New M15x Owner Information

It took 9 days from order placement to delivery (including 2 days for the weekend), which isn't bad. EDD on Alienware's site (on 2/15) is 2/28 which isn't bad at all. The Chinese New Year had held up previous M15x's a few weeks ago.

Also, Alienware uses 1333Mhz DDR-3 in the M15xR2. The lowest you can get is a 6GB configuration, which uses both RAM slots though.

 

Thanks guys!

Ya, when I was driving home today I thought about the RAM slots and realized I'm screwed.. so I'll just have to get 6GB installed.

How are discounts these days? Anyone using a particular sales rep getting good % off?

When I bought my R2 last year it was during the inventory SNAFU so freebies were everywhere

 

My rep gave me a 740QM system, GTX 460m, 6GB RAM, 1080p screen, etc for $1549 with free NBD shipping. PM me if you want his info.

I also got sent a free Messenger bag for the false promises they made me RE: the delivery timeframe of my laptop (they called me a week before it was delivered and said it would "ship out tomorrow", when it wasn't actually shipped out for 5 days).

 

Nice Matt! That's a great rig you've got there, and a great deal with it. Enjoy

EDIT: Just noticed you have the Momentus drive too, I was ordering with that drive before they pulled it from the site (UK) 2days before I placed the order. How are the read/writes on it?

 

In Windows I'm getting about 79MB/s average read with 108MB/s burst. From shut down till usable desktop is about 15 seconds for the system to boot up, and every day tasks just feel quicker. It's pretty nice! I got mine for $99 USD shipped on sale. Usually they run for $130, and in my opinion that's still not too bad of a price.

 

Hi all

First post - Just had my Order for a M15x go to shipped! Should be here in a few days! Really excited!

Good find this! Some really good info not just on Alienware - but general notebook-ary!

 

Hi Fenix,

Congrats and welcome! What build did you decide on?

 

Waddup all? As of yesterday I ordered my first m15x and first laptop for that matter. Here's what I'm gettin:

i7 740QM 6GB RAM 500GB HDD 7200rpm ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 6-Cell ($1400 at Newegg, new in the box)
Seriously considering ordering a 9 cell, not sure where's the best place to get it tho.

Hoping it's enough for the games I play for a while (thinkin so), also I've been wondering how much of the "new user" stuff I'll have to do to this machine when it arrives?
Flashing? (never done that before or messed with the Bios at all)
Thermal paste? (don't have any, wasn't really sure I needed it, open to recommendations)
Arrives on Monday, god I cant wait
Cooler pad? I ordered one, read it wasn't necessary but better safe than sorry (ZALMAN ZM-NC1000)

Thanks in advance fellas

 

Hi Madd, welcome to the forums. and that's a gr8 rig u are getting. Congrats!!

First of all, update your windows and your anti-virus. I think you'll be getting McAfee but you can uninstall it and install Windows Security Essentials from Microsoft site. It's very low on resources and does a better job than McAffe's bull. Moreover, it'll increaese your start up time by almost 15-20 secs. We M15x users keep our system plugged to AC adapter most of the time so battery time does not matter. I've a 9-cell and get only 2 hours of battery time. So, you can buy a 9-cell from Dell themselves but it all comes down to your need. I think 9-cell is good coz it has a stand-like thing at the bottom which truly helps air-flow in the system.

Update windows and AV and you are set for some serious gaming. That is a beast of a video card and you can OC it to it's full potentials. Great stock performance too. Since you already have a cooler, I don't think you need to repaste your thermals pad as of yet. You can monitor ur temps for a few weeks before going ahead.

One last thing, don't forget to register your service tag under your name and address from Dell's site. This will save you from a lot of hassles if you do need to call Dell Support.

Hope this helped. Cheers n Congrats again. Peace.

 

Thanx Sgt. I seriously cant wait for it to get here omnday (hopefully there isnt any delays due to weather!)

Wehn it comes to overclocking, I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing...is it hard to do or get the hang of? Special software required to do so? Any help with being able to fully understand all the OC jargon and benchmarking etc would be great!

