*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M15x Owners Lounge, *Part 3*

Hey guys im a noob at computer terms, can anyone please explain what throttling is and why it causes a problem? Im thinking about getting the M15x and the 2 problems mentioned were syncing w/ the iphone (fixed) and throttling, but i dont know what it is. Will this affect my ability to use the comp for school/gaming and will it lower the life span of the comp (lower quality)? thanks guys!

 

Hey, all info you would want is in here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=439546

in short however, throttling is when the GPU is being downclocked and thus the performance is reduced. There is a temporary work around right now (thanks to Joker). Read it all up in the first post of the thread

 

Yeah, the good thing is this seems like something Dell may be able to fix pretty easily through a BIOS update, given it's possible to fix it through software even (as a work around)! Hopefully it's just some screwy thing in the BIOS.

I'm still waiting for a fix, or at least a confirmation that they're fixing it with a BIOS update before I order though.

 

Can anyone tell me what the final word is on automatic downclocking of the m15x when on battery vs. plugged into AC power? I've done forum searches here, and found nothing (recent) on the newest gen of the m15x (mine's just 2 weeks old).

It seems very obvious that when I unplug, the GPU throttles waaay down. Games like Modern Warfare 2 or even Mass Effect become nearly unplayable.

 

Anybody else find the top corners of the screen to be a flexy? I feel like I could put a bit of pressure there and crack the screen. When I squeeze it a little it makes a noisy crackling sound like it wasn't put together right. The top right corner for me is the worst.

 

That's probably normal-I mean you couldn't realistically game very long on battery regardless. This throttling is when it's plugged in, some kind of glitch in it's behavior. SEEMS like it may be a relatively easy fix though. I'm hoping Dell announces a BIOS update soon

 

After a week and a half with my new toy I really only have a few complaints. The biggest being that Dell went thought the trouble of lighting the keys, and the touchpad. It would have been nice if they had done the same with the power port and the USB ports. As it stands I'm fumbling in the dark to plug in the power and the mouse. This is obviously a minor point. But for 3 grand. It really should have been something that was considered.

Second is startup. I'll be blunt. Even with fast startup in the BIOS enabled this has to be the slowest POST time I've ever seen on a system. From button press to alien head disappearing is 11 seconds or so. If that is because of the amount of memory I have installed, 6GB, not sure and haven't bothered to take out the 4GB chip to find out.

Third is Display Port. It sucks. Period. Apparently there is no native support in the BIOS so unlike DVI when you are booting the system or if you need to go into the BIOS you can forget about using an external monitor unless you use the VGA port, which on a system this advanced is insane, IMHO. There should have been DVI and display port. DVI is backwards compatible with a VGA port. If someone needs to use a VGA based display they can buy an adapter. There really is no reason to saddle everyone with a legacy plug at this point. Maybe if it was 2006, sure. When we are hitting 2010. Kill the port please.

Diagnostics don't run on this system. Neither the onboard on the hard drive, nor the ones on the DVD run. Hell the DVD freezes on boot after it says detecting IDE optical disk. Called up Dell and they are sending out a new disk. If I can't run the diags after that I need to consider my options. Anyone else having problems?

Finally and this is REALLY a nit pick. I wish the bottom plate was metal. Having it as plastic really cheapens the feel of the system and prevents the system from bleeding heat, which is important. Yes I understand the necessity of having the palmrest be plastic. However again we are talking a premium brand. They really should have gone metal.

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That said. I love this screen. I opted for the 1920 x 1080 screen and it is glorious. The speakers, while not great, are OK. (Would have been nice if they had dropped a sub in there. And I know for a FACT that there is room for one in between the two speakers or to the left the hard drive if they had removed some of the plastic there and created a horizontal echo chamber.

Overall even thought I did want a M17 with an i7 this system is much better then expected and the performance is just outright jaw dropping.

 

The patient went into the doctor and said "Hey doc it hurts when I do this." The doc looks thoughtfully for a second, eyeballs him and says "Then don't do that."

Seriously how often are you squeezing the corners of the screen? And I want to take a diving leap at people who pick up their laptops by their screens...granted I don't expect many M15x users do do that with this 9lbs block o 'puter.

 

I agree with you Silicon and it isn't nit picking. When you consider just how much you paid, you should really get perfection.

