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

With my thing, on boot, it may just have a black screen. Like, 1/2 of all the boot ups just dont activate the screen. Yet another reason for my disasterous format.

To change RAID, you gotta hit ctrl-I when booting up, and then you can dissassemble arrays and put them back together. Be careful though, because ONE change will require a format/reinstall of OS. That said, it has about 5 confirmation steps before it actually goes ahead and does something.

 

Sorry for the double post, but I've been wondering what kind of HDTune scores the 9260 owners have been getting. I forgot to backup my screenie of my results when I sent in my thing for RMA, but I know it blew the laptops in the HDtune thread out of the water by a good margin. I'd expect a RAID-0 with three drives, or a RAID-5, to be lightning quick. Only problem with RAID is access time latency... but... once it spins up, watch out! (damn thing loaded levels faster than my desktop!)

 

So you managed format and install your systema already? Mine allways shows that screen on startup.

As for HDTune here are my results in Vista 32 bits:

HD Tune: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 48.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 84.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 70.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 17.6 ms
Burst Rate : 77.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 7.9%

HD Tune: Intel Raid 0 Volume Information

Firmware version : 1.0.
Serial number :
Capacity : 465.8 GB (~500.1 GB)
Buffer size : 0 KB
Standard :
Supported mode :
Current mode :

Notice that I have my system prety heavy loaded when I was testing. Basically running everthing from SQLServer, IIS and Visual Studio to Microsoft Office (this my normal operating environment). I remember I did the test right after installed Vista and they were somewhat better.

Trance

 

thats a great hd tune score, Trance! in raid 0, the 250GB 5400 rpm hitachi drives are the better value as they give the same performance as the 200GB 7200 rpm drives due to their higher ariel density. they cost less and you also get an extra 100 gigs of space. raid 5 has poor write speeds so real time video transfering from camcorder to pc (like high def. HDV tapes) or anything write-intensive suffers in raid 5 and is not recommended.

for those going with 3 hard drives, i would recomend a setup similar to Trances. raid 0 array should be for the first 2 hard drives. the 3rd one should be independant to act as a backup drive. you can put saved games, family pictures and videos, and work files on that drive in case the raid 0 array fails. if the raid array fails you simply re-instal the programs and OS as the saved files would be on the backup drive. if the backup drive fails you simply replace the drive and transfer the files from the raid array again. it's almost like the raid and backup drive will scratch eachothers back if one other other fails.

you get the full performance of raid 0 with the peace of mind that the important files are backed up in the 3rd hdd.

here is my raid 0 hd tune results from my older sager 9860
2x 80 gig 5400 rpm hitachi drives in raid 0

 

That's a crazy burst rate you have there!

 

ARGH-
there's gotta be something funny about that burst rate. WD Raptor's dont get that speed!

Also, thats bit you said about the 2 in RAID and one for storage- that's exactly my goal for when I get it back from the factory. Best of both worlds- crazy storage, with blazing speed on the front-end.

 

yeah i do not know whats up with the burst rate numbers. i ran the test a second time and gave me similar results. the average speed is what really matters anyway i think.

i think this program only tests read speed. not too sure if it tests write speed.

 

Yeah, I also noticed the burst rate, man that is crazy.

Burst Rate - The burst rate is the highest speed (in megabytes per second) at which data can be transferred from the drive interface (IDE or SCSI for example) to the operating system.

What the bios version you have in yours?

Trance

 

Can someone post your D900c CPU and GPU temps. I just want to check if mines are normal (maybe usefull for others too). At the moment I can't fully test mine at work, later on I'll post them.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Trance

 

Clevo D900C
17" WUXGA
Core2 Duo E6700 @ 2.66 ghz
2gb 800mhz Ram
2x nVidia 7950 GTX in SLi oc'd using Riva 624/728
3x 160gb Seagate Sata 300 7200 rpm Drives - no raid
Notepal Laptop Cooler + LapCool5 Cooler + (2) TT portable fans

Laptop Fan on high. Just ran autoAVG virus scans so drives are warm.
Speedfan 4.32
HD0 50c HD1 32c HD2 50c
Temp1 36c Core0 27c Core1 29c

CoreTemp 0.95 Core0 27c Core1 29c

Riva Hardware Monitoring 37.34c

Hope that helps. Soon to be X6800 thanks to Ebay...

