pulled i7 trigger: any tweaks i should know?

224-8847 1 Alienware M11x, Soft Touch Stealth Black
313-9774 1 Overclockable Intel Core i7 640UM (4M Cache, 2.266 GHz Max Turbo Frequency)
317-4706 1 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 800MHz
330-9945 1 Alienware M11x 90W A/C Adapter
320-1467 1 11.6-inch WideHD 1366x768 (720p) WLED, no WWAN Antenna
320-9857 1 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M
342-1324 1 320GB SATAII 7,200RPM
330-9552 1 Personalized Nameplate
330-6106 1 Personalized Nameplate Trigger
313-8791 1 AlienFX Color, Mars Red
421-3095 1 Alienware Command Center Software, M11x
421-1400 1 Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
420-9691 1 DataSafe Local BackUp 2.0 Basic
420-6436 1 PC-Restore, Dim/Insp
421-0092 1 DELL-DOWNLOAD-FLAG
313-9856 1 Integrated 10/100 Network Interface Card
410-1883 1 ADOBE READER 9.0 MULTI- LANGUAGE
313-9958 1 Integrated High-Definition Surround Sound Audio (5.1)
430-3796 1 Alienware M11x a/b/g/n 2x2 MIMO Wireless
330-6348 1 Automatic Updates: On
330-8995 1 1.3 Megapixel Webcam
922-2597 1 Dell Hardware Warranty Plus On-Site Service, Initial Year
929-5570 1 Third Party At Home Service, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
950-3337 1 1 Year Limited Warranty
950-9797 1 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
421-1721 1 Soft Contracts,Banktec Care,Alienware
994-3730 1 Warranty Support,Initial Year
430-3773 1 No Internal WWAN Antenna Installed
421-1573 1 Alienhead 3D
421-1591 1 Alienhead 3D
421-1360 1 Steam and Portal Factory Installed
330-5090 1 Thank You for Purchasing AlienWare
* AW:
Subtotal: $1,124.00
Shipping and Handling: $0.00

Sales Tax: $92.74
Total: $1,216.74


was the price ok? is it worth 500 bucks more than c2d?

 

Good price As for the tweaks, http://forum.notebookreview.com/microsoft-windows-7/486478-fix-win7-i7-sluggish-performance.html

 

The price is now $500 more than C2D CPU, but it's still OK I guess. What's your EDD?

 

He has also upgraded multiple pieces so it's not simply a difference in processor; which I believe is ~$300. Regardless, looks good.

 

Looks good, just not worth the extra expense over C2D in my opinion, I'm not sure the benefits will out weigh the cost.

 

my edd is 7/8/2010. i simply called epp and told em that i was not an employee. i cant stand lieing -- karma and guilt. aggghhh. the guy knocked off some bucks I think.

 

are all the new core chips m11x's going out with the 800 ram?

 

If your a student you also get the discount. Also you can check the thread in my link for more pointers. Anyhow, All the M11xs will ship with either 1066MHz or 1333MHz RAM, but the RAM due to the memory divider will only run at 800MHz, nothing more, nothing less.

 

Not saying it's OK or not OK, but that's why Dell will have an edge over you. It's a simple fact, straight from any textbook on evolutionary biology. And they know it - they'll go very far to make a sale (it's business) and they won't have any moral dilemmas.

On topic.

Sorry, I made a mistake in my last post - I didn't finish the sentence. Yeah I wanted to say it's $500 difference from what m11x cost at the beginning, it's $300 more than what I paid mine, not sure how much it costs now, I guess you can get my configuration for less than $900 total.

On one hand they'll give you some kind of a discount in the case you don't qualify. On the other hand, tons of people qualify for EPP, students, small company employees, large company employees, government employees, military... etc...

Whether it's worth it, I don't think anyone here can answer that at this point. The CPU *looks* good. If you want to help out others with their purchases the best you can do is post benchmarks in the benchmark thread.

 

Also keep in mind if you have a family member that works for a company or is in the military ect, then you also qualify for EPP becuase it extends to family as well.

 

Would you get a discount if you have a family member that WAS in the military?

 

Is all this EPP stuff US only?

 

I think there is some student purchase program in the UK as well, but the discount is 6% instead of 10% ?

 

I am not trying to encourage or discourage, but just gonna post what I found researching the new cores. In my opinion they are not worth the money, since for the $300 a SSD would provide many times the performance gain of the new cores. If you are really worried about the performance and willing to spend $1200+ then an SSD would provide infinitely more benefit than the new cores.

