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Alienware M5790 Laptop Review
by Chris "SuBDivisions" Baldassano 2/9/07 System Configuration as Purchased from Alienware: 1 | AREA-51 M5790 1 | AREA-51M 5700 SERIES 17 " WUXGA SILVER 1 | AREA-51M 5700 SERIES ACCESSORY SET REV 1 1 | N- CORE 2 DUO 2.16GHZ T7400 4MB 667MHZ 2 | HY284/Y9525 SAMSUNG 512MB DDR2 PC5300 SODIMM 1 | SEAGATE 100GB 7200RPM SATA NCQ 1 | 8X DVD+/-RW NEC AD-5540A REV 1 1 | 5700 SERIES ATI X1900 WITH 256MB MXM3 1 | INTEL PRO WIRELESS 3945 A/B/G MINI-CARD LEAD-FREE 1 | INTEL MOBILE INTEGRATED HIGH-DEFINITION AUDIO 1 | MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME COA 1 | ALIENWARE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD STORE 1 | ALIENGUISE XENOMORPH 1 | CYBERLINK POWERDVD 6.0 1 | OWNER IDENTIFICATION CARD 1 | 1-YR 24/7 WARRANTY (NO CHARGE) 1 | ON-SITE WARRANTY 1 | PERIPHERALS 2 | AREA-51M 5750 8 CELL LITHIUM-ION PRIMARY BATTERY 1 | ALIENWARE MOUSE PAD 1 | WINDOWS XP HOME INTEL RECOVERY CD V6012 1 | NERO 7 ESSENTIALS SUITE 1 | ALIENWARE MOBILE BINDER 5750 2 | ALIENWARE STICKER 1 | Thank you for choosing Alienware. 1 | Check back for the latest deals on Alienware products! Good Morning/Afternoon/Night to those who are reading my review of this enormous beast that is the Alienware M5790. A little background first.. I am the network adminitrator for a large insurance company here on Long Island, NY.. I am also an AVID Gamer, and have been a PC Gamer since mom and dad were kind enuff to bring home that Commodore 128 back in 1983/84. I have been running a side business of building gaming rigs for a long time now, and thus my old Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with the geforce 2 go in it was just too old to do anything with anymore, so I set out on a mission to get a new laptop (thanks to a nice tax refund this year).. After debating between the Dell E1705, E1505, Alienware (which I thought was overpriced), Toshibas (WAAAY over priced !?!?!), and HP (lol gaming on an HP.. ya… right).. I became lucky where the owner of my company agreed to pay 1/3 the price of the laptop… so there was only 1 choice… ALIENWARE. INITIAL FINDINGS I ordered the laptop on 1/26/07, a Friday.. It actually arrived 2/3/07 a Saturday, but unfortunatley since for some reason Alienware ships using Fedex Ground RESIDENTIAL (I ordered it to my office), I had to wait until Tuesday to get it (They don’t deliver on Mondays ?!?!, nice union…)… So it arrived in 2 boxes. 1 was the laptop, and 1 I could tell was the extra battery I purchased.. Upon opening the first box, I noticed it was packed very nice, so nothing could harm it except the fedex guy running over it with his truck. A black alienware laptop box, inside a brown shipping box.. I immedatley tore it open and there it was.. The initial Sheer size of the laptop amazed me, but another thing that amazed me is its THIN.. I have used 17” toshibas and HP’s and they all seem MUCH bulkier then this one. Another thing that I was overly impressed with, was the glossy finish on the laptop.. It feels like a sturdy, well built laptop. So far I was Very impressed. Also in the box, a funcpad branded by alienware.. Cute, and possibly good for the road, but since I havent ordered another logi mx510 mouse yet, it will have to sit in the box. A black alienware book with recovery cd’s and such, and the power cable were present. FIRST STARTUP **My initial plan, for those that are wondering, was to buy it with XP Home, saving $130 (comon, im not MADE of money here).. and load one of the 2 million XP Pro OEM CD’s and keys that I have from the millions of PC’s that I have sitting around that are mine… So I will get back to this..** Upon the first boot, I was very impressed with the screen clarity and brightness. I am in an office with overhead florucents, and I could easily see the screen from any angle.. It loaded XP Home Very quickly, registered and got me to the desktop within a few short minutes (maybe 2 or 3).. The resolution of 1920x1200 got some getting use too, since at home on my desktop I have dual 21” crt’s running at 1280x1024, and in my office I have 2 20” LCD’s at 1600x1200. RECOMMENDATION: Leave the desktop res at 1920x1200 and just increase the font size to large or extra large… Any other setting and the desktop looks like Rosie O’Donnell squeezing into a bikini… Bloated, stretched, and Very Ugly…. I SET OUT TO DO WHAT I THOUGHT WOULD BE EASY.. After I had it running for 5 minutes, I decided while im at work to sit it behind me and