*Prospective* News/Discussion: Alienware M18x R3

You can always count on the ignorance of trolls. Like cockroaches, they show up in places where they are not wanted and their presence is never appreciated. I've never felt sorry for a cockroach. They cluster together, but scatter in every direction as soon as the lights are turned on. I almost responded and decided they were unworthy of being acknowledged.

Anti-Alienware trolls are also a lot like the wad of chewing gum stuck on the bottom of a shoe... unwanted, irrelevant, filthy and unfit for consumption. If you try to stop and deal with it, you make a sticky mess, get your hands all dirty and increase the chances of ruining something else in the process. If you leave it alone it will soon dry out, harden, fall off and become forgotten.

If that sounds haughty, elitist and arrogant... it should. After all, we are superior to them in every way.

 

it aply for a lot of thing on the net!

 

Mr. Fox I could not of said it better myself. Even with all of my current issues dealing with Alienware I still stick by them as they do support their products and stand by them as well. Like any company out there Alienware can have issues, but in the end they do right by their customers and that is what truly matters.

 

The only problem is it can take many months to get it fixed, many phone calls, and lots of wasted time to get a good working system when things break.

 

that is one thing they need to work on, for sure.

 

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with this thread but... Didn't find any other and maybe I'm going to be a little too optimist:

According to CNN " Microsoft prepare U-turn on Windows 8"... That's about time! Good news!

P.S.: Dear moderators, if you find this out of topic I will not offended if one of you delete it.

 

I think the "U-turn" is mainly to do with returning some of the Windows 7 Features like the start orb, maybe GUI changes etc etc.....it should give people the option to choose, hopefully.

 

The first thing people normally use as a comeback to myself owning my M18x is "Wow, you how much money did you waste on it? They are so overpriced"

I don't see it as offensive, I see it as jealously. Who cares what I am willing to pay for it, I love everything about my M18x, and I truely believe if I had gotten similiar specs in a MSI/Clevo/whatever, I wouldn't still enjoy it as much, as I love the Alienware styling and light up keyboard.

My $0.02

 

They are expensive , but its justified. Customising a Desktop with similar powered specs online doesn't even work out much cheaper anyway. Try customising a sleek PC online that will pull higher Benchmark scores than a speced out m18 and see how much it costs. Its touch and go, Quality costs money.

 

This is so true. I look at it as many other manufactures will only warranty their products for 1 year, maybe 2, Dell\Alienware will allow you to warranty theirs for up to 5 years. To me that means quality, and they know it. Furthermore, they stand behind the products, even if it does take several phones, emails, and other head aches sometimes. In the end, the bottom line is that computer will be taken care of. I can think of very few companies that will allow you to take a 4 1/2 year old computer that starts to die and replace it with a current system.

 

The thing is, at least in the UK you can just google 'dell discount' and usually you find a 10 it 15% discount voucher, also creation finance is easy to get at reasonable rates , especially 12 months interest free! I just ordered a m18x instead of a m14x because I got 399 pound off the list price with discounts and free delivery and as a past creation finance customer it took 10 minutes to arrange the finance. So it was worth me 'upgrading' from what I was going to get! Many other companies don't do decent finance.

 

heres a better one, haswell OC to 5.0ghz with just .9V
Intel Core i7 4770K overclocked to 5GHz on just 0.9V of power :: TweakTown

on 4 cores though, still good

 

Is a high resolution display (for example 2880x1440) + thunderbolt to much to ask for?

Dual lane Thunderbolt would be great for E-GPU. When the internal graphics are to slow just buy a PCI-E --> thunderbolt chassi and use a fun highend graphics card. If the machine have dual/quad thunderbolt ports more than 1 graphics card would be possible.

 

Is there actually a way to bridge external GPU in e-SLI or e-CF?

 

Well, if Samsung can stick a 2560x1440 panel in a 13" notebook, I think there is hope for a 2560x1600 or 2560x1440 in an M17x or M18x - no reason why it cannot be done, question is, will it be done? - not sure about the eGPU thing.....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/686177-2560x1440-13-samsung-laptop.html

 

a quick question guys! I have the m17x r2 with dual 5870 from 2010 and I want to sell it and upgrade to an m18x r2 with dual 7970m. I can find some refurbished m18x r2 on ebay at very good prices. Is it worth to get an m18x r2 right now at a good price or should I wait for the R3 and pay a lot more to get it?

