Starcraft or Diablo?

Just read the software documentation whether it utilized the graphics card's processor or not. To make sure that it does, run a movie and check your CPU utilization percentage under Task Manager. If it really uses the GPU only, your CPU utilization should remain idle or slightly above idle.

Like I said, you need a CUDA accelerated player to do so. CoreAVC is one of them.

Follow this link for more details:-
http://imouto.my/watching-h264-videos-usin...hitecture-cuda/

Mainly geared towards those watching HD anime, but it works fine for other HD files as well. As for me, I don't intend to use my M11X other than gaming. That may change when I can get my hands on that blasted external Blu-ray drive, but Blu-ray playback is accommodated by its own specific player like Cyberlink PowerDVD, and that player is already included in the M11X. Load up your PowerDVD on your M11X and it'll prompt for registration and updates itself to the latest version that supports Blu-ray playback.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Mar 8 2010, 10:12 AM

I don't understand the immediate need to disable the battery using the FN+F2. If the M11X is like anything a modern laptop should be, it'll stop charging once fully charged. The only reason I see you'd need the FN+F2 feature is when you're running the M11X exclusively as a desktop; meaning you keep it plugged all the time. If you're doing that then a laptop it isn't.

Seriously, am I missing something here? Are we still relying on old myths that keeping battery charged while on AC will somewhat decrease battery life? I say that old myth is busted already.

Looking at Dell's own Battery FAQ:-

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global....c=us&l=en&cs=04

there aren't any mention of having to disconnect or FN+F2 as a measure to prolong battery life. I'd like to think that other computer manufacturing entities have at lease catch up with Apple's own battery technology that the fear of overcharging or battery performance decrease over time myth have already been dispelled. If anything, it's the OS itself reporting wrong battery information resulting in that "fear" of leaving it charged on AC = battery life decrease. This is wrong.

I've experience the wring battery life info itself when I switched to integrated graphics and run the power plan at "Battery Saver" on the M11X. The battery endurance timer slowly increases from 2hr25min to 5hr45min over time as the Speedstep feature readjusts and recalculated the real battery life.

I've an old 2007 Macbook White myself with it being plugged into the AC all time for close to a year as I was using it as iTunes server for my VOD system at home. After relieving it of that duty and running solely on battery later, it still reports decent battery life. The same case with my previous 17' Qosmio. Certainly heavy and performed as desktop replacement. Plugged all the time, no exception, to AC as it remained immobile all the time. Unplugged it and after a customary system maintainance before I sold it off to my South African buddy, it still reports comparable battery life on its own battery alone.

In short, modern batteries and its battery management mechanism is smart enough to manage itself to not stress itsef so as to the detriment of its own battery life. I have yet to see any PC manufacturer failing to use any form of smart battery management of their own. Certainly not a company as established as Dell, and most certainly not a product that is advertised as long battery endurance as the M11X.

All these "remove battery or stop battery charging when full" nonsense are just conjectures and age-old FUD spread by those who don't know how battery technology and its management has evolved to mow. You say this in year 1990-2000 I'd probably agree but we've moved on already beyond all these nitty-gritty nonsense.

Even the with the new Li-Ion, and Li-Polymer batteries these days, battery cycles are a moot point as well. All these "don't let your battery drain fully or it will never retain its full charge" nonsense doesn't apply anymore. Battery "memory" it no longer an issue unless you're buying a super old laptop.

Time to get with the times, fellas.

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Added on March 8, 2010, 1:57 pmCoreAVC. Get that.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Mar 8 2010, 01:57 PM

I'd like to think that the reason the Fn+F2 doesn't work is because unless you are planning to use the M11X as a desktop, it is not even necessary. If you're planning yo run it totally on AC alone, it's a desktop already. If you run AC with battery attached, the technology is smart enough to charge the battery till full and then stop charging and run completely on AC as well. So why would you need the Fn+F2 again?

If you already want to run it solely on AC alone with the battery removed, then you'd only need to turn on that feature ONCE in the BIOS, and that's it! You wouldn't have the need to fiddle with it anymore ever, because you're already gonna run it solely on AC only wouldn't it, meaning not turning it off? If you say that you wanna occasionally run it with battery attached then guess what? You had to restart, right? That restart resets that "run on AC/Fn+F2" you just did previously and voilà! All set!

Makes sense isn't it?

Either way it is not a big deal as some makes it to be. You'd think that it's a big deal because of the FUD you're hearing about the failure to disconnect the battery when full would damage it. That FUD/myth has already busted and beaten to the ground already.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Mar 8 2010, 02:09 PM

I'm sure 3 years is more than enough time to save that much money. Even more importantly, are you sure by then that your battery would still be available? Unless you get a lemon of a battery, 2-3years is a good enough estimate of how long your battery can perform before depleting.

