Capabilities of crossfire 6990's in m18x

I am trading my desktop + cash for an m18x since lugging my custom made full tower is a pain in the arze for LAN parties. I know I will be taking a performance loss as my desktop has an i7 980x at 4.26GHz and crossfire 5870's that I use to game on a dell u3011 30" 2560x1600.

Now I know desktop 5870's in crossfire will destroy the 6990's in crossfire as the 6990m's are down clocked desktop 6870's. I play a ton of starcraft 2 and will be playing a ton of diablo 3. Can the i7 2960xm + crossfire 6990's play these games on high to ultra high settings at 2560x1600. Somewhere in between high and ultra high would be fine for me I don't mind if I would have to turn a couple minor things down but for the most part want ultra high quality settings.

I am going to buy the best notebook stand cooler i can possibly get for the m18x no matter what the cost. So if stock settings for the cpu and gpu's wont be enough to game at that resolution and that high settings I can overclock as aggressive as possible and use the notebook cooler to extend the oc capabilities as much as possible.

He has already upgraded the thermal paste on all the heat sinks he tried out 5 different brands and the prolimatech pro pk1 was the best so the cpu and gpu's already have top quality paste on them. He also replaced the fans with quieter but higher rpm so the m18x is getting great heat exchange.

So if I get the best notebook cooler money can possibly buy and i push the i7 2960xm to 4.0GHz+ on all 4 cores. Now the 6990m is a down clocked 6870 the 6990m is 715/900 with 1120 stream processors and the desktop 6870 is 900/1050 with 1120 stream. With the upgraded thermal paste and upgraded internal fans and a top of the line notebook cooler I'm going to try to go for as close as possible to the desktop specs of the card so I'd need a 185MHz core bump and a 150MHz memory bump. Will I be able to run SC2 and D3 at close to ultra high settings at 2560x1600 if the stock speeds of my cpu and gpu wont run it smoothly would a 4Ghz 2960xm + xfire 6990m's running at 6870 desktop specs (or as close as possible since 6990m has the exact same specs as 6870 just lower clocks)? How much lower performance would i get with crossfire 6990m's OC'd to = the desktop crossfire 6870? Basically how much of a downgrade is crossfire desktop 6870 (since I will try to OC the 6990m to = a stock desktop 6870) to crossfire 5870 and can crossfire 6990m's overclocked to equal desktop 6870 crossfire performance play both SC2 and D3 at high to ultra high quality and 2560x1600 rez when coupled with a 4GHz i7 2960xm?

 

I would wait for the 7970m

 

The dual 6990Ms will handle anything you can throw at them. The potential increases in the new 7970Ms will be nice if you can wait, but if you can get a good deal on the 6990Ms, it will eat SC2 alive on the native 1080 screen. Should be quite a lot of power for a single external at the resolution you are running too.

And, no need for a cooler.. The M18X runs really cool, its large enough and the heat-sinks are big enough to dissipate the heat without getting too hot or loud. Even Overclocked, you should be fine. But.. there are some good cooling options.

We have a lot of good Threads on the machine here;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/


ETA: Love the handle.. Hackers is my favorite Popcorn flick.

 

Zero Cool, the 6990 can't do 900mhz core...you'll max out somewhere between 830-850mhz on the dell cards. The dell cards will easily do 1050 ram though...my card can run 1250mhz ram, but its not necessary to run that high because there's tons of bandwidth even at 1050. I run my 6990 @ 825/1100 for games everyday...temps are great

So factor that in when you calculate. So the question becomes, can you run 2560x1600 with just slightly downclocked desktop xfire 6870's

 

Well I'm not buying just the cards. I'm trading my i7-980x 5870 xfire desktop for an m18x. Though I will also have to throw in some Cash as the m18x he has put upgrades into that he installed himself is worth more than my desktop.

M18x Specs:

i7 2960xm with I think just a straight 3.8GHz OC on the base clocks turbo either disabled or I'm not sure. But I will OC both my base and my turbo to the max unless i can get a higher stable OC just doing a base OC and disabling turbo.

