m11x r2 and new m15x

I've had this laptop for about 2 months and I like it alot , so I also ordered a m15x that I received yesterday, so far I think I like the 11 better, is the 1gb 5730hd ati much faster than the 335m?

 

Not really no.

 

This should help you...

nVIDIA 335M GT
ATI HD 5730

The main differences I'd say are the DirectX level (10.1 for nvidia and 11 for ati) and also the pipelines, other than that clock speeds can be mimic'd

 

Why is it that at windows loads faster on the m11x than the 15? I have the 740 qm proccesor and 4gb RAM 320gb HD on the 15 and i7 620 um 8gb RAM AND 500gb hd on the 11 also the 11 shuts down a lot faster too. Could the be something wrong with the 15?

 

@ttomp73

b/c of the harddrive

 

The harddrive is bigger on the 11x so it should be the one taking longer, but its actually the faster one so what gives?

 

wrong, check the RPMs.

 

they are both 7.2k

 

Any number of factors can be attributed to why the M11x is starting up, shutting down faster than the M15x. If I had to guess, I'd say that Alienware has tweaked the M11x to run as efficiently as possible due to the restrictions of a low voltage processor.

but as to why it's doing it? My guess is it has something to do with the way alienware configures these laptops.

 

If both hard drives are 7200rpm hard drives, then the reason is most likely because you're loading more applications at startup on your Alienware M15x vs Alienware M11x.

And P.S. - the speed of mechanical hard drives is determined by rotational speed (rpm) and areal density (storage capacity per sq. inch of actual physical metal platter). Higher RPM's mean faster drives. Larger capacity drives *typically* mean higher areal densities, which mean faster drives.

 

Larger means faster? I would thought the opposite, like how SSD's are lower capacity usually, but I guess its totally different.

 

It all comes down to areal density. Hard drive areal density is how much data you can cram on a single physical metal hard disk platter (how densely can you store data in a given area).

As you know, mechanical hard drives read/write data by moving a magnetic head attached to a mechanical arm across spinning metal platters:


The enemy of performance is having this mechanical arm move around a lot. And the less this arm needs to move around, the better your performance. A hard drive with high areal density means that more data is available in a smaller area, so the head + mechanical arm needs to move around less to get to that data.

There are two ways to increase storage capacity on a laptop hard drive: (1) increase areal density per hard drive platter; or (2) increase the number of hard drive platters you can cram into a 2.5" laptop hard drive enclosure. There are limits to how many hard drive platters you can cram into a 2.5" drive. So most hard drive manufacturers typically increase the capacity by developing methods and technologies to increase areal density.

A higher capacity 2.5" laptop hard drive implies higher areal density, which means higher performance. Technically, the correct thing to say is that the higher the AREAL DENSITY, the higher the performance, since there are a few rare exceptions*. But in general, it is safe to assume that higher capacities = higher performance.

* - The rare exception is if a hard drive manufacturer increases hard drive capacity by increasing areal density across similarly-sized drives by adding more lower-density platters. For example, at equivalent spindle speeds (7200rpm), a 250GB drive that uses 1x250GB platter will out-perform a 320GB drive that uses 2x160GB platters, which breaks the "general rule" that I had claimed. But I wouldn't worry too much about this... when most people shop for hard drives, they end up buying a new hard drive that is a generational leap in performance above their current hard drive. You only run into these "rare exceptions" in cases like the one I mentioned, where you are comparing drives that are only incrementally different in capacity... and nobody will run into this "rare exception" of a performance drop, because nobody "upgrades" a 250GB --> 320GB drive.

 

wow that is a lot to digest