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Here are some videos of some people who received their M14x prior to ours. Just to fill in the gap of waiting. Unboxing: English Accent: French: Red Version (Quiet): Red Version : How to OC: Lights: Configure: Rainbow theme: Performance: 3DMark06(stock) : 3DMark06(OC): Games: Black OPS: YouTube - Alienware M14x - CoD Black Ops SinglePlayer Gameplay Black OPS2: Crysis 2: YouTube - Alienware M14x - Crysis 2 Gameplay Bad Company2: YouTube - Alienware M14x - Bad Company 2 SinglePlayer Gameplay Metro 2033: YouTube - Alienware M14x - Metro2033 Gameplay Starcraft 2: YouTube - Alienware m14x Starcraft 2 Performance. (too short) Brink: YouTube - Alienware m14x Brink Gameplay Video Operation Flashpoint: Gameplay video made by Steven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVEOJ3GGIgI RAGINGAZN628'S HACKINTOSH TUTORIAL VIDEOS Ragingazn628 Hackintosh Install Part 1 Ragingazn628 Hackintosh Install Part 2 Ragingazn628 Hackintosh Install Part 3 Ragingazn628 Hackintosh Install Part 4 Subscribe to Ragingazn628's Youtube Channel (Tom's tech tips) for more gameplay videos and unboxings. Thanks to all who posted these vids. Just add some to the list if you find anything new.

