M18x R1 Tear Down Video: Ivy Bridge CPU Heatsink and 7970M CrossFire Upgrade

Fantastic work Fox! I'm wondering if 680m SLI will work in our R1s as the 580m SLI had issues in the m17xR2 when ichime was trying it due to SLI certificate. I really hope it's plug and play like 7970m

Sent from my iPad3 using Tapatalk HD

 

Thanks, gents. Yes, the new CPU heat sink does a notably better job with load temps. The stock Dell/Alienware "paste" (actually a solid pad) works excellent on the CPU and GPU heat sinks.

I also hope GTX 680M SLI will be compatible with the M18x R1. I expect it will be, and I am very eager to see how well it performs.

I was asked in another thread how well 7970M handles ultra settings, so I added a short Battlefield 3 clip to the second post to provide an example.

 

Mr. Fox !!!

Where did u buy those cards? And how much ???

Where do you live ??? !!!

 

This is the best config on earth .
ty desktop gpu is slower and + these gpus consuming 200W

 

Does anyone know how UK owners can get a set of these video cards?

Are there any Alienware / Dell employees that are UK based in this forum that can help with purchasing these and other items like the US based guys?

MP

 

To my knowledge, there are no "official" UK Dell guys on the forum. Regarding acquiring the new cards, I think Dell's official line on it, at the moment, would be that they are not supported in the R1. That is probably down to back-orders for the R2 - Dell will prioritise new systems getting these cards over upgrade requests, obviously so they can sell more R2's - no good shorting out the supply of gpu's for new machines to favour upgrades as its not a good move for business.

I imagine at some point, they will be officially available as an upgrade but until such a point, it may well be "hit & miss" in finding a rep who would be able to order you a pair....

 

Amazing job as always Brother Fox. As tempting as this is, I don't think I'm up to dismantling my baby yet.

 

Nice vid, congrats on the upgrade!

...but (I'm not sure whether this has already been mentioned in this thread) you should really use an ESD mat and wristband for such jobs... a towel is one of the most ill-suited working surfaces for this kind of work.

And also... always, always, always (!!!) perform a power drain before working on the inner of your system.

Would be too bad if you accidentally damaged or killed some components on such a nice system.

 

Very nice guide. Any graphically detailed differences between the 7970M CFX and 580M SLI? I'm deciding on whether or not to keep a nVIDIA based desktop or AMD based notebook.

 

Thats a shame. We could really do with someone inside Dell to help us out like the US guys have.

MP

 

Thank you for the advice on the precautionary measures. I will add annotations on the power drain since that is not demonstrated in the video. In 20+ years of working on computers, you would think that I would own an ESD mat and wrist band by now. I need to buy them. You're correct, it would be a shame to cause damage to such a nice system.

Yes, the graphics are not nearly as "lush" as NVIDIA. A lot of depth and detail is missing and games look more cartoonish. I had forgotten how much improvement there is in the display quality using NVIDIA. It's not a massive difference in most conditions, but it is noticeable. In some ways, other than the insane performance increase, nothing has changed since 6990M CF.

One thing that I think is a nice improvement from AMD is CCC's new application profile utility. Although it lacks configuration ability, it is nice to have. It's similar to NVIDIA Control Panel application profiles minus the ability to tweak things.

 

Dell Bill B is working on it - it's likely to take some time in setting up an EMEA point of contact so that we can have the kind of "go to guys" that those in the US & Canada have for sales.

 

Great guide Bat!

 

Who, LOL?

I'm not BatBoy, but I do miss the guy. He'll be back... just busy with other things right now.

 

Classic! - 10char

 

Okay, thank you. I'm ditching the 7970M CF then.

 

When you're using it every day, you take it for granted. I noticed a major difference in display quality moving from 6990M CF to 580M SLI, but then it became the norm. Going from 580M to 7970M the difference is not as dramatic as the improvement from 6990M to 580M was. It's not a deal-breaker for me because the 7970M horsepower makes up for a lot of it, but it peaks my interest even more as to what 680M SLI may potentially bring to the table. It remains to be seen, of course. Even if 680M performs almost identically and is not appreciably more powerful, it will be a worthwhile upgrade for the improved display quality, PhysX and Cuda support, etc. If I had no interest in benching and only cared about gaming, I would miss the 580M SLI probably more than I do at the moment. I am still very infatuated by the performance.

