ATI 9800m review

Whatever the case may be, we know this much is true: Rumors are a little like fairy tales. There's always a morsel of truth to them.

If there is any truth in it, AW will need another 6 months(minimum) to convert over for our use.

I hope this comes out as an upgrade. I'd be a fully satisfied customer.

If indeed this does happen, why would it be any different than the 9700?

Everyone will be ordering new 51Ms with the 9800M. AW has proven that they use the newest products to put in new orders. Leaving present customers in need of upgrading out in the cold.

Sorry, but its true. And yes, it does stink!

EXACTLY!!!!! i saw on dells site that they have a program already for dell lappy owners to get the new 9800 cards for their existing customers,,,
least they take care of the customers that bought already.

I would like to echo every last word you said...well put Brain!

At earliest, Alienware will have it in September since Dell has an exclusive four week license to use it in August.

Only about 10% increase over m9700 in Far Cry, but rather large (50-70%) increase in the others (Halo, UT03, Quake III, etc)

Eloquently said.

Asking around, it seems that ATI went from a desktop 9600XT (m9700) to a desktop 9800 Pro (m9800)

i must say that i already feel ripped of by alienware. it does no longer matter if they will come up with some solutions in the future, my next computer wont be an alienware...

think again thinkjose, AW tends to be WAY behind the competition as far as rolling out video card upgrades. Case in point, dell and sager have been offering the 9700 card in their top of the line laptops since jan/feb whereas AW didn't begin offering them until over a month ago. And that's just for new AW purchasers. Forget about all of you 51m2 owners who bought the lappy with the 9600, AW STILL doesn't offer you guys the 9700 for direct purchase. And even if you were allowed to today, most of you won't be able to use it due to motherboard incompatibilities or some other bullcrap like that.

And to think that not too long ago, the product manager for the 51m2 came on these forums and said that the industry was moving to pci-e, and that there would be no future AGP card from ATI for lappies and blah blah blah, so current 51m2 owners could expect no "upgrade" beyond the 9700. Essentially he passed the blame onto intel and ati, and the industry, everyone was at fault BUT AW, and most of you bought off on that, including myself to a certain extent. However it's now obvious that AW has no "pull" within the industry since they were completely blindsided by the mobile 9800.

I think it will take AW at least 3-4 months if not 6 months to ready the new mobile 9800 for use in existing AW 51m2 lappies, and i think most of you AW owners will agree with this assessment. But i think by then, the competition, like Dell and Sager would have moved onto the next gen graphics cards/pci-e. So unless AW fundamentally changes something, reallocates resources, reprioritzes their laptop business, they will continuously be behind the curve as far as new technology is concerned (51m2 still doesn't have dual channel ram, dvi-output, dual layer dvd burner, etc.)

Thanks for the heads up dude. I just started following Alienware earlier this month so I'm not that sure how things work with them. So far, though, everything has been fine.

Just wondering though, does Sager and Dell have the same upgrade video card technology? Or do you need to send it to the factory?

I bet people wont belive this.

I have bought MANY pc (due to my job and my dads) and alienware's pc was the ONLY one that worked right out of the box. No hardware missing/dead pixels/incorrect setup.

I have used a range of manufactors. by far the worst has been dell. they dont care about single purchases.

I have not yet tried sager due to not being aviable where i live.
Most companies only look after there new customers MORE.

but AW have no excuse to nout putitng the 9700 in there shop since they are shipping there systems with it in.

Thinking about it this is the 1st laptop i havent yet had to send back lol!!

EDIT :
Touch wood. I havent sent it back YET lol.

What kind of POS computers have you been buying?

glad to hear you still love your lappy. I sure hope that you feel the same even if your lappy with the 9600 card can't play doom3 or hl2 very well whereas the rest of us are "owning" in those games due to our 9800 card. To think, for a cutting edge lappy that prided itself on upgradeable graphics, honestly braingoo, i don't see how you can forgive AW for keeping you TWO generations behind the rest of the competition. So much for upgradeable graphics. And so much for "the ultimate gaming machine"

on a different note though, i think it'll only take time before AW realizes they can't ignore the mobile market and they begin to take their lappy division a bit more seriously and start pumping out cutting edge stuff like they are doing in the desktop space

dell you can upgrade the graphics card yourself

for the sager, the graphics card is soldered onto the motherboard so in order to upgrade the card, sager has to first offer an upgrade program for your particular machine, and if so, then you will need to send it back to them, and they will upgrade your motherboard/graphics card

the good thing with that is if they do move onto pci-e and use the same chassis, sager owners could upgrade to pci-e at a fraction of the cost as the rest of us who will need to buy a whole new lappy

the bad thing is, that's ONLY if sager offers that option to the particular model of lappy that you have

that's interesting. I wonder how dell ever became one of the biggest pc manufacturers by selling machines that don't work out of the box. hmmmmmm

by the way, if dell didn't care about single purchases, why would they offer you a 21 day NO QUESTIONS ASKED return policy free of any bullsh!t 15% restocking fees (unlike AW/Sager). if they were selling crap, hard to believe they would still be in business considering most people would return their machines. I guess dell is the only one CONFIDENT enough to back up their products with such a generous return policy that runs contrary to the rest of the industry