Questions - SC2, DNF, VM, Pro Tools, SSD...

Hey all, I have some questions about the m14x.

First of all, has anyone here played a decent amount of Starcraft II on one that could tell me what to realistically expect? I'm mostly curious about its performance at 1600x900 and what sort of framerate we're looking at at various detail settings. I know there's a lot of videos on YouTube, but I'd love some firsthand impressions from folks here. Also, I'm talking about performance at stock settings.

Secondly, anyone get a chance to try the Duke Nukem Forever demo on the m14x yet? I'd love to know how it's running.

Last gaming question: People with the 900p screen, how do you find things look at lower resolutions? Is there much stretching or distortion, or generally pretty decent? The 900p screen is a definite for me because I will need to use this laptop for work and academic situations.

As for non-gaming applications, does anybody here use Pro Tools on the the m14x? Judging from the specs, it should run flawlessly on the machine, but I'm always interested in first hand impressions.

Also, virtualization. It's not something mission critical, but I'd love to know if anybody here has used this laptop for any virtual machine applications. Once again, judging by the specs this laptop should be fine for some virtual machine usage.

Finally, to anybody that has replaced their DVD drive with an SSD, how's that working out, and which caddy do you recommend?

Lots of questions, I know, but any answers are greatly appreciated. Thanks folks!

 

Regarding virtualization, I've been able to virtualize two machines at once using VMWare player. One was an image of my work configuration (SAP, outlook, etc), and another was an XP machine I was using to run non-compatible apps that Win7 didn't like. Both worked flawlessly (with 8gb RAM, 2 gigs per virtual machine)

 

Awesome! That's what I was hoping to hear. Thanks

Also, I see you have the 2720QM. That's what I was thinking of getting. Especially for the DDR3 1600 (which will be supplied by NewEgg, woo!)

 

Starcraft 2 is basically the only game I play and I'm happy to report that the m14x handles it like a CHAMP. I'm not just talking about the campaign, I'm talking about 2v2s, 3v3s, and 4v4s, on Ultra settings. I've played all of them on this computer, mainly 2v2s.

Depending on where you are in the game (intense battle vs just macroing) fps can vary, of course, but it generally goes between 25 (intense battles) and 45 (macroing or early game), usually lingering in the mid 30s late game when there aren't battles going on. Again, on Ultra! I turned it down to High once and it was even better.

The only time I saw this computer fail SC2 was one game I played where the enemy had a mothership late-game that was hiding a million units under it, and I had a detector so I could see them all in that blue-outline cloaked appearance just as we started a big battle... fps tanked to like 4 until the mothership was destroyed and the cloaking was gone. Still, this is obviously a pretty rare scenerio, and if you're worried you can turn the graphics down to medium temporarily.

Bottom line: it handles SC2 like a champ. A CHAMP, I tell you!

 

This is what I wanted to hear! I run SC2 on my desktop (one I built over two years ago, it's an i7 920 with GTX 285 machine) and I play on 1920x1080 on ultra. I've noticed SC2 can drive the framerates all over the place. Like what you said about the mothership... I had one pop out in a game awhile ago and my FPS tanked to like 20 from 60 haha.

Do you play it on 1600x900 then?

Thanks again for the report!

 

I definitely play it on 1600x900 and I love it. This is especially in comparison to my M11x R2 which, bless its heart, does its best but just can't really handle the game above 1v1.

 

For virtualization i have been using 4-5 machines at the same time, but i have a SSD which helps.

 

Excellent! It looks like you have two drives in your m14x? Which caddy did you use?

 

--->M14x Dual Hard Drive Guide<---