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M11x-R3 & screen comparisons


unreal25

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Hi!

As someone already mentioned seems like there isn't that much love here for the little man, M11x. Since I just received M11x-R3 as a replacement for my old cursed R1, I thought I can give some short info about the differences and similarities between the two releases. (Even if its what, 9 months after its original release.)

Comparing to the old M11x-R1, this one has:

- significantly better screen

- Klipsch audio (the on-board speakers sound fantastic),

- nicer matte exterior

- gigabit lan instead of 100mbit

- USB 3.0

- lacks VGA port

- faster CPU

- better battery life

- most importantly faster GPU; it's now nVidia GT540M instead of GT335M

Specs.

Intel Core i7 2637m 1.7GHz (2.8GHz Turboboost)

nVidia GT540M 2GB GPU

8GB RAM 1333 MHz

750GB HD 7200RPM

Looks.

New matte surface looks really nice and does not have old gloss.

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Screen.

Significant improvement from R1 in terms of both viewing angles and color reproduction (even though R1 I had had kind of blueish tone; but we're assuming here an average M11x does not own a professional screen calibrator) and I didn't manage to do much better using a Windows Calibrator. Its a bit brighter too. The brightness levels match when R3 is set to about 75% of its max brightness.

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It's difficult to give a good impression of the screen quality through photos but I'll give it a shot. Here we see, from left to right: M17x-R2 RGB LED, Thinkpad X200T Samsung PVA SuperBright screen, M11x-R1 screen, M11x-R3 screen:

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This is how far screen can be pushed on each laptop and how the picture looks like then:

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The two things about the screen that I don't like is that it is still glossy and that black colors are poor (like on any "standard" screen).

Performance.

Stock Settings. GPU clock: 672 MHz, Memory 900 MHz, Shader 1344 MHz.

3DMark06: ~8500

3dMark11: 984

Fan is roughly the same level as on R1, it has a deeper hair-dryer tone when its working and I didn't find it distracting (it's a bit less loud then M17x).

(Updated data will come during next couple of days; lost the screenshots when I restored the hard drive.)

EDIT: I tried overclocking the CPU in BIOS, but for some reason it won't let me change the settings. Any ideas? Also, which software do you guys use for overclocking the nvidia cards?

EDIT2 (04/03/2012):

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Overclocked. GPU clock: 815 MHz, Memory 1050 MHz, Shader: 1631 MHz.

3DMark11: 1169 (about 19% increase)

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Crysis 2: DX11, high resolution textures, all settings maxxed out on Ultra, around 15-20FPS outdoors with action going on. (no screenshot provided)

Battlefield 3: Ultra settings with Shadows on High (see screenshot for settings; close to maxxing it out), getting around 25-40FPS outdoors with lots of action going on. Tested single player only however.

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Overall temperatures look pretty good. With this overclock (if I try going higher, the card automatically downclocks on stock), I am getting around 70-75 C max on full (100%) GPU load and no artifacts whatsoever. With stock setting its only few degrees less. Also, this is with CPU on stock settings, haven't played around with CPU overclocking, which is possible using the standard Alienware BIOS so no modding required.

I'll try to get some more games on this computer just to see what we can expect. So far, it definitely looks like a beast with a nice overclock potential without requiring anything special -- I simply used MSI Afterburner and worked like a charm.

EDIT 3: Added the screenshot of the M11x-R3 screen information if anyone is interested in the exact model.

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Edited by unreal25
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Thanks for the info, I've always been a closet fan of the M11X because of the price and portability.

Any benchmarks incoming?

As for overclocking the GPU, MSI afterburner is the gold standard IMO. Simple and effective with low overhead and some nice added features such as video capture.

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That screen on the R3 looks x10 better unreal. I've always been pretty disappointed with the colours, brightness and viewing angles on my R2, it is my main gripe with the machine and looks alot like your R1.

It sounds like a much bigger improvement overall. I'm glad that it finally worked out for you and you got a decent upgrade.

As for overclocking the GPU, I use MSI Afterburner on my R2. EVGA Precision is also good but personally I found my clocks to be a little more stable with Afterburner. My R2 can't take much of an OC though, so try them both out.

Have fun benching. ;)

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Thanks I'll try these. I originally wanted to do benchmarks first, but as I had both R1 and R3 for a day or two, I decided to rather take some photos. 3DMark06 is probably not the best bench for DX11 cards, so I'll probably be running some game benchmarks and will try to repeat some older one I did on R1 (Crysis 1) to give some comparison of how much better FPS actually is in games. Unfortunately I won't have time before Saturday, too much work these days. :)

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Added some benches. Was hoping for some higher overclock but nope. Still, I am glad that temperatures are very nice and that the laptop due to its small size and relatively low resolution (1366x768) runs games at quite high settings.

