holy crap, whys the m11x so slow?

Is it just my computer or what? I bought a used "Brand new" m11x and it is slow as . I'm not sure if its because he had so much trash and only 1 gb out of 150gb on the harddrive of free space. Or because the computer only has 2gb ram but something isn't right. Maybe its going from my lenovo y460 Core i5 to the SU7300, maybe it's all 3 but its really slow.


Anyone have any suggestions on how to optimize the speed on this thing? More ram, overclock in bios, and anything else?? Can i get rid of this alienware bloatware or the theme cause that seems to slow things down.


I'm not saying the m11x is a crap computer but I think the one that i got needs improvement or some clearing house and optimization to do.

 

I'm thinking about doing a clean install of windows on this bad boy. Is that going to void my wrranty? All this alien sense crap is just slowing everything down.

I just want alien fx controls and recovery and that's it.

I just did a factory reboot and my CPU is running at 51% at idle. ..... some help here

 

What wPrime figures are you getting on 32M?

You need some figures to back your statement up otherwise it's all subjective.

M11xR1 SU7300 Over-clocked at 1.6Ghz

wPrime = 56.715 seconds.

My M11xR1 SU7300 is fine.

Sounds like you just need to do some basic house keeping.

And with 50% background CPU you've got a lot of housing keeping to do.

I have 2-5% background CPU off and on

 

I'm actually new to benchmarking and gaming pcs and what not so the only one i know of is 3dmark06 for graphic and WEI. I'll look up wPrime and see what I get. I'm guessing the LOWER the seconds, the better?

My WEI scores:

CPU (@1.3) 4.1
RAM (2gb only) 4.7
Graphics 6.2
Gaming graphics 6.2
HD 5.5


I redid it an hour later after adding 1gb of ram (total 3gb) and stock bios overclocking and got:

CPU (@1.7ghz) 4.6
Ram (3gb) 5.3
Graphics 6.5
Gaming graphics 6.5
HD 5.5


I guess it's better with an overclock. I'll get those wPrime #s up.


From all he reviews and research I did, i thought the m11x was going to get some crazy high numbers. My lenovo y460's WEI is:

CPU 6.8
Ram 5.9
Graphics 6.7
gaming graphics 6.7
HD 5.8

(all stock with ati radeon 5650)

Im sure the wei isnt everything though. I have to decided whether the premium of close to $300-400 for the y460 is worth it.

 

my Wprime came out to 57.597..

good or bad?

 

Your Wprime score is fine.

But you're comparing apples to oranges here. The lenovo is going to be faster in pretty much every test you try. Better CPU, better GPU.

Also, after adding the extra 1gb RAM, you should verify with CPUZ whether or not you have 2GB operating in dual channel mode - because it might not be (because of the mismatch), which could slow the system down a bit.

Doing a clean install is a good idea though. Do that first before more benchies.

 

Go with what roxxor said and do a clean install... Mine is really fast no matter what im doing..

 

Hm... would you care to elaborate on that please? Afaik, the Lenovo y460 (the one mentioned by the op) generally has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HM55 HD or, at most a Mobility Radeon HD 5650. So which one of these two is supposed to be that much better than a GeForce GT 335m? I am interested to know this, since I am very curious about Thinkpads, Ideapads, etc and what they are capable of.

 

I jumped the gun slightly there. The 5650 is generally considered on par with the GT335M. It's difficult to compare the m11x with machines that have the 5650 because the 5650 has always been paired with a quicker CPU, so it tends to get better results. Passmark has the GT335M ahead of the 5650 here, whereas notebookcheck rates the 5650 higher in it's list here. For all intents and purposes they're probably the same.

Apologies for the confusion.

 

5650 and 335M are on a par AFAIK. 5650 has DX11 support though, but not something I could care about since it would struggle with the high-end DX10 games maxed out.

 

Great, thanks for the explanation.

