*OFFICIAL* M18x Owner's Lounge Thread

YodaGoneMad is 100% right, the current top end cpu's and gpu's are so far ahead of the current games it will be awhile off before you fall behind. Yes we all want the newest tech but there comes a time when you need to just enjoy what is out there now. And remember we can always upgrade to the next generation most likely, and still be fine for the next couple years. Maxed out game setting are maxed out no matter if its this generation or the next that's doing it.

 

I completely agree the problem with tech is it may seem like 'only' a 6 month wait now, but when 6 months spins around you're only looking at 6 months from a complete change in architecture. That's 12 months, so it's an endless waiting game.

I figured that the changed in tech in the coming months wouldn't be worth the wait, so I hoped the gun, esp. with the decrease in the price of the 580m it seemed worth it to me.

 

Hmm you guys do make valid points. I am having trouble locating concrete benchmarks done for both 6990 in crossfire and 580 in SLI with battlefield 3. A bunch of youtube videos but I still can't tell which setup achieves more FPS in BF3. That is the main point of this laptop really, to be able to play battlefield 3 with close enough performance to my desktop.

 

I have 6990s, my roomie has 580s ... they both crush the game and it looks amazing, both on ultra settings ... doesn't matter which you buy.

 

I agree completely, either cards will serve you well and the FPS is so close. The Nvidia has cuda and Physics if thats what you like. Out side of that the best card I guarantee is the one you own ..lol Get one and start having fun.

 

Agree... the only really bad decision to be made here is to buy something less than 6990M CrossFire or GTX 580M SLI. Both are stellar performers. Whether to go AMD or NVIDIA is a matter of personal preference more than anything else.

 

What shipping speed did you get?

 

i see, great feedback. so then, wait 2 years instead of 6 months right? long wait.
then i guess i'll just wait for intel to release trim support for raid0 on their next IRST driver so i can get two vertex 3 maxiops SSD =D

anychance they will release gtx590 mobo? or should amd 7000 mobo coming outsoon too.

 

Are you sure about that, Alienwolf? I thought it was very hard, if not impossible,to upgrade gaming laptops. Aren't they designed so that they cannot be upgraded and that you have to keep buying a new one? These companies are in it for the money. If they didn't make any money then they wouldn't be in business. I wish laptops were upgradeable like how desktops are. It would certainly be a lot less expensive to have to only buy a new component for a laptop instead of a whole new machine.

As Mr. Fox put it, you'll either be waiting indefinitely for the next best thing or [continually] a step behind the cutting edge. Link.

My problem is the former. I'm always waiting for the next best thing, and it drives me crazy. I've already returned three laptops this year without even opening the box, because I know that if I wait just another 6-12 months, the M18xR2 will be released and I can buy that. But I'm afraid by then, I'll be thinking "well the M18xR3 will be out in two years; I should wait for that instead."

 

So true, Tes96... thanks for sharing that personal story.

Unless you have pre-ordered something that is right on the brink of being released that has demonstrated that it totally annihilates everything else in performance, waiting for the next best thing is sort of a sickness, IMHO. In some ways it's like a gambling addiction, always looking for that lucky break that is seldom or never realized. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, LOL. Tomorrow never comes if you are doing the waiting game, and owning the best and fastest is merely a brief flash in time. Buying the best you can get your hands on with current technology allows you to enjoy several years of excellent performance.

In three years an M18x with 6990M CF or 580M SLI and an Extreme CPU will still spank the living daylights out of the majority of the new laptops that average folks purchase. It will not defeat what the latest and greatest from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA in three years, but the performance will still be outstanding.

Consider if you will that even an M17x R2 4870 CF with an i7 920XM, or even an XPS M1730 with 8800/9800M SLI (assuming the notorious NVIDIA defect has not killed the cards) with a Core2 Extreme, still performs much better than the average Joe's laptop and the majority of the new games are still supporting those GPUs.

The best time to buy a fully loaded M18x is now. Prices are at an all time low, and most of the "new car bugs" are worked out with mature high end components, with stable chipset and solid driver support for most components. So what's not to love?