 

Just came across this thread, I'm amazed by the fact that Dell have gone forward to include the 3-pipe heatsink we saw in the R1 prototypes.

I'm in the same position as you Brother Fox, the performance of the 7970m was astounding and truly impressive but I did not have the same feeling moving from 580m to 7970m compared to when I moved from 6990m to 580m even though the performance jump was much more noticeable. My 7970m is just sitting around gathering dust at the moment awaiting to ideal buyer.

I will be getting a M17x R4 soon when the 680m comes out. I don't care how it performs or costs compared to the 7970m, I'm not paying for it (it will be a warranty replacement ) and my work just can't be without CUDA, plus I'm a graphics junky so I love to have all the bells and whistles even if it destroys my framerate

 

I guess Dell actually listened to some parts of the "what users want in the M18x R2" thread.

Im with you on the whole "graphics" thing - how things look on screen is more important to me than benchmarking. Not saying benching isnt fun as it obviously IS fun but I am also a graphics junky and love how my 580m's display images etc. - coming from 6990m's, it was a real eye-opener to what the differences were actually like. If someone told me prior to experiencing it, I might have just said "yeah yeah" and passed it off....truth is that Nvidia does do a better job of image representation.

Although I probably wont upgrade this rig, depending on how the 680m's fair, I may well just sell up and start over....

 

Odd to hear about the graphics "difference" between AMD and Nvidia. Perhaps it unique to the mobile side? I have a rig with GTX 680s in it and I have a rig with Radeon 7970s in it (desktops) and there's not a whole lot of difference there. I'm even using 120hz screens exclusively, so there isn't a difference there, either.

 

After looking at a review of 680SLI vs. 7970CF using the latest drivers there is no difference really, just as you say. In fact 7970CF is catching up to 680 SLI. I still decided to go with nVIDIA though...

 

Well, I notice less visual detail than what I see with NVIDIA. Smoke, water reflections, particles and textures, especially things like trees and grass, just look a whole lot better to me with the NVIDIA cards. Depending on what you're looking at, some elements are completely absent. If you don't know they're present you're not going to miss anything.

In all fairness, I am waiting to see what proper drivers will do for the 7970M, as that could really change things. The only driver that works well at the moment is Catalyst 12.5 beta and it's not well optimized for this new GPU.

I was pretty blown away by the heat sink when I first saw the photos posted. It is doing a marvelous job and it looks identical to my 3-pipe R1 prototype. I set them next to each other and could not see any differences. I wonder why they never released it with the M18x R1?

 

Does someone know where to get those 7970m Xfire ?

 

Try to call in Alienware tech support and ask them. The last time I tried they quoted me around 600$ per card without heatsinks or anything, and that was about a month ago. Then again you may get the tech support agent that tells you they can't sell it to R1 owners.

 

Probably just down to cost as there is alot more copper in the triple.....

 

Reminder: To enable overclocking and proper CrossFire functionality, it is necessary to change all of the EnableCrossFireAutoLink DWORD values to 1 and all of the EnableULPS DWORD values to 0 in the registry.

 

MR. fox
how much did u pay for 2x 7970 ?

 

A 7970M CrossFire setup will run in the neighborhood of $1,250. Prices can fluctuate and you may be able to work a better deal through direct contact with a sales rep.

 

is there anyone live in LA know how to upgrade GPU?

 

haven't read into this yet but have the incompatability issues been resolved? i assume that we just need an official driver support for this to work in the R1 or is it something deeper?

 

Thank you! This is just what I needed, but now that the gtx680m is coming out I want to upgrade my 6990m xfire to gtx 680m sli. Is this possible? Can you do a quide for this as well?

 

You're welcome. Glad you like it. The guide would be exactly the same except you would be using NVIDIA parts. There is no difference in the process. If I get GTX 680M SLI, I would be glad to do another guide. I am almost certain it will be totally possible, but it is an assumption until it is actually done. I definitely hope so.

 

Hi
So once u get two 680Ms in hand just put two alienwares on table and run benchmarks same time one alien with 2x 7970M and 2x 680M
That will be awesome !

 

That would be really nice to have one of each, but I don't have an extra $4,000 to buy a spare M18x.

 

jesus .. how much you recon it gonna cost? 680M ? roughly ..

 

Hi, my name is Mr. Fox, not Jesus.

