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The m9700

post #1 of 18
5/27/06 at 7:52pm
Thread Starter 
Ok, first of I would like to introduce myself seeing as this is my first post and I just registered. In any case I recently graduated from High School and decided to get a laptop for my grad. present. Of course i had to go with an alienware laptop considering I am sick of lugging my desktops everywhere. I went and checked out alienwares laptops and decided that assasin one was to expensive so I went with the m9700. Problem is that as is configured it is about 4k. You can imagine how my parents felt about that lol. Either way they finally agreed to it but the thing is is that I just got money from all of my relatives and stuff and have to pay for it myself. So it ends up that I have to pay for it. Either way I am determined to do it. Im just not sure if I will get the pure performance that I will be expecting. I have lots of questions so I am just going to throw them out there. First off whats so great about the media center edition of XP? Next, is it really that hot? I am getting that Xbrand Cool Travel stand for it so that should help. Hmmm OH, has anyone gotten the Alienware Odyssey Messenger Bag, if so how does it all fit in there, plenty of room? I mean...is it really worth 4k????? Also, what headphones would you guys recomend from alienware? Anyway heres da specs for it.

1] Aurora m9700

Processor: AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML40 2.2GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 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) - 160GB (80GB x 2) 5400 RPM SATA with NCQ
Optical Drive: 24x10x24 CD-RW / 8X DVD Combo w/Software MPEG2 Decoder
Video/Graphics Card: Dual 256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS - SLI Enabled
Sound Card: High-Definition Audio with surround sound
Wireless Network Card: Internal Wireless 802.11b/g miniPCI Card
Communications: Integrated 10/1000Mb Gigabit Ethernet & 56K V.92 Modem
Mouse: Microsoft® IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0 - USB - Standard Silver
Bluetooth: Integrated Bluetooth® Device
Primary Battery: Alienware® m9700 12-cell Lithium-Ion Smart Battery Pack
Power: Alienware® m9700 150 Watt Auto-switch Additional AC Adapter
Warranty: 3-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service / AlienAutopsy / Respawn
Alienware Exclusive Offers: GameFly - Unlimited Game Rentals for 15 days - FREE TRIAL
Flash Memory: Alienware® USB 2.0 1GB Flash Drive
Notebook Coolers / Stands: Xbrand Cool Travel
Mobile Bags: Alienware® Odyssey Messenger Bag
Headphones: Sennheiser PC150 Multimedia Headset
Alienware Gear: Alienware® Hat Black
Free Alienware T-Shirt: Free Alienware® T-Shirt - Black
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
Free Alienware Mousepad: Free Alienware® Mousepad (a $9.00 Value!)
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post #2 of 18
5/27/06 at 8:41pm
Quote:
First off whats so great about the media center edition of XP?

It's good if you get the tv tuner, as it has multimedia function built in to organize your music, movies, tv etc. You can get it with a remote control so you can use it to play music, tv and movies. If you don't get the tv tuner, XP Home or Pro would be fine. Windows media player will organize your mp3's, so I think the media center is mostly for people that want to use their system as a home theater type deal.

I'm getting the tv tuner in the one I just ordered to save MotoGP and F1 races to my hard drive, then burn them to dvd's to save. I ordered it with media center to check it out.

More info here at Microsoft's info site on all the XP versions.

Quote:
Next, is it really that hot? I am getting that Xbrand Cool Travel stand for it so that should help.

This is a new model that uses a mobile processor, and dual low thermal power video cards in SLI, so it shouldn't be hot like the 7700 models with the desktop processors and full blown 512M gtx video cards. The m9700 was designed for low power useage for battery life, and the side benefit of that is much lower heat production. The idea behind using the dual gs vid cards instead of dual gtx's is to save on heat production, and that dual gs vid cards will outperform one 512M gtx.


Quote:
Hmmm OH, has anyone gotten the Alienware Odyssey Messenger Bag, if so how does it all fit in there, plenty of room?

No idea...

Quote:
I mean...is it really worth 4k?????

I hope so, I ordered one, but it came to more like $3600 for my configuration.

Quote:
Also, what headphones would you guys recomend from alienware?

I hear the Ozma headphones are quite nice. You've got sennheiser pc150's on there, they are great for gaming with the mic, and are fairly light. I think the earcups are a little small for my liking, but they sound great, and the mic is very high quality. Most of the guys at sR, the gaming branch of these forums use Icemat Siberia's and like them a lot, but AW doesn't carry them. They come with a clip on mic.