 

You're like a wise prophet, Mr. Fox. Thank you for sharing your words with us.
I've made a deal with myself that after I pay my car off this year I will buy an alienware laptop. And I can easily pay $13,000 off in one year. By then, Windows 8 may be out.

 

Thank you for such kind words. *blushing*

To keep my head from getting too swollen, I'll chalk it up to being an "old" PC enthusiast or "mature" gamer and learning from my many mistakes, LOL.

 

It's not my business, but I am gonna share my 2 cents anyway.

You will be in a MUCH worse place in 1 year than you are right now. Right now there are not any truly worthwhile upgrades anywhere on the horizon. All the hardware refreshes this year are die shrinks and very small improvements. Next year is a new micro-architecture year (look up the Intel tick-tock schedule), thus, in a year you will be less than 6 months away from new GPU's and CPU's that are actually significantly better than the current models. This years new stuff is looking like no more than a 10-15% improvement, in other words you wouldn't notice the difference if you weren't told.

If you need a new laptop, do yourself a favor and order it right now. You can get 12 months no interest, and if you can pay off 13K in a year you can certainly pay off a new laptop. In 1.5 years when hardware that is actually worthy of an upgrade comes out it will likely fit in your laptop, so you could upgrade if you felt the need.

 

13k or just over a grand a month is whole different story than 4k as a one time payment. Sure he could use a CC but then the 4k machine becomes 5k.

 

Agree... you will pay a high premium for only marginally better "new" technology. If you purchase the advanced 3 or 4 year extended warranty, chances are that you may end up owning that new stuff anyway, because gaming systems that are constantly pushed hard often need replacement before ordinary laptops do. When parts become obsolete and irreplaceable, your advanced warranty * may* (at Dell's discretion) result in replacement with newer and better components, or even a full system exchange because they cannot install what they don't have. Dell is very good to its customers and takes care of their end of the warranty very well.

 

speaking of which, im wanting that i7 3960 already.. lol
12 threads really amazing

too bad its only for desktop, or perhaps sagers or clevo will SOMEHOW, just like with 990x and put 3960 into a laptop, i wish they would do it for alienware, and m18x R2 would have 3 harddrive slots by then, only then it'd have 2 drives raid 0 + additional storage.

 

Well I pulled the trigger guys, 2860QM, 580m in SLI, Dual 256 SSD's in Raid 0, and 16GB of ram. Thanks for all the help!

 

Cool man. Another beast

 

I could order one right now but I also have to pay for my classes, which is about $2000. I don't need a new laptop, I want one. The current one I have is okay; an average HP G60-123CL notebook from years ago.

When you talk about "this year", are you referring to 2011 or 2012? Because we are in 2012 as of now. Nvidia's GK112 is supposedly coming out late 2012 or early 2013. And when you say "next year", do you mean 2013?

You're saying that 2013 is the year when we will really see big leaps in Alienware gaming laptops?


Skymont will have 10 nanometer transistors! I won't be waiting until 2017, though. haha It won't be long before Intel gets into the picometer range.

 

The trick to ordering an alienware....is using the DPA credit with 12 months no interest (common/permanent? alienware promotion). I could have waited until May 2012 (purchased May 2011) to pay off my M18x although I paid it off in November 2011 to get it over with

This can take a lot of the stress off you back on paying for the laptop. Although you are limited in how much credit they will extend you. Initially they only offered me $1k then I got a TV through dell and paid it down and they bumped me to $2500. I used that $2500 and a credit card to pay for my M18x (about $3700) and paid down the DPA portion over the next 6 months at my own pace (as long as staying above their minimum payments).

If you go this route though be sure that you don't forget to pay it off, they charge crazy high interest after those 12 months.

 

I will just pay for mine using my debit card, whenever that time may come. I hope to have between $5000 & $6000 saved up.

 

That's what I did. I haven't owned a CC in 25 years and though it sometimes hard to save up it makes me feel better than using a CC on stuff.

 

Don't get me wrong - I totally support not spending money you don't have. I have one CC and only started the DPA account for the discount it can get you haha

I bought my M17x cash ($2500 and $500 for CPU) that way - that still remains the most I have spent on one day - tied with my fiances engagement ring haha.

