Alienware's M18x, Part 1: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580M in SLI
by Dustin Sklavos on October 3, 2011 11:50 AM ESTGaming Performance
Before we even get to the results, I'll tell you right now...most of these are going to feel fairly academic. They do even to me. Gaming on a GPU in the class of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M or AMD Radeon HD 6970M/6990M honestly makes my desktop and its GeForce GTX 580 feel at least a little overkill. You really are dealing with desktop-level gaming performance at this point, and our results with the M18x will attest to that. With a 1080p maximum resolution (unless you use external displays), we can't strain the GPUs enough to really make them sweat.
You can see our "high" present isn't a big deal for even a single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M, oftentimes allowing higher performance than the AMD Radeon HD 6970M even while stepping up the resolution one notch. There are also a few games where we start to hit CPU limits (e.g. DiRT 2 and StarCraft II), though for the most part there's still a separation between the 900p and 1080p SLI results. Not bad at all. Now let's make the SLI work for its supper.
At our "ultra" preset it's really going to depend on the games you play. For games like Metro 2033 or STALKER, the extra GPU means the difference between a smooth gaming experience and a stuttering slideshow. Other games however already have largely enough power on tap, and the GTX 580M for the most part surpasses a Radeon HD 6970M that was still perfectly fine. Meanwhile, CrossFired 6970Ms and SLI'ed GTX 580Ms trade blows at the top of the charts and Left 4 Dead 2 and DiRT 2 seem to be largely CPU limited on the slower i7s.
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JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link
There's a reason Crysis 2 didn't make our list of games to benchmark, and it won't be on the updated list at the end of the year either.yelped - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link
Thanks for the quick and honest reply.Filiprino - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link
Truth be told, apart from brick walls and some other things, I had a hard time finding big differences between DX11 and DX9 versions, but my GTX460 took the hit.NikolaPublicola - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link
Seriously Sli on a mobile platform is not viable, I feel sorry for people spending this much money, and despite having solid FPS getting a jerky gaming experience.Anand can you please add Micro stutter benchmarks.
Even a desktop card such as a 6990, struggles with enough memory bandwidth top avoid micro-stutter, I therefore can't see how a mobile solution could be anything but worse, of course I could be wrong which is why I would really like to see a benchmark analysis.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
Micro-stutter is next to impossible to actually benchmark; the entire industry struggles with it at pretty much every level.Evil_Sheep - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
The reviewer talks about the M18x like there is such a thing as too much power. Well nobody lusts after a 1000hp V12 Ferrari because they actually need to get 0-60 in 3.2s. Practicality and sensibility are thrown out the window in the market's stratosphere: that is, frankly, the main draw.slacr - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
The first page mentioned it would rival many a desktop, yet the closest thing to a desktop found in the benchmarks is the desktop CPU in the Clevo. How does it stack up to an i7-2600k with say a 6950 or 560Ti?JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - link
You'll have to compile the scores yourself if you want to see a chart, but we use the same benchmarks for desktops as on laptops (only at 1080p standardized). Here's the latest system review, with some very high-end systems, but there are also some lower spec GPU configs:http://www.anandtech.com/show/4864/3
It generally places just below the SLI GTX 470 setup Dustin tested, and slightly lower than the SLI GTX 560 Ti config as well. A few games score lower than expected, but the M18x is faster than most single GPU desktops -- at least until you add the GTX 580.
Bolas - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
When can we see the continuation of this article, part 2?I would love to read about the Radeon 6990m Crossfire performance.
Blibbax - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
A lot of people are talking about CPU and GPU overclocking as one of the benefits of this laptop. Is the power supply and cooling system up to the challenge?