New M17x R4, M14X R2 and M18X R2 are coming - Speculation thread.

the beginning of the end....

 

Did the first M14x not have an integrated GPU?

 

I still doubt it applies to the M17x and M18x series.
If they'll do this, I'm pretty sure that many will turn away from them.

 

Oops, my bad.

 

Good point on the Win 8 upgrade and free M/S upgrade...

I'll probably still wait myself. I used to rebuild my machine probably yearly in the past (like ~15 years ago), but after getting older and kids/wife/insane amounts of work, I make it a point to actually never rebuild now. Just so little time.

Still chugging along with a 2007 machine with original O/S. Didn't even bother to re-install the O/S back then.

 

Indubitably! That makes no sense at all. So each time a GPU fails, the entire mobo get's replaced?? lol, that would be like shooting oneself in the foot

 

if that happens my next system will prob be the m18x r1 in a year

 

wait a minute, i thought that line about the integrated GPU's was for the m14X...not for the others...right?

 

quick question; ordered my M17x last week (due sometime next week) and upgraded to 2 GB radeon 6990M. looking at AU dell website now and Radeon 2GB 6990M is no longer an option.
does this mean they are upgrading? radeon 6990M is still available on US website so unsure what is going on

 

It is on the US Website;
Dell will Pull options when they run out of stock. I have noticed that in the configuration, different options and prices will be there every day or two. Standard stuff like 750gb Hard drives are always there.. but the selections for SSDs, SSD/HD Combos, Hybrid Drives, GPUs and even Memory will change, depending on the day.

 

GTX 580m is not available in UK any more...
well, at least for some time.

 

thanks for the info TheBluePill & MH.
seriously pumped about getting my new beast!

 

You are very welcome! Enjoy!

 

An ULV Quad core?

Spoiler

I dont know about M14x, but for an m11x that would be amazing..

 

I doubt dell would stick a ULV processor in the next m14x if it doesn't out do the current sandy bridge processors available for the m14x such as the 2670 or 2860. I think they would rather charge the extra money for the more expensive quad core i7's.

 

it is 35 watt i don't believe that 35 watt is a ulv, maybe a lv but not ulv, the current processor in the m11x is a 17 watt. But think about it, if alienware included this option, you could have a power efficient cpu (still powerful in terms of performance) which will give you excellent battery life on the go. Also ivy bridge comes with a configurable tdp to you could even drop that to 17 watt say when you really need battery. and then when you get home ramp it up to 45 watt. (all this is for m14x)

I wouldn't upgrade my processor-too much heat even though they are 22nm

 

here is the confirmed processors set to release for ivy bridge, no mention of an 3920xm or other new extreme processor.




Reference: Intel Presentation Confirms Ivy Bridge Specifications

 

Those are only the ones launching in April. The 3720QM, 3920XM, etc., will launch later, probably around June.

 

which means later alienware laptop launches

 

It's a real shame Intel is pushing Hyperthreading so much. You're stuck with either 4/8 for i7 or 2/4 for i5. What's wrong with a 4/4 processor? I don't want eight cores when I'm only going to be using four at most, and I really don't want the extra heat and power required to maintain stability. Not that Dell allows disabling of Hyperthreading anyway (though this could be a chipset limitation, not sure).

 

It is so they don't have to push out so many sku's. If they have 4/8 i7s and 2/4 i5s and people don't need the extra logical cores then they can disable them in the bios. It is cheaper for Intel.

 

When is the M14x r2 speculated for release? Also, is it going to be lighter?! Or is there any speculation of an improved M11x? Last year there was no chassis change... its so due for some improvement...

 

But that's just it: You can't. (To the best of my knowledge)

 

Why would you want to disable the Cores or the Hyperthreading? Do you have a specific app where it is an issue? Or just to conserve power?

 

All of those questions should be answered by this time next week.

 

Well if you're not using the virtual cores, it doesn't help anything, and can actually hurt performance slightly, it also adds about 10°C to load temps.