 

Here is what I get with ZALMAN Notebook Cooler NC1000.

Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (fans on full spin/default load):
ACPI Thermal Zone: 40C
Core0: 40C
Core1: 36C

Intel Thermal Analysis Tool - TAT (fans on full spin/full load):
ACPI Thermal Zone: 59C
Core0: 62C
Core1: 58C

Intel Thermal Analysis Tool - TAT (no cooling/default load):
ACPI Thermal Zone: 56C
Core0: 57C
Core1: 53C

Intel Thermal Analysis Tool - TAT (no cooling/full load):
ACPI Thermal Zone: 65C
Core0: 68C
Core1: 65C

Speedfan 4.32 (fans on full spin/default load)
ACPI Thermal Zone: 45C
Core0: 35C
Core1: 35C

* no cooling - it means that I have ZALMAN off and notebook fans on normal.

I have no idea if this temps are ok. So if anyone has any information about what should we expect would be appreciated.

You can get Intel TAT on: http://www.overclock.net/downloads/138139-intel-tat.html


Trance

 

Here is the setup I ordered:

XOTIC / SAGER NP9260 ( Clevo D900C ) Intel Core 2 DUO / Core 2 Duo EXTREME / 17" WSXGA / WUXGA / 512MB PCI-Express GeForce 7950 Video / SLI / DDR2 667 / SATA
- 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1920x1200)
- Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
- Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz w/ 4MB L2 Cache - 1066MHz FSB
- 512MB PCI-Express nVidia GeForce 7950GTX w/GDDR3 (User Upgradeable)
- ~ 4,096MB DDR2 667 PC2 5300 (2 SODIMMS) Dual Channel Memory (w/ Vista 64-Bit Only)
- Standard Finish
- ~Combo 8x8x6x4x Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW 5x DVD-RAM 24x CD-R/RW Drive w/Softwares
- ~ 160GB Seagate Momentus 3GB/S SATA 300 7200RPM Hard Drive
- HDD Raid Settings - OFF
- Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RS)
- Built in 1.3Megapixel Camera
- Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included
- Integrated System Speakers - Included
- Internal Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR
- Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965 802.11 a/g/n
- Basic Black Business Case - Included
- Smart Li-ion Battery (12 Cell)
- 110/220V 120W Auto Switching AC Adapter - Included
- ~Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Installed (64&32-Bit CD Included) w/ Drivers & Utilities CD's
- 3 Year Labor* 1 Year Parts Warranty Lifetime Toll Free Tech Support (Extra 2 Year Labor Warranty through Xotic PC)

not a bad setup for me

 

trance, how do you like the barracudas? i was debating between the barracudas and the siberias from icemat..i went with the icemats mainly due to the price...and i wasnt sure if i could hook up the barracudas to a laptop.

 

The Barracudas are excellent on games and films!! The best I've heard as you can really pin point where other player are during an FPS session. Now for music is under par (really yuch).

Be warned that you can't get them hooked directly to the notebook becouse they require three analog jacks (left, right, center), at least I could'nt find a converter from SPDIF to analog. This is not a problem of the Barracudas as all "real" 5.1 headphones I've saw use an analog input.

Actually this is one of the things that I don't understand why Clevo does not have in it with such a big Shell. Luckly I had a Creative NX from my previous laptop so use it while playing.

Trance

 

good to hear, if/when the icemats break..ill be sure to check out the barracudas.

 

Yeah, with the regular jack in the front, I've been getting a lot of annoying noise when my headphones were plugged in. Very noticeable even one setting up from mute, and on the highest the noise almost blew out my headphones. Do your laptops have issues like that too? Its horrible, to the point where I cant stand doing anything with headphones with the laptop.

 

Hunter,

That is strange. Mine seam to work fine.

Trance

 

Ahh well. My headphones are very sensitive to line noise (Bose QC3's). They don't like plugging into extension cables or anything but the direct source- ipod, soundcard, etc. I'll see if my cheaper headphones (Koss IDKWHT) are less sensitive when my lappy gets back from Cali.

