Alienware m11x r2 overclock: Overclocked Performance: Win Some, Lose Some

Alienware m11x laptop review / Sudo Null IT News As many of you probably know, Alienware specializes in performance PCs and laptops. Until recently, they had 15-inch and 17-inch models in their fleet, and now they have decided to take the 11-inch line.

What they did, I’ll tell you.

In general, I have always had a weakness for such devices, at first I even wanted to take the HP Mini 311c-1010ER on the ion, but when alienware was announced, I was stunned. The announcement said about 8 hours of battery life, a full-fledged discrete graphics card capable of running most games, at maximum settings and in a small size, what more can you dream of? 🙂

Configuration

Processor :
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 (1.3 GHz, 800 MHz, 3 MB) (officially overclocked to 1700mhz via BIOS)
RAM:
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 800MHz
Video card:
1) NVIDIA Geforce GT 335M (www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-335M.24060.0.html)
2) Integrated, based on Intel GS45 chipset
Hard drive:
Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive
Shield:
11.6 inches (29.5 cm) glossy LED backlit 1366×768 pixels
Size / weight:
(width x depth x thickness): 285 x 233 x 33 mm, weight: 2 kg.

Appearance

The top is made of a matte plastic that does catch fingerprints though. True, it is enough to wipe it once and they will not be.

The left side is rich in connectors, from left to right: kensington lock, vga, usb, lan, hdmi, display port, card reader, IEEE 1394a (why is it needed in 2010 is a mystery)

On the right side: 2 usb, 2 headphone outputs and a microphone input. If you enable multi-channel output in realtek audio drivers, then the ports will become: front pair of speakers, rear pair and center.

Only cooler exhaust port and power adapter connection on the back.

At the bottom, there is a sticker with a service tag (using which you can download firewood for your config from the Dell website, as well as get service support), a battery charge indicator, as well as a cooler air intake.

After removing the cover, we get access to the hard drive, RAM, 2 mini pci boards and the battery. Notice how the speakers are placed.

Inside the plastic is rough, which can not but rejoice. Fingerprints do not remain, do not get dirty, hands do not slip off. The touchpad is made of pimply material, fingers do not catch (as on HP’s glossy touchscreen) and it’s a pleasure to use it.

The keyboard is made of some kind of soft touch, slightly easily soiled, fingers do not slip. I have no complaints about the layout, but I am unpretentious in this regard, except that the arrows could be bigger.

But the screen, in my opinion, is not very successful. Glossy and covered with transparent plastic.

— Backlight

Another highlight of Alienware laptops is the backlight. Almost everything glows here: the cooler, the logo on the lid, the logo inside, the name of the laptop, the keyboard, the “eyes” on the front panel, and the notification icons. The color of some of these things can be adjusted in the Alien FX utility, the interface looks like this: i6. fastpic.ru/big/2010/0419/31/6f71475c8004dc30a3052bf882fde731.png
Video demonstration:

I must admit, in idle, this control center constantly loads the processor, so I found an alternative written in java:
ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1403399
Demo:

It performs its functions and does not load the computer.

In general, I can say that the laptop is built to last, no parts of the case bend, the bottom is generally made of aluminum, nothing dangles or creaks, in general — solid brick.

Testing

The laptop was bought for games on the road, so almost from the first minutes of acquaintance I went to test the games. I deleted the pre-installed Windu by rolling a clean seven home premium 64, and also overclocked the percentage from 1.3 to 1.7. Drivers are all official.
For clarity, I shot the gameplay on the camera, the format is simple: the first seconds of the video are the settings menu, and then the gameplay with fraps turned on.

Left 4 Dead 2

It runs great, at maximum settings, which is why it is the source engine.

Half-Life 2 – Episode 2

Same source and again great performance. It sags a couple of times, but then I went overboard with the FSAA.

Fallout 3

It runs fine, even on ultra settings, at the end I found a place with 20 fps and lowered it to high quality, the picture almost did not change, and the fps became 40.

