M11x Processor replaceable?

I was wondering if I could replace my 1.3 ghz processor with a better one. I heard that it wasn't possible with the alienwares, but I wanted to check to make sure. I can't play most modern (even some older) games, most not even on minimum settings. Some games such as Fallout New Vegas, TF2, Portal, and Oblivion lag, sometimes unplayable, on the lowest possible settings, which was a huge disappointed for how much this laptop cost. Also, I am unable to run most fps's no matter how bad the graphics are. When I'm playing games like Crossfire and Combat Arms, I go through a period of severe lag, causing me to die due to me not being able to move/shoot. Thank you!

 

Not with the Alienware M11x.
The CPU is soldered in place.

 

Well that was a waste of $1600...Any way to "overclock" it? I heard that you could only overclock desktops, but I saw that some people were using Throttlestop. I tried Throttlestop but I had no idea where my TPC button was

 

wow.. if you have the R1, overclock it in the bios, or pinmod it... use the search button on these forums.

 

Ok thanks Btw what do you mean by pinmod?

 

no problem, and a pinmod is modding the PLL chip on the motherboard to achieve a higher clockspeed. i did that and im at 1.73ghz, next month im planning the 2ghz mod. all that info is in a thread on this forum.

 

Ok thanks for the help, I'll try using the BIOS first

 

good idea, the motherboard mod if for really experienced users. the bios overclock will get you 1.6ghz

 

$1600?!?!?!? Please list all your specs!
This machine is plenty powerful, I can reach a max of 2.3 ghz while OC'ed and using ThrottleStop on my i5.
The core2duo has no support for thorttlestop.

 

this is the R1 not the R2, he probably got it when it first came out. or he lives in a region which computers cost more.

 

Yah I bought this alienware around early June 2010...How do I know if its R1/R2/ect...Also, I bought a buyback plan along with the laptop, so should I trade this one in for money and buy the R3 when it comes out? Will it be any better?

 

R1: Core2Duo
R2: i3/i5/i7

R3 is much more powerfull, and surely will be a hit...

 

wrong. my R1 is more powerful then a stock r2.
all depends on how you have it configured.

 

haha... Pinmodd doesn't count. And you have to compare the best R1 with the best R2.. Period...

"...Now even more powerful..."

 

Also, I bought a buyback plan along with the laptop, so should I trade this one in for money and buy the R3 when it comes out? Will it be any better? Just wanna know your opinion as I'm not sure if it's worth it :/

 

thats pretty funny, mods do count. the r2 without TS is nothing. so i gues that doesnt count either. anything to increase performance counts. just like when i do the 2ghz pinmod, it will count. in some cases stock vs stock the r1 is better. depends on what your doing.

 

So if I pinmod I void my warranty, but does normal overclocking void my warranty aswell?

 

normal overclocking will not void the warranty, but the pinmod will. this is only for experienced users tho, that could care less about there warranty, like me.

 

I'm pretty sure portal should run fine...and just get a new computer?

 

yah I would but I have no money to spare XD I'll just live with the normal overclock, thanks for the help

 

portal will run on a 6600gt and 1gb ram, and a pentium 4.

there is optimization issues somewhere that need to be worked out obviously.
any revision of the m11x can run 99% of the games out there, getting a new pc will solve nothing.

 

M11xR1 has a VGA port on the left hand side. The M11xR2 does not.

Guess that's something one should check before one starts pinmodding.

Or you could just tool up, and buy an M11xR3 when it is released.

USB 3.0
Intel Core i7 ULV (2nd generation)
Nvidia GT540M

 

i wont be upgrading to the r3 anytime soon =P 2ghz pinmod and gpu volt mod could boost me to over the 8.2 to 8.5k range on 3dm06, and thats about the same score the gt540 gets
but he shouldnt be having issues with the games he listed with the r1 at stock.

 

Another question: What exactly do I get back for the buyback plan if I spent around $1600? Do I only get like 75% of the STARTING price, or the price I paid? Or is it the price I paid but reduced due to its age? This is very confusing for me, so I might just contact Dell later

 

im very unsure, contacting alienware would be the best option here.

 

The GT540 can voltmod too.

It looks good, improves on the 335 but I'll be cautious of the Core ULV, remembering the R2 early days and UncleWebb saying Sandy Bridge doesn't support TPL.

