Vintage alienware content (Paging Nibby!)

"themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles" (themanwithsauce) 01/27/2020 at 20:49 • Filed to: None

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I got an old Alienware M9700 laptop for dirt cheap off of ebay, sight unseen. It packs the full might of dual Nvidia 7900GS cards in SLi. Th is is one of the earliest examples of SLi on the mobile market so it’s so much fun to have a piece of computer history for so cheap. I’m trying to find a buyer for it right now, but even if I let it go for a deal, I will still be in the green. It runs XP so it’s meant to be a great gaming rig for the 90s/2000s games that have been struggling to run on windows 10 and on the newest hardware. I’ve got another laptop I use for old games since some of my oldest driving sims and RTS games seem to run like shit on windows 10.

If anyone is interested, the Oppo discount is 250$+ shipping.

Also, if Nibby is interested, I have some other machines and models that might interest them.

random001 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/27/2020 at 20:58

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Will it play Crysis?

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > random001 01/27/2020 at 21:06

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Yes.

Barely.

I think the processor is the holdup as for some reason, alienware only gave this thing a single core AMD processor while everyone else had moved on to the Core2 platform. I have a Gateway FX with a core 2 and the 9800m that plays crysis without issue. And dual 7900s are about as good as one mobile 8800/9800. 

random001 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/27/2020 at 21:10

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No chance that's not a soldered CPU, is there?

CB > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/27/2020 at 21:10

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Holy shit. This was my dream computer as a kid.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > random001 01/27/2020 at 21:13

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Oh it’s not soldered, but the chipset is single core CPUs only. Its Turion-ML so your best bet is something like a 2.2 ghz single core. Dual core mobile Turions are from much later motherboard chipsets so you are stuck with that single core on the M9700. But it is unique and kinda cool in its own way.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > CB 01/27/2020 at 21:15

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Same. Wh en I was picking out a laptop for college, this was the one everyone wanted to bow their student loans on. I sett led on an Asus that puked out its guts the same week the warranty ended -_-. Granted, the kid who *did* blow his loan on an alienware had his fail in drama tic fashion in the middle of class.

Thankfully, this one has done multiple runs of 3Dmark06 back to back to back and it holds up just fine.

Nibby > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/27/2020 at 21:18

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Hah I’ll pass but that is an amazing machine! AW was one of the pioneers of the whole gaming laptop market. This would be a great XP gaming rig. I know some people on IRC who might be interested though

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Nibby 01/27/2020 at 21:22

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It’s not a perfect mahcine by any means (battery is toast and no replacements have popped up in the past few weeks) but if you have a hookup i can pay a finder’s fee (though I’d like closer to 400 for non-Oppo people and they can talk me down from there)

BeaterGT > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/27/2020 at 21:34

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Perfect t ime for Warcraft 3 remastered?

random001 > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/27/2020 at 21:44

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That's cool as all get out

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > BeaterGT 01/27/2020 at 21:52

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Yep! Play WC3 original, complete with old maps and updates that didn’t work with windows 7/10. My friends and I have a lan party planned for old versions of the game using some of the laptops I’ve restored.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Nibby 01/27/2020 at 21:58

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Also, I got my hands on a falcon northwest of a similar vintage with some amazing paint. It isn’t for sale, but if you want to nerd out over it, I shared some pics here - https://oppositelock.kinja.com/chromalusion-hour-rule-1841215137

NojustNo > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 01/28/2020 at 17:18

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Those first gen turion  chips were pretty terrible compared to everything else.

I’ve got I’ve got one of those orange and black Gateway fx laptops as well! Core 2 quad and 9800m

I picked up at the thrift store for twenty bucks a while ago. I just had to put a hard drive in and screw down the heat sink to get it going. the mouse pad is a little t witchy but otherwise it works fine. I gave it to one of my roommates for something to play with on the couch.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > NojustNo 01/28/2020 at 21:28

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Yeah not gonna lie, I picked up an “unknown” spec AW of similar vintage and chassis for dirt cheap that I’m hoping is C2D architecture so that it might actually perform.

But at my heart, I am an FX fanboy through and through. I got one of the 78xx series ones as a refurb in 2008. I dropped in the core2X chip, I believe 8GB of RAM, and I had dual 500GB drives in raid-0. I remember taking it to lan parties and absolutely slaying everyone in load times and often some benchmark races too. I got some scrap FXes I’m cobbling together to rebuild mine since I used it daily until 2014 or so. That was a damn good laptop.