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I'm tempted to buy an m11x or m14x to use in bed. The r3 looks like a nice improvement.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

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Well I'll be selling this one soon, I just wanted to call Dell first and see how much would it cost to buy 1 or 2 years warranty, as the previous warranty just expired (I imagine it would sell much easier with warranty.)

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I'm tempted to buy an m11x or m14x to use in bed. The r3 looks like a nice improvement.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

couldn't agree more :) Vantage seems to use the most of a system though after watching other peoples benchmarks I've seen most handle the lowest gpu overclock on Vantage why I do not know but given Vantage or 3dMark2011 seems for gpu being pushed Vantage seems to do so just a little more... giving max overclock thats lower than what could be on 3dmark2011... but seems 3dmark2011 has a good glimpse at the performance you may see with the most current games available. BTW I have been using the Witcher 2 even more lately and seems that if you use all on ultra and use settings like no texture down-sampling etc that one can push their system, the hardest out of any game available when in addition to the above "Ubersampling" is applied as it takes care of AA and AF and more so since it does both those jobs but better and is described as where one may run 240fps with "Ubersampling" off and 60fps with it on as it seems to produce 1 fps out of every 4fps.. so every 4 frames is combined for the best of all 4 and then the next 4fps are produced cutting your average fps from whatever it is with "Ubersampling" off to 1/4th the fps you were getting but a image far superior to what any AA and AF can produced when combined.

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Well I'll be selling this one soon, I just wanted to call Dell first and see how much would it cost to buy 1 or 2 years warranty, as the previous warranty just expired (I imagine it would sell much easier with warranty.)

That is one great comparison and I just want to say Unreal that I greatly appreciated the comparison of the M11x R1 vs M11x R3 :) I can see that system is far superior to the previous model 2 revisions back. I also see lol that your IBM LCD is one awesome looking display ;) and that your M17x R2 is soooo sexy in Silver... wish my M18x had that Silver paint job ;) Thanks again for this comparison before i'd never had considered the M11x in any situation but after your post if I had the budget it would be my number 1 portable buddy :) Also if I had a budget at all I'd make an offer on your system... but since economy is so great I can't but I would buy yours had I had the mula available :) Thanks Unreal simply awesome. would love to see two reviews added to the Tech Inferno user review section. your half done lol... would be a great addition there if you added a M11x R1 and M11x R3 review :) we know your busy so no rush if you'd feel like adding one :)

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couldn't agree more :) Vantage seems to use the most of a system though after watching other peoples benchmarks I've seen most handle the lowest gpu overclock on Vantage why I do not know but given Vantage or 3dMark2011 seems for gpu being pushed Vantage seems to do so just a little more... giving max overclock thats lower than what could be on 3dmark2011... but seems 3dmark2011 has a good glimpse at the performance you may see with the most current games available. BTW I have been using the Witcher 2 even more lately and seems that if you use all on ultra and use settings like no texture down-sampling etc that one can push their system, the hardest out of any game available when in addition to the above "Ubersampling" is applied as it takes care of AA and AF and more so since it does both those jobs but better and is described as where one may run 240fps with "Ubersampling" off and 60fps with it on as it seems to produce 1 fps out of every 4fps.. so every 4 frames is combined for the best of all 4 and then the next 4fps are produced cutting your average fps from whatever it is with "Ubersampling" off to 1/4th the fps you were getting but a image far superior to what any AA and AF can produced when combined.

IMO Vantage assigns far too many overall points to faster CPUs (especially when overclocked), this is also a problem in 3dm11 and every other benchmark I'm aware of, but particularly with vantage.

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IMO Vantage assigns far too many overall points to faster CPUs (especially when overclocked), this is also a problem in 3dm11 and every other benchmark I'm aware of, but particularly with vantage.

I agree the scoring system is not very good idea of game performance because of what you are talking about. Games are very dependent on videocards and I think what your getting at would be better... A scoring weighted more by gpu and its current clocks. I think i merely meant Vantage has the strongest/stressful gpu test of the 3dmarks out there, also in CPU too but as you said they use the extracted performance data in a not so balanced method giving high end cpus an inaccurate bloated score. Anyone here of a new 3dmark coming for this year?

Brian I think you mentioned you want a desktop when someone in chat mentioned M18x R2... are you planning on selling M18x getting an ultraportable and building a desktop... if so that M11x like you said could very well suit your needs for a portable.

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