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Originally Posted by thecommish16
Think so? Or do we "all", including me, want to believe that these $8000 dollar systems are worth all that? Is the XPS the reality that none of us want to admit to? including me? as I price out a Voodoo F:5 every weekend?
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Originally Posted by zeal
ok, I am on my mom's XPS so we can find out how this thing really compares to alienware and not get filtered results from commish.
I just ran the perfromance analyzer and the bottom end ALX was at 185% while this machince was at 100%. Specs: 3.8 ghz x800 pcie 256 2 gigs of ram 10,rpm sata drives ect. When my mom ordered it we just maxed out everything. I'll go run 3dmark next Update : 3dMark05 = 5182 |
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Originally Posted by DarthBeavis
Commish's mommy and daddy can afford to buy him whatever he wants but they obviously won't so he demeans those with better fortunes.
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Originally Posted by tomgreen
Update for Hammerhead here. My son's XPS arrived yesterday, so although this is apples and oranges, here is a comparison of my experience so far.
Delivery - ordered the XPS last Saturday, it arrived Friday, a few days ahead of schedule. On my Ozma M (5500), scheduled delivery time was two months arrived a month early. No clear winner here. Dead Pixels - none on the XPS, the 5500 had one, it is outside the center, but within Alienware policy. With a dark background it is annoying, but I knew the rules. I talked to 2 of the 3 people at work yesterday who own an XPS, and they also have 0 dead pixels. Configuration - configuration on the XPS appears to be exactly as ordered, the Alienware was incorrect (5400 RPM drive was secondary drive, 7200 RPM drive as the primary, this was backwards, although I did change my order mid flight, but still no real excude and this could have been caught if they emailed an updated configuration). Crapware - I hate all the extra software they install on these things, Alienware a clear winner here. Only extra software I ordered was Norton security stuff on both machines, the Dell was loaded with stuff I uninstalled. Problems out of the box - none on the XPS so far. My 5500 would not play games correctly. I spent a week reseating the graphics card, trying different drivers, and finally after one reseating of the card, games worked correctly for about an hour. Blew out the connectors on the graphics card with compressed air and it has worked fine since then. Mine came with the 5700 card, a friend said the 9700 card would do a little better for gaming, so I should be getting the new card today (two and half weeks later than promised delivery). I know this will be an incremental improvement, but what the heck, I didn't intend this as a gaming machine, but I have picked up a couple of racing games for fun. BTW - I posted about my video problems on the Alienware forum and there were 0 repsonses from Alienware representatives. Wireless 802.11g internal cards - range and reception seems much better on the XPS. Gaming - since I bought the 5500 for an audio notebook and it is not available with a decent graphices card, the XPS is much better. We tried Doom3 last night on the XPS at highest settings and it looked gorgeous. In defence of the 5500, it looks very good at the slightly lower settings and plays doom3 pretty well. Configuration possibilities - this is where Alienware really shines. I ordered my 5500 with a secondary hard drive and swappable DVD CD burner. The 7700 is very cool because you can have 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives, and I'm sure the RAID configurations must be attractive to gamers. My next audio laptop will be something like the 7700, cause I am tired of swapping the hard drive with the optical drive after a session to burn a CD. I won't have it configured as RAID, but I need a second hard drive dedicated to audio data, primary for operating system. Cosmetics - I must admit, the blinking Alien eyes and Conspiracy Blue case beat the Skullz thing hands down. I thnk if I was buying just a gaming laptop for myself at this point, I would go with the XPS given what I have seen. I can't compare customer support, because I have had no need so far on the XPS, I have 0 confidence in Alienware customer support, so the jury is still out. I'm sort of wishing Dell made a really big-ass laptop like the 7700 that would take multiple hard drives and optical drives, because once bigger 7200 RPM 2.5" drives come out, I would order it in a heartbeat given what I have seen today. From what I am hearing about bigger 7200 RPM drives, I probably have a few months to see what is coming out and comparing my Dell and Alienware experiences, so it will be interesting to see what happens. On another note, I did a little experiment on the Alienware site downloading a driver package the other night, and the best I could do as far as speed was 20KB. I then tried another website and was getting 80KB, so I wish they would take care of that. Sorry, with fast internet connections these days, I don't have the patience anymore. Tom |
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Originally Posted by tomgreen
Update for Hammerhead here. My son's XPS arrived yesterday, so although this is apples and oranges, here is a comparison of my experience so far.
