T9300 2.5GHz vs Extreme X9000 2.8GHz

Hello all, im a graphic designer and game enthusiast in a clan at the moment and im about to buy an m15x tomorrow. Ive read the forums but not found anything that can sway me over to spending that extra dosh on the X9000. What are your opinions on this? shall I stay with the T9300? Is the performance increase that big a difference?

Otherwise my minds set on what else to shell out for, it's just this that I need help on thanks

 

Well here is the main problem. When you buy a X9000, you want to be able to overclock it. All Intel Extreme cards are made to overclock. However, Alienware does not let you overclock this card, so you are only paying for more speed, not the ability to overclock which is a waste of money.

Go with the 2.5ghz and invest the rest of the money in something else such as 4GB of ram (which you should buy from newegg.com) which would be very beneficial in your purchase.

By the way post your specs, I will help you change anything if you want.

 

Pretty much as close to a perfect answer as I could ask for cheers Stone. Might need some fine adjustment help on this one soon..

 

Yea no problem man. Here are a few things that I would recommend.

1. Upgrade the RAM yourself.
2. Don't buy Turbomemory
3. If you can, upgrade the HD yourself as well.

 

Ok. Taken your advice on the CPU now im just unsure which ram is the right one. Is it easy to get the wrong one? I know the lower the latency is the better but thats as much as I know really. Is DDR3 an option and is it better?

 

Well you actually don't really have to worry about lower latency that much. Sure it gives you a faster speed, but really the speed is negligible. Also, DDR3 is not an option since the mobo does not support it.

 

congratulations on the purchase

 

You should only buy ddr2 667 ram, since thats what the m15x supports. Buying ddr2 800 will not benefit you because it will be downclocked to 667. Also, which hard drive are you getting, since if youre getting the 200 gb, then it is similar to newegg prices to upgrade (175 vs 165 at newegg), but the 320 gb is 225 upgrade vs $140 at newegg.

 

Alright thanks man, I think the right mem should be this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145172

Choosing the 2 gig option will leave me with 1gb when i order the 2gb mem stick so i will have 3 gb in total. this sound like a good plan?

So then my specs would be:

15.4" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD (1200p)
Genuine Windows® Vista Home Premium
512MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 8800M GTX
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz - 2 x 1024MB (3 gig total)
Single Drive Configuration - 160GB 7200 RPM SATA
2x Dual Layer Blu-ray Disc Reader (unsure yet on this one)..

This leading to £1,945.80 plus ram but I cant find a uk site yet doing that ram impiticular.

Is it tru Vista only recognizes 3 gig of ram no more? or is it just for optimal performance..

Thanks again

 

Vista 32-bit will only recognize up to about 3 gigs of ram. Vista 64-bit has virtually no cap. Also that ram might be ok, but i believe either corsair or crucial has a compatibility list.(for their products only of course)

 

Just letting you know that the 1920x1200 screen is not a glossy screen, it is a matte screen. There is no problem with it, just letting you know.

 

I always figured 1920x1200 would be a waste on a 15" notebook. Doesn't that make everything look tiny? Besides, as powerful as the 8800 is, it's not like you'll be able to game at 1920x1200 anyway. The only upshot I see is that it's matte, which I prefer over glossy. I wish they offered a matte version of the 1440x900 screen.

 

Well from what ive read most people say it does make a difference? I could play games like bf2 at above 1440x900 and it would improve the detail in my work where Photoshop is concerned? Just some thoughts for feedback. Thanks to all it's a big help. In the end it would be nice to have every benefit for performance with skiping on the unrequired parts or the unnecessary should I say.

p.s. What would you go for Stone?

 

If you are set on getting the HD from AW and you are set on 7200 rpm then I would get the 200 gig. It is worth the extra money for the extra space and the 16mb cache. The rest looks perfect.

 

@Spadess - If you are going to be doing a lot of design, then the 1920x1200 is a must. I consider myself a decent Photoshop / Premiere Pro CS3 user as well as a moderate gamer. That extra room that you get with the 1920x1200 is very helpful in photoshop if you are working with large resolution photos. It becomes very annoying very quickly for everything in photoshop to take up that much room, and the menus clutter your screen more in 1440x900.