let it upgrade to XP pro… So I pop in the cd and let it go… Xp screen came up, selected UPGRADE and was on my way.. PROBLEM #1. DRIVERS DRIVERS DRIVERS… Now I know what your thinking, “You Idiot, why didn’t you back up your video drivers etc…”… A HA.. That is not what I mean my friends.. You see, The Alienware has a VIA RAID Controller built on its motherboard.. so when XP makes u hit the good ol ‘f6’ to put in the DOS Driver so it can see the hard drive, you have to have it on FLOPPY only… **FLOPPY**… Oops, forgot to pay the $30 extra for the USB Floppy… son of a (*$&(.. My bad.. SO I waited for lunch and drove 6 miles over to Micro Center and got a nice Iomega USB Floppy for $40. Back to the office to continue. I headed over to alienware to download the proper drivers, found them (so I thought) and put them on a floppy. I put the disk in the drive, it finds the Via Raid controller and continues upon its merry way… then, the NIGHTMARE begins… “Please Enter VIA Combo Raid Driver Diskette…” Wha wha wha?!?!? I thought that’s what I had?!? Long story shory (and many MANY hairs pulled out) this is what I learned.. VIA for some reason or another is completely retarted when it comes to making driver disks. Alienware, Viaarena.com, and every other via driver package is WRONG. What I mean by wrong, is the drvdisk folder in the drivers does not lay out or install all the proper drivers.. I was STUCK. Some 22 Hours and 12cd’s, 18 floppys later, I gave up, and decided to Re-install XP home from the recovery cd, when I noticed something interesting… Alienware Recovery CD for M5750.. hmmmm… well I guess it’s the same, lets do it.. I put it in and started the recovery.. Once XP Home was up, Alienware gives a second “Driver Disk” that can install all the drivers for Sound, Video, Wireless etc automatically, which I think is a nice touch.. Except for 1 small minute detal… ****It will NOT install the VGA/Video Drivers**** Why u ask? Well the m5750 has a Radeon Mobility x1800 in it, NOT an x1900 which I have.. So the VGA option is GREYED OUT.. and as of this writing (checked this morning), there is NO <<< Let me reiterate this.. NO.. as in NIET.. Driver for the ATi Radeon Mobility x1900 Video Card. Not even the Catalist 7.1’s on Ati’s site will work, they say Ho Hardware Exists etc… So now I have XP home, with NO Video drivers, with Icons the size of my head and no video acceleration.. (This is the part where if you remember Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Cameron goes insaine in the back of the ferrari).. I sat at home, dejected, and steaming… so I set out to do the unthinkable… SLIPSTREAMING ALL THE DRIVERS I NEED ONTO AN XP PRO CD… I will not get into this drawn out process, but I will tell u all the EASIEST way to do it.. Google a program called NLITE. Download it.. Hug it.. Love it. Its VERY easy, and self explanitory… But when you select to insert drivers in the installation, USE THE ALIENWARE recovery cd to get the drivers from… Couple of hours later and a few coasters I got it perfect… Fdisk’d, formatted C, and Now, FINALLY I am running XP Pro, with all the proper up to date drivers etc… Except the Ati… REVELATIONS In my looking for video drivers for the x1900 I came across something interesting. People were talking about this on guru3d.com forums, and rage3d.com forums that they had a fujitsu notebook that had an x1900 that the only drivers that worked were on fujitsu’s website… so off I went… and to my SHOCK guess what… THERE IS MY LAPTOP!?!?! Same Case (Exact) except Fujitsu-Siemens puts the intel and ati stickers on the case, Alienware Doesn’t…. So it looks like alienware is just a re-branded Fujitsu. I find nothing wrong with that, we all knew alienware didn’t make their OWN stuff, but I find it funny that a company now owned by DELL, is reselling Fujitsu-Siemens (which is a company I like) merchandise. I found the video drivers (which seemed to be based on the Cat 6.8’s I think) and installed them. They worked Perfectly.. I now have a FULLY Functional Alienware m5790 with XP Pro. Time Involved: 3 days. *Note: As of this writing, anc 5 calls to alienware later, they informed me that by latest today (2/9/07) that the drivers for the x1900 would be available to me, that they were going to certify drivers for it and post them and let me know.. Personally I am going to wait for ATI to push the Cat 7.2’s out, because what I think is gonna happen is Alienware is gonna mod the 7.1’s to work, which wouldn’t be bad, but I want Ati to do it, not