D901C / Sager 9260/9262 / Pro-Star 9191 Owners Thread

Hi Deodot,

Unfortunately your scores somewhat work as a proof o my point.

In the previous generation one would go from ~5300 (non SLI or SLI disabled) to ~9100 (SLI), 71,5% increase with a E6700 with no OC (I know I would as I did the test).

You with the 8800M GTX go from ~9800 (non SLi or SLI disabled) to 13500 (SLi), 37% increase with a Q6600 helping the scores a bit with no OC. Heck, with SLi OCed you get just 48% increase against a non SLi system with no OC whatsoever, so not even close to the performance increase we experienced in the past.

So basically the new cards perform comparatively much worst in SLi then the previous gen on a Clevo. While on the desktop world its quite the contrary.

So next time someone asks what his the performance increase of SLi, just say 37% rather then 60% or 70% people (that is what it used to be but not now).

That is why, when just before the 8800M GTX in SLi (in December and January) people were speculating how good it would be, I said I was expecting scores around 16500 no OC!!!!!!!!!!. Yes I was. After the results came I our when I said I was disappointed some people may have considered me too negative, mad or too ambitious in my expectations. No I was not, I just did the maths

The reasons ... I tryed to explain my view over it in the previous posts.

It's not the Quad Core that is caping down the scores, in Deodot's case is actually giving his system an unfair advantage in this little comparison of mine with the use of a Q6600 against a E6700 in the 3dMark06 benchmark.

Stay cool,

Trance
PS: Glad you are happy. Great rig you have there, just don't know if I would go for SLi with the new cards.

 

Just for curiosity sake. don't you think the difference from 9100 to 5300 too similar to the difference from 13500 to 9800 (~3800). Humm, some food for thought around how actually Clevo managed to fit the 2x8800M GTX on the d901c.

I think I know the answer, anyone else?

Trance
PS: I knew the dollar was under pressure but not this much

 

@ deodot. whoa dude your getting 14K ay in 3dmark06.. i think its vista being the limiting factor here as im only geting 13118. and with the same overclocks as yours and same spec as your machine.

sigh now if only there were an fsb tool we can use to bump up the fsb

 

dazzyd, I think your scores are way too low. What are the scores without overcloking? You should get your supplier to review your machine.

I get with my 2x8700M GT far better scores in Vista x64 then in XP when OCed. Your are only getting 33% increase by going SLi. For today SLi standards really an abnormal value.

Trance

 

Here is what I suppose it is happening and why we are not getting the benefits of SLi has we were before.

Consider this diagram:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_side_bus

The PCI, AGP, and PCI Express/MXMIV peripheral buses often receive their own clock signals, which eliminates their dependence on the front side bus for timing. This is set by the BIOS.

The down side is that if the settings are not correct one can choke the FSB Bus. The good thing is that it gives the manfufactures more flexibility when tuning the system for better performance.

In order to use a desktop CPU and Chipset (P965) on a laptop, Clevo probably have played with these settings and found the optimum clock speeds for the PCI Express/MXMIV bus regarding the HEAT production. They really found a good balance between these settings and the chassis design (heatpipes/fans/space/grills etc etc). Great job!

Unfortunately, those tests were done mostly with the Go 7950 GTX as the 8* Series was not in the market yet. Some of them with the 8700M GT but not a lot. Making ridiculous guesses about the future that could be avoided by observing what was going on the the desktops world.

When the 8800M GTX some weaknesses started to show. So, back to play with the clock settings stated above. The problem is that most probably they don't have much leverage to play with them. In other words, most probably the settings for those clocks are just the same (or almost identical) both for the 8800M GTX in SLi, 8700M GTX in SLi and 7950 GTX in SLi.

While these clocks were not a bottleneck for the Go7950 GTX in SLI, they are now for the 8800M GTX SLI due to the increased production capacity of each card. Indeed, just one 8800M GTX requires almost the same bandwith as 2xGo7950 GTX, so were can we get more bandwith? Well we cannot, so we can only increase the clocks, but increasing the clocks generate more HEAT and that cannot be.

