HTWingNut's Sager NP9570 (Clevo P570WM) Review!

Sager NP9570 (Clevo P570WM) Review

top INDEX

Introduction and Specs
- Laptop Configuration

General Overview
- Size and Comparison with NP9150
- Ports and Connections
- Keyboard and Touchpad
- LCD Screen *** UPDATED 3/16/13 NEW 120Hz SCREEN! ***
- Power Supply

Upgradability and Accssibility
- CPU and GPU
- Storage Drives (HDD / SSD)
- RAM
- Drivers

Performance
- BIOS
- SSD RAID 0
- Audio
- RAM
- GPU
- Benchamark Settings
---> GPU BENCHMARKS <---

- CPU
---> CPU BENCHMARKS <---

- Cooling System
- Power Supply
- Battery Life
- Conclusion


intro INTRODUCTION AND SPECS

Laptops come in all shapes and sizes, and I'll just get to the point, the machine in this review is one of the biggest I've ever seen. This monster of a laptop comes loaded for bear, and it's most unique selling point is the use of a desktop CPU along with dual 100W TDP cards in CrossfireX (AMD) or SLI (nVidia). In this case a pair of 680m GPU's fill those slots. Pretty much everything else uses mobile components including RAM and 2.5" hard drives or SSD's. All this fits under the 17" screen form factor, so most of this added heft is in the thickness of the laptop. This is intended to be a portable desktop more or less.

Many thanks to Larry from LPC-Digital for providing the sample used for this review. Before I get into the details first I'll share the specs of this behemoth:

config Configuration
17.3" 1920x1080 AUO B173HW01 V.4 90% NTSC 1920 x 1080 Gloss Type LCD
Intel Core i7-3970X CPU 3.5-4.0GHz
Intel X79 Express Chipset
Dual nVidia GeForce GTX 680m each with 4GB GDDR5 in SLI
16GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600 (2x8GB)
Dual Intel 520 SATA III SSD's in RAID 0 configuration
5.1 Audio with Creative Labs SoundBlaster and THX
6x Blu-Ray Reader/DVDRW Optical Drive
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300, 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN
Ports: 2xUSB 2.0, 2xUSB 3.0, USB 3.0/eSATA combo port, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, Firewire, ExpressCard 54, Card Reader, lock slot, headphone, mic, optical audio, audio in, Webcam
Internal expansion: LGA 2011 CPU socket, 2xPCI-e 3.0 x16 MXM IIIb slots, 3x2.5" HDD/SSD, mini PCIe slot (wifi), 4x204-pin DDR3 Laptop So-Dimm slots, Optical bay SATA
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Dimensions: 16.5 x 11.3 x 2.4 / 12.13 lbs

The cost of this system as configured from resellers is over $4400.


overview GENERAL OVERVIEW

Users familiar with Sager and Clevo machines will instantly recognize a lot of the common features like the backlit keyboard, plain but elegant styling, dark brushed metal lid and palmrest typically featured on their larger notebooks, and touchpad with fingerprint reader. A few unique features standout however. These include a blue lit Sager logo on the lid, lit blue feature line between the touchpad and buttons, and glossy LED indicator bezel at the top of the unit above the keyboard.

Size and comparison with NP9150




ports Ports and Connections
Ports are located on the left, right, and front of the machine with nothing on the rear except the power jack. The reason for that is all the heat being pumped out the back from the four system fans (two for CPU, one for each GPU), leaves no room for anything else. A bulk of the connections reside on the left side of the chassis which is nice, in my opinion, keeping most of the cable clutter away from the mouse area. The left side ports include DVI, gigabit ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.0/eSATA combo port, and Firewire jack. Nestled below all these connectors is the optical drive, a Blu-Ray reader / DVDRW in this machine. The right side of the NP9570 includes a lock slot, subwoofer, two USB 2.0 ports, and four 1/8" audio jacks: headphone, microphone, optical, input. Along the front on the left is an ExpressCard 54 slot nicely disguised within the grille-like features, with a card reader below it. On the front right are just two indicator lights for power on and battery.

