Going To buy an M11x R1 or R2?

Well i was lurking this site for the past week and all I accomplished was getting myself completly confused. I was planning on getting a R2 with an i5 with upgraded RAM (4GB) but after reading lots of stories of people returning them or having Optimus problems i'm wondering if I should get an R1 with a SU7300 and 4GB RAM. The R1 is only $100 cheaper but by the sounds of things there is alot less hassel involved with it. The only games i'm planning to play at the moment are Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but i'd like to have something that i will be able to play Dragon Age 2 on when it comes out around February.
Thanks in advance

 

Read this thread Byebye R2, Oh r1 why did I doubt you!

I would not swap my R1 for the R2.

 

This is all assumptions, and given bioware, I think Dragon Age 2 would run the same or even better than DAO. We see this with Mass Effect and ME2 which runs better than the first on the PC. Anyway, on my R1 I played at beat Dragon Age origins no problem. CPU usage goes way up for sure but never had problems. I do think there was a memory leak though since after a couple hours of playing it would slow down dramatically until I rebooted. Oblivion will run perfect on R1 as well. If there are no optimus issues with those games on the R2 then it should definitely run just as well if not better than the R1. I had an SSD when playing DAO and it helped load times a TON. I'm sure that would help a lot too on Oblivion since it's an open world type game that loads as you travel. And there's tons of loading anyway. You could save some money, get an R1 and buy an SSD... or you could also look at what the R1 I have for sale. I'd be willing to ship to Canada for an additional cost.. =) feel free to email me.

 

If you were closer i'd definatly consider it (I'm at P.E.I Canada) but after the shipping and duty is all said and done with i think it would be above my price range. And i know that there is no optimus problems with those games, so should i still go with the R2?

 

my i5 wiil arrive next week. Those are the games I will be putting on. I can keep you posted if you cvan wait a week. There is certainly not the same amount of info out there about the i5 Cheers.

 

Awsome that would help alot. And i can definatly wait a week( i'm still saving up haha)
and i noticed that too its all either the i7 or C2D
Thanks again!

 

i´ll exchance my r1 for a r2 with i7 , someone wants to deal?? !!! kidding go for i7

 

Processor speed doesn't really effect gaming. Unless you need optimus (....) and/or that little bump in speed, I'd say go for the R1. It's cheaper and you may not need all the extra *flash*.

 

That's what I'm leaning toward at the moment. There doesn't seem to be THAT big of a difference in the benchmarks I was looking at, and I'm not a fan of the optimus, just more to wrong in my opinion

 

Yeah, the R1 is a solid machine, and the R2 doesn't add the amount of stuff to make it a NECESSARY upgrade, it just offers a choice (which is a bit dumb...If you upgrade something, it's supposed to be BETTER then the original. It's NOT supposed to be something that's just a possible alternative to the original...). I personally NEED that little extra processor speed the R2 offers, but if it's not necessary, I would recommend for you the R1.

And with that extra 100 bucks you could go get a top of the line wireless mouse!

EDIT: and also, optimus needs a little tlc and carefully picked drives to work the way you expect it to. I would like the control and simplicity of just manually switching, but it's not that important for me. :/

 

Yeah the main reason I started second guessing the R2 was the optimus problems. Too bad Alienware doesn't make a manualy switchable version with the i series processor

 

Well, you can add programs to a "white list" which allows you to to say what GPU runs which game. But still, I dont think the newest driver has that, and their might be compatibility issues....It's just complicated. But if your willing to really try you best to configure it, I guess I could run decently. But don't forget, this is a driver problem. This means that all of this will almost CERTAINLY be fixed in the future.

 

Hopefully the whole thing will be fixed soon, it seems to be a big enough problem for people to return them