Clevo D900C Surfaces -- The World's Fastest Notebook (UPDATED 4/12)

Yes, there is an 8600ultra mobile, the G84, that will be released this April. With a little hope it should be near at least a 7900gtx or so, perhaps more. So you'll get a DX10 part this spring, but it may not be full bore power as we were hoping. That will come this fall as the G81.

 

The main post says it's 1066fsb...

EDIT: I meant this post.. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=110172

 

Due to the desktop motherboard I'd call it a SFF in notebook form , some said here that you just as well can buy a SFF and I have to agree .

I'm looking for Clevo next gen notebooks , they make strong models like the M570 which I think was a good buy in terms of value/$ , I say was because I'd like to see its santa rosa replacement .

 

Sorry for all of the jumping to conclusions, especially about the 8800 stuff. Here is what should be clarified:
All of the spec sheets is correct, however:
- the system will be initially shipping with the 7950GTX (optional in SLI) in April-May
- the marketing for this model notebook has been said and will probably show up many more times, I quote:

* Clevo's MXM is not standard MXM, its more of their proprietary modular videocard designs.
- The nVidia 8800 Go (NOT GTX/GT/GTS) has yet to be released or tested on this notebook... however
- Clevo designed this system (and I guess is marketing it) to be able to upgrade/swap to the 8800 Go's when they are released.

Hopefully I will get this all straightened out by this week, I am trying to talk to some sources within nVidia, since their site shows nothing on Geforce 8 Go Series, and we do know that mobile 8x00 GPUs are set to go... like 8600.

Sorry for the confusion, but I have a good feeling that this [Clevo D900C] is going to not just going to stay with SLI 7950GTX's for long.

 

beautiful,

now what can they do for the 14"/15" platforms?!?!? obviously not this far, but how far???

 

Pictures of the Sager NP9260 (Clevo D900C)

Complete specifications and pre-order pricing will be up later tonight.

Tentative ship date is mid-May

 

Thanks for the pictures Donald, nice quality.

It looks very similar to the D900T, but the back sure has changed - it's basically one big vent. Reminds me of the M590K.

 

Sager NP9260 (Clevo D900C) – estimated shipping begins in early May

For complete detailed specifications and pricing on this model please go to http://www.powernotebooks.com/specs/Sager/9260specs.php.

 

quite a reasonable pre order price actually

Unless I guess you are buying an extreme intel cpu it can get out of hand.

 

Kudos to Donald and everyone at PowerNotebooks.com for getting us the real story on this system!

Definitely can appreciate that price for the hardware.

 

ZOMG, teh fans are everywhere!!!! lol

This thing is certainly a beast. It pretty much sets the standard in high end laptop gaming.

 

Awesome deal, thanks for the posting! Still curious on if those mouse buttons look white... that is incredibly white, too white.

And just to clarify for me please, it IS upgradable to an 8xxx something in the future? Maybe I'll wait to get it then. I only need it starting in summer anyway.

 

I sent your comment to Clevo that the touchpad buttons are "...incredibly white, too white." (White is white...how can white be incredibly white or too white I wondered?)

Anyway, they said they noticed that too, so the production models will be pink

 

Sweet, that'll help .

White is too white when its called pure white. That mouse button color for instance is a perfect example.

 

I'm assuming they are just aluminum buttons like on the HEL80, and they caught the light during the photo shoot?

 

That's gotta be it, because who would design such a thing otherwise? It just doesn't make good sense.

That's a hell of a glare though, its totally washed out, completely!

 

yeah, this thing really looks impressive..but just one thing annoys me here..

intel P965 desktop chpset supports only one PCI Express x16 connection..so are SLI grpahic cards sharing it in this notebook (e.g. x8 & x8) or are they both running at x16?

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/q965_q963/pix/q965_diagram.gif
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/g965/diagram.jpg
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/p965/index.htm

even if they just share connection it still does not really look like any intel 965 chipset version..any ideas about it?

btw. I was JUST about to call one of Sager retailers to order 5760 model to replace my old desktop..well..seems like I'm gonna hold on for a moment ;p

 

It is x8 x8 with a special nVIDIA bridge chip.

Oh, and the buttons are really silver.

The photo just makes them look white. We canceled the order to make them pink

 

I see that you have 4 subwoofers on the bottom of that notebook. Wait, you say those are fans? wow, thats a total of 8 fans....I dont have that many in my desktop and my laptop combined....Oh well, neither are nearly as powerful as this system. It looks good, but really really big.

Do you know when it will get the dual 8800s?

 

It does not have any subwoofers, but it does have 4 speakers.

