Just ordered mine.

I didn't want to go for the absolute max but I didn't want the lowest either. How do you guys think I did?

16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz (4x4GB)
Dual AMD Radeon(TM) R9 M290X graphics with 8GB total (2x 4GB) GDDR5 - AMD CrossFire(TM) Enabled
256GB mSATA SSD Boot + 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit English
Slot-Loading 8x SuperMulti Drive (DVDR/RW)
Killer NIC 1202 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0
Accidental Damage Service, 3 Years
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4810MQ processor (Quad Core, 6MB Cache, up 3.8GHz)

Sorry, had to copy and paste the order stuff so things are out of order.

Total: 3887 before tax

I'm kind of nervous to go back to an AMD video card but the 860M just doesn't have enough power and the 880M was too expensive, I hope I didn't just make a mistake

 

1 - Be wary that CrossfireX does NOT work unless you are in fullscreen. If you are a borderless windowed/windowed mode user, you'll find your second card WORTHLESS.
2 - I always suggest the intel 7260ac as I've seen some horror stories about the killer N wireless. Up to you though.
3 - I suggest a 7200 RPM hard drive for your 1TB. Especially when your 1TB starts to fill up, you'll notice serious slowdowns/slowness. Alternately, a 750GB 7200RPM should cost less than the 1TB/5400RPM, and you'd have an extra HDD slot in the machine I'm sure to add in a second hard drive later if the 750GB proves to not be enough space.
4 - You could alternately get SLI 870Ms and overclock them for similar performance to the M290X cards. The 290X cards will be stronger in the end (I think) but the 870Ms should be cheaper for easily near-similar performance.

Hope this helps! You're going to notice one HELL of an increase in gaming performance if the machine in your sig is your current one. I guarantee that. XD

 

1 - I don't ever game unless its fullscreen but that's good to know
2 - Unfortunately Killer was the only option because I agree with you and would have preferred not to have the Killer but I don't do much on wireless these days, its all ethernet because of the whacky setup I have on my M17x right now
3 - Yeah, I have a 7200RPM 750GB in my currently laptop and I am kind of disappointed that Dell would offer such a poor performer in an Alienware machine considering that this laptop was a 420 dollar 4th of July special from them in 2012 - I'll likely cannibalize this machine for its 750GB drive and put it in the Alienware although to be fair, most of it will be off the SSD when possible
4 - I had bad luck with my 260's and overclocking so I'd rather have something faster out of the box but either way, once again Dell didn't give me the 870s as an option. They really tightened customization possibilities on the Alienware machines, I built 5 different ones with different base builds before I came up with this one. If I remember correctly, the highest SSD option with the one that allowed dual 860s was 120GB.

And yeah, the M17x is my current gaming machine and honestly, it still handles most things with ease, its just VERY long in the tooth and I got a huge chunk of change today so I figured I might as well invest in a new machine. Part of me thinks I should have just gone all out but the other part of me wanted a PS4, a Fire TV, and a nice sound bar for my TV and the way I look at it right now is my daily machine is a Core i5-2450M with 8GB of DDR3-1600 and Intel's oh-so-lovely HD 3000 for graphics... This machine is epic in every way

 

Haha well looks like you made the best available choices then. Nothing further to report =3. The only other good thing you could do from here would be to NOT get an alienware, as for the money you could get SLI 880Ms and all other parts (including my upgrade suggestions) in a clevo, but if you want alienware then that looks like it's the best deal.

You'll enjoy it either way, I hope you have no problems and that the machine runs perfect for you =D

 

I've heard a lot of bad things about Clevo in the past and Dell has a better warranty without a doubt - and let's face it, these Haswell machines produce way too much heat to last as long as their older cousins - so Clevo is definitely out.

I have decided to contact Dell about changing the graphics card to the 870M though per your suggestion. While its not offered on the website, I am confident I'd be able to get it over the phone, especially if I threaten to cancel my order entirely if they won't do it. I generally go for nVidia products and after doing some research, both the M290X and the 870M are just rebadged chips anyway with the 870M being a great overclocker so thank you for that.

 

Well the warranty is a half-and-half thing. My friend told Alienware he wanted to upgrade the GPU in his M17xR4 and he was told that'd be a problem for the warranty, though they would do it for him (at a huge cost). Granted, they WILL send techs to your house or work and get stuff done, and almost anywhere in the world too... there is no question about that. Definitely true. Clevo, on the other hand (especially mythlogic which I go through) doesn't even care that I flashed my vBIOS with Svl7 & johnksss's unlocked BIOS... or that I repasted my CPU on my own. They still help me out and keep me under warranty. So it depends on what you're up for.

That being said, I believe it's true that the clevos have less cooling potential than Alienware, for certain. Never gonna argue that bit. They're not bad machines though, as I can safely say I love every inch of my P370SM3 and my D900F when it still worked (and boy did I work that thing to the bone). Either way, it's totally up to you what you wanna do. All I aimed to do is make sure you knew about all the options XD.

Also yeah, I think you'll get the 870Ms that way easy XD. Don't worry about it, I hope it all works out for ya.

