Clevo/vortex 2 or Alienware m17 r3?

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djkeenan

Member
Ok guys this is gonna be a long one but i hope you can help as i have spent hours pouring through equally biased reviews of the clevo np8170hm laptop and the alienware m17x r3. I know you guys may be a little biased but i want the Clevo alot more than i want the alienware

Ok, so what im looking for is the most basic laptop i can get my hands on with a quality screen and a HD990m minimum for less than £1100 (but i can eat bake beans for the rest of the year if i have to spend an extra £100 )

To start i will post the basic spec of the 2 laptops starting with the alienware:

English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
Alienware M17x Stealth Black
Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 2670QM (2.20Ghz, 6MB, 4C)
2GB GDDR5 AMD® Radeon™ HD 6990M
4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x2048]
320GB (7,200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
17.3" WideFHD (1920 x 1080) WLED LCD
DVD+/-RW (DVD, CD read and write)
Dell Wireless 1501 wireless-N - EUR

price £1170 using quidco cashback and 15% off offer


And the Clevo spec (btw this is from pcspecialist.co.uk):

Vortex II: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i3 Dual Core Mobile Processor i3-2330M (2.20GHz) 3MB (i choose i3 because someone mentioned it will make little difference on high resolution due to the i3 being a sandy bridge. Also i know some games are quad core but i can upgrade later)
2GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 2GB) (i have another 2 gigs at home)
2GB AMD® Radeon® HD 6990M - DirectX® 11 (17.3" Vortex II)
250GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm) (i have a 320gb 7200rpm at home)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW) (for some reason i cant select none anymore even though i want to use my own disc drive!)
ARCTIC COOLING MX-3 HIGH THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9) (keeps it colder prolonging life)
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19) (is this worth it? how many you guys got a dead pixel in the first year of use?)
(i have my own OS that uni gave me)

price: £1101 or £1200 with the same cpu as the alienware (i7 2670m)

Now from all the reivews ive read i have gathered this info:

Clevo case is quiet and runs cold and the alienware fans sound like a hairdryer and burns peoples laps because it gets so hot.

Some reviewers say the clevo chirclet keyboard is "grade A" some say its good but too noisy and others say its terrible. Mixed bag with the mousepad too. Alienware gets good review all around with slight keyboard flex mentioned.

m17s screen is better than the vortexs

How much of the above is true?

Please answer. I really, really need some help as trying to decide how to spend so much money is making my head hurt

p.s i can see the dell has a greater price performance ratio but i really hate the alien head and if its cheaper to get the vortex with the i3 and the pretty case then im all for it!
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
whoever told you that you only need an i3 is a bit of an idiot really, you are gonna need a quad core, and you can phone up and as for PCS to supply your laptop without a hard drive or optical drive
 
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Iceash

Bronze Level Poster
My advice is don't go to dell, recently bought an aurora desktop, which had nothing but issues, from the start, trying to get in touch with ppl from dell became a real issue, so after 6 days it was sent back for a refund, as for the alienware check their alien owners club forums there are several issues posted, about lvl of service/drivers/and motherboards, even believe it or not to show dell are lazy there is a post about the sent resource disk, that what ever you do don't reload the command center from it (this screws up the motherboard), real pain if you don't check their forums first as no warning given with the disk.

If you are running a later version of Command Center, you cannot revert to the older version contained in the Resource DVD that was shipped with your system. Customers who reinstall Windows or uninstall Command Center, and then reinstall must be careful to not use the Resource DVD to reinstall Command Center as the firmware on your system board (laptops) or the firmware on your MIO board (desktops) may become corrupted necessitating a system board or MIO board exchange.

check here for more info http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/default.aspx
 
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Tehmoe

Gold Level Poster
I was in the same exact boat as you looking at getting either a r3 from the dell outlet (Going by the price of the spec guessing your doing the same), or something else. Then I came across Clevo/sager laptops and all the hype around them was just crazy but there really wasn't much about it here in the UK. The I read about how dodgy kobalt was and very scared of what other company's would be like. I found PCS after awhile and it had nothing but great reviews, so at the time I was planning to be a hardcore laptop gamer so I spec'd up systems and overall the r3 tend to be better money from the outlet as the same spec machine would tend to be a bit more from PCS.

However after I did a lot of research I found out a few things, both laptops will get hot under gaming but overall the cooling on the clevos were great and when you were not playing games they tend to cool much better. For the screen the Clevo are amazing from the reviews Ive read they were just the best. In terms of upgrading PCS offer you the option to send the laptop back and they will upgrade.

I have also read that the new r3 are mostly plastic were as the r2 were mostly metal so the build wont be as good. The great thing about the r3 are the lights, back lit keyboard and general flash so if thats your thing might be better. the Clevo not having a back lit keyboard is basically the only let down I can see.

Overall I went with the Clevo as it had better build, screen, and CS.
 
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djkeenan

Member
@tehmore i gotta stop you and ask where you read the screen was better? at Anandtech the alienware screen has double the white balance of the new clevo screen (im guessing pcspecialist use the new clevo hannspar screen rather than the crap LG panel from 2009) about 300 nits which is perfect for well lit environments where as the clevo would struggle in a dark room. Colour gamut is 10% lower in the clevo but the colour accuracy is about 20% better. Its a tough toss up but i rekon the alienware wins because it would have less glare due to higher white balance. Would i be correct in saying this? Reason i ask is i will be using the laptop at uni in a well lit room.

Basically the only thing holding me back getting the clevo is the screen i dont really care about the rubbish battery life.
 