 

Maybe I'm being picky with my Clevo, I honest don't know as it never happened with a laptop with me.

Apart from the tiny pitch from the right fan (I haven't opened my laptop yet to try to solve it) that I mentioned before, yesterday I noticed another thing but now on my screen. The room was dark. I'm sure this wasn't there before in the same conditions.

While booting, when the screen is black I noticed some light flickering (like some light inside the LCD is flickering lightly in different parts of the screen) and ghosting (slight darker bands on the lines where white letter are presented) that simply wasn't there before. This flicker is not constant as sometimes seam less severe. This is unoticeble on bright images. But for instance while loading COD2 (Call of Duty 2) the same thing happens.

Is this normal with this screens? Can be this due to some external interferance, or internal components not well isolated?

I use this laptop all the time at work. So it is on about 10 to 15 hours a day.

Maybe any of the great wise mans on this forum such as Chaz, Gophn or Donald can provide me with some light on this issues.

Trance
PS: I ask all this to decide if is worth returning the unit for repair or something. This is very expensive laptop in my book. I would have bought it from Donald but I live in Europe/Portugal.

 

I had flicker in windows on my D901C. I switched video drivers and had a very unstable one. It kept BSODing me during games also. Since moving to the 165.01 drivers from laptopvideo2go I have not had that problem.

Did you switch from the stock drivers?

 

No I have not switch drivers yet. Was your flickering issue happening on boot screens too?

Can you post a link to those drivers? Are they XP?

Thanks in advance for all the help.

Trance

 

Ok, I've downloaded the driver for XP but our card does not come in the list of available drivers. I'm installing using the "Have disk" mode and "I'll select my video card". What card have you choosen Wu?

Trance

 

Okay, you need to download the 165.01 Driver ALONG WITH the moddified .INF file. You extract the Driver to a folder then you add the moddified .INF to that folder and overwrite it. It should be larger than the one it is replacing. I.e. 47kb to 97kb. Then what I do is go to control panel and uninstall NTune, Nhance, and then the Nvidia Drivers. Choose not to reboot and then go to device manager and uninstall both video cards (if you have them).

Now reboot and choose to go into safe mode..i.e. F8 while booting. Now click cancel twice to stop it from resetting up the video card. Now run Driver Cleaner Pro (Freeware) and then run CCleaner to fix any missing registry settings.

Now reboot again and start windows normally. Again when it boots up click cancel twice to stop it from installing your video card. Now go to the new driver folder and click the setup icon. Also, I make sure to disable my anti-virus when installing new drivers just so that no problems pop-up. But thats a personal preference. It should install the new drivers fairly clean.

If you look around Laptopvideo2go it has how to install its drivers. And there are a few articles on how to best install new video card drivers. Mine is the condensed version. Search around if you need some more information. It's the best way to learn.

Hope that help's you Trance. I was not having flickering during BIOS boot. Just when I got into Windows. If your having it in BIOS then it could be something more serious...(or not too serious) like a video card not properly seated.

Good luck to you man.

 

For those who would like to play with numbers. My Ebay X6800 arrived today. Sweeet.

With the E6700, I ran 3dMark06 and got a score of 9505. [In the past with NGO diver and clocking at 629/800, I hit my best score of 9808. For ref only]

testing Laptop
17" WUXGA
E6800
2gb 800mhz SuperTalent [Samsung] ram
(3) Seagate 160gb SATA 300 - no raid
2x 7950 GTX SLi oc'd with standard video driver

I Changed Nothing But The CPU to the X6800 and then ran a score of 9624. Temps right after test. Speedfan: hd0 38, hd1 30, hd2 38, Temp1 44, c0 41, c1 44 and Riva Gpu 39.

Reset video to 624/800. Test ran 9775. Speedfan: hd0 44, hd1 31, hd2 43, Temp1 43, c0 42, c1 44 and Riva Gpu 40.

Reset video to 629/806. Test ran 9977. Speedfan: hd0 46, hd1 32, hd2 45, Temp1 41, c0 41, c1 43 and Riva Gpu 39.

