HardwareHeaven M11x Review

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews.php?reviewid=924&pageid=1

Very positive review. Able to run L4D2 playable with highest settings and AA/AF turned on. Plays 1080p video without a problem. Runs very cool (highest recorded temp: 72C for the GPU under load).

EDIT - Also, they were able to overclock the SU7300 to 1.6GHz.

 

Another great review!
Happy to see it runs cool and fan noise is not a issue.
Gotta hand it to DELL/AW they put out a fantastic small laptop that I can afford(finally ) without taking a hit on performance.
This is a win for both sides.

 

I don't think it was great.

30 fps in CoD6 at 'Normal' is a far cry from 'High' settings.
Dirt 2 barely playable at Medium

IGN's review suspect IMO (they have no idea what they are doing when it comes to hw reviews).

I'll wait for some of the folks here to get their units and run some tests. I needed a M11x last week. No more long trips for me at least for a month or two. Plus the Dell.ca website is screwed up - no network options so I don't know if BT is included or not. And the base config is $100 more even though currency is almost at par.

I dig the metal chassis - that's a nice touch.

 

I second that. It can't be that powerful. No way it can play ME2 at maxed settings. Even at 720p and AA off I still don't believe we can maxed ME2 on M11x.

 

When was the last time that an offical review of a product before it's in the public's hands has been true? Don't get me wrong I hope this mini laptop has good performance for it's size. Though I love the look...but that never matters much when it comes to performance eh?

I have high hopes for the M11x.

 

Word. I trust this community and Notebookcheck. That's it. Everyone else are shills - trust me! IGN clearly repeated what the marketing people told them.

7-8 hours of battery?
ME2 maxed out?

I know how hard the marketing people push for positive reviews. My honest reviews got me off the distribution list for samples from several manufacturers. Now I buy my own review units and don't have to apologize to anyone.

 

They have 0xAA on the L4D2 review.

Why not? The 9600M GT DDR3 could max ME1 at 1280x800, and the GT 335M is well beyond that, while ME2 is an in-house dev job which is way more optimized than the first. I'd be shocked if we couldn't max ME2 on an M11x, @ 720p.

 

Has anyone seen this video? I think it is fairly new

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV9wpXW81iA

and no, idk what is wrong with that guys hair

 

I enjoyed the review enough to buy one haha

If I do not like it, always got the return period

 

As I remember ME1 can't be maxed out at 1680x1050 on my C2D 2.4 and 8800GT desktop. I don't know anything about ME2 system requirement yet so my statement was just what I thought and maybe not valid But from what I remember about ME1 performance on my desktop I think ME2 will be quite hardware demanding

 

I run it on my notebook at 1680x1050, 30+ frames per second, easily. Same with ME2.

fyi, here's the 1680x1050 ME2 benchmark:

 

Hardware Heaven was likely handed a nice fat check to give it a near perfect score. They did the same thing for the M15x/M17x I believe.

 

Fat check or not their review was awesome. Great pictures, real in-depth stuff.

 

Actually if you go back and look at Dirt 2, it fits with AW's claim that it is the most powerful 11" on the planet that will play games at the industry standard 30 fps. Now if you look at the picture, it only dropped to 16FPS only once, everything else looked to be above 22-23 fps.

So I don't know where you think it's barely playable.

The only thing concerning me is on the L4D2's bench mark, it dips to 25FPS for a pretty long period of time.......

 

My M17x runs ME2 @ max detail, no AA, 8x AF, 1900*1200 with an enhancer profile to enable SLI.

Probably 45 fps - some slowdowns (stutter related I think).

[edit] I just did a 5min FRAPs run and got 59fps avg at the above settings. Lowest fps was 22, probably a stutter.

But I still want a real hw tester to post a review before I trust the M11x results.

 

You don't even know what they tested - was it a FRAPs run of a simple track or a complex Rally X track?

30 fps avg is not great at Medium. You are going to get sub 24 fps dips.

I am advising caution - feel free to eat the bait and hook. I don't really care how you spend your dollars. I was pretty bullish but I can wait and see what the real scores are.

Gotta wait til March anyways so I can hold on for folk here to test it and then decide. I hope it scores as well as Dell say it will - then I'll buy it. But IGN and Driverheaven are shills.

 

You have every reason to question this thing. Hell I'm doing it.

Even though I "spent" my money, it was only to reserve a spot, as I have a 3/2 shipping date while others have a 3/8.

 

It will probably rock. And its almost a certainty I'll get one. Maybe I am bitter that after 10 years of covering Dell, NBR did not get an early look at the M11x.

If Jerry J had done the first review and achieved those scores I would trust the results.

 

Hey i knew that you were able to overlock the cpu, hey you know its alienware! Dude you whine a bit too much, i mean i understand your concern and i am for your concern but you always have to be open minded in many subjects. It was pretty good reviews, but i am surprised that NBR didn't get a review of it first, they deff deserve a nice big fat check for what they do here for us.

 

10/100 lan? no gigabit? this is an alienware right?

 

Hm, sometimes it makes me wonder. I read through that review and the comments posted, where the reviewer also answered questions. It seems to me that the reviewer got a pre-production model of some sort. First, 1.6 GHz was the supported overclock in that unit, which he states that Alienware had thoughts of upping to 1.73 GHz (via 6.5 multiplier) then they ship to the consumers. Which they apparently do by now.

But in light of that, the CPU and GPU temps under load and idle seemed to be much higher than people state here. And he said the fan was quiet, and not disturbing. So, overall I get a feeling that Alienware decided to support 1.73 GHz overclock (and undervolting?), but also made the fan behavior more aggressive to compensate. This could help to explain the ridiculously low temperatures that we see on the unit now, and reports about disturbing fan.

There were a couple of other things left out in the review as well (particularly about the usability of GMA 4500), and I am not sure what video drivers he used.

It was also quoted that Dell does not provide any warranty assistance if you get problems when overclocking. Overall, quite a lot of interesting info found there.