**Official Alienware M11x Owner's Lounge**

You will see a huge improvement. Alienware uses Samsung SSDs; and those are on par with the Intel ones.

System boot is faster; along with loading of your games. I compared mw2, and it loads twice as fast on my laptop compared to my desktop.

 

I think its REALLY lame that you can't customize with a 128GB SSD.... weak sauce.

 

samsung SSDs are absolutely NOT on par with intel drives, they aren't even in the same league. 3rd place amongst controllers, and a really way behind 3rd place at that. Please do your homework and read up on the eleventy billion in depth SSD articles on anandtech before saying such a thing.

Don't get an SSD through dell if they are samsung drives, get an intel G1 for cheap off ebay (~$190 for 80gb, ~300 for 160GB), an intel G2 (~$230 for 80 on ebay, ~$435 for 160 on ebay, ~$270 for 80 retail/new, ~$500 for 160 retail/new) an ocz vertex/agility (60gb=rofl, ~$300 likely for 120GB anywhere) or a sandforce which are way too expensive at the moment and barely even released. alternatives to vertex or agility are any other brands that use an indilinx controller.

edit: just because any SSD is faster than a platter based drive doesnt mean it isnt a huge waste of money with intel or ocz out there. I'm trying to be brash with my words to make a point. any SSD other than indilinx or intel gives you many of the benefits of an SSD (low power, no noise, fast sequential rates in best conditions) while completely failing to do anything about the worst offender in a platter-based HDD's repertoire: 4k reads/writes. Samsung is the king of the trash can, sure, but intel and OCZ are king and queen of the house that throws away the trash in that analogy.

 

Excellent work lads. I think i'll get the max-specced M11x after all. Not 1000$ but more along the lines of 1400£ haha

 

Heres a serious question you guys, whats life expectancy on SSD drives? Like if i drop the 5 bills on this stupid drive, is it safe to assume I'll get a few years out of it at least? Save me the "no moving parts" speech, I know that. If I get 3 or so years out of the drive then I'll feel pretty good about the purchase.

 

Thats what I needed to see. Not spending 5bills at dell Thanks man.

 

Jannas, please, for the love of God don't spend any money on the 256GB Samsung and manually install an intel or ocz drive instead if that's an option for you. It should be extremely simple and Dell always gives guides on manually replacing things like hard drives and RAM.

 

That settles it then. I will order an SSD off of newegg or something... so from Alienware I'll be ordering:

SU4100
4GB RAM
160GB HD
Bluetooth

Then I'll get $100 off ($50 off from subscription and $50 off from another coupon) plus 7% EPP and 3% DPA...

Sooo.... $692.10 ish after all is said and done, I'll be under $900 with an SSD

 

For added emphasis, nobody who knows whats good for them would spend the money on a samsung SSD unless it was comparatively cheap, these laptop manufacturers REALLY need to get out of bed with samsung on SSDs, or people need to stop buying optional samsung SSDs with their laptops so at the very least samsung gets off it's collective rear-end and updates the controller to have good random 4k reads/writes.

 

Don't forget when you get that intel/OCZ SSD and manually install it and run crystaldiskmark and AS-SSD that you'll go online, and look at some hapless samsung SSD owner's results and feel pity that he fell into the trap of the samsung bundled option.

 

The GPU on the Z is inferior to the M11x's 335 by a mile, if not more.

HOLY COW! Triple thumbs up for discount skillz.

 

Scrambled Eggs, Hows this look? Seems like a sharp deal, not the agility or vertex though :\

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227476

 

Nuke I understand your enthusiasm for the m11x, i'm excited for it just as well but the combo of an i5 non-ulv cpu and a 330m gpu is much much more wholly graphics/fps worthy than the m11x's specs.

The key is not that the 335 has 30 more pipes/stream processors or whatever but that we'll be sitting there with our backlit keyboards, small as crap form factor, and 7 hour battery life while ALSO having 30fps in the majority of current games and a couple thousand dollars in our pockets to boot.

 

Alrighty then. Think I should be toning down. Second time I've spoken out of turn XP

 

Zlog, I didn't make myself clear enough, the only OCZ drives worth buying are the vertex and agility, they both use the indilinx controller which is the key.

