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Alienware AMD 64 notebook? Questions about buying.

post #1 of 22
11/21/03 at 6:50pm
Thread Starter 
I am looking to buy an Alienware and I wasn't sure how long to wait. I have read that Alienware notebooks are the best 'gaming notebooks' out (though also the most expensive). I had also read that Alienware is planning to launch a 'Aurora 51m' with an AMD 64 chip in Q1 of '04 but not sure. I also see that Intel launched a pentium 4 EE but I dont see any for notebooks. Alienware shows that the Nvidia 5700 go is set to show up in the Area-51m notebooks soon.

Questions:

1) Is there much advantage to wait for the possible release of the AMD 64 Alienware notebook vs the ones on the site now (p3.2 Ghz. pc-3200 ram).

2) Is there plans on a Alienware releasing a 'Area 51m' with a P-EE chip?

3) What about just regular Area-51m with a 3.4, 3.6 or 4Ghz p4 processor? Any ETA? Worth the wait or not?

4) I have heard multiple things regarding the new Nvidia 5700go vs the ATI graphics card. Which one is better for gaming?

5) Any reviews out there with the latest Alienware Area-51m (p 3.2, new pc-3200 ram) vs any of the other top Notebooks? (most of the reviews I saw were for older Alienware specs).

Thanks in advance.

Stins
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post #2 of 22
11/21/03 at 7:01pm
www.voodoopc.com and www.hypersonic-pc.com carry AMD Athlon64 notebooks, if you are looking to buy in the next 1-2 months
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post #3 of 22
11/21/03 at 7:07pm
Thread Starter 

Voodoo and Hypersonic.

The problem I see with those two types of AMD 64 notebooks is that the largest video card they carry is a small 64 MB ATI card. No thanks. I need some serious gaming power!
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post #4 of 22
11/21/03 at 7:20pm
First off, no way is Alienware the most expensive. Check out www.hypersonic-pc.com or www.voodoopc.com for some outrageously priced lappers.


Secondly, ya 64 Bit chips are neat...but do you have an Application that will use them? None of our games will have anything to do with 64 bit processing for sometime to come.

Thirdly, the Extreme Chip is pretty cool...but not worth another $800 at the moment.

I had many of the same concerns as you and went with the machine you see in my signature. I feel this is a good time to get into a high performance laptop from Alienware or any other vendor for that fact. Both the ATI and GoFX cards are very good. Keep in mind, Alienware is upgradeable when it comes to video processors...that in itself sold me.

Good luck!

-Craig
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post #5 of 22
11/21/03 at 7:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by stins3112
The problem I see with those two types of AMD 64 notebooks is that the largest video card they carry is a small 64 MB ATI card. No thanks. I need some serious gaming power!
This Is from the Voodoo Envy M:855 Review from Anandtech


Quote:
As we went over in our part 1 coverage, the M:855 has uses a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro configured with 64MB of video memory. Within the past 24 hours, we have received information regarding how the “Pro” dubbing will be used, which we will discuss further shortly in an upcoming article. For now, we can safely say that Voodoo is in the clear about using the term Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro on the Envy M:855. The refresh model of the M:855 will still be bumped up to 128MB of video memory.
Just a shame it dont have a WUXGA screen, it would future proof it just that little more
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post #6 of 22
11/21/03 at 7:51pm
Thread Starter 
How is gaming in 1600 x 1200 area-51m? Any lag? I play grand theft auto: vice city on my dell notebook (1.7 ghz p4, 64 mg nvidia card, 512 ram) and there is some serious lag time. Other games work well too however, I usually have to turn the video settings down some.

Since the processor and video card are better, I assume the quality is much better, but figure I would take someone's opinion first hand.
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post #7 of 22
11/21/03 at 7:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by stins3112
The problem I see with those two types of AMD 64 notebooks is that the largest video card they carry is a small 64 MB ATI card. No thanks. I need some serious gaming power!
Actually I believe the card in the Athlon64 notebook is faster than both of the ones Alienware offers at the moment due to higher clock frequencies. Yeah 128MB would be even better but I still think that the card is faster than Alienware's ATI non-pro even though it only has 64MB RAM.

