*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17x-R2 Edition Owners Lounge!

8GB is not worth it for most people. Most people don't have needs that need more then 4GB. I would save the money for another upgrade. I would also suggest ordering from dell via phone to save money. You can check the link in my sig. Consider your options throughly before making a decision regarding purchasing.

 

Just a heads up:

Everest (Ultimate at least) doesn't seem very stable on 4870 (and up) Crossfire setups. It works sometimes, but most of the time it BSODs. I had a feeling it was that on my first BSOD so I did a complete format and left Everest last. Tried stability often before installing Everest. Installed Everest, instant BSOD. Searched a little bit, and yes, the Lavalys forums acknowledge the issue. They say it's a problem with the ATI's and are working on a fix.

Anyway, I'm ditching it until they fix it. How else are you guys checking temps now? Shame because I had permanent temps neatly on my taskbar and I don't think any other program can do this. Oh well.

 

I use coretemp for cpu temps

 

8gb is nice, but not "required".

To me it would be worth the small upgrade cost, but if you need to budget carefully I don't think you'd notice dramatically the difference between 4 and 8 unless you really have a lot of stuff open at the same time, and it was large stuff at that.




Item 2

There are other programs besides Everest (Hardware monitor maybe?) that would do "for now" until Lavalys manages to fix the bug. Lavalys is very good about staying on these things till they work. The down side is that things like this is where an "official" driver program from AMD would be really the right thing to do. I don't understand how AMD can sell a premium part like the 4870 and only say a driver program is coming. This is 2010 not 2000 and driver programs for ALL GPU's should be a requirement of playing the game. $.02

 

For th GPU temps I use GPU-Z, check the pic below, it shows both 4870's card temps:

 

Well just ran 3dmark Vantage, culdent change the test resolution from 1280x1024 and below is my results...that about norm for my system ?

Stock drivers and all

 

Im having issues that with certain games and they are never kicking up to 3d clocks... Im using GPU-Z to log the info and based on my horrid framerates i can tell 3d is not kicking in... NeedForSpeed Shift 19fps ? and Xfire is running ... On my M17 it was 50fps in the same spots... Something must be up with the drivers ... So far i have tested Dell factory drivers and 9.12hotfixs....

 

8Gb Ram is plenty enough for current programs. My advice is go for 4GB + SSD

 

DPC latency, for an earlier poster, is more likely related to the Nvidia chipset in the R1 not the GPU's. The reason the GPU's are influencing it is because on top of the chipset itself, there are special features of the chipset designed to interact with the SLI Nvidia cards, which exacerbate the problem further. So changing an R1 to non Nvidia GPU's helps a small bit, but the R2 which has an Intel chipset and none of these special "GPU enhancing" features cures it entirely. It's a common misconception that the source and solution to the problem is in the GPU's.

Many similar problems were found also in the desktop community using same components but switching Nvidia and Intel chipsets. Many suspect it was these performance issues that were root reason why Nvidia was denied a I7 bus license.

Hope it helps.

 

Do you have the 920 installed? Also check your power management settings.

 

Yep in terms of budgeting, SSD will give you more impact on your computing than 4-8gb of RAM. However, SSD is a bigger ticket item, though it is amazing.

 

Nope dont have the 920 installed and my power management settings high performance .... I tried this with the factory install and fresh install...

I had Don try the same thing this morning and he was seeing the same thing so im going to say its the drivers .... Something is not quite right though ...

 

Just got done playing an hour of BFBC 2 and man it was great! 1200p with max everything + 2xAA and it was almost always at 60+ fps even during intense fights. Crossfire has a bug with the game right now where the water texture flickers but that's something EA is aware of and have fixed in the final version of the game so don't freak out if you see it.

 

hmm... furmark reproduces the problem ?

 

What problem?

 

Yea....fool me, I ordered 8G thinking I could run 64bit guests in VMware....bastages have that option turned off in the BIOS with no way to turn on...

Bastages Dell.....