 

Okey guys I talked to the Technical team at alienware Europe and they said they are aware of the throttling issue and are working on a fix. He also stated that they aren't working with the American team and do not know what the situation over their is. They are planning to start a forum dedicated for alienware customers (now waiting for dells green light).

 

Whats the avg time it takes you guys to boot to the main menu from clicking on to main menu, I'm using and 80gb intel ssd and I needed to wait atleast 20 sec for the windows 7 popup and another 10 to get to the main menu. I heard it only takes 7-15 sec only.

I'll probably be returning my m15x once the 30 day period is almost over, I got terrible support and the rep lies through their F*cking teeth, however the m15x is a great lappy, just a bit over priced, I wouldn't even buy it if it wasn't for the promo and the free gift they 'said but never gave out'

 

My M15x with the 256gb samsung ssd takes about 17 secs to boot into windows after POST.

 

LoL, I timed mine at 55 seconds from power button to login screen. Can't wait til my SSD arrives

 

Poppin my cherry ! Nothing but amazed with this lappy at this point. 2 days old. I guess i will participate with the convo now . Start up boot is also about 17 seconds with the ssd. So amazed with this computer.

 

I dunno, but I open my laptops most often in the top middle of screen, but I've tried by the corners before just to get it up a few inches just to get a good grip to hold the screen up and open..especially if the hinges are pretty tight.. legitimate concern IMO.

SiliconAddict - great minireview or whatever =) appreciate your thoughts..btw what are file size are you encoding? That's handbrake right? I'm more familiar of just encoding like 24min episodes of The Simpsons off DVD and how long they take.

 

Urgh my iPhone woes have returned. After being able to sync yesterday I'm getting errors ranging from the ipod disc not being recognized to the same usb sync errors. GRRRRR

 

Which driver are you using now, and how are they performance-wise?

Installed 186.82 drivers as per recommendation and the dimming feature seems to no longer work. It's stuck at what the previous setting was when I installed.

 

No way you're going to get the 7 second bootups on a Laptop. 30 seconds is about right.

 

Could someone please explain to me why the M15x is having USB troubles? Or provide a link for me? I thought the first BIOS update fixed the issues but it doesn't seem that way upon further testing. Could someone explain to me what is going wrong? Is it something with the motherboard?

UPDATE: iTunes is now syncing with my phone. This is a really frusterating problem when the sync only works at random times.

 

Hey guys, what is the model number for the 1600x900 screen? I know its LG _ _ _ _ _ _ something :x

 

These 195.62 drivers are pretty nice:

 

FYI - Alienware is no longer offer the Blueray option for any of their laptop I was told by sale rep.. because of compatibility problem. Has anyone have any more info on it?

 

Not quite ballsy enough to overclock my GPU, but I'm curious what kind of temps you're getting.

 

Has anyone had trouble with the power port on their laptop? I find mine to be a bit loose. I was contemplating modding the power adapter to be a right-angle connector to reduce the torque on it. Anyone tried that?

 

I have the recent M15x with blu-ray read/write. I have yet to be able to get the blu-ray part to work, although all other aspects work great (DVD, games, burn to DVD/CD). Doing some research on the internet, it appears to be an issue with the drive/system/Windows 7 compatability. I am keeping my fingers crossed they will figure it out (no other issues at all with my M15x) and release a BIOS update or driver update that will correct the problem.

I have yet to find anyone with an M15x with the blu-ray read/write that has gotten it to work with Windows 7. Mine shipped with Windows 7 and just don't feel inclined to buy/install Vista to see if will work under Vista.

 

I'm glad I pulled the trigger when I did. I'd be disappointed if I couldn't get a blu-ray drive in such a hardcore computer.

 

iTunes now says it's syncing with my iPhone but it really isn't. None of my files , music, or contacts are transfering to my lappy even when it says it's syncing.
Now on another note my lappy is doing some kind of forced hard drive check. I say forced because it says to hit a button to cancel but it's not responding. And even after it starts I can't tell if it's really doing a check because it just stays at that initial screen. Anyone else ever have that problem?

