M18x ? News article looks bogus

43, 45... some of my alien colleagues, (eagerly awaiting for the 18x, as they were awaiting for this M17xR3 'fiasco') are over 70's (and still kicking very well indeed!)...

 

18.4 WLED screen reminds me of 8943G with awful viewing experience.

Hopefully 18.4 WLED will be manufactured by other mobile display manufacturers such as SMD(Samsung) and TMD(Toshiba).

 

From the French forums LesDelliens, they got the info that the M18x will be available on the second quarter of 2011. AlienWare M18X ! Disponible au deuxième trimestre prochain. - LesDeLLiens.com

The data comes from one of the sources of the admin of this forum and per my experience is reliable.

 

What do stock Mobility 5870s pull in the Vantage GPU score, 13-14k? Eurocom's preliminary tests have the 6970M close to 12k. That's close enough for overclocking to close the gap to a few percent, without having to worry about dual GPU issues. I see no reason to expect different results in the gaming tests.

I'll take the 6970M.

 

Oh please let it release in March, that would be awesome!

 

What has me a little iffy is Alienware seems to think a good comparitive to a 6970 is a 460... Not even a 470?

*ahem* 580M Please. (485 'till then.)

 

Lost in translation...it says release is second quarter of next year. By 2012 AW fans will say it sucks because it's not using 28nm

Don't forget price/perf. A single HD6970M will cost less then two Mob. HD5870.

 

I baked the cake, you brought the icing.

 

To be honest, the release date is not known so far, as dell didn't confirm it yet. We will see what happens in the next few months.

 

Not to argue with you but I have another old desktop replacement: an Inspiron 8600 with a 1920x1200 screen that in 6 and half years have not shown any problem... yes it's not LED but is WUXGA... and it's from Sharp... I have another with a Toshiba screen that show dead pixels (among other issues) it was changed under warranty to a samsung one and after two weeks shows the same problems...
So, my conclusion in this days with so minor differences (at some levels) among the brands, is not to look after the brand or the maker, but after the warranty... I always, to myself and for others, buy 4 years full warranty and then another year as an 'extension'... This approach had always rewarded me... And, as a last word: maybe there are better brands, but believing to my 'extended' experiences (more than 30 years working with computers), even I have my own heavy critics to the firm and specially to the unqualified support services, the Dell extended warranty all over the world (and I have been working-living in 32 countries until now) have no competitors...

 

They also cite the original article linked by joker. So it really just the admin's source reliability. Hopefully they're not just guessing based on the original article.

 

Fuel for your fires.

Alienware is on the Exhibitor List for E3 2011 in June....that's as "soon" as I could bring myself to expect an M18x.

 

Yeah, very big chance they will introduce the M18x at E3 2011, let's hope so.

 

The end of their current sales quarter for Dell is the end of this month. The question for me is if February starts their official 1st or 2nd quarter of 2011.

I find it amusing how many of us have been asking for additional colors for the Alienware systems & in response, Dell removes a color.

 

My argument stand for the 18.4 WLED only.

Dell should understand that M18x is the top end of their product line therefore they should place their product specification along with their brand recognition.

Google these two screen models "CMO1807" and "CMO1805" , and you will find the answer why so many customers keep away from these screens as far as possible.

 

Completely reasonable. Will the m11x and m15x get their SB refreshes by then? I sure hope so.

 

Don't see Dell waiting for a convention to showcase an M11x refresh. It'll more likely be something you'll just see go up for sale on AW.com after the SB ULV launch.


M15x refresh is more complicated. If there is an M14x in the works I could see the M15x not catching an SB refresh and getting slowly phased out in 3-4 months. In truth with the M17x as a single GPU notebook and a hypothetical M18x coming in June to dazzle the market, Dell could really get away with dragging out an M14x launch to 1/2012.

 

Why would Dell need a m15x refresh now? Dell already have 3 heavy laptops that could become 4. If you look at weight the m15x and m17x r3 are in the same catagory. M15x and M17x r2 will gradually be phased out. Dell will keep things simple with models not waste money and confuse consumers. M11x will get a fresh because it is quite unique and serves a purpose.

 

Possibly M18x with Ivy Bridge by then? As we are now aware the Sandy Bridge CPU does not support DX11, but Ivy Bridge will...learned about it this morning, although it won't matter since the discrete GPU will of course support DX11 and beyond...

KJ

 

Ivy bridge's integrated graphics will support dx11??? wahhhh! that is some jump in performance, will tiny laptops even need dedicated graphics in a couple of years?

 

You have to factor in SB in those results which makes a considerable difference in the final score (unless you are talking about the GPU score). Second, it's Eurocomm, since when are they credible?

 

No definitely not. Ivy Bridge won't be until late Q4 '11 or more likely CES '12.

There's a good chance Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge will share the same socket, so upgrade could be possible.

 

The alleged scores are from an x7200 with an i7-980x so no SB factoring is necessary.

