*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread

Welcome to the Alienware M18x Benchmark thread here on NBR. Here you can discuss benchmark results, tips, settings and of course post your results for the community to see...

There are several apps which can be used to benchmark your system. Following is a short list of some which are typically used. There are others and the core benchmarking members will have plenty of suggestions - so ask away.

• 
  FutureMark Benchmark Apps
• PCMark Vantage
• 3DMark 11 - Basic Edition
• 3DMark Vantage
• 3DMark 06
  
  Component Benchmark Tools
• POVRay v3.7 (multi-threaded version)
• Fritz 9 Chess Benchmark - standalone
• SuperPi Mod v1.5
• HDTune
• Everest Ultimate - Trial Version
• HWiNFO32
• MaxxPI²
  
  Game Benchmark Tools & Others
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat benchmark
• Resident Evil 5 Benchmark
• Unigine Heaven
• Crysis Benchmark Tool v1.05
• Alien vs. Predator DX11 Benchmark

A word of caution concerning benchmarking... While benchmarking / number chasing can be quite a bit of fun, please be aware that benchmarking your system is pushing your system to its limits. It can and will stress your components. Do so at your own risk - nobody is responsible for this but you.

Finally, as with all threads here on NBR, please remember the forum rules when posting. Any images over 500x500 must be resized. Images embedded within posts which are over 500x500 will be removed. Repeat offenders will receive infractions. There is no reason you cannot take a moment to resize or use thumbnail previews. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation with this.

Have fun folks and lets see how far you can push the M18x!

 

We'll open up the thread once the 18x units start the landing cycle...

 

Final Scores

3DMark 2011: 5692
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1213795
http://edge.imgur.com/7YESG.jpg

3DMark Vantage: 19087
http://edge.imgur.com/Z0f5T.jpg

3DMark 2006: 19348
http://i.imgur.com/9LZxK.jpg

HDtune:
http://i.imgur.com/3MNVf.jpg

Battery life with integrated graphics: 4h 58 min
http://edge.imgur.com/k8Xwl.jpg

 

Keep them coming!

 

Hi more benchs:

windows -> http://i.imgur.com/1jsrV.jpg

3DMark 2011:
http://i.imgur.com/ezzXo.jpg

3DMark Vantage:
http://edge.imgur.com/Z0f5T.jpg

3DMark 2006:
http://i.imgur.com/9LZxK.jpg

Battery time with integrated graphics
http://edge.imgur.com/k8Xwl.jpg

 

Can you put your specs in your sig so we can see what you are working with?

Also it is nice to have gpu-z and cpu-z in the screenshots if possible

And that battery life makes me awesomely happy

 

Hi people, new benchs:

3DMark 2011:
Result
http://edge.imgur.com/7YESG.jpg

3DMark Vantage:
http://edge.imgur.com/Z0f5T.jpg

3DMark 2006:
http://i.imgur.com/9LZxK.jpg

Battery life with integrated graphics:
http://edge.imgur.com/k8Xwl.jpg

 

You can just post the updates, don't have to give the whole set each time, just link back to the original post if you want to be comprehensive

Glad to see some benches on this finally, looking forward to more! Have any games you can bench with?

 

This thing is kicking R2s butt out of the box. Shame theres no voltage adjustment for the gpu. Thx for the benchmarks!

 

5hrs of battery life! With some tweaks it can be stretched to 6! Whoa! Starbucks - get ready!

 

Yeah I agree!

 

It's not quite the butt-kicking I was looking forward to, but scoring nicely nevertheless. The GPUs are scoring nicely. CPU is a few thousand points short of a 920XM+ThrottleStop though. Thank you for the benchmarks Sir! I hope you enjoy that beast!

 

NVM......to early on the game to say anything

 

He's running the slowest of the cpus available. Will be interesting to see what the faster ones score.

 

My predictions:

2920xm + xfire stock:

3dmark11: ~6400
vantage: 22-23k
06: 23-24k

OC'd will be through the roof.

 

you really think the 2920 will give those GPU's that much more juice?

now that will be interesting coming from some one who knows what he's talking about

 

I think the 6970M's are CPU starved. With the R3, no matter how much I kept raising the clocks, the scores topped off with the 2630qm. Those with slightly faster CPU's were getting more gains. So I may be overly optimistic a bit, but it should at least hit 6k 3dmark11 on stock. Anything less would be very disappointing. Not sure if the person that posted the scores in this thread was running the latest ATi drivers or Dell. If Dell, then we can expect some nice gains just from the latest 11.5 driver.

Edit: Just saw he had 8.850 aka 11.5.

 

you maybe right and crossfire always benefits from faster CPU's but i don't know how much with sandy bridge

 

sandy bridge is about 20% faster than lynnfield mobile

amd bulldozer is about 30% faster in theory than sandy bridge (according to amd)

ivy bridge should be about 30% faster than lynnfield


AMD might take the performance crown this year, it wont make it to mobile though, i dont think

 

Dell drivers for AMD Radeon HD 6970M is 8.80.6.1, A01

So it possible to install lastest 8.85 (11.5) provided by AMD ?

What is the procedure ?

 

How about we see where the Dell driver performs?

Concerning AMD Reference Driver installs, we'll have to wait and see. Nobody has posted info on this yet. A 'M18x: How To Install AMD Reference Drivers' thread works for me... +1 to the person willing to put this together.

For those AMD owners who need to reinstall, be sure to follow my tip on Integrated (Intel HD) GPU driver installs - see the clean install thread which is linked in the general info sticky.

