Alienware m18x or m17x r4?

my friend got it but dropped it as it was out of his price range, I tried to get it but no doubt a reseller snagged it in the second it was out of his cart :(
 
I ordered 3 laptops at the same time last week which were all meant to have been delivered today. The 2 inspirons have arrived but the M17x seems to have gone missing in transit!

25/01/13 08:14 BPO - GUILDFORD NOT REC'D/INCOMPLETE IN DEPOT.
24/01/13 15:16 WWI - HINCKLEY ORDER DISPATCHED FROM HUB.
24/01/13 15:16 WWI - HINCKLEY FIRST BOX SCANNED OUT OF HUB.
24/01/13 15:16 WWI - HINCKLEY ORDER COMPLETE IN HUB.
24/01/13 15:16 WWI - HINCKLEY FIRST BOX SCANNED INTO HUB.
24/01/13 11:00 PLAN COMMITTED NOTE.
24/01/13 09:14 CLEAR - ABF 28/01/13 SCHEDULED DELIVERY DATE.
22/01/13 17:00 EMF DEPARTED MANU.FACILITY
Click to expand...
 
Yikes Rob. Hopefully it comes through ok. My 7720 order has been delayed until next week. :-(

Well it's good to hear it wasn't a reseller who got the initial expensive R4 yesterday, though obviously may well have fallen into the hands of a reseller when released. Gives me a little hope, lol.
 
I’ve had my Alienware M17x for over a month now and I’ll quite easily say it’s without doubt a top performer. It can certainly hold its own against even some of the better spec desktop PC’s and offers excellent 1080p single screen gaming.

However has anyone who owns one of these machines noticed –

The keyboard AlienFX lights light up but not the whole keyboard, its hard to explain but to me, it looks like they haven’t got enough LED in places, my space bar is brighter at both ends, but the middle is dim comparable to the rest of the space bar. Same for some other keys, the lights are working but its not solid lights but some are brighter then others for quite a few keys, mainly the bottom row of keys.

The screen actually touches the keyboard when you close the lid. I’m not sure what is causing the issue, but my screen always has little marks that you can easily clean off, which match the exact position of the keys, its annoying as I have to keep cleaning the screen.

The USB ports are tight, real tight. I have to give my usb devices a good old tug to remove them, for a laptop, really tight usb ports, not welcome as I’m constantly taking my devices out.

The plastic cover over the screen makes this screen impossible to use if you’ve got direct sunlight or a light shining directly onto it, I can use the screen as a mirror at times.

The lack of subwoofer is noticeable. The sound lacks punch, thankfully I’ve got a usb headset, so this is a none issue for me but it’s still iffy for a laptop of this price to omit the subwoofer.

But good news, this is all I’ve found to complain about, all the above issues I’ve googled and others have reported them, but overall this is a top performing laptop but its not without its issues.
 
There were 4 R4's today but nothing of worth.

Guys, a friend of mine bought an L702X a couple weeks back from the outlet. He received it today and I'm shocked at the state of it?

It was a scratch and dent model but not only is the back cover covered in scratches, it's also got a huge indented scrape on it where you can nearly see the back of the LCD panel. In my mind, Dell shouldn't be selling a model in this state. The funny thing the rest of the laptop is absolutley pristine. He doesn't want to send it back simply because he's waited ages for this exact spec. So, if he phones Dell, can he ask Dell to replace the back cover or will they just say "it's a scratch/dent so tough!". Thanks for any assistance.
 
The R4 I ordered was received today. According to my brother it was in perfect as new condition and he is more than happy with it. It also had the Blu ray drive and 16GB of Ram as promised by Dell. For £1100 brand new he got a bargain with that one.
 
Received mine yesterday and wow what a beast this thing is.
Opened it straight up and installed my SSD and while I was at it I removed the heat sinks and repasted both the GPU and the CPU.
Tried to overclock my 7970m but struggled to get past 930 core and 1350 memory. :(
Had a quick look online and decided to do the voltage mod on the bios to 1.075v and what a difference that has made. It now overclocks like crazy:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5693460

Those clocks are stable in BF3... been playing for a few hours with no problems.

All in all im very please with this laptop - the GPU switching is a bit crappy but FN+F7 sorts that out.
 
Hey guys, just got my m17x r4 from Sam(cheers mate!)

Getting the following on benchmarks at stock with no tweaking;

11' - 6987
06' - 22664

all seem OK?

3610, 7970m, 8gb 1600mhz

Over the moon already, old laptop was getting 2'300 when it was overclocked out of its eyeballs, and this one is getting 7k without me having touched a thing!

Tommy
 
7K is a very solid score, I can get P6759 on CAT 13.2 so you've got a good score, the previous poster was getting one heck of a 3D Mark score.

Impressive laptops aren't they? Can give any decent top end desktop a run for its money, ok its not 7970 or GTX670 etc, but those 7970M can not half shift games can't they?

I was impressed with mine, what games have you tried yet?
 
Haven't gamed yet but not without reason....

....for some reason internet downloads are capping at 300k and speedtest.net is reporting a 3mb connection from this laptop.

However, on my phone sat in the same place in my house, getting the expected 25-30mb connection speed running the speedtest.net test.

Am I missing soem kind of setting on this killer wireless-N card? Weird!!!

Otherwise, am glad the score looks OK, the current installde drivers are a version of 12.11's from back in October, will update and give it another bash.
 
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Yes go to Killer wireless network software, there is a setting for internet up and down speeds, more then likely capped there, had the same issue myself.

Annoying..
 
Fixed. That was easy!! I'm amazed that it was capped at 3mb, although Sam may have 3mb internet, which would make sense as to why it was set as a capped 3mb in the settings.

Now downloading at a healthy 3.2mbps

Thank you so much!
 
Reformatted this morning. Getting 800 points less in 3dmark11 @ 6'200. Any ideas?

Updated BIOS to A10 from A4. And followed the driver installs based on service tag within the dell website. 13.1 drivers!

edit: rolled back to 12.11 and all is well in the world.
 
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