HTWingNut's Sager NP8250 / Clevo P157SM Review

INDEX

Introduction

GENERAL OVERVIEW
. Specifications
. Styling
. Ports
. Inside the Laptop

SYSTEM AND SOFTWARE
. Power Supply
. Keyboard
. LCD
. Storage
. Drivers
. Software
. Speakers and Audio

PERFORMANCE, POWER, COOLING
. Software/Hardware Used for Testing
. CPU Intel i7-4800MQ Quad Core
.. CPU Benchmark Results <---
.. IGP Benchmark Results <---
. GPU nVidia GeForce GTX 780m
.. Benchmark Parameters
.. GTX 780m Benchmark Results <---
. Power Consumption
. Cooling Performance
. Surface Temperatures
. Fans and Noise
. Battery Life

CONCLUSION

................................

generalAs part of Sager's annual laptop update, this time around they have included Intel's Haswell CPU's and nVidia's latest powerhouse offering, the GTX 780m. The Sager NP8250 is based on the Clevo P157SM chassis and offers a few different features this time around when compared with last year's Clevo EM series laptops.

We'll start with an overview of the laptop and get down to the details and performance after. This Sager laptop was provided as a review sample to me by LPC-Digital to share my thoughts with the crowd here at NBR and benchmark it, so thank them, and kindly consider them should you decide to purchase a Sager notebook. I've used my own personal NP9150 (Clevo P150EM) to compare with.


specs SPECIFICATIONS

The review machine is spec'ed as follows:

Sager NP8250 (Clevo P157SM)
15.6" 1920x1080 TN LCD 95% gamut Matte
Intel Haswell i7-4800MQ CPU with 2.7GHz base clock speed and 3.7GHz boost
nVidia GeForce GTX 780m
16GB Patriot DDR3 1600 (2x8GB)
240GB Crucial M500 SSD
Blu-Ray Read/DVDRW Optical Drive

The machine came with no OS but Windows 8 was loaded since that is the OS that was supported at the time the review was released. A Samsung 830 256GB SSD was also added to the system which contained the games and benchmarks used for this review.


styling STYLING

Sager notebooks are typically known for their more conservative styling. This time around Sager opted for two different style systems, one in the traditional conservative styling (P150SM), and the other with a more bold approach (P157SM), albeit not quite as drastic as an Alienware, MSI, or Asus. The machine being reviewed here is the P157SM. The first thing you'll notice when opening the laptop lid is the tribal graphic on the touchpad. It even lights up with the keyboard lighting. The touchpad surface is smooth unlike last year's P150EM with the rubberized texture. Touchpad keys are separated from the touchpad, and each button has a distinct opposing parallelogram shape with fingerprint reader nestled in between the keys.

Note that if you are not interested in the touchpad backlighting then many resellers are offering disconnecting the touchpad backlight as a free option, or you can follow my guide here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...disable-touchpad-backlight-p157sm-np8250.html
EDIT 6/18/13: It has been brought to my attention that a software fix to turn off the backlighting may be forthcoming.

The upper speaker and status light bar is a clear glossy finish panel, with Onkyo speaker logo proudly displayed on the left hand side. System status lights are posed in between the two speaker grilles on opposite sides of this upper panel, with the power button on the far right and contains the same lit symbol found on the touchpad.

The LCD bezel is plastic with a matte finish and the back of the lid is a rubberized material with the chrome Sager logo resting in the middle. There are hard angle lines surrounding at the border of the lid. Rotation of the lid extends at about 45 degrees past vertical. Lid hinges are robust and keep the lid from jiggling, although rotates easily. A 2.0MP camera is in its typical spot at the top center of the lid. The rubber material is conducive to attracting and showing fingerprints and sweaty palm prints, but is easily cleaned off with some alcohol or wet wipe.

Looking at the back of the machine, the fan grilles are horizontal going up at a 45 degree angle towards the outboard edges. The front also carries some similar hard angle styling cues.

