Questions on Alienware laptops

Hi all! Long time (well, 1 year and a few months) lurker, first time poster here.

Frequented the notebookreview forums a lot while considering whether to buy the MSI GT725 or the "brand which seems to be taboo here" about a year back.

I finally settled on a desktop because I *thought* I'll be situated in this country permanently.

Anyways, now that I'm going to be moving overseas, I thought that perhaps it's time to peruse my gaming lappy options again!

I'm now considering Alienware and "that-brand", but I'm leaning more towards Alienware as it's warranty seems better in the long term. (Dell's not going to go out of business anytime soon) I'm not even thinking about the new MSI lappy anymore because it looks pretty ugly to be honest.

And now to the questions!

1) I've read that in the US, it's actually possible to "haggle" with the sales staff on the phone, and that one can get discounts via that. As I'll be moving to Australia, and will be getting the Alienware from there, anyone know if this is possible in Aussie too?

2) I'm also undecided as of yet, as to which model to take - the M15x or M17x. While browsing through both forums, there seems to be a wide range of different issues that come up on either system and yet with no official fix.

M15:
- Throttling issue with the 260m
- Audio crackling
- Poor trackpad

M17:
- Lots of noises in general
- CF 5870 (the main draw of this lappy) can only use official drivers from Dell.
- Poor trackpad

Are these problems generally easy to circumvent? The 5870 drivers are one of the main reasons why I'm steered more towards the M15x.

Also, is the battery life for the M15x significantly better than the M17x, if both use the 9 cell battery?

3) In the case of the M15x, it comes with both Nvidia and ATI cards (260m and 5850 respectively). I've used both before in various computers, but generally favour Nvidia simply because of their excellent driver support and physx. However, in this case, the ATI card is both more powerful, and comes with DX11 support.

For those that went with the ATI card, was drivers a concern at all?

4) Finally, the Aussie Dell website doesn't sell the M17x with a single hard drive and opts instead for two HDDs in RAID. For those which went with this configuration along with CF5870, can I know what's the weight of your laptop?

Thanks in advance!

 

M15x - dont even think about getting the 260m it's inferior and has the throttling issues why pay more for the worse card? 5850 all the way on that and you can flash it to 5870 clocks so i'm told

m17x - ATI provide driver support for the mobile cards and whilst i'm not 100% on the 5870's I know you can install the drivers from ATI for the CF 4870's. In-fact ATI have pretty damn good driver support.

 

All alienware laptops have horrible trackpad. This is an established fact. Something you have to deal with if you are buying alienware laptop.

 

I use a VX Nano mouse- Problem solved.

 

If you are worried about battery life I can tell you this. The i5-540 coupled with the 5730 and an ssd and the 1600x900 screen will have you using upwards of 40+ watts LESS then a quad core 5850 with regular HDD and 1920x1080 screen. You will also be running much cooler heat wise with the first option meaning your fans will be using less watts too as well as running quieter and more confortable on your lap. The ATI 5730 is no slouch of a card. It runs better then the GT 335 in the m11x and people are loving the gaming performance of that machine. If you go with the 1600x900 screen you will get close performance to the 5850 on a 1920x1080 screen since the 5850 will have more pizels to draw. You will also save a ton of money with the first option and the i5-540 will run most things faster then the 740qm. Plus the screen is only 15.6" at that size 1600x900 vs 1920x1080 while watching HD video you cannot tell the difference at all the pixel density is too great. the latter may display a little more desktop area but the icons will be tiny, increase the icon size and you get about the same space as the 1600x900. The 1600x900 has less pixels to control which allows the GPU to not have to work as hard as well as the actual electronics on the screen will use less power since it has less pizels to turn on and off and control. The only difference between the 2 screens is the pixel amount. They are both quality LED backlit displays.

The m15x with i5-540/ati 5730/1600x900 is an incredible value and only a couple hundred dollars more then an i7 m11x with tons more power. It also is very battery efficient and you should be able to pull about 4 hours of use with this battery sipping config while still having the power to play almost every game at native rez and high graphics. All these benefits and its very nicely priced. People here seem to think you HAVE to get a big quad core and a big graphics card or the laptop is a piece of garbage and it's not true. Try it my way and I bet you will be damn happy you are getting all this extra battery life running much cooler temps and saving money. If you are absolutely obsessed with having the most power though then by all means go for it but this money saving/energy saving config IMO is the best way to go for the m15x. If you need more power then this config the m15x isnt for you, just get the m17x.

 

laststop311 does speak sense, if you're looking for good battery life, that is the configuration you want.

However...if you're using it for games, I really would go for a 5850. The power consumption is not massively higher than a 5730, but the gaming performance is. If you take the 1600x900 screen, then the 5850 will max out virtually every game out there at the native resolution.