 

Hi all
Im really concerned about if R2 has being "fixed" without intention just putting on i5 and i7; i want to ask, if this is not a problem, now that you have this thread special for M17x R2 owners would you like to include here a poll ?, something like:
M17x R2 (i5 / i7) (ATI cards) owners, it is work fine ?
M17x R2 (i5 / i7) (ATI cards) owners, it is work bad ?

This can seems to be silly but this will help bringing to the people that is afraid an idea about what they can expect. . .

 

Sorry i didn't use quotes, quadzilla was complaining about 3d mode not kicking in in games.

 

@wwoods, do you keep complaining about that to tech support ?

 

(forgot to quote)

Anyway, yes I use HWMonitor too, GPU-Z and CPUID, etc, etc. But I wanted a program that displays the temps in the taskbar constantly. That is all. Gotta look around.

 

I don't think you'll find one. If one of those programs that you're using can log to a file i could write something quick that looks at those logs and puts the results in the taskbar.

 

Use RealTemp, that's what I use and it's the most accurate program out there.

 

Some games are just fine based on my numbers like Crysis FarCry 2 06 Vantage ... Then there are games that the performance is horrid and i can tell its running in 2d mode seeing that the G73 right next to it is stomping all over the performance even with Xfire going on the M17x.... Did not try Furmark yet FYI ...

 

that's gotta be driver related then.

 

about the lack of VM 64bit guest support...oh yes. I actually have a managers personal email there as well as a few others email address I send email to regarding it.

 

Core temp displays CPU temps in task bar all the time.

 

Once i get the system i'll want those emails too

But not the GPU temps.. which are often more important to monitor overheating issues.
I LOVED the G15 screen on my m1730 since i could see my temps while gaming.

 

Quad, try this tool: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=293467

 

Ill give that a try later but i just talked to Don and he has a dual boot Win7 one for benching one for gaming etc and on the one OS with no CCC his game is running at 108fps and the other with CCC same drivers 18fps... So something is a miss but he said he would try and nail it down... The performance im seeing in some games is horrid though thats for sure and the GPUZ log.txt is telling me the game is never entering 3d clocks...

 

Ya mean these

Michael Dell
Chairman and CEO
[email protected]

Donald Carty
Vice Chairman and CFO
[email protected]


Ronald Garriques
President, Global Consumer Group
[email protected]


Michael Cannon
President, Global Operations
[email protected]


Mark Jarvis
Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer
(Dude, You're Getting An Email!)
[email protected]


Lawrence Tu
Senior VP, General Counsel
[email protected]


Susan Sheskey
Senior VP, Chief Information Officer
[email protected]


Andrew Esparza
Senior VP Human Resources
[email protected]


Paul Bell
Senior VP and President, Americas
[email protected]


Stephen Felice
Senior VP and President, Asia
[email protected]


David Marmonti
Senior VP, President, Europe, Middle East and Africa
[email protected]


Brad Anderson
Senior VP, Business Product Group
[email protected]


Jeffrey Clarke
Senior VP, Business Product Group
[email protected]


Martin Garvin
Senior VP, Worldwide Procurement
[email protected]


Alex Gruzen
Senior VP, Dell Product Group
[email protected]


Joan Hooper
Vice President, Finance, Chief Accounting Officer
[email protected]


William Gray
Board of Directors
[email protected]

or these

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/contact?c=us&l=en&cs=RC973496

now I know they are not all gonna get the email or have anything to do with the issue, but the more people that KNOW about it, the better chance they will get the ear of someone who can fix it.

Just my opinion

 

Michael Dell's real personal email is actually [email protected], he's got a team answering emails sent to [email protected]

 

Ahh thanks. will change that

 

Gave RealTemp a shot. Pretty cool considering you don't have to install anything and it sits the temps on your taskbar (tray) like I want. However, you can't make it read the GPU. Tried adding the GPU=2 line to the ini file but no good.

Anything out there like RealTemp for GPU that doesn't require install and places the temps on the taskbar (tray)?

 

Or, I will take a installed one that reads GPU and sits in taskbar

 

Yeah. There should be a plugin to have CPUID and GPU-Z be minimized and have the temps on the taskbar. That would be nice. Those require no installation and are light.

