svl7

HAHAHAHA, death star canteen... one of my favorite clips on youtube "I'll take the penne a la arrabiata!!" roflmao

Check out these two if you don't know them... same comedian as in the death star canteen video:

The Rev did some benching and got a new highscore in 3dM11, about 30 pts more if I remember correctly. I haven't found time for benching yet.

Yeah, I tried some pads from Phobya, but I didn't like them... they're too hard, the heatsink can't really press them together.

I'd take the 300 GB, I have one myself... it performs great, and 50 GB more SSD space is always useful

$350 for 300GB is fantastic imo.

New AMD drivers are up, can be found here:

Links updated, thanks Michael:

11.5 drivers, direct link from ATI site

In case it doesn't work for you, get the Mobility Mod from here, this should work no matter from which vendor you have your card.

Hey, welcome at T|I Stevie! Nice to see you here.

It's going to be hard finding good numbers... just as Brian said. I did some googling and wasn't successful... I'd just go ahead and try to convince the rep politely that 460m SLI is beneath the 5870cf and get a 6970m in your M18x Don't worry to much, I think some single GPU numbers will convince the rep as well.

Some people even say that CF scales better than SLI (I heard this a lot in 485m/6970m discussions...).

Great work!! I like it!

Btw, I'm getting an "Invalid file ID" error when trying to get it from the download section...

@Brian:

That's a great song, but it's not Metallica... I think you know what I mean

This is Metallica, Disposable Heroes live for the first time, Master of Puppets wasn't even released then

James Hetfield in best form... vocals and rythm guitar, played perfectly.. I wish they could still do this...

Hmm, I'm not sure, maybe Windows was set to "no GUI boot"... but I don't think so since there wasn't even the Asus logo showing up.

Yeah, POST, but black screen, not a single pixel... no boot logo, nothing.

Coroner - I want you (She's so heavy), Beatles cover by the best Swiss metal band ever (they stage a comeback, yes!! )

Hmm, actually no, didn't think of this... but there wasn't even a boot logo showing up, not a single pixel I guess it wouldn't make a difference. But next time I run into similar problems I'll give it a try.

Yeah, uninstalled all drivers in advance.. and I even tried to get the picture on an external screen (just for the case that I messed up with the display connector...). Too bad it didn't work. I'm not sure whether it's usual that windows boots when the GPU doesn't get recognized by the system...

I'm in modding mood

We (me and a friend of mine, G73JW owner) just put a 6970m in the G73JW to see whether it works. The system POSTed and loaded Windows, but unfortunately the screen stayed blank

Some background infromation about this whole story... When I exchanged the CPU of this machine a couple of weeks ago I decided to take a look at the GPU as well, as the system was already disassembled. (Note, it's a real pain to take apart this machine... totally unlike the AW systems... you have to tear it down completely, take out the mobo and then turn it around to get access to GPU/CPU...)

Anyway, the GPU has nothing to do with an MXM-card... except for the connector which seems to be the same (at least physically, I have no idea whether it's the same electronically)... but see yourself:

As you can see, the connector is physically identical, but the die is positioned differently than on a standard card... As the G73JH has the GPU at the MXM-conform place we got a heatink of the JH model. After some cutting and grinding it did fit the 6970m. The problem was that you can't fix the card with screws since the holes of the G73JW 460m are at totally different places... but that's nothing a little bit duct tape cant fix The important thing is that the heatsink can be screwed on very well.

But well, like I said, it didn't work... a couple of hours work for nothing. So we had to disassemble the system one more time to put the 460m back, lol.

I knew the chance of the 6970m working was small... but since the G73JH (5870m) can run with a MSI 5870m as well, I thought it's worth a try.

Maybe it's only an issue with a hardware ID, I have no idea... like I said, POST was fine, system booted, but screen stayed black.

If anyone of you have an idea to get it working, let me know!

There are two more pictures as attachment which show the 6970m on the mobo and in the system, if you're interested... just as "proof"

...Absolutely fantastic!! Really like it!!

Nevertheless, the writing could maybe be a little bit more readable... don't know whether that's the right word... the logo is great, but it could be more distinct from the background, more focussed... hard to discribe. I really like it, but I think people who read it for the first time may not be able to read it correctly in this short time... especially people who don't have English as their first language.

Just a thought... it's really a great intro!!

What's the benefit of doing this?

epeen extension? lol

WOW, impressive 3dM11 scores!! Congrats!

Did you already get to the limits of the system? Do you have a vantage run?

And engadget fails again... first they used the picture of an Area51 (legacy) model, now they have the M17x above the article... It shouldn't be too hard to get a picture of the actual product... lol.

I still think Del should create a 15.6" loaded with a 100W video card but I doubt they will, it would destroy M17x-R3 sales.

At least there's the DIY option...

But a SB update would've been really great, or better, Ivy Bridge.

Nice, I have a 300GB Intel 320 SSD as well, and I'm really happy with it. I think you're gonna like it.

Now that's really interesting... that's quite an advance, there was talk about this for quite a while now, it seems it finally comes into reality.

Btw, have you heard that a Intel Ivy Brige Processor apparently hit ebay?

Here you go: Intel's Next-Generation Eight-Core Sandy Bridge E Processor Hits Ebay - X-bit labs

Hey, very nice, thanks!!

In case you (or anyone else with a M14x) repastes the system please post some pics of how it looks inside the system.

Yes... strange, seems to be a hardware bound issue. And it's not a Clevo card. Subvendor is "Sapphire/PCPartner", seems to be directly from AMD...

And I've got even a second update

Sound through DisplayPort/HDMI works now with the card from mxm-upgrade as well!

I flashed the Dell vbios, installed the M17x R3 Dell driver and it works.

Thanks goes to the master of mxm-upgrade which tested in advance with his card whether the card works at all with the Dell vbios (I didn't want to kill my card) and also a big thanks to iloveb00bs for providing the vbios!

Unfortunately still no native fan control... nevertheless, another succes and a problem less.

Hopefully those are just placeholder prices much like the Crossfire prices were in the US. If not, then AW won't make a single sale in switzerland.

I just checked again, prices are official, they only forget to link it from the Swiss Alienware site, the Dell site links directly to the configurator...

Hehe, I just found the M18x page on the Swiss Alienware site, even though it's not linked in the main page yet

But that's about all I can laugh about... starting price is $2900, 6970m CF costs you $1000 and the 2920xm will set you back $1980... insane!! Hopefully they lower the prices before they officially release it, these prices are crazy, even for Switzerland, especially the 2920xm.

Here's the link: Swiss M18x configurator page

Edit: Prices are official...