Ashtefere

The cards are still going fine!

Cant remember washer size though.

-Ash

Hmm, this is good info brian. If I can get some reliable sketchup and unity3d tests with the 6970m xfire's, I would definately choose AMD.

-Ash

The only time this monster will be moving is on the plane to/from lan parties.

Gonna love > gtx 580 performance in a laptop! (overclocked)

-Ash

I would wager the 485m will pull out much further in front at higher resolutions. 1080p is still CPU limited. For my resolution of 2560x1440, the difference will be huge and I predict in nvidia's favor.

-Ash

There is also the possibility of salvaging a heatpipe to join the left GPU fin stack with the CPU fin stack.

This would raise temps of the left GPU slightly, but lower the CPU temps slightly.

In fact, one could also use a longer salvaged heatpipe to join up the right GPU fin stack as well.

See, during certain tasks we have different levels of load. During gaming, GPU's load a lot more than CPU's. During CPU stuff (dev, compile, transcode, video) CPU load is much higher. Spreading this heat over all available surfaces will reduce noise significantly.

Im pretty confident this is the way forward for me at least. Just gotta find some heatpipes now.

This means to remove one heatsink you would have to remove them all, but the potential heat and noise reduction would make it very worth it.

I have an old shuttle CPU cooler and a bunch of unused GPU coolers... could be fun to do down the track when I pick up an m18x. I just need to get a soldering iron powerful enough.

-Ash

This is the CPU thread, and will become the thread for the CPU mod when me or someone else gets around to it.

From the looks of things, its a single thick heatpipe with less fin surface area than the GPU's. This means it should not really perform all that well...

The hardware heaven review seems to confirm this, with 83 degrees celcius for an entry level CPU (tj max is 99) so it doesnt have very much room at all. Factory overclocked 4ghz will probably throttle during prime/etc.

So we will most probably need to mod that sucker to set it right. The only thing I can think of doing to help it is to salvage some more heatpipes from something else and solder them on for more heat transfer.

-Ash

I have a hard enough time lugging my m17x r2 around.

Better hit the gym!

"Whats a gym? Ohhh a gyyyym!" -Homer Simpson

-Ash

Documentation

Take a look at those heatpipes! *phew!*

3 thick heapipes per GPU. This thing can easily take a couple of 485m's.

The questions remain:

• Power Circuitry? is it going to be enough? (probably)
  
• Bios whitelisting? Will the bios block non-approved cards? (also, probably)
  

I am moving in August, and my job contract ends in July, so I will be buying my m18x in sept-oct this year. If by then they still dont have the 485m sli as a selection, my plan is to:

1. Buy the base config with 460m sli from USA
   
2. Buy the 485m sli pair from logicalblueone (local supplier) and MAKE IT WORK
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit!
   

Im sure someone will want to buy an SLI pair of 460m's somewhere on ebay if I can get it to work, but overall, I'm excited and hopeful!

I was in doubt about the 485m's until I saw the cooling. It looks monstrous!

As soon as I know everything is all working, I am going to proceed to see if I can do any cooling improvements to this behemoth. It will be interesting to see if they learned from all our work on the M17x-R2.

-Ash

A lot of the third-party 485m's people are buying are actually *built by dell*. None of dell's current line have them though, so I am 100% certain we will eventually see the 485m as an option sooner rather than later. This may well be the reason for the delay, even.

For the development and game dev I do, my only option is nvidia. I prefer AMD, no doubt, but I cant stand using sketchup/udk/unity/etc at sub par performance any more.

Also, more importantly, I have no fucking idea where this myth has come from that nvidia has better drivers. They don't. They never have. They never will. Nvidia have had woeful driver support ever since the geforce 8xxx series.

No one seems to remember all the troubles huh? If anyone is curious, here are some terms to google for: "NV4 disp error", "Nvidia restart PC", "Nvidia driver melting graphics cards", etc...

AMD's engineering department is more than double the size of Nvidia's. They spend more money and more resources on building their drivers. Nvida, on the other hand, spends that same money bribing game developers to make their game work around nvidia's problems (they call it "the way its meant to be played") and part of this agreement is they cannot optimize for AMD or intel.