Images around the laptop:





keyboard Keyboard and Touchpad
On to the keyboard area. Above they keyboard is the LED indicator bar which houses most of the indicator lights you'd expect: BlueTooth, Wi-fi, camera, disk activity, num lock, caps lock, scroll lock. On the left is a volume indicator as well that gets longer the louder the audio. It almost looks like it should be a touch volume control, but it is not. Five speakers are housed behind this bezel, one on each side and three in the center up on the hinge area.

For the keyboard itself, it is a bit disappointing to see that it is their standard backlit one designed for 15 inch notebooks, so it doesn't make use of the extra width of the 17 inch form factor. The 15 inch keyboard isn't bad, just that it would have been nice to see a keyboard make use of the extra width of the laptop. To the left or right of it is just bezel with some dot pattern for styling. There are a few noted differences however on the keyboard. For one, the NP9150/NP9170 keyboard has the Fn key on the left side with the Windows key on the right. The placement of these keys is exact opposite on this machine. Like other Sager notebooks, the backlighting colors and brightness are configurable. For more detail see my earlier review of the NP9150 keyboard here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...0em-review-lots-680m-benchmarks.html#keyboard



The blue LED lit Sager logo on the LCD lid and line on the touchpad cannot be switched on and off with they keyboard or otherwise. Just something to note since the light on the back of the lid can be quite bright in the dark.

The touchpad is centered below the qwerty portion of the keyboard, not the laptop width. Each of the buttons are independent with a firm click to engage, with a fingerprint reader embedded between the two buttons. A chrome ring surrounds the touchpad and buttons, with a lit blue feature line separating the touchpad from the buttons and fingerprint reader. While the size of the touchpad isn't smaller than many laptops, it looks a bit out of place considering its size compared to the rest of the laptop. But my thought is that the touchpad likely won't get used so much as a mouse, and a larger touchpad could be susceptible to accidental palm presses.

lcd LCD Screen
The screen itself is a 17" glossy 90% gamut 1920x1080 resolution. The bezel is typical of Sager notebooks, not thin, but not thick. Of course Sager offers several different screen options to satisfy your needs. The lid folds open about 45 degrees past vertical. Viewing angles are pretty good as are contrast and brightness. There is a bit of backlight bleed noticed with complete black backgrounds, otherwise it's not noticeable. An odd item on the bezel is a flat area in the center of the bottom of the bezel that with a bright light indicates a small cube with "3D" inside of it. Perhaps this is a common bezel between 17" models with 3D screens. Although it seems Sager should change that so users aren't wondering what it is or what it means.

LCD Viewing Angles

Spoiler

*** UPDATE 3/16/13 ***
The LCD screen has been replaced by Sager with a 120Hz Matte LG LGD02C5 screen. The other screen had some undesirable backlight bleed, and Sager gracefully replaced it with this screen instead. While this system does not support 3D (yet) the screen is absolutely crisp, clear, no backlight bleed, and no dead pixels. Viewing angles are pretty good too. Here's some images of the screen and viewing angles:






psu Power Supply
Considering the NP9570 can be configured with a 130W (actually 150W in this case) CPU and dual 100W GPU's, Sager offers the option of dual 300W power supplies. They are nicely connected together by way of a small dual connector box that attaches to the four pin power connector on the back of the laptop. Power measurements from the wall are shown later to see if dual power supplies are necessary or should be considered, but I can say in a few instances, power consumption does well exceed 300W. You can of course use a single 300W power supply if desired, only it may limit performance, but from my testing it did not. Surprisingly the 300W power supply isn't a whole lot physically larger than the typical 180W used by other Sager notebooks. Under load the dual power supply configuration barely got warm to the touch.

