emike09's M570TU NP5796 Review

Clevo M570TU .:|:. Sager NP5796
Review​

By Mike Capps

A while back, I returned my NP5793, purchased via XoticPC, due to the announcement of the NP5796, the possibility of mobile Quad, and the 9800M GTX. I just recently obtained its replacement, the NP5796. With the right hardware in this system, you don't have to make a lot of compromises from a desktop gaming setup. Price for performance will varied, but once you start to pack a fast X9100 Extreme Dual Core CPU (Supported overclock up to 3.5GHz), a 1GB 9800M GTX that rivals even some older high end enthusiast cards, 4GB Turbo memory II, e-Sata, HDMI, a 1980x1200 1080p+ screen, blu-ray, 4GB DDR3 1066Mhz, and up to a 500GB 5400rpm or 320GB 7200rpm HDD, all into this beautiful 17-inch notebook, you're looking at a mobile platform far more powerful than 90% of any desktop systems in the market. All this comes with a cost through. A top end NP5796 will cost you up to $3500, dropping the X9100 , the 9800M GTX, and the 500GB HDD to a P9500, the 9800M GT, and a 200GB 7200rpm HDD will put you in the sub $2500 market.

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With my P9500 mobile CPU running at 2.53GHz, the 9800M GTX running cool alongside the Zalman 2000 Notebook Cooler, and the 200GB 16MB cache Sata HDD blazing through apps, it's no surprise that this $2600 monster is fast. Way fast. It's easily the fastest sub $3000 portable notebook computer I’ve ever used. The battery life of my old NP5793 ran around 1-2 hours. After some intense optimization, I was able to get the battery to last 4 hours of full use as an internet machine while playing music. With the NP5793 using components that save a substantial amount of power compared, we’ll see at a later time what the life of a single charge will be for this machine. If you’re looking for a desktop replacement, but you need the portability the NP5796 offers, you’ll want to consider this system and read further.

Components and Performance


What do I get for my $2600? Here's the specs breakdown:

Component Make/Model

Processor Core 2 Centrino 2 P9500 (2.53GHz)

Memory 4GB - 2 DIMM (DDR3-1066MHz)

Hard drive 200GB 7200rpm HDD with 16Mb Cache

Optical drive 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW/+R) DL

Graphics GeForce 9800M GTX

Physics nVidia PhysX running on the 9800M GTX

Display 17" WSXGA

Keyboard Full keyboard with number pad.

OS Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

Wireless Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 Wireless ABGN

Sound Card Creative Audio X-fi Notebook Audio 7.1

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As you can see by the specs, there is a lot packed into a single package. The dimensions come in at 15.6" wide x 11.5” deep x 1"~1.8" high. Weight is up there too, at a whopping 8.35 lbs with the battery. This is no Apple MacBook Air or Asus Eee PC. Portability is still manageable though. It comes with a convenient business carrying case that has pockets for accessories. It even fits into my camera backpack for when I need my digital studio to move where I go.

PCMark and 3DMark Performance Tests

We’ve all seen reviews for other systems out there that offer this and that for an outrageous price, so let's cut to the chase—performance. Just for comparison's sake, we'll show how this NP5796 model stacks up with the Dell XPS 1730 and the Sager NP 9262; the two of which are faster, but more expensive, bulkier, and far heavier. The NP 9262, for example, has a pair of 9800M GTs and desktop quads, while the XPS 1730 comes with the X9000 Mobile Extreme CPU and dual 8800M GTX cards. Those differences aside, the NP5796 is fast. Extremely fast.



First up, PCMark Vantage. This update to PCMark runs through a wide series of tests, from productivity workloads to video transcoding, hard disk performance, and more. It doesn't benefit heavily from a great the GPU, but more the CPU, memory, and hard drive performance. Primarily, the CPU and memory subsystem are stressed. Keep in mind that my tests are using the P9500 2.5ghz CPU, and not the X9100. Some of us are on budgets .
Almost 4200 PCMarks is a respectable score for even a desktop system, though a fast quad-core can do far better.

Comparison of the NP5793 and the NP5796 of equal CPU, HDD and Memory​

3DMark06 is not the most recent version of FutureMark's graphics test program, but it is more widely recognized. It mostly stresses graphics cards, but only in DX9 mode. These days, even a single mid-range graphics card is fast enough that your 3DMark06 score will climb more with a faster CPU than a faster graphics card. The real difference with the 9800M GTX can be seen at higher resolutions, where 3DMark Vantage will show its power.
Over 9700 Marks on a stock notebook—that's very impressive. The 9800M GTX has 112 SPUs on a brand new G92-750 core and 1GB of powerful DDR3 memory. Comparatively, the 8800M GTX and the 9800M GT hold 96SPUs on an older G94 core. The increased shaders mean more raw processing power and room for the new PhysX under the nVidia CUDA platform. Twice the memory memory means higher resolutions will perform much better, so if you’re running the full 1980x1200, you’ll want the GTX for sure. In all reality though, the 9800M GTX will play all but a select few games and max settings and resolutions without any skip. Perhaps Crysis Warhead will be a bit better with the increased optimization CryTek is claiming.