Then again Alienware has upgradable graphics while the A64 lappy has the graphics card soldered to the mobo.
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post #8 of 22
11/21/03 at 8:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan83
Actually I believe the card in the Athlon64 notebook is faster than both of the ones Alienware offers at the moment due to higher clock frequencies. Yeah 128MB would be even better but I still think that the card is faster than Alienware's ATI non-pro even though it only has 64MB RAM.

Then again Alienware has upgradable graphics while the A64 lappy has the graphics card soldered to the mobo.
the fact the GPU is soldered to the MoBo is a good enough reason to get the refresh of the Voodoo A64 with the 128MB Memory, Games like Doom3 and Half life 2 will thank you for it
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post #9 of 22
11/21/03 at 8:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig
Secondly, ya 64 Bit chips are neat...but do you have an Application that will use them? None of our games will have anything to do with 64 bit processing for sometime to come.
Do you mean games will not work with 64bit? I am a 64bit newb, can you explain me what software does/doesnt work with this?
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post #10 of 22
11/21/03 at 8:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ELL123
the fact the GPU is soldered to the MoBo is a good enough reason to get the refresh of the Voodoo A64 with the 128MB Memory, Games like Doom3 and Half life 2 will thank you for it
But there is always something new right around the corner. By the time they offer the 128 MB version the M11 will most likely be pretty close to its release and will offer an even greater boost in performance than simply going from 64 to 128MB on the M10. Besides, I doubt that the difference in performance between the 64MB and 128MB version will be that great as long as clockspeeds stay the same.

Quote:
Originally Posted by fiction1337
Do you mean games will not work with 64bit? I am a 64bit newb, can you explain me what software does/doesnt work with this?
All games will work with it, they just wont take advantage of the 64bit architecture. However the Athlon64 is still faster than the P4 in 32bit applications and the difference will be even more noticeable once (if?) everything becomes 64bit.
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post #11 of 22
11/21/03 at 10:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan83
But there is always something new right around the corner. By the time they offer the 128 MB version the M11 will most likely be pretty close to its release and will offer an even greater boost in performance than simply going from 64 to 128MB on the M10. Besides, I doubt that the difference in performance between the 64MB and 128MB version will be that great as long as clockspeeds stay the same.


All games will work with it, they just wont take advantage of the 64bit architecture. However the Athlon64 is still faster than the P4 in 32bit applications and the difference will be even more noticeable once (if?) everything becomes 64bit.

I don't think thats entirelly true, everything from the OS up seems terribly slow on the Athalons, we compared side by side to the Intel platforms. I think if you can find a way to partner Microsoft and AMD that may change.

Also the first 64 bit OS is actually already out, Windows Server 2003 is available in a 64 bit version, we are loading it on HP SuperDome servers already, in fact we now have 64 processor configurations in place. But these are RISC chips, thats where the best bang for the buck is in the 64 bit world.

At a recent developes conference with MS they stated that as developers to not even consider the Athalon platform on Windows XP 64 when it comes out, since they did not code any provisions into the OS for the Athalons. Incidentally Windows XP 64 is entirely based on the Itanium Intel Processor, the Atahlon seems to run like garbage on the betas we have. Here is the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/6...ew/default.asp

Moral of the story, don't waste your time on the Athalon line at this point, its still at least a year out before it even competes with Itanium.
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post #12 of 22
11/21/03 at 10:19pm
Thread Starter 
VERY interesting feeback. I would be curious to see benchmarks for a amd 64 vs a p3.2 gaming notebook. I have seen them for desktops (amd wins) but not for notebooks.
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post #13 of 22
11/21/03 at 10:24pm
I just scored 2665 3D mark points. That should be good. If you want to see my stats, it's in my signature. If you get a faster AW or something else it will score better probably.
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post #14 of 22
11/21/03 at 10:26pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mechanic
I just scored 2665 3D mark points. That should be good. If you want to see my stats, it's in my signature. If you get a faster AW or something else it will score better probably.

I am not sure what 2665 3D mark points mean. (sorry if it is obvious). Do you have any comparison benchmarks? (I assume the higher the number the better).
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post #15 of 22
11/21/03 at 10:29pm
I don't know either if it is compared or not. It is good.
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post #16 of 22
11/21/03 at 10:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by stins3112
VERY interesting feeback. I would be curious to see benchmarks for a amd 64 vs a p3.2 gaming notebook. I have seen them for desktops (amd wins) but not for notebooks.