Ebay is really the hotspot for SSD purchases right now, retail websites are laughing their way to the bank with the demand for these things. Especially hot are the intel G1 drives because most owners of G1s want to upgrade to a G2 and would be perfectly happy selling their G1s for $100 or more less than the cost of a new G2, and the only thing you give up with a G1 is trim (i'm serious, in a lot of specs the G1s are actually faster than G2s for some crazy reason, its the enforced lack of TRIM that intel utilizes to distinguish the G2)

I'd go looking for vertexes or agilitys for around $300 at 120GB if you cant use ebay. $300 minus whatever rebate for the solid series is really bad....you have no idea how much the 30-40 extra for a vertex (after rebate) really gets you, its REALLY that much better.

 

I understand that an i5 with a 330M helps a lot at lower resolutions, but I'm not sure an i5 w/ 330M can cover all the ground that a 335M makes up for the ULV

 

um...how are people ordering this atm? i can't seem to find any 'purchase' button

 

Well I'm not. Not yet. Since Asiapac isn't letting this one out of the cage yet. T_T

 

The last Dell SSD scandal was in March 2008. Surely if there was a problem, it would be remedied by now. If you insist there is a current problem with the Samsung SSDs, Can you post a link?

Cancelled my pre-order till I sort this out.

 

could someone pleeeaaaaaaase give me a link to a coupon or some kind of discount..that $50 off epp one didnt work

 

i'm almost certain the i5 (520 or higher) w/ 330m is good, up to and including 1600x900 because I have an i7-720 (1.6 ghz, never goes over 2.4/2.5 dual-core turboboost) and a 230m (dv7t quad) and I run any game flawlessly it seems.

The only question in this regard based on what i know is if I'd get any advantage compared to the i5/330 combo with quad core optimized games like dragon age or gta4 but the problem there is that they are thus cpu-bound which will negate any advantage the low-cpu m11x would have over the i5/330 combo.

Far be it from me to be a downer in this thread though, I'm as excited and impressed with the m11x as all of you are, it's like a dream come true with the basic guts of an asus ul30vt with a supercard gpu somehow crammed up its butt and backlit/multicolor keyboard!

 

You have to be an EPP member to use the $50 off coupon....

 

Jannas, you asked the right question. I'm currently in the process of posting a highly detailed, image-filled answer with clear links explaining just exactly what i mean. Stay tuned, ~5 minutes and counting before I'm done.

 

Woots at Egg. Can't wait to be educated. XP

 

I'll be sure to ask my EPP rep which specific part Dell is using.

 

taken from one of the several long-winded, detailed articles at anandtech, written by anand himself who is arguably the most respected authority on SSDs (he basically was the sole test subject behind the OCZ vertex because he upset OCZ so much with his biting reviews of their SSDs):

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

I'm just going to post the images and let them speak for themselves, and I'll post the key idea and the page link (that was a 19+ page article I linked) to explain EXACTLY what I mean. Just so there's no confusion, the OCZ "samsung mlc based" drive is exactly what dell wants to sell you.







To Quote Anand:

"...and now we're down to mechanical hard drive speeds

Holycrapbbq? Terrible.

Now to be fair to Samsung, this isn’t JMicron-terrible performance. It’s just not worth the money performance."

...and later, the bada bing, bada boom...

"Don't ever opt for the SSD upgrade from any of these OEMs if you've got the option of buying your own Indilinx or Intel drive and swapping it in there. If you don't know how, post in our forums; someone will help you out."

taken from: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=19

 

how do i go about becoming a member?

 

Just got off a Dell chat where he let slip that its a Samsung PB22-J. Looks like a reasonable SSD. Hassling them about bad hard drives seems to work

Apparently they changed over to the new SSDs a month bad reports.

 

That settles it, Dell still uses the drives that Eggs is warning about.

Why do I say this? Because I have found that whenever a Dell sales rep says something, the inverse is usually the truth.

 

EDIT: Nvm, Didn't see read the captions properly. So guess if I do need an SSD, better to get elsewhere.

 

just so you know, the pb22-j has been around since april, way before this article was written.

