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M18x U.S. Configurator


Would you still buy the M18x if the prices remain the same?  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you still buy the M18x if the prices remain the same?

    • Yes, I find it normal for what they offer
      6
    • No, it is way overpriced
      20


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I always run big purchases by her. but ya my m3 doesn't do good on gas milage either. my commute 80 miles a day, 40 each way, and a couple years back i put 4.10 diff in the rear.

Im just going to go for the 18. i dont care what it costs. if its too expensive than ill hold off another year on a wedding ring lol if only she knew! hahahha

back on topic, if dual 6970s are 500 bucks that seams reasonable, if they actually get driver support lol

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I always run big purchases by her. but ya my m3 doesn't do good on gas milage either. my commute 80 miles a day, 40 each way, and a couple years back i put 4.10 diff in the rear.

Im just going to go for the 18. i dont care what it costs. if its too expensive than ill hold off another year on a wedding ring lol if only she knew! hahahha

back on topic, if dual 6970s are 500 bucks that seams reasonable, if they actually get driver support lol

That's a true AW fan! AMD has excellent driver support for single GPU while Crossfire is decent but could use improvement.

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Lets just not forget about the dell driver support for the 5870m crossfire debacle... we had to fight tooth and nail to get those updates, remember?

-Ash

and there's currently issues (aka random bsod) moving off anything other than the oem (dell) amd driver on the M17x R3... ;)

:sigh: was my original apprehension taking the amd route - only time will tell... ;)

Edited by vikingrinn
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No random bsod's for me yet and I'm using Catalyst 11.4 However, I do have problems with the brightness becoming unresponsive after I take it out of sleep mode but that's not a big deal.

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Yeah... looks to me like it will be beneficial for me to wait a couple months, see if they have the 485m option buy then and if not, get the 460's and buy third party.

I just cant trust the AMD solution any more.

-Ash

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Yeah... looks to me like it will be beneficial for me to wait a couple months, see if they have the 485m option buy then and if not, get the 460's and buy third party.

I just cant trust the AMD solution any more.

-Ash

And more rumor: Google Oversetter

I don't see the 580M during the launch though. We'd be seeing it in the current configurators already if that were true.

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the random/occasional bsod's are showing up with the 6970M based M17x R3 (single dGPU...) units 'over there' as well. while partly reassuring it's not just here, hopefully it'll be remedied soon and we'll start being able to use regular driver updates straight from amd... ;)

Edited by vikingrinn
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Those people are probably screwing up the driver installs to be getting bsod's with the R3 + 6970M. When I had mine, it never experienced a single BSOD or any other glitch.

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for the time being alleviated the issues by sticking with oem (dell) drivers on a fresh install, but can see how this will be a learning curve to those who always like to 'stay fresh'... lol :P

frustrating, since that's how it should be (ability to stay current with amd drivers)... ;)

Edited by vikingrinn
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More and more china rumors about the 580m, which is the same specs as a 485m but running cooler and higher clockspeed.

Im not really sure the 580m would be worth the extra money over a 485m - if its only 5% faster (projected clockspeed increase equates to 5% performance increase) it had better be only 5% more expensive.

-Ash

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More and more china rumors about the 580m, which is the same specs as a 485m but running cooler and higher clockspeed.

Im not really sure the 580m would be worth the extra money over a 485m - if its only 5% faster (projected clockspeed increase equates to 5% performance increase) it had better be only 5% more expensive.

-Ash

If it's GF 114, it should cost less and be a lot more than 5% faster. Guess we'll just have to see if it arrives.

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More and more china rumors about the 580m, which is the same specs as a 485m but running cooler and higher clockspeed.

Im not really sure the 580m would be worth the extra money over a 485m - if its only 5% faster (projected clockspeed increase equates to 5% performance increase) it had better be only 5% more expensive.

-Ash

If it's GF 114, it should cost less and be a lot more than 5% faster. Guess we'll just have to see if it arrives.

would be a nice surprise...

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NBR configuration/launch thread is closed. Hopefully people know about T|I and that they can continue their discussion here. ;)

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I don't get the need to close those threads, it's not as if the notebook isn't (hopefully, probably) launching tuesday.

Newbie question that was brushed aside in those other forums, is a SSD really that big a difference in performance in games? I know that in theory you can access data faster and your data will never be truly lost, but in games and such is it worth it?

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Every single thing you see in a videogame is stored on the hard disk.

To see it in game it has to go from hard disk -> ram -> GPU -> monitor.

The faster your hard disk, the faster it gets through the pipeline. Hard disks are incredibly slow compared to ram, gpu, etc.

Today, most games are 32-bit applications, so they have a hard limit of 2gb ram to store graphics, etc into. So, you need a hard disk that can catch the overflow in your page file.

If you are running through a particularly large and varied game map, if you come across an item that isnt in your ram the game will 'hitch' as brian said, and will momentarily pause while it loads from the hard disk. The loading isnt the bad part though, its the seeking.

Hard disks have "needles" that need to seek back and forth to find files. On a standard HDD, this is 8-12ms, so thats how long the hitch will last at a minimum.

If you have an SSD, this hitching is eliminated because there is no needle doing seeking, and the burst bandwidth is more than any single game resource in size.

This is just one of many examples why an SSD is better.

Whilst all of this is going on, if you use skype/vent/mumble/etc that is also going to need hard disk access, and everything else too.

I see a lot of people, even today saying "you dont need an SSD, it just sometimes maybe makes games load faster". These are people who cant afford an SSD, and tell themselves this at night so they can get to sleep.

An SSD is a massive, powerful, monstrous upgrade that is orders of magnitiude more visible than any other upgrade you can do, unless you are upgrading your GPU from a TNT2 or something to a hd6970.

TL;DR: Get an SSD.

-Ash

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Perfect set of replies. I'll try to squeeze an SSD option in, can always just use storage for cheap (80 bucks for externals, etc) later. Thanks guys!

Edit: I assume the "SSD Hybrid" option that's been popping up in these config sites is a middle of the road option or the like?

Edited by GabrielZ
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Slightly better than middle of the road.

The most often used parts is stored on SSD area. The larger files are ok to be run off platter storage, so a hybrid SSD is actually a really good drive.

In my m17x r2 I have 3 SSDs, a single 120gb sandforce drive as my OS drive, and 2x 120gb slower drives in raid0 for documents/data. The IOPS on the raid0 is slower, but transfer speed is the same, so the whole setup makes sense and works great.

-Ash

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Slightly better than middle of the road.

The most often used parts is stored on SSD area. The larger files are ok to be run off platter storage, so a hybrid SSD is actually a really good drive.

In my m17x r2 I have 3 SSDs, a single 120gb sandforce drive as my OS drive, and 2x 120gb slower drives in raid0 for documents/data. The IOPS on the raid0 is slower, but transfer speed is the same, so the whole setup makes sense and works great.

-Ash

Wait, you removed the optical drive and replaced it with an SSD and RAIDed it with the other SSD on slot 2 or did you use an external eSATA enclosure?

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Wait, you removed the optical drive and replaced it with an SSD and RAIDed it with the other SSD on slot 2 or did you use an external eSATA enclosure?

Xotic Pc offers to do that when you order...

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