HTWingNut's Sager NP6110 / Clevo W110ER First Look & Review

LOL. And then your computer will burst into flames...

 

HTwingnut, it's starting to sound like your battery might be the issue? Stupid question time, have you tried doing a few full charge/de-charge cycles? Might help possibly? Seems like you should be expecting around the 4 hr mark.

 

Well after four battery tests, and a couple more discharges from regular use,,, I'd think it'd be pretty accurate.

I should have over 4 hours from everything I've read. Sager will be able to cross ship a new battery to me, but I don't want to do that until I have better facts.

 

I wonder whether the dual core IB's will give better battery life. Maybe 50% more? My aging 3820TG with a 13" screen and the same battery gets like 8 hours with its dual core i3.

 

Not going to be 50% more. Probably like 10-20% more.

 

We can disable cores with a bios mod...so you will have single-quad core with just a bios setting...HTWN will run some battery tests later today.

 

Awesome review! This is an amazing laptop and I am bummed that Alienware discontinued the m11x. I recently bought the R3 and love it so far. I really like the styling and the performance, however I was wondering if you think this souped up Sager is worth upgrading to or will my m11x continue to perform for demanding games like the Witcher 2 and newer games?

 

gman, have you tried the M11x with the Witcher 2? I know experiences vary, but just from glancing at the Notebookcheck page for the 540M, it looks like a long-shot
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

I've been playing the Witcher 2 (EE) at 720p at the default settings for days now. It plays very well on the R3. Only a few hiccups when I initially load the game, but it is very playable.

 

Excellent! Is this the Mythologic Bios?
The resuts will be very interesting, most interested in the disabling 2 core results.
Will turbo still work with 2 cores?
If we can do that why get a i5 IVB.

 

Turbo can also be enabled and disabled...

 

I did try to disable both turbo and hyperthreading. Works fine. HT didn't seem to have much, if any affect on temperatures or power consumption, maybe a couple deg C at load. With Turbo turned off just limits CPU to 2.3GHz, so I may do some testing later for performance at that clock speed. My feeling is that it should be more than adequate for gaming, and shouldn't affect overall performance much. I did a quick round of bf3 last night with turbo off and temps peaked at only about 83C. Power consumption was also less.

As far as turning off cores, I can do some preliminary short battery tests and power consumption, but can't do a full battery test until tomorrow as I'll be gone to visit family today, and this little boy is going with me.

Maybe two cores off with HT and Turbo on may be the best option as it should more or less simulate a dual core CPU.

Give kudos/rep/thanks to Prema though, he's been turning around BIOS updates quite quickly. I think we will have a good BIOS to work with. Just have patience because the back and forth updates, different time zones, life in the way, can delay things a bit and he doesn't have his machine yet.

 

I repped way to much already to rep anymore have to wait
Anyway is this the same BIOS from MYTHOLOGIC? Or just a Prema mod

 

It's a Prema special. First jab at limiting number of cores did not work. We'll see what happens. Prema gets all the credit for the BIOS programming. I'm just the guinea pig.

 

I would amazed if it's 20% more battery juice... 10% sounds just about right

 

Wow, so excited to hear about this news. Can't wait for the update from you guys!

 

So has Intel taken a giant leap backward in terms of power efficiency then? Otherwise I cannot think of why my laptop draws about 8-9W but a contemporary 11.6" draws so much more.

 

Doesn't necessarily have to be Intel. There's other IVB notebook with smaller batteries and bigger screens that get better battery life.

But the w110er seems to have abnormally high power draw so there's definitely a problem somewhere.

 

What laptop is that? If it's a ULV, then I can see it drawing only 8-9W. But my DV6z with AMD A8 draws about 12-13W idle or light use. I've only seen ULV 13W CPU's draw 8-9W.

 

I am thinking of cancelling my order of W110.I have seen more powerful and even bigger models from ASUS and even they seem to have a larger battery life with 660M and same IVB CPU.I am still considering but as far as case quality goes I would prefer Asus again.Only thing is size factor.Decisions,decisions...

 

Well. If you don't need 11", don't take it

But, in this size there is no competition otherwise.

 

I am used to 11" while I dont exactly "need" one,I am going to take something for college anyway.This model is the king of the 11" there is no doubting that,however seeing the pitiful battery life(considering its size,mind you) I might go a little bigger

 

What ASUS laptop is there that can compete with this? I have this on order however if there is a sub 15.6" that can compete with this price-wise I would have to take a look...

