*** Official Clevo P37xSM-A/Sager NP9377 owner's lounge ***

80.04.E9.00.02 is the old Clevo and 80.04.F8.02.04 the newer one. Not related to no throttle.

So in adaptive vsync mode the driver can't communicate and execute it's throttle feature...interesting. Does that work for benchmarks, too?

 

I don't think that's exactly what's going on here...

Bioshock Infinite will soar past 200FPS on max settings if you don't reign it in. Adaptive vsync forces vsync whenever the GPU would exceed the refresh rate (in our cases, 120hz) but otherwise doesn't apply it which increases performance across the board versus vsync (far less input lag, for one) but its basically the same thing that people do to throttle the frame rate with Inspector. Since its taking the strain off the GPUs, temps are lower and clocks are higher (it doesn't force the GPUs to hit their power limit coded in the vbios).

Just to test, I went ahead and ran 3DMark.

As you can see, it throttled immediately at the beginning of the benchmark.

Spoiler

EDIT: Just played Watch Dogs and it did indeed throttle. That game struggles to keep 60FPS so it doesn't surprise me that it didn't work but I figured I'd report back. It didn't drop all the way to 954 though and it took a bit of game play before it dropped. Temps were only in the low 80s though and the fans were still on their first stage.

I have to say its horrible that a game that looks like that runs at 50-55FPS on this machine... -_-

 

Playing many hours of Bioshock Infiinite and Thief, I've noticed that the games both like to occasionally crash when loading a new area. Most frustratingly, this is the point in those games where the autosave feature would kick in. So I end up having to re-do levels I just beat.

Could this have anything to do with the 120Hz monitor?

 

Thank you for posting this as I noticed the same thing and was wondering was happening. I had completed a long stretch and the computer froze up, rebooted it and I was back at the beginning of that stage.

I suppose it could be a driver issue? Are we both on 337.88? 340 certified Bioshock Infinite for 3D,might be worth a stab.

 

I've bumped my refresh rate down to 100 for the time being, see if it still happens.

I am.

 

Hello all, I just bought this beast of a machine and I'm loving it so far! Only thing I'm wondering is why my processor shows up as 0 ghz in the Intel Extreme Tuning utility?

 

Any luck?

I got told by XOTIC the cheapest they can do for a converter box is 95 bucks. Not happy, going to skip it and just use my desktop if I have something that pushes the processor as I've already dumped almost 5 grand into this thing and I can't see spending any more right now. Kind of irritating but the parts don't come from them so I won't hold it against them. If I really want it, I'll get it for 60 bucks elsewhere.

I'm thinking about putting Windows 7 on... I was doing some basic word processing the other day and the whole machine froze. I'm starting to wonder if its a Windows 8.1 issue causing the freezing with these machines (8.1 prefers to freeze over BSOD - I only really see BSODs when the CPU is undervolted too much) - wondering if its a driver issue but without a BSOD, I can't fix it.

 

What version do you have and can you screenshot where it says that?

 

Well that's interesting...

I installed Windows 7 today and did some benchmark testing... Not only was every benchmark slower than Windows 8.1, I noticed that the benchmarks were stuttering on their combined tests much like what happened when I overclocked my CPU and GPU together in 8.1 - it also shows the CPU hitting 3.99GHz in 3DMark as opposed to 3.89GHz that it shows in 8.1

Im installing 8.1 now to confirm (I had to wipe out my set up because I want them to share the RAID and 7 didn't want to share EFI files with 8.1) my findings. If 8.1 doesn't stutter and shows the clocks at 3.89GHz, I'm going to assume that 7 is running my CPU at 4GHz the entire time which is overloading the A/C adapter.

I'm running my CPU @ stock (its not even undervolted) and my GPUs have a stock vbios.

I wish I had a kill-a-watt so I could see exactly what is happening. I am willing to bet it's pulling well over 330W from the wall which has been my damn suspicion from the start and would explain all of my instability issues. I wish there was someone else on here with my configuration

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330w from the wall is not the rating remember, 330w is what it will deliver to the system.

 

Yes, I know that.

Anyway, the tests between them are strikingly close. Outside of 3DMark, that is.

A Passmark run put them within 2.7% of each other with the biggest difference being Windows 7 having 8.9% faster 2D performance. Everything else was within margin of error.

I don't really think it is worth having 7 and 8.1 on the same system. I ran Aida, Passmark, and 3DMark 11, Firestrike, Firestrike extreme. The 8.1 system beats the 7 system handily in those.

It would appear that Microsoft has indeed worked out the issues with 8.1's performance. I made them as close as possible. Same drivers, same installed apps, on the same RAID array, sharing the same EFI partition, both on high performance for power settings.

I'm on my phone at the moment, I'll be posting my findings shortly.

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So here are my findings

Spoiler

3DMark 11

Firestrike

Firestrike Extreme

AIDA64 Windows 8 GPGPU

AIDA64 Windows 7 GPGPU

In light of this... I think I'm going to end up dumping 7 off my RAID and reclaim my whole drive for Windows 8.1, there is very little difference between them although Windows 7's Firestrike performs very poorly on the combined test for whatever reason.

