Aurora m9700: Ordered and Process Reviewed - Page 33

Well, on the website it just hit phase 10....literally took 2 months since I ordered on may 26th but I'm confident that the wait has been worth it. After all the reviews I've seen from the folks here, the notebook has surpassed my expectations and will hopefully be even better in person. It shifted to phase 10 on the website after a call to their Critical Issues department or whatever its called. They said "We're very disappointed about how this order was put through our production system" and I replied with a "You're disappointed? It's my laptop" lol but at least they admitted that there were problems along the way, because apparently, as far as the CI department knew, it had only been in phase 7 the whole time, so either they were mis-informed by the other departments, or the folks I've been talking to for the past 2 weeks have been lying about actually talking to the shipping department and finding my lappy sitting in a box ready to go. I don't particularly care which is the case as long as its actually in transit. Supposed to get the tracking number tomorrow so we shall see. I knew eventually AW would come through for me and send my baby to its rightful home

I'll post tomorrow weather I get the tracking number or not, but for my own sake I sure hope I do. I'd love to get that baby before going up to my gf's cottage this weekend....I'll set up oblivion and have some fun after I get off the waverunners

My estimated delivery date is tomorrow. I hope it comes.

I'll post pics and stuff.

I have my m9700 in my grubby little hands! MUA HA HA HA...

I'm busy prepping it for a business trip tomorrow. So far, no problems at all!

To wet your whistles, 3DMark05 numbers:

Fresh from the box: 9777
After removing the Athlon driver and installing the Turion driver: 9955

Full review later!

Update: Changed the Performance & Quality Settings -> Image Settings from "Quality" to "High Performance": 10029!

Damn that's good.. must be my RAM speed limiting me now, I guess (333MHz vs. 400MHz)

Phase 1!!!

Before I say anything else I would like to thank all those people who helped me in deciding between the m7700 and the m9700, I appreciate your help in determining which system is better for gaming.

A few minutes ago I ordered an m9700 with the specs below...estimated ship date: 31 JULY 2006!!! Can't wait to get it!!!
Processor: AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML44 2.4GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Display: 17" WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology
Motherboard: Alienware® NVIDIA® Mobile SLi Chipset
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR SO-DIMM at 400MHz - 2 x 1024MB
Hard Drive: Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 200GB (100GB x 2) Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ NCQ & 8MB Cache
Optical Drive: 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW Combo w/Software
Video/Graphics Card: Dual 256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS - SLI Enabled
Sound Card: High-Definition Audio with surround sound
Wireless Network Card: Internal 802.11b/g WiFi Card w/ Airgo MIMO Technology - New!
Communications: Integrated 10/1000Mb Gigabit Ethernet & 56K V.92 Modem
Bluetooth: Integrated Bluetooth® Device
Primary Battery: Alienware® m9700 12-cell Lithium-Ion Smart Battery Pack
Power: Surge Protector - APC Pnote ProC6 Mobile Surge Protector
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service
AlienRespawn: Alienware® Respawn Recovery Kit
Productivity Software: Microsoft® Works 8 Productivity Suite
Mobile Bags: Alienware® Odyssey Briefcase
Free Alienware Shirt: Free Alienware® T-Shirt - Black
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager

w00t, AW shipped it international priority "Next Day" shipping to make up for all the BS I went through with my order and now its only an hour and a half away in Mississauga....maybe I should drive there and pick it up *pictures the faces of the FedEx guys when some oddball shows up to pick up his package*

omg haha I went downstairs to get a drink and the fedex lady knocked on the door w00t. Its kickass and beautiful and ugh...sexah. Btw, did everybody get a remote even if you didnt order the tuner+remote? Cause there is a remote in my box of goodies....

Pics and such to come later

Mine came w/ one as well.

You must be able to use the s-video inputs and outputs without the tuner then I guess. You can probably control dvd movies too. Very cool.

Can you control mp3's with the remote? Might be part of MCE.

I got a remote too so I'm thinking it just comes when you order MCE.

So yeah, I got my laptop today...two hours ago!
I'm in love.

This thing's a beast though...almost too big for a little girl like me to be carrying around.
Almost.

Its uber sexy (I was running errands all day today) so now...its play time! Time to install bf2, swg, oblivion...*thinks.....and the others!

Just now running 3dmark05 (using my other PC to type this) and Ive got a question, never run this program before so I'm curious as to weather or not on the um...4th I believe (its the one where the giant dragon thing jumps out of the water and over the blimp ship) video test they get 1-4 fps? This video has played twice, and the first time I was getting like 50, and this time its running at like 1-4 fps so I'm curious as to if they jacked up settings on the second run or?.....very confused....and even so, wow I'm a little disappointed that its getting...ok, and now its playing the combat video of the guys in some sort of hangar fighting it out with guns again and only getting 1-5 this time aswell....can anybody shed some light on this to a 3dmark05 newbie?

If I remember right, they do several iterations of some tests turning up the settings as they go. Some tests can end up looking like slide shows...

If you're using the default settings, you should be seeing a final score of around 9600+ (with dual cards).

Oh, ok I guess the edit of my last post didn't post so um, afte running the tests I ended up with an out of the box of 9821 so I guess everything was going alright....just made me a little nervous that it slowed down THAT much because...well this is my new baby so I was worried about her *pets his m9700*

Just curious - what remote is included? Is it the standard MCE remote tha MS seems to include in all their press materials? Also - is it RF or IR?

Wow, that's an awesome score...

Yeah HH I'm quite impressed. I had a little oblivion session earlier at MAX settings and it was beautiful.....be....freakin....utiful....

And as for the remote, yeah I believe its something Microsoft is throwin out to damn near anybody because I was at bestbuy earlier looking for a laptop case and there is some xbox accessories bundle that you can get the remote in aswell. It's IR according to the back of the remote which makes sense because I think in the same little bag that the remote came with it came with an extra little IR antenna dealy majiggum...Can you see how technical I am? :P

The last tests are the CPU tests - they turn off the hardware acceleration on the GPUs and just use raw CPU power.

The results aren't included in the final 3DMark scores, however, so if you have the full version of 3DMark05 you can safely turn them off to save a little time.

Hmm its been six days since my 9700 was shipped...still not here. I worried

They must have given you a tracking number, what does the tracking say for your system?

Anything shipped to me in Washington state from Alienware in Miami takes 5 days, and I don't usually see any activity in the tracking except for when it enters the system, then a bunch of activity the day before it's delivered.