Alienware M17x R4 Notebook Review: Ivy Bridge and the GeForce GTX 680M
by Dustin Sklavos on September 21, 2012 12:01 AM ESTBattery Life
The Alienware M17x R4 enjoys NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680M's Optimus technology just as the R3 enjoyed Optimus in the 580M, meaning any battery life difference between the two systems is going to be decided chiefly by the CPU. It's nice to see gaming notebooks get to the point where the battery is no longer a glorified UPS system but an actual means of using the notebook off the mains for an extended period of time, provided you're not gaming on it.
It's all pretty much as we expected. The lower power consumption of the Ivy Bridge CPU allows the M17x R4 to last just a little bit longer in most tasks than the R3 did, but differences between the notebooks really are negligible. Four or five hours of useful battery life from a nine pound land monster isn't too shabby.
Heat and Noise
Unfortunately, this is where things start to fall apart for the R4. Compared to the cooling system used in ASUS' gaming notebooks, the Alienware M17x R4's age really starts to show. The slightly thicker iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17 was able to do an admirable job of cooling the GF114-based GTX 675M while producing a lower pitched noise profile, but the R4 gets obnoxious in a hurry when gaming and in fact even seems to be a bit louder than the R3. The GTX 680M is rated for the same 100W TDP as the outgoing 580M/675M, but TDP ratings can often be deceiving, as the difference between the identically rated i7-2720QM and i7-3720QM can attest.
CPU-only loads don't seem to push the cooling system particularly hard, but that's no surprise. GPU-heavy loads cause the fan to spin up pretty substantially, though, and that can become obnoxious in a hurry. The reality is that other gaming notebooks are handling this aspect of design better these days.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
General settings: use the power saver profile, minimum CPU set to 0%, maximum set to 100%, and cooling set to passive. HDD set to go to sleep after 1 minute. WiFi is set to maximum power savings. Display is set to 100 nits (not sure where that is on the W110ER -- I think it's two or three steps down from max), and the display shouldn't turn off or dim. System critical battery life should shut down at 1% (or if you can't set that low, 3%) battery life, 0% reserve battery, and no sleep warnings. Basically, we're setting things up for best-case battery life.Idle testing: run laptop until it's out of power (<3% battery). Audio should be muted, WIFi disabled, and that's it. I use a batch file to spit out the time every minute to a text file, and then you just subtract the start time from the finish time to get battery life. (Note that this is not truly idle, as the Batch file needs to access storage every minute.)
Internet testing: we open saved versions of four web pages every 60 seconds in Internet Explorer. Again I use a batch file to do this, that also spits out the time every minute. IE is set to empty temp files on exit. The batch file closes IE and restarts it, with the home pages set to these four: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mobile/interne...
Sounds like Monster does have better battery life than stock W110ER, though, given you're able to watch four hours of movies.
Drasca - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
I am not able to test internet at this time.I'm able to set most of those settings to spec. Wifi adapter is disabled and wifi turned off. I've set display at 40% brightness on battery life.
It is setup for 1% battery life shutdown, sleep is disabled. Everything else set to your suggestions.
The laptop is currently running. 11 minutes have passed to reach 96%. Projected idle is around 260 minutes. Will report again once it is complete.
Drasca - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
I'm at the 91 minute mark and there's still 70% left.Projected idle is approx 300 min at this point.
That is in-line previous video use.
Drasca - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
4% at the 4 hr 25 minute (265 minute) mark.System shutoff at 4 hrs 26 minutes as I was looking up the nvidia control panel.
Upon resume, reports 1% battery.
Drasca - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
Ok, there's a distinct possibility I have been testing in High Performance mode this entire time. If that is the case, then there's a battery floor for 266 minutes, and Vivek's numbers make more sense.Additionally, I am distinctly not able to guarantee 100 nits.
I cannot do further testing today. Either way, we have another benchmark.
JarredWalton - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
So you measured 266 minutes at idle? Seems rather low compared to Vivek's numbers, unless some other setting is messed up. I just wish I had done the Monster 1.0 testing so I could respond with confidence in regards to the numbers.Drasca - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link
Yes, I was able to reach 266 minutes minimum.My setup is not a perfectly clean Win 7 build. I discovered I still had lavasoft ad aware, and some other processes in the backround (using minimal CPU, not doing active scans). I also suspect I have been doing high performance mode, requiring minimum 100% CPU as opposed to 0-5% and the brightness seemed higher than 100 nits even at 40%. That last bit is a subjective look, as I do not have light measuring equipment on hand.
I have the AUO matte display, which likely has different brightness characteristics than the one you and Vivek received.
So there's multiple variables. Mine look like there's been CPU usage, as its about what I expect from watching videos.
Still, Vivek's numbers are pretty amazing.
shadowyani - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
Coasting by on the same chassis is not good. Happens across this company's entire lineup; my M18x R2 shares the same glaring design flaw (melting SLI cable hehe) as the R1, something they should have taken the time to fix. Good thing there's a workaround for people willing to pop the lid on the machine.Speaking of price, if you're in the military you might be surprised at what you can get these machines for, but take my advice, skip out on the SLI laptops. The SLI cables aren't built last.
5150Joker - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
My SLI cable never melted...shadowyani - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
I'm envious of your AW experience :) My R1 and replacement R2 both had cables that fried on top of the heat-sinks. It was a big sigh of relief when I discovered how easy it was to fix. I'm a happy AW camper now though.