Alienware M17 *OFFICIAL* Owner's Lounge

i probably will when i have some extra money
but right now im just getting one 320

 

Quick question, when your M17 is idling and you put your ear onto the power brick, is there any constant noise?

 

No noise from power brick.

 

i would hold off on that raid for a bit... there seems to be a bit of stuttering issues with the m17/ocz/nagamaki/force extreme/all other names i forgot to mention

they are testing smaller stripes to see if it cures this...but not sure if it does as of yet.

 

Hey all,
I finally got my M17 today, it actually got shipped on the 19th...two days after I ordered it. So its been hanging out at Fedex until today. The unit looks nice only one gripe so far and its that the space bar is a little small so I would keep hitting the "alt" button instead of "space" but as this is the first message I am typing on this M17 I am already adjusting so its no big deal.

Its specs are
1920x1080 screen
4 gigs of DDR3
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz (i figured i could upgrade this later)
dual ATI 3870's
320GB hd

AW sent these benchmark scores, are they normal?
3DMark 2006
Customer Information:
3DMark Score: 11,095.00 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score: 4,679.00
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 6,481.00
CPU Score: 2,055.00
Game Score: 0.00 Points
SM2.0 Graphics Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 38.34 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 39.64 FPS
CPU Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley: 0.65 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley: 1.04 FPS
HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests
HDR1 - Canyon Flight: 78.76 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze: 50.86 FPS
Unreal Tournament 3 Demo
Customer Information:
Average FPS: 57.47 FPS
Time Spent Over 30 FPS: 99.48 percent of total benchmark time was spent above 30 FPS

 

these are my latest 3dmark06 benchmarks. i found out having windows aero on doesn't seem to affect the benchmarks. i just messed around with CCC a little bit, nothing major.

 

is there a way to tell if CrossFireX is enabled?

 

Seems normal.

 

You can always run a 3dmark, 8-9k score means you are only running one card. 11-15k means your crossfire is working.

 

here are my temps for my cpu and gpus, while running DVDfab and redownloading 3dmark Vantage in the background. not exactly a strain on either cpu or gpu or anything. are these fairly good temps? where do i want to keep the temps at on anything i do?

 

Your temps look really good. And for some odd reason your GPU idles at -10c from mine

(well one of them lol)

 

Thats what makes me wonder
spending $5000 & the benchmark is not even in the NORMAL range
does that suck or what

 

yea man, u throw a bunch of cash on a machine like this and you expect it to do just about anything you ask it to do, especially play any game you want to. and you end up just dissappointed. lol the first thing i thought when i saw i had to pay about $5k for one of these is that it better be able to give me some head for that kind of cash.

 

Its like sitting on a chair and wanting to go with 100mph... CPU wont affect gaming as much as a GPU will.

 

it's still a notebook with voltage constraints. where a desktop has a lot more playing room. these are the high of the high end laptops. and they do do their job, but still...it's only a portable laptop.

have any of you guys been able to run some 3dmark vantage runs?

 

yes i have but that was a couple days ago. i've been having troubles with 3dmark vantage ever since i decided it was time to install games on this bad boy, and then i decided to defrag the hard drive over night. 3dmark vantage hasn't been the same since, i keep getting an error in the middle of the run and says "application lost focus or display resolution changed. Close all background applications." i've reinstalled 3dmark vantage, reinstalled e-wrecked's drivers, even tried the "have disk" method, and tried your idea about reinstalling an earlier version of physX. the PhysX that came with 3dMark Vantage was the old Ageia PhysX. I uninstalled that and tried Nvidia PhysX 8.09 and 8.11. Neither worked, i stll get the error. i dont know, i was reading somewhere that maybe it's a program i've installed on my system that may be pirated, which is causing the error for vantage, but i really dont know. i'll be doing more research though, thats for sure. What i hate most is when i something that isn't working correctly. bothers the hell out of me.

 

what happens when you run it stock?

