A couple of Questions about the m14x Potential Buyer!

I'm thinking of joining the m14x club, I had a m11x until my girlfriend stole it for herself and is now using it for autocad .

I managed to find a 2 weeks used one for 1100 including 3 years warranty, and apperently its in mint and also for about 1300$ new at Costco.

Specs are the same,

i7 with 6 gigs DDR3
555M GTX w/ 1.5 GB RAm DDR3
Home Premium
Not sure screen resolution but I'm assuming and hoping 768p.
750 Gig HDD
Warranty differences, 3 years dell for used, 2 years costco covers everything and 90 day return policy.

Now 1 reason i didn't grab the m11x R3 before was because of optimus, and now because of the CPU performance differences.

Are the Optimus problems still rampant like the m11X R2?

Will I see a big difference going from m11x with core 2 duo 1.6 model with 355m.

Is the battery much better than before? My m11x was amazing lasting me near 7 hours a day with general use and low brightness (ofc tweaked os).

How do games stack up? I remember the m11x struggled to put 30 fps in left 4 dead 2 at times.

I do see a lot of reviews out there, but I'd rather here from the owners. I know that most of you tweak the OS and get as much as possible out of the system.

Also, why is there a 3.0 GB version? Using DDR3 (not even GDDR3) an additional 1.5 GB will do nothing, even in synthetic I'm doubtful, can any1 confirm or deny??

Thank You very much!!!!


P.S

Last question in this comment, I am trying very had to not use my glasses when using the laptop, and frankly I don't want to go 17" because I had a Toshiba Qosmio and it was really annoying to both fit in my bag and pull out. Now I know it varies from person to person, but is the screen riddiculously small or is it hard to tell the difference between lets say it, and m15x???

Thanks again!

 

Well, gaming wise, it's pretty good, can run Crysis on "Very High" (Medium) at a good 35-45FPS (depending on if overclocked GPU or not).

Battery life, I've never tried to get a bunch out of it (since i'm always gaming, and if it's not plugged in, you lose performance).

You will see quite a difference from what you had before.

 

You will see a pretty big difference from the M11x. I play Crysis (1) on Max settings @ 1366x768 with my GPU overclocked and almost getting 50fps at times outdoors. With battery I underclock my CPU to 1.5ghz and with wifi on, one notch above lowest brightness, and alienfx off I can get about 5.5 hours. With FX on I get about 3.5-4. The difference in size between the m15x and m14x is huge, while a 14 inch vs 15.6 isnt that big really.

Heres a video I made that may help with your decision

Various Games on the Alienware M14x - YouTube

 

Thanks Guys!

 

The m14x blows away l4f2 like its solitaire, on maxed settings with maxed aa and filtering, and v-sync, the fps rarely goes below 60. (capped at 60 fps because of v-sync).

The screen isn't small, but if you get the 900p resolution, which is very clear and sharp, you kind of get lost in the smaller text of the screen compared to the larger text of the 1366x768 screen. So it's totally up to you.

 

Huge, huge CPU difference. I have both an M11x R2 and an M14x. In Starcraft 2, a very CPU-bottlenecked game, the M11x had poor framerates in the mid-to-late games of 2v2 or larger, but in M14x the framerate is fantastic up through Ultra. However, I doubt the battery life will be as good as in the M11x, since it was designed more for portability in mind.

 

Also, the 900p screen is highly highly recommended! You can simply fit more on the screen with 900p and things look great. You can always turn it down to 768p if you want.

 

the only thing I'm afraid of is that with the 900p resolution, the games will tend to take a big hit in games (for example at driverheaven or w.e the site is called now, the games took a near 50% hit in frame rates, BF:BC 2).

I also want to play native

1 thing though is that at the same time I want to be able to not irritate my eyes with the bigger 768p pixels.

Very tough choice!!!

 

Well you could always just change the resolution and downscale it to 1366x768, it doesn't look bad at all.

