M11X r3, good purchase?

Hey, vaguely considering getting an M11X to replace my honourably discharged Area-51 m15x. I have the funds to upgrade the processor to full, as well as a few other things, can anyone recommend it?

Thanks.

-Benfclark-

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both the i5 and i7 are duo-core (downclocked), so by "going all out" and getting the i7 version, you would gain minimal performance. Unless you have disposable income, then stick with the i5.

Also, if you plan on purchasing one, wait for Black Friday, as AW may have a solid discount on all their lineups

 

I'll think about it. Also, will their Black Friday discounts count for UK purchases? If so, I reckon I could make it a Christmas prezzie to myself ^^.

 

Unfortunately it's just US/Canada that offers the Black Friday deals. If you have a friend in either country that could forward you the laptop, that could work too.

There's also HIDevolution, which is based in the US and they get US/CAN prices for international customer (a "middle man" type company). If the discounts are substantial, perhaps an e-mail to their support staff asking if they could acquire one at a discounted Black Friday rate may work

 

I had an M11x R2 for a month before i sent it back to get it replaced with the R3. I absolutely loved my R2, and can't wait to receive my R3. As far as i've found out, the R3 is a major upgrade from the R2 and i'm sure you won't be disappointed.

The i5 and i7 both only have 2 cores, both with hyperthreading. At stock clock the i5 has 100MHz more, at full turbo boost the i7 has 300MHz more. Overall, absolutely not worth the extra $200. I would put that money towards an SSD instead (put one in yourself, don't get it from Dell).

I'm pretty sure the black friday sales are only for the US, and there are no guarantees that Dell will even give any discounts. If they do, it will be with coupon codes, there won't be an actual "sale".

I "upgraded" from a powerful Asus G73JH to my M11x R2 and was absolutely thrilled. I can imagine that the R3 will be an even greater machine.

 

If you can wait keep an eye on Amazon.co.uk, they did a black friday thing last year with deals available for an hour at a time. There is no guarantee an M11x will crop up but they do sell them.

 

I understand that the processing difference is close to negligible, but for the price you also get the 2GB GPU, as opposed to the 1GB one. The price doesn't seem so unreasonable when you factor that in.

 

Yeah an extra 1gb that will never be used. The GPU doesn't have enough power for the 2gb to ever be used unfortunately. Save your cash.

 

The jump from i5 to i7 is HUGE compared to adding 1GB of GPU mem.

 

I meant that it adds both the CPU and the better GPU. You get two upgrades.

 

Although they may be classified as "upgrades", as previously mentioned, the addition of 1GB GPU won't do anything in terms of performance and the i5 to i7 won't even be noticeable.

It's like going to Wendy's and ordering a Baconator. The cashier offers a single slice of bacon as an addon for 20% more. You take it and pay for it. When you eat it, in your mind, you know the extra slice of bacon is there, but it tastes and feels the same as it would of without the extra single slice of bacon.

Not the best analogy, but you get it... lol

The i7-2GB upgrade is just for bragging rights imo

 

I get that. I now have two conflicting sides about the matter; one is my good judgement, the other is my 'the numbers are bigger and it's got moar wank factor' side.

I'll have to mull it over, it doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me.

 

This is the same argument that the R2 was not enough of an upgrade over R1.

 

In regards to the GPU, put simply, think of it like this.
Say you were to go to a restaurant, and they only have on item:
A hamburger with a side of fries. Though you can either have regular portions, or double portions, with the double portions obviously costing more.

While the double portions is obviously more and therefore "better", assuming you aren't the peckish type, you can eat at the most one portion. Therefore if you were to order a double portion, you would be wasting your money as you could have just gone with the regular portions and still be full.

So the same is with the GPU upgrade. While yes, there is 2GB of memory, no game, I repeat, no game on the market will use more than 1 GB of GPU memory. 1 GB is just about suffice for any game on the market.

Now you might say to yourself, "Well, what about games to come? Won't they use more than 1 GB of memory on the GPU?" Well at that point, I would be more worried about the clock rate of the GPU than the on board memory.

