New Sager Np8170 Review, Plenty Of Benchmarks!

Relevant Machine Specs:

17.3" LED 90% Color Gamut Glossy
I7 2720QM CPU
8GB RAM (4 DIMM OPTION)
Radeon 6990M
500GB HDD 7200RPM (The one they put in mine is a Seagate)
All the other normal stuff

Let's just jump right into it.

The screen is the upgraded 90% gamut glossy. I do not know what the standard glossy screen looks like, but this one is very nice. It is most certainly the best laptop screen I have yet seen, and the very first that I've ever used that I actually run at BELOW the maximum backlight level outside of multimedia use. It is very even, very bright, and very much a pain to "calibrate" comfortably. The colors are very distinct and vivid and it takes some getting used to if you are used to your garden variety CCFL screens. In fact, it looks very wrong at first, or at least it did to me. At first glance it looked as though the digital vibrancy type setting had been cranked way beyond normal levels. However, once you start using it and adjust things a bit, you realize its actually just really crisp. The brightness is not bleeding IE, if you have a red color on a white background, the red is just really bright and vivid - it doesnt bleed onto the white like you see sometimes on cheap screens. After I got the contrast/brightness/gamma all adjusted and my brain and eyes adapted, I can say it is a wonderful screen. I am glad I opted for it. I should note that I am not at all an expert on displays and display tech, so it's possible this is the most horrible screen ever manufactured and I am just too ignorant to realize it. I doubt it, but full disclosure and such.

The sound on the other hand, is awful. This machine has a 5.1 speaker system inside it, subwoofer and all. However, it is terrible. It has to be the worst laptop sound I have ever heard. I have handled 400$ laptops with superior speakers. The sound chip is the ubiquitous Realtek HD and it's just dandy, but the speakers really disappoint. I thought something was wrong with the machine at first it sounded so terrible. There is virtually no bass, and the sound is so tinny you might as well be listening to a soup can with a rock rattling around. I have tried every possible tweak I can, including various configurations of the included THX Pro Studio software (kind of like a software equalizer program that comes with the machine). If you press FN+5 it will give you a slight boost in bass and a little more convincing positioning and it will blend stereo sound into the other speakers, but it's still terrible. This machine should have had a standard 2 speaker setup and the extra manufacturing costs put towards making them 2 decent speakers rather than 5.1 terrible (though I suspect highly marketable) ones. You are going to want to use some headphones or external speakers when doing anything more than websurfing. I find that putting the Realtek software to stereo mode, completely disabling the THX Pro Studio software, and using the FN+5 trick gives the best results. Be advised, however, that you must do this every time you boot up because it does not save this setting past a Windows reboot.

The keyboard is wonderful. It uses a somewhat "sealed" design that leaves just a few millimeters of space between the keys and the void beneath, rather than having the keys floating on the normal "stilts" you are probably used to on other laptops. This means that debris has a harder time getting down in there. The entire assembly is not actually recessed into the chassis either, it is actually more or less level with the rest of the machines chest, so when you do get crumbs going awry, a quick puff or handswipe will see them on their way. I cannot stress how big of a deal this is. The mechanics of the keyboard are very good as well. The motion is stable and the click is honest. Key placement is mundane and nothing goofy is going on, which is exactly what I want from a keyboard. Volume control, like on all Sagers I am aware of, is handled via FN+F5 and 6. This is par for the course and fine, but I do wish Clevo would start putting a hardware volume slider on these machines, and maybe a mute button but that is a relatively small issue. Like my 9262, it has the annoying caveat of having the sleep hotkey as F4, and the mute hotkey as F3. You would expect the volume up/down/mute to be inline (F4, F5, F6), and I bet most people will accidentally put the machine to sleep a few times before they condition themselves that the mute key is not where it should be due to the sleep key having stolen its spot on the proverbial couch.

The touchpad is somewhat less than wonderful. I always found the touchpad on my Sager 9262 to be rubbish, to the point of having difficulty using it. I have very dry skin, and the touchpad was very poor at reading my finger movement. The NP8170 is better, but not by a great deal. It seems to be made of aluminum, and has subtle "lines" going down it horizontally. It gives it a kind of strange sensation because the surface is not flat like every other laptop I have ever used. The sensitivity is poor to acceptable, but useable. My old Quanta KN1PM has an exponentially better touchpad, as does the touchpad on the last Black Friday Toshiba I bought as a gift for a friend last year. This is something else I wish Clevo would improve upon, but given the purpose and nature of these "Desktop Replacement" class machines It's not that big of a deal. I almost never used the touchpad on my 9262 and I doubt I will use this one much either. You can't really game with a touchpad.

The overall build quality I would classify as very good. There is no flex, and there are no obvious structural weak points. The hinges seem to be simplistic and strong, and anyone who has dealt with laptops a lot can tell you that the fancier a manufacturer tries to make the hinge system the quicker they will end up breaking or snapping or busting. The chassis overall feels sturdy, and has that sleek and utilitarian Sager look that you either love or hate. I personally love it. No one is going to mistake this machine for something you bought at a department store. If you are reading a review of this machine then I would assume you have already seen photos of it elsewhere, or will in the very near future, so I won't bore you with a description of how the laptop looks or force you to suffer my own poorly taken shots.



Words, words, words. Enough with the words eh? You are all here for the benchmarks anyway, I am sure. So, let's go right into it. Here is the meat of any hardware review: the numbers.

