Reminds me of my 2 high-five palms on my Dell Inspiron 1420 with the defective nVidia Geforce 8400M GS.

Just noticed that your rig has almost the same specs as my Sager. Both also 17.3 inch.

How's the feel on the palm rest of M17X-R3 during gaming, still hot till your hand sweats?

GreaseMonkey90 should be the first M18X owner in the owner list :]
His laptop is a lovely beastie :]

hmm...not updated?

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 27 2011, 09:32 PM

I estimate at least RM 6.5k for M15X-R3 with 6970m since M17X-R3 with 6970m is already close to 9k. Hardly you can see any price drop on dell laptop, because they normally refresh their products with newer hardware with the same price. Unless you are willing to purchase a second hand one from someone who is willing to let go next time, but I doubt he/she is willing to sell it off at RM 6k for a M17X-R3 with 6970m.

Sager is a cheaper option though, with 17.3" FHD in the NP8170 that comes with HD6970m, it costs you RM 6k at least including shipping cost, but I guess you are looking into something fancy on the exterior, so Sager might not be the choice.

I don't recommend buying a new graphics card to replace the graphics card in laptop. Unlike desktop, laptop's graphics card tends to be very expensive if you buy the graphics card alone. Normally it is cheaper to upgrade the graphics card in your laptop during the purchase of laptop. And again, not all laptop motherboard can support all types of graphics card even though these days laptop graphics card on gaming laptop are MXM (Mobile PCI Express Module). Some might be able to fit in perfectly but you will have heat issue due to incompatibility, or some require larger PSU (AC Adapter).


I can see M17X-R3 comes with at least i7-2720m. Perhaps Asus G73SW is a good option too, at least it comes with i7-2630m, but they don't have an option to upgrade to 6970M. Again, Sager is the one that allows more freedom of customization.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 30 2011, 03:02 PM

Hahaha, I estimate only. It is quite low already at 6.5k for Alienware.
I remember the last time I saw GTX 460M on M15X is already 6.6k to 6.8k.
Then they changed it to HD5850 and it was priced at around 6.3k.

So, for HD6970M, 6.5k is just rough estimation lol.
To be frank, even if it is between RM 7k - 7.5k, I won't be surprised because Sager NP8150 that comes with HD6970M is already RM 5.8k or close to RM 6k.

Yup, buying the GPU itself is always more expensive. My NP8170-S1 was originally GTX 460M, and I customized it by topping up USD 145 to have it upgraded to HD6970M.

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Added on May 30, 2011, 3:24 pmDoes alienware provide drivers & utilities dvd? I thought they should provide it as the AMD Graphics Card Driver should be in it?

Or the other one is download from Dell website?

There you go. It's for Windows 7 (64-bit).
http://support.ap.dell.com/support/downloa...anConsent=False

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 30 2011, 03:28 PM

Yea, your M15X comes with HD5870M, so upgrading to HD6970M....hmm...

As far as I know, M17X-R3 and Sager NP8170 do not make a lot of difference besides the M17X-R3's attractive exterior that comes with a 3.2 mega pixel webcam as compared to a Sager's conversative exterior with a 2.0 mega pixel webcam. Both have 17.3" FHD and cooling system is the same as both come with dual fans.

@julchin_09

Haha, the graphics card alone for AMD HD6970M is USD 550 from RJTech, not USD800, so should be better for you now.

GTX 485M is USD 750.

Both graphics cards come with heatsink.

AMD HD6970M
http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=...roduct_id=30046

GTX 485M
http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=...roduct_id=30038

I believe it's easy to clean an M15X, saw the disassembly video on youtube :]