In conclusion, there is really no reason to get the GPU upgrade for the sake of getting it. At the end of the day though, it's your money. Your money, your decision.

 

Actually i do think that i7-2617m @1.5/2.6GHz with the 2GB GPU is an worse deal than i5-2467m @1.6/2.3GHz with 1GB GPU and it is not worth the 200$ price.
The CPUs iself are pretty similar and you won't probably be able to notice the difference. Maybe it is worth to notice that the cheaper i5-2467m has better clocks for the intel GPU and so it gets better performance using integrated GPU.
The GPU "ram upgrade" (2GB ram vs 1GB ram) nets out an increase in power consumption and heat generation with no added benefits

i7-2617m was doing much better against i5-2537m - still an overpriced upgrade, but apparently all i5 R3s now are equipped with the better i5-2467m

 

That is an excellent analogy. However, I'm sure there would be a slight ego boost if you were comparing your 2GB GPU to a mate's 1GB one.

 

I got the i7 version and I am really pleased about it, I wouldn't choose anything else now that I had a bite!
If you plan to plug your rig to an external monitor with higher res, TV or dualscreen, you will love your "unnecessary" 2Gb. If you want to game only on the stock screen, 1 Gb is more than enough.
I do CAD designs and the GPU memory is important in this field too.

Whatever the CPU choice you make, I highly recommend this laptop, it's a killer for the power/portability ratio!

 

I do a fair bit of graphic design myself (3d Game Art), so that may be useful. I think I'll be going for the 2gb option for flexibility, and future-proofing (it may come in useful some day). Thanks for all the input, it's nice to hear people's opinions.

 

Well, you can use "external monitor with higher res, TV or dualscreen" with 1GB ram. You really don't need 2GB for that.
What you may need 2GB for (but you don't), is running full 1080p with high levels of antialiasing, but good luck doing that with an gt540m

The 2GB ram on a 540m is nothing more than marketing bull...t.

My old desktop card 8800gt was doing really fine with 512MB.
My not so old gtx275 (which is actually waaaaaaay faster that 540m) was doin even better with 896MB and you are telling me that a 540m needs 2GB?
Come'on

 

That's completely biased. You say that you are happy with the i7, but you're not comparing it to anything. Unless you've tested both the i7 & the i5, there's no way you could possibly know how much faster the i7 truly is. Honestly, i don't think you could even tell the difference in a blind-test.

If you are using it specifically for CAD, i would recommend getting an Asus G73 with a 5870M, and then softmodding it into a Firepro 8800.

 

You guys are off on the comparison. While its possible nothing will change and that an i5 is 100% same as i7, I suggest revisiting the other threads wrongly making similar assumptions.

Forum is full of those chasing every last FPS or wanting to maximise productivity. While doing so questioned if the i5 was enough of an upgrade. LOL

The CPU cannot be swapped and if you are a FPS chaser that measures "value" by years used then get all you can afford/justify

 

GNandGS, that's what I've been thinking, I have a rule with these things: 'Always max out what you can't upgrade later'.

 

We're not saying it isn't better. In some small way it is. But is it worth an extra $200 over the i5? If you're trying to actually get any sort of VALUE from your purchase, then no. Absolutely not.

For that $200, you can get a 128GB Crucial M4 which will give a much better performance boost than the i7 upgrade will.

If you have no budget then by all means, max it out. But if you are looking for a decent performance-price ratio, that simply is not possible with the i7.

Then what is the point of this thread? If you've already made up your mind based on your own personal principles, then noting anyone says here is going to sway you either way. It looks to me like you are invested in buying an i7, but are looking for reasons not to.

 

Rishwin, the main point of this thread was to get opinions on acquiring the m11x and whatever upgrades I should have gone for.

 

If you've got the funds benfclark, then go for it! The M11x is a great machine and you'll enjoy it no matter what.

Just make sure that if you don't max it out now, you won't regret it later.

 

Good to hear, I'll post if/when I've ordered the machine. The parents may insist that I have to wait until Christmas, though, although I easily have the funds to purchase it myself. I don't mind the wait, though.