alienware… Oh and I forgot to mention, the Omega Drivers based on 7.1 didn’t work either. Now lets get to the Actual Review.. I will break it down into sections based on a 5 point scale.. Part I – Build/Sterdyness (5.0) I have to tell you, I have used plenty of laptops in my life, and I have never used one that felt so solid in my hands. When u open the screen, it is nice and firm (to the point that if you use 2 hands *always use 2 hands* to open the lid, the bottom of the laptop will lift up and come with you ¾ thru the opening process.. so you have to hold the bottom of it down. I like this as over time im sure it will loosten up, but it will prevent screen sag down the road. The finish of the laptop is again, Incrediable. Shiny, and VERY smooth all around. Your hands glide across its surface. All the ports are Very sturdy, and no cracking or movement (giggling) when inserting a wire into a port. There are LED’s under the screen that show caps lock, wireless on/off, fan etc.. There are a nice soft Blue, that really make it nice so you can see it in the bright say time, and there cool enough looking at night for people go to wow.. The alienware logo and alien picture on the top of the case glow blue, which is a GREAT effect at night.. Also the top of the case has black ridges that give it a nice look.. *Warning*.. The finish is so smooth, I recomment washing your hands when you lift it up, cause it their sweaty (eww) or whatever, this thing can slip out of your hands and make you go postal.. PART II – KEYBOARD (4.5) Being a keyboard afficianado (I have sort of an OCD Keyboard thing) I have to say this keyboard is very nice. It has a translucent scheme (you can see thru the keys but just barely). It is a fullsize keyboard, with numeric pad.. Being I have extremely large hands, I find it very easy to type on, and I make the same amount of mistakes I would with a regular pc keyboard… There is no keyboard “flex” , aka when you push down on a key the keyboard seems to fall down into the laptop.. It is on a very sturdy base, and works excellent. The only thing not giving it a 5 is some of the keys (the right shift) is small, and the pgup and pgdn key require you to hit the Fn key… Not a big deal really, justan annoyance… but its hard to cram all these keys into such a space. PART III – SCREEN (5) The screen on this machine is what really stands out.. Its fkn huge. No other way to put it… I could have went with the lower 17” (1400x900) option, but with this power, going highest end is the only way.. There are 0 dead pixels (I was a tad worried about that, cause I know it would annoy the hell out of me, and I have heard of horror stories of returning it for pixels that didn’t work that are not in the center of the screen. The resolution takes some getting use to. I LOVE the screen real estate, but it took a good 2 days to get comfy with not forcing IE to use HUGE fonts so webpage words are overlapping their boxes and such… The Anti-Gloss coating on the screen (or more like Cover) Does show reflection, but the screen itself is so clear and bright you don’t notice it (at least I don’t).. PART IV – HARD DRIVE/ STORAGE (4) 7200 rpm drive in a laptop.. How far we have come. This model came with the Seagate 100 gig 7200 Rpm drive with NCQ and 8 meg Cache... I am dissapointed in only an 8 meg cache, since the 5400 rpm drive I had bought fo rthe Dell had 16 Meg cache on it, but the 720rpm speed is the key. I have yet to run HDTach on it, but it definatley the fastest laptop hard drive I have ever used. Xp boots up speedy and everything has a nice crisp feel to it.. *Note that XP was fully tweaked by me prior*. The built in media reader worked excellent ( I only have 1 piece of media that fits in it, from my cell phone, which is a 1 gig SD card).. It was Very fast and worksed perfectly. The DVD RW/CDRW Drive is nice, quiet (except for the drivers cd which spun and hummed so fast it shook the laptop).. It works and has not has 1 issue yet. PART V – VIDEO SUBSYSTEM (3) I list this as a 3 because of the current driver issues… I ran an Aquamark3 benchmark on the laptop and got 78,091 (wow, and with new drivers should be better).. (Note my desktop with is an oc’s p4, 3.6 with the new x1900pro agp 512, only got 66,000 (tho with screwed up drivers too)… 2d is Crisp, Clear and Fast.. So far the only game I tried on it is CS:Source, and it looked and worked flawlesly, but I hold all reservations until proper drivers are installed. PART VI – NETWORKING (5) The Intel a/b/g wireless is