Alienware New Model Speculation Thread

Yes - look at the pics above the CD slot there is an expresscard port.

 

Remember the UK price includes a 20% VAT (tax). Probably you'll pay local sales tax wherever you are, but it may not be 20%. Just note that as you look at the figures.

 

Could it be a CFast slot? Isn't express card a bit outdated?

 

Thanks for the link.

I am very doubtful about the m14x having good battery life considering it has the same battery that the m11x has.

"If the m17x r3 gets 5 hours of light use on a 90-Wh battery and the m14x uses a ~60-Wh battery..... Can we assume it will get a 1/3 of the battery life?(Both would have the same processor.)" -My quote from earlier.

 

Not necessarily. The difference in screens could be quite significant on the idle/light use power draw. Other factors could also come into play.

 

60 is not 1/3 of 90, it is 2/3. Dont forget the significantly smaller screen. The Dell XPS with a 15inch screen gets 4 hrs on a 56 WHr battery. I am expecting around 4-5 hrs of battery life.

 

1/3 the battery life. You misread the numbers and what I meant by the 1/3.

I'm still hoping it does get good battery life, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

I'd be fine with 4 hours. Also, the M17x has a more powerful GPU and no optimus. I think the battery life will be rather good.

 

The 5 hours of general browsing the web on the m17x r3 was done on the Intel Graphics.

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/alienware-m17x-2011.aspx?page=3

 

My mistake. However, It should still be good.

 

I'm really hoping because the m11x is just too small for my eyes to handle.

 

Only 2720qm or higher rank cpu support 1666mhz speed. It is a smart move for dell as it may effectively arouses the impulsive purchase behaviour of customers to upgrade faster cpu.

 

[UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X]

I talked with Dell's representative and he said:

"It will be release on 21~23 at April, and the start price will be 1200$. About the Battery, it will be able to reach 7 hours life"

[UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X][UPDATE: PRICE + RELEASE DATE OF ALIENWARE M14X]

 

It better makes i7 as stock option if they charge $1200 as starting price !!!!!!!

 

If it doesn't have i7 as a stock, it's going to get expensive...if the link to the British site is any indication though, it will.

 

Hm, no i7 1.6 GHz option there, and only 1 Gb DDR3 540M. I wonder here the 2 Gb option is which was mentioned in the manual?

 

Expresscard is "current" CFAST is a compact flash upgraded standard, and is unlikely to be something included in an Alienware machine as it already has a smaller card reader that reads the most common varieties of cards.

So while the size visually looks similar the slot you see on the M18x is 99.9% likely to be Expresscard. Makes me wonder if Thunderbolt could go through the Expresscard port.

hmmm

 

Would be a sweet deal if it really started at $1200. There's pretty much nothing to upgrade for an average buyer(on the UK site at least), except for the screen, which I suspect would be a ~$70 upgrade. The RAM upgrade is way over priced, aftermarket RAM upgrade can be done for much cheaper if you deem necessary. Throw some coupons at it and it you might be able to get it for arond $1000.

But that's if it does start with $1200..

 

but the i7 1.6 "much" better than the i7-640um...

Intel® Core? i7-2617M Processor (4M Cache, 1.50 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SR03T
Intel® Core? i7-640UM Processor (4M Cache, 1.20 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SLBMM

 

The colors available for the M11x R3, are red and stealth black. I know that Cosmic Black is a horror because of fingeprints and Soft Touch Black is rubberized.

Is stealth black better than Cosmic Black and Soft Touch?

 

Adding 2 years warranty = extra $200

 

Indeed the i7-2617M is 300 MHz faster and also faster per clock cycle. But it is not overclockable, and cannot use ThrottleStop. I had hoped to see the i7-2657M available, @1.6 GHz to get as fast CPU as possible. Seems they omitted that option, at least on that German config.

 

Stealth Black is Soft Touch. And it is possible the Nebula Red is also Soft Touch. At least it was on some Dell Chinese site. But it might be a typing error. They do lot of those... Cosmic Black was only available on the old R1.

 

Hey, it's only one year old guys.. LOL. Alienware's are not using protection and are making babies VERY FAST!

 

Dell configuration for Austria is up too

Austria M11x R3 Konfigurator

 

same with Austria... there is no I7-2657M ;[

 

Anyone got US pages for any of these?

 

How do find out the link? I want to see if it can be configured in my country as well.

 

You act like there's a tangible performance difference between the i5-2537 and i7-2657, when in reality it would be a whole lot of extra cash for nothing. I can't even see a case where the extra 100mhz base 300mhz turbo is going to make or break anything, even a game, you should be close to being gpu bottlenecked with SB performance to begin with.

