Can someone help me choose between the R1 and R2

G'day Guys,

You all have great opinion on this laptop and it would be greatly appreciated if you could help me choose which model to buy.

I will be in the USA next month for a holiday and will pick it up then at a friend address from the Dell website.

Is the i5 model any better than the SU7300 once it has been overclocked?
Is Optimus worth the haste?

My main requirements are to be able to play the new COD:BO smoothly on medium settings and also fit it into my bag for school as a work processing machine.

Thanks very much for the Help
Tim "Mumbles" Dillon

 

The automatic graphics switching that Optimus offers is merely a convenience. If you don't mind using a keyboard shortcut before and after your gaming sessions, then Optimus is not a big deal.

In addition, Optimus is still somewhat in its infancy and has some bugs that need to be worked out, the notorious "Punksbuster issue" being one of them. (although this will supposedly be fixed by NVIDIA soon).

As for the C2D vs i5, someone else will have to chime in for that one. All I know is that the only people I see going with the SU7300 are people who are looking for more battery life than power.

 

r2 also has the soft touch black option. I think the main benefit of Optimus is that you'll have more reliable official driver support from NVIDIA instead of relying on intel and NVIDIA playing nice or fan-modded drivers.

In short if you can afford it and can stand to lose the hour or so battery life there is no reason not to get an r2.

 

I went with the R1 for maximum battery and didn't mind the keyboard graphics switching. I didn't think the i5 provided enough of a difference to merit the extra couple hundred dollars. Most of my work isn't processor intensive (software dev/coding) and my games mainly depend on the GPU and not CPU.

 

Since Throttlestop now supports the m11x, there is more potential to make the i5 faster than the su7300.

To repeat, the best thing about Optimus is the better driver support. To the best of my knowledge, Black Ops doesn't use pb, so you should be fine.

 

Vote for the R2 here.

Soft Touch is great and the driver support will be a lot better for the Optimus GPU.

 

If budget is not an issue, I see no reason why not to get the R2.

 

Cool, thanks very much for your help guys it is greatly appreciated, I will buy the i5 model with 4GB of RAM.

Tim “Mumbles” Dillon

 

If you really want to get your new toy fast, then get the Alienware M11x R2 "Fast Track" configuration (Core i5 / 4GB RAM / 250GB hard drive), and get next-day shipping on it.

I placed my order on a Monday night, and had it in my hands on Wednesday morning.

 

Hey Kent thanks for the suggestion,

I would get the "Fast Track config, but I will not be seeing my friend until mid December as we will be in Florida the first week of my trip to the states. I should be placing my order tonight however for it to arrival to coincide with me arriving at my friends place.

Tim

 

i want to buy this thing but which core is better? the 1.2hz i3 core? or 1.06 ghz i5 core? is it i5 faster although its 1.06 ghz? and is it ok to get 2 gb of ram or is it mandatory to get 4gb of ram

 

I would recommend getting the Core i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM.

The Core i3 is set at 1.2Ghz. The Core i5 has Turbo Boost, which varies its clock frequency from 1.06Ghz to 1.86Ghz. And since the Core i5 supports the use of a program called ThrottleStop, you really get to run the Core i5 at close to top speeds most of the time.

And 4GB of RAM should be the minimum. You will very quickly and easily run programs that use all 2GB, and force your computer to page to disk due to low memory.

P.S. Don't re-post the same message 5 times in different threads. You look like a spammer that way.