What I am saying is that when we start talking about 64 bit platforms, you can read in that link that XP64 was definitely not developed for the Athalon. In fact rumor around the developers is there was a falling out somewhere.

In either respect both the Athlon and the Itanium(Extreme) are re-badged server processors. the Intel using the Xeon platform, and the Athlon using the Opteron platform. Now in the server world in which I work, AMD is not considered "professional quality" and therefore the big Vendors shy away from them, e.g. HP and Dell.

Here is a benchmark done using the 3.2 Intel and the Athlon processor, unfortunately the Intel P4 gets it's a** served up with all the trimmings by the AMD, but their aren't any benchmarks on the Extreme's yet. Disturbing is that the P4 3.2 is not all that much slower than the Athlon, so you might summize that the Extreme will walk all over it. Also worth mentioning is that the Extreme will have a true L3 cache.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTI0LDM=
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post #17 of 22
11/21/03 at 11:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Time-Pilot
I don't think thats entirelly true, everything from the OS up seems terribly slow on the Athalons, we compared side by side to the Intel platforms. I think if you can find a way to partner Microsoft and AMD that may change.

Also the first 64 bit OS is actually already out, Windows Server 2003 is available in a 64 bit version, we are loading it on HP SuperDome servers already, in fact we now have 64 processor configurations in place. But these are RISC chips, thats where the best bang for the buck is in the 64 bit world.

At a recent developes conference with MS they stated that as developers to not even consider the Athalon platform on Windows XP 64 when it comes out, since they did not code any provisions into the OS for the Athalons. Incidentally Windows XP 64 is entirely based on the Itanium Intel Processor, the Atahlon seems to run like garbage on the betas we have. Here is the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/6...ew/default.asp

Moral of the story, don't waste your time on the Athalon line at this point, its still at least a year out before it even competes with Itanium.
I realize that how well the 64-bit thing works out largely hinges on Microsoft releasing an Athlon-compatible 64-bit OS. I am somewhat surprised that you are saying that everything runs slow on the Athlons because pretty much every review I read has been positive.
Also I dont quite understand why you are comparing it to Itanium as both processors are aimed at different market segments. I doubt there are many people gaming with Itanium processors.

Some quotes from HardOCP:
"On the business application front and content creation programs, the Athlon 64 3200+ (paired with the right mainboard) and the Athlon 64 FX 51 were simply dominant in the industry standard benchmarks."

"On the gaming front, the Athlon 64 family showed that they were not to be toyed with in the newer benchmarks, while the older engines still seem to favor the Pentium 4 a bit. Overall, even the midstream Athlon 64 3200+ seemed well suited to handle the Intel competition."

"Intel has come to market with an impressive chip as well in their Extreme Edition. But when it comes right down to it, it's not as impressive overall as the Athlon chips."
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post #18 of 22
11/21/03 at 11:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Time-Pilot
Here is a benchmark done using the 3.2 Intel and the Athlon processor, unfortunately the Intel P4 gets it's a** served up with all the trimmings by the AMD, but their aren't any benchmarks on the Extreme's yet. Disturbing is that the P4 3.2 is not all that much slower than the Athlon, so you might summize that the Extreme will walk all over it. Also worth mentioning is that the Extreme will have a true L3 cache.
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTI0LDM=
Check that review again. They do benchmark the extreme edition P4 and it really isnt that much better than a regular P4 (although it does really well on older gaming benchmarks like Quake 3 and 3DMark01).
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post #19 of 22
11/21/03 at 11:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan83
Check that review again. They do benchmark the extreme edition P4 and it really isnt that much better than a regular P4 (although it does really well on older gaming benchmarks like Quake 3 and 3DMark01).

They are actually benchmarking the beta Extreme, and they state that the new L3 version was not available to them at the time of the test.

I think a processor with an on-dye L3 cache may "reign supreme" if they pull it off. I also think it was wise for Intel to not release the final product yet.
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post #20 of 22
11/22/03 at 12:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Time-Pilot
They are actually benchmarking the beta Extreme, and they state that the new L3 version was not available to them at the time of the test.

I think a processor with an on-dye L3 cache may "reign supreme" if they pull it off. I also think it was wise for Intel to not release the final product yet.
Where did you read that? I read the entire article and could not find anything about them using a beta EE.
Besides wouldnt a Pentium 4 EE without the L3 cache just be a regular P4. I was under the impression that the L3 cache was the only difference between the two.
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