There's no difference between running a 1600x900 screen at the 768 resolution, or just having a 768 native screen.

The only difference is that you have the option to make it 900p

 

Well there should be, I mean the pixels are smaller and the picture looks washed out? :S

I mean just going from 1280x1024 to 1024x768 on my old monitor was a noticeable difference on my old 15 inch monitor.

But Thanks anyways for the advice, I'm looking to spend around 1300$-1400$ after tax, so I will be getting the base model of the i7s and lowest ram video card and everything I can always upgrade the CPU later, I just don't have the cash now that I'm already in the middle of semester

 

@L1qu1d:
Well m in the same boat as you are sir.

n I need a laptop which can last me around 2-3 yrs while playing d latest games at a decent framerate while lasting around 4-5 hrs on battery (non gaming) and atleast an hour while gaming.

To narrow my search down I've made 2 choices: the M14x or the clevo p150HM (Malibal Lotus rebranding).

My budget is 2000$ max. n i kno that the clevo wud hv almost everything better (AMD 6990m compared to the GT 555m) than the m14x but considering the small footprint of 14x and the better battery and my lesser need for extremely high fps i cud go for the 14x as well.

Now this has made me extremely confused in choosing b/w the two.

Any help wud be highly appreciated.

Laptop Choice: M14x or Clevo P150HM
Budget: 2000$ max.
Usage: Gaming, Programming, Photoshop and the usual works

Regards

 

You'll get used to the 900p screen, but it is weird at first, even in browsers, there's a lot of empty space on the sides. Games would be played better on the 720p screen though. I recommend that you get the 900p and play high demanding games in 720p. Trust me, the 900p screen is so sharp and clear, that it makes my 1440x900 screen on my macbook air looks like I bought it 4 years ago.

 

What I could do I guess is play games @ 720p and go into Nv control panel and make it so that it doesn't stretch to fit....

 

I'm going to be buying mine from Costco since it costs about 300$ cheaper than buying it from Dell at this point and it comes with 90 day return + 2 years warranty from Costco.

I really want to swap out the CPU though once it gets close to the end of those 2 years

 

Playing games at 1366x768 should not cause any stretching as it is the same aspect ratio as 1600x900 (16:9)

 

What I mean so that it doesn't actually stretch and blur the image because of the pixels.

For example if I run it in 1366x768, the image is stretched over more pixels, which is why we get that blurring of the image. Instead i'll make it a little bit smaller (with borders) and get a clear image.

I'm still going to see what my possibilities are

 

OK so I ended up buying this PC:

Costco - Dell? Alienware M14x English Laptop i7-2630QM, 14-in. HD WLED 6 GB, 750 GB

I also had a gift recipt, with taxes and shipping first class I ended up pay about 1350$ with taxes and everything

Comes with 90 days return + 2 years warranty directly through Costco

 

Niiiice.

Costcos here (Montreal) don't sell Alienware.

Maybe something called "Allen's Wear" though...

 

I think u can order it anywhere in Canada off the Costco Website:S
Thats what I did There is a French Edition as well apperently!

Edit:

I hope its not 1600x900 though!!!!!! I hope its 1366x768!

 

WLED HD+ is 1600x900, HD is 1366x768, so you're all good

I'd have looked for one with the HD+ screen though. A 50% drop in performance with the higher resolution screen at native resolution is extremely unlikely, probably more like 10~15%.

 

I did some of the math, and its basically a near 50% increase in pixels (37%ish to be more accurate),

From Anandtech's review, it took a near 45% drop in Frames for L4D2, and 28% for Mass Effect 2 for example.

The rest ran different settings so I'm not surprised. The pixel ratio of the laptop doesn't really bother me, @ 14", increasing the pixels by 30% won't be missed for me personally, I know for others it will

I mean I have a 17" 1280x1024 monitor that I've been using for years and that looks crisp and clear for me LOL

I can't do none native resolution, its one of the reasons I went out of my way to get a 720p TV for my consoles lol