Alienware M15x

NBF NEW Alienware M15x Review Core i7 2009

What you'll find
Alienware M15x Core i7 Review 2009 & Extensive Testing/Benchmarks along with comparrison shots.

Intro
Hey Im Yoob@NBF and I like ridiculously powerful notebooks with some regards to its battery endurance and/or weight. Ive always been a fan of the bang for buck category ever since my first upgradeable notebook the Dell Inspiron 8100 which featured a blazing fast 1Ghz Pentium3-m CPU and what was the powerhouse known as the Geforce 440mx with 32MB of Vram. Till this day its always been a Dell for they have always been able to match the right stuff inside a computer with right stuff in my wallet. Today is no different since my Alienware is still technically a Dell and for once Alienware has finally reached the coveted BANG-4-BUCK title. This has come to me giving the community and the rest of the world the new and improved Alienware M15x Core i7 a review.

Will be gradually updating this as I use the machine this way you get the whole ownership play by play experience
Review: 10/6/09
Updated: 10/29/09 *Battery, Touch Pad, Win7, Ports, LED sections added/edited

Specs & Price:
* Alienware® m15x
* Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM 1.6GHz 6MB Cache (2.8Ghz Turbo Boost)
* Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Ultimate 64-bit
* 15.6" Wide FHD 1920 x 1080 LED LCD
* Intel® P55PM + ICH10 Chipset
* 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SO-DIMM at 1066MHz - 2 x 2GB Upgrade from 3GB $25
* Single Drive Configuration - 120GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s SSD 64MB Cache Upgrade from 250GB HDD $250
* 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW Combo w/Software
* 1GB NVIDIA Geforce™ GTX 260M
* Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 2 + Free Windows 7 Upgrade voucher.
* IDT® 5.1 High-Definition Audio
* Internal Intel® Wifi LINK 5300 b/g/n Half-Mini PCI-Card
* Integrated 10/1000Mb Gigabit Ethernet
* 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service
* Cyberlink PowerDVD 9
* Alienware Respawn Recovery Kit
* Alienware Mobile Manual

SubTotal: $1824.00
Tax: $162.60
Bing Cashback: -$273.60
Upgrades: 275.00
Order Total: $ 1988.40

Reason for Purchase:
Core i7m & Alienware paired up in a notebook? Tack on a high end GPU like the 260GTX 1GB? Under 2k? Bingo this had to happen ASAP where my mobile gaming was thoroughly spoiled by a middle of the pack GPU and substandard cooling to further kick itself in the performance area. What I wanted was a mobile gaming rig that i could take with me and everything in the 17"+ all were 10lb monsters with equally disturbing 3lb power brings that needed more desk space than my desktop keyboard did.

What's in the Box:
The m15x duh.
The nicest put together manual I have ever laid my eyes on.
A microfiber notebook sleeve.
The windows Vista DVD which will forever stay sealed since it also came with the win7 upgrade packet.
The power adapter.
A very nice Alienware mousepad.
An Alienware cap!

Design Observations:
By far the most evil looking notebook (in a good way) I have ever seen and almost makes you want do terrible things because you faintly hear the glowing gray alien skull telling you so. I was at first expecting something larger based on its weight which is only 1lb lighter than Dells former XPS gaming monster. It is certainly large for a 15.6" but with what were talking about that's under the hood its hard to not expect. You can attribute all the extra weight that Dell tacked on by replacing a good deal of plastic with industrial magnesium as opposed to aluminum because magnesium is lighter, inexpensive, and better at heat dissipation not to mention for dell its easier to set in a mold so a shorter build time. Dell does primarily use magnesium for all of its high end business notebooks and lots of other subtle improvements from the M4400 exists in the m15x such as the new and improved low power wattage adapter with a glowing ready indicator at the tip of the adapter where its most visible, the 2 screw "OnePanelAccessAll" from the Latitude and Precision series is a god send for being able to take every single part except the optical drive out for upgrades or repairs.

Screen:
The screen is obviously from Dell's Studio line which is a good thing as I have found Dell to use excellent panels in the XPS line of notebooks and the m15x is no exception with vivid rich colors and smooth refresh rates with no visible light bleeding at all. Viewing angles are also strong at the angles you need it which i find to be a downside as I don't usually like over the shoulder peeping toms. With all the extra padding around the hinge I can say for sure just like the studio XPS 16 that the M15x will likely get a 16 inch screen with RGBLED as a higher end option when they get a steady stream of these guys out the door.