Temps don't look like a problem. To join the 10k club, I would need the NGO drivers and faster ram. Not worth loosing sleep over. Reduced oc to 621/725, this Laptop deserves a rest.

Next up BTW, have (2) OCZ 2gb PC12-6400 on the way. CPU-Z reports the Supertalent as 5-5-5-18. The OCZ are rated 5-5-5-15. I'll let you know if that and the extra ram makes a difference.

 

How can we get CPU temp ? is there good program working on Vista ?

 

Thank you Wu, I intalled the new driver and in terms of performance it runs better. I go 9075. In terms of flickering in the boot screens and so on, it did not solve. I'll open the box and see what I can do, otherwise I'll return to repair but I really need the machine to work so I'll try to do it myself.

Anyway my 3DMarks seam prety low compared to others with similar specs.

I noticed AlanP that you use CPU-Z to get the CPU information so I searched and downloaded the program.

Here is what it says about the memory (SPD folder):

Max Bandwirth: PC2-5300 (333Mhz) What?

I was told that my PC has a 800Mhz memory. How is this possible? Or am I reading this wrong.

The memory folder says nothing more apart from the total memory and being DDR2. Am I being taken for a ride?

Thanks in advance

Trance

 

PC-5300 is 667Mhz. The bus speed showing up needs to be doubled i.e. 333x2 = 667Mhz.

Since changing the driver didn't help your flickering it may be just a badly seated video card. Hopefully that is all it is.

 

i have a question regarding opening and closing the lcd screen. on my 9860 when you flipped open the lcd screen the picture would sometimes not come up. it might flicker for a split second but the video drivers would fail to bring up the screen. you simpy have to close and re-open the screen to remedy this. i am wondering if the new D900 series is having this issue. it appears to be an nvidia driver related issue as it never does this during the boot process or in the bios, just in windows environment.

 

Trance, I reran the CPU-Z. On the SPD Page it reports:

Module Size 1024 MBytes
Max. Bandwith PC2-6400 (400) MHZ
Manufacturer - blank -
Part Number SUPERTALENT

BTWm while I had the Laptop open, I pulled and read a memory chip. It is marked as Supertalent (Samsung).

Under Timings Table at the bottom.

200 MHZ 3-3-3-9-12
266 MHZ 4-4-4-12-16
400 MHZ 5-5-5-18-23

I get the same exact readings for Slot #1 and #2. #3 and #4 are marked "Empty". Hope that helps.

 

I'm not currently having this problem. Most of the times I've heard of this problem it was because of the ribbon cable (from the mainboard to the LCD) was being pinched or twisted.

 

Posting for general information. I'm not sure what it means really. The Riva Core Temp lived at 35c when then E6700 was installed. With the X6800 installed the report now runs about 39c.

Installing the CPU does not require any work at the Graphics end at all. So I really can't explain why a CPU swap would raise the idling temps for the GPU.


Quick question, I read Wu Jen's note on Laptops, which refers to Intel Drivers. On the Intel Site there is the option for downloading the Intel Applications Accelerator. Reading the notes, it implies that the "fix" changes the Intel ATA Driver in Windows. Now the question [wasn't so quick was it?]. The new Intel Southbridge dropped all IDE support, so this "fix" shouldn't help at all, Right? It actually could make matters worse if the factory drivers for the IDE [the Optics Drives] was replaced - unless this Laptop uses sata Optic Drives also. Then the Intel Accellerator would have no effect at all, Right?

 

I can't comment on updating the intel drivers atm. I'm working on a special project. Well 2 of them actually.

1. Test all video drivers from 94.22 up. With SLI and without to determine which is best for our notebook.

2. Find the PLL for clockgen to overclock the SPU in our machines.

I'll post the results when done

 

Well guys it seams that I have a 667 Mhz memory althought I was told by the seller that it was 800 Mhz. So monday a call is due.

I opened the laptop and all the video cards seam pretty well put (honestly I don't know what to look for). I haven't taken the cards out to check anything. Just opened the cover and they wouldn't move an hair either way and the seam well attached.

