[Review] Sager NP9758-G / Clevo P750DM-G Early Initial Impressions

Sager brought power to the game when they released their desktop CPU toting laptop with the Sager NP9752 / Clevo P750ZM earlier this year. Now with the Sager NP9758-G (Clevo P750DM-G) they have updated the system to accommodate Skylake CPU's as well as included a USB 3.1/Thunderbolt type port, and not to mention DDR4 support for up to 64GB RAM sinc there are four ports and 16GB modules are readily available. I reviewed the P750ZM system back in January of this year, so feel free to take a look at the details of that machine, however I do intend on doing a full review and comparison with that system as well as with a desktop system with i7-5820k and GTX 980 Ti.



LPC-Digital has provided a review sample of the Sager NP9758-G and thought I'd share my initial impressions of it.

Specifications for the machine that was received is as follows:

Sager NP9758-G based on Clevo P750DM-G
15.6” 4K QFHD 16:9 Wide screen (3840x2160) SAMSUNG Super Clear Matte Type
6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700K (8M Cache, up to 4.20 GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M with 8GB GDDR5 NVIDIA G-SYNC
SAMSUNG 64GB DDR4 PC4-17000 2133MHz Memory (4x16GB)
512GB Samsung SM951 M.2 PCI-e SSD
1TB 7200RPM HDD
Windows 10 Home 64-Bit Edition Preinstalled, (with 64-Bit USB Recovery Media)
Intel Dual Band Wireless -AC 8260 M.2 Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module 4.0
Full Range 330W AC Adapter 19.5V

The system is physically identical to the P750ZM with one minor external feature, the Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.1 connection replacing a USB 3.0 port on the left side of the machine.



Once you remove the bottom panels it would be indistinguishable from the P750ZM, but there are significant differences in some of the hardware. Primarily as already noted, is the update to the Skylake platform. It contains an i7-6700K CPU which is a quad core desktop CPU with hyperthreading built on the 14nm lithography technology. It has a base frequency of 4.0GHz with single thread performance running at 4.2GHz. After running a few quick benchmarks, including 3DMark Fire Strike, wPrime, and Cinebench R15, CPU temps remained under 90C, and typically in low 80's. Since it is a "K" (i7-6700K) series, it does have some overclocking potential too. Using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) the adjustable settings seem to be the same as available with the P750ZM and the i7-4790K. Of importance clock speeds, TDP, and core and cache voltage are adjustable.

I am noticing at the moment that there is some wild fluctuation in temperatures reported for the CPU. At high CPU load, with each temperature poll, it will spike from mid 70's to high 80's although clock speed remains pegged at 4GHz and CPU utilization is steady at 99%. It may just be a software sensing issue, but it seems to show this behavior predominantly in Intel XTU, but also in HWInfo64 as well as HWMonitor but not with as much variation. Will investigate more closely. Also peak temperatures tend to run about 6-8C higher than what is average for a benchmark run, so will have to monitor more closely.

There is a GTX 980m with 8GB GDDR5 vRAM that populates the machine, but now G-sync versions are available which weren't with the initial ZM machines. This particular unit houses a 4K (3840x2160) 60Hz Samsung IPS LCD. G-sync should be advantageous even at 60Hz if you run at the native 4k resolution since FPS will likely be in the 30-60 FPS range. A 1080p G-sync LCD option is also available. Both come with a matte finish. I am hoping to get ahold of decent calibration hardware to share true gamut readings of this LCD.

The 980m runs at 1038MHz boosting to 1126MHz and the +135MHz Core overclock option is available as is vRAM overclocking from the stock 5000MHz. I haven't overclocked yet, but at stock it seems stable however includes slight fluctuating clock speeds and voltages as I've seen in the P750ZM models. I think some of that was due to drivers. The stock system comes with driver version 353.26 which Nvidia GeForce Experience tells me it's the latest despite 355.98 being available as a downloadable driver from Nvidia's website. Here's GPU-z and Nvidia Inspector screen shots. GPU-z obviously is not properly detecting the base clock speeds but you can see them clearly in Nvidia Inspector as well as GPU-z sensor log.








Along with the Skylake platform comes support for DDR4 So-DIMM module and 16GB modules are available out of the gate. LPC-Digital has fully populated all four slots for a total of 64GB of DDR4-2133MHz CAS15 RAM. This is a remarkable amount of RAM and great for users that tend to run a lot of VM's or even running a hefty RAMdisk.

Otherwise the system seems as solid as the P750ZM. It also includes simliar software to previous models, just they have updated to the SoundBlaster X-Fi 5 suite.

You can see my first impressions and general overview of the laptop in the video below.


System BIOS options can be seen here: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8783104


Additionally, I have run a few benchmarks up front to give you a taste for its overall performance, temperature, and power consumption.

3DMark Fire Strike: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8783104
Score: 8199
Graphics Score: 9243
Scores seem low compared with other 980m runs with previous machines, so will have to root cause a little, likely due to driver issues and/or Windows 10.