Considering that the 2x7950M GTX was already using an amount of bandwith close to the bus limit. Using the similar bus clocks for the three cards in SLi, basically means irrespectively of their production capacity the amount of information that is passed is almost just the same. So the CPU get the same ammount of information at the same rate and you get the same score increase both for the 2x7950 GTX and 2x8800M GTX (~3800).

Considering that people with the 8800M GTX in SLi (256 bits) are experiencing stuttering in high demand games such as Crysis at 1900x1200, this means that the combination of the PCI-Express/MXMIV bus clocks and the FSB Clocks is reached its limit.

To move forward, either waste is eliminated through the use of smarter Bus QUEUES embedded in the cards chipset or in the PCI Express bus dedicated to the video cards.

Also it might be the case that the benefits in terms of lower heat production of the new 48nm video cards (9800M GTX) might be just enough to be able to increase the PCI Express bus clock while mantaining the temps we have today, or even to move us out from the P965 chipset going forwared to true 1333 MHz or 1600MHz buses.

What I'm 99% sure is that if the future 9800M GTX work with 128SPs and not 96SPs as of today, SLI will be useless becouse just one Card will use all the bandwith.

In sum the production capacity of 2x8800M GTX is way above what the current architecture can handle, in other words, the second card is having a walk in the park.

This observation is interesting:

1) Indeed one 9800M GTX with 128 SPs (if that is the case) will perform the same if not better then 2xCards with 98SPs (8800M GTX in SLi). Furthermore, a single 9800M GTX will be better used in terms of its production capacity then the 2x8800M GTX.

2) If the 8700M GT used 256 bit output, most probably I would be getting very similar performance as you guys do with 2x8800M GTX. But in this case both cards would be being used at their full capacity.

In the desktop world, this problem is already solved. Well it was solved even before the 8800M GTX actually appeared in the market. The 1333MHz FSB Bus speeds was already common and Intel was coming with X35 offering FSB Bus speeds up to 1600 Mhz.

The problem I have with the Clevo SLI solution as I know now, is that it was a very short term solution inspite of being MXMIV (modular and upgradeable). Good engeneering don't generate this amount of waste in less then a year.

Indeed when you pay for a video card, what you are paying is PRODUCTION CAPACITY. That is why it is charged $600 wether to be used on SLi or non SLi.
But then this cards can only be used with the d901c. So any device making use of less then the actual production capacity is wasting our money, more even so in this case.

IMHO, That is why in the end I think $1600 for an SLi upgrade is not a fair price to ask compared to other that ask much less to their customers. In exact terms, the second card (child card) should cost around 37% or even %50 of the cost of the parent card. That is $222 for 37%. This would make an SLI upgrade a total of $822 (almost half of $1600) Tha is more or less what DELL is asking for to their customers wanting to upgrade from 8700M to 8800M Single Card SLi coincidence or not.

Stay cool,

Trance
PS: This is just my opinion and suppositions and deductions. In no way I have access to measurement tools, hardware or any other kind of exact information. Simple plain deduction out of the information it is available on the Net. I might even be totally wrong so read this with a pinch of salt.

 

Yes I know. I wasn't trying to argue that. My post was more directed to Dazzyd. As you say yourself in your later post; His scores are quite low..

 

I'm going to install Vista again and see what i get. Will inform you as soon as i can.

Actully your points is closer to what i got when i was running SLI without the bridge cable, only using the PCI bus between the cards.. This gives a drop of 500-1000. Perhaps you have a malfunctioning cable

 

@DFTrance:

First, my hat's off to you, as you've obviously put a great deal more effort into analyzing the problem than I have - I can only claim excuses on the grounds that (i) I don't (yet) have one of these systems and (ii) my "gift" of gab probably overstates my intellectual capacity.

Second, having read through your posts a little more carefully now, I am inclined to think that you have identified one of the primary culprits in the stuttering case, and that, if anything, you have persuasively explicated the basis for why Intel's move to the new point-to-point topology of quickpath is the only viable alternative left open if Intel is to proceed further with development, particularly in the case of notebook systems.

