Installation order

Hey everyone!

Bit of a noob so please bear with me.

I am awaiting my m11x R2 (i5/8gb) anyday now.

Now unfortunately I haven't done the proper research and was hastily enticed by the m11x's looks and great price at the time and bought it.

I've now been coming across some of the common issues such as the hinge, driver compatibility etc which is the last thing I need considering I require a highly stable environment for study and am very hopeful that I will be able to avoid those.

Bought this laptop for uni. I am not going to be doing much gaming anytime soon and therefore don't require any GPU optimisations etc.

I want the laptop to be highly stable, high performing and quiet so I can bring my laptop to my university lectures/tutorials and do uni related work.

Considering that, which drivers and in what sequence should I be installing?


Your time is much appreciated,

cheers.

 

Considering that, you might as well try using the factory install before you decide if you even need any newer drivers at all. There is no excessive bloatware to get rid of on the m11x anyway, and the factory install is very stable as it is (at least I never had any stability issues with it).

 

The install you get when you first boot up the system is enough. By the way, why buying a notebook designed for gaming when you're going to bring it to university? Just curious when you could buy something cheaper for that purpose.

 

I would recommended keeping ALL factory drivers as Alienware technicians believe they are the most stable for your PC.
But you could try the new 267.24 beta drivers: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/558775-nvidia-267-24-beta-driver.html as I've had no issues and increased performance.
The ones Dell install by factory I believe still have a PB issue in EA games and SC2 doesn't run that well but other than that they work great.

 

Living in Australia we normally pay a massive premium on hardware in general but particularly the higher end lines such as the Alienware. For the money I could have purchased more raw power though the m11x is probably an overkill as it is, but at the expense of weight and battery life that I couldn't comprmise on. The m11x had just the right weight, battery life and the potential for some light-medium gaming down the track as well as the aesthetics and wow factor since the premium I mentioned before means that there is really a handful of people with this machine down under.

Just to give you an idea - with the AUD above parity with the USD (buys USD1.01), I'd have to pay, at the time, about ~USD1521.83 (AUD1500) for the stock m11xr2 (i5) with upgrade to 8gb. I paid half that so yeah....

Thanks for the help guys. Just another quick question - would it be worth OCing to ~166mhz since the system is designed for it anyway? Would it make any real life difference?


Thanks again

 

SC2 doesn't run that well with the factory drivers? I play 3v3 almost exclusively, high settings, and start the game in the mid 50 fps. Late game I rarely go below 25 (completely playable, in fact, ~17 fps isn't unplayable in RTS games) with these. In fact, I find it highly unlikely that any better performance can be achieved with an i5 M11x and no throttlestop.

 

Thats great you can use the Dell drivers and get that much FPS however speaking from my experience (and many others on these forums) do not. I'm rank 3 Diamond League so smooth gameplay for me is KEY when factoring in timing. I need at least 60 FPS to play with constant 250 APM otherwise it throws me off. Which is why I play with Lowest possible settings in league games. Otherwise yeah I can deal with ~20 FPS.

 

could anyone advise whether OCing is recommended in my case?

 

I don't recommend OCing since you said you want a stable and quiet laptop. I believe with OC, your fan will turn on more often. Well I don't OC and I play all my games with no problem, and they look good still. I use my laptop for university work the other half of the time.