 

Nah it wasnt a sub 15.6".Just the battery life didnt seem to change much.You wont find a better option in this size unless you want to go the ultrabook route for more battery life of course.

 

No... it's i5-450M.

See review of similar/identical unit here:

Review Acer Aspire 3820TG Timeline X Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Minimum draw 8.2W with their i3-330M (pretty much the i5-450M with turbo disabled)

 

Yes but it says:

With ALL energy savings options. I bet having a little fun in battery settings will do wonders to the battery power too

I can surely tell that getting the W110ER onto the 5~5½ hours won't be a problem, especially if Prema creates this wonderful modded bios

 

Hmm, re-ran Cinebench with GT 650m disabled in device manager and performance spiked to 6.25 from 4.57! It seems there is some throttling issues due to the GT 650m on the 3610QM also. This means I will have to re-run all my CPU test with GT 650m disabled. But it's somewhat artificial because you won't be using GT 650m disabled normally.

 

What exactly is this "throttling" I hear so much about, doesn't sound like anything good!

 

Nice review, HTWingNut! Now all that remains is you PM Chaz for the NRB Reviewer title and usergroup on this forum...

 

You ran the first test on bios 01 and EC 01 right.
Second run now is on 03 mod2?
I guess it is just the regular Intel throttle that uses a combination of power draw and temperature to trigger.

Use throttlestop to log the CPU multis and Watts while runing cinebench, please.

 

Only with Cinebench that I can tell so far, if GT 650m is active the CPU won't even boost.

 

Lame how Clevo did some weird throttling things with the BIOS. I hope the i5 version isn't affected.

 

Prema, here's log files with 650m off and then on:

http://www.mediafire.com/?baod9da5frdw5oi

 

Yes, no turbo...please disable c state report options and run cinebench with gpu.

 

What do yo mean by disable c state? Sorry.

 

In the mod BIOS under PPM section...its a wild shot to maybe work arround the throttle, but I am without computer till end of the week so no fancy hacks...

 

There's "CPU C3 Report", "C6 Report", "C7 Report"...

Any idea which one or all? Isn't C3 to do with sleep?

 

This is getting me a bit worried, I am almost ready to cancel my order.
It's unfortunate because this laptop is exactly what I was looking for.
So it happened on the first BIOS?

 

Maybe I missed something, why would you cancel your order if the only scenario where the CPU deactivates turbo is when running cinebench?

 

Maybe sager is throttling the cpu because they don't want the laptop to melt?

 

Prime95 works with turbo, no problem. It's just Cinebench for some reason.

 

Thanks.
If it only happens during Cinebench then it's no problem, I was thinking it might be other programs as well.
I was just over thinking things, this thing is not cheap.
My bad.

 

I am also worried. I am planning to purchase this with the 2yr extended warranty on my Amex. Basically extending it to three years coverage.....not sure if the extra 79 is worth it ...... What do you guys think?

 

$79 is an excellent deal IMHO.

And not cheap? It's a heck of a lot cheaper than the M11x would have cost. $900 shipped with Ivy Bridge quad or about $800 with a Sandy Bridge dual core. That's pretty affordable for the performance and form factor you get. I know it's still a decent chunk of change but I wouldn't call it expensive compared with other laptops with similar specs.

 

Definitely worth it if you plan on keeping it 2 years, consider the amount you'd spend if you eff something up within those 2 years that's not covered by standard warranty, or after the 1 year.

 

Very thorough write-up!

Your specifications are nearly identical to those of my NP6165 I just received last week. I'm trying to debate if it's even worth me doing a write-up on now after reading yours! Although, I do have a few differences.

Anyway, in the end, I am VERY happy with my decision. I just can't stand the BIOS... Or should I say the lack of user options. Can't even enable VT-x. =/

 

6165 comes with GDDR5 I believe which would help with higher resolution gaming. Plus it's a different form factor, different screen, etc. Definitely worth a write-up.

For the powerful components they pack in these machines it is too bad they don't offer a more full featured BIOS.

 

Oh I agree once you consider the price/performance ratio it's a great deal but when you start factoring some upgrades it gets up there.
I just don't want to spend any money on any laptop that doesn't deliver the goods or is limited in anyway.

 

Eh, might as well. Gives me something to do.

 

It'd be great if you ran some of the gaming benchmarks at 768p with HTWingNut's settings. I'm sure a lot of people want to see the 650m gddr5 vs the gddr3 version.