fantastic.. Excellent range and power, and found a modicome of wireless networks upon every search (my GOD learn to wep key your crap people…). I loves sitting outside my sons school surfing on someones wireless… The onboard gigabit ethernet (marvell controller) worked with no issues.. Fast and low CPU Usage. Nice.. Fragtastic. PART VII – SOUND (4) I have yet to hear the thumping of the subwoofer on the bottom of the laptop, but I havent played with the sound settings in the control panel which seem nice and laid out.. Overall the sound is Loud I can tell u that… There is a volume control on the left side next to the output ports for headphone or mic, but It only controlls that port. I wish it controlled overall system sound, so u have to use Fn F5 and F6 as a shortcut instead of going into the control panel. PART VIII – PORTS (Usb/1394 etc) A nice touch was the single USB port on the left side of the laptop, to which I can use the external floppy with out impeeding with say a mouse or something in the 3 right side USB ports. All the ports are spread out, Very nicely laid out and in perfect spots. There is about 3cm (no ruler near me) space between the usb ports on the right side and the firewire port, so you can fir a bigger usb key, or device there that shouldn’t impede on the other ports when in use. Excellent touch (especially for those who have this… http://shop.digitalworldtokyo.com/in..._humping_dogs/ Rofl. FINAL OVERALL THOUGHTS AND RATING. (5) As a desktop replacement for those thinking of doing so, You can NOT go wrong here. This thing is built like a 1974 Cadillac, and has the speed, power, and looks of a BMW 850. My problems aside, there is nothing on this machine that I can find as an issue or a negative thus far. I do have these STERN recommendations tho.. If you are going to purchase, GO ALL THE WAY, and don’t skimp like I did… 1) Get the 2 Gig of Ram.. I am going to put 2 gig in, and change out the 2 512’s in it now, within the next few months.. 2) Get XP PRO Installed (Don’t go Vista Yet… especially if you’re a gamer) 3) Get the Bigger Screen, You’ll have to get use to it, but its worth it. 4) Make sure you get the Core 2 Duo with 4 Meg Cache (2.16 minimum) So that’s it folks… as I spend more time with it (I stil have 20 or so games to load) I will update this and post screen shots and such.. Tonight I’ll take pics, descriptive and precice to post as well, I just wanted to get you all something to chew on. **Final Note.. As of this writing with these Drivers, my 3dMark06 Bench markwas around 4500.** **Added Edit 2/23/07** I would like to add some more findings since i have ad it and i have been on vacation and have used it extensivley every day or th past week solid. DRIVER ISSUES AMUCK. It seems being on the cusp of technology has left a sour taste in my mouth. Let me explain. First off, ALIENWARE and ATi are "Partners".. AKA ATi gives alienware the latest offerings before the general public to put OEM into their laptops etc.. BEcause of this ALienware supports the ATi hardware themselves and not Ati. Well thats fine and dandy, but Getting Video Drivers for the x1900 (updated ones) proved to be as easy as finding Hoffa. THe latest ATi Mobility Catalyst drivers (7.2) which came out a day or so ago, have OMITTED once again anything in the .inf files to know that the x1900 mobility exists. I found that ODD considering ATi lists the x1900 on their website as the flagship mobile chipset product. Now i want you to know that the Cat 7.2's DO WORK, .. BUT... you have to force feed the system the drivers. Manual install (the setp program fails, and if you try to run the ati program from the website which checks the machine for compatable hardware it will always fail), was the only way. When you install via control panel/system, you have to manually select the X1800 ?!?! as the x1900 isnt even listed as a viable option. Then seperatey download the new CCC (catalyst control center) from ati's site, and your good to go. I will update the benchmarks on Sunday when i get home. AUDIO ISSUES.. 1) The Subwoofer does NOT work. There are a bunch of realtek audio drivers out there and only yesterday did AW-WARNER on the alienware support site link to the *i think* 5345 drivers, which i installed and it fixed 2 problems: 1) The Headphone ports allowed sound to come from the headphones AND the laptop speakers at the same time.. FIXED. 