adieu fellow AW fans

well it's been a short tumultuous relationship with AW...saved money and then eventually tried my first AW, brand new...and it has been one issue after another.....

i guess i asked for it...i liked NVIDIA (always have) and optimus sounded perfect.....GTA4/ELFC/ME1+2...didn't work as indicated, waited for the replacement.....still issue not fixed (i guess DELL is to blame...but i can't wait any longer...2.5months since the orignal order is enough)

credit to Batboy,roykirk,Darcoder,tzolcat...to name a few....

..... anywhoo i have taken the plunge and requested that DELL retrieve both the laptops (M17XR3's) and reimburse my money....

i guess back to the ol'faithful (yet) DV5T (or atleast till the inverter works)


*cue procession music

 

you should've opted for the 6970 ATI card...

 

heh hehe........... strange you mention this....but Dell has offered a free upgrade to the 6970....i'm not entirely convinced...as i have heard dreadful stories of ATI's drivers...compatibility issues and what nots (ON the official drivers -not OEM re-branded)


anyways still deciding (well atleast 24H....)....


PS mFractal....any particular reason to go for the M18X over the M17X.....is it significantly heavier (i.e 18 vs the 17) and whether or not i should go for the 18 (seeing it gives support for Creative's interface as well......and the 54 express card (handy to install a TV tuner)

 

I just wasn't happy with the plastic build of it.
nothing special.. I decided I want my laptop in metal flavor.
as for ati compatibility I can tell u that I installed at least 10 latest games to bench them for an article on my site and all of them ran flawlessly! most on highest settings mind you

 

these story are BS especially with dell/AW


once upon a time ati had a worst support and drivers lacked polishing but it's been a while since then ati has been releasing driver once a month and application profiles like 4 times a month?

go for the ati in a dell/AW it's a winner



EDIT :err actualy what's the story about ati driver suport cause i see mfractal implying that some games could not even run on ATI ?

 

actually no, i meant there were no problems at all with the ati drivers whatsoever.

 

ok ok

but i don't understand what nvidia's brainwashed/fanboys claim that ati drivers has as trouble

 

some drivers do have trouble (i.e. the SC2 pylon field not showing - this has been an on/off problem since the 10.xx drivers; or the rare topright mouse glitch; or the corrupt cursor issue that seems to come up for a few people), however, the sheer amount of driver, hotfix, and CAP releases really paliates the issue

and that is surely not to say nVidia is free of any driver issues nVidia owners are probably simply less likely to post about them :laugh:

Anyhow, OP, did you try whitelisting the GTA launcher instead of the game executeable itself? Just curious since i saw that suggestion in another Alienware thread today

 

ya i eard of the pylon issue and heck i never seen it i got in the beta since the second wave of accept and i never seen it

i seen the top right issue becaus i messed with it after people started talking about it with the 11.4 the cursor one is an anoying one but you just have to kinda shake the corruption of the cursor

 

Yeah, I had a HD5870 CF setup from launch until rather recently, and I never saw anything beyond the corrupt cursor... maybe once? One of my friends with an Eyefinity setup is being dogged around with it, however

 

Up until the latest ATI drivers X-Fire didn't work right on most newer games on the R2...That was everyone's biggest complaint.

 

Do a bit of forum searching, bit of web searching and you'll find more than enough to realize that AMD drivers are "ok" but certainly have a number of issues with them. If you are given the chance to try the 6970 however, you could give it the last effort and see if you like it. At least then you'll know for yourself.

 

well i would like to recant my adieu...and perhaps revert it to aloha.... or g'day mate .... cuz after 2.5 hours of Dellconnect/aka assist software they finally agreed to what i have been saying all along...optimus is not working with GTA4 and stuff and or all games that i am using.....not to mention the "significant" build issues.....so at the end i am getting a 6970 for free and the additional ? year warranty.....so fingers crossed (and sorry if this seemed like a useless thread...but i was upset and on the bright side of things...got to know ATI isn't so bad at all)

 

And Jeremy ...i take offence ....i must've been wailing on about the optimus issues for yonks..... but in all honesty....NV drivers on my DV5T .... nary an issue...ever....no graphical corruption or anything...... i guess i thought optimus would be nice...but it seems like muchos troubles...i willing to defect so i can use a laptop in peace

 

I have 5 machines right now with the following video cards:
desktop nVidia 9600GT
desktop nVidia 8800GT
desktop AMD HD5850
desktop AMD HD6870 xfire
Alienware m17x r3 6970m

The only machine I have EVER had a driver related issue with is the desktop crossfire rig, and those problems were quickly fixed with crossfire profile updates. Never used nVidia SLI. Never had a driver related problem with an nVidia card or a non-crossfire ATI/AMD card.

I am also very happy with the 6970m. I would not worry if I were you.

Edit: Forgot to add, manually switching between the 6970m and the integrated intel graphics is easy and works good for saving battery life. Not as convenient as Optimus, but works.

 

Oh believe me Optimus is anything but convenient...... i think the option for seamless vs manual switching should be allowed...period...(M11x r1 had the manual switch despite using NV and INTEL....wondered why they couldnt simply allow that) ..the amount of grief i've had with optimus on te M17Xr3 isnt funny...... i am more than happy to switch to a manual switch system


all in all i was wondering ,with all this mucking around (replacement and stuff) i must've (conservative estimate) lost about 2.5months of my 2 yrs of paid warranty.... is that counted or does the time begin once you actually take possesion of your laptop

reason why i ask is that Battery in the AW (?Dell) are considered in warranty when you place the order....so in that sense am i now short of 3 months (once my replacement laptop arrives) on my AW???!!!!

 

i always find the complain about CFX hilarious cause 90% of the rig that have cfx have cards that are adrealy powerfull enough to run any game at acceptable settign alone so just disable cfx until the catalyst app patch comes out


i have no idea honestly i just ordered a replacement pack the week befor my warrenty ended so i had a brand new .... thta is now dead 1 year later -.-

 

Optimus systems do away with video output muxers that take up PCB space. As a result, even if "manually switched," Optimus systems are still... well... Optimus.

 

OK...anywhoo placed a brand new order for the laptop with the 6970.....the price seems to have dropped here in AU...apparently now i can configure all warranty+Bluray and the GPU...and still save 100AU$ less than what i paid for initially....

 

My two cents:

Lately AMD >>> Nvidia.

Historically, Nvidia has been more stable, in my opinion. But this is going back years. And... I absolutely freaking HATE Optimus. I think it's one of the biggest pieces of junk technology I've ever seen, pawned off as a useful feature.

AMD this time around hit the nail on the head with their cards and drivers. I have old ties to Nvidia and would opt again for powerful Nvidia options, but they failed to impress me with Optimus and their latest cards.

I think you'd have much better luck going to AMD, and this is coming from an "Nvidia fanboy"

My legacy: Geforce 4 Ti4200 ---> Ti4600 --->FX5700u ---> 6800u ---> My first desktop replacement AW with 2x 7900GTXm ---> 9800 GTX ---> Desktop replacement laptops from that generation on.

So you can see, historically I've strongly favored Nvidia. Today? Not so much. AMD is top dog, IMO.

 

@ saosin

meself, RIVA TNT2 M64, Geforce 2 MX200, 4 MX400, 4 Ti4280, 5700U,6600GT,7600GT,8800GT,9600MGT (DDR2 HPDV5T) and briefly (despite any luck with my games) the GTX460M and (hopefully) soon the 6970 ...yep been on this planet a bit longer than you


PS...just recalled...they used to have 3D tech (with glasses) back then (in the RIVA era)