 

1 more vote for fresh install, and to my understanding you may want to have more than 15% of your hard drive free at all times. even more so when using such a little amount of RAM.

imo 4gb is a good amount of RAM for this laptop.

you should be fine after those 2 things are done. i got the stock 160Gb HDD & 2Gb of RAm m11x as well and out of the box it was slow as dirt.

 

True, and a nicely defrag'd pagefile.sys (at startup) doesn't hurt either given the memory side of things is tight, but I suggest 4GB of memory.

Bummer you've currently got 2x1GB as you'd have to bin it and buy 2x2GB.

Yer, just trash the OS and start again with a fresh install.

 

Seems like the OP had 1x2GB and added 1GB on top of that.

 

As others said, he should have bought a matching 2GB stick to make it 2x2GB.
The cost difference is probably minimal or at least reasonable enough
to justify the performance increase.

OP, is there any way you can exchange the stick for the matching 2GB?

 

Cheapest thing you can do is fresh install. It will absolutely help. When I first got my laptop, I uninstalled all of the crapware I didn't want until I got the final software config that I wanted. Then I did a clean install, and installed apps until I got the final software config I wanted. The clean install was SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the "uninstall" method, despite ending up with the same final software config in both situations.

On top of that, add more RAM. 3GB is good, but 4GB (2x2GB in matched pairs) is even better. Your system can still easily hit the pagefile with 3GB of RAM, even by doing something like running a single game. Plus, matched pairs lets you run in dual-channel memory mode, which gives you a slight speed bump.

Finally, look into an SSD. If you crave performance, there is no other solution than an SSD. Check out the link in my signature (Windows 7 boot + load 27 apps in 1 minute) for an example of why SSD's rock. That kind of performance is simply unachievable by any drive that uses mechanically spinning platters.

 

Thanks all!

Okay so to clarify I few things, this computer i bought used. Well its "used" but it was purchased last month and bought from a friend so its brand new and under warranty still. It wasn't customized so it game with TWO 1gb sticks which sucks.. I took one of the 2gb sticks out of my Lenovo y460 and replaced one of the 1gb sticks just to test if ram would help. So that's where the 3gb comes from. (Right now my lenovo has 3gb as well but ill be making a purchase soon).

The lenovo's ram runs at 1066mhz and not 800mhz like the m11x so I'm not sure if ram is optimized or slowing things down .. I just wanted to try it.


Regarding the clean install, I am more than looking forward to doing it but is that going to void my warranty? I know it shouldn't but im doubting myself because I have read somewhere that wiping clean the stock OS will cause dell or whomever to not cover "user related damages". I'm not sure if a clean install counts as user related damage but with HP, they will NOT cover a forgotten bios admin password for that reason and the only way out is to buy a new motherboard. (YIKES)

If i do a clean install I'd like to still keep the recovery partition so I am able to go back to factory defaults if I happen to sell the computer or something like that, will that partition be affected?

To confirm:

1) insert windows CD
2) boot from cd
3) format C: drive
4) clean custom install into C:

Is the recovery partition gone with these step?
Edit: I'd like to add that if i can make a backup of the recovery partition onto a a dvd or something than that would be preferable. Having only 150gb with 15gb of it being useless recovery is pretty bad.







And to answer cortomaltese's question between the 2 computer, the y460 is better all around. BUT, I was comparing apples to oranges like someone said. The size (11.6 class vs 14") and class are completely different. If speaking STRICTLY performance regardless of price, size, etc. than the y460 kills the m11x all around. Having a buttload of programs, no tweaks, full lenovobloatware, I'm getting close to 8000 3dmarks06 scores and the WEI scores up above and it is noticeably way faster in real life. But, like said that's like comparing the m11x to the m15x, you give up certain things like size, portability, battery life especially with bigger computers.

As soon as someone tells me how I can keep the recovery partition with a clean install, I am going to do it because I also have an issue with the battery life. 7-8 hours?? Hardly.. mine says 6 hours with 2 bars of brightness, powersaving mode and doing nothing other than typing out this post lol. I tried turning the brightness all the way down, followed the first page of the optimization thread for killing FAservice, etc. and best I got was 6 hours. Hope the clean install with help with that as well!


