Looking For Advice on a New Alienware

i dont know if you want this system pronto or if you can wait a bit, but i would wait for the turion X2 (dual core turion chip that performs about as well as its core duo equivalent) to become available in aw systems. I don't know when, but it's definitely soon.
Then the m9700 would suit you perfectly.

If you are using it mostly at home get one of the MJ-12 series. It's made for 3D imaging more than gaming but games awesome anyway (Quadro). But if you want a card that games get the GeForce, it will be amazing gaming. And it should be fine for whatever you need.

Re Raid 0 vs Raid1...Can't see any reason why it can't be configured to Raid 1, even if you have to do it yourself.

Don't know if you still need to load the Raid drivers from a floppy (that's what I had to do on my desktop)?

Just curious everyone, is this really true? Will it be something that I will notice or bottleneck me on my m9700? I ordered the highest available cpu for it by the way.

The turion supports SLI, the pentium m chips don't.

The core duo does better than the turion on business applications due to most business apps are multi threading capable. This means it can run different processes on each core at the same time. The turion is single core, so it can't. For gaming, that's not important as games aren't yet multi-threaded, and even when they will it won't make that big of a difference due to the nature of game programming requirements.

The turion isn't quite as fast as the pentium m processors clock for clock, but they are close. The turions also have an on chip memory controller that the pentiums don't, so they perform differently in different areas.

The only comparison I've seen online between the pentium line and the turion is here.

This review shows the turion is a good processor, and points out several advantages like the onchip memory controller that the turion has as an advantage over intel.

And seeing 10,000 points on 3dMark05 seems obvious that this processor certainly isn't limiting the performance of the m9700.

The turion X2's are very new, so they're still rare. When Alienware started developing the m9700 long ago, the turion was the only processor that supported SLI, so it was the only real choice in mobile processors. For gaming, the dual core won't do much, and I haven't heard anything later through the grapevine about an X2 m9700, so I wouldn't count on it being a reality soon.


It may be that Alienware just doesn't offer it configured that way, or the motherboard on the 5750 doesn't support RAID 1. Customer service should be able to find out if it's RAID 1 capable. I'll try to find out myself.


Yep, that and the X2 wasn't available during the development of the m9700. Games won't benefit much from dual core much for a long while, but the second core can improve single thread games a little by doing background stuff like windows and virus scanners on the second core.


For business apps, a dual core processor will have a large advantage, and that'll show up in benchmarks. I'm not really sure about your assesments between the Athlon X2 and core duo... The turion is basically an athlon 64 built as a mobile processor. The Athlon X2 is a dual core athlon. You should be comparing the core duo benchmarks to the turion X2 rather than the Athlon X2 as that's a desktop processor that runs at higher clocks, but does less work per cycle.

The dual core pentium, or turion X2 would do better for business apps. I understand though that the core duo will beat the turion X2 though due to secondary cache size, and the ability to power it's different cores separately to save power when one of the cores isn't doing much. The turion X2 can't do that, so if one core is working 100%, both are even though the other isn't doing anything... That's really bad for battery life...


Just passing on what I've read, I'm certainly no expert. I did do a lot of research though before ordering my m9700. It would be interesting to see what an intel processor would do with SLI, but there aren't any...

For business apps as your priority, the 5750 will do great. It's more portable than the m9700, and still will game well. The m9700 will kick it in the but gamewise, but everything else not so much...

We should keep in mind though that these all are very high performance processors. Though we're talking about differences, they'll all perform very well at all tasks, some just do better in some areas than others.

I understand that completely...

If you can't RAID 1 the laptop though, you can get an external hd like I have that backs up any computer drive automatically. It's the western digital 250G external that AW sells, or used to anyway.

It would be easier just to have RAID 1 onboard though. You'd think if they can RAID 0 they can RAID 1, but that depends on the array controller capabilities...

Well everything is bottlenecked. If you have a desktop, with a X6800 @ 4.0 ghz with X1900 crossfire and you get like 22k in 3d mark 05, the more you oc your cpu (X6800 in this case) the more your score will go up. like this guy on Xtremesystems has sli 7900 GTX and he has his X6800 clocked @ 4.9 ghz, he got 27k in 3d mark. The better your cpu is, the better your gaming performance will be, and this is where the dual core support comes in. An AMD 3000 + @ 1.9 ghz is slower in games then an Opty 165 @ 1.9 ghz. The dual core helps alot. Espeacialy when your running Ventrillo while playing, because with single core when you press ALT + TAB to change the channel in vent, it slows down alot. But with dual core you won't notice any slow downs, or minor slowdowns.