 

ahh that is true, but atleast it would be close to stock Gt 540m speeds.
and if there is no TS for the R3 that may be an issue.

 

Lol. Sandybridge isn't overclockable, Allendale is. So a BIOS OC'd R2 (ie/not modded) will in all likelihood outperform a stock R3, even in games since 335M = 540M anyway.

The R3 will be a hit, but it's certainly not "much more powerful". The leap from R2 to R3 (if the leaked specs are to be believed) isn't nearly as dramatic as the R1 to R2 leap was, and as every R1 user here will tell you, isn't huge to begin with.

 

The GT540m is nothing more than a rebadged GT435m (96 shader, 16TMU, 4rop). If the rest of the laptop was identical it would barely be an upgrade at all.

The warp scheduler design on the GF108 means it has 2 schedulers feeding 3 banks of CUDA cores (rather than 2:2 of the GF100). Even with a doubling of despatch engines (4 vs 2 of GF100) it is still inefficient. This would be why the desktop GT430 is easily beaten by the eqvuivilant GT240 (well that and the pathetic 4 ROP back end).

The GT555 with 144sp on the other hand...

EDIT: All of the games the op has mentioned (substituting FO:NV for FO3) play perfectly fine on my R1. Oblivion for example plays lovely with Ultra settings and HDR.

The Op should so a search on this forum for M11x optimizations (by Stevenx). This should help alot.

 

I'll take a look at this,thanks! Also, I finally got around to overclocking, jumped to around 1.7 ghz, so hopefully it'l make a difference

EDIT: I saw in a video that someone had AA = 8x, AF = 8x. What do these two things stand for and how do I change them???

 

Also make sure you are running on the GT 335m and not the intel graphics.....you should be able to game with the M11x easily

 

I think I'm running on the Nvidia...How do I know for sure and how do I switch? I just tried Global Agenda on medium graphics, was pretty laggy :/ And I already OC'ed...what does AA and AF mean?

 

AA = Anti-aliasing :

Spatial anti-aliasing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



AF = Anisotropic filtering :

Anisotropic filtering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


That should help a bit

 

Do you see the green nvidia icon in the task bar? If so does it have 2 arcs or one?

2 is nvidia running 1 is intel

 

Yah it has 2 arcs, so I'm guessing that my graphics card setting is fine. Does the AA and AF affect performance? Maybe this is why my Alienware is running so slow. If not, I don't know what else to do :/

 

AA and AF only use up GPU cycles when they are being used, such as during a game. For performance reasons, turn them off within the game you are playing and you may or may not see a difference, depending on the game and how it was designed.

Just doing normal things around Windows, while there is some AA going on, its not enough to impact performance like it would within a game. If you are getting slowness, take a look at what is running in the background (look at your Taskbar) and make sure you run a virus check.

Those things aside, Windows corruption can cause issues but normally those manifest as blue screens or other serious errors. A reload might be useful to you.

 

Well I ran multiple scans and found some infected files, but they were removed. Also I made sure that no programs were running in the background. Also, Is it normal for my fps to jump around, spiking every once in awhile? I notice that while I play crossfire, it stays at around 70 fps, but then sometimes spike as low as 20 fps, causing a few seconds of lag which is very annoying. Same thing with WoW, averages around 50-60, but sometimes spikes down to 16 fps. What could be causing this? I doubt its a virus, and I don't have any background programs that require a lot of resources. Also, this occured shortly after I bought my laptop, if not when I turned it on for the first time, so I don't think that a wipe will fix it

 

m11xR1 is overclockable via a TME-unlock and/or FSLx PLL pinmod. 2.0Ghz is entirely doable.
REF: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ock-m11x-r1-slg-hardmod-only.html#post7049385

m11xR2 is overclockable using TS + setpll.
REF: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-use-setpll-overclock-your-r2-over-166-a.html

If want the most bang per buck, consider instead:

CA$730 Acer 3820TG i5-480M 2.66 4GB 500GB HD6550+HD W7HP

The Acer's i5 have been overclocked to 3.4-3.7Ghz by forum members. The HD6550 can be gpu overclocked as well.

