ChewieTobbacca's Alienware M11x Review

So i compiled the first 4 posts into 3 posts to save a post for updates.

*UPDATE 2/21/2010*

OC Stablity
I left Prime 95 Blend on for over 8 hours while I slept with the OC at 1.6 GHz. It passed all 8 hours without any errors.

I know most people suggest leaving it on for 24 hours and will do so sometime during the week when I don't need to use the notebook. However, this is a good sign that the 1.6 GHz overclock is indeed stable.

The temperature on my CPU's never went past 57C during this test, which is very nice, as this traditionally taxes the CPUs fully. The cooling on this thing is very good.

PCMarkVantage Run 2
So I re-ran PCMarkVantage, and in my 2nd run at 1.6 GHz, I scored 3,208 marks.



wPrime
I ran wPrime - 32M and 1024M. Note that the pics at 1.3 GHz read 1.2 GHz, but that's just an error in reading the CPU frequency.

For the default CPU, I achieved:
32M - 67.096 seconds
1024M - 2173.909 seconds


For the OC'd CPU of 1.6 GHz, we have these results:
32M - 53.744 seconds
1024M - 1712.822 seconds

 

Any chance of you running a CoH WiC or CSS benchmark? I would be very pleased ):

 

Great Review, very informative. +1.

 

Can you give me any input on my questions on the first page chewie =) WOuld appreciate it..

here

 

Answered here

 

hey chewie I apologize, missed it, thanks guy.

 

Hey man,
That was an extremely thorough review...also one of the most intertaining I have seen on Notebook Review,awesome stuff!

 

@Chewie

My Q got skipped over, but were there any temp differences from oc'ing the 335m? I'd like to do a little bit of it so I'm curious if it has any detrimental effects on the puter. Also, I have no experience with oc'ing -_-.

 

I saw at most 3C increase in temps, but that's within the range of possible error of course.

 

I didn't have a lot of time to do any concrete benching of games, and I figure most people will have this notebook within the next week or two for better figures.

Anyways, at 1.6 GHz CPU, and stock GPU, I played a few minutes on servers with > 24 players.

CounterStrike: Source, 1366 x 768, all details high + 16x AF
Min FPS: 26, Avg FPS: 44, Max: 67

Team Fortress 2, 1366 x 768, details medium/high, no AF
Min FPS: 25, Avg FPS: 37, Max: 62

I know CS:S dipped to 26, but it was honestly pretty smooth all around, and TF2 as well, despite having a slightly lower FPS.

I did install the Battlefield Bad Company 2 beta. At the stock GPU speed and 1.6 GHz CPU, the game was pretty unplayable (average fps in the 15-20 range). With the GPU OC'd to 600/1500/900, the average FPS was around 25, and was playable, though rough. This was at the 1024 x 768 and at the lowest settings possible.

Unfortunately, BFBC2 brings even good desktops down to its knees (my brother's Core 2 Duo @ 2.33 GHz + ATI 4850 1GB see's average FPS in the 30's to 40's on medium settings at 1680x1050, so that ought to show you how demanding this game is). EA did patch the game recently which saw some performance improvements for dual core PC's, so we might see more performance out of this game in the near future, but then again, this is EA, so I'm not holding my breath.

 

Oh yeah, I also forgot to add:

I hooked up the external monitor to play games at 1680x1050 to see if Source games would drop in performance. They did a little bit, but the GT335M is powerful and still played those games at that resolution fine.

For the most part the CPU doesn't seem like it's too big of a bottleneck - i'm sure a faster CPU would make things faster, but then again, when I OC'd the GPU, I saw some pretty big gains in performance, so the CPU isn't necessarily a bottleneck - the GPU still improves in power.

Good benching to all those who get their units soon!

 

Wow so now you have the 5740G AND the M11x. Lol those are my 2 dream notebook/netbooks right now. I envy you

 

@Chewie,

So is it even worth pushing the gpu to that point?

 

thanks for the BFBC2 info, gonna see if someone else can get more tests on that too, but I kind of figured that would be the case. Although the new patch gave me some hopes.