 

@madd, OverClocking used

HTML:

to be a " hard and dangerous" thing a long time ago but these days it's nothing but fun n laughter. ;) It's like tuning your new BMW's engine without using any mechanical tools really. It's about getting the maximum performance out of your system without breaking anything as well. :DWell, since you are new are this, I suggest you take it rather slow at first cause "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" sometimes...if u know what I mean. Here's how I do it, First off, you'll be needing a OCng s/w and I use MSI Afterburner 99.99% of the time since it is really one of the best tweaking tools out there and user friendly too. Then you'll be needing a benchmarking tool n I mostly use MSI Kombuster, Crysis Benchmark and Metro Benchmark simply because these 3 s/ws will give you a synthetic test as well as test your card for real world gaming test as well. Then one more thing you'll need is GPUz to monitor your test while overclocking and that's the most important part in the process. You don't wanna fry anything when you are having fun now do u?? :) Get CPUz as well as it will monitor your CPU temps as well. 






Now, you are set for some cool OC. ;) 
Open Afternurner and you will see three slider indicating your clock speeds. Well, move each slider slightly to the right and let the first two sliders be linked together as this is a safer approach. After every 10 MHz increment, keep running GPUz and CPUz in the background and run MSI Kombuster at your native resolution with 2XAA and start monitoring the temps and fps. 

Keep repeating the above process again and again until your core speed is around 750-760 MHz and you'll have some nice gain in fps by now. You can prolly take the core higher but I think this speed is ideal for your day to day needs. Remember, it's a brand new system and do you really wanna over-stress it?? Some folks in these forums have taken their clocks in the 5850 beyond 800 MHz because they know what they are doing. I've using my 460M beyond 800Mhz as well but since you are novice in this, I suggest you take it lightly. Now run game benchmarks so that you can actually see some performance increase in real world apps and not just benchmarks. Monitor your temps throughout the entire process as Heat n Heat alone can be your biggest enemy and thus your achiles' heels. ;)


Lastly, Perform all of the above steps at your own risk. :D Some card tend to OC differently than others and it depends on the owner to decide what is their saturation point. But to be safe, one should OC their h/w 20-25 MHz below it's melting/breaking point. 

Well, I hope this post will be helpful in your endeavours and have fun with your new system. 

Peace.

 

loving every peice of this machine but already itching for an upgrade

 

Thanks again Sgt. for all the useful info, now just gotta wait for my machine to arrive tomorrow (GOD I suck at waiting...damn weekend and no UPS deliveries!!)

Also ordered an upgraded wireless card as well as a router, although I think I overshot my wireless card, as I bought the Intel Ultimate N 633, and only got a Lynksys E300 router (doh)

 

@seph-Vii

Dell were doing a special on a base config of I7-740, gtx 460m and 4gb ram.

Which is what i wanted plus hd screen and Momentus XT - also wanted red, but by the time i had actually decided i think they'd sold out as i could only get black!

Am now sitting at home eagerly awaiting the UPS man!

 

I tried the newest driver, with it I can't output sound through display port(HDMI) to TV, anyone try this?

If this is the case, I think we should stick on Alienware video driver.

 

.............lol

 

Just rcv'd my M15x yesterday. I've ordered the 5850 GPU upgrade ... should come in next week. Very exciting thread.

 

Hope it comes fast for u you ^^

 

I returned my M15x today to Dell and ordered another M15x, refurbished. I originally was going to pay $300 to buy and have a new 5850 installed in my M15x. Adding $300 to the price I paid for my old M15x, I bought another M15x that already had the 5850 GPU plus it came with 1080p and a/g/n wifi as a bonus. Should arrived next week.

I found out that within 21 days of original purchase, you can return product to Dell and not be charged re-stocking fee of 15% if you ordered another unit. Sweet.

My new M15x: i7 740, 5850 GPU, 8 GB ram, a/g/n wifi, blutooth, 500MB/7200, 1080p and 9 cell.

I bought a downloadable version of Crysis from Amazon for $15.00. Can't wait to see how it runs on my new M15x.

Carbon

 

500MB wow so small

 

Good point! LOL.

Carbon

 

whaddup all!

just ordered a m15x.. had to cancel my xps 17 since it was love at first sight on alienware!

cant wait to get it!

Intel Core i7 740QM Quad Core 1.73GHz
15.6-inch 1920x1080 (1080p) WLED
6GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD5730 1GB
6-cell battery

for $1450 with NBD shipping and tax!

EDD 4/29/2011

dreaming about it everyday!

 

Well i bought my system back in december.....after months of reading about alienware m15x and asus g73w on these forums....I believe I made the right choice in Alienware
So far its been an awesome experience......

Codename - "Emma"

Intel Core i7-740qm
6GB dual channel RAM
900p screen
Nvidia GTX 460M
500 GB HDD
Razer Mamba [Awesomest mouse ever]

 

^^Of course you made the right choice, which will become increasingly apparent as time goes by. Congratulations on your discretion and good taste.

