M17 General Information Thread

Yeah everything seems to be working well and both cards are showing in device manager as well as the option to enable crossfire in CCC. 10.3 installed with no issue at all this time.......but Im getting a very average score in 3Dmark06...I know, I know its not everyone cup of tea but I was getting a score of about 13900 with my 3870s and Im just getting over 14000 with my 4850s???
Its as if only one card is performing. Ive enabled crossfire both in the "enable crossfire" option in the new CCC and chosen the advanced option in Catalyst AI.
Im gunna do some gaming now to see how they perform.
Thanks.

 

3DMARK06 scores only increase with a few hundred when replacing your 3870's with 4850's...not with thousands.

If you want higher scores you need to overclock your CPU to the max (and probably also your GPU's) or replace it with a QX9300 (but be ready for stutter then).

 

Oh right.....so its normal then!

As long as they perform well in gaming then Im happy.

 

Aye, 3dmark06 is massively CPU limited. Vantage shows the difference much better (approx 9500K GPU score vs 7000ish IIRC), you should find some games which became unplayable at high res are now reasonably playable

 

Indeed, try out vantage .

When i first installed my 4850's i had over 10k vantage GPU score on 9.12 drivers.

 

And remember...these are essentially MXM 2.1 4870s lol since both have GDDR3

So if you can clock them as far....we got 14k GPU with the 4870s

 

Clocks are lower (500/800 vs 550/888 IIRC) and I believe the voltages might be lower. Theres also the possibility the cores are speed binned, so poor 4870m/surplus cards became the 4850s
Mine wouldnt clock anywhere near as far unfortunately, I think its possible the 4850 memory may have been a lower speed part.

Still good cards though.
With a mild clock they beat my GTX280ms, and weren't far off unclocked.

Tony - keep an eye on temps, they can get very toasty and you may decide you want to do some cooling mods on the GPU cooling arms.

 

Hi guys.....

Im still way off doing any overclocking but would do some cooling mods if I need them.
Having said that temps are very good just sitting at 60c @idle and 75ish under load......they seem very good so far. Yes they are a little hotter than the 3870s but they always ran fairly cool @50 -60c
Just looking at the cards its hard to believe that Alienware did not release these to us M17 owners.....The notebook was under a year old when they sold these cards to the fortunate few.
Thanks for the info guys!

hope your still enjoying your PC Alex!

 

Hehe, my M980NU is gone, am waiting for the G890 now!
I7 and SSD loving here I come

How are you finding the 4850s ingame?

 

Ya do provide us with some performance in games or some numbers? Also if you had a cooler then I recommend you take of the bottom cover and put it on the cooler and it will decrease the temperature significantly.

and do remember to update your signature

 

nice man, hope you enjoy your new card Tony!

btw, where did you buy it from?

 

it's from me actually

 

Thanks guys!

Ive only really played MW2 with these new cards and they are playing really well but I could not use max settings.....I had to use AA x4 instead of x8 and un-check "sync every frame" and its now playing well.
I thought I had a problem when I started Alien vs Predator and the screen was flickering.......I then realised I had been cheeky and chose the DX 11 option at boot instead of the DX 9 option.......where is the DX10 option in this game?? seems strange. Its ok now with the DX9 option selected in Steam.
Now I will atttach a screenshot of my temps shortly after boot.....Im very happy with them and think my notebook cooler is doing a good job as well as the good job I had done with the thermal paste.

 

Any advice for running a Vantage run??
I dont need to change resolution or anything like that do I? I just want a score for my sig.

 

Nope, just run it in default performance mode. Your GPU score should be something like 9.5-10K.

Also make sure you're running recent drivers like the 10.3, if you go for the 10.3 previewB mobility drivers I think they're meant to have some AVP tweaks in them

 

Mandrake got his GPU score upto 11500 in vantage when he had his M17, aim for that

That is OC'd though

 

Hi guys,

my Vantage score seems a little low overall(P8745.....or is this OK?)but the GPU score is good at 10197 see screenshot.

I would do some overclocking but I dont like the idea of changing from the official BIOS.

Thanks.

 

That score looks right ofr an x9100 as the cpu

Now OC both and watch it climb

 

Yeah but this is Mandrake you are talking about.....he can overclock a toaster!

 

You can do any overclock he did

All he did to make his scores special was stand in his garage in the chicago winter. As long as you are comfortable getting it COLD and overclocking, you can match his scores (look what I did with the M17x)

Not putting him down or anything, he is the best laptop benchmarker I know of - but he aint superman. He is only doing things that the rest of us can do too

 

Looks fine, I'd forgotten about the vantage boosts in recent ATI drivers.
The reason Nvidia cards get a higher score is that they cheat, they basically use the GPUs to augment the CPU test using standard settings.
Whip away Physx GPU accelleration and they're about equal.

Otherwise,the overall score is fine

 

I know Im just jesting really.....its all attainable if you want it......I just dont want it enough IMHO.
Maybe when Ive done some more research perhaps.
Thanks Scook and Alex also for all the info.

