Impressions/Review/Thoughs on the Sager NP8130 (Clevo P151HM1)

Discharging the battery 5-10% everyday and charging in back to full is very harmful for the battery. Don't leave your battery in there if you are not going to use it. If you won't be using it for a long time you should charge it till 40% and unplug it.

 

I did not know that. I think I'll just shut it down then before I go to bed. The boot time isn't that bad at all compared to my old laptop.

 

Here it is: Notebook batteries, not meant to last?

 

The CryoLX is an amazing cooler, albeit bulky and HEAVY! I have a modded one in possession and fits Clevo laptops well due to the 120mm fans being at the back, near the intake of the laptop.

Question 1: Yes it is enough.
Question 2: Yes it's enough too haha.

I think now they ship the LX with DC adapters that are able to fully utilise the power it has. But it can still be powered by the USB; I needed the adapter because I put standard desktop 120mm fans (Scythe and Antec) into my CryoLX, and took the stock ones out.

If it didn't come with the adapter, give NZXT an email for a replacement part. They will send it for free!

To be honest, if I have the money or time to buy a notebook cooler, I would buy one. Because, anything that prolongs the life of my laptop, I'd gladly buy it.

 

I'm actually considering the SF-19 right now, from Cooler Master. It pushes a lot more air according to most people, is customizable, has LED lights (mehhh, I'll take it) and has a USB 3.0 hub.

Can I get a "heck yeah!" people?

Mr. Mysterious

 

heck yeah!

 

I think it's a better idea to wait till you get the 8130 first before deciding on whether you really want/need a cooler. After all, owners haven't really reported any issues related to excessive heat.

 

I got the SF-19 for my 8150 knowing it wouldn't need it for heat. I like to have one for using as a platform on my lap to keep things steadier. Plus this one is nearly big enough I can keep my mouse on it too. And it chills my lap quite nicely... (oh and preeeeeety colors!)

 

Oh I'll be waiting anyways....Just exploring my options

You can never be too careful!

Really? You're going to spend $90 for a platform to keep on your lap? (And I wouldn't keep the SF-19 on my lap; too heavy) Just use a hardcover textbook! Or a cardboard rectangle!

Mr. Mysterious

 

has anyone been able to compare this screen to the full res hd of the dell xps 15?

 

No, but we know the Dell's screen is much better, though that is not to say that the 8130's screen is bad; It's actually better than average.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Just out of curiosity, how do you know the Dell XPS 15 FHD screen is better than that of the 8130?

Of course you get much more for your money with the 8130 with the GTX 460m DDR5 compared to the 540m DDR3 in the XPS with similar pricing.

 

Becauuuuuse....Dell is famous for providing their RGB LED screens that show much better contrast and color reproduction than most laptops.

Although....I'm not certain if that screen is the stock configuration for the Dell XPS, or if it is an upgrade you're going to have to pay for. It would make sense if it was the latter.

Mr. Mysterious

 

The dell xps screen on the 15in is an upgrade. I haven't been on there in a while, but I know its between 150-200 for it.

 

Congrats and thanks for the review! Patiently waiting for mine NP8130. Got the same specs your system does.

 

Now that you've gotten a little time to play with it...how is your system? Just give us a quick update please, hispeed.

Mr. Mysterious

 

To sum it up in one word: awesome! I honestly have no complaints with the laptop. If I had to gripe with something it would be the fan sound but that is something I will try to fix with a program or learn to live with it. The speed, screen quality, speaker loudness, sound reproduction (for a laptop), sturdiness, gaming and the cooling are all great. I know that I didn't put pictures on, but I've been kind of busy with spring break and internship applications/interviews. Something on the battery: I only went on battery once but for a laptop of this caliber it is respectable.

If there are any questions that I can answer with a response, feel free to ask.

 

It would be interesting to know if the fans going on/off constantly is something other folks have experienced. Fan noise in general is something that irritates me, you can't avoid it when gaming but in an office environment it's something I want minimized if I'm just doing office tasks. My Dell E6400 is pretty much dead quiet while performing office tasks and I'd like to keep the same characteristic with a Sager/Clevo.

 

Don't worry, I'm sure there will either be a program or a BIOS update that will take care of the annoying fan issues. Not a deal-breaker for me, personally.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Have you tried SpeedFan yet? It'll let you set the temps the fans kick in at as well as the fan speeds. I use it on my desktop and it works great.

