Alienware's hot new laptop

[angry hampster]

http://www.alienware.com/produ...ges/notebook_m15x.aspx

Core 2 Extreme? 8800M GTX? DUal hard drives? ....This thing has got to eat through battery life in 15 minutes!


I suppose if all you do is go to lanparties, then it might be OK, but you're only playing on a 15" screen. I just don't understand the appeal behind this.

Also, does anyone have any reviews on the high-end notebook graphics cards? Googling doesn't give me many useful links.

 

[Brainonska511]

You don't get these machines so that you can sit in Starbucks and browse the web. These are gaming notebooks for the go - whether you're traveling a lot or just going to LAN parties. Sure, the 15.4" screen isn't the best, but you can get it as a WUXGA. The dual-hard drives is just one main hard drive and one that can be placed in a modular bay, which is common place on many machines (older Dells when they still had modular bays; Thinkpads, etc).

Also, if you look at the specs, it says it has dual-graphics: "BinaryGFX ? Switch between high-performance graphics and integrated graphics", so that should help a lot in the battery life area.

 

[IlllI]

the point is some people are rich and have nothing else to do with their money

 

[Oil]

Actually that laptop is pretty interesting. The dual-graphics system I'm assuming is just like the Sony SZ where you can flip a switch and reboot into either nVidia dedicated or Intel integrated graphics. You could, therefore, actually have enough battery life to sit at Starbucks and surf the web, although with only a 6cell it is probably still pretty poor

 

[heymrdj]

When i get my next DR laptop, i'm getting one with a quad core, 4GB RAM, if not 8GB if they have that available by the time, RAID 1 HD's of the biggest, and hopefully dual HD's, 17-20" screen. It's not about running on the battery, even though you'd be surprised how well they can when you aggressively shut off HD's and optical drives, dim screen, and speedstep your process. It's the fact you can carry a screen, mouse, keyboard, and computer in two hands anyways you want, unlike a desktop.

 

[Rankor]

I wouldn't have minded if I picked this up (had I been patient and not bought the G1S)

The 8800m series completely blows the 8600m/8700m gpus out of the water.

Well, I needed a lappy (to replace my older V2000z) that I could use at work, on business trips, and (still) be able to play a current pc game at acceptable frames.

I'll wait two years from now and I'm sure that there'll be some notebooks that'll knock the socks off what is available today.

 

[corkyg]

The real point is that Alienware sees an opportunity to makes some sales to travelling gamers. Batteries are for emergency use only when no A/C or D/C is available. I didn't see an eSATA port listed. Bummer!

 

[onlyCOpunk]

the m15x is currently the only 15.4" laptop with an 8800m GTX so it's pretty desireable for people who want a gaming laptop, but not the bulk of the 17" screen. If I saw myself using it then I would get one.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Pretty Impressive they got a 8800GTX into a 15.4'' lappy. I'd be interested to see how they cool it- otherwise it's gonna be one slick looking egg fryer.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

notebookreview.com has a couple of reviews on it, they probably say something about the cooling.

EDIT: Oh and to sum up the 8800m GTX performance, it easily scores over 9000 in 3D Mark 06 and has roughly the same performance of the old 8800 GTS desktop I believe.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: OSx86
Actually that laptop is pretty interesting. The dual-graphics system I'm assuming is just like the Sony SZ where you can flip a switch and reboot into either nVidia dedicated or Intel integrated graphics. You could, therefore, actually have enough battery life to sit at Starbucks and surf the web, although with only a 6cell it is probably still pretty poor

you'd think for such a high end laptop, they ouldn't skimp on the battery. but i guess like someone else mentioned already, these are mainly meant to be plugged in anyway.

 

[angry hampster]

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk
notebookreview.com has a couple of reviews on it, they probably say something about the cooling.

EDIT: Oh and to sum up the 8800m GTX performance, it easily scores over 9000 in 3D Mark 06 and has roughly the same performance of the old 8800 GTS desktop I believe.

That's really impressive. I expected it to be completely crippled, maybe on par with a PCI-E 8600GTS or the like.

 

[ShockwaveVT]

To think, the 166Mhz Pentium desktop system I got when I started college cost almost $3,000... That sucker had 16MB of RAM too.

 

[Parasitic]

To be fair and honest, the $2149 price tag on the "base" model with 2.6GHz C2D, 256MB 8600GT, 7200rpm HDD, Vista HP, etc isn't too bad. If you start tacking on other things then of course it goes out of whack. I think that it's more or less in line or even slightly cheaper than MBPs, so still a great buy.

Plus you'd be different from most other Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, etc users.

 

[angry hampster]

And Dell plays the trump card for $3500:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3242&p=8

The thing has better performance in gaming than my desktop. In all fairness though, it costs 6x as much.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
And Dell plays the trump card for $3500:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3242&p=8

The thing has better performance in gaming than my desktop. In all fairness though, it costs 6x as much.

Not to mention is significantly larger then the m15x. But then again they are both batting fo the same team.

 

[McCartney]

Hi.

I have the T9300 8800M GTX m15x. If anyone needs help on it ask me. I absolutely love it.
I also have a desktop (780i, 8800 GTX g80s, 4gb ram and a q66 at 3.15ghz prime) so it wasn't a "tradeoff".

I just wanted the best/size/price/performance laptop. I had a 17" macbook if you see in other threads but this thing just straight smokes the pants off most things. I bought the 1440x900 screen so I can play crysis at very high (I'm getting about 15-20 FPS max). I think this is comparable to a 8800 GT a little downclocked (96 stream processors).

Its awesome.