Looking to buy a M17x (I think) - what speccs?

As the title says: I'm looking to buy a m17x alienware and since my understanding of processors, graphic cards etc. is VERY limited I would like to hear some more informed opinions on what speccs I should go with.

I'm obviously gonna buy it mainly for gaming. The games I play differ a lot, but I would basicly like it to be able to handle stuff like SC II, Diablo III, random FPS games (e.g. Crysis). When I say handle I don't mean it has to be the highest settings, but I would definatly want it to be able to run it with medium settings at least.

I hope someone is willing to help me out here as I must admit I'm getting quite confused by now. Thank you in advance.

 

Hey! Welcome to the NBR forums.

From what you described, you are looking for a mid-priced build M17x.
For the graphics cards (GPU), I would recommend the dual 260m SLI. It will give you the most performance per dollar, without breaking the bank. Most games depend on GPU for performance rather than processors.
For the processor, a T9600 is reasonably priced but clocked pretty well. Both the processor and GPUs can be overclocked in any case.
Naturally I recommend the 1920 by 1200 screen, but the 1440 by 900 is still not bad.
For gaming, no more than 4GB is needed right now - you can always add more RAM down the road if it becomes necessary.
Depending on the rest of stuff you choose, you can come in under 3 grand, and still have a pretty good machine.

 

I totally agree with Lordqarlyn and be sure to go for a raid 0 setup or an SSD if its in your budget.

 

I believe the rig in my signature is kinda suitable for your need. Of course you can pass the SSD if your money is tight.
The listing price for my rig is $2,599 + about $170 for TAX. But I got it at $2,340 and the included TAX price is $2,468 (nice number )

 

What makes you recommend a raid 0 setup (yes I'm a n00b)?

 

It increases performance especially in loading time. And gaming is where loading time plays an impotant role. But I believe it's not really neccessary. I think the reason he recommend you that is it doesn't cost much like processor or graphic card.

 

When did you order yours?

I ordered mine on friday and I have an EDD of nov.16....

 

I order on Thursday, Oct 07 Same GTX 260M SLI. Maybe you should ask Dell about it.

 

I like SillyHoney's specs and would recommend that to you. However, 128GB HDD space will not be big enough for the games you play. (Yes of course they are but you might have to uninstall programs a lot in order to replace it with other programs.) So, go for his specs but with the 2x250GB RAID 0 at least.

The reason I recommend the quad core is because the games you are going to play will most likely support quad cores. For a little price difference with the T9600, the Q9000 is a clear choice IMHO.

 

Err... I often play like 3 games at one time. Nowadays 3 games are like 40GB. For system and some apps I believe something like 60GB is enough. And I got 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent for media. 256GB SSD is much better though but I will go bankruptcy for that Raid 0 is really great option for performance but I'm afraid it will add weight to the laptop as well as higher power consumption.

 

RAID 0 will give you the capacity of two hard drives. But, the performance will significantly increase. My RAID 0 500GBx2 7200RPM M17x will boot up 1/3rd the time - under Vista - our desktop XP at work takes to boot up. We've also done side to side comparisions of app launches with each others laptops, and there is a noticeable difference with RAID 0.

But, everything is a trade off, and if you go with RAID 0, the failure of one hard drive does mean you lose your data. This is not a concern to me, because I do back of my documents on a highly regular basis, and I do a full system backup weekly. In the worst case, I am only out a day or two on a total system failure.

 

OK
So Hi
Im B1zzle I have been sifting through reviews, forums, twitter, u name it about the m17x in order to buy one soon.......

i stubled across these forums and have been eyein every thread like a hawk all day long reading opinion, see what build some people are using, etc etc etc.......when i go to the alienwarelands site and begin the lovely awe inspiring build process i cannot decide on 2 major things.

1-the processor.....duo or quad duo now quad later? save money or go in debt?

why is the duo t9800 more than the q9000 quad?

i just wana game like a gamer should
and one day play star craft two all day nonstop like the cookie monster eats cookies.....whenever blizzard releases the darn game!

2-hard drive-you all just hit on the topic of how raid may be better at load times and what not. what is the validity in this? are we talking epicly better load times?


a person i tweeted with said to get the high end duo processor and the dual 260ms then you can upgrade the cpu easily down the road..is that true, will that be easy? I come from a desktop rig gamer, so never messed around with the claustrophobic innards of a laptop.....


those are my 2 main questions
if i had a 3rd it would be HOW MUCH better is the ATI video card option? I have always been an nvidia fan boy