*Prospective* News/Discussion: Alienware M18x R3

nice one. they got some weird articles but seen most of them except RST 12+ sounds kinda dumb to me lol. just turn off cstate and max disk performance. unless RST12 can give MORE performance with cstate off than 11 series with cstate off then I'll bother to learn it, otherwise 11.2 RST has the best raid0 driver lol.

load of bs from intel again to make people switch chipset and hide their money making scheme =D

 

nvidia is being a joke 780M is practically the same spec as 680MX? thats f***king retarded. Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

look up 680mx and 780m. making us pay the premium on something that was out half a year ago, naww I'm going for AMD lol, or not going for anything at all till broadwell =/

 

haswell usb 3.0 issues, sucks

 

If the 780m is a slimmed down low power 680mx, it's not that bad. Not worth upgrading from a 680m though.

 

3x 9.5mm drives work fine for me. The sandwich still fits perfectly under the bottom cover and SSD/HDD temperatures aren't any higher than just running two for me either. You just need to screw the last drive into the middle of the screw openings of the caddy instead of the top and it should be fine.

 

For those with the m18x what is the gamut of the screen and I assume it's glossy right is there a matte choice?

 

That basically is what the 680M is, look at the performance difference and power differences between the desktop 670 and 680 after all.

 

I could be mistaken, but i think its a matte screen placed under a a glass lens..

 

It seems we have about a month left until we find out what happens with the M18x and other products. Can't wait!

Alienware didn't wait for Ivy Bridge when they released the R2, so I assume they won't wait for Haswell either. For the first month or so of the R3 being out ( assuming there is one), we may see the same components on the inside. Just hope they have significant improvements to the M18x itself...

 

What happens in a month?

 

When you start getting hardware shows.

 

More info is attached to this thread.

 

awaiting for m18xr3, more storage bay? better usb 3 and thunderbolt? yeahhh

 

Well storage would be similar but likely more of them SATA 3 due to the newer chipset, maybe more USB3 and maybe thunderbolt.

 

I'm hoping for a somewhat more neutral design. at least a screen with a smaller bezel(specially on the bottom) and loose the tip, just rectangle is just fine...Only reason holding me back from alienware.

 

If you're nitpicking about the screen bezel and claiming that's the only thing holding you back from an Alienware M18x - sorry, but you do not deserve to own an M18x. Excuse me if I'm coming across as someone arrogant, but I'm pretty sure most of the owners here simply love the current design and would only go for something more extravagant, and not the cheap-looking slab that Clevo makes.

 

I wholeheartedly agree. If Alienware suddenly became more "run of the mill" looking, like the majority of of other laptops, I would be quite upset. I love the slightly unusual/different aesthetics of the AW range of machines - it's what sets them apart from the rest of pretenders.

 

Yup, ditto, here-here, absolutely. In case it's not entirely clear, I agree. Pip pip, cheerio, and all that rot.

The shiny refective screen that is easy to clean is a more than fair trade for a bezel that collects garbage around the edges that is a pain in the bottom to clean and a blotchy screen that looks dirty when it's turned off even when it's squeaky clean... that's just my opinion. And, an ordinary looking laptop would be extremely boring. Alienware is the antithesis of average.

 

Any chance of this being released before June?

 

I would say sometime around then. I imagine it would roughly coincide with Intel's new Haswell Cpu launch, so me should see (hopefully) new revisions any time then....

 

Ahh okay. I'm still stuck between getting a desktop or an m18x. I do a fair amount of travelling since I'm in university, but obviously a desktop would be more powerful. However, the m18x r3 - fully upgraded should be able to play anything on max for the next couple years, right? I'm basing this off the fact that the currernt M18x can play Crysis 3 on max settings.

 

Yeah, even a loaded R2 or a modded R1 (like mine with upgraded 680m's) should be able to max things out for a good time to come.....personally, if it were me, I'd go for the portability of the M18x, 'cos afterall, you cant pick up a desktop and take it with you, but you can plonk a laptop on a desk quite easily LOL

Next generation processors and cpu's are just around the corner, so if you are looking at buying soon-ish, I think the safe money would be on waiting a little while, if you can, until they are released. Better that than buy now and miss out on newer hardware. IMHO, Haswell won't be significantly faster than the current Ivy processors, but we may find that the gpu's (780m / 8970m / 8990m) could be noticeable better than the current flagship 680m/7970m cards.

 

Yes exactly. There's no point going with a desktop if a laptop can play any game on max settings anyway. Would I be able add a couple monitors to the m18x, whilst still play games at max settings? Because while I'm at home, I'd rather not use the laptop monitor and keyboard.

 

Sure. I run a single 30" 2560x1600 UltraSharp with no issues. With either gpu, you can add multiple monitors. I think AMD Eyefinity allows more flexibility, but if you went Nvidia, you should still be able to run 2 externals & the internal display quite comfortably. Obviously, running a couple of very high res. monitors would tax the gpu's more, but if you are running a couple of 1920x1080 screens, you should be golden.