The only benefit to nvidia's drivers is the larger game support for multi-gpu, and even this is dwindling fast. It has been repeatedly shown however that AMD multi GPU (crossfire) performance is now far superior to nvidia since the 6xxx series.

Even the microstuttering on ATI's products are less pronounced.

If all you are doing is gaming, go AMD. And dont look back. If you are doing any kind of Dev work, you may have to go to nvidia. I know for one that sketchup performs much much faster on nvidia.

-Ash

Look at this pic http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviewimages/alienware-m18x/alienware-m18x_inside.jpg

See the foam ducting on the GPU fans now? I would like to think I had something to do with that

Anyway, thank god they decided to do a better job on the cooling this time around. Shame they didnt do the same to the CPU fan though...

Guess I have to come up with another cooling mod!

-Ash

EDIT: And here http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviewimages/alienware-m18x/alienware-m18x_inside2.jpg

Looks like replacing GPU's is going to be a royal PITA. Looks like fun!

-Ash

Then I wonder why ITX boards with two dimms only support a max of 8gb ram? I was told it was a chipset limitation. If there is no limitation, then we sould be able to get 16gb in a ITX board with 2 dimm slots.

Maybe the ITX boards can and I just got trolled by gigabyte and asus support?

They told me it was because of a bank per side limitation or some shit.

Ill have to research it more.

-Ash

Oh fucking snap I just remembered...

We currently have a 4gb dimm size limitation for all H67 and P67 chipsets. Its a hard limit that needs a new chipset to correct, which is why you wont find an ITX motherboard that can support more than 8gb ram (trust me I have looked).

If dell are saying it supports 32GB, then we can be confident that the M18x carries a ZM68 chipset.

Booyah!

-Ash

Keep in mind Aus is very close regionally to the manufacturers, and our distributors here have family ties over there. This is why we get this kind of stuff so very early. We even got the HD5870m crossfire in the R2 earlier than anyone else.

-Ash

He may want to upgrade to 485m third party.

I certainly would if they dont have it as an option, or its too expensive.

If you cant get the 485s in SLI on release, you are best getting the 460's in SLI over the 6970s. That way, you can buy the 485s third party and use the SLI cable from the 460s.

-Ash

Due to the lack of mentioning the IGP, I would bet money this could be a P67 chipset.

-Ash

Hard to get the blue right - very difficult.

-Ash

That means the AMD card will run hotter than stated.

-Ash

Wow thats a lot of cash... how much will the 2820qm upgrade be, and how much to get one off ebay and slap it in?

Also, how much ram for that? Im hoping 16gb at least.

-Ash

Oh, you are only gonna keep it a few months Brian?

I'll buy it when you are done, so long as it's a black one.

-Ash

Yeah Anand from Anandtech blasted OCZ about the wildly varying performance of these drives, and demanded that they name the drives differently based on their performance.

OCZ agreed, mainly I think because they saw an opportunity to charge more for something they were going to sell originally at a lower price.

I did not expect a $100 difference though. Thats just fucking greedy.

I guess their indlilinx purchase has hurt the back pocket a bit.

-Ash

@Brian

Thanks man, will do.

-Ash

Also, in regards to that thread with great information and important progress...

M17x r3 485m gpu - Page 61

LOCKED!

Those mods at NBR are totall fucking assholes... what the fuck is wrong with them?

-Ash

EDIT:

Just invited the guys in that thread over here via PM. Their discussion will get a lot further here.

-Ash

According to the NBR forums LVNeptune has discovered that the clevo 485m he bought for use in his M17x R3 was manufactured by DELL.

Now, why would this be? Why would dell build notebook graphics cards to sell to a competitor?

I think we will see the M18x get the 485m very soon after launch, or perhaps with launch. Additionally, when the m18x gets it, so will the m17x R3.

Im excited!

-Ash

2 x Nvidia Geforce 485M Notebook Grafikkarte SLI | eBay

If I had no GF, and wasnt about to move house...

/drool.

If alienware wont supply them I woulda tried to add them myself. Ah, but to dream!

-Ash

EDIT:

Holy fuck scratch one up for Australia - http://www.logicalblueone.com.au/store/notebook-parts/426-nvidia-gtx4.html

First time I have ever seen Australia have something cheaper than the USA.

-Ash