Alienware New Model Speculation Thread

good point about the lenovo y570. I should have read more closely what "HD" meant to lenovo.


From what I have read, optimus could be enabled in the 460m and other nvidia gpus. The manufacturers just choose not to do so.

 

I agree on the Optimus. Sad that it's not enabled on every nvidia laptop.
It would permit even behemots like the m18x to have long lasting battery, thanks also to the energy saving settings of the modern cpus.

 

I would say longer battery life, not long lasting.

Didn't the Area 51 m17x's have an Nvidia 9400m for battery life? Still didn't last very long.

 

Nvidia optimus has certain limitations (especially on bandwidth) that would make it a bad idea.

 

It's going to be refreshed in the coming months according to rumors.

 

The way I understand it NVIDIA doesn't support Optimus for SLI.

 

Any guess on the starting price of the m18x? around 2.5k base?

 

Yes the pci express bus would be so saturated as to make it unusable.

 

I'd say $1,999 at the most. AW won't be keen to break the 2k mark as a startign price.

 

The price from the leaked canadian configurator was 2020$ if i am not wrong. I then saw that all the models in canada cost 100$ more than the ones in the us. So the right price for US is 1900$ or 1920$, but i guess it will be with one GTX460m, because if it was two of them, it'd be making the m17x r3 look expensive.

 

Without having read any posts in this thread all I can say is


....I am soooooo glad Alienware went back to the Aluminum casing for the M18x!!! This is going to be one awesome laptop for sure. G73 what?!? Asus is gonna need an 18" laptop to even try to compete now!!

hahaa!!

 

Asus G73 is really ugly... I do not like that machine, looks like a big pice of cheap plastic...

 

Yeah, the probably have to work on all the rest of the config, not only on the gpu.

Then we need another solution.

Can't wait to see how will they refresh it, then!
I really hope they will move the keyboard to the left side.

 

Alienware will have to price the mx18 at just above $2,200 for a dual 460m and at $2,700 for xfire 6970m w/ 2720qm to stay competitive with the Clevo x7200/x8100 refresh. Sadly I feel that the Alienware tax will make the xfire 6970s easily hit into the $3,000 mark. It will be interesting to see how much of a difference a 2720qm will be from a i7 960 from the current DTR champ. I also wonder what chipset the mx18 will be and if it will continue to support intel's new Ivy Bridge since there is very little difference between the current Sandy Bridge Mobile vs. desktop Nehalem/Sandy Bridge. It seems that in terms of gaming the 2600k/i7 950-990x/2920xm perform near equally.

 

Man, step off this site for a second and Alienware conjures nothing but trolls and hate.

Check out the comments on the Engadget article on the m18x. It's so ignorant it's almost painful.

 

You know the m18x pic with the 360 controller makes me wish they had an internal wireless 360 controller receiver. Oh well, I guess with a beast this big modding one in probably wouldn't be that hard LOL.

 

engadget is full of Apple trolls, what do you expect? If their God (Steve Jobs) didn't give his personal stamp of approval, it's not worthy. I cannot WAIT to get the M18x, Dell definitely delivered on almost everything I wanted (no IPS which is disappointing). Very glad to see it's fully metal unlike the R3 though I am a bit concerned about the macro keys throwing off the keyboard alignment to the right.

 

No IPS...not a shocker really is it!....ive just bought an Ultrasharp which im pretty sure will do the job WHEN i get my m18x......but i am also disappointed on the screen options thus far....given its a HUGE screen, why not make the best of it and thro in an IPS panel as an option for those who want it....

 

So it seems the M18x is more focused on power than it is quality. That's not to say that what I'm seeing right now I'm not liking. I would like to see a better screen, but I highly doubt there will be one. I also would really like to see the Lunar Silver color brought back. It's made of anodized aluminum, so why not?

 

Yeah, Alienware could've been changing the laptop world by giving it's M18x a resolution of 2560*1440!
Well I can still dream.

 

There already is an alternate solution....but it requires an AMD GPU and Dell to commit to adding the extra MUX.

 

Yeah not surprising but still disappointing.

I agree, I would really like a silver M18x this time around if it was offered.

Nah, that's too high of a resolution for a 18" panel and gaming would suffer.

 

The M18x could finally be the machine to make me want to upgrade from my R1....the R2 was not exciting enough of a jump

 

another one bites the dust,

I think this make me want to upgrade from no laptop to a M18X at least for 21 days

 

We all know you will Speedy haha

You cannot resist a new big laptop

 

What is the possibility of the m18x having four spindles, three hard drives and one CD/DVD?

 

On a screen that small? Useless.

