*OFFICIAL* M18x Owner's Lounge Thread

The biggest problem is the connectors. Looks like for RGB LED backlight the system has to have another mobo connector. So we are now down to 90% gamut as the best choice. I'm hoping to at least get an IPS (non RGBLED) panel that can work in M18x. It's too early for a definite answer.

 

So they can cheat on all of the preliminary tests. Then Dellienware cuts costs on production after everyone has made a purchase.

Any idea when this new heatsink will be available for purchase? Also, what will the pricing be? Too bad I cant just slap a Noctua NH-D14 on this bad boy.

 

The new heat sink (4-pipes) is still in the prototyping stage. No ETA at this point and no pricing info. It is neither funded nor supported by Fortnax directly

 

How did you get on with Dell in your return? I've threaded my issue with a dud 6970 and issues on the eithernet and wifi with possible motherboard issues. I've had the technician verify the problems and then escalated as they wanted to send an engineer out just to fix the graphics and look at the other issues - that's too much for a new and expensive pc. So emailed Dell using the address the technician gave me - no opportunity to talk.
Hoping they are going to be reasonable and return for a new build. For such an expensive purchase it's quite a concern - the thought of open heart surgery on such a new pc is not really an option and really shouldn't be.

 

I have not been on in a while but have some good news

Got my 2 external monitors as well as the laptop internal display all working independently at full resolution. For those who have not followed my conquest, I have 2x Gateway FHD2400 monitors that I am connecting to my M18x

What I have done is ran one FHD2400 into the hdmi jack (DVI-D <> HDMI cable) and the other into the following adapter from DVI to mini DP.

Amazon.com: Accell B087B-006B UltraAV Mini DisplayPort to DVI-D Single-Link Active Adapter ATI Certified (Black): Electronics

I have all 3 monitors working now at full resolution with the desktop extended on all of them

 

I was in the 21 day return period and was not interested in major surgery either. I did not do an exchange because I had heard the rumors about the new cards coming out. Good luck!

 

Congrats. Havent changed 'em yet then 'eh? - time for some benching now then Scook???

 

If I did not have to buy new monitors, that was a big plus, happy with what I have and they are long paid for

Not too excited for benching sadly since my cards don't OC worth a dam....will maybe look into getting a pair of 6990m later down the road but sitting happy for now I think

 

Why not wait for the 7000 series of AMD cards? Unless they turn out to be much more expensive than this current generation, no reason not to wait until they are released and toss them in instead of getting a meager increase in performance with the 6990m's.

 

Several reasons why:

1) They are completely unknown and pure rumor right now
2) No clue when they will be out
3) No clue if they will work in the M18x - assuming so is just plain stupid to do due to likely BIOS restrictions
4) Pretty likely they will have no warranty coverage as they will likely not be dell supported for the M18x
5) The "meager" increase in performance is always appreciated and not a problem if there is also only a "meager" increase in price

 

Yeah, I agree. There's a good chance that the 7k will be plug and play in addition to being much more powerful. However most of your reasons are good points.

As for the warranty, it makes sense only if you upgrade your cards through Dell which is expensive.

 

I am waiting to see what they are quoting people for the price. If it is not too bad I will probably get cards from dell then sell my 6970s to recover some cost. Will of course not decide on anything until the pricing is known
I also have a warranty that could be put to use.....

 

I don't think it would be stupid to assume that they will work in the M18x. I don't really see much of a reason to jump the gun and upgrade to the 6990m's now when they are most likely not a huge improvement over the 6970m's. If the 7000's don't fit, then go ahead and get the 6990m's, they may even drop in price by then a bit. This is all my opinion though, I know you're big on overclocking so maybe going with the 6990m's now would be best for you.

 

The 7000s will "fit" unless MXM is revised yet again. My main issue was the bios locking them out like I saw with the 5870s in my M17x R1. Should have worked but didn't due to dell blocking/not enabling it in BIOS.

 

scook AMD released something about them actually ... a document roadmappy thing ...

So they aren't really unknown/rumour ... and they are slated to start hitting Q1 2012 I think the road map said ...

But sure, I can see the general level of speculation surrounding them

 

They may leave AMD Q1 2012 (still 6 months out mind you) but it will likely be a few more months at least before manufacturers have them ready to go out to customers.

 

True, much like the 6990 apparently

And they are listed as MXM 3.0....