You can pretty much take my word for this one since right now I'm editing my friends montage in Premiere right now and I have it stretched across both of my 20" screens which are 1680x1050.

Also: Samsung is releasing a 500GB 5400RPM hard drive soon. If you work a lot with design, then you will need a very large hard drive, so get the 500GB because I have already used around 400GB on my desktop at home in terms of media. (Music, Raw footage, Finished footage, Videos)

 

so i might stick with the smallest size then upgrade later on.. Thats a mind sweeper then. Back soon with it ordered with anyluck thanks Stone and everyone else for the help

 

If you want to give "reputation" to anyone who helped, you can do this easily. Just click the button in between the online button and the "yield" button and you can add reputation to someone for helping you out. Since you are new I thought I would let you know.

 

Spadess, I know your question has been answered but I want to add a little bit more. I got my m15x in Feb and I had a T7700 I had some issues and lets just say I ended up with a X9000. I can tell u honestly I don't see a huge difference. Don't get me wrong it is faster but I wouldn't suggest spending the extra money. Now if they let us overclock then thats a different story. Also like to say congrats on your purchase and welcome to the forums.

 

Hmmm... so buying the 2.8 now is kind of a gamble. If they allow us to overclock in the future (or if someone releases a hacked BIOS), it'll be worth it. If not, then it was a waste of money. I was going to buy an m15x soon, is it safe to say that it's not worth the extra $650 for another 300Mhz?

 

Hi, it's a long time I follow this forum and here comes my first post.

First I would apologize for my english, coz I'm french.

I looked for some informations to make the good choice between P9500 and X9000 a short time ago.

The conclusion is not white or black.
The main reason to take the X9000 I find is the story of CPU limited.
On some games it's seems that the 8800mGTX is limited by the CPU (Unreal 3 is a good exemple).

In the following link you can see graphics which show the phenomena (sorry it's a french link):
http://portables4gamers.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/quel-processeur-pour-la-geforce-8800m-gtx-‏/

If you don't wanna read here a summary:

GPU performances (NOT CPU) are increased by
- about 10% with a X9000 (vs a P9500) on Crysis,
- between 5% and 20% on Call of Juarez,
- between 50% and 80% on Unreal 3 !!

To conclude, it depends on the game, but sometimes it's excellent.

I think if you have enough money buy a X9000, it could avoid some local performance issues.

On the overclocking question, all the P9300, P9500 and X9000 have a good
propensity to increase their clock, I don't think it's the major fact to chose between these processors.

Good luck !

 

I agree with Gnucki that it all depends on the game and how it is optimized. Newer games will (hopefully) tend to optimize in a way that the GFX card holds most of the load, but in the case of games with huge environments or massive amounts of units -> strategy games, possibly some RPG's the CPU will still make a difference.

 

random bump to this thread...soooo how easy is it to change out the RAM? also if i plan to link my 15x to a 52 inch hdtv (panasonic) is the 1920x1200 then worth it? also if i want to do this - i just need the hdmi cable and not the hdmi to dvi-d adapter or do i need both? (can i get these of newegg with the ram?)

 

RAM: dead simple. honestly, an ape with a stick for a screwdriver could do it. just unscrew the back, take out the old RAM, slot in the new RAM, screw the back on again, done.

HDMI: depends what kind of in ports your hdtv has. if it's got an HDMI port, you need only the cable (check if you need a 1.2 or 1.3 HDMI cable). if the TV has a DVI in, you'll naturally need an adapter and a cable to match.

 

Here are a few pics from the Alienware support site to go along with whizzo's instructions (for future reference )

Linky !!

 

Your not going to notice the WUXGA screen for watching movies or most games for that matter on a 15" screen. But for CUDA, Photoshop, and video editing programs it will come in handy most of the times. but also remember for gaming once newer and stronger games come out your GFX card will not be able to handle it on your default screen resolution so you will end up having to lower it and lowering your resolution from native will sometimes give you a less clearer image then if it were from your native res.

 

actually, most games don't support WUXGA as a native resolution anyway.

 

@Whizzo - I haven't run into one of those games yet which ones are you talking about?

 

how exactly will a WUXGA screen make CUDA run better?