M17 General Information Thread

Hey guys How are you doing, whats up!

I don't want to make a new thread and so I try it here first

I was hoping to see the new MacBook Pros outperform my 2 year old Alien but ... sadly ... the don't ...

So it's time for plan B, update the M17 and be happy with the lowlowlow end 13" Pro/Air (Apple is so cruel^^)

My question is: What are my options to upgrade my GPU? I am quite happy with crossfire but I know some cards does not fit dual in the m17 so I might be happy with one card as a replacement

I know it's a bit stupid only upgrading the gpu but I don't want to invest that much

I hate asking question and having "so little" / no background information... but I am pretty sure you guys are so kind and help me

THX & Greetings
Julian

 

4850s are the best you can get and they are very difficult to get a hold of

 

4850 unles you know how to mod a bios to accept other cards

or can order custom cards from an ODM

 

4850s are the best MXM 2.1 cards that were ever made......BIOS modding wont make up for that

 

280m exist to in 2.1 and they are about equivalent

 

okay at first: thank you guys!

So the 4850 and the 280m both fit as Crossfire / SLI in the M17?

... they are both difficult to get... impossible? risky?

it the update worth the trouble? (eg for Crysis 2^^)

 

no SLI for GTX 280m as only one of the slots in the M17 is Type IV HE

Dual 4850s is possible making that the best configuration possible.

 

Okay thank you

I can't find them in eBay (as promised ), is there a better way finding on (two^^)

Greetings
Julian

 

praying? they are real hard to find

 

Or get Marshall to part his out to you lol.

 

Who is this Marshall and why does he has what I want?!?

 

I sold my M17 to some old dude..should have taken the 4850's out because he probably doesnt even know what they are :S...

 

i guess that makes me the last guy with a m17 that got 4850 on the forum owww

 

Not so fast.

 

Wanna sell the 4850's :3?

I only have 1 3870 and ebay prices for another 3870/crossfire cable/gpu fan = about the price of a M11x -_-

 

you just need a 3870 and a cable the fan adrealy take care of the second card

but yeah they are not easey to come by how ever the 3870 is more powerfull then the m11x

 

I think a single 3870 is about equal to the GT335m in the M11x.....

 

the minimum psu the m17 can live on is a dell 120w from the new xps lineup anoying to find out when you got 6 free 65w psu and 1 120w taken

i forgot to bring the psu at work today does any one knows if alienware have some stil in store

 

just downloaded the new ati 11.3 drivers about to install and hope for improvement in BC:BF2. Anyone else installed the 11.3s? Any thoughts?

edit:

installed 11.3, but when playing BF:BC2 I lost a lot of textures, water was gone, flare was gone (which can be a good thing, because you don't get any flying dust or debris, so its easier to blow up a bldg wall/throw in a grenade and just run in without worrying about sight because its still perfectly clear, and the flickering backgrounds were more frequent than with 11.2

tl;dr - I'm going back to 11.2, 11.3 doesn't help me.

 

any one know if the m17 will run of a m17x 240w psu cause i need a new powersuplie for my laptop and the m17 ones are hard to find and heavier then the m17x ones

 

I think it would work, only one way to find out

Dell uses the same tip on pretty much everything now though....I used my 240W PSU on my M11x this weekend and it worked like a charm (and one is compal other is flex)

 

ya but the m17 connector is a little diferent then he dell one the dell one has a pin in the midle where the m17 does not how ever i guess i'm making the investment as i'm currently runing of a dell 120w psu and presty much any graphic task simply cause the psu to shut down

 

See if there is anyone with 2 so you can try one, or anyone near you.

 

Having issues with m17
should i just give to the local PC repair store

or send it to Alienware, do they even take laptops for repairs for m17 ?


Issue is runs slow, Freezes, stutter

 

The stuttering has been around since it was released. If you can elaborate on your problems the people here can most likely help you and will absolutely be more helpful than the pc-repair store.

If your warranty with Alienware is up I would not expect much from them as this is an EOL product.

 

Its the same frustation again & again
it freezes, runs slow

also I have not updatted the Bios running the old bios that came with it
could that be the issue ?
just updated windows vista, could be vista sucks

 

Some ideas off the top of my head to help, but some diagnostics would help us better understand this slowness.

What processes are running in the background?
Perhaps post a copy of the result from running HijackThis! program
When was the last time you formatted and cleanly installed everything?
Does it run slow when you're using firefox?
Does it run slow when you're gaming? (what games? what video settings?)
Are/Is there particular program(s) that make it run slower than other times?
What video card drivers are you using?
What battery/power setting are you using?

EDIT:

To answer your q, bios shouldn't affect speed, nor should *most* windows updates.

 

Taking a guess at your issue:

You have a quad core which is likely why you're having a stutter problem.

Refer to this thread but what it comes down to is: 1st would be inadequate/poorly designed CPU/Northbridge cooling, the 2nd being an insufficient power/power regulation section on the motherboard.

To fix the Northbridge, you need to do the copper mod and for the voltage issue, actually updating to the latest AW BIOS because they did tweak the voltages settings.

