m9750 First Impressions...

It arrived this morning, in all it's glory.

First impressions after opening it up and setting everything up... Runs very smoothly. I've owned older laptops, all of which were much slower to load things and boot up than a desktop. This one is about as fast as a normal desktop PC - quite impressive so far. It's solid, much more solid than my older 15" apple tibook, the screen is beautiful. It's not very loud at all, It runs quite a bit quieter than my desktop x1900xtx. All you can hear is the air flowing out the back when it's being pushed.

Games, I've installed Steam (and started downloading CS:S), and I installed Crysis. I've read a lot of people having problems with Crysis with the default drivers, and having to install the new one. It loaded up just fine for me, I played it for about 15 minutes then shut it down. It was a bit slow though, I had it at 1400x1050, everything at medium settings, before it was playable (I heard SLI isn't enabled yet for Crysis, hopefully it gets better in the future). I'll also be installing Gears of War, World of Warcraft, and a few other by the end of the night.

There was also a slip in the box, saying my laptop scored 9376 in 3dmark06. I haven't tested it myself yet however.

Blu-ray's played right out of the box as well. The Terminator loaded up in about 30 seconds, played great. I haven't tested some of the newer discs, that require newer firmware updates - I'll try them out later tonight when I get home from work.

So far this thing kicks major ass

More to come...

 

I'm drooling....

 

Wow you really went all ****ing out with that one. Nice laptop

 

Just got mine the other day, and I love it too. Enjoy!

 

man oh man mine hit phase 9 today but GOD knows when it will arrive...got the exact same specs as asylum so good to hear that its running so smoothly...do put up the 3dmark06 scores Asylum and wanted to know that will the newly released blu ray movies require a firmware update for the blu ray player installed??...and if yes where to get the firmware update??

 

That's an insane machine, congratulations.

You can enable multi-GPU support in Crysis by adding a command to the end of your Crysis shortcut. Right-click it and click Properties, then in the Target field, go to the end, put a space after the quotes, and put
+r_multigpu 1

Click Apply and then start the game - enjoy the SLI performance increase.

 

chaz, thanks for the crucial tips!

U deserve a rep!

hmm Rochester... where at? I used to go to RIT alot.

 

Sorry for the delay guys, last few days have been busy. I should have more to write about tomorrow morning, I'm pretty tired.

Quick though, I ran my own copy of 3dmark06, and got a reasonable 8764. I'm quite happy. Can't wait to try out the Crysis GPU fix.

More to come in the morning, I'll try to post a bunch of pictures as well, as I took over 50 with my Digital Rebel.

 

Well, this morning I've been testing out some things... These are all tested with the stock drivers that the m9750 came with, I haven't updated them yet. Anyone know if I will see an increase in performance with the 169.09 drivers? Or should I just leave it, seeing as it's running completely stable...

Crysis runs quite well now. I've got it at 1920x1200, half of the settings on High, some on Medium, and Shaders on Low... Getting a constant 20FPS outside now. Quite happy with it, as it's much faster than my current desktop PC (E6600, Asus P5B, 2BGRAM, x1900xtx).

Running World of Warcraft at 1900x1200 and everything totally maxed out... Getting a solid 60FPS (VSYNC), dropping down to about 35FPS during heavy Alterac Valley PVP.

CS:S is also totally maxed out, completely smooth. I didn't notice any dip in performance playing Office for about 20 minutes.

Popped in a more current BD as well (28 Weeks Later), and it did have to download an update. it was about 70MB, but it runs flawlessly now. I'll be trying a bunch more later on tonight. I've had a 1080p LCD TV for a while now, with a BD player, so I have over 50 discs to test out.

All in all, quite happy.

 

that is really good news! again congrats!

 

From what I hear Crysis gets a noticeable performance boost from the 169 series beta drivers; the 169.09 are the current best choice for SLI setups and the 169.04 for non-SLI.

The 169.13 is what to install AFTER the Crysis patch is released. Otherwise if you install them the game will crash within 10 - 15 minutes.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=194905

 

Interesting.... I might have to try and upgrade the drivers as well then. I'll try it on the weekend when I have more time to debug a problem if it occurs.

 

Make sure you run a driver cleaning program in safe mode when switching the drivers after they are uninstalled, before the new ones are installed. This makes for a happy lappy.

