**M11xR2 Discussion Thread

Just ordered it online(EPP online for M11xR2 works now).
so, basically I get i7 w/ 4GB RAM, BT, Soft Touch Stealth Black and no other modification. The price come down to $1,169.00
- $116.90 for EPP member (10% off)
- $100.00 for EPP or DellU Laptop or Desktop $999 or more coupon code.
Total of $952.10 +tax +enviroment fee($8.00)
and free next business day shipping.

2 things I should mention, I'll upgrade HD later myself at cheaper price. And if you pay w/ American Express card, you can get extra 1 year warranty. So, I don't bother w/ extra warranty. And the true is after 1 year or 2, you computer probably outdated and you may want to get something better anyway.

In my past experience, I never have any hardware problem w/ laptop at all, I generally careful about moving it around and spend a few bucks(maybe $10) on something like a small surge on the laptop adapter. The tiny piece of egg looking thingy w/ LED light that sit in between the power brick and the power cord that connect to it. Generally speaking, I seen people that keep having problems w/ hardware failure have unclean power inside their house. Spending a little on surge is the best thing you can do. All my laptop/netbook have them now and my Desktop go through UPS.

PS: Extra info on extended warranty for buying w/ American Express card.

 

I put my order in for a base I7, 4GB, and bluetooth. Not sure I will keep it, but we shall see.

 

why do u not want o keep it

 

Okey, after looking into this. Let me trash this into Oblivion.
First off, let me put this into context. After looking at Alienware website, I can see a few things. So when you look at the benchmark given by dell, this is what you see:

Well, if you look carefully at the balloon pop-up, here is what you should see.

Anyone see this interesting? Then Vantage benchmarks were done in January, while the MW2 marks were done in May and it even say w/ core i7 model. The dell website that state the benchmark is the landing page for M11x series and not M11xR2 specific and we have no way of knowing if the Vantage benchmarks were done on core i7 or not. And we don't even know if Dell even have M11xR2 to do Vantage benchmark back in January. For all we know, the slight improve in benchmark could have come from Dell tweaking in setting or drivers update.

Addendum 2: and one more thing; looking at Intel site for i7-640UM product page, it said the product launch date is Q1 2010. Which mean that Dell most likely didn't have this CPU in January 2010 to run Vantage benchmark and even less likely that Dell even have a demo/pre-production/engineer unit of M11xR2 w/ i7-640UM in it at that time. So the Vantage benchmark on Dell page is almost w/ absolute certainty that those numbers are based on M11xR1 w/ SU7300 CPU.

Well, I can't find a MW marks for M11xR1 on the dell website, maybe i haven't tried hard enough. If anyone else can get it, plz post it here that way we know for sure. But from what I can find is this. A review of M11xR1 on the netbookchoice website. The test was done on M11x w/ SU7300 and 4GB of RAM.

Addendum 1: Notebookcheck have a review of M11xR1 also, w/ the benchmark of MW2 that actually confirm this, judging from the graph avg is in the 3x fps. If you google for M11x reviews with the MW2, the result are pretty in-line with this.

I think from 34fps to 54fps is a vast improvement, although this is unofficial numbers. But I think it's at least something that's more solid to start with.
Anyone else that were looking at the earlier posts should go back and revisit the numbers. Do more research, people. Don't just believe what other people said; verify it.

 

I buy 3 years + 1 year Amex, but good luck trying to get support after the Dell warranty ends.

I have never had a laptop from Dell that didn't need multiple visits from a technician, and it is ALWAYS in the second and third year. Even if your keyboard and touchpad is old and worn out, they come and replace the whole thing free.

 

That's what I got for $1285.49 - http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/489888-m11xr2-discussion-thread-11.html#post6336966

And I'd like to thank Dell for being so incompetent and saving me $242.00. My first order totaled $1600.00 because it was done before EPP or coupon code, but it was canceled by Dell because "the personalization ID you have chosen is Invalid."

