Will M17 survive after new M17x?

That's the thing though, it could end up being very profitable for them. Considering that there are hundreds and easily thousands of people that would make the upgrade. Let's say they made $100 profit for each upgrade to dual 4870s, which is a respectable profit. Even if only 1000 people upgraded (and it would likely be more than that) then that would be $100,000 easy. And any way you put it, even for a big company, $100,000 is a nice bit of profit for just offering a new component, and possibly having to slightly modify the heatsink.

I also think it'd be a wise idea for them to keep the M17 to sell, and offer the 4870s from the start with it. If they had the M17 with the 4870s and the new M17x with 280Ms, they'd be targeting BOTH markets very effectively. (However, I guess this is a poor point, seeming as the new M17x can take 4870s as well, at least I think it can, someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Oh well. I should be satisfied with my 3870s. How would the pair of 3870s compare to a single desktop 8800GT in games?

 

what you mean you have both. lol. the 3870 cf will blow out a desktop 8800 gt depending on your cpu.
i still have benchmarks from my systems. do you have fc2, dmc4, crysis, lfd etc.


also the m17x right now would anouce the crossfire. that was a rumor so far. they could of use 3870's in there but that wouldn't be an option unless they drop the m17.


also it is a iffy choice to release the 4870 because they would have to signa contract with ati. i think.

 

Id say the 8800GT vs the Dual 3870s should be very close and if anything the M17 will have it beat (for certain in synthetic benchmarks IE 3d06) . As for the whole profit thing you layed out , while that looks good on paper to me and you , You also have to think about all the tech support costs and warranty issues and all the other things that go along with releasing new cards would bring interms of overall profit and how much it would chew away at that 100,000 your talking about . Believe you me if Alienware thinks its a profitable road to take then they will take it but its never as cut and dry as we would like to think it is .

 

I haven't ran any actual benchmarking, apart from 3dmark06 (which is now pretty much defunct as a benchmarking tool, I just used it to compare it to my future M17). However, it manages crysis on High and 1440x900 resolution with near constant 30+fps, occasionally dipping into high 20s. Same with Crysis Warhead, and on Warhead I can even crank up some options to Enthusiast (very high). On Crysis Wars, I get constant 25+fps on "Best visuals". That's pretty much all I have in the ways of benchmarking. That's with a 2.4GHz quad core, so I'm hoping a 2.0GHz Q9000 won't stop it at all. (It shouldn't, my desktop's quad never goes above 70% total with Crysis, usually stays below 50%, and never places more than around 80% load on a core.)

Problem is in one benchmark I've seen for the M17 (QX9300) they got 30.1fps average on Crysis, high, 1024x768. That's just the only thing making me wonder. I guess it depends on the drivers though, that was with standard AW drivers and I have heard that the latest drivers are a LOT better for Crysis.

 

well 3dmark06 is pretty useless and it does depends on yourcpu. my qx9300 clocked at 1.6ghz gave me 8500 points 2.53ghz gave me 13,???(i don't remeber i have to search for it.) and 3.2ghz gave me 15,828. i didn't push the gpu's to much because i was focused on the quad core issue thread. so i was fixing instead of benching

 

Crysis always ran very poorly on the 3870s for some reason and never seemed to be able to take advantage of Crossfire , Dondadah can explain it better to you though.

 

yeah for crysis it will be one 3870 vs the 8800 gt.

i tried bout 6 different ways to crossfire it. and i pulled the crossfire cable and it still never work. (the only thing i did and couldn't try is master master becuase i had a master slave and i couldn't flash)

but i tried afr(alternative frame rendering). checkerboard(i don't knwo what it's called), scissor mode. and another method.

i also tried enable and disabling AI and nothing. it wouldn't work.

i don't know what's wrong though. when i pulled the crossfire cable, i ran and it was the same results. (one card temp was 60 and the master which was being used was 82). then i put the crossfire cable in and my temps were both active(one was at 82 and the other was 85) and still nothing one 1fps higher or lower. so this is when i thought crossfire wasn't being utilized effectively so i tried the different methods listed above and nothing. so i gave up.

i also tried drivers 8.5, 8.10, 8.12, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 and i didn't try 9.5 but i know it hasn't been fixed or changed.

