Alienware M14x: the Sound and the Fury
by Dustin Sklavos on July 19, 2011 12:35 AM ESTConclusion: Too Much By Half
When I say the Alienware M14x is too much by half, I'm not talking about the pricetag. Truth be told the price is actually remarkably reasonable given the excellent build quality, bling, and extra features. I'm talking about the configuration and cooling design, and these are things that significantly limit what you can do with the M14x.
If I were ordering an M14x for myself, I don't think I'd upgrade to any of the quad-core options. While surface thermals and internal temperatures aren't terrible, they aren't stellar either, and the more important issue is the fact that the fan is so loud under load. Just sticking with the standard issue, bottom rung Intel Core i5-2410M and 1.5GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M should help keep heat and the corresponding noise in check. Not only that, but I suspect gaming performance would only take a minor hit. The M14x is GPU-limited at the notebook's native 1600x900 resolution (a totally worthwhile upgrade), not video memory or CPU-limited.
And that really brings us to the central issue of the M14x: it just seems like Alienware overshot, not just with the review configuration but with the configuration options in general. I can accept the increased bulk and weight if it means a GPU like the GT 555M, but 3GB of video memory is gratuitous and unnecessary, and while Sandy Bridge has made major strides in bringing down power consumption and heat in mobile quad-core chips, we just aren't there yet. Ivy Bridge is probably the one we're waiting for, along with 28nm mobile GPUs.
If you can deal with the bulk, the potential noise, and the bottom intake fan on the M14x, there's an awful lot to recommend it. Gamers should definitely consider it as a portable option, and it's an otherwise well-built notebook that's just plain comfortable to use. The GeForce GT 555M is a force to be reckoned with in this class, too, offering the kind of performance we'd really like to see become standard. It's unfortunate that the GDDR5 version is hamstrung in a couple areas, as the extra bandwidth could be put to use, but for now the DDR3 model in the M14x is the preferred configuration. Hopefully GDDR5 will only continue to proliferate the way it has in AMD's lines, shoring up the memory bandwidth issues that make it hard for a good GPU to handle high resolution gaming. For now, the 555M is in the sweet spot for the M14x's 900p screen, and the M14x is a solid choice for mobile gaming.
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Hrel - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
yeah, he just hates Intel because they're succesful. I hate petty people.I do wish we could see some competition from AMD though, just to drive prices down. Intel's have been creeping steadily up since the release of the Core series of CPU's.
For instance I think the 2500K should be about 185-195, not 215 or 230 or whatever it is. Not a huge deal, when I build a new desktop next fall (2012) I will use the newest Intel CPU equivalent to that one. Generally though 200 has always been my cap for CPU prices, I just wanna overclock so an extra 20 bucks is meh; still, not like it costs Intel anything extra to enable that.
Unless Bulldozer makes Sandy Bridge look at least average??? Please! No? Ohhhh, ok.
Skott - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
If I was going to buy a gaming laptop I'd go with a Sager. They have the superior cooling system for gaming laptops. That heat over time can kill a laptop. It needs to be as cool as possible. Just my 2 cents.scook9 - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
Not really that superior actually....they have nice beefy cooling on their x7200 and x8000 lines but their single GPU stuff is comparably cooled compare to the alienware lineup (And the M18x matches the x7200 cooling....)Hrel - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
sager is just a brand built on Clevo or Compal or Asus or MSI or any other whitebox manufacturer; they don't actually make the laptops, they just put parts in them like the CPU/GPU/RAM and what not.Gonemad - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
...but right now can anybody answer me with a simple yes or no: Is this the fastest machine that can be crammed in a 14" notebook frame, heat be damned, noise be damned, battery life be damned?Apparently yes it is. Won't this note enter the category *hot-rod* as in "the largest engine on the smallest car"? Or is it a "Rolls-Royce jet engine in a Pinto", where the sum is worse than its parts?
PS: You don't see anything beyond 1600 x 900 all the way to 17"...
Pylon757 - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Sony has 1920x1080 across 13". 1080p isn't that hard to find on 15".This is about the same weight as a number of 15" laptops too.
bigboxes - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
Isn't it really a LED backlit LCD display? Just because the manufacturers are marketing them as LED displays doesn't make them so.etamin - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
That is what LED display means. All LED displays are LED backlit LCDs whereas traditional LCDs are actually CCFL (Cold-Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) backlit displays. They are both types of LCDs.etamin - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
I was not able to tell from the pictures but is the memory in the M14x self upgradable? Alienware is charging $200 for 2x4GB DIMMS (1600MHz) which can be had on Newegg for as low as $75.Also, do you at Anandtech notice any changes in quality since the pre-Dell days of Alienware? I believe the Area-51 m7700 I owned years ago was the last pre-Dell model built and have not given Alienware a second thought since both harddrives (yes, both at the same time) in RAID 0 permanently failed along with the motherboard. Over the life of the system, I had to replace a dead graphics card, deal with a battery that could not hold a charge, and replace a screen myself with one from a used Sager built on the same Clevo chassis. In total the system fell into the 4k range over 4 years of use and I cannot even dream about spending even 2.5k on a laptop ever again. My understanding is that Dell now uses even cheaper generic parts but I could be wrong.
Hrel - Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - link
I wish you guys could get the "other" version of the GT555M in for testing; really just out of curiosity. I'd like to see what's different and where from 768p to 1080p.(I also wish you guys would test at 1080p NOT with max settings; but with "reasonable" texture settings. You can make games look better than a console and run at 1080p by tweaking things just a little.)
Really THIS GPU with GDDR5 is the only GT555M that should exist. Hopefully Nividia will do that with the GT666M or whatever they wanna call it. I truly baffles me that someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to have two entirely different GPU's under the EXACT same name each with at LEAST 2 possible configurations totally 4+ GPU's with the same damn name!!! AHHHHH, frakkin marketing people; clearly their degrees mean nothing more than "yep, I drank a lot in college".