Ninjahunter

Hmm, i dont know about the health bar thing but there might be an illusion spell for detect life, or night vision. their usually low level spell in the previous games

The leveling system seems a bit weird to me though, it seems like the only benefit from leveling up a skill is to unlock the perks for that skill. Much more mainstream though, i like that you dont have to do stupid things to level up like in oblivion.

And just a heads up, bows are pretty useless against higher level creatures (giants, dragons) unless you use poisons and stuff. Lol, the only way i can beat dragons is by luring them into a heard of mammoths Yay for running fast

So what is everyone's character build and how is it working out? (feel free to post pics of your character)

I was going to go assassin, but then i discovered sprint (alt key) and ive been putting all my points into stamina XD Yay for ranger class? Bows seem pretty strong too. I have a dagger but im pretty sure my bow does more Dmg per second both sneaking and in combat. The only drawback: i have to watch out becausee sometimes bosses can grab an easy one hit kill off me if i don't keep track of their location very well.

BTW is it just me or does it seem like you go down a level each time you die?

Here is a complete list of notable Skyrim tweaks at the moment:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim tweaks improve graphics, disable Vsync, change FOV and more | PC Gamer

All of them are useful to most users so its worth taking a look.

**There have been reports that forcing settings in you GPU control center can kill performance on high end machines.

**In my experience When setting the 'Frames rendered ahead' setting to high values there doesn't appear to be increased input lag in skyrim.

Notable performance impacts on the M14x:

-There is roughly a 10 FPS difference between each shadow quality.

-There is roughly a 5 FPS difference between each setting of 'distant object detail'.

-Turning all water reflections off will produce about 8 extra fps near water.

-None of the sliders other than 'objects', 'actors' and 'grass' have a FPS impact greater than 2.

-FXAA has roughly a 2-3 FPS hit, but can decrease image quality.

Theres slight variations between cards, Super slight physical anomolies that are either good or bad. No two cards are identical, But usually their virtually the same, like the sweat spot for overclocking the 555m is about 750,1000 on almost all m14x's. And alot of those people who hit those high clock speeds (800,1000) Usually volt mod their GPU/CPU and repaste their CPU and GPU with aftermarket thermal paste.

Off the top of my head there are two things you can do to get lower temps.

1)find the thread for alienware fan control and force your fans to 100% when gaming

2)Repaste your Cpu and GPU.

On a side not the CPU and GPU use the same heat sync so theoretically if one component runs cooler than the other it will help keep the overall temps down. Just some thoughts. Also, you can try removing the plate over the ram to increase air flow.

Ive hit those temps with the A05 Bios on my i5. Those temps are super normal for A05 bios. Im not certain on other bios but i know its not uncommon to hit 90 degrees. M14x runs really hot. If your worried and using throttlestop then dissable throttlestop and your temps will stay well within the safe are.

I forgot to plug my fan in after i repasted my m14x and i went for an hour or so before i realized my fan wasnt on. (Web browsing and 5 minutes of furmark) Just goes to show how good throttling is.

When getting reccomended settings i also like to use the 450 gts. Its alot more mainstream that the 545 so there are alot more results and performance wise is just above a good overclocked 555m. Geforce.com has a reccomended setting tool and so far all the games ive played with 450gts settings work pretty flawless.

Just my two bits on this

M14x i5 (latest driver)

Overclocked GPU (750,1000)

I didnt catch the name of the map i benched on but performance between maps seems consistant. (60+ players)

Got some serious stuttering on the big maps. Never saw below 20 fps though

Frames 36354, Time (ms) 923370, Min 21, max 70, Avg 39.371

Frames 23331,Time (ms) 498314, Min 26, Max 91, Avg 46.820

Oops, didnt read the medium thing till just now T_T more waiting for you guys.

Yea, ile try to get to that in the next 24 or so hours. I havent played online yet, But campaign played very flawlessy.

I can second Stevensx's Performance, and if you do need that little extra visuals you can Easily get away with SSAO too on the M14x.

I really hope you can play as quarian in Co-op. love that race (and mass effect) soo much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRc_9CiOew

Rev Theory: Justice
Heard this band from one of my friends, lovin it.

Teardown guide:

Alienware M14x Disassembly/Teardown and Upgrade Guide!

This guide is very specific and easy to follow. I only came out with 4 spare screws! But thats just because i was excited to put it back together. Anyway, it is a long guide so i reccomend you glnce over it for five or so minutes to make sure your properly prepared.

As for temps after the repaste im getting an average of about 75*c with throttlestop and a GPU overclock. But you seem to be getting higher temps than i was so i would guess you might hit the 80* mark with turbo and an overclock, but i cant back that up. For optimal results youl want to prop the back of the notebook up on something for better airflow, I can still hit 90*c if i have it on my lap while laying down.

As for thermal compound I used arctic silver 5 because i had a tube laying around and it has yet to disapoint me.

Hope this helps. repasting is worth its weight in gold

PS, if your really in need another 1-2*c you can take off the RAM plate. (little flimsy thing on top of ram)

Hmm, Just a thought, but maby you could revert the bios to default settings or something.

Lol, that is my absolute max, my system will crash after 30 minutes of 800,1050 I had to cut the memory clocks to get that CPU clock If get bored ile be sure to post some 3dmark06 some time in the next day or 2.

Holy cow! Nekogins getting really high GPU scores, Very impressive! Im wondering about the 3gb version a little too, particularly with its overclocking capabilities, Perhaps it can get a little more oomph. I would post more but i havent been able to break my old score. But if i find some crazy performance breakthrough you guys will be the first to hear.

Score i fully expect to put shadows to medium (on top of stevenx's settings) in the final version (m14x) but this performance news is fiarly phenominal for beta!

Those numbers are pretty common for A05 the reason why is because the fan only goes up to about 75% or 80% speed with these bios. And there is a setting in the bios for adjusting the "low" and "high" activation temp and speed of the fan. That was a bit of a disapointment because A05 is supposed to have quite a few fan stages. I cant recall the exact location of the setting but i believe it was near some throttling or overclocking settings (Im not too keen on about 50% of bios terms). Im sure if you looked around for about five minutes it would be easy enough to find.

Hope that helps you any i remeber this was the exact reason i wanted the a05 unlocked

Looks like theres a very noticable difference performance wise, Thanks for getting the comparison up wasnt certain how much of a difference there was. I can really tell that the performance makes a dip when theres destruction or just alot of paticles and "battle dust".

Updated to have BFBC:2 performance

im excited for the driver being launched with the beta by nvidia sombody say free performance? and we should get a TI server for BF3

System requirements are so OP looks like im gonna have to volt mod my m14x again T_T

I had a problem that sounds almost identical to yours, if a few reboots doesnt help then you can do what i did. I clean installed the latest nvidia driver (with driver sweeper) and re installed direct-x through their offline installer. Usually BSOD is because of direct x crashing and could potentially get damaged. Anywho thats all the advice i got. other than that tech support might have some stupid idea that might work lol.

on a side note my card re appeared after a few reboots after un installing my driver. dont know the relevance but it might help.

Ile try to check it tonight, moving in with my dad so i have to set up my bat cave in the attic (for refference USA west coast time).

Fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong!

If your going to keep it around for that long i would go for the i7. In most games and programs today it performs about the same but alot of recent games are taking advantage of those extra threads.

In lamens terms the i5 has four cores and the i7 has eight. I dont know much about the rest of the stuff you want to know about though. good hunting!