 

I have heard that Crysis scales very poorly on any multi-GPU setup. However mainly now I play Crysis Wars (comes with Warhead) and from what I've heard both are much better at scaling across multiple GPUs. I'll be pleased if this is the truth.

 

Let me ask you though if you havent received your laptop yet ? why not just take a 15% restocking fee hit and order the M17x . If your planning to upgrade to 4870s(if they are infact coming) sooner rather then later that would be a minimum of say 600-800 bucks for the new cards and now your way over what it would cost you just to get the M17x all decked out with 2x280s or 260s.

 

I've already checked (as I had to order from the EU site) and for the M17 with 4870s at say, an 800 pound (GBP) upgrade, it'd STILL work out cheaper than the equivelant M17x with 280Ms. (And then there's the 15% restocking fee to take into account)

And the reason I don't pay the 15% restocking fee and order the M17x is 1. because I've got no more money to spend, and the base M17x is MORE expensive than my M17 configuration, and 2. parents.

But, no, I haven't received it yet. It's finished, but still waiting in the factory for it to be handed over to DHL.

I don't know if it works out cheaper in America, but where I live it isn't.

Besides, someone already made a thread ( here, as you've seen already) and regardless of whether that's 300 pounds for both or per card, it makes it MUCH cheaper for me with the M17. And seeming as it seems to have been a recent call, it's probably true. (Well, I hope it is)

Besides, I need a laptop that while powerful is also within an extent fairly portable. (Yes, I know, portable and AW don't go together) Regardless of whether I should have gone for a DTR in the first place, the fact still remains that the M17 is both a good deal lighter and 0.41" thinner than the M17x, which makes a reasonable difference to me.

 

Well those sounds like all valid reasons to not go with the M17x and hopefully you guys do get the 4870s as well . Eitherway its a great machine and im sure your going to be happy.

 

yeh Zfactor has said he has spoken to a dell employee who also confirms the status with the 4870's

 

I hope that is really the case! I'm cautiously optimistic, but hopeful!
I keep going through every thread and watching the M17 page to see if it really happens. Plus when I spoke to dell yesterday they said m17 would be discontinued, so I'm not convinced Dell employees really know what's happening, lol... no offense.

Just spoke to another dell representative and she was as clueless as the previous one was as to whether the m17 would get upgraded??

Both people I spoke with were through Alienware's site, I clicked the chat to representative, so they may not be as informed as tech support staff

 

I hope I'll be happy with it. I should, anyways. I just wish that they'd take the awesome lighting system in the new M17x and put it in the M17 too, even an extra $100 or so would make it worth it, that lighting is really nice.

 

Youll be happy im sure, the lighting would have been cool but that is something IMHO that wouldnt matter after a week or so of owning one with lights , the backlit keyboards though are where its at and both have them. I was leaning towards finding a Used M17 for a bargain but i may just grab my self a M17x with the 2x280s and upgrade everything else later. I do like the M17 though because i owned a M9750 (same chasis as M17) and it was a nice machine. Decisions decisions.

 

I hear you. I love my M9750 (now my wife's) and my M17. All the light's on the M17X are cool, but I too really appreciate the keyboard lighting at night.

Hopefully, the keyboard lighting is brighter and more even on the M17X.

On my M17, only the green is really bright and even.

 

After seeing that pic from Chaz i was blown away by how bright the keys were on the M17x .

 

And that's under bright lights!

I think A.W. has really been listening to the criticisms.

Massive AC adapter----no more.
Poor keyboard lighting---no more.
Crappy battery life---no more. (at least not on integrated graphics)
Overpriced---no more. (not at this level anyway)
Can't OC X-chips---no more.

+they have added little touches like reinforced keyboard, and nameplate etc.

I am impressed.

 

Oh yeah that thing has everything but the kitchen sink and is priced very reasonable for all you get. And your right they fixed all those shortcomings of the other machines without making any sacrifices either . They deserve mad props for this new machine .