Look at this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali.../381296-project-freeze-m17-ocz-whitebook.html

EDIT:

Meant to post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...s/368282-m17-ocz-whitebook-quad-problems.html

 

Cooling has absolutely nothing to do with stutter, save yourself the trouble

 

the only possibility it could help is if your nb get in the high 80 then placing a better thermal pad on the NB help reducing it or at least delaying it but that's a 30 second operation and is a hit or miss


don't go into copper modding it's not worth the return


also do you have an intel 5300 this card if it use certain driver can cause stutering on a perfectly stable system (aka mine)

 

The stuttering is due to power draw and nothing else

Spend $20 and get a kill-a-watt meter. The stutter will occur when you hit a certain power usage

 

errr no i have a killawat and i can tell you it's not that linear

i can hit stutering when drawing only 120 watts while i can be fine at 170

i adrealy explained why the better thermal pad help but won,t take it compeltly away
les heat mean less power consumsion and lowering it onto the nb can give you just enough headroom to stay fine longer but that's no magic solution also the more component you add the more the poor underpowerd power line of the m17 are strained so the earlier they are likely to give up
that's why config with dual hdd 8gb of ram etc etc are more likely to get stutering there was even a case where the led of the keyboard where the little to much that caused stutering

the m17 is really sitting just on the line and a change in the moon phases can make is switch from a stable machine to a stutering atrocity

 

The power issue explains why just sometimes cycling the keyboard lights or pulling the power plug can stop stutter.

At least in my experience...

 

yes when you are stutering and pull out the power plug should solve the issue you should also ear a distinctive noise comming from the laptop if the stutering does not stop then it's a overheating or a driver problem

 

Lower temps do not mean lower heat, they just mean that the heat is being handled more efficiently. Heat is an absolute measurement of energy present, temperatures are a relative scale for gauging that energy.

I know that on my M17x R1 (very similar to the M17 - I had both) the stutter is absolutely power related and nothing else. It was also the EXACT same behavior observed on my M17 and under the same scenarios

 

It might well be power related but there's no linear relationship, where it will start stuttering above a certain power usage.

I've had stuttering while playing lower intensity games, which has been fixed after pulling the power cord and plugging it back in. Same in higher intensity games.

It honestly doesn't seem like there's a definite 'switch on' power draw at which point it starts stuttering.

 

Game intensity != power draw

I often see power draws from 3DMark06 that are higher than games I play. 01 and 03 also draw a lot of power and often throttled if I do take special precautions on my laptop. They are definitely not intense

 

i said lower temps mean lower power consumsion but that's an over simplification of the concept

the more heat there is the more any piece of conductive material resist to the current the more it resist the more heat it produce and so on and the more heat it produce the more power it consume since that energy does not simply pop ou of no where



here are a couple article that contains more detail about the concept

Electrical resistance and conductance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Electrical resistivity and conductivity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

that's why reducing the heat can reduce the power consumsion by just enough to give you more headroom but don't count on it to save you from stutering completely

 

If you do the math, the change in resistance due to lowering a couple degrees c is minuscule....

 

the defaul thermal pad is crapy i droped from 94 to 67 under heavy load from that change


also yes the diference is minuscule but so is the diference from shutting down the led whil you cycle through the colors but that to is enough to make it go away some times

 

I did not realize the change in temps was THAT dramatic! That may make an appreciable difference.

The best way to save power that I have found so far is to dim the screen or use an external screen and close the laptop lid to power off the built in screen all together.

 

sadly it makes 0 diference on mine my screen looks good but it save almost no power when diming that's one of the reason i wanned to change it. nethier the killawat or batterie bar tell any diference when going from the highest brightness to the lowest


EDIT: is it me or my english is really crapy today ...

 

Eh, I haven't noticed lol

In my M17x when I close the screen it frees up a good amount of power for the other components to use. I consistently throttle between 225-245W power draw depending on what bios version I am using. Within a given version though, it is like clockwork - as soon as you hit that limit you throttle. Stay 1 watt below, good to go!

 

interesting i never got my m17 to an actual power consumsion of 200w it stay like 175-180 i guess the QX is making a hell of a diference if i ever get around getting one we will know

 

Also my GPUs are much more power hungry than yours. I am positive that I am maxing out the 75W/MXM slot for my cards. I think you are capped at 65W per. Also your adapter is lower rated I believe? (forgot the wattage, is it 220 or 180?) where mine is a 240W (although I have pushed it as high as 295 before it cut out on me)

How high can you clock those 4850s? I was dying to get a set and just said screw it and got the M17x haha

 

When I'm talking about game intensity, I'm talking about the amount of load it's placing on the hardware, which in turn I gauge by looking at temperatures. Of course temperatures aren't a definite way to measure load on the hardware but there's a definite relationship; more heat means more power going into the hardware.

So, what I mean between a 'low intensity' and 'high intensity' game is a game that might heat up my GPUs to, say, ~65C, compared to a game that will heat them up to ~85C.

And I've had cases of stuttering in both.

It might well have something to do with power but there isn't enough evidence to say exactly what the relationship is. It might similarly be to do with heat (after all, the two are connected; more power means more heat).

 

this is my permanent clock so your gpu should not be that much more power hungry

 

Well they are because when benching I run at 1.15 V (1.10V stock) and at 687 MHz core which draws more current as well as the higher voltage

 

woah i can clock to 650 with only 1.07 V but i guess mine must draw more A and i didn't had a killawat at the time
i stoped due to the cooling system and since i did the cooling mods i haven't had the time to get into benching again and now that the hot times are comming i guess i won,t be benching much the danger of killing the machine due to heat is just to big here

 

Chest freezer