In case you have some additional info that should be included, or if I missed something important, let me know and I will include it. IMPORTANT: The 6970m is not officially supported by Dell. Upgrading to this card may void your warranty. The 6970m is a powerful card, it will draw more power and produce more heat. This card can significantly improve the performance of your system, however, the long-term effects of running this card in a M15x are currently unknown. But it works great so far Cards that are known to work: The card Dell uses in the M17x R3: This has only been tested for a short while so far, but it seems to work perfectly fine. Credits go to Rogue-OP and iloveb00bs. The first guys who tried to put a 6970m in a M15x. -DP/HDMI works, confirmed by Strigae, thanks!!. -Fan control works It seems you need to install the M17x R3 drivers first before you can get the official AMD drivers. I guess installing for example the modded 11.4 will work as well. Dell Part nr. is: V9XKH. Good luck when ordering one from Dell, depending on where you live and what kind of rep you get on the phone they might not want to sell you the card as it isn't officially available for your system. Call again in this case, or if you know someone with a M17x R3 let him order the card for you. 6970m from MXM-upgrade.com: Works great, but no fan control. The fans are constantly at a high speed, but not completely at full full speed. For now you'll need to manually control the fans with HWinfo32. -DP/HDMI works. Sound through HDMI works when you install the Dell 6970m vbios and the M17x R3 HDMI audio driver. -m15x-amd-6970m-everything-you-need-know.html#post3717"]Here are the instructions for this. Card can now be ordered for the M15x from mxm-upgrade. Clevo (and resellers) 6970m: The card from Clevo and resellers (Eurocom etc.) works as well, but make sure you get a version of the card which has holes for the back plate! Some of these cards have the screw holes for mounting the heatsink soldered on which makes it impossible to use the Dell backplate, and since Clevo uses slightly smaller screws than Dell you can’t simply put your heatsink on such a card. Contact your dealer in advance to make sure you get a card which doesn’t have the screw holes soldered to the PCB, otherwise you’ll have to remove it (which is difficult) or use some smaller screws on the heatsink. For all these cards the heatsink of the M15x fits perfectly. No modification needed. Cards from other vendors / manufacturers may work as well. If you got a different 6970m running in your M15x let me know and I'll upgrade the list. Things to do before exchanging the card: Download the drivers. This modded 11.5 should work, click on "MobilityMod Windows 7/Vista" in the linked thread. Also get GPU-Z for monitoring your video card and verifying it, Trixx, for under- and overclocking and in case you haven't got a Dell card also HWinfo32 (I recommend getting it anyway since it is a great system monitoring tool) Make sure you have thermal paste, maybe some new thermal pads as well as something to clean the heatsink (e.g. isoproply alcohol) and some cloths around. I also highly recommend using a grounded ESD-mat and a wristband. Know what you're doing. You need to partially disassemble your machine to get to the GPU. Prepare yourself thoroughly, check out the M15x service manual, as well as the if you don't know how to get to the GPU. It can be helpful to write down all the steps in advance when you're doing this for the first time. If something is still unclear about the disassembly procedure after looking at the video and checking out the service manual let me know, I can provide you some pictures if necessary. The upgrading procedure: Uninstall your GPU drivers. Make a power drain (Turn off your M15x, remove the power cord and the battery. Then press and hold down the power button (Alienhead) for about 10-20 sec. Remove your GPU - Here's a little guide with pics in case you need some help. Clean your heatsink, if necessary replace the thermal pads with new ones. Make sure the 6970m has a retention bracket on the back of the GPU. If not take the one from your old GPU and put it there. Also make sure you read the section about the "retention bracket problem". Properly insert your GPU, make sure that it sits properly. Apply the thermal paste, and attach the heatsink. Then (after reassembling your system), boot, install the drivers and reboot. Make sure the fans are running. Open GPU-Z and verify your card and the clocks. It should look more or less like this. Default 3D clocks are 680/900MHz (core/memory) and 150/100MHz when idling. Make sure PowerPlay is enabled in the Catalyst Control Center. Also make sure Stealth Mode is deactivated. Check your temperatures. Idle temps should be 40-50°C, depending on your ambient temp of course. While gaming or doing something similar GPU-intense the system will run significantly hotter, 70-80°C, maybe a bit higher. Note: By lifting the back of your system a bit (for example with a book) you can improve the airflow in the system. This can really help lowering the temps. The back plate problem: The retention bracket of the 6970m has a different size than the regular M15x cards (260m, 5850m etc.) When your card doesn't come with this x-plate you need to take the one you have on your old GPU, but this one won't fit properly. Nevertheless it works, even if it covers some resistors on the back of the card. Make sure you're not shorting anything. Usually the back plate has an insulating black plastic pad on it, this will work. However, if your x-plate doesn't have this pad on it, you must cover it with some thin, insulating tape. Here you can see the problem: In this picture I marked where the back plate should be: And in this one I highlighted the area which gets covered by the too small bracket of my 260m: The space beneath the card becomes pretty tight, but it works. My advice is contacting your dealer before buying the card and asking whether he can provide the correct x-plate. (In case he tells you that you should use the one from your old card tell him it has a different size.) The backplate problem part 2: In case you got your hands on a card with a proper backplate - cool! There's only one problem... the holes with the threads for fixing the screws are standing out just a bit too much. Compare it to the original backplate which came with your M15x, the difference is about 3 millimeters. Due to this, the heatsink applies almost no pressure on the die when you mount it on the card, resulting in high temps. A simple mod will solve this, just grind down the "screw holes" of the backplate a couple of millimeters, easy to do and very effective. This will highly increase the pressure which is applied on the die and bring down the temps. Just take it easy with fixing the screws, if you grind down the metal a bit to much and then fix the screws until you can't turn them anymore you might crack the die if you're unlucky. I recommend comparing the plate with your original M15x plate and just grind your 69xxm plate down until it has the same height. Here some pics which illustrate the problem. I cut of quite some material, you might want to leave a bit more to make sure you don't accidentally kill your card with the pressure. Heatpipe problem: It's possible that one of the coils on the cards is standing out just a little bit too much and thus touching the heatsink. This can lead to a small gap between the die and the heatsink which will lead to increased temps as well. To prevent this you can do a slightly crazy mod, as done by @widezu69... take a hammer and carefully flatten your heatpipe a tiny little bit at the problematic spot. If you work with enough care, it really works without killing the heatipe. Again, care is the keyword here. Here's a pic of the modded heatpipe as well as the problematic coil (marked with green): Power consumption: The power draw of the card is probably about 75-100W. I run this card together with an i7 920xm in my M15x and it works fine. Nevertheless you need to be careful, as the PSU of the M15x is only rated 150W. When doing some 3dM11 runs with both GPU and CPU overclocked I measured about 160-170W current draw from my system during the combined test. You really need to be careful when running this card, especially when you have an extreme processor (920/940xm). Pushing both GPU and CPU can (and will) bring the PSU to its limits (and above). Some numbers about the power draw when playing games, everything on stocks: Black Ops Zombies (everything on max): ~ 130-140W Portal 2 (everything on max): ~110-125W Medal of Honor (everything on max) ~140-150W Crysis 2 (set to "Hardcore) ~ 140-150W The device I use for measuring the power draw has an accuracy of about ± 10W. I'll update some more numbers later. Fan control: In case you have a card which makes your fans running at a high speed all the time you will need to use HWinfo32 to manually adjust the fan speed. To get to the fan control open HWinfo32 (sensor only) and press on the little fan next to the "Logging start" button. This will open the fan control window. Ignore the GPU2 fan, you only need to adjust the CPU fan and GPU1 fan value. The programm needs to override the fan setting of your system in short intervals all the time, the standard value is 100ms. (See the "respin period" box). But the fan needs some time to slow down again, even when the EC already reset the value of HWinfo32, that's called the respin time. If you set it to about 11000ms your fans should run all time at the value you set. If they start to slow down and then spin up again you need to decrease the respin period. For adjusting the fans set the slider to the desired value and click "Set Manual" You will need to do this for both fans. Update: It's now possible to create a fan control look-up table and let HWinfo32 automatically control the fan speed by temperature. 1. Click on the fan symbol 2. Click on "Custom Auto" 3. Choose the temperature sensor diode which you want to use as reference. 4. Set the desired speeds/temperatures according to your needs. Do this for both GPU and CPU, ignore GPU2 fan. I recommend using the hottest GPU diode (usually MemIO). A big thanks to Mumak, the developer of this fantastic tool. Here you can find the official Alienware fan control thread in case you find a bug or need to know more. ATTENTION: Adjusting the fan speed can be dangerous!! Always keep an eye on your temps and never forget to adjust the values before doing something CPU or GPU intense (in case you control them manually)! I'm still looking for a different solution. In case I'm successful I'll post the update here. Possible problems and solutions: Unable to install drivers. Solution: Try a different driver. Also contact your vendor, maybe he knows a specific one that works. Idle clocks are 250/900 instead of 100/150. Solution: Check your display settings and make sure only your internal notebook monitor is selected. 250/900 are the idle clocks when you're connected to an external monitor (or when your display settings are got messed up, probably driver related) Solved by iloveb00bs. The GPU temps are crazy high! Solution: Repaste. You probably did a bad job with the thermal paste. Also make sure your system is dust-free and that the heatsink sits properly and is making contact (also check the pads where the memory modules touch the heatsink). While idling the GPU clocks change from 2d to 3d clocks and back all couple of seconds. Solution: This behaviour can be caused by the M17x r3 6970m driver (A00). Get the latest AMD driver and you should be fine. If you have this problem with a different driver try another driver version. Feel free to ask questions! M15x GPU exchangement guide .pdf

