M17x Crossfire in 7

You don't have to wait for them to do it...Like I said, take it to ATI, they will listen

 

Same here. I guess it said GDDR5 on their build invoices, but I too couldn't find it anywhere.

 

It was listed on their site and this is my invoice from my dell account:

1 224-5966 Red Metallic
1 317-0819 Intel Core2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz (3MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB) $0.00
1 317-0856 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz 2 x 2048MB $0.00
1 421-0415 Mouse Pointers,STANDARD $0.00
1 320-8140 17.0in, WUXGA,LCD,ANW,M17X $0.00
1 320-0759 CrossFireX - Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 $0.00
1 341-0004 500GB 7,200RPM (xMB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection $0.00
1 330-3924 Name Plate Engraving $0.00
1 421-0720 ALIENFX RED $0.00
1 420-3251 Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1 $0.00
1 330-5414 Windows 7 Home Premium UpgradeCoupon, W0, ENG,SPN,FRE,GER JPN $0.00
1 421-0359 Avatar 6 $0.00
1 421-0389 Window Style, DFT $0.00
1 410-0173 ADOBE ACROBAT READER - Eng $0.00
1 313-7711 Slot-Loading Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW) $0.00
1 430-3558 Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n 2x2 MIMO $0.00
1 421-0405 Automatic Updates ON $0.00
1 421-0398 Power Plan, BAL $0.00
1 421-0399 Time Zone, CENTRAL $0.00
1 421-1724 Soft Contracts,Dell In Home,Alienware $0.00
1 994-7017 Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Plus At-Home Service, Initial Year $0.00
1 994-3660 Next Business Day In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis , Initial Year $0.00
1 990-8029 1 Year Limited Warranty and Next Business Day,Desktop $.00
1 994-3730 Warranty Support,Initial Year $0.00
1 988-7347 No Warranty beyond 1 year $0.00
1 330-0171 S and P Drop-in-Box Marcom forDHS Notebooks $0.00
1 430-0628 Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR $.00
1 421-0397 Wallpapers, C04W $.00
1 421-0358 Wallpapers, C06W $.00
1 420-3257 Wallpapers, C07W $.00
1 421-0381 RSS Feeds,AW $.00
1 330-5090 Thank You for Purchasing AlienWare $.00

 

Yup, the invoice says it all. Shame on you, Dellienware.

 

Again, going to give Dell a chance to make good on this. They've been really good about that in the past, with me.

 

Funny thing is i think we knew all along they would be DDR3 based on the BIOS updates stating fixes for DDR3 ATI cards....

 

3dmark 06:

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=12274344

Anything else, unless it's a steam-based game, will have to wait until I get home and can download it.

 

Ddr3 could have been a typo ... Ddr5 was afterall

 

I smell a lawsuit

 

Just got off the phn with my Dell sales rep, pointed this whole topic out to him, starting from the page #1 and emphasizing on the 15th, he promised to look into this DDR3/5 mess tomorrow with his tech-guru and try to find some more info on wth is going on ...

and damn it , im still in pre-production ... shall i just cancel my order ?

 

I would cancel at this point. And shouldn't the Dell people not need their own tech gurus? Lol

that is unless you prefer ati in general

 

effing' noobs , they don't even know wth is going on within their own company, i thought we'll give them a hand !)

 

I guess its to soon to hope for a 5870 mobile GPU?

 

So, that's it then? 100% sure these are GDDR3?

Lame.

 

My cards are, without a doubt, GDDR3.

 

Pretty much.

Despite all this, thankfully, Dell is actually being pretty civil about the whole mess.

And, as of right now, I'm not really noticing a HUGE performance drop with these cards. If they refund my $100 price difference, I might just keep them.

 

At least they should be on par with the 280's. Perhaps you can demand $100 back. I think a lot of people figured that for the giant benefit a GDDR5 would offer, $100 seemed actually too low. At least to me it did.

I would not return it per se, but would try to get at least $100 back. Sounds fair.

Edit: @Ribz, yes, that's what I think too. Assuming they are the same performance.

 

I still personally would feel safer with nvidia cards on an nvidia board

but that is just me

 

Me too. Which is another reason I got rid of my M17 after 3 months usage. Those things just run too hot for my taste. And drivers are a pain. I'm not into benchmarking or fighting with drivers. I like to spend less time troubleshooting, more time using it.

It's all about preference. What I do think sucks is a single 4870 being the same $ as 2 260's.

 

They are only the same in price (for now) lol. Gtx 260m sli will far outperform the single 4870

 

It's kinda hard to see that this is GDDR3. What model does this info relate to?

From Ati website:

ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4850 / HD 4870 Graphics – Specifications

ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4850 / HD 4870 Product Features
956 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
OpenGL 2.0 support
256-bit GDDR5 and GDDR3 memory interface (depending on model) – PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
800 stream processing units
24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
Dual mode ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
Dynamic geometry acceleration
Game physics processing capability
ATI Avivo™ HD video and display technology1
Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) for Blu-ray™ and HD Video
DVD Upscaling
Dynamic Contrast
Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support
DisplayPort™

 

^ something I pointed out to my Dell's sales guy earlier today too ..

but you get those specs under 4850/4870 tab , did you notice that ?