Hence why I am maxing out the processor, maybe we'll see a practical use for 2gb VRAM in the near future

 

are you sure about that?

at full load i5-2467m is faster than i7-2617m , but it has less bling value

 

And the integrated GPU has a higher clock rate.

But no bragging rights to be had with an i5 chip!

 

But in all honesty, no situation will warrant the higher Intel GPU clock rate, it's purely for bragging rights...

Did you see what I did there? Benfclark, has done, a funny.

 

Erm... Well the higher clock rate = better integrated GPU performance = you can run more things off it without having to use your dedicated GPU = better battery life and less heat generated. It has an actual tangible performance increase, and it costs less instead of costing more.

Did you see what i did there? Rishwin, has made, undeniable logic.

 

Pie.
Did you see what I did there? Noah14, has made, a pointless comment.
--
On a more serious note,
From what I am seeing from your posts, you mind as well get maxed out.
Again, just to warn ya: you might not get as much bang for buck (suppose quid?) as you might hope for with that upgrade.

 

wow, so mutch hate towards i7 owners!
I didn't do any comparison with the i5 because I never owned one, period.
My point was that I own an i7 and this laptop didn't let me down on my expectations, hence I am a satisfied owner.
The choice wether to get i5 or i7 is up to each client's needs/budgets/wants so I don't see the point in being so aggressive, obviously we can always expect people to have different opinions in the end.

I would like someone to post an article or link testing M11x R3 i5 vs i7 in several benches to compare, no argument possible with numbers, if the i5 is better it should end 1st and the fact that there is 2gb of GPU memory will have no effect on the scores from what I can read in the previous posts. I seriously wish that the i5 comes first, this computer is great and if people could afford a better and cheaper version, that's a good thing no?

 

I was poking fun at the fact that a lot of you were mostly ardent about the perceived benefits (or rather, lack of) of the 2gb GeForce GPU, so I joked about the same sort of thing with the Intel GPU.

I would love to see some i5 vs i7 benchmarks though, statistics do not lie.

 

You got it all wrong, there is no hate against i7 users.
There is some against Dell pricing policy tho

The price difference between i7-2617m and i5-2467m is 39$ in 1k batches.
You are happily paying 200

 

I purchased an M11x R3 from the Dell outlet and it was a great buy.

i7, 8 gig Ram, 750 gig hd for $9XX US. I'm very satisfied with the purchase. Avoid buying new if you can unless you want the "new shiny" experience.

 

I'll look into some options, looks like I'll be getting this thing for Christmas. Thanks to everyone for their input, none of it wasn't useful.

One more question, I am thinking of getting the m11x portfolio bag with this, can anyone recommend it?

 

The way I look at it is that you can pay an extra $200 and upgrade the processor on the base i5 model to an i7 with the 2gb 540m and pay $1199. Or you can just buy the best configuration available for $1249 and get an i7 with 2gb 540m, extra 2 gigs of memory, larger harddrive, and a better wireless card. Thats a lot better option and can justify the extra $250 compared to $200 for just a cpu and gpu upgrade.

 

Or you can get the base i5 model and for the 200-250$ difference you get an 120GB ssd and a 2.5" hdd case to mount the hdd after you swap it for the ssd

Beware tho, after you get used with a ssd, you'll never want to get back to traditional hdd's

 

Oh yes, and another thing. What's the build quality on this thing like? I hear AW systems got a good hike in that department once Dell took over.

 

Solid. Very solid. It feels heavier than it looks, but the build quality is significantly better than my Asus G73.

Several people have reported dropping their M11x without causing any harm.

 

Assembly lacks a little. Screws loose etc but industry as a whole is down IMO

 

Right, that's good, build quality is an important point for me.

 

I got an m11x with the i7, 8gb of memory, and an SSD through the Dell Outlet, and it has surpassed my expectations in most cases. It doesn't have the build quality of an Apple of course, but for a PC it's still top shelf product. If it had a better LCD screen i think it would easily be one of the better laptops one can buy. I especially enjoy the great quality sound, though i wish it were about 5 decibals louder; you're pretty much forced to crank it to 100% playing any game at all.