On the bottom of the laptop you'll find your typical compartment covers. There are lots of vent holes in the main bay where the beefy 780m and Intel quad core CPU is housed to allow for cool air to cycle through. The sub-woofer speaker grille has a chrome accent ring and embedded in a brushed aluminum trim piece.










ports Ports
Around the machine starting from the left side front to back is a card reader, USB/eSATA combo port, two uSB 3.0 ports, ethernet port, mini firewire. Along to the back is the power port, mini DisplayPort, HDMI, and Displayport. On the right side is a Kensington lock slot, USB 2.0, and four audio ports: audio in, digital out, microphone, and headphone. The optical drive is just forward of the audio ports.


inside INSIDE THE LAPTOP
The main compartment bottom cover detaches easily after removing two screws on the bottom and two screws on the rear. This exposes the GPU and associated fan and heatsink. Same for the CPU, fan, and heatsink. Two of the four RAM slots are also accessible, as is one of the two mSATA slots (although only this one is useable, more on that later). The sub-woofer speaker is mounted just forward of the GPU fan.

After removing thee screws holding the storage cover in place, it easily slides off to expose a majority of the storage device slots. The NP8250 includes room for one 9.5mm height 2.5" hard drive or SSD, and a 7mm 2.5" hard drive or SSD once you remove the optical drive to expose its compartment. The bracket holding the 7mm drive has the words "ONLY FOR 7mm HDD" stamped right on it so it's clear that you can't put anything larger in there. Don't try. The optical drive is a standard 12.7mm height drive with its own unique bezel. There is a compartment beneath the 9.5mm hard drive bay to support another mSATA drive but that is sealed off with "warranty void if removed" stickers. This is due to an issue with the chipset, which may be fixed later with a firmware BIOS, or driver update. In the meantime, I'd heed the warning to not remove the stickers. The optical drive can also be swapped out for an additional hard drive or SSD if desired. This means that there is opportunity for four SATA drives, albeit a mixture of form factors, and chance for a fifth if they fix the issue with the other mSATA port. So in total you have: 1xmSATA, 1x9.5mm SATA, 1x7mm SATA, 1x12.5mm SATA (optical bay), with possibility for a second mSATA slot.

There is nothing special about the battery. It's square an nestled in the corner. It is a bit more difficult to remove than my NP9150 which just slides out, the NP8250 requires you to pry it out, although there is a little kerdunk to let you pry it out with a key, your finger (which is difficult), or some other blunt rigid object.

Access to the two other RAM slots reside underneath the keyboard. Getting to it requires removing the panel above the keyboard, and as has been common of Sager notebooks as of late, can be pressed out from small access hole on the back side of the laptop using a pen or screwdriver or other small, skinny, long rigid object. Five screws to remove the keyboard and then you can access two RAM slots and the Wi-Fi card. Thankfully when you order your Sager notebook with only two sticks of RAM they will place them under the keyboard so you should never really have to remove the keyboard.




system GENERAL SYSTEM AND SOFTWARE

psu Power Supply
The system comes with a 180W power supply to feed the hungry 780m GPU and quad core Haswell i7 CPU. Size and weight hasn't change from the 180W PSU from the last year. Dimensions and weight: 6.5L x 1.5H x 3.5W inch / 1lbs 13oz

keyboard Keyboard
The keyboard is pretty much same as last year's backlit model with the exception of the Windows key swapping places with the Fn key. Last year's keyboard had the Windows key on the right and Fn on the left (apparently to prevent accidental pressing while gaming), but this year it's back in the more traditional left hand side location. Key ghosting is still present and same as last year's model, but hasn't seemed to be too problematic for most gamers.

lcd LCD
The 1080p LCD supplied with this system has a matte finish and is identified as a "Thinkpad Display 1920x1080" which Google tells me is a 95% gamut screen. It has very good viewing angles, very bright and crisp, and no dead or stuck pixels.





storage Storage
A Crucial M500 240GB SSD came stocked in this machine and it delivers fast performance as expected. RAID configurations are supported as well between the three SATA ports: one 9.5mm height 2.5", one 7mm height 2.5", and one mSATA.

