the1trujok3r

Yeah. Brian said he's tearing it down in 15 mins now so it will be nice to see the vid. Also I don't think he did anything it was what he was trying to fix direct from the factory

Have you ever tried alienSense ??

actually that's another piece of software missing and not on Dell's site under my stag.

I would also download the 11.5aRC3 driver with Cap 2. It has improved games immensely in my testing.

Brian,

Since you have done the tear up and down of the M18x so many times can you do a video before you return yours on how to disassemble and paste the processor and gpu's?

I've never done it and I've seen some of the other video's but the M18x is a different beast to tear down and I think a video would be a huge help.

Thoughts?

I'm not sure. I looked around the web and there seems tons of info on running the software on RealTek chipsets but absolutely nothing with running it on IDT. I know part of the MB xfi stuff is licensed but the other stuff is not so you would think that the IDT stuff would be as readily available as the RealTek info but it's not. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

FYI. Here is my HWinfo pic. GPU 0: 79 GPU 1: 72

This was after running furmark for a full hour on the settings you gave. Your system might have a fluke. I've noticed the more times I've used furmark to "burn in" my cards they seem to have leveled out now and are running cooler than they were the first few times I've ran it. I'm running in the high 70's after a full hour of the most gpu intensive workout, so I'm satisfied that heat isn't an issue on my machine but 5150 Joker you may have an issue with your system.

I tested my laptop both on a cooling stand and laying flat on my desk. As long as the cards can suck air and exhaust it properly it didn't seem to make much of a difference. I'm ordering the coolermaster 19 just because of the hub and where I plan to use the laptop most of the time doesn't have good air flow (arm of leather home theater chair) so the coolermaster will give a good platform to balance on as well as provide cooling should i need it.

all of my drivers are installed but no webcam software on cd or on dell.

Well at least it's not just me that hears the hollow sound. I'm not expecting miracles here but having no adjustment on the sub is really bad. I have a studio xps 16 with a sub on it and i can definately hear a difference when i adjust the bass. It's not thumping bass by any means nor would I expect it to be but I would hope that adjusting the sub would give a more fuller sound at least boosting midrange...but I hear nothing on the m18x and on my studio there is definately a difference.

Well it would seem I did miss 1 thing and you would never have guessed what it was...."Intel Managment Interface" Still don't have the webcam software loaded but it's total crap anyway so I'm not too worried about that.

nope. All those drivers are loaded. Like I had said the alienware shows checkmarks on all devices the only thing missing is the webcam.

Well I'm curious what the PCI Simple communications driver is then because I've loaded everything from Dell's site and the alienware CD shows all my devices checked but windows shows me that the pci is not installed and i do not have the webcam as a device.

So did you notice a decrease in volume with the 5.1 option as well? Do you have an M18x for comparison? I've heard more than just me complaining in other forums about the hollow sounding audio.

I did that and my sound is worse as doing do disables the Waves Audio as it says 6 channel is enabled and it will not allow the waves maxx settings to be turned on.

Is there a special way to enable the subwoofer? I don't seem to hear anything from it and adjusting the bass has 0 effect in the IDT panel.

The sound seems very hollow as well.

I did a fresh install of windows 7 and the webcam driver is not reinstalled by default. I have a PCI Simple communications device not found and the drivers are not on Dell's site nor on the Alienware CD.