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Alienware m5550 query

post #1 of 8
11/11/06 at 3:25pm
Thread Starter 
Hi there,

I'm currently using a Dell XPS 2 with 2Gb ram and the nVidia 6800 ultra gpu. While it is a very decent laptop, I'm thinking of giving it to my young step-son because I would like something lighter and with better battery life.

I have a HP laptop issued to me by the company I work for with a 15.4 screen that fulflils all my laptop needs apart from not having a gpu I can play games like ES Oblivion on etc. So I'm considering an Alienware m5550.

My question ,therefore, is: is their anyone out there who has had experience of both the XPS 2 and m5550 who can tell me the positives and negatives of each in comparison?

Cheers,
Stuart
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post #2 of 8
11/11/06 at 11:46pm
I had a very similar machine, a Dell I9300 with Geforce G0 6800 and 2 GB's of memory and I gave it to my daughter for the same reasons.

I have my m5550 now and am pretty happy with it. I wanted something that was easy to carry and could do some light gaming. I do my real gaming on my XBox 360. I had some instability problems at first but they seem to have smoothed out.

I have not missed my I9300 as this is so easy to carry around. I do run Oblivion on it and it seems to run pretty smooth. I think I am running it at 1024 x 768. I do have a little lag from time to time.

The 3DMarks on my M5550 are a little higher then my Geforce Go 6800. I get around 3492 in 3DMark 2005. You probably had a slightly faster Geforce than mine but that should at least give you a referrence point.

Good luck,
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post #3 of 8
11/12/06 at 5:47pm
Well, I know two people who returned their m5550's because of problems when gaming. After about 20 minutes the games began to slow down and stutter and become unplayable. The usual things were tried - fresh install of windows xp, updating the drivers, using a cooling pad but the gaming was poor even on low settings.

I don't know if there was just some problem with the cooling in these two particular laptops but they did run very hot and I wondered if such a thin chassis could cope with the amount of heat generated....

It certainly made me reconsider buying one (and any 15.4" with a 7600 in it) - I went for the Aurora 9700 instead and it's been great.
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post #4 of 8
11/13/06 at 3:31am
Stuart,

I had a Dell XPS 2, and then switched to the m5500 (previous version, with the Pentium M CPU and go 6600 GPU). I could play Oblivion on the m5500, but only at lower settings (e.g - minimal grass/distances/shadows, and lower resolution). It was still quite playable, but not as "pretty" as on a stronger system. I've recently gone back to a 17" (m9700) because I did feel somewhat restricted with the 15.4" as a gaming machine - that said, the m5550 will be better than my m5500, and there are some real advantages to the much improved mobility of the smaller systems. I have lots of older games yet to play - and those will be great on the m5500. For example, it is perfect for Guild Wars (and WoW, although I haven't played that much).
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post #5 of 8
11/13/06 at 9:26pm
I own the M5550 myself, and it is a fairly decent mobile gaming laptop platform. Very capable. The only thing that may change your mind is the battery life. As I'm not sure what your Dell XPS was getting, I know for a fact that the 6 cell in the M5550 is around 1-1.5 hours. With the 9 cell, it's a little better, going to a little over 2 hours for movie watching, and over 2 hours playing between FEAR and Need For Speed Most Wanted. It will probably push almost 3 if you use it only for word and internet. The gaming on it is fantastic though. Being my main screen on my desktop is a Dell 24" widescreen, I thought I may be disappointed with a 15.4" for gaming. But I found it to be quite adequate for gaming, and i don't miss anything from my desktop. (though my desktop is a little outdated and needs to hit the PCIE bandwagon). Good luck in your decision. Also, for more information on the battery life of the M5550, check out my review of the new 9 cell in the review section(it will be at the top, it got stickied)
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post #6 of 8
11/14/06 at 10:03pm
I have a M5550, not only does it get very hot, but games do not play fluid on it. Currently the laptop stutters during gaming as it seems it is not able to handle it.
The stuttering is on a brand new system too, no programs AV or anything loaded or running in the background. The only thing is one game loaded. I changed the power settings to "Always On" to give that a try ( suggestion by Alienware). That did not affect the stuttering, so I also added option #2 which was to go into the bios and under POWER, disable the Long battery mode. Rebooted and still nothing. The stuttering is unaffected and it is not the game, as it plays on lesser systems on higher settings graphically just fine. yet on the M5550 I have turned the graphics down to their lowest settings and the same insistant stuttering plagues this system.
This on one of the new Core 2 Duo M5550's with 2Gb of ram.
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post #7 of 8
11/14/06 at 10:08pm
Have you monitored your gpu temps when the stutters occur to see if it's the gpu overheating or tried a cooling pad?
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post #8 of 8
11/14/06 at 10:36pm
I have not had any stuttering problems at all. I had to do some tweaking on Oblivion, but it is running pretty good at 1024 x 768 (which actually looks pretty good on this 15.4" display.)

GTA San Andreas flies, NWN rocks, and I run Postal 2 (I know it's old, but I love it anyway) and have had no problems at all. I didn't see you mention what video card you have. I have not seen my GPU get above 80 degrees. I have it set to give me an alarm at 100 and I have never gotten an alarm.

I do know if it gets too hot my 3DMark scores will start to drop until it cools down again.
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