 

Hi,

Obviously this is just speculation, but it could be that the m11x r4 gets an IVB update with the 640m GPU, since its the next generation of the 540m GPU in the m11x r3 and it was announced that alienware wont change the chassis until the generation after m17xr4, m14xr2 and so on!

Even if the 650m will be considered this would be a good indication of the perfomance of the 600m Mid-Class

Could you m11xr3 Owners benchmark the 3 games which are tested in the review of the acer aspire m3 5800 TG review, which features the 640m and an ULV 2467m, so very similiar to the m11x r3?

Please use exactly the same settings!

Stalker

Spoiler

Resident Evil 5

Spoiler

Lost Planet 2

Spoiler

Cinebench 10

Spoiler

Cinebench 11.5

Spoiler

The games are more important than cinebench benchmarks!

Also be sure to use exactly the same settings

The source of the review is laptop.bg

 

The m14x will probably get that 640 or a 650 if i had to guess. Would be nice to get an AMD offering too. at 1366x768, even the 7690 would be a descent chip to throw in there.. or something from the GCN Lineup.

 

I do not know about the laptops but i can disable hyper threading on my alienware aurora's bios

 

On most laptop's you'll need the 'vanilla' BIOS for that and other options.

 

Is there a scheduled release of information, or is that speculation too?

 

I was hoping for a new design, at least for the M11x, just maybe...

 

No release information yet....still waiting.. :| new chassis would be nice though. we have to wait and hope

 

Alright so I have to know...this model will be released soon and be coming with options of dual 7970m's or gtx 675m's. I just ordered an m18x with dual gtx 580m's sli. Here are my questions:

1) You think specs are going to be a big jump from 580m's and 6990m's?

2) Will they still be mxm format cards so we can upgrade to new video card?

What do ya'll think?

 

Nothing has been OFFICIALLY confirmed yet, I believe. If the M18X R2 is coming with the ivy bridge processors and new gen graphics cards, though, which is probably is, then it will most likely be a huge jump but nothing available right now as far as games will make it -noticeable-. I think it will be just kind of future proofed seeing as dual 6990s and 580s are pretty high end as it is.

 

so are the AMD cards re-badges as well? or will they be 28nms ?

 

7700M, 7800M, and 7900M should be 28nm.

 

1: The 675m is just a rebadged 580m...
2: Well...yes and no...watch as the story unfolds in the next few hours...

EDIT: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...tandard-3-1-new-one-up-3-0-a.html#post8363355

 

pretty much, the 680m is supposedly coming out later this year in the fall i think.

 

They typically like to hit the back-to-school season for Mobile Parts, which starts in July..

However, as you suggest, we haven't even seen the Desktop Part yet, so the 680M might turn into a Fall or, worst case, Christmas part.

 

After seeing Cebit, with all the new laptops having "GPU specs to be released" cards on them, I feel pretty certain nothing exciting is coming to mobile anytime soon. Probably late this year for a 680m type card, 675m is just a renamed 580m, and Nvidia has been pretty clear that they expect the 675m to beat any of the new AMD mobile parts that are coming soon.

AMD is also said to have horridly low yields, and so they are planning to put most of their focus on desktop cards with the high end mobile cards coming late this year. That means the 580m/675m is likely going to be top dog for most of this year in the mobile space, and then AMD will release a 7990m maybe in the fall, and Nvidia will come after them with the 680m in late fall or early holiday season.

MXM 3.1 is kind of a lame standard. All it really does is add PCIE 3.0 speed support, but it is a backward and forward compatible standard, which means new 3.1 cards will run in 3.0b slots. This further means that there is no TDP increase or anything really worthwhile, it will just be a tiny bit more bandwidth that really isn't needed by mobile cards.

Finally, Ivy reviews show a 5-15% performance increase and of course the faster GPU. Overall, nothing to get excited about, really means this is going to be a boring year for mobile, next year should be pretty amazing though. With mature GPUs on these new architectures and a brand new Intel architecture. Next year will probably see 50%+ performance gains in all areas.

 

You were right all-along. How did you know?

