Which way to go with R1..

Hey folks, my account was locked for almost a year but is mysteriously unlocked again.

I'm getting towards the end of my complete care on my current R1:
- 2720qm | 6990x2 | 16gb Kingston HyperX | 128gb SSD + 320mb | Killer Wireless N | 3 Years Complete Care

I have had ZERO problems with this one, the reverse of the many things I've seen throughout my career with XPS/Alienware rigs. I'm currently running Win8x64 (needed to learn it before onsite at customers). It runs everything perfectly,
I run CS6 / vendor applications and haven't seen one memory leak. I also play WoW, and some various steam games. I can't say I stress it much.

I typically like to refresh it in some way every three years, or so. I'm considering doing one of the following:

a. Sell it and buy a R2 either through the outlet, nbr, ebay, whatever.
- My thinking here is I'll get newer stats (cpu, video, etc), but will it give me much of a performance jump.

b. Upgrade the processor
- Not clear on what limits I have on processors.

c. Upgrade the processor / video
- Again, video works great. Running 14.1 with crossfire fully functional.

It's unusual for me to consider upgrading my current rig, just that it has been a perfect laptop and I'd be happy to keep it a few more years. I can still extend the warranty another year as well.

Thoughts? and thanks in advance.

 

Hi Red_Eye,

I am also a happy owner of a m18x R1. I used to have a R1 with 6970m cfx and a 2720qm. I sold it to buy a m18x R1 with 680m's and a 2920xm. I must admit the raw power of such gpu's are huge and the 2920xm is a cpu comparable with i7 desktop cpu's.

I admit I do use the laptop for heavy gaming hence the 680m's. I can recommend to buy just the upgrades beginning with the cpu and then the gpu's. As I am a converted nvidia believer I would suggest the 680m'sor perhaps the 780m's depending how deep your pockets are.

Also as a R1 owner I dont see the direct benefit of a R2 model other then that you can install a 3920/3960xm.

 

You could always buy an R2 mother board and make your system into an R2 after you run out of warranty.

 

Not much reason to go R2 though really.

 

Welcome back!

The M18x r1 is limited to Sandy Bridge processors, and the highest graphics card model tested and approved by Dell to work on your system are the AMD 6990m or the Nvidia 580m, but with your machine, you can upgrade to almost any graphics card in the market right now with no problems, just need to make sure the heat sink will fit and you will probably have to modify the drivers if you don't buy it from Dell.

 

He did want to buy one though wouldn't the motherboard option be simpler? Then buying a whole new machine. If he took that route.

 

I'd upgrade the CPU to an XM and the GPU's to 680m or 780m..perfect.

 

I second that, there is no real advantage to having an R2 over an R1 aside from having an additional HDD bay. 3920 is comparable in performance to 2920-2960. I would save the money on a new R2 motherboard and just pick up a 2960 and 680 or 880M SLI, and all the heatsinks and PSU etc, depending on your budget. Preliminary testing here in the benchmark thread is showing a single 880 M @ +200 core/+400 memory at around or slightly higher the performance of 680M SLI at factory clocks: 38k GPU 3DMark Vantage vs 36k or so. You can go look in the benchmarking section yourself. What might 880M SLI look like performance wise? It is difficult to say, maybe 38k + another 50% of 38k or roughly 50-55k in this benchmark, that is assuming there are no issues with power starvation as are seen with aggressive overclocking with 780M SLI, necessitating at dual PSU set-up.

880M is gonna be quite a pretty penny though, probably over $1k per card for a while. Meanwhile, Dell 680M can be had for $600 or so. And there is also Clevo 680M, which has 4GB of VRAM, up from 2GB found on the Dell cards, but I faintly recall there being some issues with driver support or overclocking. I would ask Mr. Fox and or Johnkss to be sure.

If you can wait about a year, Haswell, the next-gen Nvidia GPU architecture should be out and it may be 50% faster than Kepler, the existing architecture on which 680, 780 and 880M are all based on.