Plus, the M11X is a gaming laptop. It will always be stressed because you're pushing it beyond the means of which a normal conventional laptops would. If that sense, you'd be using the AC more often when gaming wouldn't it? That also mean less usage of the battery and the times when you need battery/mobility, you'd be turning to integrated GFX and processor down-throttle anyway.

Again, I don't see a big deal out of this.

Play with VLC and see if the audio is still missing. If it is then that very rare, seeing that VLC will play absolutely everything thrown at it. Otherwise, it may be the fault of the encoding of the file itself, which I assume is a "torrent" or a "download". You'd have to seek out the encoder of the file to check what audio format he uses.(MP3, OGG, etc)

To those looking for the elusive external USB powered Blu-ray drive, of all places, Dell has it!

http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/product...1&sku=357-10125



Damn, I feel so foolish! Looked far and wide, when the damned thing is available from Dell themselves.

You did!!? Where? I'm sorry if I missed it.

End of this month gonna get it. Unless I find one in Frankfurt.

Media Markt in Nordwestzentrum doesn't have much of a selection. Saturn has since moved to occupy the swank new mall on the Zeil shopping area, that's a better bet than Media Markt. Not holding my breath though, both of them hold more desktop related accessories than laptops, based from my previous shopping experience with them. Another problem purchasing with these two stores is that they only accept either cash or EC card, not credit cards, which I find ridiculously stupid. I don't wanna be carrying large sum of money with me.

Buying from Amazon = troublesome to ship here. Have to ship via mail forwarding service. Buying from Amazon then ship to Ameican address = have to wait for either my work trip there or my yearly holiday spent with my love ones there. Either options will have to wait. I'd like to take a look at the item and have it straight in hand when buying things like this.

Do not get the Roccat Kave for the M11X, the M11X lack the ports to drive this headphones properly. It requires three separate analog port (front, center, and rear with sub shared) for surround, otherwise it's stereo.

I'm not gonna repeat myself, since I've already posted the virtues, the pros and cons of the headphones I was considering, a few pages back. I'm not a walking encyclopedia.

For stereo gaming headphones, get the Sennheiser PC350. For surround gaming headphones , get the Logitech G35. Google them up for their excellent reviews , praises and deficiencies.

Next time, come early Michael. I had the G35 with me when we met last time. Everything was in such a hurry that there wasn't time to get it used proper.

For the M11X, the only way to get surround sound is via USB only. There are no Toslink, or optical port that can be used for surround, nor are there any PORTABLE gaming headphones that uses Toslink/optical input that does not require driving via a separate amp or additional power adapter.

I travel light. I like everything to be either powered on its own, or powered by the onboard solution on the M11X. Adding another additional amp which requires another power source, or needing to find additional power point, is a big no. The headphones with these options immediately get scratched off my "To buy" list because of that. Hence my non-inclusion of the previous Razer Megalodon and Psyko 5.1. Psyko even need FOUR separate ports (front, center, rear and SUB) to get surround.

Then there is the case of gaming headphones vs hi-fi headphones. Unless you're using the M11X as a portable jukebox, there is not reason to stick to using hi-fi headphones on the M11X. Musically-inclined hi-fi headphones will always be better than any gaming headphones. If you're the silent type and does not voice chat on the mic, then I suppose a normal hi-fi headphones will do, but then again, what are you doing gaming silently without multiplayer interaction?

I find it funny, Michael, that you are willing to spend much on the accessories, but treat your games as "expendables" and getting them pirated. The excuse of "student mah, no money" applies to all aspect, including buying expensive peripherals as well, not just games.

Going for the "looks" when shopping for headphones, is already a big mistake. If that fits the bill, you'd be getting those flashier Skullcandies instead, and end up with horrible soundstage.

You just posted the solution. Buy original game, install, and patch it with the No-CD patch. The game remains legal, with no penalties on performance. Or get it from Steam or Direct2Drive, which are direct downloads.

You saw the Slot-loader I had, it's the size of the DVD itself. Silent running as well. Hardly something that would impose on you in terms of weight or size.

Most importantly, the games are running as it should. No more second-guessing like "why aaa, framerate drop?" or "why aaa, my 3DMark score low?". For all I know, your installs and your involvement with using Limewire and torrents would already planted more background running processes that cannot be undone unless you remove the culprit.