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There has been requests by some for a centralized area to download popular benchmarks and utilities. We've listened and compiled a list of programs we think will come in useful for measuring your gaming systems performance. We welcome suggestions by our community members for other programs/games/utilities and will take popular requests into account and add them. Gaming Benchmarks Download Links S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyrat Download Unigine 'Heaven' DX 11 Benchmark Download version 2.5 Resident Evil 5 Benchmark Utility Download Lost Planet 2 Benchmark Download Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark Download Tom Clancy's: HAWX 2 Benchmark Download Benchmark Applications Download Links 3DMark 11 Download 3DMark Vantage Download v1.0.1 PCMark Vantage Download v1.0.2 build 1901 Fraps Download GPU-Z Download Benchmark Utilities Download Links ThrottleStop 3.00.1 Download HWInfo32 Download v3.70 HD Tune Download Sapphire Trixx Download v4.21 WPrime Download v1.55

There has been requests by some for a centralized area to download popular benchmarks and utilities. We've listened and compiled a list of programs we think will come in useful for measuring your gaming systems performance. We welcome suggestions by our community members for other programs/games/utilities and will take popular requests into account and add them. Gaming Benchmarks Download Links S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyrat Download Unigine 'Heaven' DX 11 Benchmark Download version 2.5 Resident Evil 5 Benchmark Utility Download Lost Planet 2 Benchmark Download Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark Download Tom Clancy's: HAWX 2 Benchmark Download Benchmark Applications Download Links 3DMark 11 Download 3DMark Vantage Download v1.0.1 PCMark Vantage Download v1.0.2 build 1901 Fraps Download GPU-Z Download Benchmark Utilities Download Links ThrottleStop 3.00.1 Download HWInfo32 Download v3.70 HD Tune Download Sapphire Trixx Download v4.21 WPrime Download v1.55

so, lets do a list with a benchmarks tools: 3DMark 06: 3DMark06 is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX performance of your graphics card. PCMark Vantage: PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. 3DMark Vantage: 3DMark Vantage is the industry standard performance benchmark for DirectX 10 gaming PCs. It includes two graphics tests, two CPU tests and six feature tests HWiNFO32: professional hardware information and diagnostic tools supporting latest components, industry technologies and standards. Fraps: Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology.