No one knows yet if or when an nVIDIA 8xxx card might become available for laptops. However since these cards are MXM type IV the cards could be exchanged, but then you would probably have to get a new AC Adapter and thermal system, and possibly an entirely new motherboard for them to work.

Until the card is released and tested there is no way for anyone to know for sure if it will work or not.

 

MXM Type IV? :confused2:

 

Yea, the specs of this Clevo D900C shows Clevo's MXM IV design for future upgrades (ahem.. 8800 Go) ... we will see at CeBIT 2007.

 

It looks like one heck of a notebook.

 

It looks so awesome bout time they started putting desktop cpus in a laptop for me thats the way to go.

 

Okay, I spoke to Clevo about this D900C notebook and they said YES they will be putting the NVidia Go 8000 series graphics card in around the May time frame, the one they had on display today at CeBIT had the 7950GTX inside. I'll have pics up of this tomorrow.

 

Awesome Andrew, thanks much for further checking it out for us. Doesn't sound like they specified which go card. I'm assuming the 8600, but I'll hope for an 8800 version. Did you say there was an updated CeBIT photo? I wanna check out those mouse buttons . Thanks.

EDIT: I see the pictures now a few pages back. Still whitish! I'm sorry I'm grumbling about it, but you can see its an eye-sore. It looks beautiful otherwise. Perhaps a different camera angle...

 

Andrew, I am glad to hear of the stated optimism. I do not want to dampen it, but I am doubtful they will meet the May time line. They are not even scheduled to release the SLi Vista driver until late May or early June...and we will have to wait and see about that.

The "Official" word on it from the senior engineer at Sager is:

"Clevo and Sager’s target has always been putting the latest and fastest in to our units, at the earliest time frame possible.

I have spoken to Clevo Project Leader of D900C today at Taipei Time 12:00AM (midnight), this is how hard they are working on this unit, and at this moment NB8E-GTX (AKA: nVIDIA GeForce Go 8800 GTX) has not been placed into testing schedule since it is limited sample supply from nVIDIA.

Again Clevo and Sager has always worked closely to bring the best available possible, but at this time there is no solid schedule when the 8xxx series will be made available."

 

I expected that from an actually 8800gtx go version. There is no way they can fit it in there without a die shrink, so they are probably working on that. This summer/fall will be the release of the G81, which is a die shrink of the G80, so that'll be the time I'm guessing.

However, I'm going to take a stab at the idea still that they will be putting in the mid-range 8600 into the laptops around May. This will be included in the Dell and other vendors lineups at this time, so I'm sure Clevo will be on pace.

Isn't this how it went for the 9600 lineup a few years ago? I know when I bought my Sager with a 9600pro in it, there were already slower versions out months before the top-9600 was released.

 

I heard about MXM 2.0, but this is actually the first thing that might be part of that.

Hmm... Need to find out more about it.

 

phew,

I just also got confirmation of the same info on Clevo D900C spec list (as well as the pricing, which is par to Sager's) that I originally posted was par to Clevo's D900C marketing projection by this summer. So Clevo truly is trying to push out (SLI) 8800's in their D900C by this summer, I am not too optimistic with that time-frame, but they are definitely pegging this model to be a high-end DX10 gaming notebook for 2007-2008... I cant wait.

I was feeling a bit depressed and like an (insert donkey's alternative name) this whole week by people chucking my original post's contents against the wall and stomping on them. I was starting to doubt myself and my source.

Clevo FTW.

-Gophn

 

Leave it to Clevo to come out with the first dual-core notebook [D900K] and now with the first quad-core notebook [D900C].

That thing is going to even outperform most gamers' desktops.

With the high-end DX10 cards coming out for it and a Quad-Core, then this beast is going to remain king of notebooks for a LONG time.

Clevo FTW.

 

I can not even believe that any 17" has the room for all of this, and the quad-core! I do not see it as something that I will purchase due to the 11 pound weight. I think that most people with a gaming desktop won't bother with it because they may alerady have most of this. I still do believe that this is a huge innovation and I think i'll just wait for people to figure out how to make 2 9750s 1cmx1cm rather than just shoving it all into this. Great job Clevo though... I just think that they should market it as a portable convection oven that just so happens to be the most amazing piece of technology since the iPod (though I don't think it will have the sucess of them).

 

The official word is:

"So Far Q6600 will not be possible on the D900C. While the quad core option is being studied, it currently will just not fit in the available thermal design of D900C. Will Intel Release lower TDP quad core CPU? Will we be able to adjust enough thermal headroom to fit in a quad core? It’s completely unknown at this time."

