mx11 - general usage concerns

First of all thanks for reading my post, I've been looking for a laptop for a few years now but I’ve always been put off, and eventually just ended up building a desktop.

Now I’m looking to get something small form factor and was initially considering getting a dell xps 13, until I found out alienware have released this mx11. only concerns so far are the processer, and whether it will be suitable for my needs.

So I’m wondering what the performance is like for general tasks; surfing the internet, sending emails/few word documents here and there, downloading a few songs and streaming films/shows off the internet? That’s mainly what I would be using this for but i want the bonus of being able to play a few games in a portable fashion.

Thanks

 

Well, I got my M11x yesterday.
It's been absolutely fantastic. The processor isn't the bottleneck everyone's saying it is.
Anyway, what you want to do on a computer could be done very efficiently by an Intel Atom, so you needn't worry about the processor being slow.
It's absolutely demolished any game I've thrown at it.

 

From what i've seen the m11x can handle itself pretty well even without the cpu OC.. the general low intensity tasks you described will not stress this system.

 

A standard netbook will do what you want (minus the games), so this will work perfectly well for it.

 

Whatever you do, don't get xps 13. The entire XPS line it seems has problems with overheating (among other things).

What games did you plan to play?

 

The M11x won't be giving you any problems. The CPU however is a bottleneck, though it's not going to bottleneck any of your activities.

 

Yeah i can fully appreciate that the cpu has its limitations, Just with the newer intel i3, 5, 7 chips. It makes me wonder if its worth waiting on the possibility alienware might upgrade them? - I think i'm still leaning towards this over anything else at the moment and i dont want to pay £1600 for a sony vaio lol.

 

Also, if you don't intend to play demanding games, why not to indulge yourself with a better and bigger screen. You can buy a Sony Z and have a 13" screen for almost the same size In your case I'd definitely look for a bigger and better screen.

 

I'd plan on hopefully playing fallout 3 las vegas and dialbo 2 when they are released, At the moment i mainly just play on modern warfare 2.

 

Ive always wanted an alienware laptop, but i could never justify the price for the ones with all the bells and whistles, I'm not hugely fussed on screen size - 13 inch would be better i guess but i have my desktop for anything that requires a bigger screen - this would just be for something to sit in bed with or take on trips.

How do the lower end models of the sonys match up for the games side of things?

 

Me too! Can't wait for Las Vegas (and Fallout Online ), meanwhile I'll just do every single quest here!

Yeah you need more powerful laptop then. There isn't much choice at prices $1000. Yeah Sony Z is good if you can afford it -- in that case, check out the thread in Notebooks Reviews section where 1 guy compares m11x and sony z. Sony Z is $2k+ btw.

For general usage there really shouldn't be much concern -- I have very similar CPU right now on my laptop (Intel Core2Duo T7250 2.0 GHz) and win7 ultimate runs really really smooth in whatever you're doing on it. The stuff I use it for is run Mathematica, MATLAB, Photoshop, Linux programs through Cygwin, video chatting, watching videos etc. The only advantage that my laptop has is it is slightly lighter than m11x (1.8kg) and it has bigger screen. I don't think you'll find anything even remotely close to m11x performance-wise with 13.3" screen besides Sony Z. And that one is just way too expensive for me.

The only Sony model I was eyeing was VAIO Y series which has the same CPU as m11x, but only integrated graphics. Still the battery life is pretty bad given that it has all low-power components. Also note that Sony Z gets pretty hot while gaming; reviewer reported CPU hitting 88 C, which I don't like at all...

 

quick stupid question: if the cpu is the bottleneck does that mean i won't be able to have rhapsody, a game, and an internet window with a few tabs open at the same time?

 

If you get 4GB RAM, I doubt it. On the other hand, if you trust Dell well lol: http://i.imgur.com/D6kzJ.jpg

 

Well I got the 8GB as a free upgrade . But when you say " i doubt it" do you mean "i doubt it will run" or "i doubt you will not be able to"

 

So are you saying M11x won't be able to run Fallout Las Vegas at very high settings? Or that there are just better choices for laptops to run it?