 

Not likely at all. The x7200 can only do it because it is so dang thick

 

I just can't believe Dell hasn't released an official teaser yet.
Sure we can hope that they purposefully left those bugs on the websites, and elsewhere, but it still would be nice to get an email, 1-2 months before release instead of being in the dark right up until release date....

 

Yeah 2560 would have been nice but even on my 30 inch desktop monitor the fonts can be a bit tiny .

On an 18inch i would probably be blind in a week.

 

Wouldn't it be fantastic if the M18x used vapour chamber coolers?

In all likelyhood it won't, but it's something that makes a lot of sense in a laptop this big.

 

I'm 90% sure these "leaks" are just part of a free Alienware marketing/hype campaign. With the amount of things popping up on Dell's site only to be removed, it seems like all of the details we've learned about the M11x R3, M14x, and M18x were intentional reveals.

 

Vapor chamber makes no sense for the way alienware usually cools its stuff. It would be great for clevos though where the fins sit right on top of the GPU board

With alienwares the fins are often remote to the GPU board so a pipe would be needed

 

Speedy and i were actually talking about that earlier today and it would have been cool(no pun) to see something innovative like that .

 

is true and with more pixels you have more chances to have dead pixels
something that I've experienced a lot lately

 

Their heatsinks are usually remote, but they usually have a fan sitting on top of whatever they're cooling, pushing air to the heatsink.

 

Yes and with that many pixels the acceptable number of stuck or dead pixels before a replacement was issued jumps up to 72 .

 

72 and complaint for one on my iPad lol.

 

But the fan locations is irrelevant. All it does is push air over the fins where the surface area for the heat exchange is. The vapor chamber simply acts as a go-between for heat from the source (the GPU die) to the exchange location (the fins)

Blowing air on the vapor chamber without any surface area (fins) would be pointless.

I recommend studying the blower design coolers that are used on desktop cards, the approach Clevo takes to cooling their GPUs (at least on the D900 and xXXXX series laptops) is VERY similar to the blower designs used by desktop cards today. The alienware approach is usually much more reliant on remote fins and therefore heatpipes.

 

Pardon me if this is a silly question but im strongly considering the M14x and was wondering what the tradeoffs would be for a i5-2540M vs i7-2720QM. Now I know this is assuming that the speculated specs are correct. But just wanted to see what you guys thought for someone looking at buying there first gaming laptop. Thanks in advance!

 

The 2720QM will offer much better multitasking performance and feel snappier all around, with the sacrifice of some battery life and addition of a couple hundred bucks onto the price.

 

Guys I was wondering, when do you think a refresh will come ie M18x-r2, and would they possibly upgrade video cards (ie. to 500m top end card) on this release in a few months or does Alienware only do that on official refreshes?

 

Thanks so much for the fast response! Can't wait for Alienware to release these things. Been following this thread for a while now and gets me more and more excited every day lol. Thanks again!

 

Well it seems a black M18x is in my future and soon at that!

I just need 485M/580M sli to be available and I'm on board. Partner that with a 600Gb ssd and things will be wonderful.

Curious though...
What do you think the market would be for a sort of "mini" 3D vision/eyefinity setup using two "wing" 18.4" screens on either side of the laptop? I know most folks think of bigger is better, but it seem to me the price would be right for smaller screens and you could run one from HDMI and one Displayport. Use the laptop as the central display and you have 3 screen gaming with all the screens having the same size/dimension. Curious if folks think this would be a good idea or not. I don't work for D/AW, just had one of those idle thoughts as I was reading this thread (which is huge btw).

 

LOL! Just read the engadget comments. Mac owners = Prius owners = Pee sitting down. Alienware owners = Camaro owners = Pee like men. lolollolol

 

Damn, the M18X looks sick!

Too bad the price after customization will most likely be out of my range...

 

The "battery life of 10 mins" crap gets old. These guys blab out useless comments without even checking the facts. One guy in the comments section was telling me the M17x-R3 weighs 12 pounds.

 

The abilities of apple-minions to pull together a coherent argument also seems low.

Jeez, I mean, with my M15x I get 2 hrs 15 minutes on 3/8ths brightness... Isn't the M17x R3's charge like 5 hours whilst remaining less heavy than the M15x?
Plus, they claim it's going to burn off your lap... MBP's get hella hot because of their unibody alum design, I bet my M15x gets better temps on the laps than the MBP dual cores. xP

 

More like Alienware owners = Ferarri/Lambo owners YouTube - Best Gaming Laptop / Desktop 2011

 

Guaranteed if you don't mind using an external drive....less likely if you meant internally.

Too bad QWXGA seems to have died an untimely death.

2048x1152 on an 18.4" screen would look like how 1680x1050 used to look on a 15.4" screen.