Here is performance of the Crucial M500 SSD:



drivers Drivers
Drivers are included for Windows 8, although apparently Windows 7 drivers are forthcoming.

software Software
There are a few unique software items that come with this Sager laptop.

First is the Clevo Control Center. It is part of the Clevo Hotkey app, and allows users to change system settings on the fly including power states, keyboard backlighting, desktop backgrounds, screen brightness, etc. It is accessed using the Fn+ESC key combination. Coupled with this are all the Fn key combos for activating/deactivating touchpad, LCD switching (for external displays), volume and brightness controls, camera, and "airplane mode". The keyboard backlighting app is also included in the Hotkey software which allows for changing of colors, brightness, toggling on and off. One function key that is missing from last year's machine is the wi-fi antenna and Bluetooth toggle. It is neither present in a Fn key combo nor in the control panel. It is all to be controlled through Windows.



Another software feature is SoundBlaster X-Fi 3. It's basically a fancy interface for equalizer, EAX effects, and includes voice effects to alter your voice using the microphone, and something called Scout Mode that's supposed to let you hear even the faintest sounds in games more clearly, so you can hear your enemies from further away. I haven't put this to the test, but I can't imagine through the meager speakers it would give you much more tactical advantage than a good set of USB headphones.



And of course if you ordered your laptop with a blu-ray drive then it comes with Cyberlink Media Suite 8 for Blu-Ray movie playback.

Speakers and Audio
It appears that this year's model speakers are carryover from last year. They don't get real loud, but are quite crisp and clear and can be tuned with the X-fi 3 software noted above. The bass is a bit lacking and personally feel it is more of a marketing tactic than for actual performance. That being said, cranking The White Stripes 7 Nation Army on YouTube the dBA meter about 18 inches from the screen peaked at about 75dBA.


performance PERFORMANCE, POWER, AND COOLING

Windows 8 has been met with a mixed reception, however for gaming it hasn't been too much of an issue and performance overall seems pretty good. I tested the system performance of several components. The GTX 780m with games and artificial benchmarks, the i7-4800MQ CPU with a handful of artificial benchmarks, and the Intel integrated GPU, HD 4600, with a few games and benchmarks. During the testing I also recorded power draw from the wall as well as CPU and GPU temperatures. This time around I am also taking temperature measurements of the laptops on the palm rest and keyboard as well as below the CPU and GPU underneath the laptop, and also the PSU during heavy loads. I've also invested in an inexpensive dBA meter which I make a few measurements for reference at idle, full fan speed, and typical gaming.

testingstuffSoftware / Hardware Used for Testing
- imgur.com : Storing and sharing images
- IrfanView 4.35 : image cropping and manipulation
- FRAPS 3.5.99 : measuring FPS and taking in-game screenshots
- nVidiaInspector : Overclocking GPU
- CrystalDiskMark : SSD performance
- Excel 2013 : storing, sorting, and manipulating data and creating FPS and other graphs
- Notepad : writing this review
- P3 P4330 : measuring power draw from the wall
- HDE IR Temparture Gun : laptops surface temperature measurements
- CEM Mini Digital Sound Level Meter : measuring dbA of laptop

cpu CPU Intel i7-4800MQ
Haswell is Intel's Tock to Ivy Bridge's Tick built with 22nm process. The new micro-architecture adds some features to improve power consumption, and of note is moving the voltage regulator on the die, not to mention the improved integrated GPU performance. If you'll notice the TDP of these CPU's are 2W more than the Ivy Bridge chips they replace. Mobile quad cores that were 45W are now 47W, dual cores that were 35W are 37W, and that is primarily due to the voltage regulator and IGP improvements, but overall the architectural changes are supposed to reduce idle power consumption considerably. Other than added features, Intel also jumbled the nomenclature considerably. Going from QM for a quad mobile CPU to an MQ, and then adding HQ for the CPU's with the on-die video RAM, and MX for the Extreme Edition CPU's. Just for ease of correlation, the i7-4700MQ is more or less like an i7-3630QM Ivy Bridge, i7-4800MQ like an i7-3740QM, i7-4900MQ like the i7-3840QM.

