how powerful is the R3 game wise

What games would i struggle to play on the m11x r3 ? i know the gpu isnt the best but will it play crysis at high settings ok ? metro 2033 etc or is that asking to much ?

 

Google "alienware m11x r3 review" and you should be able to find three current reviews that give game benchmarks and whatnot. If i remember correctly they're by notebookcheck, kitguru, and a third one i can't recall. However, note that a couple of the reviews feature slightly faster Core i7s than are currently available (the Core i7-2617 is the fastest available) and a couple also feature SSDs in the testing.

All in all, I can play Crysis smoothly on medium settings on my Core i7 R3 (8 gb ram, etc) over HDMI output to a 23" full 1080p monitor. With that said, native resolution for the m11x's own screen I'm assuming you could get medium-high settings and have it run fluently.

 

^
hardwareheaven if my recall is right

 

Yes! That's it... thanks for the backup. That's what I get posting at 3 AM

Looks like there's now an additional review from a UK site:

Alienware M11x R3 review | Laptops | Reviews | PC Pro

It's not as comprehensive as the notebookcheck review, but decent.

 

Hi Mrcgibb,

I received my R3 this week and i have been able to play the following games with no real issues.

Crysis - Medium Detail, high detail kept judder
Dragon Age 2 - Medium Detail, high was ok but would judder a few times.
Brink - High Detail.

All games were played at 1366x768.

Hope this helps.

 

I can play SC2 on ultra settings smoothly and Portal 2 on high settings.

 

SC2 on Ultra? Then I am totally in! I love me m15x about a year old but thinking of getting the m11x r3 at the end of summer to suit my "on-the-go" needs.

 

I've played the below games at native resolution with no issues:

BFBC2: High
Crysis: High
Crysis Warhead: Gamer
World of Warcraft: Ultra
SC2: Ultra
Portal: High
Mass Effect: High

I have the r3 with i7, 6gb ram, and a vertex 3 ssd. Please note that I have updated to the latest nvidia driver (270.61).

 

Good call dude - I switched from an M15 to the m11x and haven't looked back. It's not as powerful as the 15, but the portability really does MORE than make up for it (especially if you have another machine as your 'main').

I'm actually thinking of upgrading the R2 I have now to an R3 - I was looking at the 14, but I've kind of discounted that as an option now after reading a lot of comments about problems gaming on the battery. Such problems just don't exist with the M11x.

 

yeah, the ONLY issue with my m11xr2 while gaming is SC2.... dies in 3v3 matches, because the CPU cannot keep up

 

Have you seen my signature? The R2 CPUs can be made as fast as or faster then the R3 i7 as it doesn't throttle.

 

My R3 has yet to throttle.

 

It has to be throttling somewhat for the R2 to catch up in Cinebench and WPrime. In WPrime, the R3 is ~10% slower then an i7 at 166mhz BCLK (2.33Ghz).
The R3 should be running at 2.3Ghz with Turboboost and yet it's slower which means it's throttling. That's not accounting for any clock for clock improvements either so it may be running more then 10% slower in clock speed.

 

Not turbo boosting is not the same as throttling. Sandy Bridge is not designed to run 100% at max turbo clock all the time, especially if there is more than one active thread. You lose turbo well before the CPU overheats, at least if the BIOS parameters are not completely screwed up.

It's not surprising that the stock-clocked R3 is slower than the R2 when significantly overclocked.

 

Neither does Arrandale ULV.

What is surprising is that the R3 wasn't as fast as I expected.

My point still stands.

 

I just got my R3. I used to have R2 and tried to play Brink on it. I got around 20 FPS and it would sometimes even go down as low as 11.

With my R3 I get around 60-75 FPS average! Lowest I got was 38 FPS when there was alot of action.

 

What processor was in your R2? What speed was it overclocked at? Were you running TS?
Ofc a stock R3 will beat a stock R2.

 

I had the i5 in my R2 which I overclocked to 150. And I was not running Throttle Stop. I had to set everything to MEDIUM and run lower resolution, and even then the FPS would sometimes drop below 15 FPS. -_- I think it has more to do with the game itself than with the R2. It is such an unoptimized game. If you look on different forums alot of people cant run Brink correctly even with more powerfull machines.

I just tried BFBC2 and it runs around 30 FPS on high, wow. Im now downloading Crysis (first one) and will try that out soon.

My R3:

1GB DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
Intel Core i5 2537M 1.4GHz (2.3GHz w/Turbo Boost, 3MB Cache)
6144MB (1x2048 + 1x4096) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
320GB Serial ATA (7.200 Rpm)

 

That's why you were getting 15fps and not 50.

 

Without OC I had a max of 25 FPS and it would even go as low as 7. The highest I got with my R2 OC was around 45 but the thing is it kept going down to unplayable mode at around 10 FPS. It didnt matter what I did, even If I had extremely low res.

 

Yes, but with an OC and TS enabled your processor is running at a similiar speed to the R3s. Setting the res low (and other graphic settings) will not effect it at all, since that is the GPU.

 

Yea Sc2 in Ultra just blows me away...