 

The information has been out there since December, obviously not the rebadge stuff, but just that yields are bad, Ivy is not very exciting, and GCN is underwhelming.

I ordered my new M17x in December because I knew nothing amazing was coming for almost a year, and I have thus been advising other people to do the same.

It really puts some people in a frustrating spot now, if you had been waiting a few months for the "next-gen" stuff you end up with a 580m/675m that is a few months closer to being obsolete and an inconsequential CPU upgrade.

 

While I agree with your comments regarding Ivy and PCIE 3.0, the GPU part is a mess, lol. First, 580M is on par with the 6990M. Only after tweaking the throttling, updating vBIOS to 0.92 and OC'ing does it start to shine. At stock clocks and voltages the cards are pretty much on par except for heavy tess'ed games. Second, the 7970M is almost here (SI's have the first samples already) and it will definitely be a major upgrade with bumped tess and overall performance. I doubt the 675M will be a major threat being a rebrand. And third, the last 2 quarters were rather successful for AMD in the GPU sector.

 

You must've missed the 7870/7850 tests. If those are the 7900Ms, we're looking at easy 50% jumps over the current mobile chips.

 

We shall see. I think you guys are way too optimistic. The 7990m and 680m chips MIGHT be a 50% boost, my money is on it being less than that by quite a bit, but those are still a long way from wide spread consumer availability, especially with low yields and everyone focusing on desktop cards.

My prediction is the initial 7970m will be like 15% faster than the 580m, but it will vary a lot game to game, with more modern DX11 games seeing a much smaller boost. Then the 7990m and 680m will be 30-45% faster than the 580m, but are still a long way from consumer availability.

Also, the 675m doesn't have to be a threat, it just has to hold its own. Unless the 7970m is significantly faster the 675m will really hurt it. Nvidia can sell it much cheaper, which will force prices down, they won't have supply problems, and my guess is it will still be roughly the same performance wise. You say the 6990m is on par with the 580m, and it is true, but there is probably at least a 10% gap between them in modern games, and with OCing the 580m will widen that gap even more. The 7970m and 675m will be the same deal, just switched, the 7970m will be faster, but most people will see them as similar because the 7970m won't be THAT much faster.

 

Explain to me, technologically, how the 7970M could only manage to be 15% faster than the 580M, if it comes from either of the 7800 cards.

The 7850 at peak consumption is only 96W; the 7870 is 116W, and they're both faster than the GTX 570 and 6950, sometimes even the 6970 and 7950.

AMD would have to purposely hack the cards to bits for them to only manage the performance of a barely overclocked 6990M.

 

your comparing apples to oranges i think. The desktop cards are completely different than their laptop counterparts. an example is the 6990m. Its actually a down-clocked 6870, not dual 6970's like the desktop card although that would be pretty sweet. Just wanted to point out the differences between the two classes of cards. I may just be understanding what you trying to say here too, and if that's the case im sorry.

Edit: oops read through it again and you made sense, forget my rant

 

So just got a really quick question, I got the m18x in December, will it be compatible with the 680m?

 

Yes, the MXM 3.1 slot and cards are backward and forward compatible. A 3.1 card will work in your 3.0b slot.

I have no idea where you get the idea that the 7850/7870 desktop cards are such amazing cards.

The 580m/675m are based on the GTX 560 TI with lower clock speeds. The 560 TI gets a 3dMark11 GPU score of 2224. The 7850 gets 2536, the 7870 gets 3152. This means the 7850 is 14% faster than the 560 TI, and the 7870 is 24% faster.

I predict that the mobile cards will hold the same ratios, the mobile AMD cards will be down clocked versions of the desktop cards. If the 7970m is based off the 7850 then I expect it to be roughly 15% faster than the 580m, and the 7990m roughly 25% faster than the 580m. Maybe I will be wrong, but all of my past predictions based on similar data analysis have proven true. These numbers also fall in line with my prediction earlier that the 7990m and 680m would be around 30% faster than current cards.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/AMD-Radeon-HD-7850-Video-Card-Review-Review/1502/12