M11x R2 i5/i7 advantages

I've been doing a lot of research on which model of the m11x I should buy (C2D or i5) - and so far what it looks like is R1 has better battery life, manual graphics switching (helps in certain situations where optimus fails), and of course lower price. R2 looks like it has the better processor, awesome soft touch finish, but also optimus which can be a pain and no VGA. All the threads on here about the R2 seem to just cover what affect it has on gaming (which from what I've seen seems to be very little for most games), rather than the real area that a better processor helps in - i.e. general performance. So I thought I'd ask the R2 / R1 owning community to see if we can get some benchmarks up for non-gaming stuff - like startup time, itunes, internet / word processing, video / photo editing, file extraction, loading etc. - and whatever other programs would help to give a good idea of non-gaming i5 performance vs. the C2D models. I'd love to see R1 benchmarks as well as R2, that way we can compare.

Oh and maybe a couple gaming benchs wouldn't hurt - i haven't seen any for BFBC2 or SC2 (i've heard turning off turbo boost helps for R2). Battery benchs would also be helpful.

Thanks everyone for participating (in advance)!

 

Going to have to wait til the end of July for those SC2 ones. BFBC2 has a few I've read, it is overall a decent boost on R2.

As far as every day tasks, I wouldn't worry about that stuff. Any processor is fine really, which is probably why you see mostly gaming benches. Battery is about 90mins less on R2 on average.

 

Maybe when the i3 is available, you can have the R1's battery life and the awesome soft touch finish.

 

hopefully, but unless that's released in the next month i doubt i'll be willing to wait for that. i need me an m11x D:

 

For SC2, people have said they can run it on highish settings on 1v1 (and maybe 2v2? not really sure). But when you get to 3v3 and 4v4 the FPS takes a major hit, even on low settings (looking at single digits to mid teens). I'd be glad to give some FPS reports on SC2 when the beta starts up again soon.

 

Oh the beta's still off? I'm in the beta too, but since my laptop recently broke (hence my interest in the m11x) I'm unable to play whether it's up or not (campus computers don't run SC2, ext. hdd or no ) so I'm not very up to date on its' status. What alienware model are you running? And did you get any gameplay in on it before the beta went down? OCd or no?

Btw, I'm still interested in the rest of the stuff I mentioned in my OP, just for the record...

 

I'm in the exact same boat! Trying to decide between core i7 and core 2 duo version. I just ordered i7 yesterday but it's looking like I will cancel as I can't find any real advantages to the core i7 in gaming and battery life is pretty important to me. It seems like most people on average (who aren't doing crazy power saving tricks!) are getting 2 to 2.5 hours less battery life than the core 2 duo. Thats a lot! I haven't really seen any benchmarks to justify it. Let me know if you find any.

 

I have the i7, 4GB RAM, 250GB 7.2k harddrive, bluetooth.

I couldn't get any SC2 tests in. Long story short, I had a studio xps 1340 with too many problems. Full refund. Bought this baby. I was laptopless for a month and had to use my 6 year old desktop. It wasn't a fun experience lol.

But yeah, the beta should be starting really soon, whatever Blizzard defines "early July" as. As soon as it's up, I'm gonna see how well my laptop can run it, of course given that optimus does it job lol. I'm particularly interested to see if the i5/i7 can fare better in 3v3 and 4v4.

It'll probably be a while longer before you get any solid data for all these performance questions since people are just starting to get their m11x r2 laptops.

Although yeah, from reading around it seems like revision 2 isn't really worth the upgrade.

 

I don't think you should worry about the battery life, I mean how often would you even run the laptop when you are not near an outlet for more than 4 hours unless you are in the woods or on a plane, in which case I would do something that you did before you had the laptop...

In any case I would go with the best processor since its near impossible to upgrade that in the future, and you can always get a new and improved battery if the need arose. If price is an issue then see if you can cut costs by downgrading the items you can upgrade easily in the future (hd, ram, bluetooth, except 50 for the 4gb uprade will be extremely hard to beat, so I would go with that upgrade too)

Also why is everyone being such wuss-bags about adopting the optimus technology? They will fix it, and faster if enough people complain to them. If you guys absolutely have to get right to gaming on this thing with all your incompatible games you have already beat 4 times, I wrote up some code in java for the NVIDIA drivers that solved my incompatibilities:

public static void main (String args[])
{

while optimus incompatibily==true{

run YouTube - Funny Dogs
}//end of while loop

}//end of main class

 

Battery life is all about the portability factor; the longer you can last without a charge the better. It also means you don't have to carry the adapter around all day too. Also some people do go on business trips often and so it helps to have a longer battery life. It's really a personal thing and people's expectations will vary but you can't complain for having more battery life.