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djkeenan

Member
@wozza i got that particular info from someone called "wr7" at toms hardware and i think he knows his stuff. And it makes perfect sense that as resolution increases then dependency on the processor decreases and the graphics card becomes a much great performance provider. I would rather have a powerful gpu with a slight cpu bottleneck than a gtx560 which really isnt much of a performer. Atleast upgrading the i3 if needed will be easy and until then i can play any game on ultra with the shadows turned down/off and the AA at 2x (thats all a cpu really seems to calculate)
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
upgrading a laptop CPU isnt easy, ive tried getting to a CPU in multiple laptops and its proven near impossible, there is a lot of dirt that clogs up the screws it seems and i ended up scuffing the ends of screwdrivers trying to do it, get a good CPU now, trust me it will be a big bottleneck if you plan gaming at very high settings as they all require a quad core, and you will not even have a decent dual core processor, meaning you'll be lucky for medium, you'll be bottlenecked a lot by your CPU
 
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Tehmoe

Gold Level Poster
djkeenan said:
@tehmore i gotta stop you and ask where you read the screen was better? at Anandtech the alienware screen has double the white balance of the new clevo screen (im guessing pcspecialist use the new clevo hannspar screen rather than the crap LG panel from 2009) about 300 nits which is perfect for well lit environments where as the clevo would struggle in a dark room. Colour gamut is 10% lower in the clevo but the colour accuracy is about 20% better. Its a tough toss up but i rekon the alienware wins because it would have less glare due to higher white balance. Would i be correct in saying this? Reason i ask is i will be using the laptop at uni in a well lit room.

Basically the only thing holding me back getting the clevo is the screen i dont really care about the rubbish battery life.
Click to expand...

For me personally the color accuracy was much more important and as I tend to my laptop only in my room the light didn't matter for me but I guess this isnt the case for everyone. Can't remember exactly were I read the review but it said it was one of the best screen for a laptop.

djkeenan said:
@wozza i got that particular info from someone called "wr7" at toms hardware and i think he knows his stuff. And it makes perfect sense that as resolution increases then dependency on the processor decreases and the graphics card becomes a much great performance provider. I would rather have a powerful gpu with a slight cpu bottleneck than a gtx560 which really isnt much of a performer. Atleast upgrading the i3 if needed will be easy and until then i can play any game on ultra with the shadows turned down/off and the AA at 2x (thats all a cpu really seems to calculate)
Click to expand...

This is true if you normally look at benchmarks you see the FPS get alot closers as the CPU changes, however the difference between the 2 cpus is quiet alot so I would make sure you check for actual numbers before making a big purchase.

Wozza365 said:
upgrading a laptop CPU isnt easy, ive tried getting to a CPU in multiple laptops and its proven near impossible, there is a lot of dirt that clogs up the screws it seems and i ended up scuffing the ends of screwdrivers trying to do it, get a good CPU now, trust me it will be a big bottleneck if you plan gaming at very high settings as they all require a quad core, and you will not even have a decent dual core processor, meaning you'll be lucky for medium, you'll be bottlenecked a lot by your CPU
Click to expand...

Ive personally taken the CPU out of my old dell XPS M1530 when I was changing my paste and it didn't seem to be too difficult and with these Clevo laptops its actual aimed at upgrade, if need be he can send it back to PCS and they would do it for him so its a very viable option.
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
oh, the main problem was getting to it, taking it off and changing is easy, just getting the case of the laptops off
 
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djkeenan

Member
Ok you guys are convincing me to get quad core but dont forget the new sandy bridge i3s have 4 threads so can do 4 processes at once like the i7 and also at the moment i can only think of two games that uses quad core tech and thats Grand Theft Auto and saints row. I do want to get saints row though... wont 4 threads be the same as 4 cores though?
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
im not sure about threads, you would need to talk to someone else about that, infact, sr3 is one of the only games that seems to be able to run max settings on a dual core, bf3, cod, gta, nfs etc all require a quad core for max settings, although, the clocks can be very low
 
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Tehmoe

Gold Level Poster
I think on PC the i3 is enough to max out games however not exactly sure with laptops, also isn't the i5 the chip with the 4 threads and i3 just has 2 core and 2 threads, not 100% sure also like I said just get some actual numbers and if they prove the i3 is maxing out games then its more than enough.
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
Tehmoe said:
I think on PC the i3 is enough to max out games however not exactly sure with laptops, also isn't the i5 the chip with the 4 threads and i3 just has 2 core and 2 threads, not 100% sure also like I said just get some actual numbers and if they prove the i3 is maxing out games then its more than enough.
Click to expand...

yeh i checked, its got 4 threads, i imagine the PC one would do much better than the laptop
 
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djkeenan

Member
Hey guys if you look at the link below you will see the i3 2330m ranks 67th best cpu in the world at the moment and is very closely matched 3dmark06 score to the i7 620M which is 39th. I know sythetic benchmarks are not much to go by so if anyone knows some real world benchmarks to back up my claim that would be much appreciated although i dont think anyones ever made a hd6990m laptop with an i3 core.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html
 
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Tehmoe

Gold Level Poster
djkeenan said:
really awesome review here to http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

I think people getting i7 sandy cores may be wasting their moeny as the i3 toasts even the famous q6600 quad core. I know that sounds like blasphemy so if im wrong slap me in the face with some cold evidence and i will get an i7. Im challenging you to make me look like a fool!
Click to expand...

That is the desktop version and not the laptop versions of the cpu, so that might make a big differnce however when u start to hit 1080p with gaming the difference start to become very small for how many cores you have and it starts to be become how good your cpu is in terms of clock for clock, and also how fast it is. the i5/i7 offer turbo boost so that might help but overall I think you might be able to get away with an i3 just fine.
 
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