Keyboard: *UPDATED 10/29/09
I have to say that the keyboard at first sight kind of made me worry about its overall quality however thus far the tactile feedback was almost as good as the Dell Precision M4400 I owned before this which I consider to be the best keyboard money can buy for a notebook. The backlit keys however are dull but since its all for show it really doesn't strike me as a failure in any way. I will note that there is slight flexing around the E,D,X keys which I have commonly seen in the lower end Inspiron line from Dell but it seems to be flattening out. I do like one feature that no one else seems to have thought of which is to braille (add little physical bumps) to the S & F keys for those who have yet to hard code where WASD is in hectic gaming. *Update BIOS A01 has resolved a input lag issue that I was having before so if you happen to notice delayed typing on battery ensure you update from dell.com

Touchpad: *UPDATED 10/29/09
A real gamer doesn't use the notebook's touch pad for any reason at all simply because a real mouse is always superior. This type of notebook is heavy and limited on battery power thus it is likely to assume touchpad use would be limited and for good reasoning. I was excited when I noticed that Dell rid themselves of the dreaded laggy Alps pads that roam free on the latitude and precision lines from dell with the vastly superior Synaptec only to discover that my misguided faith is just that. The pad plainly sucks at native resolution of 1080p. When used at max res the feeling of delay and slow hopping occurs even with a fresh update to the drivers. This doesn't occur with an external mouse nor does it occur at lower resolutions. This is almost certainly software related and if it can be ironed out then the touchpad could be usable. Its just so hard to imagine how this one slipped by QA at Dell/AW. *Update BIOS A01 has resolved a horrible delay issue on the touchpad while on battery so be sure to update to A01 from Dell.com if you experience delayed touchpad response.

Multimedia Control:
Continuing from the previous m15x and m17x is the Alienware button less multimedia controls which I have personally have never enjoyed using from any company. I like the tactile feedback of a button that confers with me in some way to let me know that I did my part by pushing a stupid little button but with a touch panel anything can go wrong. What pains me the most is the slot-loading DVD drives only eject button happens to sit on this panel along with the volume up/down keys. Ive run into issues where the panel wont recognize the command to lower the volume instantly by bashing the volume down button while a full screen program is up so I have to rely on custom hotkeys with 3rd party software. Let me just say that this is a gripe and not something that dropped my overall impression of the computer. I will note that the Alienware stealth mode which reduces power consumption doesn't seem to function on battery or at least your greeted with an error message stating that you can only switch to low power mode on AC power. This could be more with win7 incompatibility but i wanted to note it for those who care.

Port Accommodations: *ADDED 10/29/09
On the left you have your standard kensington lock hole, charging port, vga out, gigabit ethernet, DisplayPort, USB 2.0, Firewire, and SD Card slot. The layout was a little awful since the charging tip is forced to protrude at least 2 inches from base and anyone owning the m15x may not have as much realestate as a m17x owner does. The placement of the left USB was closest to the front thus making anything plugged in stick out where it could cause harm. On the right side you have a USB 2.0, eSATA/USB combo, mic jack, headphone jack1, headphone jack2, Optical drive slot, and expansion slot right above the optical drive. The placement of the 2 remaining USB ports being so close to where a mouse would be nearby makes the whole thing look awful with wires visibly out and getting caught on your good gaming hand. I will also not understand why having the optical drive on the right side right next to where the hand is resting a good idea. The placement overall I would have to say was done with little thought and not understanding of the gaming consumers needs.

Battery Life: *ADDED 10/29/09
Dell was extremely careful not to mention how much battery life to expect and from the spec sheet I have seen you can assume 120 minutes of usage however even under the lowest and most conservative settings using SSD and all I was only able to must a whole 100 minutes of usage one minute for each percentage on the battery bar. Switching to powerhungry mode and your left with a paltry 60 minutes. When you purchase a 15 inch gaming computer your expected to get a slightly lighter and a battery friendly gaming rig as your making sacrifices to many aspects of the machine and if were comparing the older brother M17x which lacks the Core i7 then your giving up a good variety of better videocards along with a full size keyboard, louder speakers and a cooler running system.

Runtime

High Performance (CPU always at 100%, LCD Brightness at 4 of 8, All LED On, Volume at MAX)
Gaming 49 minutes
Movie 55 minutes
Web Surfing 60 minutes

Power Saving (CPU always at 25%, LCD Brightness at 1 of 8, Volume at MID)
Gaming 52 minutes
Movie 98 minutes
Web Surfing 100 minutes


Performance Number BENCHMARKs

wPrime
wPrime is an "application designed to use a highly multithreaded approach to calculating the square-roots of large amounts of numbers (up to 32 billion at this stage!)". This is where we want to compare that super CPU the i7 to work and just to compare I threw in some numbers from my desktop and a netbook keeping in mind the non m15x is Core 2 technology.
Core i7 720QM 1.6Ghz 6MB L3 Cache - Turbo Boost & HT (8 Threads)
32M completed in 15.81 seconds
1024M completed in 466.89 seconds
Core 2 Quad Q9450 3.5Ghz 12MB L2 Cache (4 Threads)
32M completed in 12.53 seconds
1024M completed in 399.79 seconds
Core 2 Solo SU3500 1.4Ghz 3MB L2 Cache (1 Thread)
32M completed in 151.74 seconds
1024M completed in 3859.41 seconds

