US dell site no longer offering core i7 ulv for the m11x what gives?

First let me start off with why I am going with an m11x.

So I just custom built an amazing AMD phenom II x6 1100t desktop. Proud of my creation even though its not quite finished (just needs 6970's in crossfire to be complete). This is why I am getting a more portable laptop instead of a desktop replacement as there is no desktop needing to be replaced. I still want some decent gaming performance though as well as portability and battery life so the m11x is the perfect choice for me now. You can skip this section if you don't care what I built.


/ Dell Ultra Sharp U3011 30 inch 2560 x 1600 monitor
/ AMD Phenom II x6 1100t (3.3ghz, 3.7ghz turbo) (overclocked to 4.2ghz on just air and High quality Noctua cooler 37C temp stressed while OC'd to 4.2ghz can go to 4.4ghz but it jumps up to 45C so I keep it at 4.2. Performance increase between 4.2-4.4 isn't noticeable so less heat is more desirable. These processors run incredibly cool for 45nm tech and 6 cores)
/ Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Grease
/ Noctua NH-D14 dual fan 120mm & 140mm Dual tower CPU Heat Sink, (This heat sink rivals the cooling power of water solutions probably the best air solution in existence)
/ CPU tower is placed on floor with my central air conditioning vent blowing towards the intake fans to provide cooler than ambient air into the tower when A/C turns on.
/ Radeon 5770 (Got off my buddy for 50 bucks when he upgraded to 6870, place holder till crossfired factory overclocked 6970's with quality aftermarket coolers released which will both run at the full x16 speed, motherboard can even run 3 graphics cards all at full x16 speed, crossfire 6970's required due to 2560x1600 resolution monitor)
/ 2.5" 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 Connected via SATA III 6gbps main drive
/ 2x RAID 1 Mirror 3.5" 2TB SATA III 6gbps 64MB Cache WD Caviar Black storage/media drive
/ 2x MASSCOOL SYTRIN Kuformula SHF1 Hard drive cooling fans for WD HDD's
/ Corsair XMS2 Dominator AMD Black edition ready 8GB 1333mhz CAS 7 7-7-7-20 DDR3 4x2GB
/ CORSAIR CMXAF1 Fans specially designed for Corsair Dominator Ram 3x 40mm fans Corsair Dominator RAM cooling
/ Coolermaster HAFX Full tower 1x 230mm fan 3x 200mm fan 16db silent bearings
/ ASUS Xonar Essence STX Audiophile grade, 2 channel RCA output with 5.1 digital output High quality amplified headphone output, high quality replaceable op-amps, high quality capacitors, analog stage shielding, 120+db S/N (every part screams incredible quality and its sound does a great job mimicking 1000 dollar stereo receivers sound.
/ Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 1000 watt power supply Gold efficiency rating 90%+ efficiency
/ 5.25" USB 2.0 Media Card Reader AFT PRO-55U Individual slots for each card type no adapters required (even micro sized cards have dedicated slots) for any cards maximum transfer speeds for each format. CF (all types and sizes), MMC (all types and sizes), Mem Stick (all types and sizes), SD (all types and sizes), xD (all types and sizes)
/ ASUS Cross hair IV Extreme motherboard (amazing looks, highest quality M board out there, more features then I even know how to use
/ Plextor PX-B940SA-11 Dual Layer Blu-Ray Re-writable Multi Drive 350ms seek time, 12x BD-R SL/DL, 2x BD-RE, 16x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+/-RW, 8x DVD+/-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 40x CD-R, 24x CD-RW
/ Samsung SH-B123L Blu-Ray Read Multi drive 210ms seek time, 12x BD-ROM, 16x DVD-ROM, 48x CD-ROM, Light scribe support, DVD Dual Layer Support, Same DVD and CD writing speed as my Plextor with the following upgraded, 48x CD-R, 12x DVD-RAM
/ Killer 2100 PCI-E Network Processing Unit (games bypass windows tcp-ip stack, network processor offloads all network processing cycles from CPU to network card increasing available cpu cycles for game, reduces ping, increases fps)
/D-Link DWA-160 IEEE 802.11a/g, IEEE 802.11n Draft 2.0 USB 2.0 Xtreme N Dual Band USB Adapter (Includes 2.4ghz band and 5ghz band)



So when I looked at the m11x awhile ago it had a core i7 ULV you could configure it with. I go check it out now and at least on the US dell site it's forcing me to take the core i5 version only. That's really crappy, I think the core i5 version is even slower then the overclocked core2duo version.

 

You have to click on the $949 option then change to i7

http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-m11x/fs

 

oh thats kinda stupid you would think the high performance option all the way on the right would be where the i7 chip is. man dell doesnt have common sense

 

haha, so funny how dell "recommends" 8 gb of ram over the other option of 4 gb of ram (seriously if anyone has hit much over 4 gb of ram usage on this laptop so far, i haven't heard of it).

 

They have the i7 option well hidden, maybe because they want to sell the older processors away. idk.

 

yea 8gb ram is kinda funny for that laptop honestly even on my desktop i dont think ive ever used more then 4gb it was just really cheap for me to get 4x2gb even with high end dominator ram

 

Try runnning some complex filters and/or automated batch processing on high-resolution images in Adobe Photoshop. Even 8GB is puny. I have 6GB on my desktop running 64-bit Vista, and I *really* have to be careful not to try to run complex automations on too high-resolution files, or the whole thing falls over with out-of-memory errors.

I could chew up 32GB of ram without working too hard at all.

Sure, you're not likely to run into that situation if you're just gaming, but my point is that not everyone uses the same applications...

 

yea its only useful for professional graphic work and maybe some very high end scientific research. I'm guessing 95% of us here only need 4GB ram but much more then 5% got 8GB even i got 8 GB that I'll never use

 

Well the amount a core i7 m11x cost just made it not worth it. For a little cheaper im getting a refurbished envy 14 with 1600x900 radiance display core i5 dual core 4gb ram 5650 switchable graphics dvd burner beats audio slice battery for like 7-8 hours actual battery run time combined with the 8 cell 500gb hdd 90 day warranty with option to buy extended warranty before 90 days up.

Just makes more sense to pay around the same price for the envy 14 with radiance screen vs an m11x. Plus the radiance screen is discontinued now and its just an amazing quality screen. The standard voltage core i5 blows away the ulv core i7, the 5650 graphics card beats the gt 335, the 14.5" radiance screen beats the 1366x768 11.6" m11x screen, m11x weighs a couple pounds less but that isn't really a factor to me. I love the alienware design but I just cant bring myself to letting this envy 14 slip through my hands for this good a price. Even when I pay to add 3 years of warranty it will still be a way better deal.

 

From what I hear, Civ 5 can eat up as much as 4gb of ram all by itself. The things you are saying about "who would need 8gb of ram on a laptop?" are the exact same thing people said about 1gb of ram in a laptop...

given time developers will use that ram.

 

Well I still say within the next 3 years (which is about average how long people keep a laptop) 90%+ of people will only need 4GB of ram during that time. Then people will be buying new laptops after 3 yeas have elapsed then if 8GB ram is foreseeable as needed people will get 8GB then plus in 3 years the price of 4GB sticks of ram should be much lower.