M11x-R2 Review Up

Anandtech got their review up of the M11x-R2.

Anandtech M11x-R2 Review

 

It's a solid and fair review. I couldn't agree more about the display. It's by far the thing I have the biggest problem with owning an R2.

 

Benchmarking is slightly above my head but I can compare easily enough and recognise that this is more of a net/notebook vs some of the gaming laptops. It is concerning to hear the complaint about the screen but will wait to see what I think of it.
They pretty much summed up why I am interested in this device due to the only real alternative for the size is the Sony Z and if I had the cash I am still not sure I would go for that. For sub £1k I am pleased with the spec but hope now that I won't be disappointed by the display.

I know they hinted that optimus drivers could improve benchmarks at a later date... is that realistic? Or will the ram (800) / gpu / whatever always limit the device?

 

I'm glad to see this Anandtech review. I read most of their articles along with anything on Tom's as well.

For the last 6 months the only game I've played regularly is Left4Dead2 and I was wondering since it was a source game if my cpu was holding me back. It looks like I can save my money and wait for another revision sometime in 2011 or build the desktop I've been meaning to put together since April.

I found it very surprising to see the large lead the R2 has in Bad Company 2. Although I will never play the game (EA) I was skeptical of the reports I had seen here initially, but now I see the almost double framerates some have reported are indeed valid. I also saw they mentioned that in many cases turbo boost works better than OC'ing the cpu in the R2 which others have reported here earlier as well.

Edit: Did anyone else notice that they once again stated that he su7300 in the R1 was running at 1.6ghz instead of the 1.73 that I though was almost a fact at this point?

 

I am glad to see this review as well. It validates my purchase of the R2 over the R1 for my purposes (For some, the R1 may be a better choice).

I think, that If you were buying the m11x series just purely for gaming, than the R1 would be a better choice. But, if you, like me wanted this mini wonder to do more than gaming, and wanted better future driver support, than the R2 will be the better choice. Comparisons from gaming benchmarks do not show that much of a difference besides BFBC2(almost 2x rates), but in application apps(non-gaming), this is where it shines. Plus, i would also like to be able to depend on Nvidia for their Verde driver support Program in the future just to ensure the longevity of running up to date stuff well.

Based also on the review and on all gaming performance advise here, I would run the beast with no OC, the Dell beta drivers, leaving turbo boost enabled.


As such, there is nothing bad about either the R1 or R2, if you compare them with each other. It's just about what you are looking for in a laptop in this size in the current market today.

 

Their complaints regarding the LCD panel are spot on.

The note about the buggy Broadcom wireless service is very interesting.

And of course their gaming benches largely reflect what people here have been seeing - underwhelming overall comparison to the R1.

They've stated that Turbo Boost is often doing a better job than overclocking and I think we've been seeing that in our own tests.

They also agree on the subject of battery life.

The only thing they appear to like about the R2 is the increase in non-gaming performance and the fact that Optimus driver updates aren't reliant on Dell. Given that those are the only two stand-out positives they hit on, I'm a little surprised that the overall tone of the review is that the R2 is a "good" refresh.

The LCD still sucks.
It costs more.
Less battery life.
The LCD still sucks.
Gaming performance is a wash.
OC doesn't improve performance in any meaningful way.
And yes, the LCD still sucks.

 

a 12.1" display could have easily fit and probably wouldn't have changed the cost much

 

@all the cpu review data for the R1 was wrong. As stated in my clock post. The su7300 and su4100 have two P levels. 6 and 6.5. Alienware chose to set bios and mb at P level 6.5.. therefore the stock level is 1.3mhz.. the oc level is 1729. Among other items in the review that are less than accurate.

But as I stated, the R2 needs some positive press. Congrats.

BW,

StevenX

 

The only thing that's really worrying me about my yet undelivered m11x is this size thing everyone keeps mentioning and then glossing over.

How big is this thing? I knew it was a bit thicker and heavier than a traditional netbook, but I actually do want it as a "powerful" netbook, a replacement for my Aspire One 532.

