I am about to purchase the m17x but..

OK.. Here's the deal. I am, without a doubt, planning on buying the m17x. I have to have the laptop as early as August. I could purchase it today if I know the following:

1) Is Montivena going to be on the m17x this year?
2) What about the Nvidia 9-series graphics card?
3) DDR3 with low latency memory?

If those things are coming out After August on Alienware, I will purchase the m17x today. If not, I will wait for them to be out. I already purchased the accessories for the laptop:
1) Sennheiser HD595
2) Patriot Xporter 32GB

Creative Sound card is coming soon.

 

well, to both 1) and 3): very probably no. as to 2): yeah, you should be able to upgrade to 9-series cards at some point.

 

Thanks Whizzo for the quick response. I am now leaning towards purchasing it right now. Any other thoughts people?

 

Hi, 1). No is the simple answer to that. I asked Frank and he confirmed that there is no plan to upgrade the M17X to Montevina this year. Besides which the performance processors for Monty aren't released until next year either so...
2). I'm guessing this will be the same as Monty, i'm not saying there won't be a future upgrade but not soon...
3). Low Lentency DDR3 is already available but, as you know will only run on Monty so... (See 1).)

I am going to get a fully loaded M17X in July, the 2.8 extreme is still the fastest MOBILE processor at the moment (Can't include Sager as they use desktop hardware) and even without the ability to OC, it will still be abeast and run all current games.

If you want the best notebook at the mo ment, and don't want battey life/mobility (if you do go for the M15X) get the M17X... it's awsome and looks cool (",)

Just my 2p

OB

 

Thanks a lot. I am getting the m17x fully equipped as well.. Why are you waiting tell July though? Is something holding you back?

 

Alienware is the only that knows if they are going to update the m15x and the m17x to montevina. If you go by Alienwares history the answer is no. They will simply release all new notebooks. As far as the 9800GTX goes, it all depends on the form factor its released in. Again history is against us on that front. Do yourself a favor and order it now and enjoy it much sooner than you would be able to if you wait.

 

bebarhood, yeah Money ha ha ha

I'm saving up for it. Have just finished paying for my wedding (paid it all ourselves) and don't have £3k or around that until then... I'm from the Uk and guessing fully loaded it will cost about £3.5k...

OB

 

The extreme processor isn't really "worth" it since you cant overclock it. Youre paying 650 bucks from the t9300 for literally a .3 ghz in speed. I would not pay it (even the t9500 is a ripoff, really). Atleast with the m1730, you could push up the extreme processor (well it is "extreme" ) to 3.4 ghz!!

 

he can overclock the extreme cpu, using Ntune. Its not through the bios but it will work...even though i would get a t9300 and overclock it with ntune to 2.8, like what im gonna do

 

Na....overclocking laptops is a PITA. Its not anywhere near as easy as desktops (currently you can only overclock video card with m15x). You would be lucky to find the pll for the m15x, and find a program that supports that pll. Also, with the amount of heat this thing is putting out, I would rather not overclock it . Trust me. If overclocking cpu was possible on m15x, then it would already have been covered. All the sager people went crazy after someone figured out the pll of the np5793 and found out that setFSB supports it, so its not as if people on here aren't trying to oc their notebook, its just not that easy.

 

Ntune doesnt require you to do this. If you install the last gen version of ntune, you will be able to overclock the cpu with it in the laptop. It has worked on every laptop i have had so far. Ill get the exact ntune version later. As long as it detects an nvidia gpu, it then gives you alot of motherboard options, excluding fan speeds and voltages. Since it wont allow you to change the cpu voltage, you usually can only gte about 200mhz+ overclock. Dont know how well these penryn cpu's clock on stock voltages

 

Overclocking its still not gonna be as easy as sliding a bar in the bios. hence the appeal of the m1730, though I havn't seen many reports where overclocking really yielded an improvement - game wise anyway where its the graphics that are the bottleneck

 

Yup, i "heard" that too...

THen there's the fans being on full al of the time, unless you want to risk cooking your nice new notebook (",)

The 1730 is reported as having a turbine inside it when overclocked...

It's not really an option for us in Uk or Ireland as Dell's specs aren't very good...

Max CPU T9500, Max HDD 400Gb @7200... NO extreme processors available...

M17X Wins hands-down in the Uk...

OB

 

halogod, the cpu you got is not overclockable.

 

no laptop cpu is "overclockable" besides x9000, this is true, its not supported. The amd tl-56 isnt "overclockable", but you can still do it through ntune, if no one tries it then you will never know. Its worked for every amd and intel cpu in all three of my recent notebooks.

 

i tried using ntune on my pc. i could get the benchmark of how far i could go without the pc shutting down, but then those settings would never stay with the system. I could watch it overclock but never actually use the ofverclocked hardware. maybe i was doing something wrong.

 

- Do we know that the m17x with a X9000 can't be overclocked? It's true for the m15x, but I'd assumed that they would unlock it in BIOS for the m17x given the larger case and better cooling. Be surprised if it's not.
- Based on the m15x, I'd consider myself lucky to get the m17x before August. Sorry to be cynical, but my experience with the m15x was continuous delays for no clear reason while they sat on my money. *shrug* Hopefully shouldn't happen that issues like the m15x downclocking, case shortages, etc. will develop.

 

"Dear Mr. ******,

Thank you for contacting Alienware.

Regarding your inquiry, the Area 51 m17x does not come with an option for over-clocking.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you have any other questions or technical issues, please do not hesitate to contact us again or visit our Knowledge Base at http://support.alienware.com.

Thank you again for choosing Alienware.


Best regards,

******** ********
Electronic Support
Alienware Corporation"

It's a quote so nothing to do with copyright laws..

Anyway thats bios wise I assume. I suppose theres the possibility of software overclocking,