63Wh / 8Cell Original DELL Alienware M11x R1 R2 R3 notebook Battery review
This gamer - he and the subway, and reserved seat on the top shelf of a gamer. Another thing is that most laptops, where you can play with no brakes in Crysis or Call of Duty 4 - the size of a brick (which you'll see in our video review). Dell Alienware M11x R3 from afar like a brick too (some even compare him with iron), but other gaming notebooks compared to him - is the foam blocks.
11 inch gaming laptop, how can he be? Toys with small display, processor, entry-level integrated graphics? Or is it a real monster, which is noisy and heated like a locomotive? Today we look at Dell Alienware M11x and find the answer to this question.
In the nineties of the last century, two-gamer enthusiast from Miami came to the conclusion that there is a category of people willing to pay for very powerful computers designed for gaming. It should only take the appropriate models to market. Unfortunately, in late 1996, not all wanted to share beliefs, Alex Gonzalez and Nelson Agil (Alex Aguila, Nelson Gonzalez) - the future founder of Alienware. In the banks, where they tried to take credit required for the establishment of the company, laugh at them and called crazy.
The thing is that at that time (as well as in ours) the leading PC vendors have focused on the mass market, it is like to sell more computers in the ordinary, the average price. Alex Nelson, in turn, had planned to sell about 50 expensive gaming computers a month - it is not surprising that their venture no one took seriously. In the end, with the help of friends and credit cards they have managed to collect an amount which is sufficient for the foundation. This is how Alienware.
Despite the pessimistic forecasts of analysts, the approach of Alex Nelson and justified, and at the beginning of the XXI century Alienware was one of the fastest growing in the United States. And in 2006, Alienware has been noticed and bought by one of the largest PC manufacturer in the world - by Dell. So a brand Dell Alienware. The first gaming laptop, released under the new brand was presented June 2, 2009. In the maximum configuration of your Dell Alienware M17x laptop could boast a Core 2 Quad / Extreme and dual-card GeForce GTX 280M, operating in mode SLI - not bad for a laptop.
DELL Alienware M11x R1 Battery info:
Battery Type: Li-ion
Voltage: 14.8V
Capacity: 63Wh / 8Cell
Weight: 334g
Property: Original Battery
Color: Dark Grey
The issue before us today, Dell Alienware M11x two cards can not boast, but for 11-inch laptop stuffing his more than impressive. However, we'll talk about it in the appropriate section, but for now let's look at the laptop itself.
If not for the thickness of the body, the Dell M11x could be mistaken for "tuned" netbook with bigger screen. Alienware logo on the lid of the laptop model adds a certain charm. In the clear differences between our little "alien" and the usual netbook too little.
Housing material - very pleasant to the touch matte plastic. Glossy inserts have a laptop just two - on the front panel above the keyboard. Dirty, they will rarely, and with cleaning problems should arise. But the screen is, unfortunately, entirely glossy - the options M11x c matte screen from Dell is not provided.
As the table shows the characteristics, M11x can give odds to some 13 - or 14-inch laptops, let alone the 11-inch and even his fellow is not worth remembering. Of course, the price for such a "complete mince" is biting, so if you do not want to overpay for SSD, you can choose a model and cheaper to upgrade later, independently. In terms of selecting the most fortunate people of the United States: the CPU, memory, hard drive, the module WiMAX and much more - all this can change in the starting configuration even before you buy, the online store. In addition, if you buy a laptop through an online store, you can order engraved his name or a nickname on a metal panel located on the bottom of the laptop.
Unchanged in the laptop will remain only a few parts: 2-megapixel vebkamera with a pair of microphones, 11-inch glossy display and video card GeForce GT 540M. However, if you really really want to get a laptop, assembled at the personal request, without a trip to the U.S. if you do not mind "Russian Post" and a keyboard, you have to engrave in addition, you can use the services that deal with sending mail from the States. Otherwise will have to settle for those M11x, which come to Russia officially. About the price of laptops in the Russian media are not very many. We only know that we are considering a modification Dell Alienware M11x with conventional hard disk drive and 8 gigabytes of memory will cost approximately between 45 and 000.