Re the Raid 1 issue on the m5750 - I've been wondering if the m5750 can just be configured with two drives - no Raid. That way one could be used for a backup or for just data storage...minimising risk if one goes out. I dunno...maybe some limitations on how it accesses the drives, so you may not be able to do this.

I had a bad experience with Raid 0 on my desktop, but it's now been stable for over a year, so if I end up with the m5750 or the m9700 later (or whatever version is out when I upgrade) - I'd probably just go ahead and do Raid 0. I like the speed, and like HH, try to backup regularly to an external hard drive.

Hammerhead: what you think of this system..comes with dual core and a GTX..but its a dell..ick...
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2700 (2MB Cache/2.33GHz/667MHz FSB) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Professional edit
LCD DISPLAY 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™ edit
MEMORY 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHZ, 2 DIMM edit
HARD DRIVE Free Upgrade to 100GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive - $170 Value edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability edit
WIRELESS NETWORK CARD Dell Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n Dual-band Internal Wireless, Bluetooth edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 9-cell Primary Battery and 9-cell additional Lithium Ion Battery edit
Accessories
GRAPHICS CARD 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GTX edit
FLOPPY DISC & MEMORY KEYS 128MB USB Memory Key and External USB Floppy Drive edit
SOUND OPTION Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™ HD Software Edition edit
CARRYING CASE XPS Notebook Backpack edit
CABLES Multimedia Cable Kit


This would do gaming and apps better than the 9700 and the 5750, right?

I'm not sure about apps, but I think a dual 7900 gs beats that card. Can someone verify that?

Yah, I am not a fan of Dell, though, I like this computer, the same URL you gave me, has reviews on teh 9700 and it didn't fair that well also, I am waiting for the X2's to come out on the 9700, then it would be a great system.

Depends on what you consider "better".

It's a good configuration. Great processor and video card, but being a Dell I'd be concerned about the quality of the components like the motherboard, the memory and the screen.

I don't have any direct comparisons, but I would speculate that it will beat the 5750 easily in regards to frame rates on games but should be the same as the 5750 regarding most applications (non-games). In reference to the m9700, the dual 7900gs in SLI beat the 7900gtx in benchmark suites, but I think it will depend on the implementation of SLI in each game whether the SLI or single gtx will be faster, but I give the tip of the hat to the m9700 here as games are single threaded and SLI is still improving through drivers and coding of games.

I originally wanted a 17" laptop with a mobile processor and a single gtx vid card, but AW doesn't offer one so I was looking at the Aurora 7700, but I really don't need all that desktop processing power in a laptop. When the m9700 came out, the combo of the mobile processor and dual low power vid cards appealed to me for both outright performance while plugged in, but the battery friendly capabilities of the hardware depending on your configuration.

Frankly, were I to buy a core duo laptop with a single gtx I'd likely get the Sager 5760 over the Dell.

If the m9700 had the core duo processor in there, it would be my first choice for everything in a laptop, no question... but unfortunately the pentium mobile processors don't support SLI.

I haven't heard anything about the X2 in this platform for a while, so if you're waiting for it, it may be a while if it comes at all...

I did read something on an AMD tech board regarding the X2 though. The posters were discussing power consumption, and a couple of them said that the X2 can't power each core separately, so when one core is working at 100%, both of them will even if the second core isn't doing any work. This would mean the processor would still behave like a dual core for performance, but it would use a lot more power and create more heat than the core duo that apparently can power the cores separately...

It's unfortunate the core duo doesn't support SLI, as it, and the merom replacement that is on the way are the mobile processors to beat at the moment...

Don't break my heart Hammer......thats my only wish now...so I can finally buy one.....

sparki,

I got an email response from AW and they said that the m5750 does support RAID 1, but they don't offer it as an option due to "low attach rates"...

I've asked for clarification as to what he meant as it might mean people just don't order it, or there's a performance issue.

It sounds like it's RAID1 capable though, but they don't configure it that way as a standard option. You can probably enable RAID1 through the bios.

And you can install two separate drives to act independently, but for some reason AW only offers single drives, or dual drives in RAID0. You might be able to request to sales that it be configured differently. They used to accomodate requests like this when they were smaller, but then they were smaller...