bit-tech.net | Alienware M17x Gaming Laptop Review

Mentai 28th October 2009, 09:14

Loving that the GTX 260M is secretly a 8800GT, nice rebranding by nvidia. Oh and you should've done a Street Fighter 4 benchmark! It's in the screenshots and I bet it could have achieved 60fps in that.

droitwichdosser 28th October 2009, 09:19

Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit...

Vista... It comes with Vista!?

Baz 28th October 2009, 10:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by droitwichdosser
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit...

Vista... It comes with Vista!?

This refers to the O/S the laptop was tested with. Obviously as 7 is out now, Alienware will be selling it with that instead.

Hustler 28th October 2009, 10:35

Lol....

£2000 for the privelege of running Crysis at 20fps.....

'More money than sense'....comes to mind, if you buy one of these.

Radical_Monkey 28th October 2009, 10:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hustler
Lol....

£2000 for the privelege of running Crysis at 20fps.....

'More money than sense'....comes to mind, if you buy one of these.

Perhaps but you have to admit it looks damn sexy, reminds me of that new Lamborghini Murcielago or the F-22 Raptor

Bonzo45 28th October 2009, 11:09

The link to the CustomPC benchmarks goes to the bit-tech.net homepage, with a little CustomPC announcement box. Not to a download.

Just thought I'd let you know.

AngusW 28th October 2009, 11:33

Already seen the custom pc review of this a while back. Personally i don't see the point in these types of laptops and for the price i would rather get a i7 desktop rig and then with the change get the new i7 dell studio 15 or something for on the move. Though i guess the alienware looks cool in the asthetics department.

xaser04 28th October 2009, 11:39

Why-o-why havn't we seen more 'gaming' laptops with the mobility HD48xx series GPUS?

The HD4850m in my Advent 6555 is superior to the GPU in this laptop yet I paid under £950 for the entire laptop. My screen resolution is lower but, crucially, as its a gaming laptop with a relatively underpowered gpu (by desktop standards) it actually makes sense (as games like Crysis are playable with decent detail settings).

The Alienware looks ok (although its considerably fatter than my MSI based Advent) but the price is just ridiculous.

duc 28th October 2009, 12:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baz
This refers to the O/S the laptop was tested with. Obviously as 7 is out now, Alienware will be selling it with that instead.

Just shy of £2000 you should at least expect to have Ultimate rather than Home Premium

Quote:

Originally Posted by Radical_Monkey
Perhaps but you have to admit it looks damn sexy, reminds me of that new Lamborghini Murcielago or the F-22 Raptor

I think more Audi R8

M_D_K 28th October 2009, 12:16

"HDD: 2 x 7,200rpm Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (in RAID 0)"

Is that an error or am i reading it wrong ?

Laptop looks a bit too square for me.

putiikki 28th October 2009, 12:44

"The power brick is enormous. Click to enlarge"
:D

Claave 28th October 2009, 12:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bonzo45
The link to the CustomPC benchmarks goes to the bit-tech.net homepage, with a little CustomPC announcement box. Not to a download.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Cheers, changed the URL.

The boy 4rm oz 28th October 2009, 13:06

I hardly see the worth or the point.

stoff3r 28th October 2009, 14:47

I don't see the point either, but perhaps the tests was a little few... I mean crysis is a sucker for power on any system, how about testing left 4 dead 2 (or 1 since the demo of 2 is delayed until oblivion), counterstrike source, red alert 3 and similar games people will actually play. I mean, nobody EVER bought a laptop to play crysis? (Edit: and testing crysis on this machine doesnt give a clear picture of what power this machine has, test nfs:shift and some never titles)

wiak 28th October 2009, 16:07

excuse me i dont want to waste cash on a OLD graphics card the 260M is just a renamed 9800 GTX series that is also a renamed 8800 GTX series :P

Geforce GTX 260M = not a GT200 chip
Geforce GTX 280M = not a GT200 chip

storm20200 28th October 2009, 16:37

I hate to be the one to do this but why oh why do you give the custom pc benchmark scores in points? It's just completely useless in my opinion and doesn't give an indication how much better at something one piece of hardware is, I used to love bit-techs hardware reviews and could never say a bad word but this is happening a lot more often and just doesn't give an idea of real world performance. I know this is marketed at a gaming laptop and IMO the gaming benchmarks were fine but giving stuff like points for video encoding, image editing and multitasking just seems completely useless to me :(

Benchmarks with points aren't a good way to show performance, look at 3DMark, just because one card scores higher than the other doesn't mean it's gonna perform better so I always skip those parts of reviews. I get the feeling I'm gonna end up skipping parts of upcoming reviews if it's always like this T_T

xaser04 28th October 2009, 16:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiak
excuse me i dont want to waste cash on a OLD graphics card the 260M is just a renamed 9800 GTX series that is also a renamed 8800 GTX series :P

Geforce GTX 260M = not a GT200 chip
Geforce GTX 280M = not a GT200 chip

Yup they are all G92 based, hence my post above querying why we don't see more of the HD48XXm series in these class laptops.

Of course I could go into how retarted the mobile lineup is from nVidia but I can't be bothered.

All I will say is:

9800mGT - 96 shaders
9800mGTS - 64 shaders

......

wiak 28th October 2009, 17:05

there are many laptops with Moblity HD 4800 series cards, just that some OEMs are just stupid to put old tech (or got paid)

jake9891 28th October 2009, 20:51

One thing, why Vista??

bothaus 28th October 2009, 23:55

I too have never seen the point of thick brick gaming laptops. Cool but I think I liked the old versions better for looks. This and the towers look to be designed by epic games. Square and tacky. Looks a bit like a bad teenage boy's Car Poster relics but no bikinis.

Claave 29th October 2009, 10:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by storm20200
I hate to be the one to do this but why oh why do you give the custom pc benchmark scores in points? It's just completely useless in my opinion and doesn't give an indication how much better at something one piece of hardware is, I used to love bit-techs hardware reviews and could never say a bad word but this is happening a lot more often and just doesn't give an idea of real world performance. I know this is marketed at a gaming laptop and IMO the gaming benchmarks were fine but giving stuff like points for video encoding, image editing and multitasking just seems completely useless to me :(

Benchmarks with points aren't a good way to show performance, look at 3DMark, just because one card scores higher than the other doesn't mean it's gonna perform better so I always skip those parts of reviews. I get the feeling I'm gonna end up skipping parts of upcoming reviews if it's always like this T_T

From the article: The scores are normalised against a reference PC that includes a stock-speed Core 2 Duo E6700, 2GB of DDR2 memory and a fast P45 motherboard. This PC scores 1,000 points, so if your PC scores 1,300, it's 30 per cent faster than the reference system, and if it scores less than 1,000 points, it's slower.

Does that not explain what the points mean well enough?

leexgx 29th October 2009, 16:55

point system works well

on page 4 http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/10/26/download-the-custompc-media-benchmarks-here/
so you can score your pc

popswala 30th October 2009, 18:34

I actually have this laptop since like a couple weeks after it came out. Its a big step up from my old xps1530. That thing couldn't handle games at all. It was new packed w/ a 8600 and built thin so you couldn't upgrade. I now have dual gtx 260m in sli. Big difference.

Its not really all that squared. The front and back are slanted while the front has a corner in the middle of the lid. Little awkward if u wanted a better webcam or a center speaker there. Its definitely not made for mobility. Its thick and heavy.

I do love the shape and everything this thing can handle. It does have Vista 64 but not Ultimate. It will get Win7 64bit on it tho soon.

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Alienware M17x Gaming Laptop Review

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