 

Ah I didn't word it quite well. I meant there isn't anything better than m11x to play games on (below 15"). I'm currently playing Fallout 3 on 8600 GT (~4000 3dMark06). And m11x is a bit better than that.

Ah sorry. I meant I doubt you won't be able to multitask between couple of apps. CPU is more of a bottleneck when it comes to gaming. For usual stuff in Windows, its more than enough. Btw, nice upgrade!

 

Got my M11x, well, yesterday.

Love it.

The processor may be weak in comparison to other laptops but it is by no means a hamper. It can play music, HD Youtube videos, while editing documents, downloading things, etc. For general activities, it's fine.

The most intensive game I've ran on it at the moment is Bad Company 2 - runs without problem, no Aa, medium settings, but the framerate is super smooth.

I can give Fallout 3 a go tomorrow if you're interested - I wouldn't imagine Fallout New Vegas has significantly different graphical options over Fallout 3.

The M11x isn't a machine to run things totally maxed though - It's a machine to run your games wherever you want.

Loving it so far.

 

I'm sure FO:NV will by made with the same engine as FO3.. no reason for it not to run on high settings.

 

I can't stand such misinformation.

Just because the m11x plays games well, doesn't make the CPU any less of a bottleneck. That's just poor logic.

This. FTW.

 

Congrats mate! It's a great little machine, enjoy it!

 

I never said it wasn't a bottleneck in demanding applications.
I said it's not the bottleneck everyone has been claiming it has.

 

And your info is just as wrong.

I had a sony cw with the core i5, and traded for the m11x. Posts like yours worried me greatly about the cpu.

Day to day use, my comparison of the core i5 vs su7300:
IE, firefox, mail, games (Fallout 3, MW2, NFS, Burnout Paradise) - No difference. Load times are the same, performance is the same, etc. The core i5 with Oc'd gpu only had an advantage in GTA IV framerates, but I honestly cant tell a difference other than that.

Areas I can tell a difference:
Extracting large files over 500MB from zips or rars, the su7300 uses 100 % cpu, the core i5 doesnt, so yes here the laptop slows down a bit while the processing is occuring. How often have I done that? Once. If you unrar large archives, encode video or images, and want to multitask or game at the same time, the su7300 will bottleneck.

If you want to stream music, video, etc, and edit word or pwoerpoint files, and then fire up fallout 3 or modern warfare to burn some time, you will NOT see any problems.

 

Thank you, +1, for putting some perspective on this. Everyone dogs the SU7300. It is by no means a powerhouse for sure. But it handles everything quite well. Considering most games are GPU limited, it makes sense to have a power GPU over a CPU. And the CPU is plenty for probably over 99% of games released today. Sure you may have to use medium or low settings, but it runs today's titles very well.

 

i'm tired of all this "will it bottleneck" BS regarding the M11x.

The long and short answer is that it depends, and anybody who argues otherwise is a fool. It's all relative. The application workload needs to be specified and more importantly people have different perceptions as to what constitutes acceptable performance levels.

A Core i7-980X is overkill for Word, but would be a bottleneck if i was running a super computer simulation.

to the OP: lookup some benchmarks on the SU4100/SU7300 chips to get a feel for how the processors will perform. estimate as best you can whether the performance difference between it and a standard voltage chip is acceptable to you. if it is, buy the machine and try it out. if it turns out it's weak sauce then just return it. done and done.

 

OP - Sounds like you'll be fine with the m11x, with the ports you'll be able to stream onto a monitor and HDTV with ease, I've seen posts about it stuttering with youtube/hulu but I think that was more todo with driver issues than the CPU itself.

 

I use the m11x as my only PC. Dock it as a desktop to a 1080p monitor, etc, and unhook it on the go. I haven't had any problems, the only bottleneck that has affected me is encoding movies and music is slow, obviously, vs my old 3ghz C2D. All my games run fine even at 1080p.

 

Btw, to add onto previous discussion. I received my m11x today and I'm happy to report Fallout 3 runs very smooth with detail level set on Ultra, with 4 samples Anti-aliasing. That is, without hiccups.

Now I have some slaves to free, catch you later.