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

Now I don't have my D901C yet so I am not really a owner, yet, but I have ordered one so I will be soon.

Miah, since the advent of the Lithium Ion battery, you don't have to worry too much about it developing a memory like nickel cadmium batteries did. So there should be no need discharge and recharge it to full like the Ni-cads needed. Since you have a "desk-top" replacement notebook, you should almost always be on 120-240 power and consider the laptop battery to an UPS if power ever goes out. Always leave the battery in. The only time you should have to take it out it is when:

A. disassembling the laptop to perform upgrades/maintainance

B. using it as a projectile to hit the guy across the room who just team killed you

 

What has happened to Wu Jen?

 

Well my 9261 is estimated to ship soon, week of Oct 8th. I hope it does, I've been waiting since early September for it.

I can't wait to get it. The quad core is going to rock with work -- I'm an Electrical Engineer and do a lot of hardware and software design tasks. The tools can really drag down a regular machine.

I'm also cranked to try it out with HL2 and Oblivion. If it doesn't ship this week I may have a breakdown of some sort.

When is your scheduled to ship Ashveratu?

 

Hi Kozi how can I check my estimated time to get my 9261? Who do I ask to see when my ship I also wanted earlier then the 19th.

 

I can't stand the wait!! I ordered mine in early September and I still don't have it! I did re-order as soon as the 9261 became available, changed my mind on the processor... was gonna go for the extreme edition until the quad became available. Does anyone know if a person could swap out the q6700 for the qx6850? I wonder why this is not offered as an option as it looks to have the same specs? Just wondering.....

 

Heya Kozi, I have no idea. As a matter of fact, I plan to call Xotic on Monday to actually speak with someone. So far all communique has been via email. When I originally made my order, I asked that 32 bit Vista be installed since I heard that driver support for 64 bit was lagging. It seems to have caught up now and was convinced when I saw Justin's post with 3DMark06 results. So I asked them to install the 64 bit version now. Then the thought hit me, if I am going to have the 64 bit version, why don't I go for the 4 gig of ram as well? So now I want to change that. I told a friend of mine in Florida about the laptop I am buying so checks it out. After he configures one, he notices that the wireless a/b/g/n card is backordered till Nov sometime. I don't use wireless a whole lot, so now I want to change that to a regular a/b/g card to help speed things up......would you believe I have spent the last 4 months contemplating this laptop. Soooo, when I call Monday and work out the changes, hopefully I will have an idea when the cows will come home. Plus I am in Qatar at the moment (until the end of December) and it will take 10-14 days for it to ship here.

 

I was just in Qatar a few weeks ago...man that's one hot place. I ordered mine around the middle of Sept. and have updated my order to the 9261...and I also just decided to switch from the E6850 to the Q6700...the performance drop for non multi-threaded games isn't all that much..but the performance increase for multi-threaded games is sizable. Kind of a waste to get an Extreme on these laptops if you can't overclock the cpu anyway IMHO. The cost of the Extreme editions being close to $1000 seems kind of outrageous when all you'll get is a slight performance increase since you can't do anything with that fancy unlocked multiplier. Better yet, the stock performance will be surpassed by a regular part later on, like the E6850 to X6800.

 

lol, so I count 3 or 4 of us who ordered from xotic in september and all upgraded to 9261's!. They must be quite busy atm.

I received my estimated ship date from Justin via email (it's not a specific day, but instead a specific week -- and it's only an estimate). I've traded a ton of emails with xotic since the last week in August (I waited and submitted my order right after labor day). In retrospect I think communications would have been smoother if I called them instead of relying upon email -- but email provides a record to refer back to. Just contact xoticpc sales ([email protected]) to request an estimate on your ship date... or better yet just call them .

Also I requested an invoice to double check the order because I upgraded via email -- and you can't see the upgraded order online. You guys are probably in the same boat where you can't seen your order status online since it was a revised 9260 order. The invoice showed the incorrect RAM type so it was good that I asked for it. I was able to get the correct RAM before they built it.

I went with the Q6600 on the hopes that I could crank up the FSB to 1333 which would make it the same and a quad version of the E6850 (I guess that would be a Qx6850?). I haven't seen much discussion on OC'ing the CPU except an article a while ago which showed almost no success using RivaTuner. Anyone else manage to OC vis FSB adjustments?

I agree with your RAM upgrade ashveratu... makes sense to me to go 64-bit then. That's exactly what I did when I picked the 4GB of RAM. I specifically asked about the a/b/g/n delay and it doesn't seem to effect anyone that previously submitted a 9260 order and then upgraded. Seems our hardware is already covered. It's for new orders but I would definitely check with Justin.

As soon as someone get's their 9261 plz share ... I'm going crazy with anticipation.

