Need advice...get the r2 or wait?

Should I pull the trigger on the 8GB, i7 processor r2 model that is currently available or wait for the beefed up r3 version? I will be using it for gaming but mostly wow, starcraft 2, the upcoming Old Republic mmorpg and other Hearts of Iron type strategy games. Perhaps the r2 will handle those games just fine and the extra hardware won't improve my gaming experience. I just wanted some expert advice before I bought one.

 

I got the r2 i5, 8gb, 320gb for $636 from a deal posted on slickdeals.net. I think its def worth it to get one now on sale. We know the r3 will come out in a couple of months but its going to be at least $1000(bases off history of the platform) or more for a long while. I def would not pay full price for an r2 at this time.

-Mike

 

Wait and be patient. Spending $999 on the r2 i7 model now will be a sucker when you know you got r3 around the corner. If it is not out yet by 1st or 2nd week of May then grab the r2.

With r3 you get:
- USB 3.0
- Sandybridge CPU
- GT 540m
- Fixed New Hinges

 

I just wanted to know if the updated processor and graphics card would improve gaming performance any...especially with a game such as World of Warcraft. Sounds like most people here have gotten pretty good performance playing wow and sc2 on their r2.

 

But if he waits until the 1st or 2nd week of may, and pulls the trigger on an R2, and then the R3 comes out a week later, he'll be even more pissed.

My advice is, if you must have an m11x now, then spend a few days fishing around for deals, because I wouldn't pay full retail for an R2 at this point, since the price will be the same as an R3, and you'll suffer from a serious buyer's remorse hangover. If you're not in a rush and can wait the weeks/months for the R3, then just get it on the day it's released (or preorder when it becomes available).

Frankly there is no good time to buy a computer, except when you really need one.

This has not been officially confirmed yet afaik.

All else being equal, the expectation/assumption is a 10-15% boost in overall performance, assuming the specs above are to believed.

 

Well you can see all of these specs in the leaked M11x R3 user manual.
Like the others said; if you can get a sweet deal on it, go ahead, if not, wait another month and treat yourself with the R3!

 

This may be a dumb and uninformed question but when you say that I should be fishing around for deals where exactly can you find better deals. I would love that info instead of paying full price!

 

I say wait. Unless you absolutely need a new laptop right now, the R3 is going to be far a better value. While we don't have benchmarks yet, Sandy Bridge has thus far been far more efficient with battery life and performance. The improved graphics will also be worthwhile investment (allowing your laptop to age far more gracefully).

This goes both for the internal Intel chip and Nvidia's both.

So, unless you need a replacement now... wait. It'll be worth it.

 

m11x r3 is new technology. period.

 

Wait, preferably until the day before you die.

However, when R3 out you will regret spending top dollah on the R2.

 

get the r2, with all the mods it would be faster then an r3.. its an excellent piece of hardware.

 

Get the refurb R1. I got mine for just under $500 shipped. That will tide me over for at least a while.

But that's only if you must have it now. Otherwise, I'd say wait. Like someone said, you're always getting hosed when you buy a computer, because there's a newer one out next Thursday every time.

 

It is always good to wait for technology because R3 could be coming out within the next month, but it could also be coming out May, June, July, August or September. There is no set release date.

Also we still do not know what the specs will be, ya there is a manual, but that is still all speculation until it is released.

It is all preference, if you feel like you want a r2 or r1 now then buy it now, if you wanna wait for R3 then wait. It all depends on you.

 

For the r2 i7, you can get away with 1v1 and 2v2s in starcraft 2 without OCing just fine. But if you play 3v3 or 4v4s, you will need to OC the cpu, and even then you'll get a bit of lag with massive 4v4 battles.

And you know this how? And this is assuming you can't mod the r3? :\

 

you cant use TS with sandybridge, and you can bairly overclock. the gt540 is roughly 15% faster then the GT335, with the vmod and a good overclock, the r2 can perform better. were at over 9k on 3dm06 for the r2

 

The same kind of thing was said about R1 vs R2.

Pimped out last year's model will burn the stock next year's model etc..

