460M + Sandy Bridge vs. 5870 Crossfire with i7 - which is better?

That clarifies some details for me… Cheers

Disregarding the 3D for a moment, do you reckon that the 460M (with a SB 2820QM) is capable of handling all current games with reasonable fluency?

Thanks

 

I didn't degrade anything, there are two different computers sitting next to each other. One is WLED (system on left, studio xps 16) and one is RGB LED (AW M17x-R2).

 

ok... wow massive difference...

 

Yup and that's why many of us R2 owners were disappointed with the R3. Add in the inferior build quality and lack of dual cards and the R3 has nothing to offer existing R2 owners. One last thing if you aren't aware, the R2's 17" display is 16:10 so you get more vertical pixels vs the 1080p 16:9 of the R3.

 

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'll have to go for the R3, over the R2. I was a bit depressed, regarding some of the aspects that I'd be required to sacrifice... Having seen your comparative shots, I’m near suicidal. Thanks for that .

 

The R3 is good for new owners that want the latest buzzword tech (usb 3.0/hdmi in/wireless hd) at the cost of performance (very little in case of 485M) and quality IMO. It's a cost effective and lighter system vs the R2 so it has it's pros. I don't think it will ever be as good of an overall system that the R2 was. I think Dell will be reserving that honor for the M18x. What the R3 does very well is compete against the likes of Asus G73 and HP's Envy.

 

Yes, definitely. A friend of mine plays BlackOps at 1080p with highest settings (except AA) and BFBC2 too with the 460m.

These games are pretty demanding and the card is totally able to handle it very well.


You can overclock the card which gives you a nice boost, as far as he told me.

 

I think you're right... I believe that the R3 is aimed at a different market than was the R2 (perhaps a combination of prospective M15X owners & general multimedia enthusiasts - kind of includes me).

It’s got some serious drawbacks, in comparison to its predecessor, most notably the lack of dual GPU support, the poor (atm – 485M soon I hope) single GPU offerings, and the outer chassis material.

However, Sandy Bridge vs. Clarksfield reviews leave little room for imagination. Also, an R3 purchase enables CPU/GPU upgrades, down the line (even if it’s unlikely that I’ll ever do this).

I reckon that, upon delivery, whichever machine I order, I’ll have some regrets about what I sacrificed by not ordering the other.

Alienware ain’t making life easy!

A very clear/useful response. I really appreciate this. Thanks mate

How does one give 'rep power' points?

 

Click the little balance beam.



I think at this point you need to make the decision as there's not much else to say.

Bottom line is
R2 = older tech, more powerful, RGBLED, few to no future upgrade options
R3 = newer tech, less powerful stock GPU, WLED 120Hz, many future upgrade options

460m is fine for current and earlier games at 1080p, but may require lowered detail on newer stuff.

 

Good summation… thanks bud… Before ordering, I’m going to wait 1-2-3 weeks… 2 reasons:
1. To see what becomes of available GPU options
2. To allow others to receive their R3s first, and be our ‘guinea pigs’

 

(R3 btw)...

 

Apart from you seeking to compare the 2 systems (which the R3 is not a true comparison to the R2 but rather an 3D ASUS or HP Envy 3D). I think waiting for others to provide insight into the machine first hand would be the wisest option for you, that way you don't go wasting your money. IMO the R3 is good for those that want 3-D, 120hz screen, and battery life (and that's pushing it). To say that the R3 is upgradeable down the road is heresay and needs to be seen to believe. I wouldn't rule out the R2 just yet because it still holds flagship status as being a more powerful system vs. R3 atm and the R2's 5870 gpu's are GDDR5 and DX11 capable. Also if you don't need CFX you have the option to disable it just to keep in mind.

 

I dont know which is really considered "better" but in one of the early post somebody said the new cpu 2820 is more powerful than the 940xm?

I am confused. With throttlestop the 940xm can hit over 3.4ghz stable for gaming and usually higher. The 2820 will peak at those speeds for 30 seconds and then back down. Also we have no idea if throttlestop has the possibility of supporting sandy bridge.

Just my .02

StevenX

 

if i were you, i would go with the R3 + base gpu

then for gaming performance, since the R3 is Sandy Bridge and the R3 has expressport x1 2.0

i would do a DiY Vidock + GTX 560 or GTX 580 with a corsair ATX powersupply

it would be alot more cost effective and give you much much better performance while having much longer battery life.

also the gpu on sandy bridge is good enough for basic stuff and some gaming

if you need the performance, just plug your DiY Vidock

DiY Vidock will be alot faster than any mobile gpu(sli or crossfire) because desktop gpu is alot faster than any mobile counter parts





with sandy bridge, you would get about 80% performance of the desktop gpu using DiY Vidock

 

Wow that's a pretty hefty price, although hopefully it will come down after a bit. From what I have been reading the R3 is definitely getting the 6970m at some point too (I think its in the owners manual). Im guessing it would be considerably cheaper (as an upgrade or aftermarket) and is suppose to perform similarly. I have no idea if it would also support the 3D features or not though, as the current ATI card doesn't.

 

The 6970m from the eurocom site is 420$... I'd say that's a competitive pricing compared to the 485m!

As the 6970m will be offered in the M17x R3 I think it will be 3D capable... but I don't really know a lot about these cards... maybe you will only be able to take the nvidia card when you want the 3D screen.

 

IIRC, DiY Vidock is still limited to a fairly large extent by the fact that it can only use a x1 PCIe lane whereas the MXM cards get access to x8 and x16 lanes. Whatever the card can do, it will be limited by the bandwidth of the bus that ExpressCard 2.0 1x is limited to.

