Alienware M17x w/ATi 4870 info thread! - Page 27

and 3D notebooks and TVs.

There are a slew of new gadgets (mobile devices, netbooks, screens ..) currently awaiting FCC stamp of approval. It will be a year of electronics galore this 2010

cheers ...

where did you the i7 processor?

Sad that Nvidia won't be there with DX11 mobiles. Both vendors benefit from competing with ea other.

Anyway congrats to AMD on what looks to be a very, very nice chip. I suspect a lot of CF 5870 M17x's are going to go out for shipment

I believe that nVidia will be with DX11 eventually if not soon. There is no point for them to announce anything but a "no" at the moment seeing that they are behind in the game. Might as well introducing something "new" to present to the end-users.

cheers ...

My understanding is a desktop DX11 GPU is due by/around June,

The mobile will come a few months later.

Of course with all these issues with NVIDIA lately makes one wonder if those dates will slip

Yeah, nVidia taunted its Femi card last year with the ability to run Unigine DX11 Benchmark and rumored it to be available in March 2010. So now with the pushing back to June, I am quite leery about nVidia being able to keep up with the timeline

cheers ...

simple question.

You had 2 ati 4870 in XF

had the both cards 1 gb ram

or both 2 gb ram ( 1 gb per card)

i will buy a crossfire setup with 2 gb gddr5

5870's are coming out, and yes for the m17x R2 alienware, which should support DX 11 and have ddr5 memory.

But.... I ended up going with 4870's because I couldn't wait plus they'll run a tad bit cooler.

Yea i know, but for the games I play that 2k isn't really going to be noticeable I always play RTS games, and DX 11 is over-rated. Not to be a troll here but Dx 10 has come and apparently passed, and I hardly noticed it go by. I should be happy with my dual 4870 and an i7 processor, I hope...

If that's the case then I'm probably going to want a mid or high generation card then, not an early pre-edition one. By next year this time there will probably be FAR superior dx 11 cards then this 5870 that is drawing alot of hype.

Remember that aside from hardware only features like Tessellation, DX11 is supposed to run on DX10 hardware. So in terms of quality, the DX11 jump is significant. Add in that the next gen consoles are going to be DX11 (from which many PC games are derived or co-developed), and you have a lot of weight going into DX11.

But the important thing to remember is that DX10 hardware won't be instantly obsolete either. You should get the same games to run just with the Tessellation option blocked out. And from what I'm seeing visually, that's not necessarily going to be the end of the world.

DX11 is very good to have mind you because a lot of games are likely to come in it's format when the consoles switch over. But 4870's and 280's won't be left in the cold either. I'd still wait the month or two to get DX11 either in AMD or Nvidia format, but don't go overly ballistic on anyone who decided they couldn't wait.

For me I remain unconvinced that AMD deals with quality issues in a speedy enough way. They've done the right thing with the driver program, so they get kudos for that. So we'll have to see how things improve with the new focus on drivers. Slowdowns in MassEff2, flickering still in many games is not yet fixed. But I remain hopeful that if they've started to churn out drivers quickly (like 10.4) that we'll see much more rapid progress in the future.

I also don't think 75% of folks are going to "wait" for Nvidia to go DX11 in June. That is a tactical error on Nvidia's part that is going to cost them the same way the desktop 5870 has - only worse because laptop purchases are usually made for a couple years time. Desktops buyers can be enticed with the next gen of cards, where laptop buyers don't change as easily (used sale/repurchase). So I tend to see a bubble waiting for DX11 hardware and then a slowdown. Nvidia won't sell much if they miss the bubble by 5-8 months.

So DX11 is good, and something to wait for, but not doom if you missed it and can live without it's features. I'm waiting, but not everyone need worry if they can't.

I thought about going ATI, but would rather wait for the mobile DX11 NVIDIA's.

I was of course going to upgrade the desktop first, but initial reviews of the new NVIDIA GPU were not that great, and they suck more power than anything else on the market.

I guess we'll have to see how the production cards do.

In case of anyone here is interested in seeing how one can "really" OC an ATI, read this from DTF.

cheers ...