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Marker01's m9700 review

post #1 of 231
7/7/06 at 4:16pm
Thread Starter 
M9700 SLI review

My FEDEX tacking number had the following status this morning



So I kind of took the day off from work

When FedEx arrived, the delivery man was carrying a very ugly box







I thinking “where is my cool Alienware box!”

But you have to unwrap the beast to get to the beauty
After opening the ugly box reveled the true packing






So now I’m psyched!

Out of the box I was imeidatly impressed. With 2x Graphic cards (and all the cooling that goes with them) and 2x HDD’s, on a 17” screen, this notebook was rather light!

Compared to the Aurora m7700 this thing is a feather







Ladies and Gentlemen, we have SLI in a notebook!




First Impressions

One of more important things for me and this laptop is graphic performance while on battery power (not battery life).

I was happy to find that while running on battery power both 7900’s are active in SLI. This is unlike the mALX that automatically disables one of its 7900’s when on battery (and cannot be disabled)

I was also happy to find that by setting windows power scheme to “Always On” AMD cool n’ quite does not turn on while running on battery, so no downclocking is preformed.


Processor running on battery power
4


So you can running this system, full blown on battery power and experience no performance drop.
Oh course, leaving both the graphic cards and processor running full blast will drastically shorten your battery life, but I only need around :30 of total batt life.


Benchmarking

One of the first things I did was install and run 3dmark05 at stock settings.

3dmark05 Score 9957!

edit: i beat that, not by much, but this is the best I can get under stock settings
3dmark05: 9988

edit: ok, beat it again, finally breached 10k!
3dmark05: 10111

Now that is an awesome score! This blows away any other 3dmark05 score running 7900GS published on 3dmarks web site.

I couldn’t wait to tweak the clock frequencies a bit and rise well able 10k!

and then I stopped, because of

THE UGLY

I was unable to overclock the graphic cards. After loading coolbits and selecting detect optimal settings, the screen flickers once and resets clock settings back to default of 375/500…

When I tried to manually change the core frequency and test changes by even 1, you get the following



I then tried to load updated drivers from nvidia.com and laptopvideo2go.com. Both drivers will not install.
So AW has these cards locked down, and no overclocking for j0o

But im sure someone will have a compatible driver out in no time.



BUT WHO”S COMPLAINING! AT STOCK SETTINGS THIS THING ROCKS!!



I am quite impressed and happy with this machine!

=======================================================================
By popular demand










Even this 6.5MB screenshot does no justice to how it really looks
http://webpages.charter.net/5002/WoW...706_230034.bmp
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post #2 of 231
7/7/06 at 4:41pm
how about allot more pictures?
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post #3 of 231
7/7/06 at 4:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 357Magnum
how about allot more pictures?

Now only if they would get our mALX's built...this is so depressing! Magnum..are you waiting out for the alienware machine or are you gonna cancel and go with the sager with dual 512s? Btw...congrats on your new machine poster...im sure you are very happy
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post #4 of 231
7/7/06 at 5:14pm
For overclocking, what you can do for now is run Nibitor, have it save your 7900 GS bios file and then load it up in Nibitor and modify the 3D clocks to whatever you want. Save the modified clocks as a seperate rom file (create as many as you like for various clocks) and then download the latest nVFlash as well. Create a bootdisk (the dell section has tons of examples) and load nVFlash's files + roms on it and then flash your cards. However, since your system is SLi, you'd need to disable one of the cards first and then flash them one at a time so I'm not sure if the AW bios allows shutting one of them off. I'll see if there are other ways of flashing SLi'd cards that wouldn't require removing/turning off one of them.


Edit: If you or anyone else is interested in trying to backup your m9700 bios so you can flash them to a higher clock, see this thread: http://www.mvktech.net/component/opt...,7726/catid,13
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post #5 of 231
7/7/06 at 5:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mistermadd
Now only if they would get our mALX's built...this is so depressing! Magnum..are you waiting out for the alienware machine or are you gonna cancel and go with the sager with dual 512s?

I just got off the phone with AW ALX dept. They said they got all my parts in and will start production on monday and ship it by friday. Of course all that is subject to change at any moment. Guess I'll hang in there another 2 weeks since I'v waited 2 months already.
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post #6 of 231
7/7/06 at 5:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by marker01
M9700 SLI review

You lucky lucky fellow

Nice review.. now, more pics, more benchies..

Oh and would you mind dismantling it so we can all see inside?

No? Awwww..


Out of curiosity, what kind of temps do you see on the CPU & GPUs?
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post #7 of 231
7/7/06 at 7:02pm
Wow, 9957 on stock settings!!!

hehehehe...

How does the build quality compare to the 7700? Is it solidly built? And how does the screen look?

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...

And, does the system bios let you oc the processor, or is that locked too?
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post #8 of 231
7/7/06 at 7:35pm
More pics please

A pic of the m9700 in action would be cool, like a playing a game like FEAR at the native res
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post #9 of 231
7/7/06 at 8:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vicious_CB
More pics please

A pic of the m9700 in action would be cool, like a playing a game like FEAR at the native res



Hammerhead's all excited now
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post #10 of 231
7/7/06 at 8:54pm
Thread Starter 
So far, the only “difficulty” I am having is what I expected, the Mobile, vice desktop processor. There is nothing wrong with it; it just acts like, well, a mobile processor. What i mean is its like my company provided laptop, the processor will cccasionally spike to 100% usage for no apparent reason, and stay that way for a while, or until you reboot. I’m also a little “scared” to OC a mobile processor as I have never done that before, desktop processors are np, but a mobile processor… idk

Part of problem was actually AW fault, they loaded the AMD Athlon 64 processor driver… not the Mobile Turion driver. This caused weird problems like dropping the CPU multiplier with under heavy load (should do the exact opposite). And also, with this driver loaded, you could not disable AMD Power Now by changing the power scheme to always on. It was kind of disabled, but at times it would drop the CPU to 800Mhz…

Anyway, I downloaded and installed the latest AMD Turion driver and it appears to work better, just like a mobile processor should. I suggest anyone who gets their m9700 updates the CPU driver

AMD Turion 64 CPU driver
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...mdcpusetup.exe

As for heat, well I’ll be honest, I am not so familiar with mobile processors lol, my last laptop was the m7700 so I can tell you a thing or two about desktop processors, but not much on the mobile processors. I loaded AMD PowerNow Dashboard. The Desktop version displays the CPU heat, this one does not.