 

And .... links

AMD 2012 mobile GPU roadmap leaks: 28nm Radeon HD 7000M - SlashGear

The original, which notes the mxm 3.0, although you will need to translate it ...
DH Özel: ??te AMD'nin 28nm GPU yol haritas?

 

I found my self laughing about my 6990s, that I don't even have yet, being outdated soon.

 

Soon is a relative term. Like I said, I predict 8-9 months before anyone is worrying about the 7000 series

 

I agree Scook about relativity and the timeline. Seems like obsolescence comes quicker and quicker though.

 

Tell me about it....I ONLY have 6970m's

lol

 

I would have been in your boat with 6970s but for an RMA and impatiently waiting. Not sure there is that much difference between the two. If the 7000 will work in our Aliens, that would be cool.

 

7000's in the r2

 

Hello guys,
Do you have any idea on how to get a Matte screen for M18X?I mean what screen from where can I buy and replace it with the current glossy thing?
Thanks

 

The screen is actually anti-glare but is protected by a glass cover!

 

Go to: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...atte-screens-why-pc-industry-s-out-touch.html


You can learn something from that thread (specially from the experiments by Aikimox... ) Actually, the screen under the glossy cover is an anti-glare original.

 

So you all mean the current screen has almost all features of a Matte screen but it reflects!I mean:
1-Less percent of NTSC Color gamut
2-Less contrast
3-Less "pure black"
Reflection
Looks like a Baaaad screen!

 

I'm pretty sure that you won't be able to tell the difference unless you have used a rgb/dream color screen. It may suck not having a screen upgrade but you do realize that when the rgb was an available option, it was expensive.

 

The screen isn't that bad; especially for gaming. I definitely can see the difference in photoshop and people who edit and do a lot of production work. For gaming, it's not a big deal IMO. An upgraded screen will be available in R2 I assume.

 

Yesterday we had an RGB LED TN and 30-bit IPS panels at our lab and comparing between the 3.... Sigh... Wish there was a way to land that IPS in M18x While the RGB LED TN v.s. M18x stock LCD difference is bearable, the IPS RGBLED is so far ahead...

I will continue the research even though there's virtually no hope

 

New to this thread, but will be following along from now on. Dell is upgrading my M17x R2 from my signature to an m18x due to persistent issues that could not be fixed. Dell literally replaced the entire laptop part for part, with the motherboard and graphics cards getting replaced twice.

In any case, I can't wait for my Alienware m18x, which is a huge upgrade from my current system... minus the gorgeous RGB screen which I love. The laptop went into production today and will be landing two weeks from now. The countdown begins.

See you all around.

 

Depression sets in...

 

For a clean install of windows 7 do I need a purchased copy or can I use the respawn CD, and if I use the respawn CD do I still need to go through the drivers process in the links?

Is there somewhere I can download a copy of win7 and then just use the registration key on the 18x?

 

You should receive a OS disk within your box of various Alienware accessories. Since it's an OEM copy, the key only works with your motherboard. That means you can install Windows 7 as many times as you want unless you get your motherboard replaced.

As for drivers, I'd recommend using a usb thumb drive to preload all the drivers in their specific order. That way you can receive your m18x. Pop in your windows 7 disk. Plug in usb thumb drive. And install drivers.

 

The only real problem is the budget/time. I need about 5k and a couple of days to get the results, but got none right now

 

Yep, there sure is. And the product key from your system will work with any non-proprietary Windows installation media. Go here and download the Win7 x64 ISO and create an installation DVD. Follow the instructions very closely. I recommend using the utilities posted for everything, including backing up your current product key and activation. This has worked excellent for me more than once.

I would recommend doing this truly clean installation over a restore operation using Respawn. It will be more work, but it produces far better results in the long run. If you're a newbie and not ready to make the transition to geek, then use Respawn.

This is not really accurate as written, but in application it's similar to how it sometimes works. Some OEM installation discs have been modified to limit your ability to install on a system not made by the same OEM, but it's not tied to your motherboard specifically. In other words, if you use a Dell OEM Windows installation disc on a HP system, you may not be able to activate the OS. However, you can use your Dell OS installation disc on other Dell systems. Same with HP. Where this is normally an issue is on a desktop computer. If you replace the motherboard with another one that fits, say a standard ATX form factor, but it does not have a BIOS supported by the OEM installation disc, the installation process either will not continue or your OS will not be able to activate after installation.

Other OEM installation discs may have ominous warning printed on the label, but will allow you to install it on any system you feel like installing it on. It varies by OEM. Sometimes the smaller off-brand or boutique system builders provide an ordinary installation disc with one of their own labels.