The machine's being compared are the Sager NP9150 (Clevo P150EM) that sports an i7-3740QM and for all intents and purposes matches specs of the i7-3800MQ @ 2.7GHz base to 3.7GHz boost, 4 cores with hyper-threading (8 virtual cores), 6MB cache, 45W / 47W TDP, and an IGP, so I have run some comparison benchmarks to see if the new architecture helps improve performance with general CPU tasks, as well as temperature and power consumption.



cpubench CPU Benchmark Results
Below are the performance results for the Haswell i7-4800MQ vs Ivy Bridge i7-3740QM

Spoiler

7-Zip Compress and Decompress Folder of Open Source Simulator game Flight Gear comprised of 1.2GB, 1432 folders, 11673 files (less than 2% improvement)


Cinebench R11.5 (less than 5% improvement)


Fritz 12 Chess benchmark tests raw number crunching potential of your CPU (less than 3% improvement)


wPrime 32 Million and 1024 Million iterations (less than 6% worse)


x264 tests encoding of HD video (less than 10% improvement)

Based on the above benchmarks, it can be seen that general CPU performance is improved by a small margin, in reality nearly negligible.


igpbench IGP Benchmark Results
The performance of the integrated graphics unit was tested as well and compared against Intel's own Ivy Bridge HD 4000 and AMD's Trinity Radeon 7660G IGP in the A10-4600m APU. The HD 4000 results were run using a Clevo W110ER laptop with i7-3610QM CPU. The HD 4000 stock GPU boost speed in the i7-3610QM is 1.1GHz, it was raised to 1.3GHz and RAM speed was 2133MHz vs 1600MHz for a stock setup. Radeon 7660G benchmarks were run on an HP Probook 6475b with A10-4600m CPU, with stock speeds of 685MHz GPU, and uses system RAM run at 1600MHz. The overclocked version is run at 900MHz with same system RAM at 1600MHz because there was no way to increase RAM clock speeds in the test laptop. Details of the HD 4000 and 7660G benchmarks can be seen here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ghtweights-amd-7660g-vs-intel-hd4000-igp.html

All tests were run at 1280x720 resolution unless the benchmark dictated an alternate resolution, and many at high or medium detail as noted on the chart title.

Spoiler

3DMark 11


3DMark 13




Allbenchmark Catzilla CAT


Unigine Heaven


Bioshock Infinite (High Preset)


Dirt 3 (High Preset)


Far Cry 3 (All Low)
While the numbers for Far Cry 3 on HD 4000 seem almost playable it would hiccup and stutter frequently. But the HD 4600 was very smooth. Good improvement overall.


Hawx 2 DirectX 11 (High Preset)


Metro Last Light (Low Preset)
This game is almost playable at 720p low settings with HD 4600, but just not quite there.


Resident Evil 6 (Low Preset)
This game will be virtually unplayable even at lowest settings, but I guess this is good info for comparison


Skyrim (High Preset, noAA, 16xAF)


Sleeping Dogs (Medium Preset, no AA)


Tomb Raider (Normal Preset)


Trackmania Canyon (Track A05, Nicer preset)

Based on the above results we can see that the performance of the HD 4600 is considerably faster than Intel's processor HD 4000, and makes many newer games playable even at medium to high settings at 720p. It even beats or exceeds AMD's flagship IGP A10-7660G in some games. Overall a welcome improvement, however still a far cry from being considered a gaming GPU.