 

hey boss.. was wanting to ask if and when we will ever here the reason why you guys dont approve working gpus in these systems and dont go past the 580 or 6990.. whats the reason for this?

 

Exactly my point r1 to r2 is such a minor change its not worth the investment.

 

The Ivy Bridge XM packs a harder punch than the Sandy Bridge XM and it's enough to notice. Plus, you get PCI-e 3.0, extra HDD, mSATA and newer Intel OROM with RAID0 TRIM support. These were the reasons I bought the upgrade parts and it was SO WORTH IT.

 

I agree with Mr. Fox. I didn't own an M18x R1, but RAID0 TRIM and the extra storage slots would make it worth it to me.

 

I say max out the R1 upgrades and get another 2-3 years out of it...

 

My apologies for any confusion. I actually have an 18x (but not an R1).

I just purchased a 18 off the Amazon Warehouse for $1870. Specs are 4700 / 770m x2 / 750gb / 8gb ram (compared to my 2720 / 6990 x2 / 128gb ssd+ 320gb / 16gb ram).
Initially I like the screen a lot more, I'm fine with the loss of Esata and some of the other differences. It even had a warranty until 2/15!

So everything being said, its already faster (8700 vs 7000 on 3dmark 11). I'd consider putting in a m500 128gb ssd and may up the ram with two more 4 sticks.
What are your thoughts on this machine, a good deal? Upgradeable? Whatever exact verbage I can give you to clarify, will be done.

 

$1870 is a really great price for that setup. Congrats.

 

I'm glad to hear that. So far it seems fine, although I feel the Win7 Alienware load seems bloated.
Do you think 8700 on 3dmark 11 sounds about right then?

 

8700 would be about 75th place for your specific hardware. You can search 4700MQ and 770M SLI for 3DMark11 or any other Futuremark benchmark to investigate further. [ LINK ]

Bear in mind most of those higher score are most likely overclocked. Looks like the potential is about +10Kfor your specs.

 

You were right on the money Mr Fox, I upped the Core 75 and the memory 300 and got a 9650 now. In looking through all the posts on overclocking and benchmarking, I'm not seeing what would be a good limit for my setup.
Right now I'm at 75c, is there a good day to day temp I should aim for?

.. and on an odd side note, as an longtime reader of the forums, what happened to Batboy?

 

PCI-e 3.0 does nothing unless you run 3 GPUs at beyond 1080p typically (Look at my scores on PCI-E 2.0, i'm not struggling to out pace all other models ). Trim support is nice but raiding SSDs is unnecessary. The difference in CPU power wont have much of an impact.

Is there a difference? Yes? Is that difference worth the cost of moving over for the vast majority of people (even enthusiasts)? No.

 

Depending on the rationale behind it, everything both of us (and others) do with benching is "unnecessary" in the grand scheme of things. One can argue paying extra to upgrade from 7970M to 680M, or 680M to 780M is "unnecessary" and that upgrading from 780M to 880M will be as well. There's no end to what one could call "unnecessary" and what truly matters is having what you want. One could likewise argue (and some do) that SATA-2 is fast enough for SSD on the basis that speed gains from SATA-3 can't be "felt" enough to justify upgrading. Putting SSD in RAID0 is not unnecessary if you want it that way. It is especially useful for creating contiguous disk space instead of forking out big bucks for a single huge SSD, or if you have deep enough pockets, creating an even more massive volume if you can afford to buy two huge capacity SSD. If you want it in RAID0, then it's a benefit to have TRIM working. Before SSD RAID0 TRIM was working the threads here at NBR and other forums were filled with people complaining that it did not work, LOL. Many were grateful when Intel made it a reality.

 

Pushed it a bit further and am #2 for my specs:

3dmark 11 = 10158

#2 Ranking

Anything more and I'm getting artifacts, but I'm happy.Thanks Mr Fox for pointing out the missing OC!

 

Yes for a bencher there can be differences but even to the enthusiast gamer saving the money for the latest GPU would make more sense.