleased with your M18x?

Would you go back and buy it again if you had the chance?

 

selling mine when kepler comes out w/ LGA 2011/AMD Bulldozer, but I have no regrets meanwhile even though I haven't received mine .

 

No, would wait for a faster gpu and better RGB screen.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O189nrainEE

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GPU temp issues, returning mine.

 

Bad GPU in mine so I'm returning and waiting it out.

 

Wow, this is making me scared. Is the temp issue really bad?

 

I think some are a little gun shy about the heat. Mine maxes in the 70's for most games after hours of play. Returning it before it has issues is in my opinion a bad idea.

To each his own but I really do not see this being an issue for most people. Played Crysis 2 for 4 hours strait card barely in the 70's on both gpu's, no freezes, flickering, or glitches just pure smooth gaming.

 

Played Civ 5 for hours yesterday and got to say I am loving it.

 

How did your M18X handle Civ 5 at later parts of the game?

 

If the machine isn't performing to expectations, especially with regards to hardware (as in bad GPU or bad temps), then it shouldn't be any worry to return it. People get on the fence about that, the time expires and then they spend years regretting their situation. Don't just return something because of something minor you don't care about, but if the hardware is bad, there is no shame in sending it back.

 

I'm still waiting to order mine. I watching for possible GPU heat issues. The last two gaming laptops I had both ended up having heat problems (Area 51m /w desktop P4, and XPS Gen2 /w 7800 Go) I'd hate to add a 3rd laptop to that list. If I do get the m18x, I will probably spend extra and go for the 4 year complete care.

 

Im extremely satisfied with my m18x. she is so sexy and its very quite. I love it.

 

Last night after a good 8 hours of gaming, mix of dragon age 2 and crysis 2 my gpu's averaged about 75 and 72. 0 heat issues 0 hiccups and pure smooth gaming bliss. I think the heat issues are being blown a bit out of proportion.

 

I think you're right. Either it's an isolated issue, or it's because Joker and others are pushing the GPU's to their absolute limits.

 

Could be a variation in hardware too. Hard to say. But do note that many folks are quite happy with the machine.

 

I suspect that most of the Pleased owners aren't spending much time on this forum. Instead they are playing with their computers or in some other way moving on with their lives. This a silent majority situation.

People with unsolved problems are much more likely to be on this forum looking for help and solutions.

 

Just to clear things up since there are misconceptions flying around: The M18x doesn't have thermal issues. My particular system is just behaving unusually by posting 10C higher temps for GPU 2 when that is not the norm. Thus I'm returning it. For those that are considering ordering, don't get hung up on the temperature issue, even with my GPU 2 running 10C hotter, the system is well within tolerances.

 

Thanks for clarifying for everyone Joker. I think it grew out of proportion only because it's such a new system and let's face it... the majority of the population doesn't even know the m18x exists. Dell hasn't exactly advertised it, sent out hardware for reviews, etc. All we truly have is this forum!

 

People should consider the fact that if 580m were to come out, knowing how Nvidia new cards are always overpriced, we would be looking at a price tag of no less than 800$ (if not the 900$ we saw on the 6970 for a couple of days) for probably 30% increase in performance or less.

6990m would most likely offer less performance than the 580m at a price tag around 600$ I'd say.

Of course, I'm just speculating.

Food for thought.

 

Also to echo Joker's points and clarify my earlier statement I've actually got a faulty GPU and it has nothing to do with temps. I actually noticed that my temps were not that bad GPU wise and are much better controlled than my previous 5870m that would cook away at 89-90 degrees.

This is basically what my desktop looks like anytime the GPU's get taxed and 3D Mark 11 is a barrage of craziness unfortunately. Working with support to either arrange a replacement or a refund and if the Nvidia rumors turn out to be true I'll order an m18x with the nvidia config (laptop rocks aside from this little gremlin I've got).

m18x bad gpu | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

boosted, looking at your video, I'm curious - did you try to re-seat the GPU's and verify the Crossfire cable was properly connected? You shouldn't have to on a new system, but its the first thing that came to mind when I saw your vid. Best of luck with the replacement/refund.

 

I took a gander underneath to see if anything was loose but in talking with CS they said it's best not to bust the whole thing open and just ship it back so they can have a look. It could be the Xfire cable as watching the logs of GPU2 it struggles and barfs frames all over when the laptop is in Xfire to the point where it actually hurts performance more when it's active than not.

Oddly enough that video is my "best" corruption as usually the whole screen glitches and you can't see a thing due to blurriness, corruption and the entire screen shifting 20% to the left.