Crossfire Radeon 6990m that I will also OC to the max. I'm hoping they can drive the 2560x1600 external monitor well with starcraft 2 and diablo 3 on ultra high graphic settings. Maybe this will be upgradeable to the crossfire 7970m which would probably be able to drive all games at 2560x1600.

Prolimatech Pro PK1 thermal paste applied to all heatsinks He said this move alone lowered CPU by 5C and GPU's by 6 and 7 C. He's not sure how much of that decrease is from a poor job done by dell or from the superior paste. Either way it's impressive and will help OC's.

He changed out the fans to some Japanese ones that have better cfm and static pressure but are actually quieter than stock dell. Not sure how he did it he loves to tinker. Surprisingly the fans only lowered everything 3-4C these were changed after the paste had been done. Together with the paste decrease I was impressed.

16GB 1866MHz DDR3 RAM 4x4GB Corsair Vengeance Rated CAS 10 Running at CAS 9. He put a ton of time into researching all the different 204 pin so-dimm rams available and the Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB packs were the best ram you can buy at this very moment. 4GB sticks that run 1866MHz and CAS 9 no problem. Again impressive. I don't think I'll even use 8GB of ram at one time I actually could probably be fine with just 4GB of ram. I never have too many programs open at once. But it's already there. Maybe I'll experiment with some RAM disks.

Killer 1103 wireless n. I'm not sure I believe this is that much better than an Intel 6300 ultimate, but it's at least = and it has some nice bandwidth monitoring built in and who knows it may actually help latencies and such a bit.

2TB Dual RAID 0 WD Blue 1TB 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD's. Should I keep these in raid 0? I will just be storing media files like photo/video/audio mainly on here. Maybe install some games if I run out of program installation room on the 240GB SSD. Will RAID 0 provide any real benefits on storing and using my media files?

Optical Bay Replaced with 240GB Intel 520 Cherryville SSD. Install the operating system and all my applications and games on here or at least as many as I can until I run out of room but 240GB should be plenty for my programs and OS for awhile.


I'm hoping I can smoothly transition to this set up vs using my desktop. And the m18x can double as a very portable LAN party desktop. That is the main reason I am doing it. My desktop is a huge Cooler Master 942 HAF-X Full ATX Tower and it's a heavy beast with an ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z Extended ATX Mobo. Not the funnest thing to move around.

Will the m18x be able to be upgraded to Radeon 7970m's from Radeon 6990m's?

What is the power usage difference between the 2 cards and can the m18x PSU handle it?
(I know SLI gtx580m's use a good amount more power than the 6990m's so I know there is some room if the 7970m's use more power than the 6990m's)

Are you able to use switchable graphics on the m18x to turn off the crossfire gpu's if you want to just browse the web somewhere?

Can I buy some super over-sized 120++ WHr battery so I could possibly pull 5 or 6 hours of web browsing if switchable graphics works?

It will mainly be used as a stationary desktop with external mouse, keyboard and monitor so even if it doesn't have switchable graphics and doesn't have any after market huge batteries I can buy I won't be that upset if I'm permanently doomed to 2 hour web surfing times I mean that's what my Envy 14 is for right

 

Sounds like a killer system.

We have a benchmark competition thread going for the M18X.. When you get it setup, see how well it does.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/632169-official-alienware-m18x-benchmark-thread-part-2-a.html

On 3DMark Vantage, top dog with AMD is getting;

Shaden - P30715 AMD 6990M

 

Just wanted to throw out that a LANbox is also a good choice. Desktop components in a portable case, but the m18x is great too.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

Agreed, for infrequent travelers its a good, cheap option. Still not as portable as a laptop though.

Welcome to Thermaltake

 

what fans did he use as the replacements?

 

I've been a fan of Shuttle boxes for years (decade at least probably). Single slot machine can handle pretty much any GPU and crank out crazy fps for any game at 1080p. Very portable, and just haul an LCD with you.