So how big is this thing? I keep seeing it compared against 13 and 15" notebooks. I really do want a powerful netbook though.

 

It's comparable in size to 13" devices.

 

The reviewer pretty much is saying R2 is worthless, and wait for R3.

 

No, not at all. It's showing that the refresh is a marginal improvement to a innovative concept in some areas, a wash in others, with room for improvement. They speculate that future improvements to the Optimus driver could help some of the gaming performance deficits and I think that's entirely possible. For those of us who aren't as concerned about battery life and want the benefits of hyperthreading the R2 is worthy.

An R3 will hopefully bring a better GPU and an improved LCD panel.

 

i LOLed at the review's comment about the lcd.

 

Guys - dont let anandtech review lose scope here. The R2 has advantages and disadvantages, just like any pc or notebook. Good strides were made toward I7 tech. I think the real battelfield is heat or heat control. The next battlefield should be moving away from Optimess. I am guilty of this as anyone here.. I think we focus too much on numbers and benchmarks and forget to ENJOY the machine that we payed for... so...

With that in mind.. it's the WEEKEND.. so go snipe some noobs!

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

Yep. I couldn't agree more with that statement.

EDIT: this was meant to refer to the Anantech reviewer's statement about the LCD...

 

Move away from Optimus? Why?

 

i'm wasting so much time on this forum. I need to get a life

 

I can relate, I don't even have an m11x yet!

 

@Slickie - I am not a fan of not being able to completely turn off the intel video. I also think it is a "weak link" in the notebook... Again this is just my opinion... Technically it is a major win for Nvidia. Best Wishes, StevenX

 

I agree that a manual switch would be ideal, but if that means relying on Dell for driver updates then no thanks. In a year from now I suspect that's going to be a big issue as new games come out.

As far as Optimus being an effective means of managing discreet GPU usage I personally haven't had any problems with Dell beta driver. It's worked with every game and application I've needed it to. I've also not run into any situation where it was calling for the 335 when not necessary.

 

I wish the M11x R3 would come with AMD Vision Platform

AMD Turion II X2 K665 1.7GHz, 15W TDP (Imagine OCing this thing up to maybe 2.26GHz on both cores??)
ATi Mobility Radeon HD5650/5730/5850 or even 6XXX?

 

I dont mind the ATI Radeon but not a fan of amd processors. Just my .02

The I7's probably get both cores up to or above 2.26 right now on dual cores + turbo. All depends on demand, heat, etc...

Stevenx

 

"Overall, overclocking turned out to be of little use, but we do have one final disclaimer. We're using the i7-640UM processor, which runs at 1.20GHz to a maximum Turbo speed of 2.27GHz. It's possible that the i5-520UM with its lower speed range of 1.07GHz to 1.87GHz might benefit more, but without testing we can't say for sure. We do know that on an ASUS Core i7-720QM notebook our results were similar— overclocking caused Turbo Modes to kick in less, resulting in generally lower performance—so while you can get some impressive overclocks out of i5/i7 desktop processors, in a notebook you're likely best off just going with the stock speed and Turbo Boost."

I've found that turbo boost is worthless in gaming. It might kick in a little bit at first, but after say 20 mins playing a game or on the second run of a benchmark the system is pretty hot and Turbo doesn't seem to kick in at all. So far I have found that overclocked and no turbo boost is much better than stock + turbo boost. Turbo boost is probably more useful in windows apps that only need a burst of speed for the CPU periodically.

 

@Max - thus the reason why I said HEAT or HEAT Control is the first major battle for the R2 or next gen R3. You are 100 percent correct about Turbo. It depends on demand and environment variables before it decides to kick in.

Now... if you manually take control of TURBO then.. well... that is a whole other story.. <EVIL GRIN>

StevenX

 

Steven, I wasn't actually responding specifically to you, just making a comment about the article in general.

For those that say overclocking is worthless on the R2, its not considering that you will get more consistent performance from overclocking than praying that turbo boost will kick in.

 

Good point. I've never really bothered to turn off OC or TB so I can't personally attest to how the R2 works in any other configuration.