The HD 4600 on average was about 75% faster than the HD 4000 and actually came out ahead by about 5% compared with the AMD 7660G.


gpu GPU: nVidia GTX 780m
It is remarkable that mobile GPU's have reached the performance that they have in the last few years. We now have GPU's that are equivalent to upper mid grade desktop GPU's in portable laptops. And in SLI configuration even come close to the top tier desktop components. This year nVidia has offered their flagship GPU, the GTX 780m, based on a refresh of last year's Kepler 28nm design. Kepler astounded most of us with the performance of the 680m and the cool temperatures at which it ran. The 780m is the same architecture except they bump up the shaders from 1344 to 1536, increase vRAM clock speed from 1800MHz to 2500MHz, and add their new Boost 2.0 technology which allows for higher clocks for extended periods as long as the system remains within its TDP limits.

780m also comes with Boost 2.0 feature that allows the GPU to boost when the proper temperature and power parameters are met. And to be honest, I never saw the boost speed drop. It runs at 849MHz at stock and 985MHz with overclock, so you really gain a significant automatic overclock on top of what you can manually adjust with an app like nVidia Inspector or MSI Afterburner.

GPU-Z Stock & Overclock for 780m


For comparison GPU-Z Stock & Overclock 680m


You will see benchmark results below comparing the GTX 680m staged in the NP9150 vs the 780m installed in the new NP8250 laptop being reviewed at stock and overclock configurations, all using stock voltage:
- 680m core @ 720MHz, vRAM @ 1800MHz, 1.037V
- 680m core @ 1000MHz, vRAM @ 2400MHz, 1.037V
- 780m core @ 823MHz, vRAM @ 2500MHz, 1.012V
- 780m core @ 958MHz, vRAM @ 3000MHz, 1.012V

The 680m was able to exceed the +135MHz limit by using a third party vBIOS provided by user svl7 at Tech Inferno website. The 780m, being relatively new, was restricted to the +135MHz core limit imposed on pretty much all nVidia mobile GPU's.

It should be noted that during testing the overclock of the 780m, the stock 180W power supply was not sufficient to run many games and had to resort to a self modded 240W Dell PSU swapping the connector on the Dell to match the plug for the Sager notebook. This occurred with Battlefield 3, Crysis 3, Dirt 3 in particular.

benchparams Benchmark Parameters
Benchmarks were run using the following configuration
- High Performance Power Mode
- 1920x1080 resolution unless the benchmark dictated a preset resolutuion (i.e. 3DMark 11 P score is based on 1280x720 resolution)
- Screen at full brightness
- Audio at 50% volume
- Ambient temperature 75-78F (~ 25C)

I also try not to run any benchmark at more the 4xAA since I feel that does not give a true indication of the performance of a system, unless the benchmark dictates it to be enabled, and 8xAA really is not visually perceptible by most people at native resolution.

gpubench GPU BENCHMARK RESULTS
You can see the results from the synthetic and game benchmarks below.

Spoiler

3DMark 11



3DMark 13




Firestrike Extreme 680m Stock


Firestrike Extreme 680m OC


Firestrike Extreme 780m Stock


Firestrike Extreme 780m OC



Allbenchmark Catzilla


Unigine Heaven


Unigine Valley




Battlefield 3


Bioshock Infinite


Crysis 2


Crysis 3


Dirt 3


Hitman Absolution


Metro 2033


Metro Last Light


Resident Evil 6


Sleeping Dogs


Tomb Raider


Witcher 2

From those benchmarks you can see the results of the 780m do trend much faster than a stock 680m and overclock especially significant. The percent improvement from stock to overclock configurations can be seen below:

Benchmark	780m stock vs 680m stock	780m stock vs 680m OC	780m OC vs 680m OC	780m OC vs 680m stock
Synthetic Benchmarks
3DMark 11 P Graphics	+37.29%	-3.77%	+7.73%	+53.70%
3DMark 11 X Graphics	+32.72%	-2.35%	+11.28%	+51.25%
3DMark Ice Storm Graphics	-5.52%	-10.71%	-8.69%	-3.38%
3DMark Cloud Gate Grpahics	+31.13%	-4.95%	+11.04%	+53.19%
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics	+29.20%	-5.05%	+8.22%	+47.26%
Allbenchmark Catzilla Tiger	+33.63%	-0.58%	+14.61%	+54.04%
Unigine Heaven FPS	+53.81%	+8.39%	+25.84%	+78.57%
Unigine Valley FPS	+30.46%	+7.07%	+18.94%	+44.92%
Average Synthetic	+30.34%	-1.49%	+11.12%	+47.44%
Game Benchmarks
Battlefield 3	+25.41%	+16.13%	+29.41%	+39.75%
Bioshock Infinite	+1.54%	-15.07%	-2.02%	+17.14%
Crysis 2	+31.37%	+11.23%	+17.83%	+39.16%
Crysis 3	+23.64%	+1.8%	17.96%	+43.27%
Dirt 3	+31.49%	+4.74%	+17.69%	+47.75%
Hitman Absolution	+20.35%	+1.78%	+19.88%	+41.75%
Metro 2033	+27.72%	+8.49%	+25.32%	+47.52%
Metro Last Light	+32.95%	+5.99%	+19.82%	+50.29%
Resident Evil 6	+31.93%	+10.85%	+23.68%	+47.20%
Sleeping Dogs	+19.84%	-5.23%	+7.38%	+35.80%
Tomb Raider	+38.33%	+9.37%	+26.45%	+59.93%
Witcher 2	+30.91%	+7.11%	+20.99%	+47.88%
Average Game Benchmarks	+27.43%	+4.77%	+19.32%	+44.25%

You can see that the GTX 680m at a signifant stock voltage overclock is about on par with a stock 780m, and an overclocked 780m blows away a stock clocked 680m by a good 45% or more.

While FPS and average FPS tell a half way decent story, many sites have gone through evaluation of the frametimes in games to see the quality of the FPS. I took three games out of this test and evaluated frame times as well as graphed the FPS for each of the four test states showing where the FPS layed throughout the game. With games that don't have a benchmark, it's difficult to really tell or show someone how it actually performs. I will try to show that here with the three games Battlefield 3, Crysis 3, and Witcher 2.

I have also noticed that performance of the 780m is a bit smoother than the 680m, based on perception only. That can be attributed to frame time lag, so it's worth a look to see if that has any impact on the perceived smoothness of performance.

Battlefield 3
First we will look at BF3. If you look at a regular FPS chart of the gameplay, it can tell you a a little more than min/max/avg performance but it still just looks like a squiggly graph.



If you break down the performance by FPS range you can see roughly the FPS that you'll experience throughout the game.



This helps show us that the distribution of the FPS is at least similar between game runs, just that the 780m is shifted by a significant 10 FPS or so and 780m OC is offset by 20FPS compared with a stock 680m.

Now for the frame time evaluation.

Here's the 680m vs 780m frame times both running at stock clocks:




The 780m average of frame time of 14.43ms is pretty low (and lower the better), with 99th percentile frame time only 28.15, for a difference of 13.72. The 680m is still great with an average of 18.15ms with 99th percentile at 37.06 for a difference of 18.91.In any case anything below 50ms is pretty darn good.


Crysis 3
Crysis 3 is a very demanding games but runs very smoothly on both machines. Here's the FPS distribution and frame times for this game.



Crysis 3 seems to remain at a steady state FPS, without varying a whole lot. And a faster GPU only tended to extend the max FPS, while the average only varied slightly. But you can see that a stock 680m struggles to run Crysis 3 at 1080p Ultra detail, where the 780m runs it quite well.




Frame times are improved with Crysis 3 as well, although both are well within reason for a smooth gameplaying experience.