 

Well this is extremely disappointing.

I installed the 169.09 drivers - it's not working as well. Everything now runs much slower. Crysis, WoW... All noticeably slower. 3dmark06 also dropped by about 600 marks. Re-enabled SLI and everything. Too bad... Even in windows the mouse seems more "jittery" and isn't as smooth. WoW dropped about 20 FPS. Crysis was painfully slow, couldn't even shoot without a drop TO 2-3 FPS, was unplayable.

Going to be going back to the "ancient" 93.43 or whatever they were.

 

Back to the 94.23 drivers and it works good again. Everything is back to normal.

I wonder what went wrong... Very strange... Anyone have any ideas? From the sounds of it, everyone is getting massive performance increases from the 169.09 drivers.

 

The more I stew about it here at work, I think I might have not rebooted after I enabled SLI...... Ack.

I'll have to try it again later, oops.

 

asylum i got a question mate help me out with it. I got the blu ray writer too but what program are you using to play the blu ray movies?? when i inserted a blu ray movie in the drive and opened up power dvd which came pre installed it said there is no disc in the drive. Its not detecting if there is any blu ray disc inserted or no. Help me out any one please.

 

Oh Asylum I think I may know why the drivers didn't work properly. I believe that the 169.09 drivers are for Windows Vista, and in your sig it says that you have windows XP. That may be the reason why it is not running too well with them. I may be wrong, but I do think the 169 are Vista drivers.

Edit: Whoops I think I'm wrong. But here is another set of drivers to try if you want. People have said that they have recieved very good performance as well from the 169.04 drivers. Follow this guide before you install them though.

Installing SLi drivers on M9750

 

i installed these drivers stone and got a score of 8900 on 3dmark...before with AW'S drivers i got 8000. plus crysis running like a beauty on everything medium on 1280X1024

 

fanatic, did you enable the SLI mode in crysis by adding the proper command line in it's shortcut bar?

 

@Alienware_fanatic - I'm glad I could help, it seems that either the 169.09 or the 169.04 drivers work great for the M9750. Which drivers did you end up using though?

And try using the proper command line and you should see even better results

@Asylum - Let me know your results if you try the drivers.

 

i got the 169.04 and used the command on crysis to enable sli as chaz had mentioned before runs pretty good i must say

 

the only problem im facing is playing the blu ray discs now...i think i need a stand alone player for that. but i was wondering that even if i dont have the player atleast the BD WRITER should recognise the disc which it isnt. it just says no disc in drive

 

but it only rund good at medium settings?

 

well on my system its running on medium with no hickups...i still need to test it on higher resolution when i go back home from work tonight

 

people report playing crysis at your settings with one card. you have two cards so i assume with the sli setting enabled in the game you should be able to play very high settings in dx9 mode at 30 fps.

 

hmmm....if thats the case ill try adding the sli command again in the shortcut properties and give it a try again...but r u sure that people are running crysis on VERY HIGH with dual 7950's because i heard that this game even gives the dual 8800 a hard time keeping up, thats what i heard though might not be true but just wondering

 

and if anyone can please help me play blu ray movies...when i insert the disc and put on power dvd or any player it says no disc in drive, but anydvd recognises that there is a blu ray disc in the drive. I think i dont have the codec or whatever so please help out

 

i don't know how well the m9750 will run crysis on very high settings because i don't have the computer. but i do know that people run it at medium settings at around the same resolution you and they have 1 video card. you have 2 and enabling sli in the game should allow you to play it with very high settings.

 

Tried it again and nothing.

Stock AW drivers (94.23) and I'm running 1920x1200 in Crysis, most settings on high and some on medium. It's running Very well.

The newer drivers drop performance in all my games quite a bit, I just don't get it really.

Funny that your Blu-ray drive isn't working - mine's working fine. Bought a 25GB Blank one the other day and the burner worked great as well. I've watched a bunch of movies on here, all working quite well. Casino Royale runs a bit choppy sometimes, but otherwise everything else was flawless.

I just don't understand why the newer drivers aren't doing anything for me, and actually dropping performance on my system.. It doesn't make any sense at all.

 

Fanatic, Asylum,

I too have a problem with Blu-ray movie discs, just as Fanatic described. I have tested the included Nero burner software and a 25 GB blank Blu-ray works just fine. Nero also recognizes blu-ray movie disc, as there is an option to copy that disc. However, the included Power DVD software player does not seem to be able to play blu-ray movie discs.