Pro video card is to tell apart. NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M - model of the middle class, made on 40-nm process technology. It contains 96 cores CUDA, the core and shader are 672 and 1344 MHz respectively. The memory frequency is 900 MHz and the width of its tires - 128 bits.
As can be seen from the diagram, comfortable to play in AVP only at minimum settings, and then the limit is 30 FPS video card only able to overcome the level of GT 540M. The chart our guinea Dell Alienware M11x slightly ahead of its competitor (Acer Aspire 4380TG) in medium and low "presets", but such a small difference in FPS can be attributed to measurement error. About the game on integrated graphics, you can immediately forget - Intel HD 3000 does not support DirectX11, which is required to run the AVP.
In DiRT 2 the situation is better. On laptops, equipped with GT 540M, you can even play at maximum settings. For medium graphics settings, the results look even better - this mode is "pulled" even with my ASUS U30S GT 520M. Built-in graphics, in turn, have coped with the game on minimum settings just by giving 35 frames per second.
F1 2010 game at maximum settings turned out to be more demanding than DiRT2. This mode is not able to "draw" even the GT 540M. On average mode play comfortably possible, even with GT 520M, but the integrated graphics is still barely coping with minimal treatment. If the AVP or the difference between DiRT2 M11x and Acer 4830TG can be attributed to error in F1 things are already different. At a minimum, and average "presets" affects a higher performance processor installed in the notebook from Acer. At medium settings, Acer is faster M11x at 7%, and the transition to low graphics settings, the gap between these two laptops is already 14%.
DELL Alienware M11x R2 Battery Compatible original Battery Code:
DELL :
8P6X6 P06T PT6V8 T7YJR
GeForce GT 540M supports the same set of technologies that other adapters 500-series. Most important in this situation, it seems NVIDIA Optimus, which allows you to automatically switch between discrete and integrated graphics, depending on the task. Thus, in many cases increases the battery life of the battery.
Video card is being used not only for gaming, its ability to gradually adapt to different tasks. Not so long ago, in March this year, was approved specification WebGL 1.0, which opens the way for us to 3D-graphics in the browser. NVIDIA, of course, refers to this initiative extremely positive, because the use of GPU-accelerated performance increases significantly.
The new processor Intel i7 (Sandy Bridge) no longer applies to the middle class, this is one of the top notebook processors. However, with low teplopaketom. Its nominal frequency is only 1.5 GHz, but thanks to the Turbo Boost processor is able to increase the frequency of one core to 2.6 GHz. Such a mechanism of Turbo Boost is typical for energy-efficient processors Intel. Hyper-Threading support is useful in everyday work, though often for games on it are of no use.
But most of all praised the new "alien" not worthy of a megahertz processor and video card, not a gigabyte of memory, and not even for the fastest SSD-drive. Most praise the engineers Alienware stands for the fact that all this power is packed into a small 11-inch laptop. The manufacturer believes is justified Dell Alienware M11x's most powerful 11-inch notebook in the world.
However, back to the appearance of our guinea. On the left side of his connections are DisplayPort, HDMI, Ethernet, combo card reader (SD, MMC, MS / Pro), 4-pin FireWire IEEE 1394 port and one USB 2.0, which allows you to charge your device from power off the laptop.
Right of the "newcomer" is even smaller ports - two 3.5-mm audio output, an audio input port and 2 high-speed USB 3.0, which are contrary to all rules not painted in blue, and unusual for USB 3.0 black. Connector for charging hiding in the back of the laptop - not the most common solution today. Usually this slot is on the left or right panels.
As can be seen in the photographs, when the laptop lid is lowered, between it and the casing has a small gap - it is because we've got a pre-production, test sample M11x. We hope that by the time of release will fix this manufacturer defect.
