OFFICIAL: Alienware M17x R3 / R4 - Owners Lounge

[mw86]

Have you had much luck with overclocking this laptop? My perspective is since the means is being provided by Intel its got to be limp. Of course I'd love to try so I can so I can clock the processor as sold to me(Intel has pulled the wool over the consumer's eyes with Turbo Boost).

Baseclock overclocking mainly and recently on non-xm and xm chipd you can raise your watts... also if your really interested in overclocking... you can get a 2920xm... Widezu put on i his and its working using unlocked bios and the Intel XTU.

[svl7]

Just read some news on a German AW forum, there's a guy who's apparently working as hardware engineer for Dell/AW and he's providing some small insights from time to time, most of which are pretty accurate.

In case you're curious....

- Apparently the M18x won't get a new revision and is e.o.l by the Q2/Q3 '12 (depending on how much it sells out).

- The r3 will get a GPU update, Tegra 3 (?? ... a bit weird imo) and Kepler (as expected). He's talking about Q1 '12 (would be awesome, but somehow it seems very optimistic imo)

- new high res display (Q1 '12)

- new 3d display, glasses free 3d Q2 '12

- r3 will become the r4 in Q2/Q3 - new mobo with EFI and IVY.

You see... a lot of these things have been rumors for a while and some things are not too hard to guess. Very interesting is (imo) the new high-res display which will be more than 1080p and apparently not 16:9

The high-end "Kepler" cards will be about 3 times (!!!) as fast as the 580m (raw performance) but come with a lower power draw.

No word on the new AMD cards so far.

And as I said, that's not official stuff, but during the past this guy has provided a lot of very great information in advance, so I think most of it will indeed turn out to be true.

[unreal25]

1920x1200 is a sufficient res for a 17" screen imo. I'd rather get a better quality display (IPS) than super-high res. But... I'm curious about these Kepler cards.

Also @ 3D... *yawn*... are they still trying to get that around? I'd think they'd give up already.

Hopefully the new mobo will finally have a working SATA controller that won't have to be registry-patched to get maximum speeds on SSD.

[svl7]

I love higher pixel-density... it's awesome for working with photos and simply looks stunning. The 1080p on the 15.6 screen of the M15x is already nice, but more would be simply awesome.

I'm not a 3d fan either, but I have to admit that I'm very curious when it comes to glasses free 3d... I can't imagine playing with the shutter glasses, but glasses free might work out well, I don't know. It'll totally depend on the 3d effect it can produce. Some parallax displays simply make the picture look like it has several layers, which looks very bad... but if the depth effect is nice enough without the "layer effect" I can totally imagine that I'd like it.

[unreal25]

I don't agree. There are very very few TN screens are good for photos, mainly 95% gamut ones, e.g. Thinkpad T520... and RGB LED is good for gaming (not that good for realistic color reproduction even though I like it this way), but otherwise they are far cry from decent IPS... *especially* for photos.

[deadbydawn]

First off hello everyone on here :-)

After reading a lot in this forum, i finally got my order for an m17x-r3 in :-D

here are the specs of the machine i ordered:

- M17X Stealth Black

- FHD-WLED-LCD (1920x1080)

- Intel 2670QM

- 8GB Dual Channel

- 640 GB Raid 0 (2 x 320 GB)

- 2 GB HD6990

Now it's time for me to wait for the arrival of the alien....and I don't like waiting ;-))

Edited November 14, 2011 by deadbydawn
Aligning the specs ;)

[Brian]

Just read some news on a German AW forum, there's a guy who's apparently working as hardware engineer for Dell/AW and he's providing some small insights from time to time, most of which are pretty accurate.

In case you're curious....

- Apparently the M18x won't get a new revision and is e.o.l by the Q2/Q3 '12 (depending on how much it sells out).

- The r3 will get a GPU update, Tegra 3 (?? ... a bit weird imo) and Kepler (as expected). He's talking about Q1 '12 (would be awesome, but somehow it seems very optimistic imo)

- new high res display (Q1 '12)

- new 3d display, glasses free 3d Q2 '12

- r3 will become the r4 in Q2/Q3 - new mobo with EFI and IVY.

You see... a lot of these things have been rumors for a while and some things are not too hard to guess. Very interesting is (imo) the new high-res display which will be more than 1080p and apparently not 16:9

The high-end "Kepler" cards will be about 3 times (!!!) as fast as the 580m (raw performance) but come with a lower power draw.

No word on the new AMD cards so far.

And as I said, that's not official stuff, but during the past this guy has provided a lot of very great information in advance, so I think most of it will indeed turn out to be true.

Hmmm so if M18x becomes EOL then I wonder if Dell will abandon dual card setups and stick to single cards? I would not be surprised since the r3 definitely sells more and has less problems.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[unreal25]

Yeah it would make sense. Also these single high end cars are really powerful, I don't know if there is any need for dual card setups... I mean aside from running benchmarks.