 

yay for 195.62

 

im having trouble with my CD rom drive
all of a sudden it sounds like it is trying to run or ciculate or ejext a disc whyll there is nothing in there i had two clicking sounds or not clicking sounds but its hard to explain the same sound you hear when you hit the eject button
does anyone els have this issue and does anyone know how to fix it

 

Hey Joaker is that with stock gpu or overclocked? Are you running this with the i7 820QM and GTX 260m? I only got 12547 on mine with that spec on stock clock.

 

If you look at the GPUZ screen, it's clocked a bit higher than stock clocks.

 

He flashed the gfx card bios and increased the voltage and he overclocked the gfx card quite nicely.

 

oh k. Thank!!

 

The overclock can be done by anyone. The voltage increase I did was to the 2nd tier clocks so most of you should be able to hit that OC with no problem on stock settings.

 

i have the blueray writer it plays blueray movies fine but have not tried writing a blueray disc yet

 

Has anyone done a clean format with Windows 7 here? If so, how did you get the OSD to function correctly? I installed the drivers off Dell's website but it still doesn't work. Also, there's an unkown USB device that I haven't been able to locate a driver for yet.


Edit: Fixed, it was the command center not picking up the board. I had to take out the battery, hold the power button to reset the bios and then reboot. It worked after that.

 

I did a clean install but i don't reall know all the technical stuff. I just downloaded the drivers from dell site, installed chipset first and everything with osd and command center last. I don't know about the unknown usb device but everything worked out fine, sorry if this wasn't much help.

 

Thanks guys for letting us know the USB support still doesn't work

Between that, the throttling, and now the Blu Ray...obviously I'm not getting this unless they get it all straightened out

With the Blu Ray though, I wonder if there was really an issue, or if Dell wasn't shipping a Blu Ray compatible player with it. Back when I got (and returned) a Studio XPS 16, Dell wasn't shipping Blu Ray playback software with it forever. They THOUGHT they were, and would just keep shipping out worthless software, but it took ages before they finally got it that they needed to include Blu Ray playback software...I'm just wondering if it's something like that.

I'd be surprised if it were actually hardware...I mean Blu Ray drives are just SATA drives like anything else, and PowerDVD works fine on 7.

EDIT: I hope those new Core i3/i5 dual cores next month don't have all these issues (Assuming it's even relevant if they're shipping with dedicated graphics...I'm not actually clear on that, or if Intel's going to try to force everyone to use hideous low end Intel graphics on supposedly mid range systems).

 

i dont think the Core i3/i5 will be in the alienware systems. They are low to mid range CPUs. The M15x will likely stay with the Core i7 and with dedicated graphics.

 

do you think they will come up with something i mean intell will come up with a more powerfulll i7 say like a 1000 or 1020 or somehting highghter then the 920

 

Unlikely, since the 920 is already pretty strong. Whats more important is the GPU anyways. Hopefully they refresh the M15x with the 5000 mobility series in February or March next year, which is about when the M15x would reach the 6 month mark.

 

Ok one more question for those that have reinstalled Windows 7 (what a headache): I'm checking the device manager and it shows an unknown device with a hardware id of ACPI\SMO8800. Any clue what this is??

 

I doubt they can do much better until the 32nm (unannounced) quad cores come out.

The only reason I'm remotely interested in the i3/i5 is just because this system doesn't work-USB, throttling, possibly Blu Ray. I'm hoping some new ones have decent performance without the weirdness (not sure what chipset the i3/i5s are using though. Might be just as bad )

 

In an M15x?

And if it is an M15x (2009), did you have to find special drivers or software to get the blu-ray to work?

 

I have no idea what it actually is, and I'm sure you've already run into this through google. Could just be a huge coincidence but:

http://www.drivershq.com/Drivers/VistaDevices/Dell-STM-Free-Fall-Sensor-Driver/169003/Drivers.aspx

 

Haha actually I didn't come across it in google. Thanks for finding that, I'm sure that should take care of it. +rep to you.

 

Could've sworn you had an SSD, so I have no idea how it relates to your system or why it even shows up. Unless SSD's have these kinds of sensors as well.

 

I'm not sure either but after I got the driver off Dell's site, it took care of the problem.

 

does anyone have a sight or know a store where i can look up a price for the GTX 280m
i have been looking for 260m and 280m and i cant even find them on ebay or any compter store i look at its like no one sells the gpu alone

 

I think Eurocomm sells the GTX 280m. I'll be selling mine as soon as the 5800 series are released for about $250.