 

Yes. Maybe dell chose the GDDR3 instead of the GDDR5. Save some money...lol

On a side note, I'm gonna see how the crossfire works. Gonna try a lil' benchin'.

Edited: I'm gonna send ATi support an e-mail questioning what model is the GDDR5 of that series.

 

^ that's a good idea !!

 

Maybe ATI thought they could off load some extra stock on the early adopters?

Annnnd I have sent this in to the consumerist.

 

That's a pic of the Mobility 4860. It's got a 40-nm die. I assume ichime probably used that image because it shows where the serial numbers on the RAM are for identification.

This is what the original Mobility 4870 looked like.

 

P.S. sorry for your experience though ...

 

Whoa guys. Just whoa.....

Really sorry to hear about all of this. Really, big, big wag-of-the-finger at Dell/AW. Should NEVER have happened.

But, for my part, I agree with Scook- have been, and shall remain for the foreseeable future, an Nvidia man....I just am hoping now these cards DO outperform the 280's (even though it leaves me a bit behind) just so you guys didn't go through all of this hassle for nothing.

Best of luck folks.

 

Hmmmm, maybe not..... funny you mention this..... I have been following this thread closely:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=417193

 

Yeah, it was an experience all right..... emotionally UP & DOWN (mostly down)..... jerk, jerk, jerk!

 

Hope you guys all get it sorted, this is the blind side of rediculous.

 

Ubelievable. Luckly I did not put my order forward.
Unbelievable also the italian commercial sweared to me they were GDDR5 because I told her this was crucial for my decision!!!!!!!
Shame on DELL! (and as of now, in italy they are still showing Gddr5 on the website!!!)

 

OK, this is interesting, so I have just published this information in my site: http://optimitza.cat/news/2009/10/2...the-alienware-m17x-is-gddr3-instead-of-gddr5/

But in Spain the CrossFireX 4870s are 325 € cheaper than the 280M SLI, so I don't think anybody is going to complain because of the GDDR3 memory...

 

Same in Italy. when asked the dell rep told me prices vary from region to region and that's all.

 

Hahah what a train wreck i woke up to. Jeez.

To be fair, the UK site seems to be the only one that was honest and on point. Cheaper than 280s, more expensive than 260s, always labelled as GDDR3.

Good old BRITAIN leading the world in ethics once again

 

I do not think is a matter of ethics but more a matter of uncompetence... they DON'T KNOW!!!! (which is even worst maybe-)

 

I personally don't care, because the 280s are way more expensive than the 4870 sli. If I'm getting 280 performance for a part of the price, I'm still happy.

My fellow patriots across the pond however.. raise hell. America is the land of customer service anyway so lets see what you can get.

This from a yank in the UK i can tell you, I feel very lucky to have gotten this free replacement so I'll be happy with 4870s.. now if this computer can ever get here...

 

I mentioned this ages ago, but the Irish site also listed the 4870's as GDDR3.
Looks like it was the US site that completely screwed things up!

 

the UK site had them as GDDR5, it was Italy that first showed them as GDDR3 initially.

I pointed this out a few days ago.

 

Negative, they've been GDDR3 on the UK site forever. I even stated it last week but no one seemed to care until i was repeating over and over!!!

 

Hehe...found my own post stating the same thing
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5392013#post5392013

 

The US site never said anything one way or the other. It was just on the order confirmation emails and order status link.

 

aye, they seem fairly on the ball tbh, only problem i encountered with them was when my order got cancelled, but that seemed to happen to a load of people worldwide

edit: aside from the ridiculous prices of course

eg: difference in i7 720QM and i7 820QM on the M15x
US: $300
Ire: €480

Current exchange rate: 300.00 USD = 200.547 EUR

-.-'

 

What happened to the pics? I wanted to see them again.

 

No they weren't. They were GDDR5 at one point while I was arguing about my refund on the M17, I checked because they temporarily offered me a M17x but then retracted.
They WERE showing as GDDR5.

It swapped round much like Europe and the US have, I was one of the first to see them on the UK site, as they came in during my M17 issues.

 

My bad. I didn't realize that!

Looks like Dell trully had a worldwide screw up with regards to this. Strange that they wouldn't coordinate across all Alienwares in each country to get the spec in order, its not like their supplier didn't tell them exactly what they're getting.

Ah well. Still waiting on mine so..

 

Well, Im not entirely surprised. Alienware Europe Tech Support and in general were absolute morons, and most didnt know anything. Hell, I was even once told my specification didnt exist.

 

Thanks for that! I wonder how long it would be till the M17x would get those puppies? Probably not till 2Q of 2010 at least.

 

I think the DDR3 crossfire version should still be better than the 280Ms SLI in games when using Anti-Aliasing, both image quality and performance wise.

 

I surely hope so, because that would justify it for me when I buy my m17x still this year

I think so too, since ATI usually performs better with those filters on in high resolutions...
But now I'm not sure which one should I buy, 4870 CrossFire or 280m SLI... You guys think that zennik's results for 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 06 were good? (3DMark Vantage = 10609 Graphics Score, 3DMark 06 = SM2.0 5917, SM3.0 7785)