 

I was thinking about that or MSI Afterburner which works great for controlling cooling fans on my desktop GPU. Unfortunately a lot of times those apps don't work on laptops because you can't get the same sort of motherboard-level interface. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

The way I thought was laptop fan control was a bit more complicated than just getting a generic program. If anything I'd think a BIOS update would be the best thing, but we'll wait and see what happens.

 

Oh and btw you should update your signature since you're one of the lucky ones that already received this system!

 

It's not a generic program. It ties in to your bios to use the temperature sensors and fan controls. It's basically an abstraction layer on your bios controls.

 

For anyone that has received the 8130 already, if you have Bad Company 2 can you let me know what settings you play on?

 

Sometime I look @ other computers with the same specs to find out what the np8130 is probably capable of: YouTube - Bad Company 2 on Asus G53JW GTX460M Overclocked!

without overclocking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca8C-NdP068&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

 

Personally, i play a little bad company 2 at full HD and (edit: ultra) settings, save for turning off anti aliasing. (on a screen with this kind of pixel density its kind of unneeded)

I haven't noticed hiccups.

 

I just want to say, thank you for taking the time to put together this review, it contained a lot of crucial information that eventually convinced me to purchase one too!

 

No problem. That's what I wanted to get across with this review. Benchmarks and pictures are not going to change between people and their machines, but opinions about the device do. If there are any questions that I could answer please feel free to ask.

Also, the only games I have are SC2, and portal. I don't really buy that many games as other people. As many have stated, the 460m can handle many games, often times on high/ultra, so any game can be played without a hitch. FPS is great and all, but after 60 you can't even see the difference anymore, so as long as I can get that I'm pretty satisified.

Lastly, exams are starting to pick up for me and I can't get to answers as quick, but I'll try my best to get to your questions.

 

Hey there, thanks for your review, it was rlly helpful, so i was wondering like its taking a rlly long time for the laptops to be built and shipped, so do u think i should wait maybe sager will enable the optimus option with the GTX460m in the sager NP8130, or i should just buy it now.
Thanks

 

They won't do optimus in the 8130 since it's not wired for optimus. If you want a more powerful gpu w/ good battery you'll have to turn to the alienware R3, until clevo comes up with something

 

What hizzah said. There physically isn't any wiring connecting the IGP on the processor to the mobo, so it would require a redesign of that. In addition paying the fees to nvidia to get optimus on more laptops. I don't see any solution from clevo until next year in this performance bracket.

 

I heard even if they did enable Optimus, the discrete card would have to run through the IGP first which would cause performance issues. If this is true, an entire redesign of how the technology is implemented would be required for high-end cards.

 

There are still bugs in the software. It apparently messes up while gaming too. In my opinion, I would much rather have a manual switch to go from discrete to integrated. Hell, I would even restart the computer. Now that cannot be hard to implement (I have no idea if it is or not, just guessing)

 

It wouldn't really work that way. You'd still need to wire the discrete card through the IGP. Unless they introduce a totally new technology to have two separate connections to the screen via a switch, there's not much to be done. With optimus, all display output is routed through the IGP, even when using the discrete card. I'm not sure if it's even possible to have a hardware switch that would hop between one or the other, but I'm sure it's been tried somewhere (and that there's a reason it's not out there).

 

True, I just want something like on the AW mx17. If they can get 5 hours, then we can to! Lol

 

If the new AW can get 5 hours....well under what conditions will it hit that kind of longetivity??

If you're talking screen brightness all the way down, no wireless, and typing on a word document....well that's just useless.

Mr. Mysterious

 

That claim is only on the IGP and I haven't looked into it. I heard that number thrown around a few times on the forums and that's why I said it. Here's to hoping by rockwell that we can get high end graphics switching

 

I thought there was a setting via Nvidia Control Panel to manually set default preferences for applications to use IGP or discrete card.

 

For me, the only weak spot in this machine was that it didn't support optimus.