On a gaming system, you need it to be tweaked and kept running as minimum as possible, that why you see those guys at NBR are even particualr about how much CPU percentage and background processes are running when idle. Sure, you can add on programs and all, but with the addition of more and more programs, your registry gets bloated, and in some cases, as you saw, they add startup entries that loads up before everything else loads, before you can even move your cursor on Windows desktop. All these eats into the available system resource, and you get decreased performance.

Your choice. I want my M11X working like a slick, well-oiled machine just like from the day it arrived. I kept it well maintained, and avoid using/installing anything that introduces elements that will erode the gaming performance, such as pirated copies, bloated programs that runs in the background, or needed to be running first before anything else. If I want to be extreme, I'd be using Blackviper's Windows 7 super Tweak to pare everything down to absolute minimum, and have it running even better, but I'd rather have some for of eye candy and nice UI than a blank desktop and plain looking themes.

Which is also the reason why a lot of folks needed their system reformatted after a certain amount of time, because they've failed to do basic maintainance, installed so much nonsense and useless programs, and are not careful with where their programs are from (pirated discs/file downloads), that the whole system becomes unstable, or slowed down to a crawl, that requires a fresh reinstall to get it back running again. If you want to go through this troublesome ritual, then be my guest.I want as little upkeep as possible, while keeping my system squeaky clean and running smoothly. I dont want to introduce elements that are detrimental to my system that may erode its performance later on.

With that, I don't think there's any help if you wanna dabble with piracy or pirated downloads. Only you know where you get it from, and it's your responsibility to find a way to return your system to its previous working state. I've had many people coming back to me asking me to help them repair their system, only to see what blatant disregard they have when it comes to their habits of installing files that they don't know where it comes from, and then damaging their system's performance. When it comes to that, I just ask them to reformat, and refrain from repeating the same nonsense again, which they fail to comply because it is their habit.

Instilling good habits from the start will avoid having to face the pain later. Believe it or not, I had my M15X for 2 years already, and never do I have to reformat, reinstall or repair anything on it, and it ran games and benchmark as good as it does the moment I opened it up two years ago.

Go one step further, if you decide to follow 300078's advice. After everything up and running smoothly, create a restore point. That way you can return to it should you mess up anything or installed something that degrades its performance.

I go one step even further. I create a bootable system image BASED on that restore point. That way, if I cannot get it to turn back to that restore point, I can "turn back time" and reinstall my system back to the point where it is working based on the image I've created. This can be accessed from the "Backup and Restore" option in the Control Panel.

My point is, Windows is a volatile and dynamic platform, anything can change in the blink of an eye, when you open a website, a prompt asks if it can install a plugin, when you download and install a program, you allow access to vulnerable system files in your computer. Creating options to return it back to its working state is not only logical, it may save you the whole lot of hassle reinstalling the whole damned thing later. I don't wanna go through reinstalling the OS and all my games, that's 200GB++ worth! So I upkeep it properly and pair it with good habits. Remember, there are no warranties for installing pirated products, you alone are responsible for what it does to your system.

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Added on March 9, 2010, 10:59 amActually, all these things should NOT have to be told, it should come as common knowledge. We all use computers on daily basis, but I noticed that not everyone is taught on how to maintain the computers optimally. Only when things starts to go wrong only you start to worry.

As a gamer on PC, not only all this should come as common knowledge, you should even go one step above a normal user, you need to tweak and improve your system beyond the level of a basic computer user. If you can't even properly maintain your computer, I shudder of how messy your gaming laptop would look after a few month of use.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Mar 9 2010, 11:01 AM

Getting a pirated copy is not a NEED, it's a WANT. Anything beyond the form of a NEED, can be deferred till later after it can be obtained legally. There is no leeway or wiggling room for getting something that you WANT illegally.

I stand corrected. How's the volume, it's loud enough? I ran into problems with the PC350, because the headphones is not as loud as I wanted it to be, well.....not as loud as the G35.

But as you pointed out, you lose the mic. No multiplayer voice chat in exchange for surround.

Bought one at ViewNet for RM355.

If you want PC and PS3 compatibility, you'd have to look for the Tritton AX Pro/180/720 models.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Mar 9 2010, 03:00 PM

Yup, it works if you're not using the mic often. This is your Zalman, right?

The Tritton lineup would be perfect if it doesn't have those amp box(AX Pro) or the decoder box(AX720). Just need a neat single USB out to the M11X would be enough.

The G35 works with any PC that has USB port. That is how the audio's transferred to the headphones, from stereo right up to 7.1. Further fiddling can be done at the Logitech G35 sound setup installed with the headphones. PC only I'm afraid, PS3 does not work. That would be sweet if it does.