This forum has been real helpful thanks.

 

I would get an SSD but i dont know much about them. All i know is that they extremely expensive, coming in at like close to $250 for a 100gb drive? Is that close?

If i'm going to pay $250 for a performance upgrade, it would make more financial sense to just stick with the lenovo since the whole reason I bought the m11x is to see if i can save that extra premium of $300-400 by letting the y460 go. ($250 ssd + $45 for 4gb ram =$roughly 300)

Unless of course, there is a place you can get it for cheap with coupons or something, OR i have seen people make them using an CF adapter but that might add up as well. Only place i know of is newegg.com

 

Whats the best way to do a clean install of Windows 7 without an external CD drive?

 

Bootable USB Jump Drive Not difficult to do.. Plenty of tutorials out there on the net.

I just purchased my M11x yesterday and then went over to newegg and purchased an external DVD R/W drive for 25 bucks (free shipping / no tax) with a 10.00 mail in rebate.. So total cost of 15 buck.. The drive had 4 eggs so I'm confidant with the build quality of the external DVD drive. I just feel better knowing I have the external DVD drive in case the need ever arises to use one.. And for 15 bucks.. heck.. I can spend more then that at McDonald's for lunch with me and my twins.

 

When doing a fresh install FYI the DVD that came with the system will not have any drivers, you should download the latest drivers and put them on another USB stick first.

Not sure how much you have spent on this M11x but keep inmind you are using the entry level one. Most of the guys here have either upgraded or entered at a higher spec M11x R1 / R2.

Good luck though

 

If you want to keep the original OS intact, with the recovery partition, you may want to consider picking up another hard drive. Do the clean install on the new hard drive. That way you can tweak it however you want to, even doing it more than once until you get it down just the way you want it. I put the Momentus XT in mine and it works great. BTW you will not void your warranty with Dell by doing a clean install on your hard drive. It may take a little longer to do a fresh install vs a factory restore, but you get to only put on the OS and programs that you want on there. There are also some threads that explain how to get the Alien FX without installing the software. Good luck with your "new" laptop.

 

I think from what i have read, i can delete the recovery partition after i make a backup using alienrespawn. I will make some CDs, download all the drivers and make a cd for that and delete this partition.

That, or depending on the price, I may just upgrade this harddrive into an SSD or a bigger one along with the RAM and it'll run just perfecttttttttttt....




And yes, windows can be installed without an external. When i had a netbook i had to figure out all the little way to get around the cd drive. Using a software called win2flash, you can make a bootable installer and go from there. Make sure to make the usb active partition and what not or it wont boot.

 

am getting while OC

my CPU gets 4.6
my Ram gets 4.9 :S :S and it's 6GB so wierd :S anyone know why
my Vga gets 6.5
my HD gets 5.9

but the Ram thing is wierd why is it 4.9 is it supposed to be like 5.9 or something like that ?

 

i dont think ull get 5.9 ram cause my y460 gets 5.9 and its fast as crap and runs at 1066mhz and not 800mhz. I managed to get 5.3 or so on m11x though..

do u have an ssd? how are u getting a 5.9 on ur hd? cpu is garbage though! what i give up for battery life....

 

no i dont have a SSD got a normal HD drive 7200 RPM
okay about ram atleastt a 5.1 ?: P

 

Do it off of a USB flash drive instead.
How To: Install Windows 7 from a USB Key! | Maximum PC

You really only need to follow step 2 and beyond. Step 1 is just a really complex way to tell you that you need a blank USB drive formatted to NTFS.

 

Hey guys can any1 tell me how to do a clean install of windows 7 from a usb please im gettin my m11x in a few days n im definatly gOin for the clean install. Tell me how to do it or point me in the rite direction please. Thank you for your time