Power supply 300W comparison with 180W




upgradeUPGRADABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY

cpugpu CPU and GPU
In most Sager notebooks the cooling system and components are easily accessible. This is somewhat the case with the NP9570. Removal of the main bottom panel exposes the four system fans and heatsinks to cool the high TDP CPU and GPU's. Two fans for the CPU and one for each of the GPU's. Accessing and replacing the thermal paste and the CPU and GPU's themselves is pretty straightforward. Removal of a few screws for the fan, 4-6 each of the heatsink, and you can get at these components. For the CPU only one of its two fans needs to be removed.



storage Storage Drives
Hard drives are also easily accessible. Underneath a center panel near the front edge of laptop houses a dual drive cage, with the third in a drive cage below the battery. Both cages have isolation rubber grommets to prevent against vibration, of course not as much of an issue with SSD's, but still a prevalant issue with fast hard drives. For the dual drive cage, a proprietary ribbon cable is utilized to connect to the mainboard, but a stanard SATA connector is used for the single drive under the battery.



ram RAM
Where things get sticky are with access and replacement of the system RAM. Access to any RAM requires removal of the LED indicator bar above the keyboard, removal of the keyboard, and keyboard backplate. When all is said and done, you will remove about a dozen or so screws and a few ribbon cables. This offers access to 3 of the four RAM slots. The fourth RAM slot requires removal of BOTH of the CPU fans and the CPU heatsink. So be prepared with some thermal paste if you ever go to upgrade your RAM. This machine came stock with two RAM modules in the spot underneath the CPU, so if all you want to do is add more of same type of RAM, then it's just as simple as adding two more sticks in the other two slots.

drivers Drivers
I performed a clean install of Windows 7 Professional x64 using the supplied drivers on DVD. Windows 8 drivers were also supplied should a user decide to utilize that OS. There were no issues installing all the drivers from the DVD. I only updated the video drivers to the latest 314.07 from nVidia's website for all the benchmarks listed.


performance PERFORMANCE

bios BIOS
Most low level system configuration happens in the BIOS. In typical Sager fashion, however, the BIOS is quite sparse and doesn't offer much more than the basic options like setting system time, enable or disable things like Bluetooth, boot logo, setting boot device priority, etc. Although it does offer UEFI and secure boot. Other than that, any other BIOS options that may be enabled just not present in the BIOS menu, will have to be adjusted with software like Intel's XTU utility.

ssd SSD RAID Performance
The Intel X79 chipset supports 2 SATA III and 4 SATA II ports, and the NP9570 makes use of almost all of them. Three 2.5" bays, one optical bay, one eSATA. The two SATA III ports are part of the dual drive bay, everything else is SATA II.

There is support for up to four 2.5" notebook hard drives or SSD's, with native RAID 0, 1, or 5 support from the BIOS. Three are native 2.5" drive bays, with the fourth located in the optical drive bay if a user decides to swap the optical drive bay with an add-in tray to support the extra hard drive or SSD. The configuration in this review unit contains two Intel 520 180GB SSD's in RAID 0 (striped array) connected to the two SATA III ports for maximum performance. Results can be seen in the CrystalDiskMark results below and in the file copy tests.



audio Audio
The NP9570 sports a 5.1 sound system supported by Realtek HD drivers and SoundBlaster Compatible software with THX TrueStudio Pro. The five tweeters are all located around the hinge of the laptop. Two beneath the upper LED indicator bezel, and three more on the hinge itself in the center. The subwoofer is tucked away to the side on the right, and to be honest offers less than stellar performance. Let's be honest, a 3x1x1 inch speaker can only handle so much low frequency. Playing U2's "Love and Peace or Else" which has a very powerful bass riff at the beginning is distorted and not very loud. On the other hand the five tweeters are crisp and loud and offer pleasant tones for most music and video I've played.

There are three audio packages that need to be manipulated to tune for preferred sound: Realtek HD Audio Console, SoundBlaster Control Panel, and THX Panel. The Realtek offers speaker configuration and volume control. SoundBlaster offers an equalizer, microphone adjustments with voice effects, and EAX effects, along with the THX panel. The THX panel offers fine tuning of the speaker configuration, including smart volume and for dialog in movies, etc. It's a little complicated, but once you fiddle with it, it works out pretty well.