 

Not only am I going crazy with anticipation, my Asus G1 is starting to get this nervous look in it's touch pad wondering which relative it will be passed off to. My mother got my last lappy, looks like my sister may...wait, she got a new lappy 2 years ago so she is still good (is not a gamer). Hrm, maybe a cousin in Ohio can use her.

 

I ordered mine through pcTorque, and Steve the sales rep told me he was going to get me the lappy with the a/b/g card, the send the n card for me to install when they become available. Their sales department seems very qualified... Steve has answered all of my emails in a timely fashion, and what he does not know, he finds out and gets back to me usually the same day. I decided to go through pctorque cuz they were a few bucks cheaper. After i placed the order, I noticed that xotic had a bit better warranty. It really does not matter to me though as it is only an extended labor warranty, and i can swap out any part that breaks myself. If it were an extended part warranty, I would have cancelled the pctorque order and gone through xotic. I agree with kozi as to the extreme proc... if you cant get to the multipliers via the bios or some other program, why spend the extra money on an easily overclockable proc? Sooner or later someone will find out a way to do this, and we will ALL be happy! The extra money saved by going to the q6700 goes a long way. Now I am getting 4gb ram, vista ultimate, and 2 hard drives for less money. I really feel this is the best bang for your buck.

 

I'm back, lol. RL has been keeping me very busy atm. I'm snoop around a bit and try to update this thread.

 

YEAH!!! I got it!!! I have a question for those running vista 64bit... does your sli work? In the nvidia control panel, it states sli is activated, but through gpu-z and the sli zone website it says i dont have it enabled....???? I tried a few of the different vendor's drivers and still no SLI. WTF? HELP!!

 

Just run 3DMark06... if you score > 8000 then you have SLI enabled. Otherwise you'll score < 6000... assuming default test configuration.

 

Hi all

Nice to see you around again Wu.

After a long wait I will finnally get my d900c fully replaced with d901c, the new motherboard and some upgrades (from E6700 to Q6600 etc etc). I was told it will be back home in the last week of this month. I've been without my lappy for two months now!

One question. I heard that inspite Clevo declaring that the d901c supports Q6700 CPUs, internally to the distributors is advising caution with this kind of setup due to heat? Does this bare any truth?

Stay cool,

Trance

 

It has a habit of doing that. I was a bit worried.

 

Hey trance, do you mean to say you already bought your D900? and sent it back for the upgrade? I have the E6700 too, and was thinking about jumping to the Q6700, so, lemme ask how much is the upgrade of the motherboard costing you? and who are you doing it through?

as to answer the feasibility, i could understand why theres still a heat warning, but first off, if they're supporting it, and it overheats while your using it, then just send it back. A company cant send you a computer that overheats. They'd have to at least change your processor back to the E67. Plus, if you have the zalman cooler you'll be fine too. I doubt your gonna be doing so much to ur processor it'll overheat this baby. You should already seen how much a cooling beast it is.

 

Yes I bought mine in the last week of July first week of August. Mine went back due to some problems. Because I would have to wait for about a month to get fixed and Clevo just launched the new motherboard It came out this way. The rest a of the upgrades aren't really part of the equation so I don't know how to answer you. I'm using a company in Portugal (were I live)

Yes I have the ZALMAN cooler but only use it at home when gaming. At work I don't use any and its were I spend most of the time with it. Games are really the culprits rising the temperature of this beast.

As for overheating, I believe that regardless of the circumstances (assuming your are not putting the lappy in the oven) if it is on the specs that something is supported it should never overheat. This is called Quality. So let's see.

Trance

 

When you say problems, are you refering to the screen problems you mentioned in another thread? what did they say about that...?

Also you said in the the quote above that you upgraded from a D900c to a D901c, i ordered my 9260 at the begining of august, got it shipped to me begining of september, and on the bottom of my laptop it says the model number s D901c, does that mean i have the new motehrboard too? :S

Thanks

 

Yes, it is the same problems I refered in the other thread. They haven't said much, just that after analysis by the distributor it was agreed to replace with a new one just in case the problem would return (and since I had it just for a few days). It seamed that all distributors in Southern Europe were out of stock by then. If you got one you were lucky

Also I'm getting the d901c just becouse it seams that the distributor doesn't have the d900c anymore (or it did not ordered a new batch). Not that I actually asked for it. I just said it was ok when I was asked if I would mind the change in colours.

As for your question regarding the motherboard you got I don't know the answer. Justin posted a picture showing the internals of the d901c were he marked the place were it can be seen if it has the new motherboard or not. Maybe you can open your's to find out. Anyway I wouldn't worry that much about it. Looking at the specs your beast is fine and dandy.