There is no thermal monitor in the Nividia driver either… so as far as internal temps go, im up for suggestions on monitoring software.


Build quality is awesome, like a light weight tank. As I said before, the m9700 is like a feather next to the 7700.

The placement of ports and expansions bays is excellent. The 2 HDD’s sit under your left hand, adjacent to each other. Again, im basing a lot of this by the m7700. the m7700 puts the GPU under your left hand, and well, it got HOT. I believe the m9700 has a very nice design and defiantly built to last. Its slim, attractive, and has loads of options.

Now this one may shock you, the heat released from the notebook, like the heat you would feel if you placed it on your lap, it actually MUCH hotter then the m7700…

At first that seem strange but then it made sense, have you even looked at all the fans they put on the m7700 http://alienware.com/product_detail_...KU-DEFAULT#sub

Its like the ting is ready to take off. The M9700 doesn’t have nearly as many fans, so a little extra heat is expected.

I used a very cheap laptop cool stand for the m7700, I plan on upgrading that to one of them aluminum ones with integrated, USB powered fans.\t


Overclocking.

There is no overclocking utility in the BIOS, in fact, there is nothing useful in the BIOS except Nvidia RAID setup.

Again, im a mobile processor noob so I don’t know any mobile CPU overclocking tools off the top of my head. I assume it’s the same as overclocking your desktop processor where the software has to support your MOBO.

As for the video card… ya…
I believe what Joker said is correct, at the present, you must flash your GPU’s BIOS to higher clock frequencies in order to OC, coolbits does not work.

Guys, i am like completly out of web space now so i really cant post any more pics... I'll try to do some cleaning up this weekend and get some more pics up.

I took some great screenshots of WoW at hight quality, but they save as .tga files, wth is a a .tga file and why would they not save a .jpg?
(i never took a screenshot in wow b4)

Quote:
Hammerhead's all excited now
lol, but who wouldent be, like he said 9957 STOCK 3dmark score is just awsome =) that actually better then my desktop at stock speeds running AMDX2 4200+ 2x 7900GT SLI, RAID 0, get 9520 stock, but OC to get 11647, so i am DIEING to OC the vid cards in the m9700, but im not flashing them to do such...)
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post #11 of 231
7/7/06 at 9:28pm
Marker-

You should use www.imageshack.us to host images that you wish to put up here. Interesting to read about the Mobile A64 issues, you'd think AW would've noticed that while prototyping the system.
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post #12 of 231
7/7/06 at 10:46pm
TGA files can be opened with Irfanview. You can get it here: http://www.irfanview.com/ and it can convert the tga's to jpeg or bitmap, your choice. I don't know why WoW saves as a TGA, but I've never been able to convince it to save them differently. Congrats on your machine, Marker.

I wonder if they'll have the wrong processor drivers installed on the mALX, too...
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post #13 of 231
7/8/06 at 1:24am
Well now..

This makes me EXTREMELY depressed yet at the same time.. Overjoyed that I ordered this computer
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post #14 of 231
7/8/06 at 1:43am
How is the touchpad?
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post #15 of 231
7/8/06 at 1:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kazkek
How is the touchpad?
Yeah yeah! Tell tell!
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post #16 of 231
7/8/06 at 2:10am
Congrats! Thats one nice machine! May i ask, how is the 2.4 ghz turion holding up? Like if/when your doing multiple tasks at the same time, does it slow down alot? If you do use photoshop, how fast is it? Have you plyed Bf2 or FEAR at native resolution? If you have how is it? I see your playing WOW, hows your fps? I suggest to go into rehab on WOW, so you can enjoy other games...lol
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post #17 of 231
7/8/06 at 6:30am
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post #18 of 231
7/8/06 at 9:21am
I'm kind of bummed to hear it runs hot, part of the reason I went with the m9700 over the 7700 was concerns about heat and longevity.

Can you tell where the heat is coming from, the CPU or GPUs? The CPU is in the upper left corner (looking at keyboard as if using), the GPUs vent just to the right of the middle of the back of the unit.

First thing I'm going to do is take the heatsinks off and see if they use thermal pads like they have in the past. If they do I'll be applying AS5 to hopefully limit the heat.
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post #19 of 231
7/8/06 at 12:34pm
Great review Marker! Thanks for taking the time. Thread is 'stuck'

Enjoy that puppy!
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post #20 of 231
7/8/06 at 1:25pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Congrats! Thats one nice machine! May i ask, how is the 2.4 ghz turion holding up? Like if/when your doing multiple tasks at the same time, does it slow down alot? If you do use photoshop, how fast is it? Have you plyed Bf2 or FEAR at native resolution? If you have how is it? I see your playing WOW, hows your fps? I suggest to go into rehab on WOW, so you can enjoy other games...lol

It acts just like a single core mobile processor... thats all i have to say at this point.

I am still fighting with AMD power now/CnQ.

But ultimately, its fine.
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