But, if by some miracle, they do allow people with certain laptops (like the 81XXs for example) to somehow turn on Optimus....well...this really would be the best laptop in the world IMO.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Trust me, you guys don't want Optimus if you are serious about doing any production creative work or want to actually play games you have with your Nvidia card and not your Intel one. Just read through a few of these Nvidia forum posts about the problems:

Nvidia forum Optimus subsection

This is especially interesting:

Nvidia banned from making future Intel chipsets

I'm sure to many Notebookreview members this news is as old as dirt. However, there still may be members who have never heard of this news. Basically, the right way to do integrated graphics is you use a proper chipset implementation and couple that with your graphics solution such as the AMD Radeon integrated series or the Intel integrated GMA series. However, Intel banned Nvidia from making chipsets for their processors starting with the Core series. What did this do? Effectively make it where Nvidia had to develop a "hack" so to speak in order to hook their graphics chipsets to the Intel ones and dump their rendering output into the Intel GMA memory in order to eventually get the output to the user's screen. A proper implementation would be with an Nforce chipset, yet sadly those days are gone. Now, all we have is Nvidia having to work around legal issues by using a software solution called Optimus. I know that some people love it and it brings better battery life. I'm not saying that it doesn't. What I am saying though is that it is simply a work around solution to a legal issue and the problems with it are many because it is primarily a software solution and incompatible applications may require driver updates, actual vendor application updates, or both. If either Nvidia or the application vendor fails to update their code, then sadly it is the customer that ultimately suffers. Check it out and do your own research. I would love for someone to vouch for Optimus and say that it is as reliable as a standard discrete graphics or a properly implemented integrated graphics solution.

 

After used my NP5135 for 2 months, I failed to see any significant problems for Optimus.

The worst is lack of profile updates, but you can still manually add new programs in.

And for the chipset bans, it just says NVIDIA cannot manufacture chipsets for intel CPUs, not implying intel won't license NVIDIA technology in their own chipsets.

And of course you missed this "Intel pays NVIDIA 1.5Billion for Licensing"

Updated: The License Agreement: Intel to Pay NVIDIA $1.5 Billion - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

So stop spreading FUD.

 

Other users may go and form their own opinions about what is FUD and what is not. I clearly stated for people to do their own research and that I was looking for someone to defend Optimus. All I said is that it has reported issues and it is not a clean implementation like is normally done when an integrated chipset and gpu are combined. There wouldn't be a need for Optimus if the chipset was Nvidia instead of Intel. You would just have an awesome core series processor with a really good integrated Nvidia gpu onboard.

 

I agree with griff, don't bother with optimus. I loved my 5125 but was tired of fiddling with the optimus tech when it wouldn't work. It was so annoying that I just sold the laptop and am now getting the 8130.

I tried numerous times to get optimus to work with browser videos. I added FF to the exception list but every time I went to watch a Netflix movie, the dedicated card never kicked in. Also I tried playing the Battlestar Galactica web based MMO but it would never use the nvidia card since there was no .exe to add. I just got tired of it and am going the straight dedicated route.

 

about optmius, it is clear that in it's infancy it was not perfect and there were issues, and might have gotten a bad rap from previous implementations of a full-on gpu switch that required a reboot and such. it has matured a bit over the past year and the compatibility and usability has improved. i did find one old game that i had (star trek bridge commander) that failed to see optimus, but everything else should be fine for you.

it comes down to this: what do you need your notebook for? heavy gaming, casual gaming, portability, raw power, etc all have different needs are requirements. you probably have overlapping needs so you'll have to make your best judgement as to what is your #1 need.

i mainly play SC2 and my 5160 is fine for me. you may play something more intensive would want the 8130. and anyways, when you game you'll be plugged into the outlet anyways; when you get the 8130 you know you won't be off the grid for too long

 

This is strange, I can add Firefox to use NVIDIA every time its launched and worked perfectly. I haven't have any browser based MMO but I imagine if I can make browser work with NVIDIA, the MMO should be fine.

And yes I agree that dedicated is better for you since you probably can't figure out how to add profiles.

 

The interesting thing to see is: people always blame the tech when themselves aren't capable to figure out what's going on with the said tech.

But let's not derail the thread.

My NP8130 should be in in a few weeks.

As I mentioned in another thread, the 425M is too weak for my gaming habit.

 

I don't think the 460M will be able to max SC2, I can barely do it on my 485M...

 

Definitely not. In all honesty, I prefer medium/high to get steady performance.

 

I'd only do that when laddering