It chews through AutoCAD and Battlefield 3, Witcher 2, or Civilization 5 without a problem (and oddly, Civ 5 is the hardest on the fans). Battlefield 3 is especially fantastic on the machine, and apparently has settings predetermined, or uses a really intuitive auto-selection tool, as the settings it boots with are nearly perfect. I can even run 2x AA in Battlfield 3. It also uses ULTRA texture memory, MEDIUM on everything else; it sees how much memory the m11x i7 has and throws it into there. You also learn that other games with similar texture memory settings can be cranked up to Higher settings than the rest, which kills pop-in issues; i never have texture pop, even playing Caspian Border, that huge 64 player map in Battlefield 3.

Now it is true some games are not well optimized for the oddly balanced m11x, with tons of video memory, but an above average (by desktop standards), if modern, GPU, that gets away with it by driving a very low resolution screen. Shogun 2, for example, only shows 512mb of video memory no matter what settings i try to adjust.

However, on benefit of the Optimus system is that you can run many old games on integrated just fine, as well as many "Indie" games on Steam which have become more popular in recent times, such as Bastion, LIMBO, or SPAZ, which saves battery life on planes, and which is different than most laptops unable to switch between integrated and discreet. Though the Optimus system itself is at times a bit janky till you learn how to work with it.

Best wishes and luck!

 

Just ordered the m11x with the i7, 6gb, 2gb gpu for $1099 CAD...
with the current discount it was only $100 more than the i5, 4gb, 1gb gpu @$999.99 ..

Now for the $100 price difference was this a good buy?

I forget about Black Friday, probably should of waiting another 2 weeks.. stupid impulse purchase.

 

It sounds like a decent enough deal to me. Not the best deal on the planet but not bad either. Certainly if you don't mind waiting prices will always get lower. But eventually you have to take the plunge or you will just watch the computers go by. Be happy and enjoy your purchase!

 

Realy? my r1 gets 917mb of video memory in shogun 2. Wierd.

 

Sigh... This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

More system RAM will NOT improve gameplay performance above 4GB.

and an SSD drive will not improve your framerate, only your loading times.

 

Other threads are all about fps or encoding times so if i5 is better then yippee. Don't it though. All you need is some throttle stop style breakthrough for the R3i7 and it will all be a moot question

I5 is a good value by comparison so the point is valid but seems just like the R1 vs R2 that went on

 

although most games do not yet take advantage of larger system and video memory, eventually they will start doing so. If you have piles of spare cash laying about it doesn't seem like a bad choice to me to go for the 8gb of system ram and the 2gb video. The price is really not that much different between the two. The Witcher 2 for example will take advantage of the larger video ram if you have it available.

The 16gb upgrade is just insane though. If you do not have a specific need for that much ram avoid it. And the above poster is right about the SSD drive not improving framerates. Faster hard drives just improve general load times. Which you will notice in games when you are sitting and waiting at the 'loading' screen. Honestly I think SSD drives are a bit extravagant. Certainly they will help improve battery life, so if that is an issue for you and you have the cash. . but I went with the 750gb storage of the standard hard drive.

Also SSD drives tend to have shorter lifespans. They are only good for so many writes, then they will start having errors and stop working. Currently the traditional hard drives have longer reliable lifespans than their SSD counterparts.

What SSD drives are good for is durability, low power, and an increase in write and read speeds. So if you need more battery life, and intend on shaking your computer around or subjecting it to lots of vibration while you are using it, then go for the SSD.

However, the traditional platter hard drives are more affordable, tend to last longer (so long as you don't shake them around while they are spinning), and are much better in terms of the amount of raw storage you get for the price.

 

@darkdomino you better start reading what others type and then comment over it

Rishwin did NOT said that a SSD will improve FRAMERATE.
He said that a ssd you will yield a much better performance boost than the upgrade from i5 to i7 will give.
Performance as in everyday performance, system responsiveness, etc and not strictly framerate
The same is valid for memory upgrade from 4 to 8GB. You will end up with a more responsive system, especially if you manipulate large files, not with better framerates.

@zenstrata, i used to consider SSD as extravaganza gadgets too, but not anymore since I actually started to use one