The master software CD rom that was included by Alienware has a link to "Power DVD Blu-ray"; unfortunately that link is not the software as such, but only a link to the Alienware US web site, to which I have no access (9750 purchased from UK).

I have contacted Alienware UK, and their response was that they are discussing with Cyberlink so that they will make the blu-ray player software available to Alienware. They in turn should put it into MyHive for download. So far this has not happened. By the way, they also replied that it is normal for Windows Explorer to not recognize blu-ray discs at all; WE shows a near-empty 25GB re-writable blu-ray disc as a full CD-ROM instead...

Asylum, did your 9750 come with PowerDVD software that plays Blu-ray discs? Can you tell us the version of the software from the Help/about menu?

Interesting discussion about drivers & Crysis - I have updated the drivers to 169.09 and have installed Crysis. Haven't had time to play it though, so can't comment about performance. I have XP and two 7950 cards as well.

 

well im gonna try with the stock AW drivers and see how crysis runs and then post here...fingers crossed

 

celevue i found out the problem with the blu ray. the powerdvd software provided by alienware in your laptop does not support blu ray or hd dvd. But i downloaded powerdvd ultra 7 from torrents last night and it played the movies. so now i dont have any problems. you should try that it should definitely fix the problem. The powerdvd that alienware installs is the normal one and not ultra. only the ultra version supports hd dvd and blu ray

 

ok so i installed the stock drivers and i got the score of 5500. somethings really wrong here...with the 169.04 i got a score of 8900 or something...gonna try the 169.09 now and see what happens

 

well got my 3dmark score back to 8600 with the 169.09 and i tried playing crysis on high at 1920X1200 with a few things at medium and its running smooth now

 

Very Strange...

 

asylum i was thinking that after installing the new drivers are you sure you enabled the sli before doing the benchmarks and playing crysis?? because i had this problem when i installed the 169.09 i thought i enabled sli and ran 3dmark but scores were in 5500's and then i rechecked the sli settings and it was disabled so i enabled it again and ran the tests again and got higher scores. might work for you or might not.

 

Yup, I double checked. Then checked again. Then rebooted and checked again. Said it was enabled, so I have no idea why the performance was much worse.

But the stock drivers run close to 8900 marks in 3dmark06, Crysis runs great, Gears of War runs great, World of Warcraft runs great, Counter-Strike: Source runs great. So I'm quite happy with the stock Alienware drivers.

 

hmmm....wierd but who cares as far as you're getting the performance this machine is supposed to deliver...happy gaming

 

Thanks for the PowerDVD ultra tip, Fanatic. I suspected this is the case, and the Ultra version is the one I need. I'm still waiting a bit more for AW to arrange a downloadable version for me before hitting the torrent route.

By the way, my 3Dmark06 scores for 169.09 drivers was 8441, but I still haven't had time to play Crysis so can't comment on how well it runs...

 

celevue i think if you have an american my hive account you might be able to get the ultra addition or blu ray plugin for the power dvd from there too because on the support disc that AW provides there is a link for power dvd blu ray but when you click on it it redirects you to AW US support site. So you can give that a try too

 

Unfortunately being in Finland, I have only the UK support access, and AW UK tech support did not offer me US access. I noticed the same thing - that the included CD-ROM had a link to the US support site when I clicked the PowerDVD Blu-Ray. Oh well, I'm sure AW UK gets me a copy via Myhive, and I don't have any particular hurry. I already have a US Sonly blu-ray player and an European PS3, so I'm fully covered as far as region A and B blu-ray discs go...

 

yea i was surprised to see that they put region codes on the blu ray movies...when they were launching this technology i heard that its gonna be region free...i purchased 3 copies of die hard 4.0 just because i got the wrong region everytime and at that time wasnt aware that they are region coded

 

BD's have had region coding since inception. Helps larger distribution companies like Fox and Disney with fighting piracy. Most companies don't region code their discs though.