 

Same difference, i7-980x vs mobile CPU's tested with xfire 5870m. Just as an example of how huge of a role the CPU plays in the final score: My default score with a 5870m xfire + 720qm is around 13k. With 920xm that goes up to about 15k. With an OC'd 920xm it jumps to 16-17k. Both CPU/GPU OC pushes it to 19k. Those desktop results of 5770 vs 6850 are all we really need to know to figure out how well it will stack up in the mobile space.

 

Even so my fellow alien, even so: This is exactly the reason why I'm remarking the added value/benefits of a (Dell) NBD in-site full warranty... Something that, until now, as far as I know, other named brands, don't offer...
Then it can be LED, RGB LED... etc. from one brand or the other (today a differences among them are minimal), or whatever... Dell will change it without questions...
I’m not a Dell seller or rep. btw: I'm very caustic critic of the quality control @ manufacturing and of the quality control @ technical servicing... (among other failures like ignoring too often their customers).

 

Interesting...see, I'm still learning here. I read the other day on some page saying for example the i7-940XM does not do much in terms of helping the Frames Per Second (FPS). It stated that processor will only increase gaming FPS by 1.5....Really? It does not sound like much of an increase in gaming performance for a chip that costs over $1,000. Is this even correct?

I understood its the GPU power that is the main determinant in the gaming performance. I really need to understand....if these Xtreme chips are really of any benefit to the gamer at all, or are mostly for Desktop programs which benefit from higher CPU speeds and RAM.

I'm not understanding also how do FPS relate to the results above? What values are the 13K, 15K, ....19K, how do they relate to FPS. I know 30 FPS sucks compared to 60 FPS...but what do these numbers with the K*thousand (I guess?) Mean? Thanks in advance. *gaming newbie*


KJ

 

It doesn't, they are synthetic benchmarks basically programmed by people, non are that credible because they can be overly sensitive and don't constitute real life situations. for example the stocks on cpu and gpu getting 14k while overclocked both getting 19k the same hardware, sometimes its up to 22k in extreme cases, the difference is nearly a 50% gain however you will never ever ever get that in gaming or any real life applications. laughable. more likely you will shorten the life of your hardware and get a somewhat noticable gain. and all good range cpus starting above core duo are adequate for gaming apart from the poorly optimized games, gpu is far more important.

 

Ok, thanks, but what about the point about the i7-940XM.... does this xtreme chip/cpu processor really make such a big difference in gaming compared to an i7-740QM, or the i7-840QM? The real difference I see upon configuration is the prices! lol....like I said that 940XM is very expensive, so is it even worth buying for a frame per second or 2 difference?

KJ

 

you will be able to play GTA4 much better. does that answer it? no most games don't require that kind of CPU power so to the eye it wont make any difference. you might think that your balls grow a bit if your fps jump from 50fps to 53 though. anyway upgrades are good, get the 920xm from ebay for half of the price or more once sandy cements itself. it will be competitive against the sandy if you use throttlestop just use much more power than it does. an upgrade like the 920xm/940xm is overkill for nearly any average persons use and processes at the moment and it will be fine for several years.

 

john2000, clear, straight, helpful answers. +1 rep.


KJ

 

I don't know if its posted already.

Dell is trying to take down this blog!!
Guys,

I have just received news that Dell is demanding Posterous, the domain and host of this blog, to take down some posts that contain "theft of confidential company information".

I'm trying to stop this from happening, of course.

As you can probably guess, this only confirms that my info is legit and credible.

As far as I'm concerned, I haven't done anything illegal, so I hope this blog lives on.
Should Posterous oblige to Dell's demands, you'll find the juicy info elsewhere.

Eric
Dell News, Tips & Tricks - All about Dell - News, Tips, Tricks, Secrets, and more...

 

Killa Joe - it depends what you are wanting from a system and what budget you have. First of all drop the 940xm because the price is stupid regardless of source just make sure you have the 9 cell battery for the power needs. The 920xm is better priced if you buy from an independent and it can be overclocked to those levels easily just don't buy from Dell! I saw several 920xms on Ebay for under $500 before sandy was even released so they should collapse soon. CPUs with this sort of power several years ago were dreamland because it competes with mid-range desktops. Sandy is an even further step forward with the 10% quicker clock rate and insane power efficency. This is a huge step forward for portability but since gaming laptops are heavy we wont see the effect yet. But if you are articulating on gaming whether or not it will not make significant difference, it won't in nearly all cases..... apart from future proofing yourself. John is correct that with the power of these CPUs (that are silly now), GPUs are more significant and always have been for gaming. CPU's are out-doing GPUs in advancement at the moment from the quad options and turbo modes. What GPU are you after exactly? And an 920xm would do you for years if you don't want portability!

 

Having a faster CPU increases consistency of framerates in most games (even ones not CPU dependent) as well as raising the average overall. See here: Conclusion - Real World Gameplay CPU Scaling | [H]ard|OCP

So even though it was a desktop test with 4870xfire (which isn't much faster if at all than xfire 5870m) their tests show that a CPU positively impacts gameplay. A 920xm ES combined with throttlestop is an extremely good value proposition.

While synthetics may not represent real world usage (nobody so far has claimed it does) there's no doubt that a high end CPU has an impact on GPU performance in games and it's not just a negligible impact either. I've personally tested the difference between 720qm vs 920xm in an R2 with xfire 5870m and noticed a huge difference in some games (e.g. bad company 2).

