Reginal Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 1. Should I buy an M18x now or wait? I mean would the new GPU options completely overshadow 6970CF?2. What's the best SATA3 SSD brand for the M18x/M17x R3 (with emphasis on stability and compatibility)?Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted May 17, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 17, 2011 It depends on what you think you need. The new GPU options are just a rumor right now and usually Alienware takes a while with testing so I doubt they're going to introduce the M18x just now and release new faster GPU's in one month. However, right now I only see the 560M making an appearance, not the black comb xtx for GTX 580M. I think the latter two will be slated for the M18x-R2 along with some other enhancements (maybe chipset change to Z68 and ivy bridge). Best SATA 3 brand with emphasis on stability is an Intel SSD, either 320 series or 510. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reginal Posted May 17, 2011 Author Share Posted May 17, 2011 What about the M4? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder StamatisX Posted May 18, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 18, 2011 Yeah M4,C300 and Intel 510 are good SATA 3 choices right now (the 510 from Intel uses the same controller as the C300, the Intel 320 is a SATA 2) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted May 18, 2011 Share Posted May 18, 2011 Is the Vertex 3 not an option? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashtefere Posted May 18, 2011 Share Posted May 18, 2011 OCZ's business practices are more than questionable.I would personally go for the Corsair Force 3 series at this point, over OCZ.Without a doubt, the corsairs should be the fastest drives out by about 5k-10k IOPS.I run a datacenter with many of the corsair force 2 drives, and havent had a single DOA (which is suprising for SSDS) whereas the OCZ equivalent drives had a 1 in 4 (yes, thats one in four) DOA rate. Stopped buying them once I figured that out and switched to the corsairs.Sandforce v1 drives have a few issues, for example if you fill it up completely with incompressible data you can never trim it to full performance again. Thats pretty fucking bad.The new Sandforce drives (vertex 3, force 3) are exceptional. They have excellent wear leveling (90 years+ at full thrashing all the time) and are the highest performance - so long as the manufacturer builds high quality drives with the chips (hence the OCZ issues...)The intel drives are higher build quality than any other drive, bar none. Its ridiculous. But you get slightly less performance and slightly less wear leveling reliability. We are still talking 60-80 years continuous use so its not something to worry about though.-Ash 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted May 18, 2011 Share Posted May 18, 2011 (edited) I read Vertex 3 standard has 25nm NAND from the Intel/Micron partnership, the Max IOPS drive uses 32nm toggle mode NAND from Toshiba. Boiling it down to the basic points, the Toshiba NAND is up to three times faster and also consumes less power.Found here: OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS SSD Review (240GB) | StorageReview.comThat doesn't mean vertex is reliable but I mean to point out there is a difference in their two models builds due to completely different memory being utilized and its interesting that Intel makes the mem for Vertex 3 but Toshiba does for the Vertex 3 Max IOPS edition.Vertex 3 Max versus Corsair Force 3 seems similar write and read speeds and the only difference is Corsair seems to have the advantage at 10K more IOPS @ 4kb writesCorsair mentioned here compared to Vertex.http://www.nordichardware.com/news/75-memory/43164-corsair-luanches-sandforce-basa-force-3-series.html Edited May 18, 2011 by mw86 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashtefere Posted May 18, 2011 Share Posted May 18, 2011 Yeah, its a monster. Definately getting a couple for a nice tasty raid0 array.-Ash 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted May 18, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 18, 2011 I think i read on OCZ forums that the pefrormance of 240GB & 240GB IOPS is almost identical. Would be awesome to see the IOPS in a alienware. Here are my results without any tweaks 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashtefere Posted May 18, 2011 Share Posted May 18, 2011 What machine and what drive Michael?-Ash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reginal Posted May 18, 2011 Author Share Posted May 18, 2011 It depends on what you think you need. The new GPU options are just a rumor right now and usually Alienware takes a while with testing so I doubt they're going to introduce the M18x just now and release new faster GPU's in one month. However, right now I only see the 560M making an appearance, not the black comb xtx for GTX 580M. I think the latter two will be slated for the M18x-R2 along with some other enhancements (maybe chipset change to Z68 and ivy bridge). Best SATA 3 brand with emphasis on stability is an Intel SSD, either 320 series or 510.Based on your M18x experience, would you still give the green light?I'll be ordering the same configuration as yours - minus the wireless HD transmitter (since I'd probably never use it), and will be installing an SSD (most likely an M4) and an 8GB 1600mhz kingston (2 DIMMs). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted May 19, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 19, 2011 Based on your M18x experience, would you still give the green light?I'll be ordering the same configuration as yours - minus the wireless HD transmitter (since I'd probably never use it), and will be installing an SSD (most likely an M4) and an 8GB 1600mhz kingston (2 DIMMs).I love the M18x if that tells you anything. I like it more than my previous M17x-R2 despite not having RGB LED. It's an all around better system and Alienware's best yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted May 19, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 19, 2011 What machine and what drive Michael?-Ashash, it's the m17x-r3 with a vertex 3 240gb. no tweaks applied. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashtefere Posted May 19, 2011 Share Posted May 19, 2011 Then color me curious about the results after the tweaks. Those numbers are actually quite good!-Ash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted May 19, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 19, 2011 Then color me curious about the results after the tweaks. Those numbers are actually quite good!-AshTried JJBs tweak - no improvements whatsoever, it even went down a bit.Still need to try the intelppm tweak but i suspect that won't change the results.Also, i am new to sandforce drives, should i make 1 fill or 0 fill in CDM for it? the result u see is with random data fill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted May 19, 2011 Share Posted May 19, 2011 Michael when I get my system you will have to school me for sure.. seems like a lot of tweaks to get the vertex really moving... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashtefere Posted May 19, 2011 Share Posted May 19, 2011 Uncompressible data is an unrealistic test for any drive. You arent going to be using 100% uncompressible data. So yeah, random is better for all benchmarks. So the tweaks didnt change anything huh? Thats a bit of a worry. The intelPPM trick will most definately help though, as it disables the auto cstate change. Looking forward to results with your m18x -Ash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted May 20, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 20, 2011 I'll test the ppm tweak and let u know. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reginal Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 Seeing what Brian went through with his temperature issue, I'm honestly tempted to cancel my order. lol xD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted May 21, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 21, 2011 Seeing what Brian went through with his temperature issue, I'm honestly tempted to cancel my order. lol xDI'm really hoping mine is just an isolated case. JTOverath doesn't seem to have this problem but littleone does. So we'll just have to keep watch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted May 22, 2011 Founder Share Posted May 22, 2011 Lets put things in proportion here guys, even if one of the GPUs heats more than the other does not necessarily mean trouble. If both are loaded to 100% performance doesn't suffer. Sure i wouldn't be happy if that'd happen to me, but that's because i have my OCD about those things.Still, the M18x is a hell of a powerful laptop. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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