Notebook Critic

Reviewing this notebook was tough. Initially I could not get it to run games without crashing – often blue screening. I stumbled on the solution by way of a BIOS setting that I must have changed while tinkering.

Since then, the notebook has operated reliably and that made it hard for me to pull myself away from gaming. My enthusiasm for this notebook has grown to the point now where I feel like telling the world about it – or all 100 or so people who visit my blog each day LOL.

Alienware ships the M17x in an elaborate box. Inside you’ll get a well-packed notebook, mammoth power supply unit and a nice assortment of accessories. This includes a mouse pad, leather-bound manual, baseball hat and full complement of recovery disks.

When you unpack the notebook and gaze upon it the word that comes to mind is majestic. Seriously, this monolithic Notebook is imposing and its looks suggest formidable power. Alienware’s website more than hints that the inspiration for this notebook was the F117 Stealth Fighter. Available in Red, Silver and a matte Black (tested) the M17x disposes of the previous model’s (IMO)  gaudiness.

Construction is best described as a clamshell of thick stamped aluminum. It is no match for the CNC machined MacBook Pros, but it feels very good compared to the mostly plastic notebooks in its class such as the Gateway FX and Asus G-series. Why is the unibody aluminum construction used by Apple better? My reason for saying this is that the M17x has too many panels, not all of which are made from metal. This approach to construction results in some flexing and creaking where panels meet. In particular you might notice the palm rest flexing where it meets the solid aluminum clamshell.

Alienware notebooks are thick and heavy – these are gaming notebooks so they need adequate cooling solutions to dissipate heat from the high power components used in their construction. The M17x feels like a boat anchor when you carry it, and the power supply looks like a boat anchor. Alienware lists the weight as just under 12 lbs, but it feels heavier. Lugging this in a backpack to the weekly lan party would be OK, but I feel bad for anyone who opts to lug this thing around daily.

The height of 2.11 inches is somewhat misleading as about a quarter to half an inch of the height is used for little rubber feet. These keep the M17x a quarter of an inch above the surface in order to maximize airflow and cooling. This gives the impression of a 2″ notebook hovering just above your table or desk.

Keyboard performance is very good; let down only by some flex. Alien FX, Alienware’s lighting control software, is employed to gives users granular control over the keyboard (and chassis) lighting. It all works very well. In contrast to Asus RoG notebooks I have tested you can close the Alienware software after you finish setting up lighting to your liking, thereby conserving resources.

I found the touchpad to be excellent. Here is a trick: I always skip installation of the Synaptics mouse software and stick to the basic Windows drivers. Performance always seems to be better. For example, the sensitivity needs no tweaking and the strange features like chiral motion are turned off.

Alienware includes some touch sensitive media buttons above the keyboard. About the only thing I can say is that I missed having a dedicated mute button. I am not really a big fan of these buttons but Alienware has made them unobtrusive. Folks might also like the ‘Stealth Mode’ button which shuts down the 280m GTX cards and brings the entire computer to a TDP rating of 65 watts (versus 240 when everything is running full speed). This increases the M17x’s battery ‘life.’

Port selection is excellent. Dell has chosen not to clutter the M17x ‘s facade which is dominated by left/right backlit speaker grills (an Infra Red receiver is cleverly hidden from view).

On the left side of the M17x we have mini FireWire, eSATA, 2x USB, Ethernet, DisplayPort, HDMI, and VGA.

The posterior is kept clean with a large grill exhaling warm air and the M17x’s power plug. Unfortunately there is no way to charge the plugs visual charge indicator colour.

On the right side of the M17x you have ExpressCard, Flash card reader, Optical drive slot, 2x USB, and audio in/out jacks.

Specifications

Alienware has a well deserved reputation for making expensive notebooks, but after being acquired by Dell they have access to one of the most efficient supply chains in the world. This allows them to deliver solutions at a much wider range of price points then before. The M17x can be configured from $1999.00 CDN. The going rate for the model being tested is approximately $3,600.00.

An interesting thing about this notebook is that almost everything can be upgraded. The CPU, GPU, RAM, Network and HDD are all readily accessible and can be upgraded in the future.

Three GPUs makes the video system the most interesting part of this notebook. You can run the provided GPUs in one of three configurations: IGP only, SLI only (IGP off) and Hybrid SLI (whereby all the GPUs and IGP work together). Switching between modes can be accomplished by using the BinaryFX or Stealth Mode hot keys. This may require a restart.

In terms of gaming performance, my preferred mode was Hybrid SLI (two 280m GTXs each with 1 GB of 256 bit 1,000 MHz GDDR3 helped out by the more modest Nvidia 9400m IGP) and it made quick work of every game I threw at the M17x. Each 128 core 280m GTX card is clocked at 583 MHz core, 1,450 MHz shader, and 1,900 MHz memory.

A listing of game test results and settings follows (The latest patched games were tested in intensive high action areas using FRAPS – except Batman where I used the built-in benchmark tool):

In terms of synthetic measurements, the M17x scored between 12,500 and 13,500 points in 3dmark06 depending on the driver version (the games were tested at stock clock speeds using the 195.62 Nvidia drivers).

As you can see, almost everything I threw at the M17x would run at its native LCD panel resolution of 1920*1200  and maximum settings. On really demanding games you might have to compromise Anti Aliasing but that is it. Crysis continues to pose problems for even the most powerful GPUs but I think we can attribute that to poor coding. Games like Far Cry 2, Batman and Resident Evil look much better and run better.

