Brian

To be honest, I'm not even sure I'd buy an M18x apart for the purpose of doing a review for T|I. I've been wanting a light gaming notebook and the R3 seems to fit that bill nicely. It's not built as well as the R2 and lacks the RGB LED but apart from that, it's a very nice notebook that's well rounded.

Nice man, start selling them for a dollar each I'd be interested in one.

You will probably get most of your wish sans the 3 hard drives. But IMO we shouldn't have to sacrifice things like the RGB LED or even the multicolored alien head. I notice the missing color variation on the R3 alien head and it just looks...cheap. In fact since I received the R3, it's received minimal use because the R2 is my workhorse. However, I plan to put more time into the R3 starting today because I have to get ready to do a thorough review on it for T|I's main site. Welcome to the forum!

Those specs are probably very close to what the production M14x will have. I also have to take back what I said earlier about the 6970M being as fast as the 485M because I was basing it off ichime's card which is apparently an unlocked one with extra shaders. Nonetheless, with the 11.4 catalysts, the 6970M DOES close the gap considerably with the 485M.

Pretty cool idea, as a transparent sticker?

You will see a considerable improvement in performance with the R3 vs the XPS 1730. What makes you think it wouldn't be any better? Welcome to the T|I forum!

Hey rev, welcome to the forum! It is extremely odd that ichime's cad has more shaders, at first I was ready to dismiss it thinking it was an R2 bios glitch but then his scores are also faster than ours clock for clock. I doubt he did anything to unlock it, more than likely he just received a sample that was already that way. It must have slipped past AMD somehow when they sent it out. AMD typically lasers out bad shaders and bins them as a lower tiered product and they likely neglected to laser the one he has. Edit: Yup I was right, take a look here, the same thing happened with desktops: http://lensfire.blogspot.com/2010/10/can-you-unlock-hd-6850-to-1120-shaders.html AMD 6950-->AMD 6970 unlocking thread: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=335318 Since those bios files are for desktops, it doesn't apply to us and since Speedy already tried to flash his card with ichime's bios (original one I'm assuming) then that means ours are already lasered and cannot be unlocked.

Plus if you decide to stop using the oil to cool the PC, you could use it on a couple girls wearing bikinis.

With the new 11.4 driver:

Here's a teaser benchmark from the M17x-R3. I'll be posting tons more in the official review that will be on Tech|Inferno in a week or so.

Hey inap! Welcome to the forums man! That score is awesome, it's approaching default 5870m crossfire scores and it beats 4870m Crossfire. Pretty amazing card. I got my R3 today, I haven't done anything with it yet but I plan to load up some benchmarks tonight and enable overclocking via rivatuner. After I do initial benchmarks, I'll do a tear down video + retention mod on the GPU. My initial impressions of the system are decent, it doesn't feel as cheap as I thought it would though its nowhere near as sturdy as the R2 either. Very quiet though.

After wrestling with bears and chopping down trees I'm sure Aaron is in perfect shape.

Nice work and thanks for taking the time to do this write up! +1 rep.

Notice all the warnings and finger pointing? And they constantly shit on their users by blaming them for bickering yet the M14x rumor thread had none of that. They just aren't owning up to the fact that they have other motives and now are feeling the pressure. Hopefully people don't fall for their bullshit yet again.

Welcome to T|I, WaR!

I don't think the CPU is dead or anything, you might just have to settle for stock TDP with it or slightly above it for stable speeds.

Order Date: 3/7/2011 Order Status: Shipped Departed FedEx location CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA Shipment Dates Ship date Mar 14, 2011 Estimated delivery Mar 16, 2011 M17x-R3 en route!

Good news - The M17x-R3 has shipped out and will be here on 3/16. The plan is to take photos + vids of the unboxing processing along with commentary and then to setup the machine for review. The review will take about 1 week to complete the first part. We're estimating a total of 3 articles that will span over 3-4 weeks.

Yeah looks like the same recycled info except they neglected to mention 6970M Xfire which will obviously be an option.

That just has to be wreaking all kinds of havoc on his body physiologically. No wonder pilots have to be in perfect physical health.

Ash, I honestly don't notice microstutter. That doesn't mean I don't have it, it's just not noticeable to me. What about triple buffering?

There's no direct review yet but ichime posted his results on this forum in the R2 benchmarking thread with the 6970M + 11.4 Cats and his results are matching 485M. That's with an R2 no less, it should do better in an R3 + 2920xm.

Speedy- Ichime figured out how to overclock his 6970M, have you asked him how he did it? If not, I'd suggest sending him a PM. I wouldn't be able to assist you until I have the R3 here so I know what exactly is going on.

Right now the 485M has not been ruled out for the M17x-R3. It's just not available at the moment but that could change since the 485M was mentioned on it's product page in the past. However, I was speaking strictly from a performance sense, the 485M isn't necessarily faster than a 6970M with the recent Catalyst 11.4 release.

Hi Silent Bob--thanks and welcome! Where's Jay?