 

any one know a blue ray BURNER that would fit the m17 ?


it needs to be tray load a slot load one would just look ugely with the m17

 

IIRC it was an SATA connection (take the drive out and check), in the standard 12.7mm format, most of the drives on the market are in this format (just put the M17's fascia on the drive).

IIRC Panasonic do one (UJ-230/240A), as do Sony (5700S?).
Be warned if you grab a Sony drive, unless its an actual Sony OEM drive, they lock the firmware to manufacturer through the security checks used in the flash programme. (my 5500s drive which originally came from an Acer is locked to the 1.b2 Acer custom BIOS for example, which just isn't as good as later Sony' own BIOS make the drive)

Not many drives come in the thinner 9mm format, so just take the drive out of the chassis and measure if you're that worried, but I'm almost sure it was a 12mm one.

Hope that helps!

 

confirmed the m17 drive is 12.7 mm

thanks alot

 

Where can we buy m17 battery ?
cos mine has red X on it
how much is it ?

 

Do you have warranty?

If yes then for free from AW/DELL.

If no, i might have 1 for sale, though i'm europe.

There are also a few on ebay:
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m38.l1313&_nkw=m17+battery&_sacat=See-All-Categories

However i am not 100% sure these are for the M17, looks like the m9700..unless its all the same .

 

thanks will look into it
I did E mail Dell been 3 days
No reply yet

 

Any luck yet ibraveheart?

 

my god he wants £134 for that battery? are they really worth that much?

I knew I should have tried to get a spare from Alienware whilst I was under warranty. I dont need one yet but will do in the future no doubt.

 

I got a spare one for free some time ago ..lucky me...

 

you should be able to still buy it from AW warranty or not, you are their customer and if they have the part they will sell it to you

 

and do they usually cost around £130($200)??

Thanks.

 

No clue, call and get a quote. Might be harder as a UK resident though

 

Alienware doesnt help
No reply from Dell

When I call they say we have battery for AWm17x


this is bad cust service

 

Yeah Ive not had a response from Alienware either.....its been a few days now!

 

@Scook; Catalyst 10.4 installing without issue unlike 10.3 and working very well. Even got a few extra points in Vantage.

About the battery.....yeah Alienware will let you buy a battery even if you are out of warranty providing you have an account number. They gave me a reference for when I call at the weekend. I also need to get hold of a cross-fire cable.

Will post back with prices. I wish I would have phoned a month ago whilst I was still under warranty.....I would have got the parts for free.

 

Get it here
Alienware Area-51 M9750 / 9700 / M17-R1 Battery | Alienware M17-R1 | Laptop Parts By Model Number | Ztronics

 

Hey TonyToff (or any other video driver testing people),

I just installed 10.4 catalyst as well, but now when I play winamp or a movie with vlc, it seems to studder sometimes. I do have a quad (q9000), but I have 4gb ram. So far, the world's most crazy drm game plays alright, but sometimes it will lag also for seemingly no reason (only happened twice in the last 6 hours I've been playing it), but yeah, just wondering if anyone else is having similar experiences?

 

You have a Quad and may be you have the "normal" shutter problem

Are you sure that there was no shutter before 10.4? If not, install an older on and take an other look.

That die M17 can't handle quads that good is a sad but ture story ...

Greetings
Julian

 

I have m17 to & yes ithas shutter problem
Can you please advise, if the new m17x with 5870 card
will be like double the the power of the m17 or tripple the power ?

also is it better to wait & get the soon to be out m17x with dual 5870s cards

Thank you

 

The 5870ms are somewhere between the desktop 5750/5770. Quite a lot faster than 3870ms, BUT I would wait and see if they release a crossfire variant, as you may find the move from crossfire 3870s to a single 5870m a little underwhelming (overall performance will be better and more consistant across titles, but it wont always be anywhere near twice as fast in all likelyhood)

 

Shutter? Don't you guys mean stutter ?

And i totally agree with Alexrose1uk.

If you got crossfire 3870's it's not really worth the effort to change to a single card. Changing to 2 5870's...thats a totally different league.
A new M17x with 5870's in CF and a new I7 cpu would krush, kill 'n destroy the M17.

Be patient .

 

The single 5870 will actually only turn out around 25% or so faster than crossfire 3870s. It's not worth getting any single GPU laptop over your M17 already.

Crossfire 5870s is a different story though. Wait for them for sure.

 

Thank you all
i will wait
god bless

 

my build with the up comming qx9300 desagre LOL

 

i7 and dual 5870m's will still thrash a qx9300 with dual 4850s

trust me.....you can see my sig and scores and know I still wish I could afford a loaded R2 lol

 

here here.

 

Yeah not meaning to be harsh, but the I7 is a better CPU all round than the QX9300 (especially for single/dual core apps where the turbo boost and IPC boost kicks in) and the 5870s are about 20-30% stronger per card than those 4850s.

We still dont know if the M17xR2 is definately getting crossfire yet though

 

yeah its still not confirmed but I would be surprised if Alienware dont offer the 5870s in crossfire.
Im gunna get a M17X if the opportunity arises financially. Although if things work out I might get an Alienware desktop.