*** Official Sager NP8170/Clevo P170HM Owners Lounge ***

OK just got my laptop. This is just a quick update since I am still messing around with it.

The viewing angle is horrible. Upgrade the screen if you can. If you sit in one spot and never move then you are good. If you move AT ALL like sit up straight or slouch the picture quality changes fast.

Everything else seems good so far.

 

Wow, that bad?

 

I use it on the table and dont move much at all but it is more than reasonable I think and the picture is really clear once you get a good spot. My thoughts are had I not came here and still bought the laptop I wouldn't have even worried about the screen.

 

Guys,

I'm still mulling over the WiFi vs Bluetooth issue and have a few last questions before I 'take the plunge'

I just found out from the vendor that they can get me the 6230 wifi+BT card. Which kindof confuses me more... since I had almost made up my mind.

Can anyone tell me how well the Intel 6230 works (on wifi and BT)? I've seen in the Dell forums where that card for some notebooks was an utter fail - slow throughput, connectivity issues, etc.

My Alienware has the 6300, so I have to admit that I'm kindof partial to that card just because I know what to expect. However, since the 6230 is so new I have no first hand knowledge about it. My current router is a Netgear WNDR3700v1 so it can take full advantage of the 6300's 3x3 capabilities.

I do use bluetooth for my mouse (Razer Orochi) and to sync my Droid. A 6300+BT would be ideal, but that creation doesn't exist yet. If I do go 6300 I'd have to use the dreaded dongle

Thoughts? Should I just quit worrying about BT and go with a dongle or is the performance of the 6230 good?

Also, if I do opt for the 6230 will I be sunk later on if I do want to upgrade to a 3x3... you only get the three antenna conntections if you buy a 3x3 card originally don't you?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

Upgrading screen doesn't help that much. I checked out both the matte and a high gamut screens personally and didn't see a whole lot of difference with regards to the vertical viewing angles. I was going to buy one if it was much better but it isn't.

 

I'd imagine the improvement is more with the colors than the view angles. Or no reflection with the matte.

 

Someone posted before that it had a 10 or 20 degree above and below viewing angle for the stock screen. They also posted the updated screens which had something like 40 degrees for both. Sorry I dont remember who it was. I am just posting my observations. I am no expert though. I am installing RIFT as we speak. =)

 

Cool. Please update us on how Rift runs your machine.

thanks.

 

Man, i have to ask, what's the deal with your avatar pic lol, you look like Ghost from CoD or something. Are you wearing a mask?

 

Where did you hear this and is it the real card or the engineering sample? And is this US or Europe?

 

From what I understand this is the real card. We should be hearing an announcement from Sager/Clevo next week.

 

Since you can take advantage of the 6300's higher-speed capabilities, I'd say get that one... if you actually use the faster network. A bluetooth dongle isn't that obstrusive.

That said, don't worry about it so much and just get what makes sense for your current network and bluetooth needs. WLAN cards are one of the easiest and cheapest components to swap out on a laptop, so it's not a big deal if you change your mind down the road. (Even the TOTL 6300 is <$40.) Chances are, that perfect card you want...a 6300+bluetooth...will come on the market at some point and you can just get it then.

A general answer to your question: I've never had any issues with any Intel cards....they've always been rock solid. (I use the 6300 right now, not the 6230....so I can't be specific about that one.) I have had issues with other brands.

 

Just wanted to throw in my two cents on the screen. I got mine today and the screen seems great. Yeah, if I stand up or something it's hard to see but I haven't had any problems during normal use in terms of clarity or picture.

Also, I didn't know what to think of the keys at first but now that I'm used to them I really like the board. I'll post some benchmarks if anyone is interested. I'm downloading Just Cause 2 and BC2 right now so I'll post how they run later if you want that too.

 

Im in the Air Force and was deployed to Kunsan S. Korea. It was really cold and windy so I had to wear the mask to keep me warm! I took this pic last November.

 

That's a good setup you got there. Just wondering but what else will you be using your laptop for besides gaming & movies?

I hear 8 gigs of ram is sufficient now a days but how's the 16 gigs been like especially when you have multiple windows open?

I see you got yourself Intel's 510 120gig SSD. How's your bootup? Loading problems such as WoW? I can't wait to test out this drive myself.