I agree on the optimus thing though.

By the way, your loop will run infinitely, causing your laptop to crash =P You might want to fix that.

 

Yeah, I think optimus is the biggest reason for the giant battery loss - I've heard that it runs off the 335m almost all the time, like running all kinds of programs that would do just fine on the integrated graphics. There's always the possibility that they'll improve optimus down the line and we'll see improved battery life, but personally I don't like staking a huge purchase like this on the hope of a company doing something it should (they more often than not just screw us customers over ). Battery life is very important to me too - I plan to use this as my on-the-go computer for years, so battery life is what will really matter for me down the line (I'll just get a desktop and upgrade it down the line to keep up with gaming tech).

Did you have an R1 before the i7? Also, feeling up to doing any other benches for us in the meantime?

LOL I like your little coding at the end there. XD

But yeah, battery life matters because down the line I'm going to be using this thing for its' portability and battery more than its' gaming capabilities (assuming that computer gaming tech continues to get more demanding). I like to use my laptop in bed a lot, and not having to bother with a cord really helps. Also there's things like airplanes, cars, and seats in the middle of a classroom with no outlet. And again - while there's the possibility of them improving optimus.. I don't like staking $900 some odd dollars on it, and I still doubt they'll be able to improve it to the point of it being just as good as the manual switching of R1.

Now, what would have REALLY made sense is if alienware had included the manual switching in R2 rather than COMPLETELY replacing it with optimus...
*head -> desk*

Now of course, if we get some benches that point to i5/i7 clearly doing significantly better than the C2D, I might have to agree with you that the R2 investment is the better idea. So far what I've seen has been rather unimpressive though. :-/

 

Doesn't the new drivers make the GPU turn off fully?

 

To be honest I can't seem to figure out if the default dell 189 drivers or the newer beta drivers are better. They both seem to have their own set of problems at the moment.

 

same here it is driving me crazy!

Original drivers can play BFBC2 and COD WOW for me, but I cant play SF4 if I install the new drivers then I get loads of punkbuster errors!
I want a driver that can play all my games, this is crazy. I understand it is new tech but what an incompetant launch, did nvidia/dell not test optimus with a selection of popular games before launching it?

 

I can only agree. Seems to be too much trouble so far.

What I don't understand is... why can't we manually toggle between integrated and discrete card via, say the taskbar, in Windows? It is all software that controls the automatic switch between the cards anyways, right? So...

I can feel endless trouble coming here. So many situations where you probably want the integrated card, but it will use the discrete, and vice versa.

 

New drivers will not play Just Cause 2. I wish we could get a list of which games are compatible with which drivers

 

unless GPU comes into play video encoding might be reduced by as much as half on R2. (my guess)

 

My experience with M11x SU7300 have been superb. In my opinion, I feel the R1 gives you more bang for the buck.. also shameless plug, my brand new replacement R1 is up for sale.

 

Yeah, this is the consensus I seem to be getting from most people. I'm kinda hoping that dell / alienware / nvidia or whoever will put some work into providing updates that will fix these problems, but like Mackan said - there seem to be so many endless posibilities of situations that'll have trouble with this setup. R1 really just seems to be the better choice right now.

Now, I'm kinda hoping an R3 featuring i3 processors and manual switching (and VGA? eh that doesn't matter too much, there're adapters) will come out soon (I won't be able to afford one of these for at least another month) - but unless I hear something on that soon I'll probably just go for the R1.

Btw, if anyone's still up for doing non-gaming benches for their R1 or R2 on here.. that would still really be appreciated.

 

Not really sure how you'd go about doing non gaming benchmarks. Any programs or such that you can point me to? I'd be glad to run some tests.

 

passmark, wprime 32 are good CPU based benchmarks. Since the CPU is the major change.

 

Well I guess what I mean by that is programs that test processor performance for normal computer use, not just gaming. Does 3dmark do that?

