Alienware m18x or m17x r4?

PJHUK · 12 Sep 2012 at 07:29

Metalface Mark said:
Just clone it

Thanks Mark. Do you have any recommendations regarding cloning software?

fish · 12 Sep 2012 at 07:52

Macrium reflect free edition does a good job

Metalface Mark · 12 Sep 2012 at 12:36

fish said:
Macrium reflect free edition does a good job

Yes, this, and its free

PJHUK · 12 Sep 2012 at 15:41

fish said:
Macrium reflect free edition does a good job

Thanks - will try this when I get home.

Is is best to enable AHCI in the bios before copying the cloned image, or does it not matter since the image is from a windows install that did not have AHCI enabled in the first place?

Meaker · 12 Sep 2012 at 15:48

That setting is registry based so it will need to be set to the same in the bios in order to boot.

PJHUK · 12 Sep 2012 at 15:54

Oh ok, good to know - one less setting to fret over! Cheers

Dazzo · 12 Sep 2012 at 18:07

Anyone have problems with the radeon 7970 gfx driver?

Giving me jip and no cd's supplied

Metalface Mark · 12 Sep 2012 at 20:25

No problem, You updated it?

Dazzo · 12 Sep 2012 at 21:10

when i first turned it on i got an error about the driver. downloaded a new one seems to be ok atm

antipesto93 · 12 Sep 2012 at 22:39

Just ordered

alienwisher · 13 Sep 2012 at 13:30

antipesto93 said:
Just ordered

Was that off the outlet mate? What did you get?

currantloaf · 17 Sep 2012 at 10:54

*points at R4 with delight*

2gb 7970m 8gb ram i7 3610QM and 1080p goodness

Was lucky to find a reseller who needed his cash back quickly, Considering i was upgrading from a 2.2Ghz 1gb ram 128mb gpu Vista machine this is some improvement!

Yet to stick an SSD inside but i have yet to find reason to

Meaker · 17 Sep 2012 at 17:10

and

In the middle of properly modifying my power brick (adding a sealed connector of the right kind to the end).

Myranda · 17 Sep 2012 at 20:51

Meaker said:
and

In the middle of properly modifying my power brick (adding a sealed connector of the right kind to the end).

Been staring at that wondering what it was.... then re-read the bit at the bottom and finally saw that it was the power brick. That was driving me potty!

Thinking of power... the R4 M18X... how long does the battery last under various conditions?

I assume full on gaming drinks down the battery juice faster than I drink cheap wine.

But what about with the twin graphics cards turned off watching a blu-ray using only the processor GPU (assuming things like SSDs rather than spinny spinny disks). Is there enough battery juices to watch a whole movie?

I'm used to an Acer big screen lappy that in its prime could JUST manage an action film (90m ish) before dying in the credits, though now the battery is so poorly that it lasts less than 5 minutes sans plug. Part of the appeal of a great big 1080p screen and blue ray is the possibility of watching a movie on the train to/from work. I know they're beefy but I'm used to carrying a lot of luggage/gear when popping out (think my bike jacket is heavier than the R4).

Meaker · 17 Sep 2012 at 23:21

The M18X does not use optimus so wont have the same profile as the M17X.

Metalface Mark · 18 Sep 2012 at 20:36

Just a wee update, I have my desktop replacing my alienware now, with an i7 2600k @4.5ghz and 580 gtx 3gb, I scored marginally better on my alienware with 3610 and 7970 at the stock test on 3dmark 2011.

Myranda · 19 Sep 2012 at 17:25

So, no one knows what the R4 battery life is at all? Hmm okies.

How about... there's an option for an mSATA drive on the 18inch beastie, and I've heard Dell are a little on the eeeeeevil side on pricing for things like RAM and hard drives...

If one ordered a M18X with a 500gb spinny drive and wanted to swap it, is the bios able to handle 3 non-spinny 2.5" drives in the sort of drive stack thing they have in there and an mSATA drive? having seen the price of a 256gb mSATA dodad I thought it rather tempting... but the pricing options on Dell are a little on the scary side when changing things like that... and yes I suppose a laptop with 4 drives is a little odd, but I'm also highly caffinated... mmm Monster Ripper.

Also: Slot loading drives. Have they improved? Only experience of slot loading stuff was a cheapy stereo at a shop I managed, and it was essentially a CD grinder leaving scrapes and scuff marks on the edges of every disk that had the misfortune of being popped into it - as I noticed that Alienware seem to have gone slot-load-crazy I'd ask if it would kill the blu ray collection I want to get when I have a laptop capable of playing them

Metalface Mark · 19 Sep 2012 at 18:33

The battery life is good when not gaming, I got nearly 4 hours out of it on the onboard gpu.

Myranda · 19 Sep 2012 at 19:07

Metalface Mark said:
The battery life is good when not gaming, I got nearly 4 hours out of it on the onboard gpu.

4h is about perfect... hmmm... it's getting more and more temptings

thedinks · 19 Sep 2012 at 20:12

Myranda said:
So, no one knows what the R4 battery life is at all? Hmm okies.

How about... there's an option for an mSATA drive on the 18inch beastie, and I've heard Dell are a little on the eeeeeevil side on pricing for things like RAM and hard drives...

If one ordered a M18X with a 500gb spinny drive and wanted to swap it, is the bios able to handle 3 non-spinny 2.5" drives in the sort of drive stack thing they have in there and an mSATA drive? having seen the price of a 256gb mSATA dodad I thought it rather tempting... but the pricing options on Dell are a little on the scary side when changing things like that... and yes I suppose a laptop with 4 drives is a little odd, but I'm also highly caffinated... mmm Monster Ripper.

Also: Slot loading drives. Have they improved? Only experience of slot loading stuff was a cheapy stereo at a shop I managed, and it was essentially a CD grinder leaving scrapes and scuff marks on the edges of every disk that had the misfortune of being popped into it - as I noticed that Alienware seem to have gone slot-load-crazy I'd ask if it would kill the blu ray collection I want to get when I have a laptop capable of playing them

I get just over 5 hours with onboard igp.

The hdd caddy takes 2x9.5mm drives or 3 x7mm drives plus the msata slot.

The slot drive is fine on mine.