In another thread I think erawneila stated that CPU-Z isn't compatible with the M11x. I'm not sure if he was referring to the R1, the R2, or both or if he was even talking about the latest version of CPU-Z.

I have, however noticed some seemingly odd behavior with it in the very few times I've run stress tests with Wprime or Prime95. I'll have to revisit that again and make note of my observations. Someone else in the dozens of threads pertaining to R2 performance has probably already done so.

 

I think with further driver / bios improvements we should see a big leap in battery life (similar notebooks with i7 ulv chips but no nvidia graphics are getting hours more battery life).

That said, the review hit the the one big issue on the nose:
Screen. No reason at all the screen needs to be 11'' - you could easily fit a 12'' or 13'' screen in that case.
And while I understand that the reason they are keeping screen quality down is likely to keep costs down (lets be honest here, an increase in screen quality is going to be an increase in price, and the m11x is at that magical $1k mark already), I'd like to see an option to pay $100-$150 more or so for a better display, and a matte option. Even apple offers this option now - no reason that alienware can't do it on the m11x.

 

I couldn't agree more. I was set to take delivery of a m11x r2 on 20 till I saw it in person at a Best Buy while I was in the city. I loved everything about the machine except the screen. I spend a lot of time in Adobe editing photos so i decided that i would sacrifice some portability for a better screen.

The other thing i will miss about not getting an m11x is the fact that there are so many helpful people on these boards that are constantly helping people tweak their systems and that are just all around friendly. My only hope is that the forums for the new laptop I ordered are as helpful and wonderful as the people on the m11x boards.

Thanks
-mac

 

Really? This thing has a smaller footprint than a Macbook (I'm not including thickness)

 

Am I the only one here that is ok with the screen? I mean it is quite a bit reflective outside... but otherwise I found it pretty decent. Keep in mind I mostly work on m17x with an RGB LED screen, and I don't find it "bad" when I start looking at m11x.

The review just confirms what people have already posted here, i7 ULV is a marginal improvement (except in some specific games like Bad Company 2) over the older C2D. The real difference is in the applications utilizing only CPU - and some of the benchmarks I didn't really get (what is Firefox Internet benchmark?). On that note if you need a good CPU for CPU intensive tasks, it's kind of pointless to buy a ULV CPU. Proper i5 on e.g. ENVY 14 seems like a logical choice. If you want a better experience in Windows with loading stuff and all... it'd be pretty stupid to buy i7 vs the SSD - while i7 WITH SSD is obviously the best choice of course, if you're not constrained with money.

EDIT:

Comparison of sizes m11x vs Dell XPS m1330:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...330&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

 

Footprint is probably closer to 12'', thought you might be able to squeeze a 13'' in there. Definitely larger than 11'' though.

 

Do drivers have that much of an effect on game performance? I'm not a big PC gamer...

 

They can, yes.

 

12" for sure, but 13 is a stretch if you include the webcam, and that lame and oversized "ALIENWARE" logo on the bezel (I wish it was smaller like on the Macbook). Either way, I'd like to see a RGB standard, at the very least. I could care less about the screen size, provided it's portable. That, this PC needs to be lighter, better build quality (i.e. hinges) and a decent price is what would make the M11x better. $949 is a pretty steep starting price for the laptop.

 

Its not gonna get lighter - the metal used for cooling purposes sees to that.

Making the hinges better is definitely something that should be done on a $1k laptop.

And $1k is probably a reasonable price considering its a brandname (alienware) ultraportable, with a nice custom chasis - especially if they fix the hinges and maybe up the screen size or make the screen slightly nicer.

Gigabet ethernet and a usb 3.0 port would be nice too ...

 

Well if the price is around $1K it would be nice to see GLASS for the screen....

 

I think the price is fine. This is dell we are talking about, there are coupon that come out every other week. Thats what makes Dell's products competitive. Apple rarely has sales and its usually in the form of a free iPod/touch not a price discount.

I got my M11x R2 i7 got $950 w/10% sales tax at launch ($200 off). I think thats pretty good for a new release.

