price cut, m15x (-100) m17 (-200)

i just checked the webpage and there are new prices getting the m17 with xfire 4850 seems better than m17x everytime i check

 

At that price its tempting...... must... resist

 

Not bad..

 

As soon as you add the 9800 GT and WUXGA to the m15x it isn't worth it. You could get a base M17x with a 260 for $1673 before tax via EPP.

I guess the m17 is a better buy than the m15x, but that system has been around for quite awhile and is getting a little long in the tooth, IMO.

M17x all the way!

 

I agree with sleey0, the M17 is now a good option with the 4850's but the M17x is better due to build quality in many aspects and i can vouch for this as i owned an M17 and OCZ whitebook.

 

ya possibly, still m17 is the best band for the budget deal imo. Still the stylish and build quality of the m17x its possible worth the difference.

 

M17x is awsome

M17 is awsome

if your on a budget M17 all the way

 

Ya 450 $$ for the 9800 gt from the 3870 its simply insane.. they dont have such a big difference in performance.

 

10-15 % maybe

 

Build quality? The M17 is very, very well built in my opinion. Solid as a rock. Although the M17x is very nice with its anodized aluminum.

Even if you're NOT on a budget, the M17 is now a very viable option with 4850s. Over in Europe now I've just reckoned up a comparison, with identical components except for 260Ms/4850s, the price difference is over £400 in Europe. (Well the M17x does have 1333MHz RAM but as we've said, it's next to pointless, so...)


Not to mention in Europe you now can't order an M17x with a 1920x1200 screen for some bloody reason. All it lets you select is 1440x900.

 

That's a pretty substantial cut to the base price of the m17, in particular. Trying to clear out inventory, I suppose. Hopefully it means an m15x refresh isn't too far off.

 

Yep, M17 base price seems to have fallen around €250 over here.

 

You can't compare the two PC. The M17 is getting old and does not have the best design anymore. It never felt rock solid like the M17X. On top of that don't forget that you are wasting your money in an M17 as it does not have MXM 3.0b which you will need to upgrade to better graphic cards in the coming year.

The M17X is by far a better thermal design, built, options and to this day the GTX280M SLI beats the 4850.

 

The price drop itself is great; that said I placed my order 3 days ago by finance. Now I'm gonna have to contact Alienware and try and see if they'll amend my order, because £200 is a LOT to loose when the order hasn't even passed finance/billing yet!

 

Unless the 4850's are flash overclocked, the 280m will loose to be honest.

 

Maybe, but we have yet to see PC with 4850 to beat the recent OC scores of the M17X.

Nonetheless even if they do; the possibility of an upgrade to the best cards in the next year or so with the M17X beats the current 4850 since it's most likely that the GTX300M comes on a platform MXM 3.0b

 

Wait a minute....

You think the 4850's are faster than the 280's? I hope I read that wrong because that is a pretty big brainfart you just had.. lol

 

Alienware's policy in the US is you can return your system without penalties as long as it has not shipped.

In the UK, you have 7 working days to return your system. So if it has not shipped. Call them asap on Monday and tell them you want the price cut applied to you or you will cancel the system. Most likely they will do it for you.

Here is the link towards AW UK Policies:

http://www.alienware.co.uk/sub_pages/warranty.aspx

 

I tend to agree with you even if you flash them and OC them there is no way you are going to be faster than the 280SLI.

 

The stock 4850M is a bit faster than a GTX260M, and is roughly the same as the 280s, so yeah I see no reason to believe a clocked crossfire setup couldn't beat an GTX280 SLI setup. I'm going on vantage scores here btw.

 

Can you show me those scores???

According to this site which is very good for benchmark you are completely out of it....

Benchmark Scores for Recent Graphic Cards

 

Pretty much my plan. I've already said as much in an email; however am going to ring them on my lunch on monday, as its easier for an email to be ignored than a direct phone call.

 

Sure; here's some for a start
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-280M-Review.14565.0.html

The guys with a single 4850m over in the MSI forums are getting similar scores, and SLI/Crossfire are as fallible as each other. The GTX280 SLI gets the physx boost, but aside that they look pretty similar.

If you ignore notebookchecks listings and go take a look at the individual scores on the sub pages for each card, they suddenly look a lot more comparable.

As far as I can tell, Notebookcheck's listings are decided by 3DMark 06; which varies heavily dependant on CPU used; if we compare Vantage scores between a single 4850 and GTX280M machine listed in thier subsections, they're pretty close.


Example
GTX280M
5314
M980NU X9100 2048 MB 583 / 950MHz 1024MB GDDR3 VRAM 7.15.11.7936 5314

Mobility 4850
5500
Megabook GT725 P9500 4096 MB 500 / 850MHz 512MB GDDR3 7.14.10.0630 5500

Whilst theres room for variation up and down there; that says to me the chips are very similar, and I'd rather take Vantage scores over 3Dmark06 any day now they're there; as its much less CPU orientated, and makes use of much newer testing methods

 

Your article compares the 4870 Crossfire to the 280GTX SLI which Nvidia wins in all tests.

The only potential of the 4870 is it's OC possibility and GDDR5.

Now the 4850 is far behind: 3DMark 2006: 9949
280GTX: 3DMark 2006: 11727

No way the 4850 will beat the 280GTX SLI and if you OC the 4850 then you should make a comparison with an OC 280GTX



Now Vantage scores look pretty close because the overall score is low around 5000 points.

 

As I said above, Im much more interested in Vantage scores; its much more meaningful with modern games, and much less CPU orientated (I could add thousands of points on 06 by just using a quad over a dual...game related...nope)
Given driver updates; I think this could end up pretty close

The article quote isn't what Im using as a direct comparison, but is where Im getting some of the figures Im using to compare with

 

Well, there will be only one way to find out but to this day the M17X has the highest laptop Vantage score and in my opinion there is no way it will be beat by a M17 with 4850's.

 

Well we shall see; Im actually really interested to see how it will fare, especially once the 4850s have some decent drivers going for them. If it turns out they're within 1-5%, for much less cost, I'd say that makes them a good buy.
The GTX280 M17x is massively more expensive in the UK and europe, and both a single GTX280 and 4850 seem to get a *GPU* score of 5000-5500 in 3dmark Vantage, which is where I'm interested; I want to know the graphical performance of these chips, not whether X machine with more memory and a much faster CPU got a higher score overall (no **** etc).

 

Ok, but for this kind of comparison let's not compare prices...

 

Hehe, I always compare price performance whatever Im looking at it.
The 4850 may well turn out to be 2-3% (example figure) slower than GTX280 SLI; and yet still faster than the SLI 260M, if the base price is significantly different for a comparable spec, then that will come into it for many buyers; I mean with the new price cuts, for a similar machine in the M17x you're looking at a ~$1000 difference over here in Europe, thats an awful lot of money for virtually nothing!

 

4850 oc with a qx93 can obtain around 14k in 3dmark 06, thats 1 card, the highest reported score for gtx 280m and qx9300 is around 13500+ i think with a sager(Single card v single, i dont know how SLI tech really compares between the two), dont know how that'l work with crossfire, but 4850 being based off its desktop counterpart, should quite clearly outmatch the gtx 280m which at present is based off its mobile 9800m gtx.

Both cards above were maxed overclock.

No brainfarts here, ive seen evidence from both sides of the table.

But thats synthetic crap, we need ingame reports and so on, that i havent seen.