The unit can drive 7.1 audio through the 1/8" side audio jacks, however, so if you want fuller sound you do have that option. My Sony earbuds sounded as good a with any other laptop I've used it on, plenty loud, no hiss or crackle, and very crisp defining sounds.

ramperf RAM Performance
Theoretically the X79 chipset should support up to DDR3 2400MHz RAM (or faster) and quad channel memory. While I was able to get quad channel memory to work, with no more effort than installing four matched RAM chips of DDR3-1600MHz, the system would not run DDR3 2133MHz RAM


gpuperf BENCHMARKS

GPU Performance
Of course when you have such a massive setup with two consumer level top end GPU's linked in SLI, gaming will likely be one of your priorities for owning such a laptop, and the machine does not disappoint. I pitted this machine next to a desktop with an i5-3570k and GTX 670 GPU, plus my trusty Sager NP9150 with i7-3610QM and GTX 680m slightly overclocked from stock 720MHz core/1800MHz vRAM to 900MHz core/2200MHz vRAM. All components in the NP9570 were at stock speeds including the two 680m GPU's at 720MHz core/1800MHz vRAM.



Specs for systems compared were:

(1) NP9570: i7-3970x, SLI GTX 680m (@ 720/1800), 16GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600, 2x180GB Intel 520 SSD
(2) NP9150: i7-3610QM, GTX 680m (@ 900/2200), 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600, 1x256GB Crucial M4 mSATA (@ sATA II), 1X512GB Crucial M4 SATA (@ SATA III)
(3) Desktop: i5-3570k, GTX 670 (@ 1084/6200), 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600, 1x256GB Crucial M4 SATA (@ SATA III)

benchsettings BENCHMARK SETTINGS

Game Settings
All games were run at 1920x1080 resolution and 60Hz refresh unless the specific benchmark required a specific resolution like 3DMark11 P setting at 1280x720. Maximum detail was used in most cases, and utilized a system preset (i.e. Ultra) for ease of comparison and consistency.

System Settings for all tests were as follows:
- Power Options set to "High Performance" in Windows Power Options and Clevo Control Center (Fn+Esc)
- LCD at 100% brightness
- Keyboard backlight on and full brightness
- Wi-Fi ON
- Speakers at 50% volume
- nVidia beta drivers 314.07 (started with 310.90 but bumped up to 314.07 before benchmarking GPU performance)
- System utilized no additional cooling except during Adobe Premier Pro CS6 benchmarking to prevent or limit throttling of the CPU

Software and devices utilized for recording and manipulating data:
- FRAPS: Recording frame rates and taking screen shots of in game images
- IrfanView: Manipulation, cropping, resizing of images provided for this review
- MSI Afterburner: Utilized for verifying GPU temps and utilization in game
- MSI Kombustor: Stress testing GPU
- HWMonitor: Recording system temperatures
- Kill-A-Watt (Hardware): Measuring power draw of system from the wall
- Microsoft Excel 2013: Compiling and creating data and charts
- Prime95: Stess Testing CPU
- WPrime: Stress Testing CPU

Game benchmarks are posted in the second post of this thread, so links are provided. You can either select "Game Benchmarks" to take you there or select the specific benchmark link.

gpubench GAME BENCHMARKS:

Synthetic:
3DMark 2013
3DMark11
3DMark Vantage
Allbenchmark Catzilla
Unigine Heaven
Unigine Valley

Games:
ArmA 2 Benchmark
AvP Benchmark
Batman Arkham City
Battlefield 3 (Armored Kill Maps)
Crysis 2
Crysis 3
Dirt 3
Far Cry 3
Just Cause 2
Metro 2033
Resident Evil 6
Sleeping Dogs

From the results of these benchmarks it's clear that the SLI 680m CPU is a notch above even an overclocked desktop GTX 670 GPU and overclocked single GTX 680m. With the exception of Just Cause 2, which seemed to not utilize both card of the SLI, it's a clear performance leader between the three systems. About 25-30% improvement over the desktop and as much at 60% improvement over the NP9150.


cpuperf CPU PERFORMANCE

The one thing that makes this sytem most unique is the incorporation of a desktop CPU. The additional one inch thickness over other typical high end laptops is required to cool the max spec 130W desktop CPU (well in this case a 150W TDP CPU). This review unit came with the top end desktop hexacore, yes that's six cores, i7-3970X Extreme CPU rated with a 150W TDP. Six cores with hyper-threading results in 12 virtual CPU's at up to 3.7GHz for massive parallel computing. For compaison, the top end mobile CPU currently is i7-3940XM rated at 55W TDP, and maximum 4 cores with hyper-threading. Note that despite the nomenclature of this CPU, i7-3970x, it is still a Sandy Bridge CPU. Hexacore Ivy Bridge CPU's should be available later in 2013.