 

I'm new to M15x. I spent the last 3 weeks reading every post in the M15x New Owners, Tech Questions and 6970 threads. Good crowd of people. I'm a newbee and need some help.

I downloaded Driversweeper from Cnet.com and ran the tool cleaning all the drivers. I corrupted the ati registry in the process (the screen's resolution looked like you were in safe mode). Alienware tech did a refresh on the ati registry and solved the problem. Should I have run Driversweeper in Safe Mode to avoid the registry corruption? Is there a thread I can go to for more info on how to properly run the Driversweeper tool.

Thx,

Carbon

Config: i740, 5850, 8G, 500GB/7200, 1080p, Blutooth

 

Config: i740, 5850, 8G, 500GB/7200, 1080p, Blutooth

 

You probably didn't really corrupt anything. When you run Driver Sweeper and remove the ATI drivers, the computer can no longer identify your card and so it loads the Windows default VGA driver, which is what it also loads if you startup in Safe Mode, so it looks more or less the same. In that situation, "repairing the registry" amounts to nothing more than reinstalling the ATI drivers.

Driver Sweeper is best used sparingly. First, be sure that your version of DS is 2.90 or later. Earlier versions would sometimes corrupt or remove certain Windows system files, which was not usually fatal, but did/does prevent Windows 7 from updating to Service Pack 1 without first reinstalling Windows, a major inconvenience. Second, ATI drivers are designed to be installed over the prior version and will just over-write earlier versions of the same files and registry entries, i.e., the existence of the earlier drivers and entries is no impediment to installation of the updated drivers.

Nevertheless, the best practice is to uninstall the existing drivers by going to Uninstall Programs in Control Panel and right clicking on ATI Catalyst Install Manager and selecting Change. Then click Next and then the bottom selection - Express Uninstall ALL ATI Software. This will result in the automatic removal of the existing Catalyst drivers and utilities. When complete, you will be asked whether to remove Install Manager itself. Select OK and exit. You will need to reboot to complete the process.

When it starts again, it should find new hardware (your card) but will be unable to identify it as a 5850 and will load the VGA device/driver. At this point, run CCleaner and clean the registry, mostly of leftovers from the driver uninstall. Fix the problems and rerun the Analyze/Fix process until no errors are found. Exit and return to the Desktop. On the other hand, if after removing the drivers, Windows comes up with an ATI driver instead of the VGA device, then there are one or more versions of the ATI drivers remaining in Windows driver repository. Go to Device Manager and remove the Display Adapter drivers, selecting the option to remove software associated with the driver. Reboot and repeat as necessary until all of the old drivers are cleaned out and Win 7 loads the VGA device. In this eventually, run CCleaner after all is clean and the VGA driver is loaded. Then just install the new Catalyst drivers, using the Express Install option.

You really only need Driver Sweeper if you're (a) changing cards - nVidia to ATI for example. (b) if you wish to install an earlier version of the Catalyst set (needed because the Catalyst drivers and utilities will not ordinarily install over a more recent version) and (c) if you had the Dell drivers installed and now wish to install an ATI Catalyst reference set. When needed, run Driver Sweeper in Safe Mode so that the drivers you wish to remove are not in use at the time, which will usually prevent their removal. Otherwise, leave DS parked.

 

Revelator:

Thanks for the quick answer. Much appreciated! I do have the latest version of Driver Sweeper, luckily. I just successfully completed installing Windows7 SP1.

Gamers seem to update bios, drivers and OS like breathing air. I need to do more research to learn how to do this better because different techniques are used depending on what's being updated. For instance, to update M15x bios, one needs a bootable disk with the AO9 .exe file on it. I spent days trying to figure out how to make a bootable disk (almost buying a program that burns bootable CDs) when I punted and asked Alienware support. They said the M15x CD burner already does that and showed me how. Another example, the M15x threads recommend for updating drivers to go into safe mode, run CC cleaner (mem + register) and Driversweeper before uninstall and after the driver install.

I see gamers are constantly updating GPUs, CPUs and memory (to a lesser degree) and overclocking and adjusting voltage levels to get that last 5% of performance out of the PC. This is quite exciting to read about this ... it's like going out where no man has gone before (for $600, that is, for the 6970). This is why I bought the M15x ... just to figure out how to do this.

Thanks for all your posts on these threads.