With the R3 you will get some of the lessons learned from the past plus the unknown and unproven of the future.

 

no. you can only overclock sandy bridge very slightly. maybe 10mhz. the pll runs the usb ports and other things, and you cant increase the mhz much without things not working properly. the only thing you can do is overclock the gpu.
everything runs on the same chip.

 

So your saying that by overclocking (whatever that means- this is my first time buying a computer with more than 256mb of ram) the R2 performs better? I'm going to be playing games likes Mass Effect 2, Bad Company 2, Fallout 1 and new vegas, SC2, and Skyrim (when it comes out). Mass effect 3 as well when it comes out. I need the computer by the end of may, so waiting seems risky. I also can't go overbudget at all. The maxed out R2 costs my limit exactly.

 

Except nobody modded their R1 before the R2 release. Would pinmodding before R2 make a difference? Yes because it removes the CPU bottleneck well enough in games where it's head to head. It still was beaten in anything multithreaded but gave much more of a fight.

More like 5 at best. With Sandy Bridge, you're banking on the improved architecture for better performance.

 

This kind of posts are stupid. R3 is a way better. Just buy the R3 it has better performance of R2 or R1, it is new tech. USB 3.0, RAM: 1333 MHz, Second Generation Intel Processors, Intel HD Graphics 3000, HDMI 1.4, DirectX 11 support.....

NVIDIA GT440m is better than NVIDIA GT335m, and if you overclocked the GT440m, it would work as a 555...

Why you dont overclock your calculator and play games on it??
hahaha

 

damn man that sucks lol. i doubt the 2nt gen will be much faster anyway

 

the GT540 runs on the same chip the GT4 series does. so performance will be similar. do your homework. and the r2 will still be faster, with all the mods. there will be no cpu overclocking on sandybridge notebooks.

P.S
just couse the r3 is new, doesnt mean its better.

 

Yeah you're right because we're all mod-savy enough to know what we're doing to not damage our components and not void our warranties, right?

 

well maybe you should have the knowledge if your buying a gaming computer? its not that hard to learn if you dont.

 

Overclocking the R2 is a feature of this notebook, it is advertised by Dell, and is warranty-supported.

 

I think I'm going to get the R2 (and learn to overclock). I"ve looked at the Asus G53 (and yes, it is MUCH MUCH more powerful) but it is too big and has poor battery life. I looked at youtube videos of people playing different games on R2s with worse specs than the one I"m thinking about buying. They had things like Mass Effect 2 and Just Cause 2 running on high graphics and above. I'm heading off to college, and the college I"m attending has lots of outdoor space. The R2 size and it's near 8 hours of battery make it perfect for doing work on the go (and outside). I think the R2 is what I'm looking for. The led keyboard doesn't hurt either

 

He's referring to overclocking beyond the m11x's standard oc features using 3rd-party software, which Dell does not support, and if something happens, it will void your warranty.

I wonder.... you should ask Dell if you can buy the r2 now, and when the r3 comes out, you can trade your r2 for the r3 paying the difference and appropriate depreciated price of the r2 (example, pay a restocking fee, etc).

 

SetPLL is in the same league as GPU overclocking software and Throttlestop, which Dell does not support, and yet many still use.

 

And another thing is no buddy would know if you overclock or not, And upping the cpu mhzs ain't going too kill anything anyways, what kills if you put alot of overload voltage threw something it cant handle the voltage.

I know because im a huge overclocker pretty much anything i have is overclocked and i never had anything die on me the pass 10years i been doing it lol

My desktop in my sig is fully overclocked and with alot of voltage going threw it with no problems and i run it 24/7.


But ya like ajslay said because something is new doesn't mean its better, Like the 5850 5870 desktop card vs the 6850 and 6870s the 5x series preform better at release and i think they still faster by the benchmarks i see.

If there's no overclocking on the new cpus than its a deal breaker for me at the moment till i see benchmarks, Sure the 540gt will be better than the 335gt but it seems not a huge difference, And with overclocking the r2 up too 3ghzs and over even it might match the r3 even when the 540gt is overclocked that's if it can be overclocked high. The r2 can be overclocked high on the cpu and with the gpu most of the time.