 

Ordering w/ i7 bluetooth and 4GB of RAM = $1,022.49 total for me. Placing order today. Going to swap my OCZ LE SSD out of my current M11x and then hopefully sell my current M11x for around what I purchased the i7 new one for

 

Placed my order. Soft touch black, i7, 4 gb ram, and 320 gb hdd for a total of $1,095.90. For some reason all the shipping options were free, so I chose next day delivery.

 

make sure you do some benchies first, please

 

debating pulling the trigger on this, just concern 11"s is too small for similar size to some 14" notebooks out there...its just a travel notebook for me, I use my desktop when I am at home. Just debating vs the Lenovo Y460.

Any idea on battery life with playing movies on one of these? Will i7 drain battery more than i5?

 

Just curious, whatever happened to the i3 option?

 

It was available in other countries but not the US. They never even put up that option

 

Turbo Boost Technology on the Core i7/i5 models... peak current can be higher, and likely approached the previous design limit on the R1, that Dell bumped up the PSU on the R2.

- Kirk200

 

Just pointing out a few of the obvious. Bare with me.

While the core-i chips are not released than, Intel creates engineering sample and qualification samples for a reason. The get shipped to manufactures for a reason. The company can develop thier system based on the chip. Look at the 940XM CPU. It's not released until Q3 at the earliest, yet myself and a number of other members already have the CPU.

Also as far as MW2 going from 34 fps - 54 fps, while it's possible, that would suggest that the game was strongly CPU bottlenecked. Those of us that have run logs on the performance, know that the game is dependant on the GPU rather then the CPU. Obviously with the same GPU in the R2, something about this benchmark is a bit off, or odd to say the least. Whil the CPU may help the GPU out a bit, I don't think it will help out that much in MW2. I'd believe 2 maybe 3 FPS, but not 20fps.

 

I believe it will still be coming, just not available yet (at least in the US region). Core i3 is definitely listed in the Owner's Manual as an option.
- Kirk200

 

I got an email from alienwar mkt ... they say 92 fps with avg 52 in MW2, i got 48~28 with su7300 and 4GB

 

I saw that as well in the R2 manual... I really do hope they updated the LAN to GbE. While most of us will be using WLAN in general, the few times you need to move big files (like initially sync'ing an iTunes library w/digital copy movies), GbE will be really nice...

- Kirk200

 

Differance in max fps 92 vs. 48 doesn't sound right at all. I know personally I got well above 48. In any case, I never trust anything that comes from dell. Rather I trust the forum more once the system has been looked over and stress tested by NBR members.

 

Can anybody confirm that the M11xR2 will get a matte screen option?

A Scandinavian sales consultant wrote that the M11x has two screen options when asked about screen options (I'm considering HP Envy 14 due to the supposedly superior screen).

 

modern warfare on m11x su7300 overclock to 1.7ghz 4gb ddr3 ram gt335m

i get 30 to 89 fps..

Angel Sanctuary: Modern Warfare 2 benchmark with Alienware m11x

 

The difficulty is we dont know what settings everyone is using and also is it single or multi player.

I play COD4 on multi and get loads of stutters when there is a lot of people and explosions going on. This to me feels like the cpu bottlenecking the game.

I am hoping the i7 plus overclock will allow smoother gameplay. I am also hoping it will allow me to play BFBC2 as with my su7300 it is unplayable (15-22 fps)

 

hey all, I'm selling my m11x r1 that I got from Best Buy with upgraded 500gb hd and extra power cord for $750, ([email protected] if interested) but my question/ comment is, the main thing I noticed about my R1 model was the video card seemed to handle everything, even higher antialising settings it just began to really take a hit when it came to the cpu based part of the gaming experiance, I'm thinkin at least in my opinion, I have been sayin if I could just get 5 more solid FPS out of this thing (R1) I'll be good but I couldn't seem to get it, I think this new cpu, (i7) could give those 5-10 fps, (across most games) and will make it very nice to play on including Bad Company 2 which with the 5-10fps whould have made it playable, what do you guys think?