I believe the only thing samsung brings to the table is some background garbage collection (which the OCZs have and the intels don't need since the G2 has trim and and G1 is twice as fast as the OCZ even at its worst)

Look at it this way, when your filesystem needs to read/write let's say for sake of argument 40000 4kb files in random locations, the samsung can accomplish that in 133 seconds, plus even longer when you account for the average 2ms latency for EACH file.

The G1 can do the same thing in 6 seconds plus a .29 ms latency for each file, the G2 in 4 seconds because of TRIM.

Granted, you may not have to read/write so many 4kb files at once, but imagine how that can add up with the total amount of 4kb random r/w that occurs throughout the day.

THE INTEL DRIVES ARE MORE THAN 20 TIMES FASTER than the samsungs at this type of operation. Do you feel comfortable supporting the underdog enough to give them the same amount of money you'd give intel?

 

Passionate huh? I feel like you have bad some luck sometime before, either that or an Intel salesman.

 

Different games are going to have different CPU/GPU dependences. GTA IV for instance, is heavy on CPU based calculations. Dragon Age is a likely candidate too. Generally, single-player games with heavy calculation (typically AI related, i.e. RTS's) will be affected by CPU calculations a lot more than other games.

But when I say "affected by" I mean that having a fast CPU can "unlock" more potential out of your performance. That is, if your GPU isn't maxed out on the graphics (let's say you're playing a game that uses 80% of what your GPU is capable of), a faster CPU will certainly help more.

This is the case when you examine lower resolutions. Let's take a desktop 5870 for example. At 1280 x 1024 (1.3MP), you can max out just about every game on the market's settings, crank up AA, etc. and your 5870 might be only at 50% of it's capabilities. At that point, your CPU is going affect your frames per second numbers a lot more - if the CPU is too slow, and it's feeding information to your GPU too slowly, you won't get as much performance.

This is most noticeable in benchmarks that default at low resolutions - for example, running said desktop 5870 on an Pentium Dual Core and then running 3dMark06 (default 1280x1024) - you might be lucky to break 12K. However, run said desktop 5870 on a overclocked Core i7 desktop, and we're talking 20K+ regularly. Same goes for 3dMark Vantage... when you get to the X preset, the GPU is almost entirely responsible and the CPU gets nullified.

On your note about quad core... I'm not sure those games even take advantage of the extra threads from hyperthreading right now.

That said, the real question about the i5/330M vs. SU7300/335M is whether at the 1366x768 to 1600x900 resolution settings, the i5 is significant enough to make up the performance gap of the GPUs:

GT 330M
48 SP's
Up to 1265 MHz shader clock
Max 1GB RAM
128-bit bus
182 GFlops

GT 335M
72 SP's
Up to 1080MHz shader clock
Max 1GB RAM
128-bit bus
233 GFlops

The GT335M already surpasses the GT240M by quite a few GFlops. I know, GFlops don't mean that much, but the real kicker is this:

72 SP's vs 48SP's

If they do what Nvidia typically does, the 48SP's part will have 16 TMU's (texture units) and 8 ROP's (render outputs). The GT 335M is still 128-bit so it will keep 8 ROP's, but Nvidia likes to scale TMU's to SP's so the GT 335M will have 24 TMU's, which means more texture performance in game, and will affect existing titles (which is often affected by texture performance).

So my best bet is that performance @ native resolution of 1366 x 768, a GT335M on the m11x will perform fine, probably the same as a i5/330M would, but you hook them up to any external monitor (or play any game where the GPU's get maxed out before the CPU), and the GT335M easily wins.

 

@ egg= so intel is our best bet regardless?

@chewie = Finally some hard numbers

 

A lot of people seem to be forgetting the whole sales tax thing. That's what propels it well over $1000.

 

Sadly this is true for all the big OEM's. Of course, this is also why I love shopping from smaller resellers and retailers that are in other states

edit: This problem is even worse for those of us in California. Not only is our sales tax high, but the vast majority of the OEM's and computer e-tailers are located here, meaning sales tax is unavoidable. So even the best deals on say, Newegg, aren't as great because they're in CA as well

 

Yeah, I feel bad for people in CA. My tax here is 7% for state alone and I think even that's bad.