Haha found the clip on another site I frequent. I want to see up close high resolution (e.g. 10-20 megapixel) pictures of his body and independent DNA analysis done to confirm that it's really him. I wonder what the Republicans will say about this tomorrow.

Yes... Charles P Jeffries can kiss my ass. I spent hours upon hours benchmarking the m15x and the m14x. Said my posts were spam and to stop posting so much. Apparently when your Avatar is Bobba Fett the professionalism goes right down the Rancor's mouth. StevenX

Please let me start by saying I have already written something once but this is starting over from scratch. I received my m14x literally 7 days after I ordered it. It pays to be EPP and have a DPA. I received it on Thursday April 28th. REVIEW: Intro: The M14x details were leaked about 3 weeks prior to release from a Chinese website. Judging by the configuration I dont believe this to be the successor to the M15x, but rather another product to fill a niche market of smaller more portable notebooks. Order: I ordered the M14x, Soft Touch Black, I7-2630qm, Nvidia 555m GT 1.5, 4 GB Ram, 720p screen and the standard 500gb 7200 rpm hd. Arrival: Order arrived by Fedex overnight. The packaging is top class and the notebook arrived in perfect condition. Validation: Powered the M14x and bios and Windows 7 booted quickly. At this point I powered the notebook off with the firm intention to take it apart a bit and swap out the standard 7200 rpm hard drive for a much faster 60gb Corsair Nova SSD. The process took about 10 minutes as you have to remove the battery and optical drive which takes a few extra minutes. The inside is nicely designed and lets face it...Everything is a tight fit due to the size limitations! My one complaint at this point is the spring loaded screws that hold the bottom or base of the m14x to the chassis. One of my screws doesn't fit well and I have never really been a fan of spring loaded screws. Reload: I performed my usual format and reload of the SSD and applied all the drivers from dell as well as the latest graphics drivers from Intel for the HD 3000 series integrated card and the 170.61 driver for the Nvidia 555 mGT. Testing/Benchmarking: Stock the system feels pretty strong. I scored a 1336 in 3dmark11 and was immediately impressed by the different games I have installed. I don't believe in the value of 3dmark06 anymore and therefore didn't install it. (I would be that the m14x scores higher in 3dmark06 but my m15x w/i7-720 and 5850 score higher fps). Note: My best 3dmark11 score is 1732 and I will back this up with pics shortly. 3DmarkVantage score is 8350 at 800/1050. 3Dmark06 score 15751 @ 800/1050. Game Benchmarks: Crysis 2 - Vanilla Extreme 22 fps average at 1366x768 native. Oc the gpu to 750/1000 and add a custom config to remove FSAA, MSAA and AF and the average fps goes up to 31-34 depending on map and enemies. 2011-04-28 22:13:17 - Crysis2 Frames: 1678 - Time: 41559ms - Avg: 40.376 - Min: 29 - Max: 52 (Vanilla High stock Clocks) 2011-04-28 22:14:28 - Crysis2 Frames: 5548 - Time: 155969ms - Avg: 35.571 - Min: 28 - Max: 45 (Vanilla Very high stock clocks) 2011-04-28 22:17:28 - Crysis2 Frames: 1395 - Time: 63071ms - Avg: 22.118 - Min: 0 - Max: 30 (Vanilla Extreme stock clocks) 2011-04-28 22:18:32 - Crysis2 Frames: 740 - Time: 35256ms - Avg: 20.989 - Min: 13 - Max: 30 (Vanilla Extreme stock clocks) 2011-04-28 22:28:33 - Crysis2 Frames: 775 - Time: 33650ms - Avg: 23.031 - Min: 18 - Max: 28 (Extreme with config minus FSAA) 2011-04-28 22:32:10 - Crysis2 Frames: 8320 - Time: 245499ms - Avg: 33.890 - Min: 25 - Max: 42 (Extreme with config minus FSAA and MSAA) OC 750/1000 2011-04-28 22:42:16 - Crysis2 Frames: 1332 - Time: 46457ms - Avg: 28.672 - Min: 21 - Max: 36 (Vanilla Extreme with OC 750/1000) 2011-04-28 22:43:09 - Crysis2 Frames: 1934 - Time: 66238ms - Avg: 29.198 - Min: 22 - Max: 40 (Vanilla Extreme with OC 750/1000) Battlefield Bad Company 2 - MP Map, 32 man Rush 2011-04-29 00:57:05 - BFBC2Game Frames: 13911 - Time: 140042ms - Avg: 99.334 - Min: 69 - Max: 164 (Vanilla Medium OC 770/1000) 2011-04-29 01:00:44 - BFBC2Game Frames: 8434 - Time: 148356ms - Avg: 56.850 - Min: 22 - Max: 84 (vanilla high OC 770/1000) 2011-04-29 01:08:44 - BFBC2Game Frames: 5977 - Time: 132226ms - Avg: 45.203 - Min: 32 - Max: 72 (vanilla high stock) 2011-04-29 01:13:40 - BFBC2Game Frames: 7562 - Time: 139091ms - Avg: 54.367 - Min: 39 - Max: 86 (vanilla high oc 750/1000) Call Of Duty Black Ops: Very playable at all levels. Here are some numbers again recorded with FRAPS logging while playing full MP TDM Sessions. 2011-04-29 17:29:35 - BlackOpsMP Frames: 39923 - Time: 469813ms - Avg: 84.976 - Min: 59 - Max: 94 (1366x768, Texture High, No AA/AF, Trilinear, Stock GPU) 2011-04-29 17:46:38 - BlackOpsMP Frames: 29408 - Time: 438051ms - Avg: 67.134 - Min: 46 - Max: 95 (1366x768, Texture Extra, 16AA/AF--max, Trilinear, Stock GPU) HOMEFRONT: Outstanding Performance! Homefront Benchmark - System Settings: 2630qm @ 103.1 bclk, 555 1.5 @ 750/900, driver 170.61 whql. PHSYX set to auto detect and went active in game (notification window) Game settings, DX9, all high, all visual options enabled (only vsync disabled), no AA or AF, 1366x768 (native) Full 32 man session, Battle Commander, ping @100ms or less 2011-05-05 22:54:04 - HOMEFRONT Frames: 26113 - Time: 430579ms - Avg: 60.646 - Min: 43 - Max: 81 Temps: During Gameplay at OC levels the GPU reaches 72-74c and the CPU 82c. Palmrests - The softouch gets a bit hot during gaming and can over 100f. Screen: Screen is quality for a 720p display. It does exhibit the "glare" that also plagues the m11x. DVD's look nice on it as well as HD720p video. Noise: The m14x is very loud at performance levels. I mean loud. To compare it, have your wife turn on her blow dryer at low and it's that loud. Seriously. I do not recommend any game or performance activities while in class or at library! Overall - Having the machine now for over 72 hours I give it a 8 out of 10. The 2 marks off are for FAN NOISE.