Witcher 2
Witcher 2 has aged a bit but it still looks beautiful and can easily stress a system to its fullest. There is an Ultra setting and an Ultra Uber setting that basically halves the performance of the Ultra setting. But for this purpose I am looking at just the Ultra setting.






This game runs smoothly regardless of GPU or stock or overclocked.


power Power Consumption

The power consumption of the NP8250 was measured as drawn from the wall. Reminder that the actual power used by the laptop will be less than the power shown by 10-20% due to efficiency loss of the PSU. But it's at least a good relative indicator of power consumption. One item to note is that for a few benchmarks a 220W PSU had to be used for the overclock benchmarks since the 180W PSU power output peaked and couldn't offer sufficient power for the system. But stock clocks the system had no issues and ran great. Anywhere you see a power consumption exceeding 200W it likely will not provide sufficient power for the system.

Based on these results it is safe to assume that the actual TDP of the 780m is significantly higher than that of the 680m. It could either be a 120W TDP chip or the 680m runs actually much lower than the spec'ed 100W TDP.






cooling Cooling Performance

Clevo notebooks are known for their great cooling capabilities, and the NP8250 is no exception. The 780m runs remarkably cool.

CPU Temperatures





GPU Temperatures






surfacetemps Surface Temperatures

There is no noticeable or uncomfortable heat from any touch surface on the laptop. Keyboard is very comforatable and even the bottom mof the laptop is reasonably cool. Obviously the rear vents are hot, but that's where it needs to be.






fansnoise Fans and Noise

With so much computing power in such a small package, noise is obviously a concern next to temperature. Thankfully
the cooling in this system and the components in it run cool for their performance they offer. That being said, ther is still fan noise, albeit a low hum usually, except at full fans (only full on demad with Fn+1 key combo) which makes a notieable noise. Otherwise during gaming and other fairly intensive tasks the fans are audible but are very tolerable and don't drown out any audio from the already weak speakers.

One hiccup I noticed though is at times whne the fans spin due to high temperatures, like over 80C, the fans will spin at the same high RPM for an extended period even when the system had cooled off. This has apparently been addressed with a BIOS update but have not had the fortune of validating it yet. It should hopefully be avaiable soon for other users to verify.

In any case I had a cheap dBA meter and here are my results. Take them with a grain of salt as this is an inexpensive dBA meter, but perhaps it has some value. Those values were taken with the meter about head level, 18 inches from the edge of the screen.




battery Battery Life

Thanks to switchable graphics like the Optimus supplied in this laptop, monster performance doesn't necessarily mean meager battery life. The sytem comes with a 77WHr battery and when running with the Power Saver power plan, 10% LCD brightness, 4 flash based browser tabs open, and SSD's on for two hours, the system offered over four and a half hours battery life. 4hrs and 36 minutes.


conclusion CONCLUSION

Sager and Clevo have at least this time around tried to offer something a little fresh with revised styling and offering a little extra bling for those that want something a little more bold. However there is no connection that I am aware of to the tribal sign and what Clevo and Sager are about, so it feels like it's just thrown in there to add a little something different. Otherwise the Intel Haswell refresh offers a slight performance improvement, but battery life is actually quite impressive given the high performing silicon guts contained within.

The GTX 780m has proven to be no slouch with performance, and offers considerable improvement in cooling as well. The latest games had no issues running on Ultra settings at full HD resolutions. It is a bit of a disappointment though that the power supply won't be able to provide enough juice for a software overclock that this machine had no troubles managing heat-wise.

Otherwise the package is similar to last year's EM offerings without a whole lot more added. This machine would definitely be a significant improvement for anyone that has a GTX 580m/670m or older GPU if they want to get the most out of their gaming. The speakers are still a bit dismal, but imho adequate for the most part. Most users will buy an aftermarket speaker or headphone system anyhow.

