Alienware M17x Questions

Hi Guys,

Potential buyer of the M17x, with a couple of questions in mind.

First of all, I currently have a desktop and laptop. Laptop is a MSI GX600, nothing special, however my Desktop is a decent one with a Q9550, 4GB RAM, and 4870x2 Crossfire. First question is that of opinion, is it really worth getting the new Alienware 'All Powerful' and replace my current laptop, to satisfy my inner geek to make him squeal like a schoolgirl. The m17x would replace my Gx600's responsbility of on the go LANs.
Second question, in the event of getting the Alienware, I really would like to get the QX9300, however dell's website quotes $1000 (AUD), as appose to the $500 I can get it off of eBay for. Is it worth Voiding my warranty and getting it off eBay, or should I just stick with a T9600 / T9800? I will mostly be using it for gaming, and will getting the SLi GTX 280m

Final question, is everyone running Vista? If yes, how's that going for you. And how about Windows 7?

Cheers guys.

EDIT: Looking over the dell website, it's showing the T9800 for no additional cost, obviously a glitch but damn I wanna impulse buy this sucker and exploit it.

 

Only you can answer that question .

Switching your process doesn't avoid your warranty as long you switch it back when sending it to RMA.

IMO QX9300 doesn't worth with the actual OC limit...

 

STICK WITH THE t9600 !!! the x9300 will not help out much in gaming unless the games you play requires a Quad.

the t9800 isn't worth the upgrade....since you can OC the t9600 to make it 3 ghz easy


the M17x will rape your MSI in every way possible

THEN fart on its face n make it pass out

 

Of course you can always buy the X9300, have the basic T9600 in your closet and if you need to send it back in put the T9600 back in... you don't void your warranty unless you send it in with different parts lol... this is what I am doing

 

if he is going to buy the Qx9300 why spend extra money on a t9600?


Butter: can you please keep a Q in front of x9300

 

Cheers for the reply chaps!

In regards to why spend extra on T9600, it's actually the standard CPU in Australia.

I'm thinking I might start with just the T9600, and if I think I need more, I'll buy the QX9300. No point spending the additional 400AUD on the upgrade to T9800.

So that solves that answer.

 

exactly

the t9600 will not bottleneck period with gaming @ high resolution

 

Id go for a quad in any notebook that can support one. Even a humble Q9000

 

i have the 8600, more and more games will come along with quad optimisation, things like crysis (which is quad optimised) and GTA

Personally i brought a cheap cpu and ordered a qx9300 on ebay

 

Yea yea, lets hope our Qx9300's are awesome

 

The qx9300 does crap for crysis or warhead. I owned a P8400 and than all three quads.. an oced qx9300 at 3ghz gave a 1-2fps improvement over the P8400 stock (at around 25-30fps). So talking about crysis being quad optimized? Not really.

 

yea vicious proved this in the Asus w90p owners lounge

Having a Quad does not boost it enough to justify the price. I think its all marketing IMO.

 

It isn't quad optimized, its SLI enabled if that's what you are thinking.... the only game I kno of that's Quad optimized is GTAIV

 

Yep, and im not a fan of that one so i never tested it.

 

Oh GTAIV was a great game! I never finished it though... I'm going to play it again once I get my M17x

 

Quad games that I know of...

GTA4
DMC4
FSX
Supreme Commander

there are more, but those are the ones I know for sure.

the thing is that you should not focus on getting a quad just for quad optimised games. It still plays all the dual core only and single core only games just fine.

But the quad does everything else soo much better, any cpu intensive task or program is going to use the quad. Video rendering, photoshop, bench@home, multi tasking, the list goes on and on.

Plus you will only see more and more games come out that do use quad. The sad fact of the matter is that I can not think of any game quad supported or not that the quad can not play, but there are a few situations where the dual core can not do what the quad can in those quad optimized games.

Unless your buying your laptop on a budget (probably not if your interested in a M17X) or your buying it for just now and the games out now and never plan to use your computer for other computer related tasks, the quad core is a better investment and will extend of the life of your computer before its time for an upgrade for a good amount of time.

 

most definitely, I don't think I could ever go back to a dual now

 

I wouldn't say I'm buying on a budget, however I don't want to unnecessarily spend money. I suppose by that same logic you could question my need to even buy this laptop, however I need to fill my obsessive geek needs.

As stated, if I find a Dual Core isn't enough, I will purchase a Qx9300 and mod it in myself later.

My friend has a contact, so I am currently trying to see if I can get a nice chunk off of the price.

 

Just benched my P8600 @ 3GHz and mandrake said it was close to the X9100 (using 3Dmark06).

Now that is good price-to-performance ratio!

 

X9100 needs a voltage that we don't have ATM

 

ok butters when you get ur m17x just post like what you have your cpu overclocked to and stuff... then in the gta 4 folder make a file called commandline.txt and edit it with notepad... type in -norestrictions and save it... then make sure ur gta 4 is updated and launch... go into options and put every setting to the max and run benchmark... post the benchmark log here...

 

I see what Chaz means when he says topics start to get derailed. xD That is all...

EDIT: bbq (insert other meme here), I have 1 rep.

 

lol sorry just really want that info...

 

Will do! 10char

 

k thanks....