But also I meant just like timing how long it takes for programs to open / run things - like for example you could just grab a timer and see how many seconds it takes for startup, or how many seconds it takes to load itunes, firefox, openoffice, or any other (especially processor-intensive) programs - like maybe video editing programs etc., or file extraction

 

^ what he said

 

Actually that's not what I'm seeing. It's rarely switched on for anything I'd consider unnecessary. Not sure where you read otherwise.

 

I actually don't really remember where. I know google chrome unnecessarily uses it (not sure about what other programs but I heard one guy say that apparently his is always on.. although that's probably just a manufacturing defect), and I know that a lot of games don't work on it, and I know that the battery life on the R2 is much lower than it should be from what I've seen. Soo.. I'm not sold.

 

Same here. I haven't had the 335m turn on except with flash videos, gaming, and with a movie playing in vlc.

In regard to battery life, with the screen at the lowest brightness setting, all lights but the keyboard off, the 335m always off, and bt/wireless off, doing constant browsing (via wired connection), I'm down to 80% battery after an hour, so it looks like it will shut down just short of five hours (although it estimates 4 hours and 24 minutes are left). That is with an I5. And again, the 335m hasn't come on once, so it's not the reason the R2 gets less battery life than the R1.

 

Hm... well then if it really is the processor causing the battery loss (or at least the majority of it), I would expect some pretty great results with benches... I haven't seen much so far, but the only truly impressive feat I've seen with the R2 yet is the 32fps on GTA4 with all high settings on an i7 with turbo-boost off (covered on another thread on here). Not much else. Maybe as people see this thread & posts benches, or as computer websites start getting their hands on R2s and doing tests, we'll see awesome results. But really... is a faster processor really worth the heavy battery life loss with something like the m11x? The computer is really designed around portability while also offering performance... and maybe it's just me but it seems like the R2 takes away a lot of the first in order to offer just a little bit more of the second.

 

I would like to see a pure turbo boost face off thread actually. to see how that affects the i7 and maybe even battery too.

same clocks different benchmarks / games with turbo boost "on" and "off".

 

I posted this in another thread, but really the only reason I went with the I5 over the C2D is the fan issue after switching between GPUs. Some people don't have the issue, but a lot do, and one of the reasons I wanted a new laptop was because my last one seems to always run the fan on full blast, so it's a sore point for me. If it wasn't for that, I definitely would have went with the C2D. I think 4-5 hours of batter life the I5 gives is more than I need 95% of the time if not more, but 6-7 hours with the R1 makes its use carefree--that is, when are you ever going to go a full 6-7 hours without having an outlet nearby? I don't think either the I5 or I7 are worth the drop in battery life because the C2D is no slouch itself (if it sucked at regular tasks that'd be a different story), but I also have a computer to play games the M11X doesn't play well, and to me the sacrifice of not playing some games like GTA4 while I'm away from my desktop isn't a big deal. On that note, if I was going to be gaming entirely on a laptop, the M11X wouldn't be my first choice; I don't think that is a good role for it, as you said.

Yes, IMO the drop in battery life is way too big for the low increase in performance, but it depends on your uses both in terms of portability (because 4-5 hours isn't bad) and speed of the CPU (because the C2D isn't bad).

 

Alright get ready because these numbers will AMAZE you guys! Haha just kidding. But it will be my biggest post since joining this forum so I hope the time spent on this stuff will help someone here. Also sorry for the lack of screenshots for easier viewing.

The lower battery life can be attributed to the higher watt usage of the iX cores. Also any weirdo optimus and driver issues is gonna kill battery life too. I'm still in the middle of doing my own battery tests. I'll post them up when they're done but it'll be a while considering the holiday weekend.

Right now I am barely getting 3 hours battery life. More like 2.5 to be exact.
Specs: i7, 160 overclock, no GPU overclock, 4GB RAM, 7.2k 250GB HDD. Turboboost enabled. Stock drivers.
At idle I consume no more than 14W according to BatteryBar.
With Chrome browsing, power saving, BT off, windows media player, backlight off, and lowest brightness setting, I consume a max of 28W. That's double the consumption rate; I feel like something is wrong with this. If it's linear, that means at idle I should get about 6 hours. Beta drivers might fix my battery life. Who knows, but fixing my battery life is the number one thing on my list.