 

I mean 2012 for this year, and 2013 for next year. Mid 2013 will see MUCH larger leaps in performance than anything releasing in 2012. Like I said, 2012 is the shrink year, 2013 is the new architecture year. Nothing in 2012 is even worth worrying about, to put it in better terms. Let's say you have an average game running at 60 FPS today, if you wait a year and get the new parts coming this year that add 10-15% then you might get 66-70 FPS. It is literally so tiny you wouldn't even notice.

I don't know what you are looking at for the Nvidia pipeline, but the problems with fabrication have pushed everything back about 6 months. Nvidia is supposed to be releasing their shrunk GPUs right now, but they likely won't make it for several more months, and won't see widespread availability until this summer. Thus, if what you are looking at says Early 2013 then expect it mid 2013 at the earliest.

On the other side, I have used a CC exclusively for many years, I now have multiple cards that give incredible cash back. I average over $500 a year in cash back and never pay a dime of interest. Using a Dell DPA account gives 3% back instantly, on $3000 that is $90 just for using their money for free for 12 months with no cost to me.

 

It can have advantages. But when I was 21, I wouldn't be the one that pays on time, very lazy So the interest would make my payments bigger and bigger.

At least now I know I have the cash when I want something. Makes my wife happy too .

 

These days it is ridiculously easy. Most all banks offer bill pay systems, and the credit cards themselves also offer autopay. I have all my cards set to autopay the full balance each month. When I get something like the DPA account I go onto my banks billpay and setup an automatic payment to happen 12 times for the exact amount needed to pay it off in 12 months.

In most months I never even think about it, it all just happens automatically.

I know it used to be (and can still be) much harder. My mom still tries to do all hers by hand, she gets paper bills, she opens them, she writes checks or manually pays online. She stays on top of it, but she has missed a few over the years. If you set it all up auto then it is pretty much foolproof these days.

 

Got it. Just got my rig, got it, got it I'm so freakin' happy. Commence unboxing.

 

Grats, I am sure you will enjoy it!

 

Well, for the modification work I do with "Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind", even on my friend's i7 quad core, I only get about 10-15 FPS, which is not very playable for me. If, and I say if with a grain of salt, I had a 6GHz clock speed for my CPU, that would allow me to reach the 40-50 FPS range. And with technology from 2013, I would expect alienware extreme laptop gamers to be able to finally play The Witcher 2 with ubersampling enabled in ultra settings with anti-aliasing at full capacity in 120Hz 3D. A lot could happen in 16 months from now. I keep my fingers crossed. Or do you think I am just holding my breath, so to speak?
(Let me point out that any modder can make a mod that will bring any computer CPU to a crawl, especially with older games that are strictly single-threaded, like Morrowind)


I do have a credit card with a $5000 cap but it's for things like unexpected car repairs and such.

Congratulations, Mitchrapp! How did you customize your laptop?

 

Yes and no. By the time when you get such a system there will other unplayable titles with crazy-mega-uber-duper-xampling. There's always something new on the horizon and waiting game is lost by default. No matter when you buy, it will become obsolete in a couple of months. That's why if you want to enjoy your games right now - do it. Just make sure to get the best warranty

One exception when I'd actually recommend waiting is when a new platform is a couple of weeks away and you know 100% it's gonna be here in no time.



-- sent from my IBM ThinkPad R40 running Oneiric Ocelot --

 

There's always the option of going desktop instead of waiting almost 2 years for a non-existent laptop.

 

When I built my system online, it came to a little over $3700. When I called to buy it, I told them I was not going to spend anymore than $2800 as that is what I could get a reman off ebay for. The manager said if I applied for the Dell credit he would sell me the unit for $2800. So when I get the first bill, I will write them a check for the amount and save $1000 in the process....

