Alienware m17x

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28 Nov 2004
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Just bought a Alienware m17x q9000 quad cpu 4 gig memory
1920x1200 screen 17 inch
blue ray reader
Ati 4870 Graphics
2x 7200 160g hard drives in striped raid 0.
bluetooth
So far loving it will get some benches done.
so far overclocked cpu from 2ghz to 2.4ghz and stable ;)
only paid £999.00 bargain ;)
had a prob with on board 4870 turning off and nvidia 9400m coming on.
sorted it now seems to switch to onboard graphics if u dont have power lead in to save power. nice feature ;)
 
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It wont be brand new as they don't do that model anymore. As an ex-Alienware owner myself they're decent laptops but god help you if you have issues. The Nvidia equipped Revision 1 laptop (which is what Dazboots has, but with ATI cards) suffered some major issues, to the point they're still not completely fixed, there was talk of a class action, and Alienware doesn't sell R2 laptops equipped with Nvidia cards.

I would suggest you change the CPU though Daz, from past experience with those 4 series mobile cards, they like a CPU much faster than the Q9000, as the crossfire really appreciates the extra processing power and actually benefits in raw framerate terms (I went from a P8400 to a X9100, using the crossfire 4850s, so a little extra CPU cache and approximately 700Mhz of extra core speed, and my framerates in nearly every game I tried and benched increased, some by quite a way) :) ;)
CPU limited games absolutely went through the roof.
Its a good machine though if you've got one with no issues; get the CPU upgraded and you've got a few years of decent gaming capability there, the 4850s were certainly capable of playing Crysis in 1920x1200,and the 4870s are about 10% faster :)

At £999, providing you haven't got a problem model (the ATI models were much less problematic but there were still a few), then you got a very good deal as that'll blow holes in most laptops new at that price, especially when/if you swap out the CPU.

If you want any examples of how much difference the CPU made, check out:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=404008

There are some before and after and updated direct comparisons, one example would be DMC4, changing the CPU resulted in an FPS increase from 100 to 160 in one of the benchmark scenes and similar rises elsewhere, Last Remnant bench went from average FPS in the 70s to almost 110; EVERYTHING benefitted from the faster CPU.
Please bear in mind these benches were done with 9.8 drivers and with 4850s not 4870s, the increas in performance with new drivers and the newer cards is potentially larger!
 
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