 

considering desktop equivalent is twice as fast or sometimes even trice as fast, getting 80% of its performance is pretty darn impressive by just using a single connection(expresscard) on sandy bridge

if more performance is wanted, he can also remove his m-pcie and do a x2 2.0
in which theoretically could achieve 100% speed of the card



http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/397667-lets-figure-out-how-make-diy-vidock-16.html#post5122549

 

Can somebody tell me does the M17x R3 come with a dual 1.5GB Nvidia card?
how is this compared to the crossfire? fps wise?

 

Graphs (may have been from Intel) on sandy bridge review articles states that the base 2630 is faster than even the extreme previous generation icore 7's.

 

He's talking about the 940xm combined with throttlestop... that's definitely not in those graphs

 

Hope Uncle Ted will mastermind something for the 2nd gen. Too.

 

@DR. J, i would bet that the t-stop 940xm stomps the 2820 or 2630 or whatever in any benchmark that lasts over 30 seconds. Even the 920xm would.

That's why I am in no hurry to order the SC processors unless I see real proof that you get a large boost. For us alienware owners I bet the newer cards 6870, 6970 will be compatible with the older Revisions of the m15 or m17.

Also I have some real issues with the benchmarks that compare the "notebook" version of the video cards to the "deskstop" to help market the DIY Vidocks. Example the notebook version of the 5850 IS the desktop version of the 5770 with some minor clock changes. So it is NOWHERE near 50-70 percent slower than 5850 desktop @stock. Maybe 20-25 percent slower and that's a big maybe. Most of the time it's less than 20 percent. So combine that with I7 processors and you have desktop speeds without any docks necessary.

StevenX

 

SB is already supported in the latest release However as far as I know there's no adjustable multiplicator in the non extreme chips, so TS won't help a lot for CPUs like the 2820.

The advantage of SB is of course less heat and less power consumption. (Along with more performance, apparetly they really improved the Turbo Boost technology... )

Edit: That's what unclewebb just wrote in his Throttlestop guide thread:

bad news... but I guess this doesn't apply to the extreme processors.

 

Umm, a downclocked Radeon HD 5770 is significantly slower than a stock Radeon HD 5850. That's 800SPs@625MHz vs 1440SPs@850MHz (nearly 2.5 times the performance). Also the memory bandwidth is doubled on the 5850.

 

@Jenes - according to the BFBC2 gpu benchmarks and these are subjective they show around 25 percent difference.
Example 5770 45 fps vs 5850 60.1 fps.

Once you enable more features then sure, the 5850 may pull a little further away. Still nowhere near 50-70 percent slower (5770 vs 5850).

http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page4.html

StevenX

 

I'm totally agree with you , I really laugh out loud after seen these post. (btw we have same spec build of r2 , but I don't have blue-ray )

 

Understandable in such a CPU-intensive game. But in 3DMark Vantage, for example (in which the graphics tests don't even strain my lowly Core 2 Duo P7350), the 5850 scores much higher than the 5770, especially at 2560x1600 which is about as GPU-bound as you can get. And that's for the desktop 5770, which is clocked higher than the mobile 5850.

 

No the new processors , were tested faster that the old ones. uuh why would they make new sh*t that's slower than the old sh*t, does that make sense, also it seems like a 920 and 920qm are much different in perfomance seening as they are built differently, learn to read the letters at the end!! m = mobile.
If you think the 940 and 920 are faster than the 2820, your crazy the 940qm benches at 4445 < passmark, and the 2630qm @ 5,420, nevermind the 2820qm, plus when you look at the face that the 940 is about $800 and the 2630 starts arounf $325 you'd feel small if you bought the 940/920

 

I debated the OP quandary. No one has mentioned checking out the dell outlet. I just scored a m17x R2 920 i7, 5870 CF and 500gig HD for 1800. I intend to use throttlestop and OC the system as I am about performance. The R3 with 460M is nowhere near the 5870CF.

Plus the overall chassis is proven on the R2 with possible issues with the R3 overheating. I am not sure if there has been a rule out already, but the R2 MAY be upgradable to the 485M/6970. It has the cooling and the PSU most likely. If the r3 can handle a 485 in a slimmer lighter design, I would assume there could be potential for current R2 owners.

Either way get what you want and can afford. Just don't buy something "new" thinking it's better because it's basically a more affordable laptop meant to compete with the g73 and not represent the flagship of gaming for AW.

 

Come on, tis has been discussed in a lot of threads here, and even in this thread, just read it properly...

The 2820qm may beat all the "old" i7 CPUs at stock clocks, but... the 920/940xm are extreme processors with adjustable multi, TDP and TDC which allows a quite crazy overclock as long as the cooling system is decent.

I'm talking about 3.2-3.3 GHz across all cores without any issues, and that's not even the limit.
This will beat the 2820qm performance-wise... you can't do this with a 2820, you simply can't.

 

What Stvnhwk - fails to understand is that the "NEW" cpu's with all the flashy numbers will hit the max turbo for about 30-60 seconds and then back off. The 920 and 940 cpu's (with throttlestop) can STAY at 3.3-3.5 ghz until YOU choose to back them off. That's all 8 threads too!

I am tired of kids assuming you can't read when your OPINION differs from theirs. YOU do your research before calling others out!

First Review of M17xR3 with 460m and 2820... 13k 3dmark06 score (@1280x1024)... Not my review so no whining at me...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/549937-alienware-m17xr3-i7-2820-gtx460m-review.html

StevenX

 

check ebay for great deals, i just got a m17x r2 with a 720qm, and crossfire 5870's for only $1600, and it had the advanced warranty which is the best and it lasts til 2012. and its the red one with no scratches, man it looks great.