M17 upgradability

Hey guys,

I thought about buying the M17, but im not sure with which conifg. I just wanted to ask if i can more or less easily upgrade the hardware if im feeling it needs to after buying a low config? Is it recommended to take the dual 3870s? and with which cpu at min.?
ANd at least are the self-upgrades cheaper than the config ones and is there always (meinly at cpu upgrade) a loss of guarantee?
pls help!!

 

Everyone here will recommend you to get the 4850's. They are head and shoulders above the 3870's. Also, upgrade the screen to the Hi-res 1200. The hard drives and the Ram can be upgraded by you for cheaper. Stay away from the quad core processors as the M17 is know for having stuttering issues. At most get an X9100 but if you do, might as well get one from somewhere else cheaper.

Most upgrades, except for the HDD and RAM (I think), are upgradable without voiding the warranty. However you can upgrade the processor too but it will void you warranty (IF AW finds out, just put the old one back if you have to send the system).

I tried to be quick but more people will give you a more thorough input. Wait a little more.

 

the only prob is that i wanna order it soon and i think my dad will limit the budget at about 1400 euros ... the damn thing is that alienware.de (germany) does not offer the 4850's in the config at the moment...
im just about to run wow or wc3 on it and use it to put down my things while i study... so isnt it wise to take the single 3870 to calm my dad and later, if necessary upgrade to 4850's or is it still to hard to get them?

 

Upgrading the CPU, RAM, HDD, Optical Drive do not void the warranty

 

If you don't get the 4850s you will be SERIOUSLY sorry. Beg your father or something, because they're 150% worth the money extra. You're looking at up to twice the performance of the 3870s. (The 3870s are still beastly cards, but the 4850s are...ownage)

In terms of the warranty, the word from Alienware is that you can upgrade any hardware yourself however if in any case you need to return it to them, you will need to put the original hardware in and any damage done by changing hardware e.g. to the CPU socket, RAM slots, etc. WILL void the warranty.

 

I spoke to AW a few days ago about the availability of 4850s - they're currently not available, I think they're having supply issues? As for upgrading them at a later date, there's quite a few people here who are trying to, and AW aren't really letting them.

 

The 3870's will scream through WoW and WC3 no problem (even just one). You don't need the 4850's for those games. We recommend the 4850's for future-proofing, and also as they are not currently available to upgrade with AW until they fullfill their current orders for new machines which will be relatively soon.

 

As Marvie100 says, the 3870s will still play any game extremely well. I for example manage to play Crysis on 1440x900 set to High, with over 30fps nearly constantly. If it can handle Crysis like that, it will handle any game without a problem even for a while to come, if not on the maxed out settings.

 

Aye the 3870s are decent cards, just not as good as 4850s, with everything going on in WoW, the 4850s will help there at higher settings and res also, even with shadows turned down, which may make higher settings and raids more playable for you, if that matters!
Even with my Master GPU seemingly having just keelhauled itself; I still love them; my love is just a little temporarily diminished as it appears to have topped itself!
As a comparative example, I have an average fps of 30-40 with Crysis on High, except Im playing at 1920x1200 with some minor drops on a few levels (25fps).

 

Hmm, that's interesting as I can completely max out Lord of the Rings Online (which you have to admit is more graphically intensive than WoW) and I can run a full RAID without a problem. Maybe it supports CrossfireX better than WoW.

Annoyingly earlier today a virus screwed my Norton over (last time I ever try and use that...thought I'd give Norton a shot as it's meant to be 'all-new' and 'fantastic' (and my father had one spare license) and lo and behold...a week later it lets a virus through and I have to format and restore my system...Oddly though graphics seem to be better after that. (Sorry, that was a little off topic but I had to rant about it)

 

WoW unfortunately has a lot of very archaic code dating from about 2000 underneath, and because of that its dependency on the CPU, utilisation of some newer graphics cards, and its compatability with crossfire/SLI leave something to be desired.

It doesnt always make best use of what it has due to foibles in the engine, I'd imagine as a much newer game based around a newer engine, LOTRO doesnt suffer as many of the same issues.
WoW runs about 1/2 the speed now it did on release hehe.

 

Heh, is that because of supposed graphics updates? I have to admit though on high detailed levels it does look fairly nice. Not as nice as it should for the hardware though, and of course Blizzard would never consider rewriting the ancient code for, what is it, 10 million players paying subscription fees? Their revenue must be through the roof.

 

Yeah, unfortunately the game has got progressively more stodgy as the graphics and other updates have gone in, building on a progressively more outdate engine. I mean the actual engine in reality likely dates back to late 90s/early 2000s, WoW has been out in one for or another since 2004, and was in beta in 2003; and we all know the dev time they must have put in.

Hopefully in the future; they'll completely revamp some of the underlying code. To give some perspective, when it first came out; I used to be able to play at decent framerates (30-60fps) with details on high (although low draw distance) on a 9800Pro.

A few years later; an X1900/x800 have similar performance due to the updates.

When some people are reporting SLI graphics cards utilising only about 60% of the GPUs, well thats some pretty innefficient coding!