 

WTH they told you to ship it back when you should have next day service? I would have told them I wanted to speak to a manager. That's not acceptable on a brand new system. Either that or you could have told them you wanted a new system expedited out to you. Trust me they can make those things happen. Having a rep with Dell does help because trust me my company has proven that Dell can do some amazing customer support if pushed on the issues.

 

It took them two days to even respond back to my initial request via email (was traveling out of province on business so I just emailed them). I'm still waiting for confirmation of the return and it's a holiday tomorrow so I'd assume Tuesday the ball may get rolling and I'll ring them again to push it along. I requested a return + refund simply because this is my second round with bad AMD mobile GPU's and they seem to leave a bitter taste in my mouth so I'll hold out for new nvidia options.

 

Man oh man... I hope my m18x doesn't have any issues right outta the box..

 

this forums starting to depress me lol so, i hope ill have an ok M18x. if not ill just go with another desktop and wait...

 

We early adopters usually take the brunt of it.

 

It's my first go round with Alienware but you bet should I have any major issues I will raise all kinds of hell and get "Michael" himself on the phone should there be serious problems down the road.

All joking aside my experience has been a good one. Other than missing my RGB-LED I love the M18x. Seems to be a really decent piece of hardware especially for an R1 Dell Product =)

 

No real issues. I got one of the graphic bugs at one point but it cleared up very quickly.

 

I would of had buyer's remorse if I had ordered. I think the m18x is a great machine but the performance just isn't that great considering the price. Mostly I'm referring to 6970m CF.

 

I am actually very happy with the performance and build quality of mine. It is about 2x the performance of my M17x R1 it replaced. As for the build quality and design, it is like they took all the complaints on the M17x R1/R2 and fixed them

The only thing that annoys me is the difficulty in accessing components - other than that this is easily a 10 out of 10

I would order it again for sure

 

I don't like the fact that in a year the graphics solution on the m18x will be out dated. This for me is a problem when investing 2.7k in a 6970m CF/2920xm laptop. I think with bulldozer and the nvidia 6xxx series and ati 7xxx series we are going to really start seeing more portability in power laptops. While the processing power of laptops is there, it's the gpu solutions that are still pretty weak and haven't caught up to desktop parts. I think that gap will be bridged however in the next couple of years.

 

ANY laptop GPU will be "outdated" in a year....if you wait a year for the new stuff....it will just be outdated the year after that. You will never have a top-end solution that remains at the top for longer than about 6 months.......that is true in both desktops and laptops. You are being a little naive if that is all that is keeping you from ordering. Allow me to put it in perspective for you:

Dual 6970m's is the power of CrossFireX Radeon HD 4890s from the desktop world but you have twice the vram, half the power draw, and optimized DX11 (much better DX11 than the HD 5000 series had).

 

I think it is always a matter of, "How long can you tolerate the computer you have?" The longer you can wait, the more money you have for other things.

At this point, I don't feel like tolerating my old m9750 anymore and I already have enough money for other things. I don't have an m18x yet because I hate paying full price for anything and Alienware doesn't have any discounts now.

 

They have discounts, they just do not advertise them, I got about $400 off my M18x

Talk to someone in person

 

I absolutely agree with all of this statement. In a year of course you are going to get a graphics bump in the notebook sector and then guess what? Direct X12, Windows 8, and Crysis 3 and oh look your nice shiny notebook performs about the same as last years with DX11, Win7 and Crysis 2.

Technology always pushes forward. If you wait to buy tech on a yearly basis then seriously you just need to pickup something in the 400 dollar range and use it to surf the internet and do general computing things such as office, excel, etc...

If you are a gamer and you want performance then a yearly cycle is absoutely not going to work. 6 Months is even iffy now as companies are upgrading their technologies at an ever quickening pace.

Moral of the story is if you wait to buy then you'll never buy.

 

Temps issues seem overblown. Furmark pushes cards far beyond what any actual card will do in any game (see: desktop issues w/ Furmark) - the more valid issue is if GPUs are way out of whack between GPU 1 and GPU 2 - such as 10 degree difference. Could be a bad heatsink for all we know.

What's any of that have to do with this thread?

As others have stated, if you're waiting, you'll always keep waiting. Wait 6 months, (possibly) get a new GPU, but lo and behold, Ivy Bridge is around the corner. Wait for Ivy Bridge? But wait, 28nm is only months away!

And, this is actually some of the best performance we've gotten from mobile GPUs in a while. The 485M is a downclocked full unit GTX 460 desktop, which is no slouch at all. The 6970M is a downclocked desktop 6850 (should be faster than the desktop 4890 actually), which is again also no slouch at all.