 

yeah i will upgrade in the future along with an ssd. but that will be like 2 months later or so, the 4 gb ram version i currently have is default, but imo i think i will go with a good ssd first.

i currently have the default 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (2DIMMS) version, actually imo the ssd will help on loading times, but might have a minimal impact on frames, the gpus and cpus respectively are the main sole mechanics that speeds up games i think.

you can also ask in the Hardware section here in nbr about the hard drive options, there are some good stuff i have read back then but i haven't confirmed much because im currently busy

 

I always buy from the Dell Outlet site and wait until 20 or 25% discounts are out. Then I use some of what I saved for SSD's and upgrades. With ram and cpu's maxed out I do not have any problem with the current crop of games. If no new platforms come out I'll just upgrade cpu or gpu's. My m18x was 2200.00 with out the ssd's and the Area 51 only 1700.00 with 2 x 500 drives then I upgrade over time.

 

uh is there a difference with 2960xm and 2960xm OC to 4.0?
i mean getting the non oc, i can manually oc it in bios right? and on top of that isnt OC bad for the cpu, so whats the point i dont get it.

 

There's a lot of good ways to save money. Sometimes, generally during the winter holiday sales they have insane promos like buy 300 or x amount and then you get x amount as a bonus. You can really rack up tons of free dell credit by buying through gift card promos like that.

Don't be linear in thinking like just paying through your bank account.

You can buy discount gift cards, go through websites that will give you cashback, call in and get discounts. The dell outlet is another way you can save, although it's a crapshoot.

I've purchased through ebay and gotten some amazing deals. You can also find some deals through the nbr marketplace (although I haven't used it myself).

Just do your research before you purchase. Don't give yourself a mind job in terms of when you are purchasing and if you should wait or not. Mr. Fox and others have given a fine roadmap as to what tech is developing; some people are always tilting at windmills.

Getting a good deal for good tech is probably more important than waiting for technological leaps unless they are on the threshold of being released.

Windows 8 is not worth waiting for, it's largely being developed for use on a variety of systems that were not previously mainstream, aka tablets and other form factors. With considerations such as touch, gestures and voice interaction.

I don't have even top tier graphics cards, just 6970's and they destroy everything I've thrown at them.

 

Yes but I need a laptop. I drive and travel around too much. A desktop would not be a wise decision on my behalf, no matter how powerful it would be.

That's what Windows 8 is going to be? Bah, I don't need any of that new fangled crap. Even my cell phone is super basic; no touch screen or any of that voice command stuff; doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Wow, your system can handle anything you've thrown at it? Even The Witcher 2 in 3D with übersampling enabled and anti-aliasing at its max while still maintaining a good frame rate?

 

Yes you can manually OC the 2960xm, mine just came factory OC'ed I did not pay the extra 75.00 for them to do something I could have. lol

 

When I priced my build out on the Dell site it came to just over $5000. I went to the military exchange site, built the same thing got it down to $3704. I ordered it and called Dell right away. I told them I was looking to see if I could receive any other discounts. Gave them my employers EPP code and got the total cost of the system from over $5000 to $3119 and free overnight shipping!

 

Nice! Congrats!That's a nice savings! There are a few ways to save,another popular tool is call and haggle,alot of owners saved quite a bit,and one rep say's no,you find another that say's yes.A dude on here about a week ago got a new 2960 sli 580gtx loaded and after a haggle and a few $75 off every $400 customer coupons he paid approx,2600!That was amazing to me.

 

From Intel's Tick-Tock schedule, Haswell will not come out until 2013. Its die shrink will be named Broadwell. Now, just to clarify, if I have a computer with Haswell architecture, is it easily upgradeable to its die shrink? Likewise, if I have a Sandy Bridge laptop, is it easily upgradeable to Ivy Bridge? Or would a whole new machine need to be purchased just to upgrade to the die shrink?

 

Way to go, that's a pretty good discount. Gratz and post your spec's.

 

That whole modded game problem is very interesting. In terms of single core performance and clock speed I would actually expect them to decrease going forward. Everything is switching to concurrent processing, and the idea of running a single thread faster has quickly died to the idea of running many threads slower. The 2013 tech is not going to run significantly faster in terms of ghz, it will only be faster in terms of architecture, but likely have the same ghz (or when it first releases lower ghz). This has been Intels strategy for a while, there were VapoChill cooled Pentium 4's running at 5-6Ghz like 10 years ago, and in single thread performance (like Morrowind) they probably outperform an i7 990X (the fastest CPU in the world right now).