 

The CPU heat is definitely going to be a factor, but these Clevo gaming notebooks have been improving their thermal designs.

Personally, when I built my D900K, I thought that the notebook was not going to do well with a dual core desktop CPU, but then when I received the barebones, I saw the massive 3-4 pound Copper Heatsink, and saw the dual fans. Now after having it for about a year now, the CPU heat is NOT even considered an issue, at full load, it never gets beyond 50-55 C degrees. The Clevo Fan Toggle (Fn+F2) is great and should be included to ever other notebook to prevent overheating issues. My GPU on the other hand, is something that should always be monitored, it never gets past 90C degrees when gaming [Oblivion, BF2142, C&C3]... but its all stable and no hiccups.

I only had to swap videocards once [a few months after purchasing it] due to hardware failure (for overheating), now I always use a notebook stand/cooler, monitor the temps, and toggle the fans to Max Speed when gaming.

 

As I said in the other thread...

I'm honestly wondering if XoticPC is just doing this because it's pin compatible. Where is this tested compatibility information coming from?

 

As a D900T owner, I can say that people should hold off on buying this notebook. If I were even considering another Sager beast, I would wait at least 6 months checking the forums for problems. The D900T (Intel), and to a lesser extent, the D900K (AMD version) were plagued with problems due mostly to drawing too much power. The D900T went through several motherboard revisions before they got something that was even halfway decent, it still has the same problems, but to a lesser degree. Seeing as the D900C is going to be in the same size chassis, and they are cramming even more powerhungry hardware into it, I think this might be another Clevo lemon. Don't look to Sager or any other reseller to make good on problems either.

The Phoenix BIOS offers extremely minimal options. Driver updates are practically non-existant -- the latest NVidia driver for my machine is 84.22. Performance is OK, but not what it would be in a compareable SFF desktop that you could buy for far less. Battery life (new) is about 50min, and I can't help but think that the D900C will draw more power and not have as big a battery. Sager tech support was very slow fixing my D900T and they only pay shipping one way.

When the D900T was released, they advertised the graphics card was upgradeable, but you needed to replace the entire motherboard and power supply as well, and it was expensive. Don't believe the MXM stuff either, Clevo uses it own proprietary version of MXM.

 

What do ya'll think the legitimate battery life is on this puppy? I would guess like 1.5-2 hours considering it has a 12 cell battery, but def. correct me if im wrong

 

At this point battery life would only be guess work, but based on previous models with this kind of power a better estimate would be 1-1.5 hours.

 

Officially on the r&j tech website. $1819 for the WSXGA barebones. ETA May 15th.

 

I think setup is going to be cool. Knowing the clevo and there setups. With there great Cooling systems. It should handle the fastest dual core.

 

so I just talked to a rep from alienware. He assured me that their upcoming m9750 will be fully upgradeable to the new 8800. I know that the m9750's motherboard will be diff since they'll use merom or santa rosa, but to have it officially stated as such does give hope that the 9260 will too be upgradeable.

Speaking of which, I presume that the processor will not even be given the chance to be upgradeable since intel's next cpu release will be based on 45mn technology, which means that the E6700 and the X6800 will be as good as it gets. kinda sucks knowing that it'll only be the most powerful laptop for around 4 months.

 

Will that translate into Sager lines too then? I think Clevo makes both Sager and Alienware...

 

I would take anything Alienware says with a grain of salt.
How can they say 100% FOR SURE their system will upgrade to the 8800 cards when the spec's for the cards aren't even out yet? It sure would be nice if vendors and distributors would just tell the truth in this industry and if they don't know just say, I don't know, instead of just saying what everyone wants to hear.

Not only that, like I said months ago when people were saying the 8800's would be out in MAY, that I had talked right to nVidia at CES and they said no way. That didn't stop everyone and their brother from hyping the 8800's and taking system pre-orders that are now X out's and "Oh sorry's".

How many people that want dual 8800's in a notebook even have a single 8800 GTX in their desktop? I have one, and I ran it for a day and took it out because it could literally heat up my office from 70-75 degrees to a summers day in AZ in about an hour.

The question I keep asking over and over, yet haven't had one credible answer is, " 1. How are they going to power it. 2. How are they going to cool it. 3. What is the "mobile 8800's" performance going to compare to the desktop version?"

A desktop 8800 GTX with a 384 bit bus and 768 MB of 1800-2000 Mhz RAM that requires at least a 600 watt quality power supply to be reliable ... how is that going to translate to the mobile version?