 

This is just my personal opinion, but based off of how you worded your statement, I would grab a m18x R2. Coming from dual 5870's to dual 7970's is going to be a substantial leap in graphics performance as it is. Purchasing a R3 will get you the "latest and greatest" for awhile, but at a significant cost increase over a refurb R2.

Of course if money were no object, then grab a R3.

 

I agree with Keith - if the R2 deal is a killer deal, it might be worth pouncing on it. I recall my old M17x R2 with fond memories - 1920x1200 and 5870m's, great machine. Coming from that to even a single 7970m is going to be epic. If you can find a decently priced M18x R2 - maybe even with dual 680m's - it'd be awfully tempting if the deal was sweet enough.

Cutting edge technology is always gonna suck up your cash quicker than an alcoholic at a free booze party - unless you have the means to do so, and don't mind the fact that as soon as you have handed over your cash it's depreciated a fair amount, it can be a painful experience. If you have the means and the willingness, go all out for an R3.

Looking at all the rumours and speculation concerning the new hardware (Haswell and 8970m/780m) it's not going to be huge jumps in the gpu department, like going from 580m/675m/6990m to 7970m/680m which saw performance gains of around 50% - this time around, the refresh is likey to favour Nvidia as the early lead with the 780m's proposed ~15% performance increase over the 680m. The 8970m is not reported to see such a gain over its predecessor as rumours dictate that is essentially a rebadge with higher clocks, and therefore *shouldn't* see as much increase.

As for Haswell vs. current IvyBridge rumours, performance is likely to be even smaller - maybe around 5% to 10% on clock speeds, however, they should be a lot more power efficient, so we should see maybe greater battery life and lower temperatures.

Exciting times, yet again!

 

Yep, I agree with Keith and Stevie. If you have the cash and are not the type of enthusiast that wants to compromise an ounce of performance in the name of value, you need to wait for the latest and greatest.

But, if you're not prepared to pay a lot for the new tech, there is no point in waiting if you have found something great now. You can expect prices for the latest and greatest to be about the same as the current latest and greatest... I doubt the new products from any brand will be going down in price. We might see a drop in pricing as soon as today's best (Ivy Bridge and 600 series NVIDIA GPUs) are rendered obsolete. So the good deals you are seeing right now might get a little bit sweeter.

But, I say strike while the iron is hot... a bird in the hand... if you've already found a good buy, don't procrastinate... pull the trigger. If you don't, you might regret it. How many times have you see a sweet deal on Steam, or a steal on that SSD you've always want on sale at NewEgg, only to find out that you waited a day too long to take action and now that screaming hot deal is gone? There is a fine line separating the evils of procrastination and impulse buying.

 

that samsung 13" notebook with high resolution is overkill.. there is no way anyone will able to see properly and work with that kind of resolution.

 

Yeah, it's overkill on a 13" screen - be nice on an 18.4" screen though :thumbsup:

 

lol even 1920 x 1080 is too much for me in a lot of cases. if i use external keyboard i have ot use 1600 x 900, and only use 1080p when im not using usb keyboard.

 

You're weird, go away.

 

I concur, are you scared of the resolution or something?

 

Well... maybe not weird... just different than us. Some people's eyes work differently than others.

I find 1080p is the lowest acceptable resolution for any computer. 1366x768 is totally a joke (should be banned) and 1600x900 is disappointing. Anything lower than 1920X1080 is unpleasant if you use spreadsheets a lot, which I do. If the screen is too small to support comfortable 1080p viewing, then the entire computer is unacceptable to me. I avoid using my Dell Mini 9 because of the low display resolution and small keyboard... very unpleasant to use, but better than nothing if I need it in a pinch. My work Lenovo ThinkPad T420 has 1366x768 and I hate the machine in large part due to the poor display resolution. (The keyboard and pointing devices also suck really bad.)

 

I'm currently typing this on my little baby PC in my signature and it's 1366x768, but that's fine for a little 13.3" screen. I can't imagine how that Samsung resolution would look on the same size screen - I think it would be a tad too high even for someone who loves high. res.