I believe, however, that my own little pet favorite, inordinately increased usage (monopolization, I should say) of the current system bus, aka FSB, by the memory controller for the purpose of maintaining cache coherency, is, if you will, the straw that broke the camel's back of the main problem you've identified. In particular, the need to use the FSB for such maintenance must have the effect of substantially increasing both the immediate issue of bus latency as well as the issue of overall DPC latency, as cache maintenance not only consumes a large number of bus clock cycles, it also consumes CPU cycles at a very high level of priority, thereby further deferring other time-sensitive DPCs that would otherwise be scheduled to run with elevated priority.

So, together, you with myself as junior, junior partner, appear to have named the dragon in Intel's lair for what it is; now, if only the means to slay that self-same dragon can be found.

Congratulations! May we all some day swim in fountains of champagne!

 

hmm i got my lappy from xotic.. and unfortunately as i am in australia. i dont want to send it back to the US. methinks to open up the lappy myself and have a squizz inside to see if the bridge cable is loose or sumthing.


let us know what score u get with vista x64 deodot.

 

@Shyster,

Yes, freeing the BUS is one of the primary concerns of Intel at the moment (or it should be). AMD lost the game becouse it worried about it just too soon (no 48nm tech yet in the market).

Not just becouse of video cards and games. If you consider the evolution of networking with greater thoughtputs to pass on HD content, realtime HD enecoding, plus more resolution in HD TVs plus ESATA etc etc, when can see that the FSB will be in the future charged with information at greater rates. Whatever resources that can free the FSB to the devices that actually need it will be appreciated in the near future.

Indeed, if they (Intel) do so while mantaining temps down as they do now, we might even witness a Clevo d9000 with Quad SLi and 8 Core CPUs in 3 or 4years.

What both Intel and AMD dream doing, is actually have a point-to-point link to the graphics cards cores. Again freeing even more the FSB. Something of course NVIDIA does not like at all. I too believe the idea for the time being to be too far streched as of something will be lost such as scalability.

One other idea is to implement a direct private BUS between the CPU and the graphics cards. This carry other problems but IMHO much more feasible and with imediate performance gains.

Trance

 

When you guys are comparing scores it would be helpful if you also posted what driver version # you are using. They do matter.

 

Hey guys I could really use some help. I just received my np9262, plugged it in and turned it on and... NOTHING. Then I turn it off and on again and it says no operating system??? WTF??? So I turn it on again and now the screen wont even turn on. I waited for 3 weeks for this, how disappointing! I thought they were supposed to test these thing out, at least that's what they told? Any thoughts?

 

Who was your reseller?
Call them immediately?
DO you have your windows CD?, reformat yourself?
sounds like something could also be loose, you might have to reseat parts, but i wouldnt recommend that if i kno wat you're doing. Send it back if you cant just install windows urself, and see if you can strike a deal (ya kno, like "i spent all this money and its DoA, wtf? Wat can you do for me so i recommend u to others")

 

Did you call your reseller up?

 

First question...what operating system did you order?

 

I ordered Vista 64 with it but there is no windows disk. I just called and they are closed until Monday. The weird thing is that when I first turned it on it was starting to boot up until it said no operating system. Now when I turn it on there is nothing on the screen. This sucks! Well it's a beautiful looking laptop anyways, now I can stare at it until Monday

 

Btw I ordered it from PCMW.

 

well, i personally vouch for PCMW and say that u shud actually be glad u got from them. the moment they do pick up, they'll fix that all for free and be very courteous about it. ANd btw.. you prolly can strike a deal with them.. shhhh... i never told you. Just be like, I spent all this money and heard such good things, wat can u do for me... im very surprised, you shud have the windows CD with it....

 

Not necessarily. You obviously still have some sort of computer to work on that gets onto the internet, so you could always d/l an iso of the ultimate boot cd, burn it to a cd/dvd, and then use it to boot the 9262 and run some diagnostics on the hard drive.

 

Thanks for the advice I will defiantly do that. Do you know if there is anyway of contacting someone this weekend or am I going to have to wait?

 

Yeah I could do that, but the screen isn't even working now. I was going to try plugging it into my monitor and see what happens.