I'm glad to hear that WoW runs flawlessly. I can't wait to get back into it bit with better self control! Haha I haven't played the game in 9 months.

Thanks in advance.

 

Ahhh I can't wait. It will be awesome. Now all I can hope for is that the upgrade doesn't cost more than 200 dollars. I am a college student and I was really didn't want to pay for the $495 for the 485m. I stalled my order since I heard the 6970 was around the corner for like half the price. My original order was the 28th of January.... I just hope that they do announce it next week... and not next month.

 

The main reason for having a lot of RAM is being able to open a ton of apps and turn off the page file. This stops minimized applications from paging out to the HD which causes a series of page faults when you open the applications later.

Speaking of 16 GBs though my friends asked a similar question since they like playing that minecraft game.

Did I mention I love this computer?

 

Anyone got a picture of the bag that comes with the laptop up? For anyone who has it how does it look? Will it protect the laptop well enough or should we be looking into purchasing our own?

 

It is a plain bag but seems to be sufficient. You will not win any fashion contests but it is certainly functional.

Played BC2 last night, froze on my twice but I am not sure what caused it. Event Viewer didn't have any information on it at all. BC2 ran at about 50 fps fully maxed out all night, temps never got over 70c from what I could tell.

 

Thx! I guess those measurements are in CM.

 

What video driver are you running? I've been using the 270.51 with good results.

 

The one from the sager website. I am at work or I would be for sure.

 

I'm just using the video driver that came with the driver disk

 

Good Morning,

I hope I am in the right forum what I am about to ask:

1. I am choosing b/w this machine and Alienware 17x R3. Any ideas on which is better for my needs (mainly WOW, Dragonage II and soon Rift).

2. What is the usual wait time for this machine from order to delivery?

3. Is it worth waiting for 6870 to come out (supposedly soon) or gow with 485 (money is not an issue). I heard that Rift preferes Nvidia.

Thanks a lot.

 

I like the NP8170 personally. The Alienware will be more flashy, light up and what not but it is not user upgradeable and will run you a little more in cost. I personally chose the 8170 due to its simplistic design and the fact that I can swap out anything down the road. The 485 will destroy warcraft (most pc's can) and I assume that DA2 and Rift will both be playable at very high settings.

 

Interesting. I'm ordering next week, so let's hope your intel is accurate. That way I can afford the screen, Blu-ray, and the GPU.

 

Does anyone know how much the 485m downclocks while running off the battery, like % wise? I'm wonderin if i could get acceptable framerates playing games off the battery if i lowered the resolution.

 

MOH is on sale for 7.50 on Direct2Drive. I may get it now that it is cheap, I have been wondering about this game for a while.

 

I'm curious about this... How is the AW not user upgradeable? The main parts are all just as accessible via the bottom panel. Is there something I don't know about soldering or proprietary connections?

 

Without the power cable don't bet on playing games. Crysis 2 doesn't run well at all without the power cable. Then again that was at 1920x1080. I'd just test it honestly unless you don't have yours yet.

Would be interesting to see the percentage. Testing with and without the power cable it feels like performance is cut in half.

 

Yea i don't have my laptop yet or i would. Nibert said Crysis Warhead gets 50-60 fps on enthusiast at 720p so i wonder if it's unplugged it would still get 30 fps on enthusiast at 720p? That would still be acceptable for me gaming portable.

 

I am always near a plug in the house or even outside. I am not sure what it does without a power cable. If I get the time I will check tonight.

 

Cool thanks man. I might occasionally need to game unplugged so it would be nice to know the limitations.

 

I just gave it a go. The system caps the CPU @ 1.3GHz (13x multi) and GPU @ Core=73MHz (normal 575) / Shaders = 147MHz (normal 1150) / Mem = 324MHz (normal 1500). Basically 2D desktop speeds.

I was able to play Crysis 2 at 1280x720 at "High" settings in the campaign at about 12-18 FPS.

Power draw according to BatteryBar was about 50W so with 78WHr battery probably get well over an hour of gaming. Funny thing is my CPU and GPU didn't even break a sweat. CPU max 46C, GPU max 44C.

While I don't think I'd play Crysis 2 on battery, seems possible to be able to play other games like Battlefield 2, Starcraft 2 reasonably well for a solid 1.5 hours perhaps, maybe more. Actually not too shabby.