As usual, Sager offers a large variety of configuration options with everythin from LCD, to SSD, to RAM, hard drive caddy in optical drive, GPU, CPU, you name it, it can be configured. The configuration of this review system is actually quite nice and will likely set you back less than $2200US. Personally I feel it offers at least it's value of the purchase price.

 

Save this spot please

 

Keep one more for good measure.

 

Very nice review HTWingNut, i will read it again so make sure i have nothing to ask you I went with the P170SM to have more headroom for OC, but i don't know if i will enjoy as much as i would enjoy the 15.6 screen. Some say the 17.3" chimei has a little bit of "sand", and i'm coming from a 95% color gamut 15.6"...

 

Excellent HTWingNut! Reading this from my workcomputer, so no pictures, but will read it again when I come home in the morning. I really looked forward to this review!

 

Wingnut,

In light of the fact that nVidia doesn't have a full-on WHQL-ready driver for the 780m yet (ie: a 320.24 type, or even an R325 driver), do you feel that upon nVidia releasing such a driver, that performance would go up noticeably? The 311-series drivers seem to be existent in the name of the ODM's going "okay, we need to make SOME sort of driver work for this GPU for the time being".

Jason

 

I don't know that the performance would go up noticeably. It is still Kepler, but there have been some wonderful improvements that drivers have made in the past, so who knows.

 

I just had my reseller offer me a p150em at a reduced price, except they'll also upgrade the 680m to a 780m, and throw in the new heatsink. For free.

Haswell doesn't really seem worth the upgrade. It seems like the 780m and the heatsink are the real champions of the SM range.


I just wonder whether the p157sm runs cooler than the p150sm.

 

What are your thoughts on the new chassis HTW?
A lot of people I know are stuck choosing between the p150sm and p157sm.

Having never owned (or seen) either, I'm not really sure which way to go either.
I'd say I probably prefer the look of the p150sm - but even a small advantage in the p157sm's cooling would swing me.

 

If I read correctly, this 15 " will fit 3x2.5" drive with odd caddy ?

 

Hmmm, that key between the space bar and the ALT key... Do you think it'll be a nuisance for a programmer? It's kind of weird that they have 2 of the same keys... The other one is above the enter key...

Do you think this is a good laptop for a college student majoring in Computer Science?

 

Great review as always HT, everything you would wan't in a gaming laptop review. So the only thing holding this beast back is the stock PSU, even though the stock PSU is fine but for those that like to push the envelope and OC a bit it is not enough. Just wish the stock PSU was a little higher rated but everything else looks like great, SAGER/CLEVO has another winner even if it does have a backlit touchpad that might take a while to get used to, personally I think they could have done without it but it's not a deal breaker.

 

Holy cow, so many typos... will work on that.

Personally, I haven't had any issues with that key there, but I can understand the concern. I'd almost rather see a longer spacebar and eliminate that key altogether. Or if anything make it another Fn key.

 

Great review, I'll be re-reading this at least a 3 more times to pick up the finer details :thumbsup: good job.

Would you be able to fit the new 1 piece GPU cooler to your P150EM 680m, and compare noise levels with your system OC'd..... I guess the fan profile will hold it at a similar temperature but maybe do so with a little less noise/effort?

 

I fit it on the 680m and temps dropped 6-8C at load, but noise levels were comparable, I think primarily because the temps were still high enough to keep the fan kicked in. I don't know that I'll have time to swap again, plus I'm almost out of thermal paste and have to order more. Time permitting, I will check it.

And you might want to wait a day on the re-read, lol. When I correct some grammar and spelling and a few other corrections. I usually wait a day, walk away from the review, and then re-read it myself and make corrections, but many people were anxious to check out the performance, so went forward with it.

 

Why in gpu-z on 680m are unchecked cuda and directcomp?? Its driver issue or gpu-z ( also on my 680m i have unchecked that... )

 

could you comment on the 480gb m500.
how is its overall snappiness and performance relative to other ssd's youve tried?