 

Well I'm not willing to buy a new laptop atm, and I wish to keep my warranty. I find it odd that other members seem to have freat fps with most games, while I have severe lag on most games, some even not modern. Also after overclocking in the BIOS I've noticed that after leaving my laptop alone after awhile, going afk, it tends to just freeze up. What should I do? Am I just gonna have to wipe the system and hope for the best?

 

Modifying counts. Its like saying no throttle stop on the R2. To be honest i7 isn't as reliable as the ol' C2D. AMD's really lagging the in CPU business .

 

The R2 is still faster counting modifications. What is not being done here is considering the distribution of the modified M11x systems. Less then 10 R1 users have pinmodded their PLL compared to nearly everybody using Throttlestop on their R2.

 

less then 10, im one of them i feel special haha

 

oh by the way, you overclocked in the bios right? its only running at 1.6ghz. windows reports it at 1.73 but its wrong. windows was using the wrong multiplier

 

So you have an M11xR1 SU7300

How much memory do you have? 4GB is good.

You are running the switchable 197.72 version of Nvida/Intel as supplied by Dell.
You have not downloaded a Nvidia version from the Nvidia site and switched the BIOS to load Nvidia only.

You have over-clocked the CPU in the BIOS and you now see 1.73Ghz in the Windows WEI panel. The true over-clock is in fact 1.6Ghz.

You have 0-4% CPU use when the system is idle.

You have less than 50 processes active as seen in the system monitor when viewing all processes. (No biggie, but less means more system resources available)

I have 51 and I have MySQL and Apache, Java and etc etc...

Your system HDD has been defrag'd (Good housekeeping)

Using AC you have the power setting set to 'High Performance' with no power throttling actions i.e GPU Processor is set to Max Performance. etc etc..

You are not using an external monitor and thus your screen size is 720p (1366 x768) or less.

You have not over-clocked your Nvidia GT 335M GPU and have stock clocking:

GPU Clock: 450Mhz
Memory Clock: 790Mhz
Shader Clock: 1080Mhz

Or you have over-clocked your GPU and are using moderate over-clocking:

GPU Clock: 540Mhz
Memory Clock: 850Mhz
Shader Clock: 1296Mhz

Just establishing some base lines.

I use my stock (albeit Nvidia 260.63/Intel 2020) M11xR1 SU7300 daily and play Crysis 1.0 on medium with moderate over-clock now and then and have no problems.

With some bleeding edge GPU clocking I can get ~6965 3DMarks.
wPrime 32M and my 1.6Ghz CPU completes in ~57sec

I did model my requirements before I bought the M11x though.

Update: Spoon feeding children. Hours of fun. Here comes the aeroplane.

 

About Fallout NV, it runs smothly with highest settings. Mine is R2 i5 without OC or throtlestop. Did you install the newest patch???

 

Well I remember long ago that most games couldn't run due to me not having the Nvidia version, but I downloaded it a few months and it increased performance. I upgraded the BIOS with the files from this forum, and used the BIOS to overclock. I have power settings set to high, and I've even tried Game Booster, still no luck. I also have the latest version of my nvidia driver, but I'll try defragging and seeing if that helps. I already used AVG to fix any registry errors, but that didn't seem to have much affect. I'll try defragging tonight to see if that helps. Hopefully it does...

 

I don't understand why this thread wasn't closed after second post?

 

Because we haven't found a solution yet?

 

m11xR1 has a BGA soldered CPU on it. Meaning it would require some sophisticated equipment to replace the CPU. Could then put in say a SL9600-2.13, which could dual-IDA overclock to 2.4Ghz. With a 266->333Mhz PLL pinmod it might even be able to run at 3Ghz which would be approx full powered i5 levels.

Is it worth doing? No. It's cheaper, easier and doesn't void your warranty to just sell the m11xR1 and get a m11xR2 or Acer 3820TG and overclock either of those instead.

 

Yah I was thinking of doing this but I'm just confused on how other people that aren't modding are able to play games like crisis 2 and mw2

Edit: I will mention again that I believe that the problem is my cpu usage. My cpu jumps around from 20 to 60+ when idling, not doing anything. I don't think that this is normal...

EDIT 2: Well great, defragged and made matters worse, now running WoW at 3 fps... happened? The only thing I did was defrag and fixed some registry errors with AVG.