Intel Extreme CPU's are typically unlocked for overclocking as long as they system cooling is adequate to manage the additional heat. It appears that the 150W TDP may be a bit too extreme for this mobile platform rated for 130W, but that doesn't mean it doesn't perform well at rated clock speeds of 3.7GHz when fully taxed. Extended periods of peak computing power may require use of laptop cooler, as rendering or encoding video resulted in near peak temps of 90C before throttling. Users may want to consider removing the bottom panel when on a cooler to improve cooling performance if they plan on stressing the CPU at peak loads for extended periods.

Overclocking was attempted using Intel's XTU, however many of the features were locked and most required a reboot. Increasing TDP offered the best result for maintaining higher clocks for extended periods, however options like turbo boost power time window were not available. It is possible to increase the boost ratio of ALL cores to the same multiplier regardless of load applied, but this resulted in higher overall temperatures and also ramped up temperatures a lot more quickly under load. I am sure with a BIOS update or two that many of these restrictions will be resolved. But for this review, the system was run at stock settings at 3.7GHz with all cores loaded, since overclocking does not seem possible with this CPU in this machine at this time.

cpubench CPU (and some file/system) BENCHMARKS:

7-Zip Zip and Unzip
Adobe Premier Pro 6 PPBM5.5
Blender Cycles
Cinebench 11.5
DPC Latency
File Copy Test (disk test not CPU)
Fritz 12 Chess
Geekbench
Handbrake
PCMark 7
Spodemark (Single thread performance: Gimp, x264, Video, mulitask)
WPrime
x264

From these results we can see that the added cores help improve time to completion of compute intensive tasks like rendering or encoding. Regular desktop performance is pretty much on par with the other two machines compared.


cooling COOLING SYSTEM

I already touched on the accessibilty of the coolig system, but to restate, the fans and heatsink are easily accessible and simple to remove with a small philips head screwdriver. There are dual fans to cool the CPU and a single fan for each GPU for four total system fans. Remarkably the system is not that loud with fan noise at idle or mild use. With a stressed system the fan noise is a bit apparent but it's a low tone "whooshing" sound so it is not too annoying. There is no noticeable heat around the system, as everything is pushed out the back vents.

The fans do a remarkable job at cooling the 680m GPU's keeping them below 70C during most games and benchmarks. It is a bit different with the 150W i7-3970x CPU however. Despite haveing two fans, the CPU can reach the 90C throttle point with extended full system load within 10 minutes. Typically so far only one or two cores throttle and doesn't have a significant impact on resulting performance, but it does affect it.

Note the results below of the CPU and GPU temperatures. All tests were run with the system closed and no additional cooling except for Adobe Premier Pro benchmark where I opened the bottom panel and placed the notebook PC on a laptop cooler to help prevent CPU throttling.





power POWER SYSTEM

This system came with two 300W power supplies, and they can be used simultanously. Both PSU's are linked using a small Y adapter allowing to pull up to 600W of power. In most cases the power was around or less than 300W. Note that this is power drawn from the wall, so whatever performance factor has to be taken into account with the power supplies, typically about 90%, so actual power use from the PSU was about 250-270W.

Below are the results of power draw based on each test run.




I re-ran a few of the tests that pushed the system over 300W, this time using just a single PSU to check if performance for that particular benchmark was hinderd or not and results were similar. So a single PSU would work, however it would run near peak power most of the time while gaming which would likely burn out the PSU in short order.




battery BATTERY LIFE

In system like this, battery life isn't much of a factor. The 80WHr battery really is more of a battery backup than a useful computing on the go battery. However I ran an idle battery life test nevertheless using the following settings:

- power saver profile
- 20% brightness, never dim or turn off
- Wi-fi On
- Backlit Keyboard off
- hard drive/SSD power off after 10 minutes

Result: 75 minutes

I think with some regular wi-fi use that total time would likely end up around 50-60 minutes. Still respectable considering the harware it's housing. Granted a similarly equipped NP9370 with mobile CPU ran over 2.5 hours.