I thought I'd throw in CPU comparison to show P770ZM-G with Haswell i7-4790k, desktop PC with i7-5820K Haswell-E, P750DM-G with i7-6700K all at 4GHz

wPrime 2.10 (8 threads):
i7-4790K 4GHz 195.336
i7-5820K 4GHz 177.033
i7-6700K 4GHz 201.054

Cinebench R15:
i7-4790k 4GHz / 788 cb / 158 cb
i7-5820k 4GHz / 1100 cb / 152 cb
i7-6700k 4GHz / 816 cb / 167 cb

Keep in mind this is all just initial impressions out of the gate. After a good repaste and some time with the machine I will follow up with a detailed review and benchmarks.

 

keeping tabs on this

 

The Lord of reviews has spoken...now gearing up for the grand judgment day.

 

As always, thank you for taking the time to post all of this. Can't wait to see your follow up.

 

Few Questions:

1. You mentioned that screen refresh rate for 4k is 60Hz, but what about when you set resolution to 1080p. Does the refresh rate increase?

2. What is the deal with that 3G LTE connector. Has any model had this option available?

 

you can theoretically overclock the refresh rate more if u set lower resolutions, but most of the time the refresh rates dont automatically go up if u lower the res. some monitors have implemented stock settings at their lowest resolutions (like 1280x720 or 640x480) with higher Hz than at their native res, but thats not always the case.

and sure, the ZM series had that option as well@3G/LTE so did/do other clevo models, nothing particularly special about that...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

HT, aren´t the 4790K and 6700K scores a little low? I got 800 with my 4790K at 4ghz and Hyperbook posted 876 with the 6700K.

Waiting for the full review!

 

wouldnt be surprised if that is due to the 2133 mhz ddr4 with the high timings. cinebench is kinda ram dependable

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I was successfully able to overclock the LCD to 67Hz at 4k and 69Hz at 1080p using Nvidia custom resolutions. 1Hz higher in each case and it wouldn't pass.

I believe the 4G LTE option has been available with other models. Sorry, I personally don't know much about it.

 

I'll look into it. I just ran the benchmarks without tweaking or tuning anything, with my normal apps loaded in the background, but XTU showed that the CPU speed remained consistently 4GHz in all three cases.

In general scores seem a little low so far compared with the P770ZM-G and the P650SG even. So I will have to spend some time monitoring performance and see if there's something I'm missing. Everything is set to high performance.

 

That only helps if the gpu is the limiting factor. The 1080p pixels are up-sampled and converted by the display itself to drive each individual pixel on the display (all 24,883,200 of them). There's no compression technology used here, so the raw data driving the pixels is still the same as with 2160p rendered. Some monitors support 'direct mode', which partially bypasses display chip conversion and these will actually see the highest refresh rate with the highest/native resolution, not a lower one.

Could say the bottleneck is display's TCON or bandwidth after that, but that isn't the case. Problem here is IPS-type; pixel response time is roughly double that of a TN, severely limiting refresh rate oc potential; pixel can't switch from state A to state B fast enough. Complicating the issue, if you're interested in ~75-120Hz, is that there are scarcely any eDP+TN displays in existence. The sole example over 15.6" were a few 3D 120Hz panels (x4). Here's a selected list of a 17.3" 120Hz, a bunch of other eDP+TN panels and the Samsung 4K IPS-type (left-to-right). Compare ' Optical Features' -> ' Response Time' (in ms). Though you have to take those values as an indication, not an absolute; display manufacturers self-report those values, so ...

 

Thank you for showing the video with the bios also and pretty much everything else you have done (thunderbolt 3 confirmed in the bios) In another video do you think you could compare the dm to the 17 inch zm and the p650 that you have so we can see how it looks compared? And I look forward to seeing more of your analysis when it comes to benching this thing .

 

According to Nvidia Inspector the temperature target is 101C. IIrc on the ZM it was 87-88C and we need Premas vBios to get it to 92C.
Have you done anything to have it at 101C?

 

So far at stock speeds it doesn't exceed 61C. Haven't overclocked yet, but I found it difficult to even approach 87-88C with my ZM even at max overclocks/overvolt.

 

How are the keyboard temps?

 

@HTWingNut how is the SM951? Planning on getting one but is it worth getting over a Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB? Is there really a benefit of the M2 SSD?

 

Cool. I will be taking temps of the keyboard when I load it up.

M.2 PCIe has high sequential transfer speeds, about 1300MB/sec but at the cost of heat. With the thermal pad it's manageable but still can approach 80C at load. Honestly, unless you have a specific need for super fast sequential transfer speeds, get a traditional 2.5" SSD or even a SATA version of the M.2. They run cooler and a lot less expensive.

See here for the transfer speeds of the M.2 Samsung, scroll down to the storage section: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...g-sync-review-by-htwingnut.777906/#components

Then scroll down to the storage section of this review: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ngnuts-initial-impressions-and-review.770412/

You can see the difference in benchmark performance, but honestly, for real world use, M.2 PCIe is overkill unless you have a specific need for it.

 

What NVIDIA Inspector is showing doesn't mean anything on stock vBIOS.
Its not the real value as offsets are in place. Temperature control works only with the Mod.