 

Well I was seriously hoping to see a lot more benchmarks and shots from the thread. If you guys want to see a specific game benchmarked then post what you would like. I'll be doing all my benchmarks at 1920x1080 and will do single vs xfire in each game. Now is the time to put in your request. I would say I have most of the top 10 games in both RTS and FPS but if you have something obscure and you want it benched let me know because I just might have it. So far plans are:

Crysis 2
CoD: Black Ops
Bulletstorm
Homefront

Dirt
Blur
Need for Speed Shift

Dragon Age 2
The Witcher 2

Starcraft 2
Darkspore
Warhammer 40k Retribution

FedEx better get here early. It says by 3pm so it will probably be 2:50pm

 

Could you bench the OG Crysis? It still seems to be more demanding then Crysis 2. I'd be very anxious to get my hands on that thing if I were you haha.

 

Sure thing. I have a custom Crysis 2 config with everything on extreme so it's pretty demanding and not the out of the box fluff you get with Gamer, Advanced, and Hardcore.

 

I will also be benching Crysis, it will also be one of the first games I play on my beast, it is a right of passage for all my systems haha

I plan to remove any potential CPU bottlenecks on the 6970m's

 

there will be no CPU bottle necks ... but meh, can't wait to see your benchies

 

yee crysis 1/2 wont scale with cpu overclocking @ 1080p

 

Crossfire is not SLI

Crossfire scales pretty well with the more CPU power it can get the better

Until you put up the benches to prove me wrong, I am sticking to that line

 

CPU Scaling On AMD : Multi-GPU Setups: The Basics Of CrossFire And SLI

cpu overclocking does help when theres a lot of gpu power. not sure if the 6970M overclocked to desktop 6850 speeds will be enough power.

not sure if its really about whether we use crossfire OR sli

its about raw gpu power. lets say the 2920 @ 3.3Ghz on 4 cores gets your 47fps with your 6970m overclocked to their max in crysis. 2920xm might only get you 50fps @ 3.8Ghz on all 4 cores.

 

CPU power seems to make its biggest appearance at high resolutions when we're talking about the uber enthusiast cards like the 6990

 

the opposite actually.... at lower resolutions you are usually CPU bound, at higher resolutions you are usually GPU bound

 

yep, basically anything faster than a gtx 580 is when 3.7+ghz on an i7 really helps @ 1080/1200p. @ 1440P quad 590/6990 is needed. i dunno about benchmarks for beyond that in games.

3dmark apps dont count.

hes just saying at high res when the gpu power is so immense it can be bottlenecked by even a 3ghz i7, which is what you were saying earlier (i think, you guys are confusing me). 6970m in xfire isnt groundbreaking power. we had access to it with gtx 280 tri-sli, which i think is faster.

 

at higher resolutions the CPU sits idle waiting on the GPUs to make the frames for output

GPUs are the bottleneck there

at lower resolutions the GPUs are done before the CPU has fed the information for the next frame

CPUs are the bottleneck there

This will generally hold true for all 3d titles, it is just a matter of at what point does the bottleneck shift from the CPU to GPU

 

From what I've seen, the general resolution where it starts shifting is 1680x1050 but ymmv

 

That sounds about right to me.

 

Joker do you have Empire: Total War by any chance?

 

Can't wait to see how The Witcher 2 runs on this thing.

 

Yes I sure do. I have all 3 and I can test it for you as well.

I've posted up information and pictures and my initial review of the Build Quality. I'm digging into the Benchmarking now and will have something up soon.

 

Benchmark Results:

3dMark 11 (Interesting results on the proc never hitting 3.3ghz or the cards reporting 3GB memory instead of 4. This was done at 720.
Result

 

Thanks man! That's really my game of choice since it came out. Using DarthMod of course! Awesome reviews so far and thanks for doing all of this for the community. Both Jokers, you rock!

 

Runs a 6-7 fps on ultra quality in 1920x1080.

 

It seems the witcher 2 does not yet have an xfire profile so you are most likely only running on a single card.

I found this program that allows you to create custom profiles for games without an office xfire profile yet. It might not be the most optimized and yes you might be a few frames shy of what AMD will release officially but 2 cards are most certainly better than 1.

RadeonPro: Radeon Games Profiles Automation Tool

 

witcher 2 is running like crap on nvidia sli and amd xfire. yikes

 

It's due to not utilizing the other card because a game profile hasn't been built. I'm going to test that tool and see what I can do.

 

The1TruJok3r does the 3dmark score increase/decrease with changing the AMD drivers from the dell ones?

 

Hi all! Sorry for this completely off topic question but jfbarea, are you from spain are you? I'm from Portugal can you tell me where did you ordered the m18x?

Thanks you all and sorry for the off-topic

 

Okay.. so I'm completely new to benching.. and my rig isn't gonna bench anything compared to you all's. All basic stock, no upgrades but memory. Id like to bench it anyway against my old laptop just to feel awesome about the difference. So I was curious if anyone else here has benched the basic specs yet. :_)

 

Here's one of the benchmark runs I've done so far. I've got several more but they're not on NBR yet.

 

That's purty

 

Matrix we haven't seen the benches on the basic config so throw some up

Oh and good news I put in my M4 and 16gb of Kingston memory and getting about 430MB Reads and 200MB writes. I'm a HAPPY CAMPER 7.9 Windows disk score baby!

SSD is the most single awesome upgrade I've ever done. It just makes the laptop feel soooooooooo fast. First time using SSD. I don't think I will ever go back!