Trance

 

Hi ashveratu

Thank you for your detailed and informative explanation! Ya, what you said makes total sense to me, and I too like the idea of the battery functioning as a UPS during blackouts if they should ever happen. Well, I am keeping it in for good then, especially since I've found out that running SLI on battery will cause nv4_disp BSODs, hehe.

"B. using it as a projectile to hit the guy across the room who just team killed you" Hahaha!

 

Is there anyone running Vista 64-bit and SLI? If so what drivers are you using?

I'm currently running 163.44 which seems to work ok generally speaking. 3DMark06 score of 7900 and change. WIC refuses to recognize that I have 2 cards and fram rates for newer games are in the 20 to 35 range.

I'd think this rig could do better.

Thanks

 

I am having the same issue as phule... I ran 3dmark when i first got the laptop, and scored just over 9100. I changed the drivers to see if it could improve, and it got worse. GPU-z states sli is not enabled. I tried rolling back the drivers, and still no sli. I have sager working on it, but was curious if anyone else has experienced this and how they went about a solution.

 

There's no way you could get a score of 9100 without SLI enabled...

 

Thats what i'm saying... it worked until I updated drivers, then it stopped. I went back to the original drivers, and still wont return to sli although the nvidia control panel states it is....

 

Have any of you guys tried the Unreal Tournament 3 demo with SLI 8700M GT?
With quad core? Drivers? OS?
I just placed my order yesterday for the Xtreme Notebooks 917v Accelerator.
I really have no clue about what driver to start off testing, I have been out of the driver testing for a long time. (old graphics card, no point in testing newer drivers)
I am a mod at laptopvideo2go, and I can tell you guys that there is some major driver hookups there for newer ones, we are getting newer 163.xx every few days or so. (its ridiculous, I have never seen them release all these drivers on all these OS's so fast)

Anyway I am sure there is or will be a good SLI driver here, we just have to find it.
Maybe I should put all the 163.4x-163.7x on a dartboard and then test the first one I hit.

 

The only difference between the D900C and D901C is the color.

The Sager NP9260 has the older motherboard (V4.x). It is the Sager NP9261 that has the new V5.x that supports the Quad processor.

 

I got fed up with vista, and loaded xp pro. right out of the gate, with sli enabled and nothing turned off, 3dmark06 score of 10011. FU VISTA... u suk!

 

I understand your sentiment, but Vista is the future and I didn't want to deal with either an OS upgrade or a clean install. I'm not technically inclined and I find dealing with drivers less intimidating than messing with the OS.

 

So does it work at all? I am waiting on my second 7950 to come in but I'm starting to have my doubts. Other than that I have basically the identical rig. I just want Company of Heroes, NWN2, and other recent and future games to run well but it sounds like a bit of a chore and those frame rates sound like what I am getting on my single-7950 rig right now (e.g., in CoH at 1920, High Settings, 2XAA, 2XAnisotropic I believe).

 

Guys, does anybody know how to activate the in-built microphone on the machine? I am using XP pro. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Oh ya, can somebody put me up on the list? Hehe, I wanna be a part of this group

 

Things definitely run better with the 2 cards. I haven't done a lot of benchmarking in games though. 3dmark shows improvemnet, but not as much as I'd like.

As I said, the game I'm having the most issues with at the moment in WIC. The program doesn't allow me to select 2 graphics cards and gamee supports suggestion was to change the drivers. They didn't suggest to what. I haven't written them back yet as I didn't want to tell them what I thought of their suggestion.

 

I just got new d900c from eurocom, theBIOS revision:1.00.05e. Anyway was running Oblivion at full tilt, ended up crashing getting blue screen of death. I sent error message to microsoft, message back was bios not compatable with processor. Any Answers on that 1

 

A lot of people should use vLite to lighten the bulkiness of Vista.

 

I doubt that.

Have you ran a MemTest86+ on your system to check if there are any mem errors in your RAM?

As well as try different drivers?

 

Ah ok, do you have to "select" SLI in each game you want to play it with? I just assumed you put the card in, updated the drivers and you were good to go. Is there more to it than that?

 

Haha, i guess it goes without saying, but Bioshock actually is detrimented by having 2 cards. So. Buyer beware, I guess.

Though the new NWN2 expansion runs like butter on my machine.

 

AstroLad,

You have to enable SLI in NVIDIA control panel. Also you need to check if there is a SLI profile for the Game in NVIDIA control panel. If you don't have one try to find one on the Internet or create one yourself. Get some knowhow about NVIDIA profiles and how they work. One way to check if SLI is enabled on a game is to activate the SLI OSD. When the game is running it will show you a bar graph of the workload spread amongst both cards.

