M11xR2 very important benchmark info.

Those requirements I posted are for WOTLK, the original WoW only required an 800 Mhz CPU and even less ram and vram. At the time of WoW release my 1.6 Ghz P4 was twice the required specifications for Vanilla WoW.

Shadow is a GPU bandwidth intensive task, the CPU has no part in it (unless for whatever reason you force the game to not use the GPU hardware for shadows, but this is never a good idea, even maxed out desktop quad cores chug). The M11X is shortest on GPU bandwidth, it is even more of a bottleneck than the CPU, in any game, if you have problems, reduce shadows and shaders first.

 

This is great news! I absolutely hate the fact that the R1 only allows a specific overclock, that's only somewhat stable on my SU7300 (and was advertised as being able to stay at 1.73GHz). I really need it though, since the difference between 1.3GHz and 1.73GHz is the difference between smooth gamplay, and huge lag in certain games. I just can't stand the occasional freezes, that require a hard reboot.

Now all I need is to get an exchange, but this always takes forever.

 

That was true THEN, but not now, which was not well indicated in your post.

As far as the shadows goes, I haven't tested it myself, but it seems to be very unoptimized and give performance hit across the board.

I imagine it becomes a CPU issue, when you have many characters, many enemies, many objects, many spells all at the same time projecting real time shadows - and then it becomes an issue about CPU and Ram, I could imagine. But I am not sure about that.

 

Could you also verify whether or not the NIC supports GB? The manual says it does, but specs on the site say otherwise.

Thanks!

 

The chipset in the M11xR2 which is QS57 does have include Gigabit Ethernet included, so it make no sense to drop it.

Speaking of which, I was just looking at QS57 spec and comparing to GS45(M11xR1), and couldn't quite make it. Since GT335M will be sitting on the PCI bus. Which I couldn't make it clear what exactly does this mean.
QS57 say it's PCI express 2.0 w/ 2.5GT/s but the configuration is x1, x2, x4 (technically PCI express 2.0 is double speed of PCI express 1.0). So does this mean it's equivalent of PCI express x2, x4, x8 ports? But,
GS45 say it's PCI express x16, is that mean M11xR1 actually have more bandwidth for the GPU than M11xR2?
While on nVidia site, GT335M spec does say it support PCI express 2.0. So exactly what does all this mean?

 

I've done a little Googling and from what i can find, the QS57 does support 8x PCIe 2.0, Intel's list may be incomplete.

 

Extra question in addition to my previous post... will such overclocking void the warranty?

 

Considering it's "built in" i highly doubt it - other companies specifically design their BIOSs so people can't overclock their processor.

 

I play WOTLK on effect settings of medium and can do icc15 ...but Ive seen my FPS drop down to 20ish on intensive fights.

 

Remember guys that games don't support hyperthreading...so if your a gamer you might not see too much difference between i7 and su7300

 

We will because the OCed i7 will be a 2.66 Ghz with turbo boost enabled. Compared to the OCed SU7300 at 1.73 Ghz that is almost 1 Ghz more, with the difference in architecture you could be looking at double the performance(from your CPU only) of course that will not translate to double the frame rate in game but it will certainly make a substantial difference. Couple that with faster ram 1333mhz instead of 1066mhz.

All in all the R2 will be substatially better especially on games that are heavy on CPU usage. Of course we will have to wait a couple of days now till the first pre-orders are delivered and im sure this board will be flooded with benchmarks and then we will see whats what.

Also for me that also means I get to play my PS2 Emulator again, there was no way I could run it on the Core Duo (all emulators care about is your clock speed).

 

A few knick-knack here. 2.66GHz on TB+OC is a single core mode, on dual core mode is 1.8GHz TB. So, go figures that out w/ OC, but I don't suppose everyone can OC all the way to 166 from 133. Also, even though you can use faster memory, but the CPU only use 800 bus speed. Since we are talking about Arrandale architecture here, CPU get direct path to memory, and if the CPU is limit to 800MHz, then putting in faster memory won't get it any faster, but unless there is a way to clock it w/ lower CAS, then it's like overclock the RAM. But I don't think that's in the BIOS. That said, from what people are saying, that's not how HT works either. Games don't dictate whether to use HT or not. It's more like HT will be used when it fit. So, just because games doesn't design w/ HT in mind, doesn't mean it will use 0% of the logical core on HT. Maybe 5-10% or even 15%, so even if we are saying that SU7300 is the same as i7-640UM in everyway except for HT(which is not true anyway), then CPU w/ HT still get the benefit just not efficiently.