 

1)Conspiracy theories and assumptions is hardly "thrasing it into oblivion".

2)Companies lie about numbers? This is news to anyone?

3)I am pretty sure they had tests of the i5 and i7 laying around. maybe it's a mistake? maybe it's not? there are lots of youtube videos with m11x on mw2, that has lower average fps that the one stated in the benchmark.


but like I said before. companies lying is not news, and it shouldnt surprise anyone. Also benchmarks and tests results are often screwed. Same sorta thing when companies test battery life.

 

ok shows what i know

 

Playing the same not heavily CPU-bound game, R1 vs R2 all else being equal, there is no way you'll see a 10fps increase.

This is in no way an apple to apple comparison, but just to give you an idea and where I'm drawing the above conclusion. My desktop computer is a modded Dell XPS 630 (what's left of it is really just the case and P/S) running a X58A-UD5, i7 920, ATI5850, 6GB etc. Running the few games (let me stress here that I'm not a hard core heavy gamer) like Dirt2, SF4, I saw a 2-6fps increase when I OC'ed the 920 from the stock 2.66 to >3.8GHz. 2-6fps is within margins of error, if I ran the benchmark enough times at 2.66 it might have hit the same fps.

Where the 3.8GHz OC shines is doing my 1080p MKV movies conversion. It's a huge time saver.

 

^ that's exactly what I'm thinking. I was saying you can't compare video encoding/editing etc to graphics performance. The i7 will be very good with the multithreading on video encoding and faster clock speeds but 3D is very involved with GPU and CPU etc. Not trying to say the i7 isn't worth it, b/c it can be for people, but I think people on the fence should definitely wait for benchmarks to see if it's worth the time, possible loss in money for the i7 since that and the soft touch are the major differences.

 

I was thinking about putting on a protective skin and spray paint it with metallic grey.

 

Yes, but that's because the Core i7 920 is MORE than ample for modern games and the bottleneck is technically with your graphics card. With the processors in the M11xR1 it's the other way round; sure, the GT335m isn't the best graphics card, but in games it's more competent than the ULV Core 2 Duo processors. You can clearly see this if you run the GTAIV benchmark; your CPU usage will be 99% in the results, but your memory and graphics card usage won't be.

 

GTA4 is just a crappy port. Hardly good comparison.

 

I'm gonna get the i7 with the new mobo just so there are better chances of upgrades fitting in the future vs the c2d.

 

Hello, does it matter if it's a crappy port or not? It's a PERFECT comparison because it outlines a game that would benefit greatly from an improved CPU. I listed a few previously such as Bad Company 2 and Crysis. There are some other examples on the page of the GT335M on NotebookCheck; Modern Warfare 2, DiRT 2, Anno 1404 and F.E.A.R. all benefit from a good processor with the same card.

 

I'm pretty sure the i series UM are also BGA and therefore non upgradable.

 

I actually completely agree with you here. This did come into my head, and i was about to make a post for it when i saw yours.

Everyone is saying turbo boost only kicks when the processor is under strain, well then surely when playing games such as GTA with maximum usage, then the turbo boost will always be....well, boosting. It wouldn't just turn off because it felt like it?

 

1. Let me put this thing right, didn't make anything up. There is nothing conspiring or assuming about people misquoting benchmark number. Meaning people should stop saying that 3DMark Vantage Extreme Score & Performance Score are based on M11xR2, because they most likely not the number. The chance that Dell get a sample unit of engineering version of i7-640UM before end of January is possible, but the chance of dell actually have an actually redesign M11x and get M11xR2 sample unit to test it on is by January is very unlikely, and even if that's true, I wouldn't even dare publishing a number like that on non-production unit. It's like publishing a benchmark numbers of the beta (if not alpha)version.
So, stop posting that benchmark numbers and say it's from the M11xR2. That's my point.

3. Which is exactly the point, the benchmark number for MW2 is quoted by dell is the only benchmark number that according to dell was performed on M11xR2 with i7-640UM. Well, all the youtube video posting about MW2 on M11x are M11xR1, which as you said lower numbers. That's so wrong about it? M11xR2 should get better numbers than M11xR1. The question is by how much?