I think this demonstrates how wise it is to invest in strong video systems first when building a gaming PC as todays games are still very much still constrained by GPU performance.

This particular notebook’s upgraded Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 CPU is a cost-effective way to get all the performance you will need in games for the foreseeable future. For a modest premium over the entry-level 2.4 GHz P8600 CPU the T9600 has double the cache – this will help game and media performance. T9600 also costs considerably less than the M17x’s quad-core options and faster Core 2 Duos, but it can easily be overclocked to the 3.06 GHz of the top-of-the-line T9900 using the over-clocking settings within the M17x’s BIOS. At this time clock speed is still king in games with only a few exceptions.

What about Core i7 I hear you ask? Intel’s new architecture is better than Core 2 Duo/Quad. What makes it better is that the chip dynamically switches from slow and wide (1.6 GHz up to 8 threads) or narrow and fast (two threads and 2.8 GHz). This means no compromise in performance. For now the i7 is not available in the M17x.

If you have a PC that can hold you over a bit longer, it would be wise to do so. The new i7 CPUs are not socket compatible with the currently shipping M17x so a future upgrade to the new chip will be impossible.

Back to our test; Windows performance is almost a moot point with this much power. This is more power than Office will ever need. In terms of synthetic performance PCMark05 rates the M17x at 8005 points that beats every notebook I have tested before it and compares favorably to some desktops (like the iMac I recently tested).

If you are looking at the M17x as a mobile workstation you may want the added power of the Core 2 Quads. Or check to see if any of your favorite power apps will support CUDA, this is Nvidia’s API for allowing regular applications to harness the considerable power of your GPU(s) to accelerate performance. Rendering and media encoding apps are starting to appear with CUDA support.

Media playback is smooth, you can watch a HD movie and do other work quite easily.

With two 7200 rpm Hard Drives configured in RAID 0 (striped) the I/O performance of the M17x will only be surpassed by expensive Solid State Drives. Booting Windows and loading games is very snappy. At an average transfer rate of 139.7 MB/sec the M17x has the fastest mobile storage system I have ever tested.

Booting time was 1 minute 1 second to get to the Windows Vista x64 desktop. This included an almost 17 second POST sequence where the memory test and RAID initialization occurred.

All this power would normally come at the cost of heat and power consumption.  Alienware has designed the M17x around a no-compromise cooling system – at least that is my theory. I say this because the temps are so low, even under load. After hours of playing Batman Arkham Asylum, the highest external temperature I recorded was 42 Degrees Celsius near the right rear vent (right above one of the 280m GTX cards). That is amazing! GPU temperatures never exceeded 90 Degree Celsius.

Fan noise is noticable when gaming, but so what? Turn up the volume or use headphones. Alienware has designed a highly specialized gaming notebook – it can’t be all things to everyone. If you plan to use your notebook for audio production or in a quiet environment, keep looking.

On the topic of power consumption, battery life in stealth mode was approximately 60 minutes. If it takes you more than that long to run from plug to plug then the M17x is not for you. I did not buy the M17x for portability so the battery is more of a power failure backup feature than a mobility feature. Forget about playing games on battery power.

Network performance is a mixed bag. On the one hand hand you get lots of options (10/100/1000 Ethernet, 802.11n, Bluetooth, FIR) but on the other, they don’t all work. There are thread at NBR discussing network problems, I have not encountered them myself. I have encountered a scenario where my M17x can not see my Apple Time Capsule’s 5 Ghz 802.11n. Plain Jane 802.11g works fine so I use that as a fall back.

Finally, let’s look at the often overlooked audio performance. I still maintain the ADI makes the best audio codec chips, but the M17x comes with a solution from IDT. Like the touchpad, I prefer to run my computers without the bloated audio utility preferring the standard Windows driver instead. But in order to use HDMI audio you will need to use the IDT driver. Speaker performance is great – loud and clear.

Conclusion

Rating the value of a notebook like the Alienware M17x is a lot like the challenge of reviewing a Mac, a lot of what makes it special may not appeal to you. You have to pay for quality.

• Robust metal construction
• Sophisticated cooling design
• Upgradable components
• Personalization

In order to get these advantages you will pay a premium versus the Gateway FX line or the Asus RoG series. Personally, I think the starting prices for Alienware’s M15x and M17x are close enough to the prices of their nearest rivals to justify the added expense.

In the case of the M17x you pay for (and get) a lot.

Outstanding Issues

As mentioned at the outset of this article, I did encounter some issues with the M17x that were BIOS setting and driver related. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I am going to humbly admit that it was probably a problem caused by this user’s error. I turned-on something in the BIOS that I should not have. But that begs the question, why is that option even exposed to the end user?

Also, although I have not noticed it while using my M17x, there is an outstanding audio stuttering issue that as of this date has not been resolved by Alienware. A new BIOS that fixes the problem is promised, but proof is in the pudding.

A great resource for troubleshooting the M17x is here.

[update January 12, 2010]: My solution to the audio stuttering is to enable Hybrid Graphics Power Save mode. This uses the integrated 9400m IGP when in Windows, only powering the two 280m GTX cards when you start a game. This works great and has the added bonus of consuming less electricity.

At this point, the source of the stuttering is agreed by most M17x users to be caused by the Nvidia GPU power state polling algorithm.

Verdict: Writing this in late 2009, I have to believe that an Intel i7 revision to the M17x is coming soon. That is my only reservation.