Official drivers and utilities for the AW M14x Official drivers from Dell Alienware Command Center Alienware Command Center houses all of the custom software for your M14x. By placing programs like AlienFusion and AlienFX, AlienTouch, AlienSense in a single, user-friendly interface, you gain more control over your system. Official documentation from Dell Official Manuals Official Wallpapers of Alienware Restore the Alienware 'Look and Feel' after a clean install of Windows EDIT: more 'look n feel' customization in this thread EDIT: Utilities Crystal Disk Info: A HDD/SSD utility software which supports S.M.A.R.T. and a part of USB-HDD. http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html MSI Afterburner is a handy overclocking utility for ATI/NVIDIA graphics cards. Main features include GPU/Shader/Memory clock adjustment, advanced fan speed and GPU voltage control. EDIT: Core Temp: is a compact, no fuss, small footprint program to monitor CPU temperature. Download: Installer Download standalone: 32 Bit 64 Bit Core Temp Gadget: This is a sidebar gadget for Windows Vista and 7 for use in conjunction with Core Temp Addgadget: Sidebar for Windows like All CPU Meter (temps work with Core Temp), Network Meter, GPU Meter, Battery Meter, Drives Meter HWMonitor: is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors : voltages, temperatures, fans speed Notebook Hardware Control: you can easily control the hardware components of your Notebook, control the hardware and system power management, ustomize the notebook (open source ACPI Control System), prolong the battery lifetime, cool down the system and reduce power consumption, monitor the hardware to avoid system failure, make your notebook quiet I hope it is helpful...cheers!

Please allow me to explain myself when it comes to benchmarking. I believe when it comes to testing games or apps in reference to benchmarking we have two types of benchmarking. 1. Static - This means the test case which provides the benchmark is the same each time and provides a very repeatable expected results. These type of benchmarks usually dont show real in game performance but give you a good general overview of performance. Examples of this include 3dmark11, 3dmark vantage, 3dmark 06, and any in game benchmarks such as Just Cause 2 and Metro 2033. 2. Dynamic - This type of benchmark is the result of recording performance in game with tools such as FRAPS which record frames per second and the time during the bench. These can be taken during gameplay and represent an accurate representation of performance during gaming and this includes multiplayer. The difficulty is that these can be somewhat variable and other factors such as network latency can impact performance. Best wishes, StevenX

They're available fairly cheap on e-bay, I'd skip it and go for warranty, you can always throw one in later.