The one thing the distributors aren't telling you is that the chassis this is based off of, the D900K had a ridiculously high RMA rate. I wouldn't jump on the 'desktop chip' notebook band wagon until this thing is out and tested for a while.

 

hmm, I dont know if you're referring to the NP9260 preorders, but last time I checked, the laptops are still available, and pple can still make the cut for the first shipment in a couple of weeks.

my impression was that the 8800GTX's consumption of power wasnt nearly as bad as previously thought, in fact, I read that it consumes 7W less than the Radeon X1950 XTX while running a game... then again, these differences are obviously magnified in a laptop, I guess that's why the d900c has air vents pretty much everywhere...

the good news is that nvidia managed to make the 8800gtx quieter than the 7950gtx... perhaps they'll achieve the same for laptops.

As for the 8800m performance to its desktop version, considering that a single 8800GTX outperforms the 7900GTX SLI configuration, I think we can also assume that the 8800m (or the 8700m for that matter) will probably be, at best, on par with the Geforce go 7900GTX SLI, with a score of <6000 in 3dmark 06.

**actually, because the NP9260 will feature some of the fastest desktop cpus [E6700 and X6800, which btw run superpi <19 secs vs. the T7200 2 Ghz, which runs superpi ~60 secs)], I would assume that the 8800m or 8700m will perform even better, most prob achieving results of >6000 in 3dmark 06 **

The real bummer is knowing that a score of 6000 in 3dmark 06 with the newest biggest and baddest laptop gpu 8800m (big assumption) will only place you right above the Radeon X1950pro (desktop) and below 20 different configurations/combo of desktop GPUs...

Oh, and I read somewhere that through overclocking, a single 8800GTX will reach up to 16752 in 3dmark 06, or >10000pts greater than a presumed score of 6000 for the 8800m... damn depressing.

Of course, all of this is still pure and baseless speculation and open to many more interpretations

Now, what I really dont get is why a GeForce go 7900GTX SLI which typically has a similar 3dmark 05 score (around 11500) to the GeForce 7800GTX SLI, would also not perform as well as GeForce 7600 GT SLI (7564 vs ~6000) in 3dmark 06?? All the results are based on 1024 X 768 mode. Am I missing something here?!?



source: http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q4/geforce-8800/index.x?pg=15
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/geforce-7800gtx/index.x?pg=11
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4216&s=27
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/362/10/

 

Thank you khiev! A very well thought out post, backed by links. Not many do either of those .

 

This is also being sold in Australia by Pioneer as the D90:

http://www.pioneercomputers.com.au/products/configure.asp?c1=3&c2=15&id=2218

They list Quad-core and also 8800GTX SLI as options. I have been told units will arrive "in about 2 weeks or maybe sooner". I have specced one with the works including Quad-core and 8800GTX SLI.

The only question which remains unanswered to me is:

Is the DVI out a DVI-D Dual-Link so I can run my Samsun 305T 30" LCD panel at 2560x1600 resolution? If anyone knows the answer, please post back.

From looking at the pics posted, the shot of the rear of the unit definitely seems to indicate a DVI-D Dual Link port, but I'd love some "official" confirmation of that

 

According to some Chinese news websites Clevo announced they are going to use the upcoming 8700M, check the following Chinese websites:

http://translate.google.com/translat...%3Den&sa=N
http://translate.google.com/translat...=en&sa=N

these news are posted on 23 of may, is it after Clevo removed 8800GTX/8700M from their site?

The problem how trust worthy Chinese news are ?

 

Check the link. Eurocom have announced quad core support for their upcoming release for D900C

http://laptoping.com/eurocom-quad-core-q6600-phantom-d900c.html

They are saying revised version...

 

My D900C came to me a few days ago. It really stands up to what is said about being the worlds fastest notebook.

Clevo D900C Notebook
Dual nVidia 7950GTX 512MB in SLi
17" WUXGA LCD
Intel E6700 core duo at 2.66 GHz
2GB Kingston DDR2 RAM
3 HDD's at 160GB SATA 7200rpm in RAID 0
8x DVD+/-RW DL CD Drive
Integrated 802.1N Wireless and Bluetooth
WinVista Integrated TV Tuner
12-cell Li-Ion Battery

battery lasts about an hour ( not that I use it )
It runs at a usual temperature of a laptop. especially with the amount of fans in it.

Overall... I'd have to rate it as a sexy beast!

Also came with a packet listing upcoming releases and supported hardware.

Listed is suporst for quad core processors coming out within the year and the GeForce Go 8800 GTX coming in late July.

 

How do you know it is coming in late july?