I really think the average battery life for the R2 is 4.5-5.5 hours. Any lower and something is probably wrong...I don't think anyone has reported gaming times, but I would expect at the very least 1.5 hours. Just speculating here though.

From another thread:

Screenshot shows that tassadar got 7874 on 3dMark06.

I also ran 3dmark06. No screenshot xP You'll just have to take my word. Keep in mind that the 335M didn't turn on for me during the test. I'll give the beta drivers a shot when I get around to it. I actually had a 162 overclock when running this test.

But anyways I scored 6944.
SM 2.0 score was 3078
SM 3.0 score was 3098
CPU score was 1770
The benchmark listed my CPU speed as 1461, which is not much higher than what tassadar has in his/her screenshot. My CPU score is barely higher than tassadar's. I'll give the beta drivers a shot and see if my score improves.

I couldn't get wprime to run. I get an "Unexpected error; quitting" message. If I can fix it I'll run it for sure. (Anyone know why I get this error?)

As for passmark, at first I ran it under Power Saving settings by mistake. Doh! So I got these numbers:

PassMark Rating: 480.9
CPU Mark: 1436.6
2D Graphics Mark: 162.7
3D Graphics Mark: 106.4
Memory Mark: 278
Disk Mark: 479

I then changed the power settings to Performance and got these numbers:

PassMark Rating: 813.6
CPU Mark: 2069.4
2D Graphics Mark: 231.1
3D Graphics Mark: 208.9
Memory Mark: 898.7
Disk Mark: 501.9

With the Balanced Profile setting I get:
PassMark Rating: 811
CPU Mark: 2043.2
2D Graphics Mark: 228.7
3D Graphics Mark: 211.4
Memory Mark: 896.1
Disk Mark: 504.4

So Balanced is just slightly worse than Performance, while both power settings are approximately 1.4x better than Power Saving, with regards to the CPUMark.

For both tests the 335M never turned on. I'll run it with Balance Performance Settings in a bit and update my post. I'm actually really glad to see this scores slightly above my old laptop which has a C2D P8700.

And for mbrinton91, I have actually been keeping track of cold bootup, restart, and shut down times. I don't have much though and my times vary a lot. On average, bootup time is 90 seconds, shutdown is 20 seconds, and restart is also 90 seconds. I'll keep keeping track of the times and get better averages as I only have a few numbers down right now.

Also since you're worried about Starcraft 2, after running CPUMark and realizing this laptop is better than my previous I can give you some FPS numbers from my old laptop to give you a better idea of how the m11x will run. For reference sakes, my last laptop was a Studio XPS 1340 with P8700 C2D, 4GB RAM, 7.2k 320GB HDD, and SLI Graphics with a nvidia 9500m gs (I think...). The numbers I wrote down are the minimum frame rates I saw while playing. These are for 4v4 matches with me and 7 other comps. I tried to fill the map completely and let the comps build up as much as they could but that was sorta hard since Very Easy comps take forever to build . I ended up just building a bazillion buildings. Hope this helps:
Ultra Settings: 5-10
High Settings: 10-20
Medium Settings: 20-30
Low Settings: 40-50
Keep in mind that if you're playing with 7 other people these frame rates will probably definitely drop by a lot. I didn't record with FRAPS, but rather if you press alt+f, SC2 will keep a FPS tracker in the top left hand corner. I would hope that their FPS tracker is just as accurate as FRAPS.

All in all I'd say even if you did choose the C2D, you probably won't be disappointed at all. I almost wish I had the R1 but whatever. If I can fix my battery life I'd be more than happy with my purchase.

EDIT:
Added passmark benchmark results for balance power settings. Also added a paragraph concerning Starcraft 2.

 

wow amador this is kickass O.O

...now we just need someone with an R1 and your level of dedication to do the same tests....

