Planning on purchasing m17x

Long time viewer, first time poster.

So i have been planning on buying the m17x and saw that it only can use vista 64 bit when you customize it and alienware recommends for you to buy 8gb of RAM with it. Since i don't feel like scrapping up another 800$ for the RAM would running it with the 4GB be that much of a problem? Also, would i be able to purchase 8GB of RAM from newegg.com and install it myself or would that cause a problem? Thanks in advance.

 

4 gigs is more then enough to do what ever you want to do

8 gigs is a waste and they reccomend it so that you spend the 800

 

FOR GAMING

BTW 2x4GB is expensive even on newegg... I recommend waiting till the price drops

 

o yea Big ...... 8 gig game .... i would love to see that one in the next year....

 

Isn't going to happen in the next 2 years (specially with win 7) but remember that ppl do more than just game .

8GB is a waste for gaming but you can't say that is a waste for everything

 

As all the others said, more than 4gb for games is pure overkill. The only reason why people buy notebooks with 8gb ram is for programs like Photoshop and working with very high resolutions.

 

or encoding and compiling

 

or for ram drives lol I have done that in the past.

 

Which with that amount of money you can buy an SSD lol

 

with 800 $ you can buy a new laptop...

 

Ram drive r much faster than ssd.

 

Let me see 100gb+ of things with faster loading speeds > 6gb at best

 

Depends on the use

 

lol.. sorry for getting the debate going..

Just a statement to point out, if you have a use for it, then get the extra ram.. if you don't then save the money until it is cheaper to upgrade.

 

True true

 

Thanks a lot everyone . Also, I'm wondering how much of a difference a quad core 2.0 ghz will be from a duo 2.8 ghz

 

If you want to save you might as well get a P8600 - I was able to OC it @ 3ghz stable

Basically I have a P9900 (which they don't make currently )

 

Actually, I had a couple of questions about my purchase so i might as well get 'em all out now. First, is the hard drive, what's the difference between the single drive, raid 0, and raid 1s? Next is the WideXGA 900p and 1200p, is the only difference between them two the resolutions? Also the for the RAM, is there a big gap between 1066 mhz and 1333 mhz? And lastly, is the AlienRespawn CD a waste of money? Because people say there are free programs that can do the same thing.

 

If i can notice a considerable difference in gameplay then i'll scrap out the extra 200-250$, i would like to be able to run my games at the highest resoultion. And also, I'm in competition with my friends you can say so I want to blow them out of the water.

 

difference between the single drive, raid 0, and raid 1s?
raid 0 is for speed it uses both the hard drives as 1 and if one of your HD's goes bad you loose every thing
RAID 1 is for saftey it uses both hard drive but they mirror each other so you don't loose anything if you loose a hard drive.
RAID 0 is faster then a single drive

Next is the WideXGA 900p and 1200p, is the only difference between them two the resolutions?
YES

Also the for the RAM, is there a big gap between 1066 mhz and 1333 mhz?
no waste of money

And lastly, is the AlienRespawn CD a waste of money? Because people say there are free programs that can do the same thing.

yes it is , there are programs that can do the same thing

 

i would still like to know how much of a difference those 2 would be from one another, please and thank you

 

Unless your using multi-threaded apps or games then get a P8600, if you want to go "future-proof" then get the quad core and and overclock it... im probably gonna get a P8600 and a QX9300 off ebay... if you can up the voltage that Q9000 will be a very good overclock....

Also, What are the apps that can replicate the AlienRespawn DVD?

 

Just google disk drive image software.

Acronis is good, try that.

 

I'm not the best with all the terminology, what does it mean to over-clock it. And what are multi-threaded apps and games? haha and what is uping the voltage? please don't criticize, i'm only trying to learn the lingo.

 

I don't feel like typing all that (no offense), but I am sure someone here will oblige

 

I wonder if a P9700 could get the same amount of OC and hit 3.3Ghz like the X9100.

 

I didn't think that my P8600 would oc that well being it is a lower TDP processor.

Eh... Whatever, I'm happy

 

hahaha, fair enough thanks for the help though

 

The low TDP may very well be why it OCed so high.

 

Hello, I've been reading this forum for a while now and dicided i't was time to ask your opinions.

I am living in the Netherlands and planning to purchase a new laptop for about 2-3 months now. After checking out the Toshiba Qosmio X300-112, which is nice but probably very hard to upgrade. (Like I found out on my current laptop, if I only know then...) My eye was caught by this new M17x rig! I am convinced this should be my new laptop (or in this case "monster")

That said, I am not sure what specs I should get? And why is there such a huge price differance between the US and the EU, (this could add up till 40%) I don't want to spend a lot of extra cash on the basic €1999,- But am willing to do the some concessions like SLI and screen upgrade. I already read a lot of people upgraded the HD with their own bought. I'll manage to do that aswell... But what are essential upgrades, the EU version already can't be outfitted with 1066 ram, which drives the price up and also the proc starts with a Q9000.

What do you people suggest? Somewhere around the €2500 should be the goal?
I will probably wait with ordering, untill the first Europeans start getting their laptops, but who knows?

 

Basically, "multi" just means many, or more than one. Think of cores and threads as adding lanes on a highway.

Like mechanic jargon (or any other specialty) you don't really need to know all the terminology to appreciate the abilities and value of these components. However, to say they're a "waste of money" might not be the best way to phrase it, nor does that mean AW is trying to rip you off. It's just that some components--that you pay extra for--might rarely be used, or not used at all for the applications you have in mind.

Quad core, is an early application component; and you might think of it as state-of-the-art. But for right now, few application (excluding multimedia) would benefit from the extra cost.

That said, Intel would like to encourage more software manufacturers to design products (games included) that will take full advantage of the extra cores. Once they do, you'll be ready!

 

i actually agree with you Krane

 

Quad core is just a SMP and SMP was first implemented in 1961... Early application? oh yeah

What applications you want to be SMP capable?, winamp?, aim?, msn messenger?.

You will notice a huge performance increase when watching 1080p vids, when multi-tasking, when playing Source games, when encoding, when compiling, when running virtual machines.

That's more than enough to make it worth.

 

"Practical application." I take for granted these things are understood.

 

So "Practical application." is what for you?.

Having a multi threaded firefox?

 

chill Bigx333.

as technology improves, so can web browsing. people who make ridiculous notions of future technologies (and stick to them) fall behind in advancement and innovation. we've all heard the, "you will never need more than 256K of RAM" and look how long that lasted.

sure, applications might not be fully developed for it yet, but who's to say our web browsing capabilities will remain non-progressive and the experience won't change? perhaps multi-threaded web browsers will be needed in the future to support certain web browsing functions. limiting innovation deserves rolling your eyes, not pondering innovation.

movie conversions, audio conversions, gaming... they can all make decent usage of multi-threaded programming. perhaps that is the practical application Krane is looking for.