Try first with the provided Clevo drivers. They are very stable, but then again it may not give you the best performance of them all.

Trance
PS: Sager, Clevo, Eurocom, whoever, we need more up to date driver for the Go 7950GTX

 

Thanks very much. So if a game is on this list--http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_game.html--then all I need to do is enable SLI in the control panel and I'm set, right? Almost all the games I care about are on that list, so that would be quite easy.

 

For those of you who have been dying to know whether or not you can use our rig plugged in on an airplane, I have an answer.

Probably not. I was flying back from Germany today and decided to try it out. The rig fits, if barely, on a business class tray table. I plugged the power brick into the seat and got a green light and got the same when I plugged it into the rig.

Turned it on and as it wan booting, lost the AC indicator. It completed the boot on battery. I treied pulling the plug out and reinserting it. Each time I did that there was an AC indication for a second and nothing.

It seems the power draw is enoght to trip the breaker in the seat power socket. No high flying gaming for me.:cry:

Airbus A300 BTW.

 

Dear friends, sorry to have to repost this again, but does anyone have any idea how to use the in-built microphone?! I know its the least exciting thing to answer here as opposed to stuff like working SLI drivers but please help if you know how to enable it. I am using WinXP Pro and want to use voice chat on MSN or Skype with the microphone. Thanks! Oh, btw, I would really like to be on the list so please add me

 

On my Vista Ultimate 64bit system it just worked...

Check the sound settings in control panel. I am running Realtek High Definition Audio (driver 6.0.1.5386) that came preinstalled. The microphone is activated on the recording tab.

 

I wonder if anybody has had this problem..... I have quite a few USB components plugged into my laptop; they are all dasiychained so that I only have one USB into the laptop and everything else is chained off of other hubs, etc. When I left it plugged in, the laptop would hit the part where it checks the USB for bootable devices and then it would just reboot -- over and over and over...

I finally tracked it down to my iPod. If I had the iPod plugged in [anywhere, including DIRECTLY to the laptop] it would never get past that part of the bios bootup. If I unplugged the iPod, it would continue on its merry way.

Is there some way to get this thing to not care if there is an iPod plugged in?? I mean, it makes some sense as to what it is doing [enumerating the usb devices so that it can add them to the bios list so it can boot from them] buuutttt an iPod messing that up seems odd. Seems to be a pretty significant bios bug to me [it can't be JUST iPods that causes it I would venture to guess].

Thanks!!

 

iPods are evil, plain and simple. Destroy it while still have your soul (assuming you still have it that is)

Where is my 9261!?!?! I have been awaiting ever so impatiently for it to arrive these last two weeks. My mailroom clerk is becoming quite annoyed by my visits. It could be the threats of bodily harm if it does not arrive soon.

 

Those who got the Sage 9261 recently from XoticPC.com which picture is it...from all the pics it looks like two different versions...one is black dull type finish with Sager name on the bottom right of the keyboard, the other is a more Gay color with a glossy finish, and Sager's name is not located on the inside of the laptop. So does it look like XoticPC Picture 1 or Picture 7?

 

I got mine two weeks ago from Sagernotebook. It does not have a Sager logo on the inside, below the keyboard. I ordered and, for as far as I know, got the standard finish which is bi-color: Glossy black and metallic grey. The cover is protected by a metal (aluminum) plate, embedding a Sager logo.

Check my pics!

 

i just got mine with 2.66 dual 8700 2gb ram 100gb hdd @7200rpm and vista 64 bit ..... however my 3dmark 06 was only 7379 which I think is low ... I was looking for a 8500+

also the gpu z does not detect my segond gpu .....

how can I know for sure that I have both graphic cards up and running ???

could the low score be due to windoes vista 64 bits ???

also where can I find good drivers for vista 64 and sli ??

las question .... annyone with the matte screen ?? it seam not so bright to me ... is that correct ???

thanks all after I solve this issues ill post some pics and benchmark results ...

good weekend alll !!

 

You might try the new drivers from the sager site. They increased my score by about 500pts. I just gone mine yesterday and it was the two tone black and grey. With the logo on the cover.

 

use the newest drivers in Sager's site for sure.

And make sure that you have your system set to Max Performance in any of the power settings (like Nvidia PowerMizer and such)

 

i installed the driver at sager website and plugged in my other 2gb ram making 4gb but still only got 7544

i gues the drivers and vista 64 are still no good for now .....

anyways is there a website where I can see the lastest nvidia drivers ??? it seams that on nvidia website there is nothing that usefull

thanks all
and of course
TGI friday

 

I ran MemTest86+ for 3 hours or so no errors. Weird though as this error only seems to come up when playing Oblivion, i"m thinking ( well hoping ) that its the game causing the crash.