 

My main concern would be the ability to upgrade the gpu/vidcard. Would the same update work on both the r1 and r2? I'm thinking that by the time there is an upgrade there will be more r2's floating around therefore they would make fitting it into the r2 more of a prority than the rarer r1's.

 

What does that mean for the battery then?

 

The thing is, StarCraft II is coming out soon. I bet people are just thinking twice, like myself, about playing campaign in the R1. If you experience chugging in 3v3 and 4v4 in midgame, what else will you feel if your fighting 3 protoss teams and 3 zerg teams in one map?

Don't get me wrong, I love the R1 but i think we'll have a hard time changing settings every now and then.

And why is CoD always the benchmark anyway? They should bench Crysis or Shattered Horizon, or F.E.A.R. so that we'll definitely know that it's CPU and GPU capable.

 

Iziit true that the proc that use in the r2 M11x are 2 core
Arrandale (microprocessor) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Compare Intel® Products

 

Possibly, please email me, DtotheK at g mail dotty com

Thankyou

<sorry for off topicness everyone>

 

I did a google search for the official C2D ones, and these latest one came up higher, in the section after telling about the i5. That naturally made me assume that it would be from the new processors. Or they did some new benchmarks.
. You assume that because they got a production unit early, that it's fake. Yeah, okay. It's not like you have to do TAE on a device and test it for months before releasing it.

And the thing about not releasing benchmarks before the product is out? ? I have seen plenty of companies do that. The just update the scores later, and post the highest they got.

This is also why I think they have not posted 3dmark 06 score. I think that the 3dmark 06 is either lower or the same in their tests, so they have decided to hold them back and not post them, but only post those that have improvements - The Vantage scores! I think that's much more likely.

NOT only that, but didn't they also said before M11X was released that they where doing a core i refresh at summer?
I recall hearing about that way before. To me it makes perfect sense that Dell, one of the largest laptop makers in the world would get their hands on hardware, to test configs. You dont just put in a processor and release it, without doing lots of tests for your product.

 

Looking at the m11x R2 service manual, it looks like the mobo has to be swapped out. Nothing in there about being able to pop out the cpu or gpu.

 

For the back and forth exchange on benchmarks, please move to:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/490626-m11xr2-very-important-benchmark-info.html

This benchmark exchange can easily grow quickly which is why I am going to keep the thread freeman created. Lets not bog this one down with benchmark specific posts.

Thanks.

 

Man, I was just about to place an order (link in sig) but figured why not wait until after E3. Not that I think anything new will be released but I still rather let E3 pass first.

Anyway, I guess 2 weeks from now we will be seeing some reviews and pics on the soft-touch option.

 

i've seen the Dell website say something about soft touch black, wht is this color, is it like kinda rubberie vs the glossy figer print magnet like the r1?

 

moved to here.

 

ok FREEMAN well put man, thats wht i been findin on most games I play on this r-1 of mine, like i'll say Bad Company 2 for instance I cant remember exact fps but it was very low then I thought well let me turn the Gpu/Graphics settings all the way up then and lil difference I concluded on this title as well as others it not the video but the cpu now realisticaly Mr. Freeman if I go from the R-1 to the R-2 and Im gettin we say 20fps on a game, with the new i7 overclocked vs the su7300 i have now will i go to 25 perhaps or even 30fps, thx for your reply

 

hey all , My first post , ive been wanting to buy this laptop for a while and finally saw the new specs were released for it and ive noticed most people are buying the i7 , ... Is the i5 not so great? i mean is it not worth the extra money compared to the DC2? because it looks like it is slower from my point of view? i dont have enough money for the i7 but if it will make a big enough difference then i will get it. What should i do? and is the i5 worth it?

 

So, who's going to get their R2 shipped at your doorstep first in the US?

 

7/6 if they don't screw it up... (and thats only b/c fedex is closed 7/5...)