Also, just for reference, Origin is using a phase change cooling solution to OC chips and they still don't hit 6 ghz, we are talking holding the chip at -40 degrees and yet it still can't run that fast.

Now, to help you out, you can flash an unlocked bios and probably tweak to do a lot better for what you are trying to do. If you take a quad core i7 and using an unlocked bios turn off all but 1 core it should run in Turbo mode always. Thus, a top-end CPU today would run in the 3.6+ ghz range for a single thread, which I would hope would give playable FPS.

You are just holding your breath. This is technology, it isn't magic. For the next many years all the big tech firms know what they are doing and what kind of improvement they are going to see. No one is aiming for high ghz single threaded performance, so that is a loss, you might as well buy today because it isn't going to improve significantly. As for running some game at max in 3D blah blah, yea, if you wait for the game to be 2-3 years old then current hardware will do it better. The problem is by then The Witcher 3 will be out, along with 20 others games that won't run maxed out. Heck, many computers still struggle to run Crysis maxed, so if you had been waiting to buy to get a computer that could max Crysis you might just keep waiting.

My advice, if you have the need for a new Alienware today, buy it today. This is just about the best time to get one for the next 1.5+ years. Generally, you want to follow the architecture refreshes, those just happened less than 6 months ago, what you are getting today is the best version of the current architecture at the current die size. The next year brings shrinks and almost no performance gains (10-15% increase on 10-15 FPS is 1-2 FPS), then the next year brings new architecture again. Hardcore guys generally do a 2 year refresh, so buy each new architecture as it releases (which is every 2 years), enthusiast (like me) might do a 4 year refresh, buy every other new architecture. No one in with any budget constraints worries about die shrinks, because in the real world they don't matter, they are small incremental upgrades with almost no bearing in the real world.

It just depends, some boards are upgradable, some are not. In general, the tiny increase is not worth the cost of upgrading anyway. $400 for a new CPU to get less than 5 FPS or 1 second faster is never a good investment.

 

The word is you won't be able to stick a Ivy bridge in a Sandy bridge motherboard. Only on desktops this will work

 

You are actually quite wrong about thread performance and clock speeds.....Architectural advances have been HUGE in boosting IPS and therefore overall performance. A 990x at stock will be faster than a 7 GHz Pentium 4

Here is some proof, this is the fastest SuperPi P4 run I could find compared to my old stock t7200 laptop at 2GHz. So that is one thread at 2GHz on core 2 Duo compared to 1 thread at 7.7 GHz on Pentium 4. Current chips are a lot faster per clock than even the Core 2 Duo was.

My T7200:
scook9`s SuperPi score: 17sec 125ms with a Core 2 T7200 (2.0Ghz)

The Pentium 4 at 7.7 GHz:
mtech`s SuperPi score: 16sec 719ms with a Pentium 4 651

Here is the current world record held by a 980x (which surprises me! Sandy Bridge would do better if we could get the clocks comparably high) at 6.9 GHz:
Hicookie`s SuperPi score: 5sec 781ms with a Core i7 Extreme 980X

Note the difference in times despite the relatively similar clock speeds between the 980x and P4. I chose SuperPi because it is a single threaded benchmark and only leverages one core (at a time if on a multi core cpu)

 

Even when 2013 comes, I will still most likely be able to buy an M18x, probably cheaper than what it is now. Other than the fast processor, what I'm also waiting for is for the M18x program to enable 120Hz 3D screens with better resolution than 1080p since 18 inches makes the image not as good looking as on a 17". Glossy screens really annoy me.

I did a quick search for VapoChill cooled Pentium 4; mostly got forum discussions. And isn't 4Ghz 10 years ago equivalent to 2 Ghz today? Or thereabouts?