 

I got something to make you feel better. I pay 20% international tax as a leveller since I work outside of my home country and in every other country in the world. 7%...That would be sweet

 

wounder what the temps will be like on this bad boy on gaming, think ill wait for a review before ordering.

 

lol jannas I actually have never had a samsung. I do have an intel G1, but the main reason im so passionate about it is just based on how crazy much I've read about both the performance problems of samsungs and dissatisfied and angry purchasers of the #1 OEM tie-in SSD brand, I try to make as much of an effort to at least impart my knowledge about just how bad they are. Also, I've bought many a laptop lately and guess what? they all have SSD upgrades as a possible option, and they're always samsung.

Even worse, when the entire point of certain laptops are to run SSDs, like the adamo or macbook air, to the point where you cant even get a cheap HDD instead, and all they offer is samsung, I take personal offense to that.

With the prices charged for SSDs these days, and the samsung's benefit over a platter HDD being heat, noise and sequential writes, I also take it personally when an OEM thinks its ok to charge an arm and a leg for just these three features when they leave out the #1 upgrade for ANY computer: 4k random r/w.

Why do I love Intel so much? Was anyone else here following the SSD trends when intel announced their G2s at $225/$440 MSRP for 80GB/160GB? Mind you this was an IMPROVED version of a drive (the G1) that was then going for around $340 on newegg for 80GB, and the OCZ 120GB competed by being something like $20 or $30 more with 40GB of additional space.

I saw a guy who actually paid, get this, $990 for his 160GB intel from newegg earlier last year, and is now desperate on ebay trying to get something like $200 minimum for that drive. That's how bad the prices were then. That's why seemingly everywhere online you see insanely high prices for every type of SSD, is because basically every retailer out there doesn't want to budge on prices.

I tried to get a G2 at $230 from newegg when they launched, and the newegg auto-price-bump *bleeping bleep* went up $200 - $300 in increments of like $10 as they continually sold out. I hated the situation then but I salvaged the moment by hopping on ebay and getting the old drives from people selling their G1s trying to make as little they could to go and get price gouged for the G2s.

Mind you, this wasn't intel's fault, they blasted the SSD market in the head with a revolver and it's been crazy ever since, thankfully ebay seems to be the great equalizer as bleeding edge nuts try to dump their "worthless" yesterday's best onto me. I'm happy with second place (G1 that I just bought a 160GB of). I'm staying the *bleep* away from 4th or 5th place, wherever you wanna place samsung on that list.

Anyways, I'm just rambling now, I was really hoping to just pass on some of my knowledge about all this crap to you guys, and I'm not mad about it but I'd appreciate not being called an astroturfer for just trying to help

 

what are peoples thoughts on the m11x playing C&C4 - see below for system spec:

Year: 2010
Genres: Strategy (Real-time) / 3D
Developer: EA Los Angeles
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: PC
Recommended system requirements:
Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista
CPU: Any Intel Core Duo machine, AMD Athlon 3500 or better
RAM: 2 GB
Disk Drive: 8X or faster DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive: at least 10 GB of free space
Video: DirectX 9.0c compatible video card. 256 MB with Shader Model 3.0 support. NVIDIA GeForce 8800 or better, ATI Radeon HD 3850 or better
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Multiplayer: 2 to 10 players, network or Internet connection required (Cable, DSL, or faster connection
Internet connection required at all times.

 

Nuh-uh! Heh, just kidding. I'm actually quite anticipating the 335m blowing me away more than I can imagine, I suppose I am just wary because of how much I know laptop GPUs can just really stink compared to desktop GPUs. I have a clear memory in my head of having a solid dual core AMD cpu, and remembering how upgrading the GPU never seemed to really do as much compared to when I jacked my specs up to a quad core phenom II. I suppose you could say it's colored my expectations revolving what I see as another comparison between a computer with a better gpu and much crappier cpu and another with a good chunk of SPs less in it's GPU but a much better CPU.

I'm not even going to imagine that I have any clear idea of how much a cpu can affect performance of recent games, the only thing I can even comment on anecdotally is how much a GPU matters in some respects. I remember integrated graphics and upgrading to discrete on laptops in the past year, myself, and noticing the crazy huge improvements. I also noticed how insane it was going from an atom netbook to a laptop with integrated graphics but a core 2 duo and it was just as astonishing.

