Hammerhead's m9700... - Page 3

Sorry, had guests and stuff tonight so I couldn't do much... I updated the AMD CPU driver, then fiddled with drivers a bit and got this...



More to come... I've got some different drivers to try out, then I might do a bit more...

Okay, first the disclaimer...

I would not advise anybody to overclock any hardware in their systems, it will void your warranty. Overclocking is needless and stupid, and if you have a problem or fry your hardware, it's not fair to expect or try to get Alienware to repair your system due to your own stupidity.

Having said that, I was playing with drivers and figured out how to get coolbits to work with the 8.4.7.4 Alienware drivers. I hit "detect optimal frequencies", and it settled on 465/687! The stock clocks of the 7900gs are 375/500, so that is quite a leap. Against my better judgement, I decided to do a run while monitoring the temps and watching closely for artifacts. The detect feature of coolbits isn't very reliable so I backed off to 450/600 just to see if it would do it...





The gpu temp kissed 78 degrees C at one point, most of the time it was at or below 70.

As you can see, fairly hefty overclocking didn't really help the score all that much. It's really not worth the risk for a few hundred points. The games I've played so far, Oblivion, and GRAW play flawlessly at native resolution so there's no reason to overclock anyway, especially with this small a return. I just had to beat aaronjb's score... hehe...

I shouldn't have done it, and I probably won't be doing it again for the sake of my wallet and hardware, but damn! This is without testing newer drivers or touching the processor speeds. There's still a ways to go if I wanted to further risk my hardware... but I don't...

...probably...

I used Alienware's 8.4.7.4 drivers slightly modified to allow overclocking. I accidentally ran the first run in single card mode, and got somewhere in the 7300's with the single card. That's pretty amazing. A couple grand better than my desktop.

Yep, I added it to the above post. 5511.

Yeah tate, this has bluetooth built in. With the airgo card I can pick up four networks from my house.

I just finished playing Oblivion at 1920 x 1200 on ultra high setttings... ON A LAPTOP!

LOL, this thing is amazing...

As for heat, the case is cool, notice a small bit of warmth through the keyboard but barely. The air coming out of the back is toasty though, especially the central vent for the vid cards/sli chipset... It seems to vent and shed heat efficiently.

I'll have to get back to you on the speakers, I'm using headphones cause the wife is sleeping. From the minimal use I've done, I'd say they're as good or better than any speakers I've heard on a laptop. Not sure the woofer does much... There is an equalizer built into the sound software that helps. I'll know better later today.

Pics are coming...

Crap, it's 7:26 in the AM, I need to get some sleep...

I'll do what I can tonight Yang, but I'm not sure I'll be able to give you an educated opinion. I don't have any dual core processors, and I'm not at all sure about the 5750's performance. Not real sure how to quantify the relative performance.

I can tell you regarding games, this is easily the fastest computer I've ever used, desktop or laptop. This laptop is getting twice the score with a little tweaking in 3dMark05 that my p4 3.2, 6800 ultra OC scores even when overclocked to 3.5G...

I'll have to figure out what to run simultaneously. I regularly record online audio streams while playing CSS with my desktop, I can try that. I also encode asf files to mp3 so I can try that at the same time also. I can get a dvd playing in a window, then run 3dMark, but I'm not sure what that'll show as it's strange stuff all at once.

Do you know anyone that has an Athlon 64 3500+ system? I understand that's basically what the turion ml44 is, so it should perform similarly.

My only disappointment so far is regarding the sound. While I have to admit it's the best sound I've heard in a laptop, it still sounds a bit like a clock radio depending on what you play. The sound can be a bit jerky at times just playing mp3's. It works better with headphones, I haven't tried the 5.1 speakers yet...

If and when someone makes a sound card for the express card slot, I'm all over it. That will also take the sound duties off the cpu and help it's performance as well.

I don't think you'll be disappointed with the lower res screen. The text is very small even on the 17" screen at 1920 x 1200, and scaling this monitor down to 1440 x 900, the text is noticeably fuzzy though easily readable.

The 1440 x 900 screen will be crisp at that resolution, so it should be perfect for web pages and text apps.

It is nice though since this thing will support Oblivion on ultra high settings at 1920 x 1200 to have this screen for gaming, but I suspect I'll soon have to start scaling down games to make them playable, as that's the cycle we're all stuck in...