Advice for a new buyer.

Hi all - New forum user and first time poster.

Basically im in the market for a new Laptop, i've decided what suits me best is an M11x. This is due to the size. I travel a lot and it makes sense that it would be my first choice.

Around 7 months ago i wanted and bought a laptop for the purpose of gaming. Money was an issue and i settled for a rather cheap (dell outlet) Dell Studio 1749 with the following spec: Core i5-460M 2.53GHz, 4096MB 1067MHz DDR3, Radeon HD 5650.

This Laptop has been great for the price. However it's simple too big for me to take on my travels often. My main concern with it however is the performance decrease while on battery. Its pretty much makes gaming impossible. I have to be connected to a power supply to game on this machine at all.

This brings me to my post - I would like to know how the m11x and any of the alienware laptop's perform on battery alone. Can i expect a huge dip like with my 1749? If not, just how much of the preformance is effected?

Also how would an m11x hold up compared to the machine i've been using in terms of gaming?

and are the cheaper versions of the m11x still viable for gaming? What would be best value for money?

Any answers/advice would be gratefully received. Thanks

 

The M11x r1 is still a great machine so long as you don't run cpu intensive games. It will give you about 2-2:30 hours while gaming (depending on the game)

The r2-r3 will handle cpu tasks better but will do so with about 1:30 to 2 hours of gaming on battery.

The graphics performance will be about the same as your 5650m, slightly better on the r3.

Performance is not affected under battery unless you run in power saving mode for the GPU.

 

the GT335 is about the same performance as your HD5650. and when the GT335 is overclocked it can be 20% faster or more

 

A 5650 can be Overclocked quite a bit as well so that's not much of a selling point.

Overclocking the GPU is a sure way of decreasing battery life so I run my GT335m underclocked at 350mhz core and 600mhz memory when gaming away from a power source.

 

Assuming i know very little about overclocking - Im guessing the m11x is a lot easier to overclock than my machine?

Is it do-able for someone who's never overclocked a machine before or best to steer clear? Thanks

 

LOL. you should probably not underclock it, if its running at the same voltage its still going to pull the same amount of power... same with overclocking, if its still at the same voltage, just higher clocks you will get the same battery life lol...

 

even a newbie can overclock the R1, its pretty simple really, just PM me if you have any questions on getting it stable. if you buy one.

 

You are quite wrong in that respect. By reducing the clock speed you decrease the load - ie the amount of pixels the GPU must process - and thus convert those saved pixels into additional power. This is of course considering that the CPU is not bottlenecking you tremendously. In a game like Crysis you aren't bottlenecked by the CPU and thus a 100mhz reduction on the core and a 200mhz reduction on the memory can net you about 15-20 minutes in my tests.

Reducing the voltage will further save you battery life. The combination of an overclock and an undervolt can balance each other out - as is evident by Alienware overclocking and undervolting the CPU in the M11x R1 yet retaining almost the same battery life.

For pretty much any computer, if you reduce the processing output you will reduce the power consumption assuming there are few or no bottlenecks.

 

Thank you, will do.

 

hmmm. well iv tried underclocking my r1 before and i noticed zero difference.
with my cpu pin modded and my gpu overclocked highly with the 0.95v mod, there is maybe a 5 minute difference, nothing to get excited about.

 

Play crysis @ 350mhz core and 600mhz memory and then try it @ 550mhz core and 1000mhz memory, you will see about a 25 minute difference. Assuming of course you are not playing a level that has allot of CPU work involved.

The other way to save battery life in certain games is to enable a 30fps cap (if one is available).

 

This is correct, underclocking WILL net you longer battery life.

 

id rather not play crysis at lower clocks, i like my performance over battery life.
i have my r1 in discrete mode at all times, but i dont game on battery so i dont know. it never goes above idle clocks, i get over 4 hours with the GT335 on.