 

the original Ageia PhysX was originally giving me the error. i only went with the nvidia PhysX because i thought maybe it was the solution. i just dont know. vantage was working fine earlier, now it doesn't and thats all i know. i want to say that maybe it's E's ati drivers, but its not because vantage was working fine with them before. so its gotta be some program i've installed on my system. thats the only logical explanation. but then again, why would a random program not even running in the background or anything cause vantage to have errors. i dont get it. so, that too eliminates any logical idea for any sort of troubleshooting.

 

anybody try hooking your m17 to an hdtv? i got a 32in 1080p lcd samsung. i hook them together via hdmi and then go to display settings and click "extend the desktop onto this monitor" but the tv cant seem to recognize that theres an input via hdmi. nothing using the source button.

 

I have and it works beautifully, I've done it with the Fn button, the CCC and the windows properties.

 

yea i figured it out. i used some windows program called mobility center or some and worked like a charm. although i tried playing blu ray scaling on both laptop and hdtv and that didnt work very long. but works great if i just put it on the hdtv. dont u just love technology? 1080p is beautiful

 

I do notice a very thim black border when I play a movie, something I don't see when I play on my HDDVD player.

-Yes I have dead technology

 

My GPU's are idling at 55 and 53C. How the heck is his so much lower?

 

According to one of hes GPUs is running at 39

No idea how, might be room temp, cooler etc. Or he might changed the cooling. Or a buggy report since 10c difference a bit too much from the other GPU.

 

yea i'm not too sure either, but i am using a belkin single fan which is a U-shaped to keep air underneath the laptop, nice little $20 cooler. also, have the window open for some winter breeze and another fan, next to the window, blowing towards my laptop. pretty much my own little cool air intake.

 

I'm in the middle of winter with no heat, the fans are on all the time (is that normal) and my GFX is idling at 50c.

 

i dont know, but about the black border when watching movies, if you use CCC and under DTV, in my case HDMI in paranthesis, go under scaling options and you can scale the picture on your tv to fit your tv more closely to a full screen.
i've done this before on my old sony vaio laptop and had a nvidia card and obviously drivers. the nvidia scaling options were a little better on that thing. it had full scaling options on that thing. on CCC, it just lets you scale horizontally and vertically in a fixed ratio.
If you know how to fix that let me know.

 

Yeap thats exactly as mine 50c idle 75-85c on load.

 

yea i have no clue man why that one card is 10 degC cooler than the other. but i had my laptop on the rug next to my tv while i was checking out the connectivity between the two while playing a blu-ray movie. i had cpuid up and the temps of the 4 cores were still around 50 degC. so not too sure if its my cooler or not. but right now their idling in the mid 40s while i've seen that one gpu at 36 degC.

 

try doing it with a game in window mode. see if the temps try to even out...

running allot of stuff on your comp will probably only require more usage with one card so this could be explained why one card appears to be higher. this happens with sli as well..depending on what mode we use for sli. if we use single gpu, then one gpu is about 10 to 30 degrees hotter than the other...

 

That's exactly what happened to me when I installed the modded drivers, I uninstalled them and the fans started to go normally. *They sound pretty loud than before you installed the modded drivers huh?

(I went back to my original drivers just so you are aware.)

 

Did they fans stay at max speed the whole time after installing the modded drivers ?

Basically, its possible your laptop went to X temp the time you were installing the drivers and the fans kicked in to cool it down.

 

They sounded like it was on medium speed, and it would go to maximum speed which is definitely scary hearing it, just by playing games. I didn't have this problem when I was playing games on my factory drivers.
(I guess you could say max speed the entire process but like I have said 5 times already, they started acting this way the second I, "Uninstalled the graphic drivers using Device Manager in control panel.")

*I have my factory drivers installed and they are working fine and the fans are quiet just as before.

 

And as i said so many times it might be a coincidence since drivers and especially these ones (since over 40 people in ocz and aw forums use them!) dont have that effect.