2) The volume control knob on the left side above the ports now WORKS and controls the system volume levels.. Before you had to go into control panel to make the sound lower or hit the Fn f5/f6 key. SO as you can see this laptop was NOT perfect coming from the factory, infact I wondered how some of these things got past any sort of quality assurance? I mean if you didnt know the volume knob didnt work, dont you thinkit would have not shipped? I honestly dont think alienware is selling SO MANY laptops that the mass production of such are letting things like that squeek by on the assembly line.. Especially since these are suppose to be hand picked and built. Now for some good points: The wireless internet has been a CHARM to use. THe intel software for it is so nice to use (altho i wish it didnt leave so many processes running, but i got enuff juce). Gaming on crappy bell south DSL is another issue lol.. The screen has made it a pleasure to use. Now warning on extended use. This puppy gets warm folks. I was smart tho and went to staples and picked up 2 lapop lap desks (nice finished woo with a vlcro pillow underneath).. Perfect width to use for the alienware, nice and bg, very comfy to lay in a recliner (like i am now) and use, or sitting straight up.. And its only $29. I looked on staples.com but i couldnt find a link, so ill take a pic when i get home. Well thats about it for now, as i come across more I will be updating this review. Thanks everyone. |
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System Quality Ratings
Laptop Benchmarks
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Excellent review. Have you benched 3dmark05 yet? I'd be curious as to what the x1900 scores. Enjoy the laptop!
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Out of curiosity, how did you get your x1900 so fast? The website still lists a 61 day wait on that part...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Groove75
Out of curiosity, how did you get your x1900 so fast? The website still lists a 61 day wait on that part...
Dunno, I guess I was the lucky one.. I never dreamed it would ship that fast.. There must have been a big ATI shipment recently, because after over a month of backorder i even got my X1950Pro 512 AGP for the desktop... |
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Im running the 3dmark05 bench right now
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moved to the review section...
get some pics up! and looking forward to seeing your 3dmark scores! |
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Impressive Write up.
Are you going to post some pictures? edit: UMMM i dont know why this post is up here... the time on the forums got messed up again? |
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I was just gonna say get some pics. And why are there two of these threads?
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fixed d00kie =D
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@ SUb
first off nice review!!! second, alienware does not buy the m5790 from fujitsu, in fact the m5790 is made by uniwill for Alienware and fujitsu, just needed to clear that up. third thanks for the benchmarks ive been waiting for these |
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Isaac-Link
@ SUb
first off nice review!!! second, alienware does not buy the m5790 from fujitsu, in fact the m5790 is made by uniwill for Alienware and fujitsu, just needed to clear that up. third thanks for the benchmarks ive been waiting for these Thanks for clearing that up  Ok, Here is the official 3dmark05 benchmark... :  RUMROLL::  >> 7118 << Not bad at all, I have to again, get the better drivers, and i also want to compare to the desktop tonight. I will post pics tonight when i get home, im in the office and i dont have a camera here. |
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thats a very very good score for a single card!!! ill say it can almost rival the 7900gs in SLI
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nice score! that's not even Overclocked...
my score was a lil over 6800 overclocked w/ a x1800 so glad to see that the x1900 is a significant boost in performance |
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Nice review + congrats! And pics plz
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It's too bad you can't get XP installed on these machines anymore. I had it all keyed up for my purchase this week and Thursday they switched to nothing but Vista as the selectable OS.
Also the x1800 is now the default card, the nVidia card is no longer an option. |
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