Nvidia 9M series? Is it out yet? When will alienware offer it?

Im looking for a new laptop for september, and wanna buy it now, but Alienware doesnt offer the 9M series that I hear people talking about. And nvidia has the 9800 and such out already so shouldnt they release an M series as well?

Also is it worth buying a laptop now, or should I wait a month or two before ordering (Hoping new components will be released..) Any new cpus being planned for release in the summer?

 

Yes wait, a new platform from Intel is coming out, called Centrino 2 (also called Montevina) and AMD is launching its Puma platform. Both will be shown off at Computex, a computer show in Taipei during June 3rd-7th. By then, Alienware laptops should have rhe Nvidia 9 Series.

 

New cpus have just been released (well not just released...penryn). Not sure about the new video cards tho...but i do remember seeing clevo/sager having the 9500m offered somewhere/or maybe it was they have planned to put it on there.

 

As far as I know, nothing has been announced officially yet regarding the remaining 9m series (don't quote me on that though), but you can probably expect it to be a die shrunk re-hash of the 8m series.

 

Look, Alienware JUST released their m15x and m17x line, featuring essentially brand new 8800M GTX's. It's highly doubtful that a high-end 9 series mobile card will appear any time soon, let alone in Alienware laptops (Or Sager/Clevo for that matter). My guess? Q3 or Q4 is when you should be expecting the high-end 9 series cards to trickle out.

 

You'll see parts of the mobile 9 series some time this summer, though parts of it are pretty much exactly the same as mobile 8 series, for example the 8600m GT is the same as the 9500m GS. In other words, I don't know if they will have a high end mobile card capable of taking down the 8800m GTX this year.

Anyway, you probably wont see a whole new processor till next year when Nahelam hits full force (the name of the next Intel processors), I believe high-end desktop versions will be available at the end of this year, but mobile versions wont be around for at least a month or two later.

What you will see is a new chipset this summer, which is actually worth an upgrade, considering it will cut down on power consumption and increase performance a tiny bit.

 

9800m is just a refresh of 8800m, no huge difference will be gain

 

The only reason I'm looking forward to the 9800m is because it will push down the prices of 8800 equipped notebooks.

 

Another thing that will push down the price of notebooks is an HD3800 series, the HD3650 with GDDR3, etc...... And the new platforms from each AMD and Intel. The new platforms are good to get due to faster memory controllers and RAM, DDR2-1066 or even DDR3 for Intel. AMD's new offering will be an atractive budget choice. Some AMD laptops (the "Gold Edition") are already capable of using DDR2-800, but they are coming with DDR2-667.

 

AW won`t be turning to Montevina until maybe next year. And no 9th series until the autumn at least...

 

If 9 series is so similar to 8 series then I would like to ask why do they make the 9 series

 

Asus has some lower and middle end 9 series GPUs out now.

 

Nvidia would have to answer that.
It is possible that Nvidia had planned to make them faster, but failed.

If you read reviews on them the 9500M GS with DDR2 performs better than the 8600M GT with DDR2.

They could have simply kept them as the 8600 series, even though they shrunk the die, but then they don't get any new advertising and reviews and all they look bad (stagnant to investors) for not putting out a new line every 6 months.

Recently AMD did a die shrink on their Turion processors and didn't rename them, and cause further confusion. This die shrink also happened to include an upgraded memory controller to run DDR2-800 and because there was no hype for the budget notebook maker, they don't get new reviews and OEMs don't put the faster memory into a laptop perfectly capable of utilizing it. AMD may always be the enthusiast choice for reasons like this, but Nvidia wants all the PR they can get.

 

aren't them support DX 10.1?

 

Nvidia still does not support DX10.1. You can probably easily figure this out on reviews of the cards.

Only the ATI HD3000 series does right now.

I'm not sure people want to be doing anything in DX10 or 10.1 yet anyway, with these middle of the road cards.

 

What's the whole deal about DX10.1 ? Will current 8 series GPUs like 8800M GTX never support it ? In other words, it's already obsolete ?

 

It`s a bunch of useless features anyway.
Hands up those who play DX10 ONLY games. Let`s be honest, DX10 is not ready yet.Not even today.
So why the fuss about 10.1?

 

Why give support to something that doesn't exist yet? By the time that DX10.1 will be deeply inside the market(?), newer GPUs already have came out... maybe DX10.2 is already out by that time...

 

Its not useless. Just because you aren't going to be able to run Oblivion or Crisis with DX10.1 doesn't mean some other users won't get a better visual experiene with animation or video of some sort that uses it. Not everything requires the fastest GPU, just games.

I wouldn't say you should base your purchase on DX10 use, because it is not necessary, but its not useless.

 

Montevina / 9-series should be out by July/August. Thats the perfect time to pick up a lappy for September.

 

I've been waiting for the new 9 series GPUs too. I don't necessarily want the highest end 9 series card, I just want like a 9600 GT DDR3, I'll be happy.

 

You could probably just get an 8700GT. The 9600 will likely not be much faster than that.

 

The only reason to get a 9 series over the 8 series will be if the 9 series does a better job with battery life than the 8800 does. I think that would be a wanted upgrade. 8800 just sucks the life out of a computer. I'd really like to see something on the 8800 esque level with better battery life/cooling.

 

I would if they were offered in 15.4" notebooks. I'd imagine the 9600 to be smaller and more efficient in terms of cooling so I'm looking forward to that as well.

 

For a 15" notebook you would probably be happy enough with a HD3650 with GDDR3, but I haven't seem them yet. This will bridge the gap between 8600M GT DDR3 and the 8700M GT. It is built using smaller feature size than even the Nvidia 9 series. However ATI packs in so many transistors they still get nice and warm.