So... That been said, if you want to get to the bottom of this instead of just running around saying this about the drivers without having a proof about that. Id suggest to give them another go, since im sure you want to play games in other resolutions other than the native one. Except if you planning to play games like Crysis at that resolution.

Fans spinning means temperatures. So have a temp monitor program running and try again, best way to know for sure. IF its a driver problem (which it isnt), it will be easier isolate the problem and solve it if you can provide some info about what you have experienced with something more except the noise you heard.

 

I can probably just record the entire process of me switching to prove that it is something that deals with the drivers, if not then I just have an easy tutorial for people on how to install e-wrecked's drivers.

Other than that, my computer runs perfectly fine with the stock drivers.
As far as resolutions, what resolutions do I not already have, need?
I'll do the tests another time, my computer is fine I don't want to have it overheat again or problems like that.

 

Did you tried play games in other resolution than the native one ? (Yes they are available, but they dont scale on the whole screen).
Same goes for the desktop resolution.

 

Yes, I have played other resolutions besides native, they work fine and they fit the whole screen, as to me bringing up the question, What resolutions do I not already have with my stock drivers, need?

I was able to run all the resolutions before I even touched e-wreckeds drivers.

 

Thats really odd. Its a known issue that although you can select other resolutions using any ATI drivers none of then actually fills the whole screen (scalling issue).

Hence why E modded those and the reason why almost all of us use them.

 

I only wanted them because people said it would increase performance and etc. As for resolution, I didn't care for I was able to use all of them with my stock drivers.

Played TF2 and Wow, both on different resolutions with no problems on scaling. They adjusted to the screen quite well.

Also, my booklet that came, looked a lot different from those that got the m17's early. Go look at the pictures I posted on my review.

 

Can you post a screen shot of your cards driver version ?

 

My laptop is in my backpack on the floor, and I am about to go to sleep. I got a bday to celebrate tomorrow and after it is better, I'll post pictures of my driver as well as me being able to use other resolutions other than native and having full screen. (Better yet, just record a video of me being able to change them, if that's the proof you really want, I honestly do not care what people think, but if they don't believe my words that I have said for my experience then it isn't my problem)

 

Post them when you can no rush, and happy birthday

 

anybody having problems with the shut down process? just started this morning...whenever i restart and windows is shutting down it would freeze on the shut down screen and stay there until i decide to hit the power button.

 

I posted it @ *hit me*

 

yea, so you think it'll fix itself later? after the system is settled in with the new drivers? its just weird cause i've been experimenting with different versions of ati drivers and this is the first time i've ran into this problem...i hope it goes away.

 

A question Alienware Owners: okay so my bios is flashed and i want to go to AW website and myHive and am thinking about calling AW tech support. last time i did that they had me do the whole "AlienContact" method. do you think it would be a bad idea to do that again, since they will probably detect a different version of bios? and what would happen if they do happen to detect it on my system? would they completely shut me off from their technical support? because if 4870s ever come out for this system i'm planning on getting those badboys through AW and wondering if they'd be able to assist me with that if my warranty is void.

 

I didn't know I normaly just hit the button ... and leave the room ... I'll have to try if it still takes so long ... but one moment ... I am @ my m17 now (with the other hand) so I'll try it asap^^

Greetings
Julian

Edit: I tested it and my17 @ myHive ATI Drivers (after nearly all others) shuts down in less than 20 seconds ... (after hitting the button)

 

anyone know where i can find the microsoft vista product key? its usually on the bottom of the laptop but my m17 didn't come with the windows sticker on the bottom. i gotta find the product key because under system information, on the bottom of the page under windows activation, that it says "1 day until automatic activation. activate windows now". i thought ok, let me see whats that all about i thought i already registered this thing. then on the next page, it says "the windows vista ultimate product key is invalid for activation". ? now i'm scroungin around tryin to find the product key to retry and type it in myself before i call AW. i have a feeling this happened due to the bios being flashed.

 

When you say bottom, you meant the battery compartment right?

 

bottom as in bottom of the laptop...is it inside the battery compartment?