My thoughts on my new NP170EM (short)

So after some minor (major) headaches getting it to play nice, it's finally in it's groove and I am starting to see why so many people are enjoying this machine.

Build: The build quality is solid. Even the keyboard feels kind of rigid and strong. Although this is a problem for my pinky trying to crouch with a stiff control, this is a good thing for travellers. Your laptop will be pretty well safe carting it around. The no branding looks mint, and the feel of it is sleek and professional. Like an assassins computer. Lol.

Screen: I went for the +30 buck Matte upgrade and I am happy to say I am glad I did. No glare obviously, but it also is a very sharp image and the colors are as accurate as I need them to play games. Also my first time with 1080p and wow.

Performance: Benchmarks without clock enhancements were for 3dMark11: 5822 and for Kombustor: 5235 (on Wavy Plane). As for gaming, Batman: AC plays smooth as butter with everything maxed. Constant 40fps while gliding around the city and up to 60 while in smaller environments. As for BF3?

BF3: Pretty smooth actually. I'd say most of the time I'm hitting around 30-40 fps, the trouble is the spikes. When it dips, it really dips and that's the only bad part about the performance while playing this game. This is for Multiplayer I must add. Totally playable though! I've really been enjoying the enhanced environments and more awesome ways to look dead lol.

Notes: Totally need to upgrade to SSD. As soon as possible, the processor and RAM are choked to death with this mechanical hard drive, so that's a must for the short term future. The panel you put your arms on will get some sweat stains. The touchpad won't switch off permanently without uninstalling it, which is a pain cause I do use it occasionally while in airports etc.

Final Thoughts: After the initial hassles, I'm totally happy with the 170EM so far. Thanks to Larry at LPC and the NBR team for helping me out and keeping me amped about this purchase. If you're tossing up cards and are hesitant about getting the 7970M, let me tell you that even with 12.5 drivers, it's going to perform very well for you.

Cheers!

 

Nice to hear you got the problem figured out

And yes the SSD is a must update in our time..... !! Don't forget to update drivers, and I would assume your GPU is throttling if you are having high dips.. check temps

but hey, have fun!

 

Oh temps yea...Err for the tests it sat around 70 degrees. But yea, it's fun alright!

 

im about to buy basically your same build.. a few questions... what's with the upgraded wireless card? what extra stuff can it do that the default one can't?

second is i'm torn between malibal and sager. and here's my reasoning. sager has a display port and esata on the left... i don't need display port.. at all. malibal doesn't have a display port and it has it's esata on the back. and i think some kind of charged usb on the left, i don't know what it does. but i'd guess it has something to do with charging devices while it's closed?

EDIT: also, malibal's keyboard looks nicer too.. to the keys on yours flex a lot or what?

 

wait..... malibal DOESNT HAVE a display port? when did they remove the display ports? btw malibal should have the same exact ports as sager considering the fact that they both uses the same clevo case...

 

go check out the satori 170em pictures.

 

Wait.... so what is this that i am seeing?
there ya go, take a look at the connections -->

 

now lets compare it with a sager NP9170

 

sager has display, hdmi, dvi out, power.

malibal has esata, hdmi, dvi out, power.

 

sager has display? you mean display port? malibal has it too...... also sager has eSata ports too.... and as i have stated BOTH laptops uses the SAME clevo case.... i truely doubt that there will be a difference in the ports..

 

on the back of the sager... the port to the left is a display port.

 

hmm just took a closer look at malibal's pics and the specs and it seems to me that they either has fake specs/pictures. Their satori p170 pics showed 2 usb 3.0 ports and 2 usb 2.0 ports (spec said 3 usb 3.0 ports and 1 usb 2.0), and no display port (spec advertised as having 1 DisplayPort ) the fact that malibal gets their laptops from eurocom makes it even more confusing...

just checked on eurocom website Specifications and it seems to me that malibal is stating fake specs in their list.... pretty shady if you would ask me...

So i guess that you were right regarding the fact that malibal doesnt have a display port (p.s. i was thinking about external monitor output ports when you mentioned it the first time.) Oh also, i would recommend going with sager resellers like xoticpc/lpc and others. These resellers generally have much better customer service than sager

 

Probably just old pics of the HM model at Malibal. When the EM first came out there were several sites still showing pics of the older chassis. The highlighted white plug is a DVI output.

 

yeah i was thinking that by display port he meant ports for external displays :/ thats why i highlighted the dvi

 

Sorry about the delay, been hella busy. As for the wifi card, I believe that the upgraded cards have small increase in bandwidths and range. My keyboard is the standard one everyone else got and it's solid as a rock. the lighting is mellow and the keys get a little softer stroke once you've been playing with it for a while.

 

The Malibal has the same ports as the Sager. They are identical. Malibal just hasn't updated their pics yet from the previous model. Either way it's better to go with a reseller than buying directly from Sager imo.