 

Where can you download those patches.. cuz the game doesn't patch when i click download patches.. :/

 

Right click the updater.exe inside your directory and run as administrator...

 

I'm testing it tomorrow night.

 

ahh thanks!
you should see how well photoshop run and demanding programs like that!

 

Thanks mods

Thanks

I didn't have a lot of time to play around w/ BFBC2 (other than eyeballing FPS counter in Fraps, which isn't 100% accurate anyways)

The game plays fine when the GPU + CPU is OC'd - yeah there are sometimes moments where the fps drop is noticeable, but amazingly it was fine

 

Chewie if I may, of course OCing the GPU will be worth it. There are some instances where a game is more CPU intensive and so OCing the GPU will have only some effect on performance. But, more than likely, you'll be gaming with a lot of GPU intensive games and so every core/shader/mem increase will help. I suggest you OC your GPU to the max and clock it down when it's becoming detrimental to performance. In that case it'll either be bottleneck or unstable OC.

 

Well, I wouldn't say do it to the max... do it just to where you need it.

But yeah, games that are GPU intense are going to benefit a lot more from GPU OC'ing, and can be very helpful.

 

which tool did you use to overclock the gpu and can you give me a good link please how to overclock it with the m11x .. (soory im really noob)

 

I'll have to write up a guide or something some time. I really wouldn't advise overclocking things like this without some knowledge ahead of time of what's okay and not okay to do..

 

Did a few more CPU intensive benchmarks for those wondering about CPU performance.

*UPDATE 2/22/2010*

Synthetic Benchmark - Sandra Memory Bandwidth
Ran Sandra's Memory Bandwidth benchmark. At stock 1.3 GHz, I received Int and Float memory bandwidth's of 4GB/s.

For 1.6 GHz, I achieved for Int: 4.74 GB/s
For Float: 4.84 GB/s



Synthetic Benchmark - Cinebench R10
I ran Cinebench R10. For my stock CPU,
Single-Thread: 1458
Multi-Thread: 2635

For 1.6 GHz CPU,
Single-Thread: 1815
Multi-Thread: 3165

 

chewie, for the love of god man do a game benchmark

Neil.

 

Oh my lord, it actually overclocks to the stock clocks of a bloody desktop 8800/9800GT? Now THAT is an achievement.

By comparing it with this, and factoring in the drop from 96 to 72 shaders and from my desktop's Q6600 to this 1.6GHz C2D...

I'd say looking at this that the M11x can handle Crysis in Medium at stock resolution, perhaps even at high at a lower resolution, pushing out playable framerates.

I'm now really, really, really going to push hard to get one. I'd love to have one of these beasts...

 

I don't have Bioshock 2, so I just benched my copy of Bioshock through a playthrough of ~15 minutes:

1366 x 768, all settings maxed:
Min FPS: 15, Average: 53, Max: 80

Game was very smooth and sharp.

Unfortunately I've got a busy day ahead of me, otherwise I'd bench Dragon Age Origins and a variety of other games such as Empire Total War, COD MW2, etc.

 

Noooooooooo, don't kill it with Empire Total War

No surprise at how smooth you ran an Unreal Engine game

 

What are the negatives of OCing the GPU? I haven't done it before.

 

OH and I might bench Crysis Warhead in the morning if I get a chance to... unfortunately I don't have any saved games available to jump to the frost level

 

Increased heat is the only real negative, and if you push it too far then there's a risk of immediate burnout (not likely, it usually overheats and shuts down first)

Push it hard enough and you'll get errors and shutdowns but once it's stable, there's just the heat.

Oh, and if your laptop manufacturer finds out you've been overclocking the GPU then they'll probably void the warranty. But only way they can generally find out is by finding an overclocking tool on your system-either delete it before sending it in, or if it can't boot then they can't find it anyway.

 

Well, if I OC my GPU I'm only going to do it a safe amount. The CPU will be at 1.73 or whatever the ghz was. Thanks for the info.

 

Can Someone give us a good stable GPU OC? i'd like to know what numbers to try or set it to once i get it.