Probably not a whole lot more than 7970M CF... a little bit more, I'm sure, but we don't know until we see it. It depends on what your definition of "a little more" is and whether you are willing to pay extra for owning the best. Whether it will actually be better in terms of performance is also unknown at this time. We will have to wait to find out.

I was responding to GalaxySII asking me to put two systems next to each other for comparison, so to buy a second M18x configured similar to mine would be in excess of $4,000.

 

OK mr fox
Can I ask you what performance u got with SSDs in RAID ?
I'm bit concern cos in video I have seen crucial M4s ..
Did u swap them with 2x Agility?

 

The Crucial M4 is an overall better performer. I've had trouble deciding to choose performance or storage space. I have double the drive space with the Agility 3 and that ultimately won out over an edge in performance the M4 SSD RAID0 offered. It was a tough decision since I am a speed enthusiast. The Agility 3 excels only in compressible data read/write speeds. I think the M4 is also more reliable. Even the WEI score for disk data transfer rate drops from 7.9 with the M4 to 7.7 with the Agility 3.

 

And you know why?
because you suppose to NOT use RAID with ANY SSD !
Intel hasn't released rapid storage technol. software that WILL handle TRIM in RAID .. It should be out .. matrix is 1 year old now and Intel is quite behind with this!
So I recon NOT to use SSDs in RAID for now..
I have reinstalled deleted overwrote plenty times m4 and it is STILL 7.9(no RAID)
thing is people watching read and write speeds while they should look at 4K speed cos that is used often in windows..

 

Thanks Mr. Fox! I will bookmark this for reference if/when I put 680m's in my m18x.

 

Says who?

The M4 is overall better performer in a single drive or RAID0 configuration. The WEI score does not change with RAID0 with HDD or SSD.

I (and several other forum members) am already using a desktop version of Intel RST (11.1.0.1006) that appears to be passing the TRIM command to the drives. Based on the improved read/write performance, I believe it is working correctly for us.

See the recent update in post #1 (near the bottom of post #1) on this thread for more info on the version of RST we are using.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...llation-questions-troubleshooting-thread.html

 

Looks like u have 11.xxx new version of RST !! wow ?!?!
on intel web is 10.8.0.1003 ..
Where did u get that version from ? is it JUST for DESKTOP ?
Can I have the link ?
Is it possible to install 4 SSDs in alien laptop M18x and make RAID 0 ?
Thnx in adv.

 

Yes. Its a desktop version of RST but it works fine on our mobile platforms right now. I think Fox posted the link in his above post - if you cant see it, try this link - you want the bottom one of the three listed.

You may well be able to install 4 SSD's in a raid on the R2 (x3 in the caddy, replace the optical drive and put a SSD in there) but I wouldnt advise it, quite simply because two of those ports will be Sata II and not Sata III so your raid would only work at Sata II 3gbps.

Your best bet for a raid on the R2 would be between the top and bottom ports on the caddy. That would get you Sata III 6gbps performance - assuming you have Sata III drives.

 

Hi aah thnx yes yes the link worked ..
I already downloaded 11 version on intel via google

Aaah pity .. and What about M18X R3 ?

Oh yeah I have 2xm4 128g SATA III
Someone selling M18X R3 on ebay.. that one MIGHT support SATA all over connectors .huh

 

The limit to 2 ports at SATA 3.0 is the chipset, not the laptop. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge only have 2 SATA 3.0 ports regardless of the motherboard or OEM.

When did they invent time travel? M18x R3 has not been released to my knowledge.

 

In that case seller is lying .. Just as I thought .. And I was planning to buy this !
I asked him about that I told him that R3 doesn't exist ..
He said it is written there.. He sent me very nice pictures ..
eBay - The UK's Online Marketplace

 

I think the seller is either lying or just confused. Given the SB CPU, I would assume it's actually an r1. I'm VERY leery of buying computers on eBay (just my $0.02). Plus, I think one of his pictures is a marketing picture of the m17x-r2, lol

 

Omg R3 first landed on Ebay Well from seller ratings (1) its easy to understand

 

No they ar not marketing pics
he sent me few over email ...
And he prefers local pick up

 

Yeah - I saw that one - that's definitely an m18x, but the other picture he had at the top of the page (see attached) was a studio-type picture and not the same laptop (notice the column of TactX keys missing on the left). That's what I was referring to.

It looks like it's in good shape...