Here they are at Newegg, they come in white too but Newegg doesn't appear to carry them in white.
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post #3 of 18
5/28/06 at 6:23pm
Thread Starter 
Hmm aight...so is a laptop with this sli 7900 gs really that much worse then like a normal pci expess card in a full desktop computer? I mean oviously it cant be as fast, but is it really that much worse? I would think that having the sli in this laptop would make up for it.
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post #4 of 18
5/29/06 at 4:25am
The late generations of video cards between desktop and mobile are actually quite similar when it comes to performance. The m9700 is pcie. My last laptop has an ATi MR9700 in it, and that card was quite a bit slower than the desktop 9700, but nowadays the gap is much smaller.

The dual 9700gs's should beat the 9700gtx at about the same power usage, but the 9700's are clocked much lower so they don't get anywhere near as hot, and because there are two cards they have two heatsink fan units to keep things even cooler.

I have a desktop with a 3.2 p4/6800 Ultra OC in it, and I expect my m9700 with the SLI 9700gs's to outperform the desktop by a large margin.
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post #5 of 18
5/30/06 at 8:59pm
Thread Starter 
Well...I ordered my m9700 today. My total was like 4,300 something. I got practically all of the best stuff with it so be expecting a huge review for the m9700 in the near future on this thread
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post #6 of 18
5/30/06 at 9:44pm
I'm decideing between the 7700 and the 9700. But i thought id ask my question here because its on the 9700 instead of makeing a whole new topic. Well AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML44 2.4GHz can be compared to what?like is it comparble to the amd 3200? around there.
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post #7 of 18
5/31/06 at 12:56am
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post #8 of 18
5/31/06 at 7:21pm
Hey Hammerhead your buying the 9700 right? I hope your planing on writeing a very detailed review . I'm baseing my choice on reviews from the site before I click the purchase button lol. Thanks for the link
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post #9 of 18
5/31/06 at 7:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reanimated
Hey Hammerhead your buying the 9700 right? I hope your planing on writeing a very detailed review . I'm baseing my choice on reviews from the site before I click the purchase button lol. Thanks for the link

Yeah, I'll be writing a review with lots of pictures as soon as I get the laptop. They're not shipping yet though, so it'll be a while...
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post #10 of 18
5/31/06 at 8:10pm
When are they shipping? Like are you already in the phases and just waiting till end of june to ship? or do they start building the 9700 in june?

Edit - Also if i go with the 9700 with 2 gigs of ram,1 7900 and the amd 2.4 can i expect it to play games like bf2,wow on high? or am i expecting too much?
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post #11 of 18
5/31/06 at 9:56pm
I'm at phase 3, which means my payment has cleared.

The earliest estimate for shipping was June 19, when I ordered it said estimated delivery was about June 26. I imagine at this point they're waiting for all the inventory to be in before they open a line to put these together.

Judging by the benchmarks I've seen, the 7900gs beats the 6800 ultra I have in my desktop right now easily. My desktop got somewhere around 2600 in 3dMark06, the 7900gs gets around 3400 from the article I saw. I play BF2 on my desktop on high, so I'm not expecting any problems at all depending on how high you want the resolution set. BF2 likes lots of memory though, so 2G is a good idea. WoW isn't as demanding as BF2 I don't think, so it shouldn't have any problems.

I'm also expecting the 2.4 turion to be very quick. Read the comparison in the article I linked above to the pentium m.
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post #12 of 18
5/31/06 at 10:06pm
Is 1 7900 good enough still? Tight on money so decideing to get the other one later on.
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post #13 of 18
5/31/06 at 10:29pm
It should be more than adequate. And if you aren't happy you can always add a second one later.

Like I said, my 6800 Ultra plays those games on high settings and gets about a 2600 on 3dMark06. The single 7900gs has higher benchmarks (3442 from the article I linked) than the 6800 Ultra, so yes it will play those games fine on high settings at reasonable resolutions.
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post #14 of 18
6/10/06 at 4:30pm
Thread Starter 
Hmmm I dont like this phase game...I am still in phase one.
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post #15 of 18
6/10/06 at 5:30pm
One of my friends is getting a mALX so ill be able to do a side by side review.
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post #16 of 18
6/10/06 at 7:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vicious_CB
One of my friends is getting a mALX so ill be able to do a side by side review.

That'll be great.
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post #17 of 18
6/12/06 at 2:39pm
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post #18 of 18
6/19/06 at 6:48pm
Thread Starter 
YES! Just got an e-mail back from Alienware Today. They have received the paper work and my order is offically in phase 3! Finally...now I can finally sleep at night. lol
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