 

@freeman - I understand and appreciate your post. I would ask everyone to research hyperthreading and games. You will see that games do not utilize HT at this time. Some will actually decrease performance if HT is enabled (game is not designed and caused performance loss). If the I7 with dual physical cores operates at 1.8ghz on turbo then you will see a small increase in performance. Maybe 1 to 2 fps on most games.

Again I will wait until I see the benchmarks before I jump on the I7 bandwagon.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

is there a book or a website or pamphlet so i can read and bring myself up to date on all of these terms and what they all mean in terms of computing power? most of these posts are kinda greek to me >_>

 

Haha, but I don't think there is, some of them are just community abbreviated. But in term of the M11x related, here are a few.
TB=Turbo Boost
HT=Hyper Thread
OC=Over Clock
Try searching those in wikipedia, and it should broaden your horizon. (in fact try reading Arrandale wiki article)
There are bunch of other, but I think for the rest even if you know what they are, you wouldn't care for. Not everyone need to know how the car works in order to drive a car, the same can be said here.

 

there's one guy claiming to have gotten 70 to 80 fps in dirt 2, and 60 to 100 fps with just cause 2 - claims to be using the i7 version, with everything on high.

if that's true, then that's a big jump, considering with high details (no AA) in just cause i barely break 40 in the benchmarks, and gameplay is choppy unless i lower details.

it is the first customer review of the page on the m11x site, so i don't know if it can be trusted (i was trying to see the status of my laptop repair - no luck )

 

He's definitely lying, he also stated that he's getting 29-50 fps on crysis maxed settings.

 

I have seen HT improvements on both BFBC2 and GTA4 with my i5 540m.

 

Is it exactly the same hyper-threading as in the good old Pentium 4 days?

 

I don't know. But i think in general, this is how HT works:
you got 2 input that need to do the same operation. Then CPU would be able to see that those 2 will be doing the same operation just with difference value, then apply HT to it. So, the logical core will be doing the same operation as the physical core, but with difference data input. For something like conversion/trans-coder, this is a significant help. So, even if HT doesn't change much as CPU technological advances, HT does get some benefit of that also.

 

Just confirmed with a Dell rep that the additional 133 -> 166MHz overclock is under warranty. Now all I want to know is what kind of framerates it gets in BF:BC2... erawneila?

 

Any coupon codes to save a little dough.

 

If it comes from a Dell rep - it must be absolutely true... riiiiiiight.

 

Considering this rep is from Team Blackhawk and was referred here, and does speak perfect English, I'm inclined to believe him. Plus, I have it in paper.

 

ROFL

I got told many things in perfect English that weren't as near as correct.

 

I think you should probably just use your brain :/ I know it's only an assumption, but it's a very likely one.

 

Based on what is that likely?! Many people here complained quite a bit on either not being able to swap CPU to the one that can be OC'd or going through quite a big hassle to do it. It's exactly the same thing - advertised that can be OC'd quite a bit but it's questionable whether all units can actually do it.

I think you should probably read more threads around here...

 

Well, then I have grounds to complain or ask for a refund, as I have it in paper. Not that I've ordered one yet.

 

Overclocking to 166MHz is described in the M11x manual with no mention of being at the users own risk. Can't imagine they would include that unless it is covered under warranty.

 

Looks to me that AW / Dell is pretty confident most if not all M11x R2's should be able to reach that 166 MHz without much issue, which is why they don't have any warnings or disclaimers related to that OC'ing. They simply just say stock is 133 MHz and you can OC from 134 to 166 MHz in the manual.

 

That's what Dell expected with the R1, and we know how that worked out. Hence, the 2MHz steps.

 

I wonder if it will be able to exceed 166 MHz... maybe it's BIOS locked past that though.

 

Through the bios a BCLK of 166MHz will be the maximum, but perhaps if it has a pll that doesn't require hardware modifications, setfsb will get it past 166Mhz. It's really not worth it though.

 

A second ago you were arguing that it probably isn't covered under warranty, now you're saying that it's not fair you might not be able to achieve max overclock? I'm not following you at all...

 

Due to the (unavoidable) fact not every CPU is made the same and different units will have different overclocking capabilities.

Let me put it in another way then: you might have problems replacing your system if it's not going to be overclockable. I'm not saying that the possible damage to the CPU isn't covered by the warranty (unlikely there will be any anyway). Just saying the "inability to do max overclock" may not be enough to swap the system for the other one that can do max overclock.

This time on their web page just says "overclockable", so it's really meaningless. I mean you can overclock it by 2 MHz. R1 was advertised as 1.7 GHz overclockable, yet a bit of people had problems (BSOD etc.) running it OCed.

But it the end it probably won't matter since it's working @ 2.266 GHz with turbo boost anyway - the only question is whether it can also boost both cores as it's "big brother" i7 620.

 

How stable are these systems while with overclock and turboboost?