 

Just thought I'd say that I have Hackintosh working... I don't even have to kill EFI unlike my ASUS desktop board. Gonna try to get the 880s working using the alternative drivers. It worked for the 780 Ti, probably can achieve it with a plist edit if it doesn't work out of the box.

I think Windows just got downgraded to one SSD so OS X can have the other

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4.4.0.4

 

Re-install the software make sure it's the latest from intel.

 

I'd like to be able to change the color of the afterburner lights. I bought some transparent vinyl tape that I'll experiment with, but sadly, my favorite color for gaming rigs is green, and I don't think there's a combination that will give me green from red.

 

Yeah I really hate those... I wish there was a way to have the keyboard lights on with the back lights off.

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I just want them green. I bought green tape and blue tape, so my choices are yellow or purple. I think yellow would go better with a green keyboard than red and green, which makes it look like a Christmas laptop.

 

Blue vinyl tape had no impact on the back lights other than to make them darker. Strange.

 

It all comes down to what wavelengths the materials are transparent to.

 

Well since I wiped out my system and started out fresh, I haven't had any issues lately. It hasn't failed to POST since I changed UEFI to Other OS (I still use UEFI booting for Windows 8.1 but legacy boot is available as well which I was using for OS X until I switched to using the Clover bootloader today) and it hasn't randomly frozen on me a single time since I switched to setting my chip to -80mV in the BIOS and have avoided doing any software tweaking to it.

No more freezes with the video games because I'm on the 332.35 drivers the machine came with. I'm not upgrading until I hear about fixes.

Its pretty impressive actually. Failing to POST has nothing to do with Windows so I can only assume that there may be a bug in the pure UEFI booting mode that doesn't exist in legacy mode. I lost my Windows 8 start up logo (its back to the flag) but I don't see any downside to running it like this since I didn't use Secure Boot.

 

I've tried to follow the issues you went through but can't remember why you had to go back to 332's? I've been on the 337.88 and have been really happy with them. I never mess with beta drivers and I was going to be very careful when changing because I don't want to run into new issues.

 

I don't think it was the drivers that were the issue. More and more I'm suspecting that there was something else causing the issues. With that said, 332.35 works fine and that's what came with the system. That whole thing about broken and fixing definitely applies here

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Has anyone tried a 780m in the P377SM? I'm also curious to know whether a 780m will work with a 120Hz screen...

 

780M is a lower clocked 880M. I see no reason why 780M wouldn't work considering that the 3D model used 780M with 120hz display.

Here is the P370SM3 (they're really hard to find configuration pages for but you can see the default option is the 120hz display and the drop down has the option to throw in the 3D glasses) Metabox Prime P370SM3 Laptop

The question is if the BIOS in the P377SM-A supports the 780M or not. That I can not answer.

 

Yeah. If only someone could test one out. If I had a spare 780m lying around I'd let them borrow it. Perhaps Prema could chime in once he's back from holiday.

 

I have to say that I'm actually really impressed with the graphical horsepower in this machine... Witcher 2 @ 100FPS is no joke... Ubersampling drops it to 30-45FPS but still... I didn't think I'd be seeing my adaptive vsync kick in on that game yet it exceeds 120FPS maxed out (no uber but everything else jacked to the max).

I'm going to put together the ultimate FFVII Bootleg and jack up the AF and AA in the nVidia control panel and see just what this thing is capable of... As soon as the 17GB Bootleg configurator torrent is done anyway. @_@

Dirt Showdown with 16xQCSAA and everything maxed out had a minimum framerate of 79, average of 95.

I don't play Battlefield but Witcher 2 is rated as one of the hardest games out there, not far behind Battlefield when ubersampling is on and it was still playable at the ridiculous 4K scaled down to 1080p.

 

But will it run Crysis 3?

 

A £155 PC can run Crysis 3 at 30fps:
£45 CPU & £110 GPU Run Crysis 3 At High Settings On ‘Consoles’ Framerates | DSOGaming | The Dark Side Of Gaming

Gives them consoles a good run for their money

 

If it runs Witcher 2 at playable frame rates with ubersampling then it should handle Crysis 3 as well. I've been meaning to check but I don't want to pay for games I'll never play.

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What about giving money to charity and receiving games for free?
https://www.humblebundle.com/

 

I bought both humble bundles, the 2K on Sunday and the flash sale yesterday. Lol

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I've been making my way through skyrim now that I have had a spare hour here or there, obviously a long way to go at this rate Got it in the steam sale.

 

Lol I bought that one too but haven't even launched it yet. My steam library grew from having half life 2: episode one, lost coast, and portal to having 37 games in it since I got this machine haha

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Yeah the steam sales will do that to you

I got steam back in the old days or Half life: blue shift so my collection does not grow very quickly but it has been pretty steady so has reached 107 games and programs (pitiful compared to others I know).

 

I wouldn't say "pitiful". I would say more "controlled"

 

I know what you guys mean about the Steam sale, went from having just 8 games when I bought my Clevo to over 30 now.