In any case the battery is located in a good spot, near the forward edge (palm rest) of the laptop, away from the hot components. The odd thing is that it is secured with three flat head screws instead of a slide lach. The flat heads have wide grooves so it could easily be opened by using a coin or key, though, so no screwdriver required.


conclusion CONCLUSION

The Sager NP9570 is definitely a unique monster sure to support the needs of a specific niche market, but I guess that is nice to have that option. Users primarily wanting a higher end desktop CPU, and of most interest hexacore CPU's will likely find this machine desirable if they want something portable or compact compared with a a desktop. The Socket 2011 should be compatible with Ivy Bridge hexacore CPU's later this year so it should offer an upgrade path down the road. It's clear that a hexacore CPU will improve completion times of encoding, rendering, and likely compiling of code. The only issue I noticed was a peak load the CPU would approach throttle temperatures, however keep in mind this was with a 150W hexacore, the 130W i7-3930k may be a better option if you are looking for a cooler running CPU. In any case the CPU was able to manage 3.7GHz for extended periods in most of the benchmarks.

I don't think there's any doubt that the SLI GPU's will manage games for the next few years, and there should also be an upgrade path for users with the 700m series nVidia GPU's or even AMD's 8000 series. Gaming performance bested the desktop quad core Ivy Bridge i5 and GTX 670 overclocked by about 25-30% as well as the NP9150 with i7-3610QM and GTX 680m overclocked by as much as 60%.

Considering the added thickness of this laptop, Clevo made some odd design decisions in the design of this laptop like difficult to access RAM slots, primarily requiring removal of the CPU heatink and fans. Other things like utilizing a common keyboard with the 15 inch models, a small touchpad, and extra lighting that cannot be turned off on the lid or on the touchpad while the laptop is powered on. But overall those are nitpicking, just items that stood out while using the laptop.

Otherwise I hope I detailed enough information to help any users considering this machine to make their purchase decision. LPC-Digital was kind enough to offer this laptop to me for a short period to offer a review, be sure to thank them, Larry in particular.

Pros:
- Unique platform for users seeking desktop CPU performance in a mobile form factor
- Lots of storage options with RAID
- Premier CPU performance for multithreaded apps
- Easy access to CPU and GPU's and their respective fans and heatsinks
- Powerful SLI setup for gaming with excellent cooling
- 90% Gamut Screen

Cons:
- Cooling questionable for high end hexacore CPU's
- Difficult to access RAM, requiring removal of CPU heatsink and fans to reach one of the SO-DIMMS
- 15" keyboard on 17" notebook
- Price, at over $4400 it's a high cost for mobility
- Subwoofer is really a subtweeter

Neutral:
- Size and weight, although expected considering components it houses
- Two PSU's as an option with 130W CPU and SLI GPU's, would have been nice to see a 350-400W single PSU
- Sager logo lighting on lid

 

Synthetic Game Benchmarks:

3d133DMark 2013




3d113DMark 11



3dv3DMark Vantage


catzAllbenchmark Catzilla


heavenUnigine Heaven


heavenUnigine Valley




Game Benchmarks:
arma2ArmA 2


avpAvP Benchmark


batacBatman Arkham City


bf3akBattlefield 3 Armored Kill


cry2Crysis 2


cry3Crysis 3


dirt3Dirt 3


fc3Far Cry 3


jc2Just Cause 2


metro2033Metro 2033


re6Resident Evil 6


sleepdogsSleeping Dogs

 

CPU Benchmarks

7zip7-zip 64-bit
Zip and Unzip Freeware flight simulator Flight Gear folder which consists of 11673 files in 1432 folders at about 1.2GB total size


app6Adobe Premier Pro 6 with PPBM5.5 benchmark
PPBM5.5 evaluates several aspects of Adobe Premier Pro 6: rendering h.264 timeline (CPU), export timeline to MPEG2 DVD (CPU), export timeline to H.264 file (CPU), and export to AVI file (CPU and Disk I/O)
. The file can be downloaded from here:
http://ppbm5.com/Instructions.html


blenderBlender Cycles Render (2.65)
This benchmark I found from the blenderartists.org website where it renders a model with cycles: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?239480-2-61-Cycles-render-benchmark


cine115Cinebench 11.5


dpcDPC Latency
Just thought I'd throw this in here since users typically request it. Latency was low. I let this run another time for a long time while I used the laptop just forgot to take a screenshot, but this is pretty much representative.