Carbon

 

Welcome to the club. Have at it. It is fun, and the more you learn, the more there is to learn.

 

Didn't really want to start a new thread so I thought I'd just state my satisfaction here.

I just found out that one of my aunts companies (where I'm sitting right now) has an engraver in the workshop. Sweet. Finally the little metal plate underneath my laptop has some individuality!! It's not the funky Alienware font that you lucky 'States-ers get, it was never an option in the UK. But it's still pretty cool! I'm gonna bring every metal object I own to the workshop tomorrow and engrave the hell out of it all. I'll probably regret it later but right now I'm riding high on the novelty.

 

You can download the Alienware font somewhere then, if you can feed the data in you may be able to have the Alienware style.

 

Nah, it's a hand engraver. So it's like two points, one of which follows the letter-plate and the other gouges it into the engraving medium. Think I prefer a normal font anyway to be honest! The Alienware font is just illegible heiroglyphics. Mine says "GAME OVER!" in nice clear caps.

 

Just got my alien, going nuts looking at it now!

trying to uninstall the synaptics driver

 

Its defo worth the money enjoy mate^^

 

Congratz on your new babe, enjoy it!!!

 

Well Congrats from my side as well... It's a rare breed these days.

Cheers.

 

Thanks guys. It is an amazing machine indeed!

 

Great post, very helpful, Thank s a lot !
Couple of questions to whoever might feel like helping)
- Why is it such a bad idea to install codecs(KLite is what i went for)? Just wondering...
- What kind/type of air compressor would I need to get to clean my laptop(been using lungs and new toothbrush so far))? I understand that canned air is a more expensive solution - but do correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks)

 

You can install codecs if you like but if you don't know what you are doing, it may clog up your system. K-Lite is really unnecessary, I use a ffdshow + MPC-HC. It's all you need. VLC is of course the easiest option. For cleaning out fans etc, I take them out and use the vacuum cleaner. It's easy and gets the job done.

 

You can also buy cans of compressed air in Best buy, micro center, etc - just be careful not to use it when the computer is on - you can damage the fans. They're useful for dusting other things - but not camera mirrors - too much force.

Joe

 

Thanks for the quick reply widezu69! Guess I'll be uninstalling the KLite then... I use MPC already, but I've been getting a lot of ffdshow- related error messages until I installed the KLite pack(haven't installed VLC yet after the recent OS reinstall).
As to the hoover solution - several posts on different forums declare hoovering as THE taboo - something to do with the static charge generated from the friction that dust particles create when blown along the surfaces. Don't really have an opinion on the matter yet - just researching. I'm guilty of having used the hoover before and it hasn't affected anything, but those posts made me think again...

 

Yeah what I do is that I take the parts out, hoover them, ground them and make sure nothing is charged and them put it back in.

 

Just a general question, not even sure if it should be in here, but...

Im with the 260M right now and looking to upgrade it. Was looking at the 6970 or 5870. I dont have a warranty anymore, so I'm not worried about voiding that. Is there somewhere I can go to look at the two cards side by side? Powerdraws, and temps would ideal. Obviously the 6970 would be faster, but I would like to see them side by side for those two specific things.
Also, I understand that upgrading to both would be great for me, moving from the 260M and all.

Thanks for the help in advance. And sorry if this has been asked somewhere else.

 

you should be looking at these two threads =)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...u-need-know-upgrading-problems-solutions.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/578047-gpu-upgrade-nvidia-460m-vs-amd-5850-a.html

 

Does anyone know how i can find out what is the revision of my M15x? ...

I see some people putting M15x R2 ... how do i know if mine is an R2 or R1?

 

There isn't really any such thing as as R1 or R2 version of the M15x. The more recent, post-Dell-acquistion of Alienware version is correctly designated as the M15x (capital M) and is sometimes referred to as the R2. They are characterized by Core i processors; if it's got an i7, i5 or i3 CPU, then it's an M15x. The pre-Dell version(s) are correctly designated the m15x (small m), but are sometimes referred to as the R1. The m15x used mostly Core 2 CPU's.

 

great information here for when I want to upgrade to my 5870.

 

ah! Thanks for the info =)

 

I just bought an Alienware m15x here, and the seller doesn't know the bios password. Is there a way to reset it? thanks!

 

I want to send in my M15x for some repairs and fixes. Does anyone know how it works in terms of the data that is currently on my hardrive? Should I be backing up my entire hardrive and disabling the password during startup? I've never sent in my laptop before so I want to know what happens.