And btw I was being facetious with the Crysis 3 comment. Even 780M SLI at stock will run Crysis 3 on Ultra with 2x MSAA just fine (50-70 frames), so 880M SLI should give an even smoother experience if throttling is taken out of the equation.

 

I'm about to find out. I want to run it to the ground and see what it does. I think that's the biggest thing right now with the 880M is that I can't really bring them to their knees unless I'm using settings that are not even noticeable anymore (perfect example is Final Fantasy VII - I set it to render at 7680x4320 and that still produced a playable 15-30FPS in Opengl with one card, HDR + Bloom - but the graphics quality looks exactly the same as it does at 3840x2160 which runs a smooth 60FPS) or I'm using a poorly optimized game (Watch Dogs). They just don't slow down and that's on the stock vbios. If I could get temps under control with the modded vbios I wouldn't need a new card for years...

I can't believe I haven't been using Steam more. I hate DRM but Steam is DRM done right. Every game I've installed on my laptop has gone on my desktop without any issue as well.

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Edit: the key buddy sent me is for 2, not 3. I guess I'll just buy 3. It's not expensive.

 

Well I just ordered both Gelid GC Extreme and a Liquid Ultra kit...

I wonder if I can make it through a Liquid Ultra install without a heart attack hahaha.

I think for my first time I'm going to tape pull the CPU out of the socket and use masking tape to protect the VRMs and just put it on the die itself. With how the heatsink assembly is designed, its hard to avoid sliding it over the die when putting it back together and gravity + Liquid Ultra sounds like a bad idea. Hopefully the CPU heatsink has better contact pressure than the GPUs do.

EDIT: And now I just ordered my AC-100 converter box to go with my dual adapters. Getting serious now

 

Liquid ultra comes with some brushes that you can use to control the spread. Work in it really slowly and carefully and it should be fine. Good luck!

 

Yeah I just tend to be a worrier. I've seen the videos and I know I'm plenty capable of doing the install.

Laptop Parts Now just called me to confirm that I know I'm getting a converter box, not an A/C adapter. Nice customer service really but they're shipping it now and I'll get it Friday. Very excited!

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So i'm about to pull the trigger on a NP9377s with the 4810mq and 870m sli. Getting basic hard drive and 8gb ram because I want to upgrade that myself later and save some money. Anything I should know before I order this beast?

 

Made me so mad that I just purchased Spec Ops for like 7 dollars the other day

 

Great choice, that CPU and GPU combo is probably the best bang for the buck. I went with the dual 880's for mine though.

Make sure you choose the screen you want, I went with the 72% gamut because it was free with the model I chose, and because I am normally on an external so I didn't want to pay for any upgrade.

Also note the disc drive you want. I went with a blu-ray burner even tho I may rarely use it, I like to have that option.

Storage drives you should be good to go, I went with the cheapest hard drive only too, because I installed my own RAID hard drives and RAID msata SSD's. It came with everythiing I needed, no missing adapters or screws.

 

Dependong how much they charge for the Blu-Ray upgrade, might be cheaper to just upgrade yourself. I can wholeheartedly recommend the Sony Optiarc BD-5750H. It's one of the most responsive and silent optical drives I've used. A shame that it's discontinued, since it's a great product.

 

I think it cost me 80 bucks to move from a DVD drive to matsua Blu-ray BD-XL writer.
http://www.eeshops.net/panasonic-ma...ve-for-lenovo-thinkpad-w530-t420-p-41440.html

Its not a huge mark up that Xotic charges plus you get a full warranty.

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It looks like my syringe arrived intact unlike so many others who complained about it being stuck in the cap.

I also got ArtiClean and GC Extreme today.

Converter box will be here Monday.

I'll probably get the balls to do the Liquid Ultra tomorrow or later on tonight.

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Well... The Liquid Ultra was a fail... I applied it to both the heatsink and the CPU... Must not be any contact pressure at all...

This is literally 2 seconds after starting TS Bench



Not good...

Maybe I didn't use enough? Maybe I should have tightened one screw fully then went to the other instead of the progressive tightening?

Both the heatsink and the core were shiny.

One thing I noticed... When I was cleaning up the diamond, there is a black line that goes right across my cores... I really hope they didn't break??? What would cause them to crack? I just used ArtiClean to clean up the old paste. I'm going to be pissed if this just ed my CPU. I can't run the machine without it being on power saver, those middle cores shoot to 90C immediately when they get any load... F#CK!

I'll get a picture of the core...

 

I've seen this before, and the likely cause is not enough Liquid Ultra.

 

Well I took it apart and it doesn't look like the die made contact with the heatsink at all. Why? I think it's because of the thermal pad... Tell me what you think.





Here's the big thermal pad...



What would you do at this point? There are beads of the stuff on there and the Middle cores were the hottest but they have the most (because I pooled it there like Brother Fox said to do with the beads).

I think that pad is too thick and that would explain all my temp problems with this machine as far as the CPU is concerned.

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