As the others say though, don't even consider the 260M. It's more expensive and much worse.

 

Thanks for the responses

As EviLCorsaiR mentions, I'm in it for gaming. In order of priority, they are:

1) Power
2) Ease of driver updates (for this Nvidia usually seems to be easier to update. While from what I read, the CF5870 is still stuck on Dell drivers)
3) Looks/cost
4) Weight and everything else

laststop311: Very good advice you're giving there Aussie's Dell has the screen res fixed on 1920 however, and comes by default as a i7-740 (or in the M17x's case, i7-720).

I would probably go with the M17x, but it's poor driver support, computer noise and hefty weight are keeping me on the fence.

As for the trackpad, it's not *that* big a problem, since I'll be using a mouse for the most part. Still, it's about time it got fixed!

EDIT: On a side note, anyone here who has bought an Alienware from aussie that has managed to haggle the price down a little?

 

As I stated before ATI Drivers are released directly from ATI just like nVidia's:
ATI Mobility 10.6 Drivers
That page should be more than enough proof that the driver support is there.
For my opinion on the matter nVidias driver support is crap on the m11x But my 3870 crossfire solution has excellent driver support from ATI.

 

the only alienware that has issue with ati driver suport is the m17x and this is just a temporary issue they are trying to fix

and with ati you don't have to roll back because game XX runned beter and then upgrade again because game XXX just didn't ran on the older one

 

Hi Magnus Draconis

The official response from Dell is "use Dell drivers". The official response I was told from AMD was "use Dell drivers." Some on this forum claim it works the first time, others claim it works after much effort, and some claim it doesn’t work at all. The experiences have been widely varied as have the methods of installation. Some claim the Catalyst mobility drivers ALWAYS worked on all M17x-R2 before the 5870 but there are plenty of people on plenty of websites that have had widely varrying experiences.

Dell does not support tinkering and typically locks up the overclocking options in their bios or reduces the bios options and that has been the status quo. Some claim Dell are working hard on the issue. I on the other hand I think this is counter intuitive based on their policy of reducing options in the bios. I think they will further lock down the M17x-R2 the best they can. There is a huge demand for Catalyst mobility drivers but the problem is stability with laptops as most of the GPU's are custom configurations. If someone is willing to spend a lot of time and trial and error you will probably get it to work eventually. Most people that are getting it to work are using some kind of sweeping the Dell drivers.

I have phoned Alienware and AMD multiple times about this issue. The last time spoke with AMD the level 1 tech (who worked for AMD for F-O-U-R years) was not even aware that AMD had mobility drivers. What does that tell you? He thought their website linked back to Dell. Talked to a level 2 tech who also told me to use Dell drivers as the Catalyst Mobility drivers were not truly compatible with Alienware as their boards are custom. Next I asked him who are the Catalyst Mobility for than? What brands? He would not tell me but kept saying they work for some and not for others and depended on your hardware. If Catalyst drivers are a must have for you than you may be better off with a desktop.

The mouse touch pad is very poor. There was a new driver on June 21 that is a great improvement. I highly recommend the tactx mouse.

P.S. If you look at the 9 page release note (10.6) they are very specific about who the drivers will not work for but they make no promises as to who the drivers will work for. The word Dell or Alienware is found no where in the release notes. What they do specify is that Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features which are not supported. The M17x-R2 is the most feature rich laptop on the market these days so no surprise the problems people are having.

 

I suppose in my case, I'm taking a too long term a view. I'm hoping to get at least 6+ years out of the machine I get, and if I were to just count on Dell... I'm not sure if they'll actually be still be pumping out drivers for the CF5870 in 6+ years time.

Thanks for the replies Now there's one more issue left: Is it possible to bargain the price down in Australia? I'm intending to get my bro to place an order for me - if it's online. But if it's possible to haggle, it'll probably be best if I do that personally once I'm over in Aussie.

 

Oh sh...t yeah, you do .Just be polite and FIRM.

 

Thanks! Perhaps it might be better if I go back and call them up instead. How much of a discount did you get on yours? From reading, it seems like 20% is the limit in US, but does anyone know what kind of limit there is in Australia?

 

Hi Magnus Draconius. Anything is possible but 6 Years does not seem reasonable. If you play FPS games than I think your equipment will be current for 3 years with fully loaded version, 2 medium build or 1 year with light build. *Laptop parts such as batteries last 1 year, and LCD screens will lose their luster after 3 years. Laptop graphic chipsets are NOT supported with games and the technology lags behind desktops. Even thought they are not suported you can still play most games on a gaming laptop. Currently you can buy single 4 Gb cards for desktops GPU. 6 years from now you will probably see 12 or 16Gb cards CF on desktop GPU. The alienware line is pretty reasonably priced so they will not discount that much unless you live in USA.

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