 

No way intel would cheat themselves out of a chipset sale on top of a CPU sale

 

Well that's pretty much confirmation that he's coming across info they wanted to keep hidden. I think they should have left it alone rather than try to use legal against a blog..pretty poor form.

 

So, I don't know from where this demand comes... but, maybe, just a crazy hypothesis, they prefer that all the good propaganda that Posterous and this forum has been given to Dell will be transferred to WikiLeaks....??? Then Posterous may become more prosperous!!!

 

firstly I never said that CPU did not affect games just not as substantially as GPU. secondly I mentioned anything above core duo you will not see a noticable affect to the eye in most games. thirdly I have championed clock speed over number of cores in 4 vs 2 debates many times, it is simply better not only for real life apps but gaming too. if you can afford both clockspeed and cores then great otherwise clock speed is better choice than cores. unless you can afford the extremes a high clock dual is better, but again there will not be substantial difference. And no test you see on the internet is necessarily fair there are many variables and usually little evidence apart from wording. You have to agree though that synthetic benchmarking vs real life performing is abolsute rubbish

 

5150Joker, thanks, I'll aim for the 920XM at minimum, but I doesn't Sandy Bridge change the desigantions now to 4 numbers, like 2630....etc? and I'd love a HD 6970 in Crossfire or higher if I have to wait a bit longer maybe for an Ivy Bridge or later to save up some cash! Thanks....


KJ

 

That is seriously messed up there! I mean, NBR has been nothing but fair to Dell/Alienware and all other companies we discuss. This is not just USA, this is an international forum.... based on opinons, facts, shared knowledge, experience, etc....

Why would any company want to shut the mouth of a forum that most likely helps their bottom line in the end?

In short I say, NO WAY!!!!! We have a right to freedom of speech! NBR lives on, thanks.

KJ

 

It's not NBR they're targeting. They want to shut down Eric G's blog.

 

ahaha DELL is the FCC of family guy , well it's obvious that Dell wanted to give us a surprise because of the mess they did but now they don't have and like a father that discovers the kid is messing around the presents before christmas eve, is going to give some spankies around xD

 

You forgot to mention that the human eye can only recognise a certain number of frames per second anyway. It is obviously much lower than 50 or 60 or whatever a good gpu and cpu can manage these days. Probably closer to 30 to the eye.

And why would Dell want to close the blog/thread? If anything their disgraceful pricing in the UK needs to be highlighted as disgusting profiteering.

 

oh, ok. Thanks for the heads up.

KJ

 

I think the answers may be that...

The new R3 being a single GPU machine will need a "lime light" attention right now to be legitimate consider. After all look at how people reacted at first. (Most were ) But was what it was. Don't like it buy a R2, Dell still wins. But a leak of a M18X changes everything, the buzz on the M17x R3 or lite as I think of it, is now being by pass. People set on 2 GPUs the enthusiast are now focused on the M18x that will hurt sales. I think that why their wasn't a M14x or m15x refresh yet. I think it may come down to a M18x and a M14x coming at the same time and a m11x with the low power SB. If they refreshed the whole line at the same time and had to sell off the the R2's and start new size, and the single GPU M17x R3. That would have FAILED.

IMHO

 

Traditionally Intel's Tick phase CPU(Ivy) share the same socket as their Tock phase CPU (Sandy).

We didn't see it with i7 because Allendale dual-core, and Westmere quad-core were both scrubbed.

 

Oh please, we've been over this so many times, because it's so wrong.

They haven't even been able to determine the max FPS the eye can see, because it's so high.

If you saw in just 30fps, it would be considered a severe disability. Wave your hand in front of your eyes, then play a game at 30fps. There's no comparison.

 

What R3 was\is is totally baffling... doubly so to those customers outside the US. Even before you add the "wonder feature" R3 addition of a 3D screen it's hideously overpriced compared to the R2.

It's the equivalent of $4030USD for the base model R3 over here. I would consider paying that, or even a tad more for a fully spec'd M18x however, but for a base R3 as they stand currently, they're clearly off their rockers and deserve whatever flak they cop.

 

This is all logical and even reasonable imo. These leaks might deeply hurt R3 sales. At the same time if he goes away I'll be sad to lose our Alienware prophet whose 2/2 in predictions so far

 

The human eye can see much more than 30fps , thats why alot of people get headaches from CRT's running under 60-70hz. I can see the judder on a 42" lcd for example at 60hz. Thats why I went with a plasma, 600hz.
I think most of the time the moving image is smooth to most ppl above 24? frames. We know that the human eye can see well over 300 fps, but doesnt need all that detail. My brother is a science teacher and since im a gamer I hear this conversation from him all the time. So my argument is that its not overkill until 300 fps (-: . If the R3 comes to light like we think, I'd be more than willing to go for frames that high! p)

 

These leaks wont hurt R3 sales, the R3 weaknesses will hurt R3 sales. If it wasnt for the M18x, I would be seriously considering the R2 or X7200. I wont buy the R3 in any case!