 

great to see you guys with your 9750's. i ordered my 9750 on 12/8 and can't wait for it to come in, here's what i ordered:

[1] Area-51® m9750

Video/Graphics Card: Dual 512MB Nvidia® GeForce™ 8700M GT - SLI Enabled
Chassis: 17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology - Stealth Black
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7400 2.16GHz 4MB Cache 667MHz FSB
Memory: 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 512MB
Operating System (Office software not included): Windows Vista® Home Premium
Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Without Media Center Remote Control or TV Tuner
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 80GB 7,200RPM (8MB Cache)
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer CD-RW/DVD±RW Burner
Wireless Network Card: Internal Intel® PRO Wireless 3945 a/b/g Mini-Card
Sound Card : High-Definition Audio with surround sound
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service
AlienContact: Added Bonus with any AlienSupport Selection
AlienContact - Remote Alienware Support
AlienRespawn: AlienRespawn v2.0 Recovery DVD – Windows Vista® Edition
Monitor: No Monitor
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mesh Cap
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mousepad
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mobile Binder
Alienware Extras: Owner Identification Card
Avatar: Alienhead 3D
Window Style: Default Window Style
Mouse Pointers: Standard Mouse Pointers
Power Plan: Standard Power Plan
Automatic Updates: Automatic Updates On
Time Zones: (GMT - 5.00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

i didn't bother with the blu-ray drive for my 9750 as i just got a plextor px-b900a for my desktop. i've burned several bd-r sl (25gb) discs, bd-re sl (25gb rw) and several bd-r dl (50gb) discs and it (px-b900a) works great, so i don't need a bd burner or reader for my laptop (my ps3 is my bd player).

but i'm kinda confused by your benchmarks with the various video drivers. i'm hoping i too don't have any issues with my sli setup, i got the 8700M GT 512 sli setup instead of the 7950 sli setup. i wanted to be able to support dx10 (i know, i know ) but i wanted to atleast support it (dx10).

i also only ordered the 1gb of ram (from alienware), and i ordered (2) 2gb so-dimms from newegg. i also only got a single 80gb drive (from alienware) and ordered another 80gb drive from newegg cause i'm gonna run a small 160gb raid 0 setup for now and change it later.

how do you guys like your systems so far? hows the performance? i know that only 2 - 2.5gb of ram is available out of the 4gb (bios / chipset limitations), does that affect performance?

i only got vista home premium edition, cause right now i only like running xp on my desktop (i haven't switched to vista yet, and am kinda hesitant) i'll upgrade to vista ultimate later if i need to. i run dual boot (xp / ubuntu) on my desktop and kinda want to run my laptop that way (vista or xp / ubuntu, or perhaps vista / xp / ubuntu).

to make a long story short (too late, heh heh), how are the laptops? anxiously awaiting mine

 

You might be unhappy with the 8700 graphics card because it is slower than the 7950 GTX . Unfortunately, although the latest nVidia drivers do support Vista in SLI, other than higher 3dMark scores there is no visible difference in game performance. Hopefully Vista SP1 will fix the SLI issues and speed up game performance so that it matches Windows XP.

Two Gb of ram is fine for Vista. You really don't need any more than that and
as noted, the m9750 can only access 2.5 Gb max anyway.

I love my m9750 and I am gaming with just one 7950gtx card with good results. I think you will be more than satisfied with your purchase. Enjoy.

 

make sure you get the exact drive (same make and model) as the one in the your system for any raid setup otherwise you will get errors.

 

One of my mother's co-workers is married to a Microsoft programmer who has been working on SP1 for Vista. It will not fix memory issues - he still recommends using at least 4gb's of Ram with Vista - at least.

So far the machine is running top notch, I've only had a problem playing 2 or 3 BD's, but I also haven't really looked for a fix for them either. Runs all the games I want it to - easily, and It looks fricken badass to boot.

Now with more and more rumors saying it will also support the 8800 GTX's in the future, I would much rather have this over the new m17x with the santa rosa platform.

 

I also just placed my order and elected on 1gb since they wanted $150 for 2GB and knowing that I can find it cheaper elsewhere.

I haven't bought RAM in a long time and was curious as to what brand and configuration that I should consider for my new M9750. What did you buy from NewEgg?

Also, can I pair up a 2GB and 1GB stick to get 3GB, as long as they are both DDR2s?

Thanks!

 

Again, the m9750 cannot use more than 2.5 Gb of ram due to motherboard limitations. Is it worth it to upgrade to 2.5 Gb from 2 Gb? I don't see much of a performance impact there. Just get 2Gb and that will be fine. Save some money.