*sits back and continues twiddling thumbs*

 

My specs: i7, 4GB RAM, 7.2k 250GB HDD, BT

Stock clocks + Turboboost:
Performance Power Setting
Passmark Rating: 752.9
CPU Mark: 1917.0
2D Graphics Mark: 190.5
3D Graphics Mark: 232.3
Memory Mark: 740.9
Disk Mark: 496.9

Balanced Power Setting
Passmark Rating: 743.6
CPU Mark: 1896.2
2D Graphics Mark: 189.5
3D Graphics Mark: 222.1
Memory Mark: 719.8
Disk Mark: 510.2

Power Saving Power Setting
Passmark Rating: 449.8
CPU Mark: 1150.7
2D Graphics Mark: 164.2
3D Graphics Mark: 86.1
Memory Mark: 336.3
Disk Mark: 517.0

160Mhz overclock + No Turboboost
Performance Power Setting
Passmark Rating: 628.9
CPU Mark: 1522.1
2D Graphics Mark: 160.7
3D Graphics Mark: 206.7
Memory Mark: 521.5
Disk Mark: 509.8

Balanced Power Setting
Passmark Rating: 618
CPU Mark: 1518.5
2D Graphics Mark: 151
3D Graphics Mark: 207.6
Memory Mark: 514
Disk Mark: 518.9

Power Saving Power Setting
Passmark Rating: 461.7
CPU Mark: 1265.1
2D Graphics Mark: 135.1
3D Graphics Mark: 104.2
Memory Mark: 335.6
Disk Mark: 483.0

160Mhz Overclock + Turboboost
Performance Power Setting
PassMark Rating: 813.6
CPU Mark: 2069.4
2D Graphics Mark: 231.1
3D Graphics Mark: 208.9
Memory Mark: 898.7
Disk Mark: 501.9

Balanced Power Setting
PassMark Rating: 811
CPU Mark: 2043.2
2D Graphics Mark: 228.7
3D Graphics Mark: 211.4
Memory Mark: 896.1
Disk Mark: 504.4

Power Saving Power Setting
PassMark Rating: 480.9
CPU Mark: 1436.6
2D Graphics Mark: 162.7
3D Graphics Mark: 106.4
Memory Mark: 278
Disk Mark: 479

So yeah. Lotsa numbers. If we use cpubenchmark.net to grab the SU4100/7300 CPUMark score, we see the C2D get almost 1000 (although I don't know if this is for stock clocks or overclocked speeds and what power setting this is for).
Key:
SSNT= stock speeds + no turboboost
OCNT= 160Mhz overclock + no turboboost
OCTB= 160Mhz overclock + turboboost

With respect to the Performance and Balanced power settings: What's interesting to note is that between SSNT and OCTB the difference in the CPUMark is not that substantial. Admittedly, OCTB still gives the highest CPUMark score, but only by 100-200 points. Both SSNT and OCTB scored approximately two times greater than the C2D. Meanwhile, OCNT only scores about 1.5x higher.

With respect to the Power Saving power setting: Regardless of which combination of overclock speeds/turboboost you choose, you're looking at only a 1.1-1.4x higher CPUMark score over the C2D.

Not really sure how CPUMark scores relate to in terms of actual speed so someone else will have to interpret these numbers.

So that's all the benchmarks I have. Only thing I'll be looking after this is SC2 framerates and battery life. I don't think I'll be rerunning the 3DMark06 scores as not only can I not get it to run with the 335M but benchmarks are so time consuming lol.

 

@amodar

Nice work dude, really nice. So according to commonly used benchmark tools we can see that as most people would expect, turbo boost does make a huge difference and OCing helps too. Sometimes more than others but its not something that should give negative results.

 

I went ahead and did a full passmark run on my m11x R1 with integrated since your 335m didn't turn on for your test for more accurate testing.

Here are my scores:
Passmark Rating: 572.3
CPU Mark (SU7300 overclocked) : 1314.9
2D Graphics 182
3D: 105.7
Memory: 603.1
Disk Mark 834.6

 

Thanks aznguyen. If you don't mind can you run it without the overclock?

So it looks like my CPUMark scores are 1.4-1.6 higher at best and under Power Saving mode, can actually be worse. So all in all about a 50% increase, which I would think isn't too bad.

 

sorry unable to restart machine for the time being, got a lot of work on it right now hehe, but according to passmark scores on the site the SU7300 gets around ~900 or so on CPU score

 

No problem at all. I'm fine with saying 900-1000 for no overclock on the C2D models.

So best case scenario the R2 scores twice as much as the R1. Worst case scenario (ignoring overclock + no turboboost scores since TB seems to help a lot), you're looking at about a 1.5x increase over the overclocked R1 in terms of CPUMark scores.