 

So, I am re-thinking my disk layout, right now I have 2 500GB drives in a raid0. The performance increase from raid0 seems almost neglible...

So I am thinking splaiiting the raid0 into 2 spperate HD's. I would make a image, split the raid0, then restore the image to one of the 500GB disks. or am I screwed because the image will be 1TB, and I will just need to re-install..

Also debating, split the Raid0, pop a SSD in the main drive and use it to boot etc....have my mps'3 and movies on 2nd platter HD, maby my games on the platter HD also...opinions ?

If I go the SSD route, got a link to a good one ? couple hundread GB would be great

 

Related to changing hard drives:
If I was to put a SSD in, is there an imaging program that will allow you to clone from a larger size HDD to a smaller SSD? I would like to not have to reinstall the OS and everything else from scratch since I have all my programs and everything setup they way I want it and it runs perfect.

I have the 320GB drive and would want to go to a slightly smaller SSD.

 

And that is exactly why AMD needs to get with a mobile driver program asap. It's clear we like the performance of their chips. But a year from now it's not Dell you'll be getting drivers from...

 

You're not screwed if the actual information on your raid is less than 500gb.
If so, you can use Acronis TrueImage to make an image and then restore in onto the 500gb drive. Have a look here for howto.
SSD will give you a very nice performance boost. I'd use it as a boot drive + games and pagefile on it. Music,pictures,movies,installations etc would go to the other 500 gigs drive. I know that the Intel X25-m 160 is a great option though a little more expensive than the competition.

 

when you get a SSD you DON'T EVER image your OS onto it

VERY bad idea

 

hmm, that's something i never considered..
Thanks for the tip moo.

 

Yeah Cloning your HD isnt worth it, the way the drives are aligned are different. Your SSD will underperform if you don't do it right.

 

no when you clone it the windows settings are for the Mechanical. So its defragging the SSD and the registry is wrong ETC

 

No, thats the easy bit and apparently windows 7 automatically switches on TRIM assuming you don't install the chipset drivers.

The real problem is that the HDD is aligned differently than an SSD. When you do a fresh windows 7 install, Win7 aligns the partition on the SSD properly. I might be wrong but XP didnt even do this bit properly, it treats SSD's like HD's and users had to manually align for up to 300% performance increase. If you copy over an HDD Partition it will be misaligned the way XP used to do it even if you're copying a Win 7 HDD Partition.

Copying boot volume to partition-aligned disk or SSD clone alignment should turn up some results on google.

Ex. ('select partition #', 'delete partition') and then create a new one with correct offset ('create partition primary offset=128'). Then you format the partition with the 4096 allocation. <---- If you don't want to deal with this and just want win7 to give you max performance of your SSD with no tinkering, DO A FRESH INSTALL!!

 

i am almost pulling the trigger on a x25-m 160gb drive off ebay.
i think it's the one thing that boosts performance best in a laptop.
Is 450 including shipping a good deal ?

 

yeah, just make sure its Gen 2

 

testing this very thing as we speak. moving an image from a laptop hd 5400 rpm drive to an ocz vertex 120 drive....
trying two methods...first is a disk copy and second will be the image itself.

 

Ok, back to write up my impressions on my M17x-r2. After A really rocky end of week/week-end, I finally been able to download again my game ( Darkfall ), and after a day of resetting all my skills, UI, hotbars, hotkeys.. I was finally able to play a bit. So, as everyone, the instant I fire Xfire, I flicker as hell. So I played with nothing changed, all stock drivers and all, but with X-fire off, and Damn, it was good !!! I was able to play at 1920x1200, with most setting at high, but no shadow with FPS going from 60 to 120 !! it was great..

So, my other problems ?? I dont like the touchpad, and I freeze when plugging / unplugging the PSU when the computer is running. Except that, all's perfect.

I saw Jokers posts about having the new Bios and all... does the new bios fix the freezing when plugging or unplugging or someone else found a fix for it ??

 

yup...make sure that it's gen

 

OK....er...why ?