 

Yep, just standard 1920X1200 and 1920X1080 montiors. I've been doing a little more research and it seems the fps can drop quite substantially on the M18x, whilst playing crysis 3. The current M18x cannot play crysis 3 at 16xMSAA apparently.

 

With the 680M you can improve it's high res performance a lot by clocking the vram...

 

I play it fine at full native 2560x1600. There is a thread with some very useful Crysis 3 info. Have a read: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/709199-m18x-crysis-3-performance-thread.html It is a demanding game, having everything fully maxed can stress things, but as Meaker pointed out, a little OC'ing can make a world of difference.

 

need to see some usb 3.0 performance boost here. funny thing is they use crappy controller so a single port from 1 side of machine max at 210 mb/s read and 170 mb/s write. however if both usb 3.0 ports were used at the sametime, speed drastically drops to around and below 100 on each port.. go figure, cheap stuff if you ask me lol. no doubt we'll see some raid bottlenecking as well when all sata ports are at sata III =/

 

The m18x R2 supports extended displays across 3 monitors easily. The laptop screen, a DP monitor and HDMI monitor.

The nVidia 680m does NOT support nVidia Surround, the technology required to turn all of the displays in to a single unit for game playing. This was a major disappointment for me, but it is an nVidia issue so not much Alienware can do about it.

 

Surround is card and bios specific IIRC.

 

Does anyone know if nVidia plans to offer nVidia surround on their next mobile cards? It seems like it's only for the desktop and really hoping they would offer this.

 

waiting for 8970m 8990m and 780m hopefully they still mxm 3.0b and works with m18x r1/r2 mobo. and hopefully they all provide 4gb and can overclock high.

 

We have MXM3.0B this generation, the 8970 is just a clocked 7970 so that's pretty boring.

2GB is enough for this class really, maybe if there is a new chip from AMD, and maybe on the 780M, but you would have to be using a 2560x1600 monitor.

 

I believe with the upcoming hardware refresh we will see significant improvements across the board in efficiency and temperatures (better battery life and cooler load temperatures).

We'll know soon enough - can't wait!

 

" It's a long, long way to alien landing
But my heart's right there..."

(from the song they [hearts] sing as the aliens march along...)

 

this u guys might be interested Real World Labs
haswell CPU OC to 7ghz on 4 cores 4 threads.

@J.Dre temp is still uncertain at this point, it shouldnt be much difference than ivy bridge though, same die size, but maybe able to OC higher unlike 3940xm only goes to like 4.7-4.8ghz. on the other hand still waiting for thunderbolt and better usb controller, and pray window 7 release a service pack to support USAP.

on graphics side, 780m or 8970m maybe only seeing 15-20% improvement, which is alright but imo not as much as I thought it'd be, certainly not worth $1200 =/

my gamble is on broadwell/skylake, or the one after that which is 2-3 years from now lol. another die shrink and we may see 6c/12t chip in mobile cpu, or 4c/8t that will allow high oc still run much cooler when compared to sandybridge. by the time that happens, we maybe seeing sata express, NGFF supports over 700mb/s-1.2gb/s per storage drive and DDR4 support may go mainstream.

 

Come one, that overclock was at 2.56 V!!!

 

I'm still thinking about desktop pc or AW M18x R2/R3. Now i have M17x-R3 and only thing makes me mad. Fan noise cpu and gpu under load...grrr! Even if fans are not so smaller, noise is very high.
Don't know about noises M18x R1-R2, but guess still loud. In this position desktop pc won.

 

yes its loud.. nothing can be done lol until astek water cooling are implemented then we can see noise reduced to half and still OC well.

 

I hope this happens. Ill be lining up for a kit.

 

I really do hope an R3 comes out, but I haven't really seen much news on it. >_< All I've seen is m14's and 17s

 

Alienware Teases "Big News" for E3 - IGN

 

Being posted on IGN I can't help but think it will be the next x51 revision to cut the consoles lunch.

 

Not sure if this has been posted ...kinda hard to search on my phone ...in any case Alienware just announced big news to be disclosed on June 10th at E3...I hope they continue with the m18x
http://m.ign.com/articles/2013/05/06/alienware-teases-big-news-for-e3


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Looks like a possible launch date for the new notebook revisions - nice to know a date when we will all learn more 'bout Alienware's new plans for world domination LOL!

 

Well it's after the launch of haswell...

 

I hope they do do another M18x. Would be a shame not too, I have grown so attached to mine, I can only imagine how attached some of you boys must be to yours.

 

lol look at all the comments bashing alienware. feel sorry for them

 

Yeah, but not by much. I dunno if the Desktop parts get launched before notebook counterparts.....

 

I'm sure they're already in Dell's hands awaiting builds. Stuff arrives for them 1 to 3 months ahead of time.