Delivery - ordered the XPS last Saturday, it arrived Friday, a few days ahead of schedule. On my Ozma M (5500), scheduled delivery time was two months arrived a month early. No clear winner here. Dead Pixels - none on the XPS, the 5500 had one, it is outside the center, but within Alienware policy. With a dark background it is annoying, but I knew the rules. I talked to 2 of the 3 people at work yesterday who own an XPS, and they also have 0 dead pixels. Configuration - configuration on the XPS appears to be exactly as ordered, the Alienware was incorrect (5400 RPM drive was secondary drive, 7200 RPM drive as the primary, this was backwards, although I did change my order mid flight, but still no real excude and this could have been caught if they emailed an updated configuration). Crapware - I hate all the extra software they install on these things, Alienware a clear winner here. Only extra software I ordered was Norton security stuff on both machines, the Dell was loaded with stuff I uninstalled. Problems out of the box - none on the XPS so far. My 5500 would not play games correctly. I spent a week reseating the graphics card, trying different drivers, and finally after one reseating of the card, games worked correctly for about an hour. Blew out the connectors on the graphics card with compressed air and it has worked fine since then. Mine came with the 5700 card, a friend said the 9700 card would do a little better for gaming, so I should be getting the new card today (two and half weeks later than promised delivery). I know this will be an incremental improvement, but what the heck, I didn't intend this as a gaming machine, but I have picked up a couple of racing games for fun. BTW - I posted about my video problems on the Alienware forum and there were 0 repsonses from Alienware representatives. Wireless 802.11g internal cards - range and reception seems much better on the XPS. Gaming - since I bought the 5500 for an audio notebook and it is not available with a decent graphices card, the XPS is much better. We tried Doom3 last night on the XPS at highest settings and it looked gorgeous. In defence of the 5500, it looks very good at the slightly lower settings and plays doom3 pretty well. Configuration possibilities - this is where Alienware really shines. I ordered my 5500 with a secondary hard drive and swappable DVD CD burner. The 7700 is very cool because you can have 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives, and I'm sure the RAID configurations must be attractive to gamers. My next audio laptop will be something like the 7700, cause I am tired of swapping the hard drive with the optical drive after a session to burn a CD. I won't have it configured as RAID, but I need a second hard drive dedicated to audio data, primary for operating system. Cosmetics - I must admit, the blinking Alien eyes and Conspiracy Blue case beat the Skullz thing hands down. I thnk if I was buying just a gaming laptop for myself at this point, I would go with the XPS given what I have seen. I can't compare customer support, because I have had no need so far on the XPS, I have 0 confidence in Alienware customer support, so the jury is still out. I'm sort of wishing Dell made a really big-ass laptop like the 7700 that would take multiple hard drives and optical drives, because once bigger 7200 RPM 2.5" drives come out, I would order it in a heartbeat given what I have seen today. From what I am hearing about bigger 7200 RPM drives, I probably have a few months to see what is coming out and comparing my Dell and Alienware experiences, so it will be interesting to see what happens. On another note, I did a little experiment on the Alienware site downloading a driver package the other night, and the best I could do as far as speed was 20KB. I then tried another website and was getting 80KB, so I wish they would take care of that. Sorry, with fast internet connections these days, I don't have the patience anymore. Tom |
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Originally Posted by Hammerhead
Thanks for the update.
In all fairness, comparing the Ozma to the XPS is comparing apples to oranges. The Ozma is not a gaming machine, the XPS is supposed to be. The point here is that an XPS and AW when configured the same, will not perform the same. As for your opinion on service and download speeds from the website, if that's a deal killer for you, then don't get an AW. Many people are happy with Dell products. And many people also drive Ford Taurus's. If a Taurus meets your needs, get one. I don't like Taurus's... I drive a pickup. If I compared my pickup to the Taurus, it wouldn't really make sense, would it. My pickup is slower than a Taurus, and uses more gas, but it does what I bought it for very well. The Taurus would not. |
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Originally Posted by thecommish16
This argument is so off track. And Hammerhead, give up the personal attacks on me, i.e. my parents bought it for me, etc. I was having a debate with someone who took a shot at my XPS but whos signature is a Delltia. Now its turned into an everyone jump Commish. Ive been very "clean" with my posts lately, but this is one of those "lets fire up and insult commish" threads.
I should know better than to debate alienware vs. Dell is any way in this forum. Its a lost cause. The opinions are slanted remarkably, with no sense of discretion in almost anyone. I never said alienware computers werent cool and fast, I simply said that someone with a $15 dollar sentia should lay off me and my XPS. Maybe I should order an ALX just to shove it in the face of those delltia owners who love telling Commish how crappy his Dell is....then I'd have both and Id do my own comparison! |
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Originally Posted by tomgreen
I was comparing the buying experience more than the machines, because you are correct, the Ozma is not a gaming machine. In the case with my son's XPS the Alienware customer service was in fact a deal killer, and that's why I bought Dell instead. The download speed is less important, but as I mentioned before, just not something I would expect from a company that prides itself in high end PCs, where the customer is probably going to be upgrading drivers more than once over the life of the machine. On another note, I just got my ATI 9700 card for my Ozma, and despite trying several suggestions from the peer to peer support, my computer still locks up consistently playing Doom3. Guess it's time to try for some support, or pay the restocking fee. Sigh.
The 7700 is still on my list a few months down the road, so the new graphics card issue may tilt me one way or another. |
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Originally Posted by Hammerhead
I understand your point tomgreen, and if my experience were similar to yours, I'd probably feel the same way. My support experiences have been good, all my machines have arrived as configured. My only gripe is I ordered a gaming controller with one machine, and AW was out of stock. Instead of sending it later, they just knocked it off the invoice. I bought the controller elsewhere, so AW did lose a sale on that peripheral.
Have you updated the bios for the 9700? You may need to do that if what I'm reading here is true... |
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Originally Posted by tomgreen
I am running BIOS 1.20, and they require a call to tech support to upgrade your BIOS, so I am going to call about the issue this week when I get a chance. In the peer to peer forum, it was suggested that a new BIOS would bring up the correct clocking speeds, but they seem to come up correctly when I check them with Powerstrip, but who knows. I tried underclocking the card last night, and that helped, but at that point, the card doesn't run as well as my current 5700. The card gets a lot hotter than my 5700 at the same performance levels, so I'm not even sure even if I can get it to work that I want to subject the notebook to that much heat. The 5700 is adequate for the limited amount of time I play games. Doom3 at 1024 * 768 medium quality is fun to play.
Maybe it's defective given the amount of heat, but I have heard these cards run hot. |
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Originally Posted by NotoriousKiller
get off Commish's nuts !!!!!!!!!!!
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Originally Posted by thecommish16
Thanks Notorious!!!!
And Hammerhead...you make some decent points, and others are just wish wash. I got the best DEAL and VALUE in the forum in terms of high performance machinery....leave it there, and enjoy your alienware. |