World of Warcraft (AKA WOW)
WoW is an MMO which now borders on 14 Million active users making it the most popular pay to play online service for the PC market and its primarily the reason why I game now. A lot of you may know that WoW runs on ANY PC that has shaders even the Intel X3100 integrated graphics card which allows for such a large user base thanks to low minimum requirements. WoW has gone thru many upgrades over the years and thus have increased the recommended requirements to achieve smooth playback on the highest settings with the highest resolution and honestly I have yet to see the game run at a steady 60fps on the highest slider on even my monster of a desktop. We do not have a consistent benchmark for this game yet since the performance comes from various settings and variables but I thought I would include a shot for those who play the game and are wondering what performance is like on large fights where there are 40ish little chars on screen with massive spell effects.
CPU/GPU STRESS BENCHMARK (32bit ~ Quality @ Ultra) Unplayable -17 / Playable ~26 / Smooth 50+
1920x1080 AA=8xMS, ~~ Last Average RAIDING FPS: 16
1920x1080 AA=8xMS, ~~ Last Average CITY STANDING FPS: 56
CPU/GPU STRESS BENCHMARK (32bit ~ Quality @ Good)
1920x1080 AA=1xMS, ~~ Last Average RAIDING FPS: 47
1920x1080 AA=1xMS, ~~ Last Average CITY STANDING FPS: 60+

Crysis SP Demo
This game is now almost 3 years old and its still an epic struggle for enthusiast machines to break its will. This is also one of the first games to make use of the DX10 to destroy gaming rigs. I have included CPU stress and GPU stress tests using a variety of settings like if jumping to DX10 takes a major hit on overall performance. I did try testing 32bit vs 64bit and the performance loss was less than 1% in most cases but people who have more than 3GB of RAM will want to run the game in 64bit to not choke on RAM. Its good to see that these numbers are strong for a notebook with a single videocard no doubt with the help of the core i7 pushing all the calculations.
CPU STRESS BENCHMARK (64bit ~ Quality @ Very High) Unplayable -15 / Playable ~25 / Smooth 30+
DX9
1920x1080 AA=16xQ, ~~ Last Average FPS: 18.16
1920x1080 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 23.88
1024x768 AA=16xQ, ~~ Last Average FPS: 38.66
1024x768 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 43.21
DX10
1920x1080 AA=16xQ, ~~ Last Average FPS: 9.42
1920x1080 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 12.25
1024x768 AA=16xQ, ~~ Last Average FPS: 20.33
1024x768 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 24.92
GPU STRESS BENCHMARK (64bit ~ Quality @ Very High)
DX9
1920x1080 AA=16xQ, ~~ Last Average FPS: 20.13
1920x1080 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 25.32
1024x768 AA=16xQ, ~~ Last Average FPS: 43.08
1024x768 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 46.93

Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
This game borders on 7 years of age and still a prime example that graphics arn't everything. The dated engine runs on DX8.1 but due to extensive modification certain custom maps such as DotA runs some systems to its limit which means on some systems load times are moderate at 15 seconds and maintaining 60fps on high settings was astonishingly hard on many systems that ive owned but the game presented no challenge to the mighty m15x.
Gameplay Average FRAMERATE (32bit ~ Quality @ High) Unplayable -12 / Playable ~25 / Smooth 45+
1920x1080 AA=No AA, ~~ Last Average FPS: 62
1920x1080 AA=ON, ~~ Minimum FPS: 60

Half-Life 2 Lost Coast
Half life 2 is no longer the taxing game it used to be but back when people couldn't rely on Crysis to break sweat on there new gaming rigs Lost Coast came in to fill the gap with industry breaking effects like H.D.R. (High Dynamic Range) and Bloom lighting effects. With every single setting maxed out as high as you can the game is no longer a match for notebooks of this calibur.
Stress Test BENCHMARK (32bit ~ Quality @ High) Unplayable -15 / Playable ~30 / Smooth 60+
1920x1080 AA=6xMS, ~~ Last Average FPS: 140.13

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
I like R.T.S. (Real Time Strategy) type games a lot and some can be pretty demanding when having to render for more than one unit on screen especially with area effect explosions. Dawn of war focuses on tactical strategy of securing resource nodes and a single building to produce all your units rather than the classic building and farming for all your resources which is more micromanagement heavy. This game is very modern thus all the effects require heavy ended machines.
Stress Test BENCHMARK (32bit ~ Quality @ Ultra) Unplayable -14 / Playable ~25 / Smooth 45+
1920x1080 AA=ON, ~~ Last Average FPS: 32.47
1920x1080 AA=ON, ~~ Minimum FPS: 12.78
Stress Test BENCHMARK (32bit ~ Quality @ Medium)
1920x1080 AA=OFF, ~~ Last Average FPS: 38.91
1920x1080 AA=OFF, ~~ Minimum FPS: 18.63


More details and pix coming soon.