filecopyFile Copy Test
I just did two file copy tests: (1) was the Flight Gear folder also used with 7-zip test. Freeware flight simulator Flight Gear folder which consists of 11673 files in 1432 folders at about 1.2GB total size. and (2) a single 3.5GB video file. These were copied from and to the same disk


fritzFritz 12 - Chess benchmark


geekGeekBench


handbrakeHandbrake
I converted a 3.8GB DVD VOB file to an mp4 file using ipad default setting.


pcmark7PCMark 7
These results show that the more powerful systems really don't affect general computing


spodemarkSpodemark
This test is really to test the single thread performance as it runs through Gimp image manipulation, x264 video encoding, video playback, and general multitasking. Interesting to see how it stacks up with single threaded apps.


wprimeWprime


x264x264

 

Reserve this one just in case

 

EXCELLENT work HTWingNut!

Wow.....how small the NP9150 is......

 

I just realized I forgot to add Crysis 3. Will have to do that later, I seem to be missing data. Will have to go back an play it a little more. Darn,

 

Awesome job there) I just wish there would be some GPU OC results not to check what 680M is capable of but what the cooling of the beast can manage..

 

GPU could not OC with current vBIOS installed. But from the results you can see there is a lot of headroom.

edit: I just realized I missed the GPU temps in there. Sorry. Just posted graph in temps section. I have to add Crysis 3 still.

 

Thanks for that, great job! +1
Will compare some of your benches with my X7200 with 680m SLI soon.

 

Awesome job, great to see all of this all in one place!

 

all i can say is

holy mother of lord that's a massive laptop

 

Awesome review as usual. The NP9150 looks puny compared to this beast.

 

Yep, it's a big dude, especially when lugging the two 300W PSUs around, but that's the price you pay for the desktop chipset and CPU.

 

OK, so I compared some of the results with my X7200, which is the predecessor of the P570WM.

As you may know or not know, I upgraded it to GTX 680m SLI. Therefore I have to use a hack that allows SLI on that system with the GPU´s, because they are not officially supported.
I have to use the driver 310.70, but I updated the SLI profiles.
To make as many things equal as possible, I used the vBios 80.04.67.00.01. (Surprise for me, because some of my scores went higher than before, for example 3DMark Vantage -> GPU over 1500 points more!)
I didn´t overclock the GPU, but I overclocked my i7 970 a little bit, to make it more comparable, 3,6 to 3,95 instead of 3,2 to 3,45.

The X7200 only supports SATA II, so there is no need in comparing any benches in regarding the speed of the harddisks, the P570WM has to be a clear winner.

BUT, if you take the graphic benches you can see that a nearly 3 year old machine can compete with his successor... and it is very stable, though I have to use the SLI hack.

I compared all benches I had and I thought would be useful.
Some are nearly the same, but some are very interesting, because some of them the X7200 wins! I have no clue why, though.

Other specs: 2x 8 GB RAM, Samsung SSD 840 (256 GB)

That´s my little toy:

Spoiler

But now, here are the Benches! All scores from the P570WM are taken from the first post made by HTWingnut, I hope it´s all right, say if it is not!
All X7200 scores are benched by me the last couple of hours.

3DMark Vantage:

Spoiler

3DMark 11:

Spoiler

3DMark 13:
Ice Storm

Spoiler

Cloud Gate

Spoiler

Fire Strike

Spoiler

Allbenchmark Catzilla:

Spoiler

Unigine Heaven:

Spoiler

Unigine Valley:

Spoiler

Dirt 3:

Spoiler

Metro 2033:

Spoiler

(I don´t know about the other settins besides very high, so it may be a little bit different in case!)

And of course here wins the P570WM (CPU/ overall):

Cinebench:

Spoiler

PCMark 7:

Spoiler