I wish there was some kind of manual showing how to take them out. They appear to be sealed as there is a plastic ribbon around them.

Honestly don't know what to do about this. I have built my own desktops but when it comes to these babies they are so different and expensive that I'm afraid of making the matters worst. The problem is that I need this baby for my work and two weeks repair was not on my schedule.

By the way, are the temps I posted ok (as of standard without much cooling gadgets on like AlanP) or strange?

"The Riva Core Temp lived at 35c when then E6700 was installed" - Alan

They are tottaly different from the ones posted by Alan. Mine without the ZALMAN cooler are 51 on TAT and 48 on Riva Tuner. When stress testing it with TAT go to 68C!!!!!!! SpeedFan during normal operation sometimes show me the Burning flag.

Can someone give me some advice what to look for? I'm getting really worried about this unit. Right when I had everything installed and running

Trance

 

Honestly if your having the flickering issue I would contact RJTech...your reseller right? And I'd RMA it back to them. When it comes to hardware that was supposed to be working when it shipped it should fall to the reseller to ensure that it was working properly. Did it flicker straight out of the box?

 

No it did not flicker straight out of the box. It started flickering about three days ago (about 6 days after I got with no tampering from me).

RJTech is not my reseller, I live in Lisbon/Portugal/Europe and found a reseller.

Anyway, I wrote to them already. I'll keep you guys informed.

List of resellers of D900/1c in Europe:

Spain, Portugal, Netherlands & Belgium: http://www.ahtec.net/

Portugal: http://webservinfor.com/php/index.php?cPath=44&osCsid=8031107e509faec03479e67a63b984fe

By the way guys, I returned the Razer Barracuda, Microphone did not work!
I got my money back and choose something else as I've read that this problem is common on the Barracudas. It is such a shame, they sound great but for the price they should work perfectely. Looking form ZALMAN or Medusa 5.1

Trance
PS: Great projects Wu, that sure will help people like me and many others who really know very little about these beasts.

 

Yeah, I'd like to get something at least in the 9000's when I get mine back- hopefully drivers ill do that. Elsewise, it feels like I got the short end of the 3DM stick...

Anyway, good luck to all of you.

 

One problem I have noticed (and I'm going to point it out in my review) is that the microphones placement near the speakers leads to a massive feedbackfest when you do a hardware microphone test. It's pretty disturbing.

 

You're doing a large-scale review, Wu? Thats great. I hope it goes more in depth than the other ones up.
I was gonna, but I'm too lazy. I was hoping one of the top-of-the-line'ers (near max spec) would, but I've never had the inclination much...

 

lol, I've just got a lot on my plate atm.

1st thing I want to do is test every Nvidia driver from 94.22 up, i.e. 94.23, 94.24 etc. I want to run CS:S, HL:LC, 3DMark05, 3DMark06, FEAR min/max, Oblivion, Supreme Commander (Low/Med/High) tests for each driver. I figure I can probably get through about 3 drivers per day without getting burned out. I am also going to enable SLI and disable SLI during each driver so there will ONE complete set with SLI and one without.

This should give us a good idea of which driver is the overall best driver to use in our machines and some idea of which driver is better to use for one of those particular games. These will all be run in XP. I just don't have the heart to run them all in XP then do it all again for Vista. I probably will eventually but I'm taking it a step at a time.

Then my project after that will be to figure out the chipset for PLL control to enable CPU overclocking. That should be fairly easy to figure out and not take as long. (Hopefully!)

Finding the best drivers is #1 in my book atm. I've found some interesting drivers also. The alienware 94.23 drivers are about 23MB while the laptop video2go drivers at 94.23 are only 12?MB much smaller with the same driver # attached. I want to test all I can to see what works best for our machines. I think it will probably bleed over and work for other SLI 7950GTX machines, such as the m9750 but we will just have to wait and see.

Now after the driver test for XP and after I get the CPU overclocking finished, then I'll write up my review. I've had mine for a bit over a month now and I'll outline all the PRO's and CON's that I've noticed.