His vBIOS (like all stock vBIOS) throttles even on stock clocks because of power constrains (the green bars in the GPU-Z sensor shot), that's "normal".
To have no throttle even without OC we need to use the Mods...

 

Yes unfortunately stock vBIOS will throttle. Prema vBIOS will NOT throttle. At all. Part of the lower score is likely due to this throttling.

 

Thanks for the review, really interested in this machine, or the 8657 ... Does anyone know if we can run RedHat on it? Do they support the hi-res 4k display? Which version of RedHat? Thanks

 

I can't get the CPU to clock faster than 4.0GHz and am using Intel XTU. However, I can underclock and undervolt.

 

No base clock control in intel XTU?

 

Just underclock. Even if I move the sliders when I load the system it won't break 4GHz. If I move the sliders lower, it will underclock just fine. Not sure if an issue with XTU or the laptop.

 

It may need a little prema love for the enthusiast tweakers then.

 

Likely. But then again XTU has been known to do some odd things in the past.

 

HTWingNut, I don't have a reference, but it was mentioned that the 6820HK was unlocked, but only to 4ghz. I guess it's true? Or is this unique to the system you are evaluating?

 

This is the 6700k, so it may be different to the mobile line.

 

Meaker, I seem to be mixing threads/benchmarks, no time to double check now, but I thought HTWingNut's Fire Strike benchmark posting in another thread hit 4.2ghz Turbo, and it was a 6820HK... must have been someone else.

I see this Fire Strike benchmark is for the 6700k, so I would expect that to go past 4.0ghz, so this is doubly confusing if HTWingNut can't get it to go past 4.0ghz.

 

cache voltage offset is also directly tied to CPU core voltage. You can't change them independently either.

 

Here's XTU showing how it won't go above 4GHz.

 

HTWingNut, so the slider for 2/3/4 cores is stuck at 40x?

I noticed with the Broadwell 5950HQ that increasing the Cache ratio beyond 37x was unstable, maybe try dropping down the cache ratio from 41x to stock to see if that allows for higher than 40x 2/3/4 core ratios.

 

Slider is not stuck. Just the cores won't run faster than 4GHz regardless of anything above 4GHz.

 

Have you tried with the latest ThrottleStop?

Nevermind, Skylake support not added yet.

 

Ok, weird. Just for giggles I just cranked the sliders all the way up to max (83x / 8.3GHz, lol) and system froze then rebooted. Now clock speeds adjust with sliders. WTF!? Proverbial bigger hammer?

I'm running 4.5GHz at stock voltage, granted at 95-96C with full fans.

964 cb Cinebench R15
171.143 wPrime 2.10

 

Sounds like a management engine error. Nice that it's working now. Nice little fireball though but 4.5GHz at stock voltage is pretty crazy.

 

about 11% faster clock for clock in cinebench r15, compared to 928 cb at 4.8 ghz on my 4790k. nice

btw, the 6700k doesnt have a 4core turbo iirc, right? it just stays at 4ghz and turbos to 4.2 ghz on one core...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Correct.

 

Nice clocks at stock voltage.

I'm probably the only person on earth who would actually downclock that chip to get it running cooler. I get my jollies by seeing how cool & quiet I can get the machine to run, as opposed to how fast I can get the CPU going.

 

95-96C? Yikes, slap some Liquid Ultra on there.

 

I do too, but it's pushing limits to see what it's capable of. In all my reviews I usually at least undervolt to show temp improvement. If it can overclock at stock voltage to 4.5 (4.6 actually after a bit more testing) GHz, it should be able to undervolt very well. I'll have to check that next.

 

thats comparable to the 4790K though, mine only needs stock voltage at 4.7 ghz looking forward to your undervolting data!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

It looks like intel have tightened up their binning curve/manufacturing process so we do see less variation now.

 

My 4790K does 4.5GHz on a massive undervolt of -50mV on core and -35/40mV on cache... They are improving the binning...

 

Well using one sample as proof is not really valid but looking at how many samples are behaving it seems that way.

 

Yes I know.. I do have an engineering background

My point is from my experience a few others on the forum, the 4790K silicon seems to be much better now then it was at the begining of the year.. of course, now stock is just being delpleted... In that sense, I really don't regret getting the 4790K as I got a golden sample... Instead of a 6700K which might not as good of a quality as the 4790K...

 

with an average ipc improvement of 3.7% according to anandtech, its not really worth it for 4790K owners to sidegrade to a 6700k machine, especially not with the same gpu line

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Well to be honest, besides USB 3.1/TB3, there really isn't a whole lot of reason to get the DM if you already have a ZM. DDR4 is meh (unless you need 64GB of RAM), RAID is iffy at best, G-SYNC is available on the ZM already.

 

and raid as well@ZM. but going for a DM helps cure the yearly upgrade itch for some people lucky me (and my wallet) arent affected by that

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I believe the RAID support on the ZM is software, while its hardware on the DM, no? Could be wrong on that.

 

Thanks for the info HT, look forward to the full review. Excited about this machine, glad it got the Thunderbolt port.