Bioshock 2

The unreal engine, as always, is democratic in terms of system resources, so the game runs smoothly.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Here, the maximum settings turned out to be too tough, 23 fps on average, but people are pressing up to a playable frame rate, I haven’t delved into it yet.

TES Oblivion

Goes without slips.

The Sabouteur

The maximum graphics settings and high CPU dependence do their job, the frame rate sags.

Gothic 3 1.74 patch

It goes well, but because of the crookedness of the engine, constant loading from hard, hence jerks.

Unreal Tournament 3

It goes well, but subsidence occurs on large-scale stages. But, do not forget that the graphics are at the maximum.

Just Cause 2

I play on TV, via HDMI, on joe from 360th. The framerate is not very high, but when the frequency drops below 30 the game gradually slows down and this creates only the effect of smoothness, not brakes. You can live.

This is what I made videos for. From the rest that I have tested, they are great: Mirrors Edge, Tomb Raider Underworld, Thief III Deadly Shadows, Crysis (on average, of course, but I have not studied it yet).

Other people are great at running Mass Effect 2, World of Warcraft, Star Craft 2. In general, any non-CPU dependent games run well. Any unreal engine games are fine. In total, in terms of games, there are no special problems. Somewhere, of course, brakes climb, but they can be completely defeated by lowering the graphics settings.

Battery life

Another notable feature is the claim of 8 hours of battery life. I ran 2 tests. For starters, I just worked on the Internet (youtube, surfing, played a little on the snes emulator, skype). With the backlight killed, Intel graphics and Wi-Fi turned on, the laptop lived for exactly 5 hours. Then I turned off the wifi and recorded several mouse actions (opening and scrolling through pictures, copy-paste from one text document to another), and turned on endless repetition. In this mode, the laptop worked for 7 hours and 16 minutes.
Demo (though in English) here:

Final screenshot: i6.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0419/df/e9ba5e9a7e44556ef190e0d585fb75df.png

Alien Sence utilities, you can teach the laptop to log in using face, the computer recognized you and logged in, you can switch users in the same way.

— In a laptop, a hybrid video card is installed, there is an Intel video chip and there is a discrete graphics geforce 335. Switching between them occurs without rebooting through a simple key combination fn + f6. When switching to intel, discrete graphics are turned off and do not consume power. If some application is running that accesses the GPU, a window pops up that indicates what kind of application it is, so it will not be difficult to figure out the scoundrel.

— As for heating, everything is rosy here, it does not heat up when surfing the Internet, if the cooler is working, then cool air often drives. When playing games, the maximum GPU warmed up to 63.

— 1080 remixes play without problems with DXVA, just install the latest Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

— The sound is traditional for such small cars, Harman Kardon does not smell here. Plus the speakers are oddly placed, with the left speaker in the left corner while the right one is almost in the middle. The sound does not come out of the «eyes» but from the bottom.

Price

When the review was written, the laptop was not yet on sale with us, only a brief announcement. Now there are «shuttle» copies, 50,000 rubles each. However, by the summer they promise from 35,000 rubles a model similar to my configuration. I’m sorry I didn’t point it out right away.

Conclusions

What can I say? Satisfied of course. A small machine, it calmly pulls everything you want, and what doesn’t pull, you can twist it to pull it. Battery life exceeded my expectations, to be honest, I thought this can only be seen on frail business laptops.

Pros:
Small size
Powerful graphics card
~ 7 hours battery life
Good build

Cons:
Weak sound
Marky screen
Weak, compared to the video card, processor

P.s. There is also a fly in the ointment. I received a sample of not very high quality, I found 1 dead pixel, a whole group of brightly glowing pixels and a speck of dust under the plastic. i6.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0419/38/8b970ae2ccc235be8c55f131f644f338.jpg
And since I bought it in Denmark, then I can only count on service there.