wow. nice "Mothership" you got. very systematically done. just drop by here to do some research (hope you welcome the stranger ).
So far, have m15x and m11x experience any major problem? I read the reviews by google-ing. it says problems were the weight, fan noise, keyboard noise plus plus. no offence .
i love gaming and i had my own studio xps 16 which i found that her graphics performance wasn't enough for me (soon for new games like MW3, DB3++).
i'm a college student studying away from home. but moving constantly back home weekly. is m15x or m11x ideal for me? thanks in advance for all the sifus around.

I think M11x is ideal for moving around, but the GPU on the M15x will be a better performer and closer in size to your XPS (Screen = 15.6"). But with the M15x you'll have to carry double the weight if you don't mind plus a bag which can fit a 17" notebook. Both GPUs are more capable than the GPU on your currnet XPS thus I feel can play games like Diablo3 and Modern Warfare though I can readily say from a M15x point of view but iirc Playing those on the M11x was fine as well minus Diablo 3 which hasn't been launched..

well, if u really went into gaming, M15x will be ur best choice. as M11x is for portable and battery life, not really for gaming purpose ^^

weight, i guess isn't a problem with a backpack, will get used to it soon enough
how does the battery life do? did the 9-cell battery spoilt the whole laptop appearance?
how about the heat? is it produce a lotta heat when high performance mode?
its has a really bulky design but cool though.

Battery life for the m15X with the 9 Cell is about an hour with gaming or less even. The added hump of the 9cell does make it more difficult for me to store the notebook in my backpack notebook compartment so I think taking out the battery might be a soloution.

Go for the M17x.

I've tested all on MAX on Mafia II, Metro 2033 and SC II... average fps about 40-60 fps and the GPU runs at around 80'C at 635MHz with shaders at 1558MHz and Memory Clock at 1100MHz~

...
Are you serious?
You can run Metro2033 at max setting and average FPS is 40-60?

My desktop (i7 930 @ 4.0Ghz, 6gb RAM, 285GTX @718/1325) can't run metro2033 at max setting lol, it runs but what, 10-30fps? :/

Maybe 1366x768?

I run the game at 720p, at medium (some high) and sometimes when it got intensed the FPS can drop to 20 - -
Average was 60+ I guess.

I haven't tried Metro 2033.. Looks super demanding for my desktop..

This post has been edited by Eugene91: Sep 12 2010, 02:29 PM

You should try. Really taxes your GPU but I love the graphic details and smoke etc.

For the GTX 260M I managed to play only high smoothly with a bit of OC. With the ATI 5870 I managed better fps which I can say is around 30fps smoothness with DX11 Settings Tesselation ON and Advanced DOF OFF but everything else on VERY HIGH. I doubt I reach 40-60fps during battle scenes....

o.o what's the battery life under stealth mode with all the conservative settings?

No idea. You can't run stealth mode using battery last I checked. I would say if you can underclock everything, still less than 2 hours....?

There is no stealth mode.
There is only a "make my laptop useless please" button.

lol

Wakakaka

i lol-ed!

so that stealth mode thing is only a gimmick?or was it an unsolved bug by dell for a long time?

coz i was planning to use tht stealth mode when i bring my laptop to college to do some projects and browsing the web...of coz not gaming