4850's Finally out for the m17

nbrsearch

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lol i'm just plaing but yes there is. but only 3 members have it so far. so we have to wait for them to enjoy it first.

 

dude....................

 

Hey, I just talked to a support agent at alienware, 5 as a matter of fact. And they told me this, "Sir, the 4850 cards are not currently available as an upgrade for the owners of the m17. We do this whenever a new card/upgrade is available on a system. This is normal. We WILL have the 4850s available in a few weeks, just be patient please. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

So. They will be available.
-ARCHON

 

@KCUK, I have the cards, they're already showing a 10-20+ % performance gain, even against 3870 crossfire setups using much stronger CPUs; and the 4850s appear to be heavily CPU limited with my CPU (P8400 opening model).

I have an X9100 coming at the moment; which should help me get a lot more of the potential out of these chips, especially clocked. I can play anything I want to with this laptop at decent settings at 1920x1200 already, including Crysis/Warhead 64bit on high *runs better than 32* and Age of Conan on high. The chips are performing roughly the same as a desktop 4870 1GB.

Marshall (The guy who got his from AW) has already hit 16k 3dmark06 with an UNCLOCKED X9100 and Windows7, so it looks like as Im hitting about 11k; and already extremely playable; these cards have a lot to give with the right system backing them, and looks like they respond well to Windows7.

This is all pretty much being documented in my thread called 4850 Xfire Benchmarks [although I had to edit out a lot of my posts as I wasnt sure if I needed to RMA earlier in the week]

As a conclusion - so far these things seem stronger than the 260M SLI, for less money, however they need a powerful CPU and the best drivers you can get to get the most out of then and make them shine; as ATI drivers and cards are more CPU dependant than Nvidia's, with a decent set of drivers, CPU and possibly Win7, they're within stones throw of 280M SLI scores, at a considerably lower cost for an equivalent machine to the M17x/Clevo comparable, and even now, much as I love getting the best shineys possible within reason, I could't justify the extra outlay. These are GOOD cards.

 

Best damn news I've heard all year

 

So, here comes the huge question to all of us m17 owners out there with our old 3870s...What do we do with them when we get our 4850s? ebay? thats what the alienware agent told me, alienware will not take them back, or refund you in any way. you are stuck with them, ahem, We are stuck with them.
-ARCHON

 

Ebay or/and NBR sales forum id say.

 

Aye, but who would buy 3870's? backup encase they fail? lol

 

People with other MXM 2 setups perhaps, providing they have BIOS support; a 3870 would be a big step up compared to say a 3650 or X1800 mobility

 

thanks for the replies lol

and +1 facepalm for me then!!!!!!

 

Like you said, " ATI drivers and cards are more CPU dependant "

I have the - Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz

Should i downgrade to - Intel® Core™2 Extreme X9100 3.06GHz

Please Advice anyone ?

 

I think you'll get good response out of either; especially if you can overclock the quad without the dreaded 'stutter bug'.

 

My master plan:

1) wait about 6 months until 4850's are available, and all bugs have been worked out (or at least revealed)

2) Convince the wife that an upgrade is OK - after all, honey, the reason we bought such an expensive computer is for the upgrade potential, remember?

3) grab a pair of shiny new graphics cards for my system - either selling the old cards, or keeping them for future use.

4) Take over the world with my army of giant robot hamster ninjas.

5) Profit!!

Oh, wait, there may have been an incorrect step in there - ah, yes, there it is! There is no profit... Everything else looks correct, though....

 

Haha nice plan, bar the SSDs I should be able to give you a decent indication of how they perform once EMS/Customs get my X9100 to me

 

the Asus W90p wil have the same scores except a maybe a little higher because they overclocked

you 1 gig of vram MIGHT help but not much

 

the extra vram wont change benchmark scores much, cuz they are always run at a "low" resolution of 1280x1024 not the 1920x1200 where the vram makes a difference.

Although, an argument has been made that extra vram doesn't actually do much at all (at least for a standalone card - I still believe multi-gpu is where it makes the difference)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gv-n285oc-2gi-gtx-285,2380.html

 

why would multi GPU's need it

they mirror both cards onto one eventually not even using the other

either way i said might...... HOPEING people would know that the vram won't bottle neck @ 1280

i guess i assume to much around here huh ?