 

Shyster how would I do that lol? Directions please I'm fairly new to some of this stuff. Thanks

 

No signal to an external monitor either. I think DOA

 

If it wasn't installed, and you didn't get the DVD, then please take a moment and double check your Order Confirmation and Invoice to make sure it is on there.

 

It's not DOA, you just don't have an Operating System installed.

 

Double checked and ordered with Windows Vista 64 premium.

 

How do I create a boot disk from my other computer?

 

Well give them a call. I am sure they will straighten it out quickly.

Don't they have 24/7 DOMESTIC Toll Free Support?

 

I don't think so, does anybody know?

 

Does anybody offer that?

Schwing, batta

 

Hmmm, what is the Schwing, batta reference?

 

In certain circles, it's an invocation to the lords of baseball to stop the batter from getting a hit, particularly when pitched a real soft-ball.

 

@corvette. If you didnt get the OS installed, they will probably send you (OVERNIGHT) your CD... they're that good. at least they were with me anyway. so you call monday, you'll have it tuesday...

I have noticed they are clumsy sometimes tho. My computer came with the bottom piece off with one screw holding it in >_<. another time they just forgot to send me the return shipping sheet for broken parts i had to send back. Everything with them is overnight. But yours is an easy problem.. i hope

 

Although I was disapponted that my laptop didn't work I am already impresed with their service. They already responded to my email and told me to take out one of the ram modules. That didn't work so I will send it back. They said they would overnight it which is nice. I understand if I just needed to install windows it would be no problem, but the screen will not turn on anymore.

 

Make sure that they pay for shipping both ways. Since the unit was DOA.

 

And insurance!

 

I agree with Doodles. I just got my rig from PCMW a few of days ago and there were a couple of problems. They didn't send the car adapter that I ordered and the laptop came with a glossy screen instead of the matte I ordered. However, they fixed the problems after I talked to them. They overnighted the adapter and they cut me a deal on the screen: I agreed to keep the glossy, and they took $500 off of my order instead of shipping it out, swapping screens, and shipping it back.

 

WOW, that's awesome service form PCMW!

 

That are the things that still keep my confidence in them.

 

Wow I hope they can take some $ off my order too. I already took it apart and took out the ram like they told me too, but no luck. The only thing I wish they had was 24/7 phone support, I know others do.

 

yeaaa... they're still a relatively small business in Cali. People just have to learn to try and call and have patient if your put on hold (which they rarely do anyway). They really make the customer feel like u can come to them with any questions. If anything seems broken, call them up and get a new piece under warranty. they overnight everything. have all your questions ready during the day. GL corvette.

 

Thanks Doodles, hey any reason why my desktop with a Q6600 and 8800gts 320mb is getting 8212 in 3dmark 06? Ive seen lots of benchmarks of the np9262 with one 8800m gtx getting high 9000s and sometimes 10,000s. I thought the 8800m gtx and the desktop 8800gts 320/640 were almost the same performance wise?

 

they are not the same. i tested my 8800m gtx with my brothers 8800gts 320 and i destroyed him in all games we tested with the exception of eve online where his rig performed much better than mine for some reason.

 

actually I have tested this as well.

the mobile 8800M GTX (G92) is near the same performance as the desktop 8800 GTS (G92)

comparing a G92 to a G80 would have a discrepancy since they are different in mem bandwidth and mem interface.

 

Alright so your saying that our 8800m GTX is similar to the newer desktop GTS? Which I heard was pretty close to the desktop GTX. Or am I confused?

 

The 8800GTS 512 is pretty close to the GTX.
But the 8800M GTX is still somewhat slower than the 8800 GTS 512, it`s closer to the 8800 GTS 320/640 ...

 

Got it, still very impressive.

 

For a notebook that's amazing with current technology standards and it has everything of a desktop and a HD 17" screen.

 

PCMW had Fedex overnight the laptop back to them today. They were very pleasant to deal with and I got a great deal on the 3 year extended warranty. They said I would have it back by Friday at the latest. If anyone is on the fence about them I wouldn't hesitate. Great Service I hope it stays that way!

 

They are doing well from what i hear