 

Yesterday replaced the E6700 with a X6800. Oblivion seemed odd, but I only ran for a few minutes. Today Oblivion crashes after maybe a minute.

Looked like a Video issue. So I reinstalled the first few drivers from the System Disk. Ran 3dMark06 for grins and drop kicked 9912 score. Reset the video to 621/800 and then reran the 3dMark06. Riva temp at end of test shows 47.5c. Wow, like it kinda broke into a sweat! Drum Roll please...., scored 10,008. Just making it in should still be good enough, right? Please add me to the list of 10K runners.

Why the changeover of CPU would affect the Laptop System is strange, but keep it in mind if you do a swap too. Try reinstalling the Drivers first before you panic or assume something else is wrong.

 

Nice score man

 

Thanks. This set up definitely runs hotter than the E6700. Maybe 4 to 5c on the GPU score from Riva and 5 to 10c on the CPU after running Oblivion. But then again, Oblivion in 1600x1200 without stutters and video stuff is really nice to see. You can really flow into the game graphics. Nice Machine!

I'll post what I can see from the OCZ memory swap, probably next weekend.

The E6700 from the Laptop is going into an Ebay project at work, my "workstation". Besides the E6700, it gets a Gigabyte mb, evga 8800 ultra, (2) sata 300 7200 rpm 160gb hd, and (2) sata 300 optic drives, with OCZ 2gb pc2-8500 platinum mem sticks. Should oc to 3.5mhz easily. Will probably drop kick well beyond the 10k mark! It should run MS Word pretty good, LOL!

 

Thanks a lot Wu for all the help, I tried the drivers you mentioned on XP and I get better performance out of my laptop. I suggest you to put the quick how-to about installing the drivers on the first post. That would help a lot others like me.

I also tried the Vista 32bits drivers. Finally I was able to enable SLI on this version of Vista but unfortunately they cause extreme flickering when for instance executing the 3DMark06.

By the way my LCD is getting worst so definitely there is something wrong with it. The fitting of the cards may not be the only problem has I haven't move it these weekend so the fitting couldn't possibly get worst ... I think.

Trance
PS: Are my temps ok? Still no one posted anything usefull about what we should expect in terms of temps using the standard cooling methods offered by the D900c (or d901c if you will).

 

just received my 9260 from xoticpc...im gonna try my best to get some playing in tonight...i just worked a 12 hour day in the sun with no breaks...im exhausted.

 

Raid 0 is a lot faster then not having raid 0. My D900C (hypersonic) has two 100G in a raid 0 array and I can assure you that there is an absolute noticable difference in speed.

Raid 5 is another story... a Raid 5 array is SLOWER then a single drive. You can always expect about a 30% performance deficit when dealing with a Raid 5 system... it's there for data integrity, not speed.

 

Not true. My RAID 5 config with 3xHitachi 7k200's posts a better score than a single drive. I'll HDTune it and post a pic but my throughput is better than was posted for the stock 7k200's in their threads on the Hardware forum. My seek time was also good about 14ms. If I remember my minimum was 40.1 average was 60 and max was about 84. It was a bit higher than was posted for a single 7k200.

 

Please add me to the owner list, my machine should be shippin' in the next couple of days, cant f-ing wait! has the specs in my sig. Got it from XoticPC.com and Justin was extremely helpful! I recommend the site to anybody. (if i get my laptop that is ).

Gettin it with x64 vista ultimate then installing the "Performance Edition" XP (from demonoid.com)

Thanks guys

 

Added, welcome onboard man! Congrats on your new machine!

 

Can I join the club?

 

RAID-5 is definitely faster than not having RAID at all so long as you have enough CPU power. There is no doubt.

If you have hardware RAID, bandwidth will be limited by the controller, so a big RAID array will end up being slower than an ordinary set of HDDs, but that is the price one pays for adding something external to the motherboard. PCI-e/SATA RAID controllers might alleviate this to some extent.

If you have software RAID or fakeraid (as in your above average notebook), then bandwidth isn't going to be limited by a hardware controller, it will be limited by processing power. With only 3 HDDs, you're really at the worst case for RAID-5 AFAIK, but performance should still be a bit better than without RAID at all.