 

I think that an i7 with throttlestop at 166MHz will out do the SB CPU's at first. But, as time goes along and we start getting mods and wierd overclocks on SB, we will see it murder the R2.

 

Just ordered my M11xR3

 

Wulfher, where are you?

 

but there are some differences...

I7
Clock Speed 1.6 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 2.7 GHz
Intel® Smart Cache 4 MB
Bus/Core Ratio 16

I5
Clock Speed 1.4 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 2.3 GHz
Intel® Smart Cache 3 MB
Bus/Core Ratio 14




Add 67$ I7 worth it, better and newer then the I5...
the extra 100mhz doesn't matter so much.. but the other things...

how and from which site? (UK, Germany...)

 

The cache helps, and so does the extra MHz. But it's prolly only a, like, 8% gain.

 

The 1MB cache really won't make a difference, processors are already to the point where most of the bottleneck is the gpu, 1MB Cache + 300mhz turbo != $250 or more, just like upgrading from a 2630 to 2820 is overkill, because all you gain is 1600mhz ram (pointless) and vt-d (also generally useless in a gaming laptop).

 

Hmm, I am afraid there aren't any exciting mods to be done on a SB, at least not software wise. Intel has locked it down pretty hard. You can probably overclock the base clock to around 103 MHz, and that's it. Maybe some kind of magic hardware mod can be done, who knows.

 

http://configure2.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=at&cs=atdhs1&l=at&kc=&oc=n00w1v01&dgc=AF&cid=5674&lid=137596&acd=882205b09d5923f335408af6e53a809f

replace the red parts with your country code

 

SB isn't really 'locked down' it's just that the base clock runs the entire chip basically, and you would need to keep every single component of the processor stable, and you can only really do that with a few mhz variance. It's probably a far more efficient design for Intel to run everything off a single clock, too.

 

I saw the price betwen the I5 and I7... 67$ more for I7... worth it... but adding more 250$+ THIS IS CRAZY! = NOT WORTH IT!!

 

I hope a pinmod may be possible. Not sure.

 

Off the austrian site:

Intel® Core™ i5 2537M 1.4GHz (2.3GHz w/Turbo Boost, 3MB Cache) [Im Preis enthalten]
Intel® Core™ i7 2617M 1.5GHz (2.6GHz w/Turbo Boost, 4MB Cache) [zuzgl. 190,00 € oder 5 €/monat1]
Von Dell empfohlen

That translates into $67? lol.

 

Pinmod to what, unlock the multiplier? unlikely.

 

Mobile SB (except for the unlocked extreme version, possibly) is locked down in terms of modifying Turbo Boost thermals, which ThrottleStop could do on the previous generation. Makes Turbo Boost meaningless for long duration tasks.

Together with the now built in clock generator for the entire chip, as you say, and without dividers, there isn't much left for us to play with. There is the Z68 chipset arriving for desktops soon, which has dividers and supports base overclocking much better, but I don't know if it has a corresponding mobile version.

@Wulfer

Thanks, will try.

 

Naah, I'm prolly wrong. There most likely wont be any hardmods. I was thinking like the PLL mod on the R1. I'm not familiar with SB architechture, though.

 

190€ = 274 US$

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Should I take the M14x or the M11x R3. I can't decide. M14x has also Optimus so the battery would last a little longer?

 

I don't think Intel ever intended for a program like ThrottleStop to exist in the first place, they put the limits on TDP and such for a reason, turbo boost's sole purpose is to make tasks finish faster so it can go back to a low-power state and save battery life/power.

 

Yeah, but for us power hungry freaks, it is useful.

 

Wow, the M14x already has a competitor here in India, just found out about the HP dv4t 3016tx, has the 6750m with 1 gb GDDR5 VRAM and SB processors. Sounds impressive, but HP=Overheating troubles. But still at only 900$ in India it sounds like an impressive deal. And since HP products in India cost around 30% more than their US counterparts, it should cost around 600-700$ if and when it is launched in the US. AW is gonna have some serious trouble convincing people to buy the M14x or even the M11x R3. Here is a link-
HP Pavilion dv4-3000 Entertainment Notebook PC series Home & Home Office

 

A power-hungry freak wouldn't buy an 11.6" ULV Laptop

M14x has a more powerful processor, a 4-5 hour battery, a 14" 1600x900 screen, and a 555m

M11x-r3 has a ULV proc, 8~ hour battery, 11.6" 1366x768 screen with a GT540m.

If you want power, m14x, if you want battery m11x, if you want to see things, m14x

 

A power hungry freak in need of a laptop that can play games AND have 8 hours of battery life would