When SLI/CF are working, you're getting essentially near desktop high end single GPU performance in a portable form factor

 

Yep this is the first time I have ever considered a laptop because I feel mobile tech has finally gotten on par with desktop tech. Yes, desktop ultra-high end stuff can't be touched yet by the mobile form factor parts but we all know laptops have certain limitations... Once I read that the new 2920XM was on par with the i7 980x for everything but SUPER heavy multitasking... I was sold on finally gettin a laptop. I just had to wait for a dual-GPU one because I wanted the graphics to be just as good and have the game run just as smooth as it does on my desktop with its highly OC'ed GTX280! That card STILL cranks out very good framerates in todays games with high settings.

 

Dual 6970m's will stomp a single desktop GTX 280

They are doing about as well as my SLI GTX 275 used to (And the GTX 275 beat the GTX 280 almost all the time)

 

Good! This is why I bought an m18x! and the fact Im overseas in the middle east... can't exactly lug a desktop around over here... I wanted at a bare minimum the power my desktop has. Seems this thing will stomp all over my desktop! Which is all the better! For reference my desktop was scoring about 14k in 3dmark vantage. This thing hitting low 20k is makin me salivate.

 

That is low 20k stock with dell drivers (which are never the best ones)

The 6970m about equals a 4890 which is comparable to a GTX 275 which should edge out a GTX 280

 

6970M Xfire should match or beat a single desktop 6970 at stock clocks. Pretty impressive IMO.

 

Yep, and given the price (especially in Canada) it's a steal. The 485M and 580M? if they ever make their way into M18x, will easily set you back 1000$+ compared to the CF.

 

this is what i was saying. Laptop cpus have caught up to current gen desktop cpus but laptop gpus are still way behind. Gpus in laptops will eventually start catching up and the price will be warranted. But right now the gpus in these 2k laptops are sorely lacking and just plain not good enough imo. Once laptop gpus catch up to desktop gpus like intel has done with their cpus then i'd consider. This is assuming that cloud gaming doesn't take over and laptops like these are not reduced to workstations.

 

I would not worry about cloud gaming, bandwidth caps and latency will keep that from ever being a factor.

 

There really is no need to spend another 5 pages on why it doesn't fit for your needs KipCoo and I mean no disrespect there, but seriously, bottom line is that the M18x for it's price/size/gpu power, etc...simply doesn't give you what you need at this point so I'd say again to wait 3-4 years since your current rig is probably acceptable for what you need it for.

Most likely, gpu sizes would have dropped at least 1 or 2 notches and you may be able to get a 15" xfire which will very likely post double or more Vantage scores easy.

With technology, you will also be paying LESS for said system. For some folks still pushing old gfx cards that they can't even use to play games from 2 years ago, the M18x is a good option (eg: I'm running a 4yr old machine w/ 8600M GT and get a whole 6-8fps in Dragon age ).

Also, I don't know why people calling any technology an "investment". This "investment" can only DROP in value.

Your old forum post as to all the whys already repeated:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...cons-why-i-cant-pull-trigger-convince-me.html

 

I think cloud gaming is the future but it is still far behind. Technology is always improving so there is no reason to believe cloud gaming won't. I'm surprised the big developers do not embrace cloud gaming especially since a game released specifically for cloud gaming cannot be pirated.

 

I'm about sick of seeing these posts about how when they catch up. IT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Just based on thermal dynamics and power and those two factors alone will keep this from happening not even going into any other debate here.

If you think these cards in xfire performing like a single desktop 6970 isn't a feat of technology then I don't know what "Catching up" you need. Good for you that it's not where you want it but you post this in every thread to the point it's just baiting for responses.

As soon as you think a GPU in a laptop catches up with a Desktop GPU 1 to 1 then my friend the Graphics Industry is dead because bleeding technology in the market will always make it impossible to be a 1 to 1 comparison.

With that said I think we all need to write AMD and NVIDIA and tell them to STOP development on Desktop Graphics GPU's so that way in a year we can get that 1 to 1 comparison you want so much. I know this is a borderline rant but seriously come on.....

and to comment on Cloud computing it's great in theory but in practice it's not a feasible model for gamers / users but it is beneficial to the companies/developers as it does offer better piracy control but with EA's latest COD: Black Op's hitting over $1 billion in sales I think the current model is here to stay for at least the next 5 years if not more. Cloud computing takes that "ownership" feel that users like. I for one like to buy my games and know I own them and not rent them from a cloud service.

 

It's already caught up on the CPU side of things. Like many mentioned, the 2920xm is as fast or faster as the Intel 980x.

SSD Drives of course, and Ram is just as fast on the laptop as it is on the desktop.

All that's left is for the GPUs to catch up...and they will.