 

With multi gpu, the exact same data is loaded in to both cards memory, so effectively only 1 cards worth of memory is being used. For 3870's this means 512MB, for 4850's it means 1GB. The fact that twice the memory is available for holding frame buffer is what will potentially boost performance (have yet to see a direct comparison of dual 512mb vs dual 1gb on same gpu yet though)

 

ummm the 1 gig is used the same on a multi GPU as a singl GPU

i know about it im just confised why you say increased size in Vram is better for multi cards more then a single

 

Because the amount of vram isn't a bottleneck for single gpu where it COULD be (has yet to be proven as I mentioned) with multi GPU - since you will have 2 GPUs accessing that data vs just one

Read that article I linked....it explains the single gpu side of things (albeit, the card being reviewed went from 1gb to 2gb, so maybe bottleneck wasn't there anyway)

 

the Vram is only used on one card in a Multi GPU config ..... the amount of textures don't change.

I will read it as im always open to new things

 

O ok i see what your saying your refering to it being split between the cards I got you

i see what your saying now

i thought you wer implying that it is able to use it more efficiently

 

the ram of both cards is used, they are both filled with the exact same data, mirrored - think raid 1

This way both GPUs have access to an identical set of data, but each GPU still only interfaces with its dedicated ram, thus more ram on each card means more textures and so on available to each GPU (they each have a full set of data to work with - the same data - but should only use 50% of that each). It isn't the most efficient system as far as memory use, but it still yields a good performance gain clearly.

Knowing nothing about writing drivers....I am sure with a lot of work they could code it so that vram on card 1 gets odd frame data and vram on card 2 gets even frame data making better use of the vram, but that is not what is being discussed here

 

Would need help
How to do that ?

 

yea i understood what you were saying after i realized you were refering to it being split

 

glad I could help moo

 

Personally I think the 1GB of RAM could potentially make a BIG performance difference during these card's useful lifetimes, especially in combination with a 1920x1200 screen. Games that use too much VRAM for a 512MB card; even an ATI one using more efficient texture compression (this is one reason Nvidia tend to use more texture memory) are already in circulation (Age of Conan and STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl /w 2009 Complete Mod to cite a few).
Whilst the extra RAM, unless clocked higher, won't typically benefit benchmarks nor maximum framerates; they can increase the minimum and average framerate by reducing the texture calls which have to be made, even a single card can benefit if the GPU is strong enough; as they won't run out of memory, and I have already seen a couple of situations where this is true.

This would be less important with a single card; as lets be fair you wouldn't want to push a 1920x1200 screen res with a single mobile chip if you could help it; and would lower settings to make it playable; however when you're fully intending to play at 1920x1200, this can result in a much superior performance.

One of these days they'll probably come up with intelligent algorithms to more efficiently utilise the memory rather than duplication, but that's not here yet

 

Just to name a couple that use or can use far more then 512 of VRAM GTA4 Oblivion and Fallout 3 there are more out there though .

 

News from alienware: exactly two weeks from now and the cards will be released. This is official.

 

Someone confirm this

 

until they are in an owners hands, nothing is official haha

 

can you give us some more information to substantiate your claim?

thanks,

for some reason I actually believe you!

 

My thoughts exactly

Technically one person has already recieved the upgrade however that was an accident on AW's behalf

 

Well, you could call them and ask for James in the repair department. That is who I spoke to that confirmed this, I would not give out false information, this would assist neither you, nor I.

 

LOL, hope you don't get the guy fired. Here's hoping you are right!

 

it appears that no-one believes me.

 

Well, I think we all would LIKE to believe you, but we've all been burned before. "Fool me once..."

 

Sweet, gives me time to donate some body fluids for the cards

 

It's not a matter of not believing you, it's a matter of not trusting information coming out of Alienware. I've seen this many times before where you ask three different agents and get three different answers so ... here's hoping!

 

If your right, ill give you a big kiss.... a big manly one =)

 

Are they going to fix the Quad CPU stuttering problem (northbridge overheating) with the release of the 4850s?

 

Sounds like not, which is a shame, as I wouldn't mind the option to put one in here in a year or so. That said; by the time it's actually necessary to get best performance in the majority of programmes; we're likely to be on mobile I7 or beyond, and be after a new laptop with new GPUs anyway.

The stuttering issue may or may not be northbridge heat related; but it seems there are a couple of related/similar issues; so it may well be the stutter will never be completely cured.

 

I personally find it to be NB heat that causes stuttering, every single time. The odd thing is...it's a CERTAIN temperature that causes it...every time it happens, my NB is at either 62C or 63C. Very, very strange.

 

Italked to alienware again today, and I was told the same thing. Roughly two weeks.

 

Hopefully they will release some decent drivers by then seeing the issues new users have at the moment.

 

Marshall, how are your 4850's holding up?

 

Absolutely excellent mate. Just been playing stalker for 3 hours with full dynamic lighting and everything turned up. A dream I have to say. Temp never got above 87

 

Well Im hoping my X9100 will arrive tomorrow if Tonytoff's time period from Customs to doorstep holds true. If it does; will be doing some stability tests and will try and get a few initial re-benches done, including RE5.