As for the size. The M11x has a physical shape of a 4:3 laptop, but with a 16:9 screen, so I don't think you can fit a larger 16:9 screen in it as there isn't much room in width. The 4:3 shape allows for the relatively powerful components and battery given its size.

 

@unreal - I like the screen too. I play blu-rays on mine and AVATAR looks phenom.. Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

I'm disappointed that by paying more dollars for the i7 I got less battery and less gaming performance, but oh well. It's still a step up from my previous netbooks!

 

Also am I crazy or do all those benchmarks say that the i5 AND the i3 are better than the i7 ?

Alienware M11x R2: A Legend Reborn - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News


edit: Oh ok I see, I keep forgetting the Alienware has an i7 UM, not i7M

 

How did you get less gaming performance with the i7?

 

Compared with the R1, the article says all over the place that the i7 performs about the same or worse than the previous iteration, and somehow manages to get worse battery life


edit: To quote:

 

Yes the battery life is worst, but in most cases the i7 is faster in games and in all the applications they tested.

Its also an apples to oranges comparision.
They compared an Overclocked R1 vs a stock R2 in both games and application test. I also think their claim that the R2 stock w/turbo boost is better than overclocked is false. Turbo boost may kick in while the PC is still cool, but after the PC is hot it never kicks in. It seems to be a good feature for applications that periodically need a boost, but seems worthless for games since they keep the CPU loaded and hot. In my test turbo boost did nothing for games and overclocking was affective.

"Also, we should make note that the original M11x results are using the overclock to a 166MHz FSB (1.60GHz CPU), which definitely helps it keep up. The M11x R2 also features overclocking, and we'll look at that in a moment, but Intel's Turbo Boost actually tends to do a better job of maximizing performance in most cases. Ultimately, then, the M11x R2 isn't much better as a gaming platform if we look at just the raw numbers."

 

That's about right. I think they got it right that the main benefit to an R2 is future driver support for Optimus, and declining driver support for switchable graphics. You get that at the cost of about -15% battery life, the loss of a VGA port, and higher price.

Of course, you also get to Fast Track an R2, so if you want the laptop in your hands in 2 days, that's the way to go!

 

Alienware M11x (Optimus Graphics) Review - A Review of the Alienware M11x (Optimus Graphics)

And heres another!

....when is the i5 going to be reviewed?

 

That's a very good review! And confirms about the same thing, the i7 is almost worthless. I'd like to see some i5 reviews now too, probably better to save 150 bucks.

 

This review confirms my thoughts all along, that the R1 is the better value and that the R2 performance increases are in no way proportionate to the price increase.

Laptop Mag has their review up as well

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/alienware-m11x-optimus.aspx

 

how does the soft touch finish compare to the one on the m11x r1

 

@All - your looking into figures which can be manipulated. I can stare at the ground in BFBC2 and get 50fps. So let's keep to facts...
1. Fact - stock vs stock I7 = 1.2 ghz Su7300 or 4100 1.3ghz
2. Fact some apps due utilize hyperthreading. Most games do not.
3. Turbo vs OC (su7300 vs 4100) 2.26 ghz vs 1.73
4. Battery Life R2 I7 5.5 hours R1 (either proc) 7+ hours

I dont have the R2 but I am thinking someone soon will start unlocking the potential. It is not going to knock the doors off desktop machines, but IT IS a powerhouse. I think R2 owners will soon notice that it's not the cpu thats holding you back, it's the Nvidia 335m Gt optimess with 128 memory bus that is now the culprit.

Good Luck... Congrats if your a R2 owner. Dont let the reviews get you down. Like I said, benchmarks can be manipulated to show ANYTHING...
Ask for the proof, VIDEO PLEASE!

StevenX

 

When you touch the R2 w/ soft touch, it makes it looks like you were just eating bacon with your bare hands; it leaves grease marks. That's despite that I've only used it in a well air conditioned room, so I'm not sweating due to heat. I'd much prefer fingerprints to, uhh, grease prints.