But ya we wont know till it comes out and see some benchmarks.


I say if you can get the r2 fully spec i7 8gb ram under 800$ than its a good deal and hard too pass up, But i would think paying over 1000$ is a waste now till we see the benchmarks of the r3, I paid 820$ shipped for my m11x in sig refurb and im pretty happy with it, which i don't feel i would like too pay a extra 400 too 500$ more for a 10 too 20% more performance that's even if that is true, And the base price i would think will be 1000-1100 for the r3 and maxed out might hit 1300-1500 with tax and everything. When the m11x r1 and r2 first came out i configured each one at release and i had it close too 1500$ maxed out.

I think i wait till the r4 comes out in 6months lol seems like alienware laptops gets release at that times which too me is too fast, Should be at least every 12months. So we be talking the same stuff about the r3 too r4 again.. lol

 

The real question is: Will you give in to the concept of "Instant Gratification?"

The comparisons between the two CPUs will be negligible with TS and Overclocking of the R2's equally that of the power of the R3's sandy bridge. The only advantage to waiting for the R3 is two-fold. Slightly better performance with graphical games and software OR if you want to go the R2 route: then you will get a great system for a cheaper price (I'd imagine the price will be around $800 at first just like the R1's initial drop). If it were me and I already had a decent system I'd wait for the price drop and go for the R2 unless you have the money for an R3 and wish to splurge on a rather beastly 11inch gaming machine.

Best of Luck,
DeeVu

 

No, he said:

Given what we know about Sandybridge, a max overclock of the R2 (in the BIOS, no setpll) will likely outperform a stock R3 (under load) in CPU benchmarks. There is only so much an efficiency boost in the new architecture can do vs raw clock cycles.

 

I wouldn't be so sure. At 166, a dual core load will have the R2 i7 640 running at 2.33Ghz ((9+5)x166), less then the 2657M dual core speed, 2.4Ghz ((16+8)x100). Hence SetPLL enables a higher clockspeed to compensate. There won't be much to an overclocked R3 (5% at best) so once that clockspeed advantage is negated, there isn't much SB can do to close the gap. That is if it's not affected by throttling over time like the R2 before Throttlestop.

How did this happen? Everybody is just counting the larger number, which is true only for single thread loads because it's larger.

 

I was thinking of the 680UM, but yes you're right.

 

With the ticking hinge timebomb on the r2, the screen touching keyboard showing vertical lines on the screen, the smart money goes to r3.

Though I understand the overclocking capability of the r2 that can probably go faster than r3. But the new advantages of the r3 (fresh model w/ probably better built quality, usb 3.0, faster ram, new cpu/gpu) will overshadow the r2 cpu advantage if it really is an advantage. Real Talk

 

The 680UM isn't the i7 R2 everybody know about and most own since last year. Only one person owns one, insignificant to the number of 640UM owners. It may have enough clockspeed at 166 to match the 2657M.

Everything you noted won't make the R3 overshadow the R2, at least in the sense of R2 vs R2. Let's break it down:

The leaked manual shows the same design as the R2 and R1. Pure speculation to assume a new design.

Cool new feature.

Doesn't mean anything for performance. Just means the 1333mhz RAM will run at full speed.

Hope Intel is more generous with the Turbo Power Limit.

Performance remains to be seen.

All in all, the R2 won't be overshadowed like the R1 was. It will remain competitive for those who already own one and the benchmark to live up to for those who don't.

 

Well thank you to everyone for the great feedback and advice. After giving it a lot of thought I think I am going to just go with the R2. I think it is plenty powerful enough for what I need it for and once you factor in the OC possibilities it should be great. So...I can get the maxed out R2 right now for $999 direct from Alienware. Not sure if that promotion ends tommorrow (~$310 discount). Should I get it at that price? Once the R3 hits do you think the maxed out R2 price will drop much below $999? I searched around for coupons and other deals but can't find any right now. I would be willing to pick up a refurb but that seems to be hit or miss as to the availablility and even then, how much lower would the price be. Any advice, $999 a good price?