M17x refresh buyers- why not wait for ATI 5870's??

While ROFL, the price shouldn't go over 3.5K with 720M and 4GBs RAM. Steep, but bearable.
You can get a 8740W with all the mentioned specs (no CF though) for under 3K.

 

Gday I was hoping to upgrade my laptop next month to a long awaited alienware (my Dell XPS1530 8600M GT just isnt good enough for the new games anymore to run at good settings) .

Anyway I noticed that the m17x only have the 4870 HD in them and no Nvidia selection at all in Australia. Should I wait for the HD 5870 or go for the dual ATI 4870 in crossfire ???

And does anyone know when dell will release the m17x with the HD5870 ?

cheers

 

Both the HD5870 and a Nvidia option are due to become available by June. While it is a rumor mill, the probability exists that the 5870 will arrive in a short time frame, not all the way to June.

If I was going to guess fully I'd say 5870 and 285 will be available soon as a refresh since they are both available, and the "June" mention was referring to a mobile Fermi chip that Nvidia has said it's producing for that timeframe (and may have had working behind closed doors in Jan).

I'd bet that USB 3.0 comes with the refresh, since the M6500 (the workstation cousin of the M17x) has gotten a USB 3 refresh. As to when all these things are available in Aussie, I'm not really certain.

 

I hope it comes out before June

I was thinking og gretting it mext month as I have Just Cause 2 , Bad Company 2 and Assassins Creed II to play. My xps1530 only benchmarks just cause 2 at 10FPS max and thats with toned down setting.

I was thinking of getting the asus A2 with the HD5870 but there tech support is terrible. If it comes out of the box defective then it has to go Sydney !!! wheras Dell techs come to your house in Perth which is swaying me.
There is also the defective crossfire cable I wsas reading about with some m17x's as well.
what to do what to do


Just noticed that Dell Australia has the Alienware desktop woth the 2GB ATI 5970 GDDR5 for the same price , hmmmmmmmmmm swaying away from laptops heeeeeeeeellllllppppppp

 

When ordering over the phone, is there any difference in calling the alienware number to the dell one? Any tendencies in price or part availability?

 

Try both.

Whoever gives you the better deal wins!

 

Some people on this forum were lucky to get up to 20% off through reps, so if you're persistent - order by phone. You might need to call many times and talk to many different reps but in the end it's worth it.

 

What type of memory is on the 5870? is there any confirmations about this?

 

GDDR5 but only 128 mem bus.

 

So if it has ddr5, doesn't that alone make the upgrade very worthwhile from the 4870. I find myself confused or lost that people are stating that the 5870 isnt a huge upgrade from the the 4870. Basically my question is, is the difference between a 5870 and 4870 more significant then a the 260m and 280m, leaving the whole dx11 thing out, (something I haven't really bought into myself because I personally feel that DX 10 has come and left and I never even really noticed it go by)

 

Ya, it's all up to chance i suppose. I'm going to try and order through work so id rather not ring and quote the companies name too much.

 

Here you go!
They are 80% accurate IMHO.

 

See this is another thing I don't understand right now. Currently, there are no 5870's in Crossfire mode offered on any of the other systems, Clevo, Asus, etc etc.

So why are we so certain that a 5870 crossfire solution will be made avail for the current m17x?

 

It would be useless to get an M17x with just 1 5870. the reason for the size of the M17x is so there could be 2 gpus.

 

For the games I play no CF is needed, so it's off now. A single 5870 would suffice my requirements for a few months, after that I'd upgrade to a CF config.

 

Notebook check is hit and miss. I wouldn't give them an 80% accuracy rating. They can't even be bothered to run tests with the same processor. That's a huge problem with that site, hard to get an accurate idea how single or dual GPU systems really perform against each other when one set up is being pitted against another using different CPU's.

 

yeah like sucking a tsunami through a drinking straw - whats the point

 

Tests (done here by NBR users) have shown that the 128bit bus is not a limiting factor in the way you just described. It's more like GDDR5 adding +128bit to the already existing 128bit and scaling perfectly to 256bit with no issues related to the smaller memory bus. In fact IIRC the 128bit bus with GDDR5 actually has a more efficient data throughput than any other mobile 256bit GDDR3 mobile card on the market right now. But it also has more heat as those GDDR5 modules get quite hot.