 

Every GPU is different and some OC better than others, I would suggest you go up slightly and test yourself.I believe the reviewer got up to 550/1320/871.
So start low and work your way up.
He also stated he tested 600/1500/900 and it was stable but I would be careful with those levels especially if your new to this.

 

yes bioshock 2 im coming gonna buy it now for my 11x
thanks so much !!!

 

@ chewie, there may be a console command to skip levels, I'll look it up but I think you've done enough work for us.
Exodus save game (snow level)
Source: incrysis

I'm thinking what games I plan to play that may see some good use of OC'ing the GPU as I don't want to do it unless I see frames under 30FPS (that's good enough for me). I'm thinking DA:O, Crysis, Dawn of War II will be those games I need extra GPU power. I'm pretty set on tossing BFBC2 out the window in terms of playability unless another uber patch is released haha

 

Hey chewie, I was wondering if you have enabled multicore for your TF2 test run? I wanted to know if you got any performance gains doing that, or if it crashed when you used that option. Thanks! Great job with everything you've done already!

 

I know this isn't as interesting or important rather then the other questions posted.. But out of pure curiosity how are the speakers?

 

Also really interested to hear peoples opinions on the speakers as I plan to listen to music on it on the go.

also has anybody tried DPC latency checker yet?

 

^ good question airsinner, I've heard that they're very good. But I would like to hear first hand from a NBR member

 

How does the new m11x run WoW? Will it run on Ultra (Max Settings)

CoD MW2 it should run just fine in medium settings right?

The video card it has its about equivalent to what?

 

equivalent to maybe a 250m more so than 330m. CoDMW2 will run on highs actually but we haven't gotten a definitive answer on what settings WoW will run during a raid yet, but we can assume on mostly highs for most everything.

 

If anyone knows the WoW performance graphics wise please share.

 

What software do you use to overclock the graphics card? Does it bring up any warning notices/ terms and conditions etc junk when you try to alter the settings?

 

EVGA Precision is what was shared.

Another minor question, how easy is it to pull the plug out from the back? Is it at least snug or have a "snap" to it rather than a simple slide in and out? I get annoyed by plugs that slip out easily.

 

Unfortunately because of the age of WoW's engine, it is far more CPU reliant than GPU, however you will still be running in the higher detail levels if you can't in max.

Modern Warfare 2 supposedly runs on max settings. If that's too laggy for you (they claim 30fps maxed) then high still looks and runs great, and I guarantee it'll run fine on High.

(I actually run MW2 in High not Extra because it gives me freezing every few seconds in extra )

In terms of video card equivelancy, well, it's in between a 9700M and a 9800M. It's said to be a hairline slower than an ATi Mobility 3870 which is a very capable card. (I should know, I run two of them in crossfire)

To give you a better idea (seeming as I had my slave not working for 5 days with a driver issue) I could still run MW2 in High, Crysis in High (although Crysis started to average about 20-25fps) so I'm guessing this thing will play Crysis on Medium with very playable rates, to give you a good idea of it.

 

Please dragon age first ! Total War was tested on the HH forum, it was playable on medium setting and MW2 was also tested a HH.

Keep up the good work

 

I'm no audio-phile but the speakers appear to be very good and can be set to be pretty loud

I totally forgot about that. I'll load it up for a run and check it out

 

thanks for the awesome review chewie! i'm one of the several that ordered on 2/3 and still stuck in "build purgatory". if it's not too much to ask, can you please run the street fighter iv benchmark when you have the chance? this will be the main game i play on the m11x, so would love to know how it performs.

it can be downloaded here: http://www.bigdownload.com/games/street-fighter-iv/pc/street-fighter-iv-benchmark-tool/

thanks!

 

So I dropped the ball on TF2's multi-core rendering.

I turned it on, and with the same settings earlier (OC'd CPU, stock GPU) my average FPS and max FPS went up a good amount. Max FPS was now in the 80's, average FPS was 41, on a 31 player game of Dustbowl.

Very very smooth and nice. I'm sure I can crank settings up a bit more if I want to.