Now put the lid on the laptop and look at it from the back. Here you can see the battery indicator (activated by pressing a button with the symbol of the battery) and a metal plate on which is engraved the name of the owner, if the book laptop via online store. If the laptop is not bought from an online store Dell, then this plate will be engraved only laptop model. A sticker with the key Windows, as well as proprietary sticker Intel, located here, at the bottom of the laptop. Very nice when a manufacturer is not more sculpts, bright and glossy stickers near the keyboard or screen.
If the pro keyboard and touchpad can say only good things, then the screen - the weakest point of our experimental. About the omnipresent gloss to say no, the problem is not in him. Between the matrix and the glossy screen is a gap in 1 - 2 mm, because of which highlights the already glossy screen gets bigger, and the angles of this does not increase. For viewing angles, by the way, the laptop can also criticize - they are cheap at the TN-matrices. However, we should not forget that this is a test, not the final model laptop. Especially, the manufacturer promises to improve the display of the official release.
Before proceeding to the tests you want to tell you about another nice feature M11x. With the pre-application AlienFX can manually adjust the backlight the front panel, keyboard, power button and logo Alienware. You can turn ordinary illumination, the gradient (the color will change from yellow to green, for example) or very obscure, the flashing lights. If the light does not like or do not need, then you can disable it as a tool AlienFX, and pressing two hotkeys.
DELL Alienware M11x R3 Battery Fit machine:
DELL Alienware M11x Series(All)
DELL Alienware M11x R1 Series DELL Alienware M11x R2 Series DELL Alienware M11x R3 Series
How would a compact notebook was, no matter how beautifully designed it did not possess, almost always it is all about the speed of his work. In order to understand exactly what is it like to Alienware M11x, we subjected it to several tests. It is a known benchmark PCMark Vantage and PCMark11, as well as gaming tests, and test the battery life.
It is worth to make a small digression to say in advance that testing will not M11x honest. The fact that the notebook with a diagonal of 11 inches, to put it mildly. But netbooks with a diagonal so that just takes your breath away, but to compare the M11x with a netbook would be to put it mildly, ridiculous. Therefore, in order not to engage in "Massacre of the Innocents," for testing were chosen two laptops with diagonals of 13 and 14 inches.
The first rival Dell Alienaware M11x - 14 "laptop Acer Aspire 4830TG, equipped with a processor Intel i5 and second-generation graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GT 540m. The average price for this laptop is about 27 thousand rubles. The second contestant - 13 "ASUS U30S - classic" workhorse "with an Intel i3 and second-generation discrete graphics card GeForce GT 520M. Its average value, according to price.ru - approximately 30 thousand rubles. To show the difference between discrete and integrated graphics, a test chart have been added to the results of an integrated graphics accelerator ASUS U30S - Intel HD 3000.Nachnem we, traditionally, a "synthetic" benchmarks and those game tests, whose results appear in the "parrots" and not frames per second.
In tests, PCMark hero of this review has left two of his competitors far behind. The reason is simple - within our M11x was not a classic set the hard disk and SSD. Unfortunately, this coin has another side - SSD, installed inside the M11x, costs about $ 500. In 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11 hard drive is not as important as the processor and video card, so in these tests, everything fell into place, and Alienware M11x with Aspire 4380TG get similar results. In 3DMark 11 benchmark integrated graphics Sandy Bridge has not passed the test, for obvious reasons - it does not support the desired DirectX11.
The alignment of forces in Civilization V and Final Fantasy IV reminds 3DMark'ov results. The diagram with the results of these games laptops from Dell and Acer gained similar results.
Turn to the gaming tests. For each game, we conducted three tests using a variety of graphics settings. In the «Low» all detail settings have been exposed to a minimum, and anti-aliasing - off. In the High, in contrast, exhibited maximum settings and 4x anti-aliasing switched on. There is also a mode of Medium, in which the settings for each of the games were selected individually. Thus, depending on the test card, the results in the Medium mode can be closer to the High or Low. All tests were carried out in the resolution of 1360 x 768.