Saying that, I'd have liked to have 1920x1080 on this little machine - it's fine as it is, but it just woulda been nice to have. Obviously a screen like the M18x 18.4" should be able to handle much higher resolutions than 1920x1080 native - something I'm sure a lot of users would benefit from if offered.

 

I was just joking. I realize everyone is different, haha.

 

IMHO it would be hard to use on a 18", but might be usable in a hypothetic M20x+...

SlimBean 4.2.2 on GT-N7000. Smooooooooooth!

 

I feel the new line of AW machines are around the corner like 1-2 months max... looking at the discounts DELL is giving now on all Alienware machines today it makes me wonder ... hmmm haswel 780m 8990m ,,, there are out with manufacturers now for a while so soon enough we should see a big bang refresh on new line laptops including maybe New M18X R3 I wonder how much more it will go down in price from DELL before the new line will be out for public

 

well theres also display settings, I use small 100% window font size and I bet most use 125% under 1080p. which is terrible experience trying to use 100% with 1080p, too hard on the eye, especially sitting 3/4 meter away from the screen. I've got over 200 applications installed and some programs (maybe around 10) dont get affected by window size display so I have to keep it at 100%, 125% wont upsize it, no choice but to keep it at 1600x900.

that aside, look at this GTX 780M they call it qual sample, specs are below on ebay page
Qual Sample M18x M17x NVIDIA GeForce GTX780M Laptop Video Card 780M 4GB w Driver | eBay

TIME TO DISCUSS THIS CARD

 

so I dont see any memory clock increase over 680mx, but upped from 680m so it should be like 20% faster? was hoping to see a 25%+ but maybe only under overclocked, not bad though. on the other hand 8970m spec isn't confirmed yet but doesnt look like any better than 7970m, disappointing!!! maybe they gonna launch 8990m?

 

8990m is pretty much a given otherwise AMD are going to find themselves in a bit of strife.

 

Someone's picked up those Ebay cards recently: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/718402-nvidia-gtx-780m-es-theyre-here-already.html but I believe the seller has listed 3 more....

However, regarding the 780m, we should see a performance gain of anywhere between 15-30% over 680m. Lots of juicy info available over here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...i-m-upgrading-you-gtx-780m-review-inside.html

 

its no more than 15% max, so hold your horses and wait till the official launch

 

Also depends on the overclocking potential... the gap between 680m and 780m might be smaller then some people think

 

Remember, it's launch figures we are talking about here - once driver support matures and vBios' get tweaked, we might just see a much better card, just like with the 680m which started slow out of the gates, got tweaked and became a monster! LOL

 

Agreed. I would even say 15% is too generous. Maybe a 10% increase in performance with a 30% in crease in price. I also expect 8990m to perform similarly only that it will be cheaper and come out with some fatal flaw.

 

Not many specifics, but some pics
Link

 

you meant this?

Alienware M17x, M18x e M14x refresh. Nuovo design e Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M - Notebook Italia

It seems there is definitely anew M13X launching and new M17X R5, it talks about M18X there but all photos are named as M13X and M17X as filenames hosted online

 

Google Translate

 

new design looks cool, i wonder if they will have entire new design towards m18xr3 as well. if so, good for them but better see some specs UP, and if not hopefully can upgrade the mobo/cpu/GPU LOL

 

@UltraGSM Yes. That's it. Thx. I tried to add the translate.

 

still no news on the R3 and its specs eh? I see 15% discount and 100 dollars off on the R2 so it make sense R3 should be coming..

edit: ah just finished reading a bunch of reviews on haswell, quite disappointed and seems to be a joke. although these are desktop processors, power usage doesnt seem to improve unless its during idle.. with 330watt power supply (if it comes with R3) it won't overclock both CPU/GPU all that well.

hopefully someone grab one and tell me how it goes

 

So, "what's new p u s s y c a t"?

any reliable news?

 

the R3 is out in japan

 

This thread seem to be very active with the latest news - for those that want to know more details: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/720272-2013-alienware-notebooks-revealed.html

 

check this out.. thanks to the guys in this forum..

New Alienware m18x | Dell

 

The new models are out and everybody's excited.
Let's continue discussing here for now:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/721403-official-alienware-launch-discussion-thread.html