I'll tell you one major thing that is quite hard to ignore in my experience, is just how much performance will suffer in games I play on my dv7t quad when the turboboost magically stops working. I dont exactly know what's happened, but there'll be times when I notice a game chugging and I crap my pants thinking I've experienced overheating issues which I've been wondering If I'd see considering that the vents on this dv7t funnel air straight down into the covers of my bed. Turns out though that it just annoying turned off turboboost, limiting my clock to 1.6 ghz, giving what i'd say is an apt indication of how much cpu affected fps performance.

I suppose that's why I'm thinking the i5/330m combo can possibly rival the ulv/335m combo, but I'm hoping that I'm wrong and you're right and this little 11 inch puppy will blow us all away.

 

The recommended requirements are almost always over-estimated. You really need to pay attention to the required/minimum requirements to get a better picture and even then with a lower cpu clock you could probably play acceptably at 20fps or more.

Think about it, when the required system specs are listed its almost always a 2ghz dual core processor minimum required, so you imagine that will achieve 30fps if they require it. at 1.3ghz I'd say that'd make about 20fps, more if we can overclock somehow.

The GPU in the m11x is absolutely going to be more than enough for any game you throw at it, nuff said.

I'm imagining the way this m11x will turn out is that for the forseeable future it will play ANYTHING at 20-25fps or above, most at 30 fps with good graphics to boot. Not only that but there would probably be no performance gains with medium settings instead of high because the GPU isnt the bottleneck, the processor is.

You could probably unofficially call the m11x the Alienware m24fpsx.

 

I know it seems like I am rebutting you just for the hell of it, I appreciate the well thought out replies. +1 to Eggs.

I do have one or two final questions though. Am I correct in thinking the Samsung SSD will rip apart the 5400rpm HD in my HDX16t? I also fly helicopters (i'm computer clueless) for a living so it needs a hard drive that can stand the heavy vibration that I need to endure. I take it would be better off with the SSD instead of a 7200rpm HD, correct?

Once again, appreciate it. I'll add +1 before I forget.

 

Anyone in the UK placed an order for this yet? I placed it first this this morning and have been an estimated delivery date of the 11/02/10? Whats everyone else's ETA's?

 

Basically the only SSD that isn't worth any money is anything with a jmicron controller. I forgot about the motion benefits, that's a good point, and yes all non-jmicron SSDs are better than platter drives except for the usual storage loss.

I mean really, I exaggerate and give the samsung a lot of crap, but its still OK. It's like just so behind the others for the price they charge. I'd even get one if they priced them appropriately or if the OEMs acknowledged the controller maker, like if they sold one labeled intel and the other labeled samsung and again if they priced them appropriately.

As it is it's much better than a platter, it even has idle garbage collection, its just like living in this other world where there's no competition and so all the OEMs have to buy them. Samsung needs to get its head outta you know where and get some performance going! It's like if we lived in a 4 dimensional world and saw a planet that was all 3D like Earth, you just have to laugh at them and criticize them how they cant manipulate time like we can. But it's like you see them (Samsung) and they're like "yeah we can manipulate time but ah screw it lets go play wii"

OK i dont even know what I'm talking about now.

 

Good on ya eggs!! Lucky you guys can even order the thing. I have to wait till Thursday at the EARLIEST.

 

Are there reviews out yet?

 

So geez, are you spending nearly 2 g's on this thing?! The reason I'm getting it is the price, so I can't imagine paying that much!

 

hey, for all the europeans on this thread, the m11x is offically up on the dell website. maybe you guys could cash in on the stacked discounts now.

uk link: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/p...enware-m11x?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&ref=hbn
us link: http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/note....aspx?refid=alienware-m11x&s=dhs&cs=19&~ck=mn

Instead of lunar silver they have named the second color option lunar shadow. I know i asked this already but does anyone know if this means that the lunar silver is of a darker shade than the option offered for the m15's and m17's?

**edit**: found the link I with the color was talking about: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49304848-2,00.htm , is it just me or does that look like dark matte grey instead of the glossy fingerprint magnet black?