Reading up on the performance of these UM iX cores suggests that they provide little to no performance increase in most instances. The i5 is said to be faster than any 1.2 Ghz C2D, problem is the M11X has a 1.6 Ghz C2D. Thus the i5 will probably actually be slower than the C2D. There is just no way architecture will make up a 600 Mhz shortfall, and Turbo Boost will only engage in the most extreme instances, for most tasks having the extra 600 Mhz even on older architecture is gonna be faster. This is especially sad for $150 more.

The i7 is said to be faster than any 1.6 Ghz C2D, that means it should be faster than the older processor across the board. Problem is, it costs $300 more than the C2D model and what I am reading suggests it will only be slightly faster than a 1.6 Ghz C2D. Everything I can find says expect no more than a 10% performance increase out of the i7 versus a 1.6 Ghz C2D.

 

Anyone know if the i7's will have a BIOS OC option like the old model?
Now that would be something.

 

Can't wait for the benchmarks.

*pets C2D*
Don't worry girl.

 

Why don't you post some actual benchmarks?

 

Uh because there aren't any We can only go off what intel said and make reasonable assumptions, which is what he's done.
Personally i'm waiting for the benchmarks purely because i'm not one for speculation, but the guess is pretty solid.

 

Well, beyond 10% increased performance you'll also see slightly longer battery life (motherboard + chip combined for the i-series will be about 2 tdp lower than a c2d, there are several posts scattered about the boards with the exact # ... I've heard that it equates to at least 30 minutes more life on battery mode). You'll also be getting better integrated graphics.

Whether all of this (+ optimus) justifies the price increase is an individual call, I think. To me it does, but to others it wont'.

 

Both the i5 and i7 will be better than the c2d. The i5 runs at 1.066GHz and 1.86GHz with turbo boost. Consider it running at 1.86GHz all the time with an additional feature of running twice as many threads with the same amount of cache. With turbo boost running it already beats the c2d and most likely it will have an overclocking feature that will increase it even more.

For the maximum amount of battery life you can disable turbo mode and make it run at 1 GHz which is lower than the c2d, and considering it has the same TDP with turbo boost, it will be alot lower and will increase the battery life.

There is no possibilty that intel are going to introduce new technology that is worse than the one they previously had, that simple

 

Not that I know a lot about CPUs but...
For what I know, more GHz does not mean better performance strictly speaking. In processors with similar elements it is THE reference for performance, but between groups of processors it is not the only reference.

Of course a 3.0 C2quad is better than a i5 @ 1.2, but I do think that the core i5 @ 1.06 is far much better than the C2D @ 1.2, because the SU7300 is 1.2GHz...

Just wait to see what happens if you don't trust me ( I understant of course), I may be wrong, I may be not.

But i think i have seen C2DULV vs i5ULV and i5 is far better than C2D.

But only time will tell

 

Notebookcheck: Intel Core i5 520UM Notebook Processor

"(The) Core i5-520UM is faster than a similar clocked Core 2 Duo (1.2 GHz) in all (us known) applications and benchmarks. Still the Turbo Boost will not trigger very often and therefore the maximum of 1.86 GHz is not very important."

The turbo boost is exactly what it says, a short term temporary boost when doing something utilizing 80+% of the CPU. You CANNOT look at the 1.8 Ghz and think it will always run at that speed, it won't. The C2D M11X runs at 1.6 Ghz with the OC on and it runs at that speed constantly. This means that in the vast majority of circumstances the C2D is probably going to perform as good or better than the new iX core.

You are correct about battery life and such, and straight across the iX is better, the difference is the C2D is OCed by 300 Mhz, and thus that helps to make up the performance deficit and perhaps even make the C2D faster than the i5.

Tests - Asus UL30JT - 13-Zoller mit Turbo und Optimus auf notebookjournal.de

The current C2D is 1.3 ghz OCed to 1.6 ghz. Currently the i5 ULV is said to be faster than a 1.2 Ghz C2D and the i7 ULV faster than a 1.6 Ghz C2D. Therefore, only the i7 will be faster than the current C2D in all tasks, and even then it won't be leaps and bounds. People need to have accurate expectations of this refresh, and from all the talk of doing buybacks and returns and spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to upgrade from an R1 to an R2 I get the feeling people don't understand that.

Notebookcheck: Intel Core i7 640UM Notebook Processor

Notebookcheck: Intel Core i5 520UM Notebook Processor

Tests - Asus UL30JT - 13-Zoller mit Turbo und Optimus auf notebookjournal.de

NOTEBOOK.cz - Notebooky Recenze - ASUS UL30Jt - na del?í cesty