Mine has finally shipped! Order date was 4/19, so that makes it pretty short order to ship period F5ing fedex for tracking information

Very expensive indeed... and you pay for everything else but computing power offtopic but I can't help it... when I see products like that one video comes to mind

I use it on both my R2 and my netbook (Asus 1101HA), so far I didn't notice any issues with performance or the plugins (I don't keep it on for long though, also some sites are not compatible yet and they look broken), I use chrome as well for this reason, thanks for the link

FF 4.0 seems to have a memory leak. I'm running it on my sister's Dell XPS 16 and my own M17x-R2 and after a while, it does start coming to a crawl. Once I shut the browser off completely and restart it, it's fine again. Google Chrome on the other hand works like a champ.

I would suggest you go with M18x as a desktop replacement and get a netbook for school with great battery life (unless you plan to play games while waiting between classes) Plus, you can always take M18x to school when you really need it (or a LAN party ), not the desktop though...

Slightly better than middle of the road. The most often used parts is stored on SSD area. The larger files are ok to be run off platter storage, so a hybrid SSD is actually a really good drive. In my m17x r2 I have 3 SSDs, a single 120gb sandforce drive as my OS drive, and 2x 120gb slower drives in raid0 for documents/data. The IOPS on the raid0 is slower, but transfer speed is the same, so the whole setup makes sense and works great. -Ash

In case you run out of thermal paste...

So close to Obama's re-election bid for 2012. Anyone else find it a bit too convenient? They are saying he was found near Islamabad in Pakistan, how could nobody have noticed he was around there all this time? That part of Pakistan is very densely populated and someone would have spotted him long ago. They're saying on ABC news that Pakistani intelligence helped locate him--more like they had him the whole time and released him when told on cue lol. Anyway, glad this chapter of the war is over, lets see what happens next.

Every single thing you see in a videogame is stored on the hard disk. To see it in game it has to go from hard disk -> ram -> GPU -> monitor. The faster your hard disk, the faster it gets through the pipeline. Hard disks are incredibly slow compared to ram, gpu, etc. Today, most games are 32-bit applications, so they have a hard limit of 2gb ram to store graphics, etc into. So, you need a hard disk that can catch the overflow in your page file. If you are running through a particularly large and varied game map, if you come across an item that isnt in your ram the game will 'hitch' as brian said, and will momentarily pause while it loads from the hard disk. The loading isnt the bad part though, its the seeking. Hard disks have "needles" that need to seek back and forth to find files. On a standard HDD, this is 8-12ms, so thats how long the hitch will last at a minimum. If you have an SSD, this hitching is eliminated because there is no needle doing seeking, and the burst bandwidth is more than any single game resource in size. This is just one of many examples why an SSD is better. Whilst all of this is going on, if you use skype/vent/mumble/etc that is also going to need hard disk access, and everything else too. I see a lot of people, even today saying "you dont need an SSD, it just sometimes maybe makes games load faster". These are people who cant afford an SSD, and tell themselves this at night so they can get to sleep. An SSD is a massive, powerful, monstrous upgrade that is orders of magnitiude more visible than any other upgrade you can do, unless you are upgrading your GPU from a TNT2 or something to a hd6970. TL;DR: Get an SSD. -Ash

If it's GF 114, it should cost less and be a lot more than 5% faster. Guess we'll just have to see if it arrives.

More and more china rumors about the 580m, which is the same specs as a 485m but running cooler and higher clockspeed. Im not really sure the 580m would be worth the extra money over a 485m - if its only 5% faster (projected clockspeed increase equates to 5% performance increase) it had better be only 5% more expensive. -Ash

With regards to benchmarking methods, that's what we also employ. However, with "dynamic" benchmarking, we use single player (e.g. bad company 2) at a certain scene so that the results are as close to each other as possible. We typically run 3 FRAPs tests and then average those out.

Ashtefere mod coming in 3, 2, 1,... Nice review, I'm sure the noise can be reduced at least a little with some modding. I'd try the simplest thing first - thermal paste as StamatisX said and see where you can go from there.

Welcome Home by Coheed and Cambria

Dååth , From the Blind (without drums and vocals)

ok watch this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3CI8I5Si_U&feature=player_embedded

That works I guess, haha!

And it would cost less than M18x.