 

If they offer you the 870m sli let me know. I was really aiming to save a little cash and will be purchasing my 18 within the next week or two because I just came into a chunk of cash myself.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

Well with the way things went with my Alienware, they told me that I could replace anything that I wanted to however for warranty purposes, I would have to put the original hardware back in the machine in order to be covered. That makes sense to me that they want your machine to be serviced with the original parts but I had a great experience with them for warranty and they even sent me the 2nd drive cage for free (although I lost it lol).

I'd be lying if I said that the Sager NP9377-S isn't attractive, especially at the price point and the 120Hz screen, but I have heard so many things about the poor cooling on Clevo machines that it would take a lot for me to get one.

Well I just checked Alienware's site and across all of their 18 options, its 765M, 860M, 780M, or 880M (of course, not all of them are available for each configuration with the higher configurations offering nothing but the M290X and the 880M). There is no 870M on any of them so I guess I'm stuck because the cost difference from the 860M to the 780M is 900 bucks versus only 550 for the R9 M290X so I guess I'm keeping the M290X. If the damn warranty wasn't 400 bucks, I would just get the 880M's and be done with it.

I'm pretty sure that no amount of overclocking will bring the 860M to the performance of the M290X - there's just too much of a performance gap between them.

Realistically I could probably live with the 860s considering that my old 260s do most things with ease... I don't know, I guess I'm on the fence and I need more opinions on the matter. In this case, it seems like the AMD card is the better of the options - the performance gain of the 880M is not worth another 550 bucks from the already 550 jump I made to get the 290X from what I've seen, regardless of the fact that I have the extra cash available.

 

M290x is a good card. My previous machine which was stolen was crossfire 7970m and I have no complaints. Especially with the extended warranty I would have no worries.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

So none of AMD's infamous driver instability issues? My 5830 in my desktop is fine (although my roommate is using that machine at the moment so its not being used for anything but basic browsing) but I had an ATi Radeon 9800XT and an X800GTO and I said never again after dealing with the drivers for those. The only reason I got the 5830 was because my 8800GTS needed a replacement and quite frankly, the card was much cheaper than the nVidia options at that time.

 

The drivers have improved considerably, and really there is only a few games that do not run as smoothly as on Nvidia. The big one that comes to mind is Skyrim, that engine for some reason just is not as smooth on AMD cards (and this is both on my previous desktop and the laptop). But the vast majority of games perform just as well as they do on an Nvidia card. Besides performance I did not have any instability issues or crashes related to drivers and most complaints you hear about are from cards dying prematurely. I didn't have this happen to me but the boards would suggest that they are more fragile than Nvidia cards and definitely moreso if you plan to overclock them. Running them stock like I was should pretty much guarantee a good life out of them.

 

The 860M maxwell card can be over locked to the near performance level of a stock 780m. Check the gaming thread for more info on this as there are several guys doing it. Title is "the 860m is a beast!"

 

Yea but that card is pretty heavily overclocked. It's thermals are fine but I would really question the longevity of that solution.

 

Yeah overclocking the card that high can't be good for it. With that said, the 260M was a great overclocker too, I just happened to get one stubborn one and one amazing one.

After seeing the BIOS thread, I'm not sure what I'm going to do now... Ugh why can't Dell just fix their issues. I'm having flashbacks to the DPC latency and stability issues that my M17x had.....

 

The only reservation I have with the amd cards is the driver support. Having owned the 6990 in my 17xr3, I can tell you first hand that amd driver support and user friendliness leaves much to be deserved. I would prefer Nvidia any day.

 

Yeah I'm starting to lean more and more towards calling them tomorrow and switching to the 860s and saving the 550 bucks and potentially a bunch of driver headaches. I will have to sleep on it and see what others have to say too when I get up tomorrow.

 

Make sure you get the 2GB maxwell 860Ms if you choose the 860Ms. The 870Ms might still do you better in the long run though. Depends on what you want.

 

We will probably get our systems around the same time, I am ordering absolute base config 880m sli. I will upgrade over time to save myself some cash initially. Will probably order a 4930mx from Aliexpress.

 

Well I called Dell this morning and got yet another rep that can't speak English and managed to get the order canceled after about 20 minutes. I was going to re-order it but I chose to get the NP9377-S from XOTIC instead. I tricked it out and its just under 5K with 2 240GB SSDs in RAID0, 2 1TB 7200 RPM drives, a 4940MX, 880M SLI, and the 3 year warranty + accidental damage and a 120HZ matte LCD... Dell just can't compete and XOTIC has US-based support.

Best of luck to you man and thanks D2 for instilling some will to shop around - I think I'll be much happier with the 9377-S.

Here's what I got for the 9377-S

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/751966-just-ordered-my-np9377-s-xotic.html

 

I was considering that and still am. The alienware is a personal thing though with it being stolen and all.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

Dell needs to work on their issues... And I'm sorry but when you're paying the premium that you are for an Alienware machine, at the very least they should have all support regarding Alienware from order to tech and everything inbetween be in US or Canada.