Vsync is disabled in all tests, using the default settings for everything in CCC.

It should be noted these tests were run using video card driver version 8.85, from sagernotebooks.com. All games were run at maximum possible in game details unless otherwise noted.

UNIGINE ENGINE HEAVEN 2.5 BASIC
Render: D3D11
1920X1080
Shaders: High
Textures: High
Filter: Trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: Enabled
Refraction: Enabled
Volumetric: Enabled
Tessellation: Normal
Results:
FPS: 30.0
SCORES: 755
MIN FPS: 16.5
MAX FPS: 64.2


3DMARK 06 BASIC 1.2.0
19764 3DMARKS
SM2.0: 8163
HDR/SM3.0: 8825
CPU SCORE: 5676

3DMARK 2011 BASIC EDITION
P3539 3DMARK SCORE
GRAPHICS SCORE: 3255
PHYSICS SCORE: 6692
COMBINED SCORE: 3365


DAWN OF WAR 2 RETRIBUTION
ALL SETTINGS ULTRA, HIGH SOUND QUALITY 1920X1080
AVERAGE FRAMERATE: 62.32
MINIMUM FRAMERATE: 31.43
MAXIMUM FRAMERATE: 128.0

JUST CAUSE 2
1920X1080
ALL SETTINGS HIGHEST
4XAA, 16X AF
DARK TOWER 41.56
DESERT SUNRISE 53.20
CONCRETE JUNGLE 31.13



GTA4
Average FPS: 50.57
Duration: 37.12 sec
CPU Usage: 27%
System memory usage: 46%
Video memory usage: 55%
Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1080 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Shadow Quality: Very High
Reflection Resolution: Very High
Water Quality: Very High
Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x4
Night Shadows: Very High
View Distance: 25
Detail Distance: 31


BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM
1920X1080
ALL SETTINGS YES/VERY HIGH
NO AA
NO HARDWARE PHYSICS
RESULTS
MINIMUM: 88
MAXIMUM: 183
AVERAGE: 142



DIRT 2
1920X1080
4XMSAA
ULTRA SETTINGS
AVERAGE FPS: 61.6
MINIMUM FPS: 48.7


COUNTERSTRIKE: SOURCE
1920X1080
ALL GRAPHICS MAXED
NO MOTION BLUR
NO MULTICORE RENDERING
REFLECT ALL
4X AA
16X AF
RESULTS: 295.17 FPS


As of this writing ATI has no newer drivers that work natively with this machines GPU. There are "mobility mod" drivers (Think laptopvideo2go drivers, but for ATI) that I am going to try as soon as I get the time to do so. If I find myself with even more time, I may come and update this review with new benchmarks if there are significant changes. I feel this would be a useful thing because of how new the GPU is and how immature the drivers for it could possibly be. Thank you for looking at my review, I hope it helps you make an informed purchase!

 

Good job. Thanks for the review. I'm looking forward to newer drivers to increase the 6990M's performance too.

 

We thank you for your time in putting this together for us!
_

 

Thank you for your work! I ordered a p150hm with virtually the same specs (except for a 2670qm processor) and plan on posting a review when it gets here (mon. or tue.)

I had never heard anything about the speakers being absolutely horrible. I always heard that they were decent, but not really impressive. Is there a difference in the speakers between the 15' and the 17'?

 

Yep, there is a difference. The P170HM has 5 speakers + subwoofer while the P150HM/P151HM1 have 2 speakers + subwoofer.

 

Sometime this week, im going to do some more bench's (probably just the same ones I did already) with new drivers, and some overclocking! Also, I just got BF3 and will try to get some performance numbers from it too. I finally have a little free time and have been meaning to do this for awhile. Stay tuned!

 

^^^^ Please do so! We really appreciate it.

-

 

Thanks for the review and benchmarks. I am in the market for a new laptop and this NP8170 sounds like the right one for me. Cant wait to see the numbers you get for BF3.

 

A good honest review. Thankyou. Interesting to hear about the speakers being below average. I was always under the impression the P150/P170's would have better sound than most laptops due to the addition of the mini subwoofer. Obviously not.

 

My speakers sound great. I'm not sure what he issue is with yours, but "the sound is so tinny you might as well be listening to a soup can with a rock rattling around" couldn't be farther from the truth about my machine's speakers.

 

I need to 2nd about the screen.

I to just bought a NP8170 with the Glossy 90% screen.

Thing is, I have a NP8760 sitting next to it on my desk so im able to make a real comparison between Sager's standard Glossy vs this upgraded one.

1 word, the difference is HUGE.

I spend 2 hours yesterday using my Canon T2i taking pictures of both screens side by side displaying solid colors using the UDPixel program. Unfortunatly i cant for the life of me get the camera to show what my eyes are seeing...

The difference is more then i expected.. When both showing red, the standard screen looks orange and washed out. the 90% is rich solid Red. Every color is just incredibly rich with zero washed out feeling. Its really something to see the 2 side by side, I have no regrets spending the extra $$$ at all...

Between the 2, the NP8170 Has a better trackpad, speakers and of course looks. I'm really happy with the upgrade.

 

i'm on the fence between the 8150 and the 8170. though i wasn't aware the speaker architecture was so different. benchmarks look promising though

 

if you want 17inch go with 8170