BTW, deadbydawn grats on your setup. It looks awesome!

[Brian]

Yeah it would make sense. Also these single high end cars are really powerful, I don't know if there is any need for dual card setups... I mean aside from running benchmarks.

BTW, deadbydawn grats on your setup. It looks awesome!

Nah dual cards is useful in a lot of games, take battlefield 3 for example. Even with 6990 crossfire it can't maintain 60 fps at all times in ultra mode. Single card gets owned.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[deadbydawn]

Yeah it would make sense. Also these single high end cars are really powerful, I don't know if there is any need for dual card setups... I mean aside from running benchmarks.

BTW, deadbydawn grats on your setup. It looks awesome!

Thanks a lot =) I caaaan't wait =))

Btw, what does "EOL" mean?

[Brian]

Thanks a lot =) I caaaan't wait =))

Btw, what does "EOL" mean?

EOL means end of life.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[deadbydawn]

[MENTION=5]Brian K.[/MENTION] ah i see, thx!

[deadbydawn]

funny thing, i just realized after researching on the net, that if from alienware switzerland, it isn't possible to customize the "custom"-nameplate engraving. it just comes with the generic one (model name i guess). i remember that i couldn't see any option anywhere while putting together my configuration...

it's a detail, but i think this is once more dell behaving BSish...

[svl7]

funny thing, i just realized after researching on the net, that if from alienware switzerland, it isn't possible to customize the "custom"-nameplate engraving. it just comes with the generic one (model name i guess). i remember that i couldn't see any option anywhere while putting together my configuration...

it's a detail, but i think this is once more dell behaving BSish...

Wow, hey cool! Another Swiss forum member Welcome!!

Yeah, Dell doesn't offer the custom nameplate in Switzerland, as far as I know it's not available at all outside from the U.S.

[deadbydawn]

Wow, hey cool! Another Swiss forum member Welcome!!

Yeah, Dell doesn't offer the custom nameplate in Switzerland, as far as I know it's not available at all outside from the U.S.

haha, nice hello there dude and thx for the welcome!

wtf. hmm, well, i don't really care but i still feel f'd in the a$$ for spending all that money and not get to customize everything haha ;-)

[svl7]

Totally true, but still... when do you ever look at the backplate... haha.

[deadbydawn]

yeah of course, i don't hope i will have to deal with the behind of the beast too often ;-)

[deadbydawn]

soooo i recieved my m17x-r3 today and i'm setting everything up now. now i was wondering if anyone here is using alien autopsy? seems like a bunch a useless sh*ç and i don't think that there's much use for it. but still wondering

[Brian]

soooo i recieved my m17x-r3 today and i'm setting everything up now. now i was wondering if anyone here is using alien autopsy? seems like a bunch a useless sh*ç and i don't think that there's much use for it. but still wondering

I've heard of it but no idea what it is since I didn't get it with my M18x. Care to post some screenshots?

[deadbydawn]

it's basically a tool which gives u detailed system information (but either i'm too stupid or it seriously doesn't have a tab on the graphicscard which is in the system), lets you download drivers off the dell website (but - as shown in my screenshot - the website tells me there is no drivers for my m17x-r3) and lets you create a password-reset-disc, scan your hardware etc...

ps: sorry, but since i'm swiss my software is in german ;-)

[freedomofthedarkendheart]

Interesting but just junk software crapware, it's a prettier version of HWINFO64. IPS 1080P screen for the R3? Nice! But yeah a lot of people i know use the M18X and also the M17XR2 for video editing, graphic design they really need the dual graphics and sometimes not everyone buys a precision for graphic design and i totally agree dual the better, and of course a lot of games in the next coming year are going to get beffer and more demanding and with that your always going to need dual graphics.

[deadbydawn]

I have been installing/uninstalling/reinstalling/bsod-ing/wsod-ing a whole lot the last couple of days and now got the catalyst 11.11a running on my horse. i tried a ton of different methods but never succeeded, until i found this post:

M17xR3 Owners - **Driver Updates** - Page 19

Post #185 from User GeoCake was, what worked out for me.

Now doing some Benchmarks to see if it actually was worth the effort (as I don't have BF3 or Rage installed atm).

[deadbydawn]

so as far as benchmarking goes, i can't see any difference, will have to wait to chech in-game.

[mw86]

so as far as benchmarking goes, i can't see any difference, will have to wait to chech in-game.

interesting so that Alien Autopsy is a info utility?

[deadbydawn]

interesting so that Alien Autopsy is a info utility?

my last two posts don't have anything to do with alien autopsy, but with my update of the catalyst drivers. sorry for the confusing