Games
I ran three games on the system to see how well they perform. While the results are amazing, I don't have another system to pit up against, so I will just post their results in text form. Crysis is the ultimate game for benchmarking raw system power. Even the most powerful desktop hardware today will bring a system to its knees. Flight Simulator X Acceleration is also a very powerful game, and while quite unoptimized, it beautiful and very resource intensive. Unreal Tournament III is the most optimized game I've played in a while, and fully utilizes everything a system has to offer. The results are as follows:

Flight Simulator X Acceleration
DX10 - Default Free Flight
1680x1050 All Maxed - 19FPS Average
1680x1050 Ultra High - 38FPS Average
1680x1050 Medium High - 76FPS Average

Unreal Tournament III w/nVidia PhysX Mod
1680x1050 All settings Maxed
76.59 FPS average, 97.54 percent of time spent > 30 FPS

Crysis
1680x1050 Very High - 16.23 FPS Average
1024x600 Very High - 28.56 FPS Average
1024x600 High - 37.89 FPS Average
1680x1050 High - 28.21 FPS Average

As you can see, these intensive apps are ripped apart by the powerful 9800M GTX and the 2.53GHz Dual Core P9500, and in UT III, did so with power to spare.

Screen

The 1680x1050 screen I chose is beautiful, crisp, clean, and clear. The response time is very low and caused no ghosting or tearing. I chose the standard screen so I could game at a lower resolution natively for increased performance. My opinion… A 1080p+ screen is necessary for a large TV, but on a 17-in monitor, I find the higher resolution screen to be overkill. Its more expensive, forces you to run games at a very high resolution if you wish to run natively, and makes things quite small on the screen. I could not make ripples in the screen by applying pressure to the back panel, and torquing the screen left and right made little effect. The hinges are very tight and solid.


Hard Drive

I chose the 200GB 7200rpm HDD with price, space, and performance in mind. HDD temperatures stayed around 110F on idle and 130F under long heavy loads. The drive’s 16MB cache helps keep things running smoothly while there are multiple read/write operation on the drive.


Turbo Memory 2.0

Intel upgraded its Robson Turbo Memory with the Montevina platform. The original 1GB version for the Santa Rosa platform offered very littler performance increase, but Intel claims the new 2GB and 4GB models truly do offer an increased amount of performance. The new Turbo Memory Dashboard allows you to put individual applications into the module and cache them, a technique called User Pinning. User Pinning is installed by default with 4GB modules, and has to be installed with a special command for 2GB modules. User Pinning causes slightly longer start times in my testing, but applications loaded into the TM load significantly faster. Photoshop normally took about 20 seconds to load, and once loaded into the TM, loaded up in 12 seconds. Crysis also took 6 seconds less to get to the main menu when loaded.


Memory

The Montevina Platform sports 1066MHz DDR3 memory. DDR3 has a variety of different advantages over DDR2, some of which include lower operating voltage, increased frequency, and better reliability. Its disadvantage, it uses 7 CPU cycles to perform one operation (CAS 7). This equates to memory that is not a whole lot faster than the 667mhz DDR2 found in the Santa Rosa Platform (Down to CAS4, stock at CAS5). Overall, the memory is snappy and fast.
One of the fastest notebooks on the market.


Clevo has been in the building of notebooks since the 1980s, so notebooks are nothing new to them. Even without the Extreme processor, this system is extremely fast.

Other
Overall, the system in pleasing in oh so many ways. The business carry bag it comes with is decent, although a step down in quality from the one used for the NP5793. It has 3 pockets inside and one outside, and holds all the gear one would need for basic use. I find the HDMI and e-Sata ports of little value, but I also don't have an HDTV or external e-Sata drive.

Temperatures
Under 1 hour loads, the GPU peaked at 165F, while the CPU peaked at 130F. Fans were set to automatic, running without the Zalman 2000 cooler. HDD also peaked at 130F. The palm rests get warm, but remain comfortable.

Advantages and Disadvantages over the NP9296

While the NP5796 is very fast and powerful, the NP9296 offers some advantages that the NP5796 cannot offer. For one, the 9262 uses a desktop CPU. Even the most powerful Quads work with it, and some have reported getting Xeon processors working. The 9262 and Dell XPS 1730 also allow SLI of the 8800M GTX and 9800M GT GPUs, and up to triple HDD’s in RAID 0,1,5. But if you care at all for portability, the 9262 and 1730 are out. They are designed to be run plugged in. If you are lucky, you might be able to get an hour of light use from these systems. Play a DVD on battery? Forget it. Pack it around? Likely not. These systems come in over 12lbs.
This is where the NP5796 excels over the NP9262 and XPS 1730. While it is still heavy at over 8 lbs, its battery life is quite decent. How decent? Actually, it’s really good! After some basic tweaking to Vista’s power profile, I was able to hit almost three hours of battery. I was able to watch an entire DVD with life to spare. With advanced tweaking of voltage tables for the CPU and GPU, and power profiles in Vista, one could hit over 4 hours.
By all means, this product has its drawbacks—primarily those shared by all really high-end 17-inch notebooks. It costs a bundle, weighs too much… you know the stuff. The target market for this system is the money-is-almost-no-object mobile gamer, the guy who doesn't want to carry a big system to the LAN party but still wants to turn all the eye candy on in his games. For its intended market, it's a fantastic system.


Summary: The fastest "laptop" system I’ve ever tested. It makes no sense to purchase a system from another manufacturer when you get the price and quality Sager provides. The only game I played that I could not max out and get at least 45fps was Crysis. PhysX is not supported out of the box and requires both the PhysX API and the latest video drivers. I used 177.92 and was able to get PhysX to work properly. No overclocking is supported OTB. Waiting for native inclusion in the next revision of NiBiToR. Still unsure whether

Now if they could only make it lighter, and even cheaper.

Photos of the system can be found at XoticPC's website:
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np5796-custom-notebook-built-clevo-m570tu-p-2415.html

 

Nice review! I had a 5796. Returned it, had a few issues with it

 

nice review indeed.

I like the benchmark charts.

 

Thanks. I just realized that the GPU test in PCMark was overclocked for the 5793. The score there is not as accurate.