 

Oh wow lol, that's quite a downclock...way more than 50% on the gpu...neeeeevermiiiind....unless i'm playing older games.

 

I will 90% of the time not need more than 8 gigs, as you are correct absolutely correct in your assessment of not needing more for general gaming/work. I got the 16 gigs purely because I wanted to ensure if needed I could play around in certain rendering programs and multitask to my full capability.

Sometimes i have 3-4 WoW's open and then i'm playing with adobe on my other screen between ques etc. Just wanted maximum flexibility.

Boot up time is really fast, i've never owned a SSD so it was a very fun experience. I have not timed it by any means, but wow opens in under 2 seconds to be sure which is amazing for me.

My friend has a SSD and he said he could notice a difference between his SATA 2 and my version as it was faster.

As for getting back into wow i'm in the same boat, havent played since October last year so checking out Cata.

 

BOLDED: thats awesome! I'm assuming your really good at multitasking eh? lol... what do you do with 3-4 WoW's open though?

 

I goofed on the couch playing on the internet last night for about 2 hours totally unplugged and still had plenty of batter left.

 

Hey guys. Tell me about the touchpad buttons.

Do they have a good click?

 

They do have a nice "click" feel to them, and yet that have a tiny bit of give so that you don't just accidentally press a button. I like them.

 

BLUE SCREEN 2 Times:

I had my np8170 for two days now and last night it Blue Screened 2 times. The first time was when I was playing RIFT. (Which up until that point played great) The second was about 20 mins later when I was researching the error. I think it was error 42 Kernel power issue (logs). On the second Blue Screen it said Driver_Power_State_Failure on the blue screen itself. I loaded some patches from Microsoft afterwards but haven't used it since. It was getting late last night (2am) when I was doing this. I will look into it later today to see if it still blue screens. Anyone have any issues like this with theirs? BTW my config is below.

I7-2720, 485GTX, 8G RAM, Win 7 Home, Stock Screen, 120G SSD (510) hard drive, 500G 7200 HD, Blu-Ray.

I only loaded Norton Internet security 2011 and RIFT on it since I got it.

Any advice that you have would be appreciated.

 

If it happens again, update to 270.51 Forceware.

Also, try running it with Norton turned off.

Great. My one beef with the M860TU, is that there's zero click to the buttons.

 

Oh there's click for sure. Very solid buttons. I like them for as little as I used the touchpad, it is very nice. And yes it is difficult to accidentally press them unlike on my stupid netbook.

 

this is what my temps look like after 10hrs of gaming (sc2,da2,crysis2,assassins creed: brotherhood) most of which on max settings. ambient is about 28c

crysis 2 on extreme settings drops to about 30fps minimum on highload, which imo is not a ideal for a shooter. very high settings on 1020p is the way to go.

 

The 2 x Blue Screens gave the Event 41 Error "Kernel Power" (It was plugged in as well)

After googling it I noticed that there was a KB for it from Microsoft. I finish loading all the patches from Microsoft after the Blue Screens to include SP1. I hope that solves it. When I originally tried loading the patches it failed the first time which worries me. Last time that happened to me was on a desktop that had a bad motherboard. If it Blue Screens again I will try the 270.51 forceware for the GPU.

What drivers did you all need to update right out of the box? Shouldn't they have already been updated by the resellers? Did you find that you were behind? I just got my laptop 2 days ago.

Thanks for the help.

 

As a former console gamer, 30 FPS is very acceptable for me esp since the pc will be running crysis 2 at 1080p at 30 fps or more, while the console versions run in sub hd resolution with drops down to like 20 fps.

 

Got a newb question...

8170-S1
Does this laptop support a clean install of Win 7 from a USB flash drive?

 

I need someone to post the GTX 485M Device IDs.

In the 270.51 thread, on the Nvidia forum, NVIDIA Technical Support asks that unsupported GPUs have their IDs be posted, and no one has posted the GTX 485M's yet.

Device Manager -> Display Adapters -> Properties -> Details - Hardware IDs -> Copy the first line.

 

i hope you're referring to this thread

Official NVIDIA 270.51 Display Driver Feedback Thread For NVIDIA Geforce Desktop/Notebook/ION GPUs Released 3/30/2011

cause i just posted it there
can we get more 485m owners to do the same? kthxbai

 

Yes, that's the one!

I'll register and repost the same. All current and future GTX 485M owners need to do the same.