 

So after a clean install I can't find the drivers for the 580m in SLI. Any suggestions?

 

Normally I don't recommend your resource CD, but have you checked there?

From what I understand, the Verde 275.50 Beta drivers should work. You might want to give these a shot, even though they supposedly do not support your cards.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 275.50 BETA

Your video card is not listed as an unsupported exception in the list on the Products Supported tab, so you should be good to go.

 

Yeah I tried both of those and got a "your hardware is not supported" message. The resource CD includes up to 460m. I do still have the stock harddrive with the original install, so I may look in there.

 

So great, the 580M's are also stuck with Dell drivers only...anybody want my Alienware laptop? I do exchanges lol

 

This goes along with the territory of being on the bleeding edge of technology. The 580M has been out less than a month. The same thing happened with the HD5870 drivers on the R2. You could install AMD reference drivers through an INF mod, but it was not until a vBIOS update changed the hardware name of the MXM modules from HD5870 to HD5800 Series that reference drivers could "identify" the right hardware.

The drivers are all basically the same, it's just the INF file that needs to be modified to recognize the name Windows is using to identify your Geforce cards. The Quadro Verde drivers have always been an excellent performance tweak over using the standard Geforce Unified Drivers, so that's a good starting point. If there are not already some third-party modded drivers out there, you can do this yourself by using Windows Notepad. If you do a Google search, you're bound to find something out there for download or simple instructions how to do the INF mod. Conceptually, this article on Tech|Inferno about INF modding for the 6970 may provide some theoretical value that you can apply to the 580M.

Another thing you can try, which often works for me, is to manually install the driver through Device Manager. Extract the Quadro Verde package, then go into the properties in Device Manager. Browse to the folder where the drivers are, telling Windows to let you choose what to install and uncheck the box to show only compatible hardware. This will show the "incompatible" INF files to you that would otherwise be hidden by Windows. Doing this may allow you to force the installation of the NVIDIA reference drivers and if you can, you'll be good to go. Once you do that (if you can) the names of the cards will change in Device Manager to something generic, then you can run the full driver setup because the newly renamed cards will be recognized. This doesn't work in all cases, but it's worth trying before you launch a Google expedition to find a solution.

 

Hmmm, interesting, i will try this, thx for the help, +1 rep! Is the 275.33 driver a verde driver or should i look for Quadro drivers only? Can you submit a link?

 

Exactly. I recall the hassle with the R2 I had and getting reference drivers to install.....it took the Vbios update to allow easy install of AMD drivers....same thing probably will happen with the new gpu offerings from Nvidia....I would imagine. The trick may be in getting Dell to "play ball" and tweak things so Nvidia reference driver installs are as easy as AMD ones.....

 

Genius, just Genius.........not sure what your talking about but i'll figure it out with some google.. Nice to know someone is on our side.

Delltech was useless.

Thanks

 

Well, i've tried the extraction of the driver and tried updating the driver, it said that windows had some dificulty installing the driver lol. Am going to read about modding the .inf files to see if i can get anywhere.

 

It'll work. Just don't expect to enable SLI for some reason. Same goes for the 460M SLI.

 

just go here for nvidia laptop drivers

NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com
LaptopVideo2Go Community
just make sure the 580 is in the list; download the modded inf with it
replace install and done
do tests to check if they are beter or worse then your prev, if not go to nxt;
site has all the drivers fom all the OEMs

wish there was something like this for AMD
im new to AMD cards
also new to SLI/CF so dunno how that works

 

Yes, that site is good, now let's just hope that SLI still works when you turn it on.

 

I don't see the 580ms.

Anyway, I called the Dell tech support and they said call the solution center. The solution center remote connected to my computer. The drivers are (obviously) not available through what they suggested (resource CD or support.dell) and can in fact they only reinstall the drivers on to your computer, not provide them for you to do yourself. This means that there is a charge of $59 for the installation of these drivers. I told him I don't need the service, just what should have been included and provided along with purchase but they were unable to do anything besides charge me and then install them for me.

I told them no. As I said before, I still have the original install on my second drive, so does anybody know where I can find the drivers to copy over or should I just clone the drive?

p.s. first post from m18x. Yay?

For the record, I love love love everything about this machine. It's dell and the drivers I have a problem with. Bleeding edge or not, this is still crap, the drivers exist, and should be made available like everything else. Why even include a resource disk that's missing 4 of the drivers?