 

When did this occourance take place, 2 months ago? Else my Rep would be lying and I will be very, very, very disappointed!

 

also conflicts with darkhan's information - unless one of the few overall updates coming "very soon" from alienware don't include ati, but rather nvidia?

 

Guess your rep lied to you then. There is the possiblity that they simply aren't allowed to say but he did take the time to e-mail me after he went and researched the issue w/the hardware guys so it seems believable.

 

If this isn't the week then who knows when they are coming.

 

I am done caring about the 5870's. lol

If I get them great, if not no biggie.

I am more interested in what is next from ATi. I am thinking that the mobile nvidia stuff coming out eventually will perform better than the 5870's and ATi might want to respond sooner rather than later (after all they have a 3 month lead on nvidia to this point).

 

this week is the deciding factor. good luck to you all.

 

If you go back to the original 4870s their lead is nearly a year long.

 

Well, the g92 core has got be one of the longest available mainstream gpu parts in the history of mobile computing. lol

 

Do you think it's possible for Hecatonchires to make it to the notebook sector this year?

 

Heh I guess my post linking to the M17 Mob HD4850 thread was deemed too much troll and not enough relevant commentary on the similarities of the situations. :wink:

 

I bet a few people went ordering the new systems, lol.
Yes, very similar, and it's ok - history always repeats itself.

 

Waiting for an updated Gateway FX now.

 

hi all just some info ive come across, the 5870s still month or so away as they have a problem with crossfire, im not sure how correct this info is but well their you go. dont shoot the messanger

so jokers date of couple of months may be right. if were lucky

p.s this info is from fella who works at dell

 

Why am I not surprised?

 

M15x doesn't have CF.

What is the excuse there?

 

Going EOL?

 

4870x2
to
Single 5870
That's less than a one percent increase in 3Dmark05. The FPS tests are all pretty darn close as well. I haven't looked to far into the reasons for why some of you want the 5870 but it doesn't seem worth it to me; the wait time and extra cash I mean.

 

Because CF 5870's are going to be redonculously fast

I am still impressed by what these single card systems are doing. So I can only imagine how good the MR 5870's will be in CF mark

Just as an aside here, I wouldn't be using notebookchecks website to compare bechmark numbers. lol

 

yeah but 2 5870s in crossfire muhahahaahaha

 

Yeah this goes back to what I was saying, how sure are we that 5870's can be run in crossfire on a laptop or this m17x? Those asus PC's have Crazy good Cooling systems for a single 5870. How certain are you that the m17x as is, has a good enough cooling system to cool down 2 of these things. And again no laptop currently has 5870's in crossfire mode yet.

I'm thinking that if they do release it I'm still going to wait like 6 months before I jump on board in fear of it not working out.

 

Why not notebookcheck sleey0?
And I was just assuming that crossfire 5870 won't be available for a time. What would that cost like in an m17x, an extra $7-800?

I'm having buyers remorse for my M11x and am thinking about the M17x-R2, that's why I popped in here. Maybe it's cause my laptop is being delivered today and I'm out of country till friday . I have so many factors when buying this I can never make a decision

 

Yeahm, umm Asus hasn't been known for even average cooling, let alone great cooling, in the past.

On the other hand, AW has been known for excellent cooling and the M17x's GPU cooling in particular is the best you get, IMO.

The only other company that is as good as, and sometimes exceeds, AW cooling is Clevo.

 

Did someone just post something about 3DMark05?

 

Nope. But if they did, why would that be bad

 

That's very true. I especially wouldn't rely on their temp measurements. Just because they couldn't find a way to check the 5870' temps they just removed it from the calculations and gave the temp mark of 90+ to Asus G73.
I mean, you can still use them for certain references but only if you power ON your own grey matter cells , which is usually not the case with many people (including myself )

 

yea.. why don't we just bench mark with the organ trail... Notebook check needs to update their unfair scores. I'm sure the 5870s in CF will be at least 15%-20% faster, otherwise it would be a waste to spend so much time for an upgrade that a lot of people won't even want.

 

omg noooes

 

old program, modern system.

 

Wouldn't 3dmark06 be considered a pretty old program too? It seems to still be widely used to benchmark.

 

All the programs are benchmarked but that's not used to compare one GPU to the next. Stick to Vantage GPU scores and newer gaming benchmarks.