Alienware M17x R4 Notebook Review: Ivy Bridge and the GeForce GTX 680M
by Dustin Sklavos on September 21, 2012 12:01 AM ESTConclusions
What we're looking at with this review of the Alienware M17x R4 are really two things: the performance of the shiny new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M, and the Alienware M17x R4 notebook itself. Amusingly if unfortunately, the conclusions drawn are pretty disparate.
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680M is a qualified win. They knew it, and now we know it. Whether or not it's worth the substantial price premium from vendors is up for debate, especially since we don't know just exactly how fast AMD's competing Pitcairn-based Radeon HD 7970M performs in comparison (yet). If AMD can get between 80-90% of the performance of the GTX 680M out of the 7970M, that will probably be enough. The 680M is an impressive beast, though, able to produce performance roughly as good as last generation's GeForce GTX 570 in a notebook form factor. You'll remember the 570 was no slouch, so gamers looking for a mobile fix would do well to shortlist the 680M.
.jpg)
As for the M17x itself, unfortunately it's not the homerun it used to be. While I still personally like the bling and submit you can't really appreciate it until you've played with it first hand, the chassis needs to be updated. The current generation of Alienware notebooks are just rehashes of the successful last generation, but there needs to be iteration and improvement. Those were good notebooks, but they weren't bulletproof. The cooling system needs to be reworked, and more attention really needs to be paid to ergonomics and overall ease of use. The typing experience (layout notwithstanding) is one place where the iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17, fugly and unwieldy as it is, offers a better experience.
It gets worse. Given that the CZ-17 is more comfortable to use, it would be a reasonable alternative to the M17x R4 at the same price. But iBuyPower is willing to give you at least identical performance, if not better (by offering a full SSD instead of a small mSATA caching SSD), for $500 less. You lose the option of going for AMD graphics hardware, but the baseline GPU is the very capable GeForce GTX 675M, while the 680M is a slightly more reasonable $350 extra.
Let me be clear. The Alienware M17x R4 is by no means a bad notebook, and if it's what you're interested in I certainly wouldn't stop you from going for it. iBuyPower's offering isn't the greatest thing in the world to look at and its wonky keyboard layout, however responsive the keys themselves are, may be enough to put off a lot of users. The problem is that I'm not sure the M17x R4 is worth the premium over competing notebooks, especially when Alienware elected to just coast on last year's chassis design instead of going back and fixing it. I can't reward a company that chooses to stand still with their hardware, and unfortunately the industry seems to agree. The R4 is a good gaming notebook, but the minor blemishes seen on the R3 have now become more unsightly.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
61 Comments
View All Comments
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.