Yeah, that's true. I guess I am just holding my breath. At least I will get my car paid off by the end of this year. I don't need a new laptop; I just want one. The one I'm typing on right now is enough to get by, even though it's 5 years old. When I'm ready to buy a new gaming laptop, then I will. I'm not satisfied with current technology and probably will never be, but I will find a happy medium down the road... I hope. I'm very anxious to see what the M18xR2 will be like.

Does the "R" in Alienware's titles mean "Refresh"? Like M17xR3 for example?

Thanks for the advice on how to help improve my Morrowind playing. I was thinking the same thing about disabling all the cores except one. Having one core run in single-thread will produce less heat than having all four run in hyperthreading.

 

R is for revision I think.

And as for the 18" vs 17" thing......you must have ninja eyes for something to look less good on the 18".....do realize that the same 1080p resolution is used on a 60" tv and still looks great....(albeit NOT if you use the TV as a monitor). I can understand wanting 120Hz though

See above for a clock speed difference

 

Very interesting, I knew that the architecture was many times faster, I just didn't know anyone had pushed the iX architecture nearly that high. The highest Sandy Bridge I have seen is in the new phase cooled origins, and that is only in the 5.7Ghz range. Of course in this case we are also talking laptops, which will never hit even close to desktop maximums. Anyway, I still think what I said is quite valid, I don't expect single threaded performance to improve that much, and in some ways what you posted confirms it. The difference of 10+ years for single threaded performance is only 10 seconds, I don't know how SuperPi scales (if the time it takes decreases in a linear fashion) but if it is linear then that is maybe a little over twice as fast as a 10 year old processor of close to the same speed? In the real world that is hard to justify waiting something like 1/8th of an average persons entire life for a little over twice the performance.

Anyway, moral of everything I have said, don't waste your life waiting for technology, it is never worth it.

EDIT: SuperPI site is pretty cool, haven't been to it for a LONG time. Seems an average OC for a current 2960XM processor is very close to twice as fast as the average OC possible for what they rate as the fastest P4 processor. The average clocks are extremely close, so it is very close to twice as fast clock for clock.
http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/pentium_4_631/
http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/core_i7_2960xm/

I think that P4 released pretty late, maybe like 06, so it has some of the architecture improvements of modern CPUs. Basically, they maybe doubled the performance clock for clock in around 6 years. Pretty interesting metric.

 

I took 1/3 the time (980x vs P4 at similar clocks) so about 150% increase in performance per clock from P4 to SB. That is purely architecturally driven - awesome improvements for a 5 year time frame where we are used to 10-20% improvements between generations.

Ivy Bridge will be the exact same architecture as SB so do not expect astronomical improvements (5% at most just lower power usage). Here is a great article about core-core comparison at same clock speeds. So the only variable is really architecture.
Conclusion : Tom's CPU Architecture Shootout: 16 CPUs, One Core Each, And 3 GHz

I particularly was interested in this summary chart which shows how all the different architectures compare:

 

That is a very cool chart. What I find most interesting is that the Core 2 DUO E6850 doubled performance over the P4 in 2007, and then the next 5 years up to today only resulted in another 50% performance boost. You can really see that jump caused by the new architecture, in 2005 the P4 is the top of the stack, 2 years later performance is doubled by the Core 2 Duo (and the Core architecture), now 5 years later performance has only increased another 50%.

Another cool thing in that chart is you can see the effects of a die shrink versus an architecture change. Bloomfield was the 45nm Nehelem Architecture, Gulftown was the 32nm die shrink of the same architecture. The increase in performance is almost non-existent from the shrink (30 seconds better on an hour and 40 minutes operations). Then the next year comes new Sandy bridge architecture and you see a major jump in performance (10 minutes, on the same operations).

Another way to look at that would be to say that an architecture change improves performance 20 times more than a die shrink.

The real question is will performance continue to improve in a linear fashion (as that chart seems to suggest is has done for the past 5 years) or will one of Intels new architectures cause another jump like the Core architecture in 2007. That whole chart is a good example of why I want to buy a computer right AFTER a new architecture, it would suck to get a computer at the start of 2013, and then Intel drops their new architecture mid 2013 and it doubles performance. Plus, as I talked about it is clear the die shrinks really don't matter.