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    Multi-tasking with the M11x

    Discussion in 'Alienware M11x' started by xbonez, Aug 3, 2011.

  1. xbonez

    xbonez Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm very strongly considering buying an M11x sometime this week. it fits all my needs (small screen, powerful etc.). However, before I seal the deal, I have two questions:

    1. Apart from the occasional gaming, I program a lot. Programming generally involves me having one or two copies of Visual Studio 2010 open, along with windows media player and roughly 20 tabs in Google chrome. can the M11x handle this?

    2. How bad is optimus? I've been reading about it having issues picking the right video card for games? Dell is still selling the Revision 1 without optimus. But it has a GT335M video card without an option to customize it. Can I customize it if I call a sales rep?
     
    xbonez, Aug 3, 2011
    #1
  2. slickie88

    slickie88 Master of Puppets

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    I regularly run 1 or more virtualbox virtual machines (server 2008 R2, OSX, CentOS, XP) on my R2 and have no difficulty doing so. Provided you have the memory to accommodate Visual Studio, you should be fine.

    Problems with Optimus are greatly exaggerated here. It works; no muss, no fuss.
     
    slickie88, Aug 3, 2011
    #2
  3. kent1146

    kent1146 Notebook Prophet

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    1) Those are all fine. The usage you're describing is mostly RAM-heavy, instead of CPU-heavy. So as long as you have enough RAM on your system, you'll be fine. I'd recommend you get 8GB of RAM, based on what you described.


    2) Optimus is fine. It works 98% of the time. The other 2% of the time, you can go through nVidia's Control Panel and manually choose which GPU you want to use for a particular program. The reason that you hear bad things about Optimus is because people are only vocal about it when something goes wrong. Nobody writes posts when everything is working like it should.

    If you're thinking of buying an Alienware M11x, I would get an Alienware M11x R3. The Sandy Bridge CPU and upgraded GPU give it a nice performance boost over an Alienware M11x R1 or R2, to the point where it is worth paying a little more to get the most up-to-date hardware platform.
     
    kent1146, Aug 3, 2011
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  4. xbonez

    xbonez Notebook Enthusiast

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    Alright, Thanks for the input guys. It seems it'll be the M11x R3 w/ 8GB RAM for me
     
    xbonez, Aug 3, 2011
    #4
  5. martinroshak

    martinroshak Notebook Consultant

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    I'll echo the no issues with Optimus. I did a complete fresh install and didn't run into a single issue with the drivers, work brilliantly in my opinion.
     
    martinroshak, Aug 3, 2011
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  6. dredd1893

    dredd1893 Notebook Consultant

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    another vote for 8 GB RAM here.
     
    dredd1893, Aug 3, 2011
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