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

so if i understand correctly, in a darkroom, with a black background, you get light bleed all the way to the middle of the screen, regardless of viewing angle?

 

With mine, if I adjust the viewing angle, I can pick whether I have significant light bleed at the top or the bottom. Straight-on, it bleeds about halfway up the display.

 

Hmm, I mean when I look at my screen in the dark with a black background, I do see the bottom half is grayish while the top half is blackish, but is that due to light bleed? I thought that was just from the viewing angle.

Although I compared between this monitor and my HP Pavilion monitor; the Sager monitor displays bright colors MUCH better than the HP; however, when I switch to all black, I do notice that the Sager screen is grayish while the HP is pretty solid black: I'll post pictures later.

 

Hey guys I tried using the "Search Thread" for my answer because I'm pretty sure it was already posted but the search isnt working for me ATM and I'm tired of clicking around. I might be crazy but I believed I read either on this forum or another that there was a conflicting driver problem with the audio from the nvidia HD audio, Realtek, and THX Driver? Because I just got my beast today... Yaaaaay... And I'm at the drivers now and I want to try to get it right the first time but I just cant seem to find the posts about the audio drivers.

 

That really is not bleeding in the traditional sense from what you guys are describing and sadly just the way the screens are designed.

Bleeding usually looks more like little spots or a white line along the bottom/sides/top. Sorta like a little flashlight poking through the edge of the screen.

Bleeding would not change depending on the way you shift the screen though as some of you are saying and thats just the manufacturing process of the LCD. That is also why everyones screen sound very similar.

This is also why the viewing angles are poor if depending on the angle you place the screen at the colors shift so radically like what Htwingnut was saying about his kids watching youtube and not being able to see anything.

I experience none of that on the AUO 90% screen i have but i have owned screens just like that.

 

Well mine looks 100% like CCAROLLO's picture on page 184 when it's a straight level view. There is light coming from the bottom making a half circle of light until the middle. It also has the small amount of light on each corner on the top.

That seems to be what everyone got with the stock screens.

Bottom line... the stock screen should be upgraded.

Now I just got to find a place to buy a new screen.

 

I have a stock screen but mine is no where near as bad as CCAROLLO's. I just have a very even gray thats due to viewing angle (I believe)

 

Finally got mine today after delays from Xoticpc. They said there was a problem with the screen so they had to order another one. Very happy with the upgraded screen quality but very disappointed that I have a stuck pixel. Nothing like paying 4k+ for something and not having it be perfect. =/

Not sure if anyone else has everything maxed out like mine so if anyone has any requests let me know.

 

@ wraptor, it would be great if you could do a GTA IV / EFLC benchmark video.

Since I have my laptop all setup now I was able to do a GTA IV Realizm IV 6.2 modded benchmark with the latest patch.

 

Apparently its pretty common for the 90% screens to have a stuck pixel as i went through 3 of them and all of them had either a single or a couple stuck pixels . Finally settled on one that had a stuck pixel you cant see unless you smash your face against the screen ..

 

Can you provide instructions? I'm not much of a gamer but don't mind running any benchmarks people want. This machine is really for editing/vfx work.

 

Sadly GTA4 does not have any sort of demo nor benchmark.

 

Well I wish I would of known that info before ordering probably would of paid for the 0 dead pixel. Any way to fix this?

 

There are things you can do to try and unstuck the pixel that have worked for some people.

You can google dead pixel fix for a couple different apps to try and also massaging the pixel has occasionally fixed these issues as well for others.

I have tried all the above numerous times with 0 luck but i have read enough times it working for some so i would say its worth a try .

 

Well my screen swap worked like a charm! Though now I'm getting a bluescreen when I start to install Win 7 onto my Vertex 3.

 

Do you mean a hardware failure kind of shutdown? Or an actual Windows blue screen? It doesn't really make sense that you'd see a Windows BS before it's eevn installed...

 

It's a bluescreen just as windows is starting up -- though I think it was because I'd moved what was previously my main drive (with Windows installed on it) to the secondary drive bay. Reading up on it some, sounds like that can cause bluescreens, so I temporarily removed it and am no longer bluescreening.

Unfortunately, I'm getting drive hard hangs with the Vertex 3: solid hard drive light, all apps that try to access the drive hardhang, end up having to hold the power button down to restart the computer. I'm doing another fresh install of windows and will install drivers more slowly this time to see if I can narrow down what it is.

 

Good luck. My first suspicion would be the SATA controller, but in truth, it could be just about any driver causing a conflict. So your "take it slow" approach is the best way to go.

 

Can someone please let me know what the upgraded screens are that the resellers are selling?

 

Just put in my order.

90% LCD
2630QM
6970M
Blu-ray

$2,009.84 shipped.

Now the loooong wait begins. If I have it by May, life is good.

B173HW01 V.4 = 90% Color Gamut Glossy

B173HW01 V.5 = 72% Color Gamut Matte

EDIT: actually, the matte is the LP173WF1 Matte

If you want a matte, better to buy the V.5 yourself.

 

I realized that a few of you weren't around, back when we had the thread, in which Mythlogic posted screen comparisons.

Here is the viewing angle comparison:

Default:

http://www.mythlogiccorp.com/images/screen_compare17/Angles/LPG%20Angles.png

Matte:

http://www.mythlogiccorp.com/images/screen_compare17/Angles/LPM Angles.png

90% Glossy:

http://www.mythlogiccorp.com/images/screen_compare17/Angles/V4 Angles.png

These images are huge 20MB, so they will need to load. The difference here is what made me decide the 90% Glossy was my only option.

 

Yeah, that's actually my laptop, lol. I guess I didn't pay much attention to the 90% glossy because I wasn't interested in glossy, but viewing angles do look much better. I just couldn't justify the cost of the matte because it didn't help vertical viewing angles much at all.

And congrats on finally getting your order in! Worth the wait! Great deal IMHO. $2K for all that hardware is pretty spectacular if you ask me.

 

Has anyone bought from ScreenTek in Texas? They have the B173HW01 V.4 for sale for $172. They also offer a 0 dead pixel on delivery if you get extended warranty for around $25? I am thinking about getting that screen from them and updating my stock screen.

Also when you remove those 6 x rubbers plugs on the screen (when you replace it) do you have to glue them back in to get them to stay in afterwards? Or will it stay on its own.

 

They are held in with double sided tape. 5 of them went back in without a problem. I used a touch of glue on one because the tape wasn't as tacky. I used a toothpick and just a hint of glue. No problems since.

 

One kept falling out right away. Two more kept falling out, and now the three are just missing, so I'd say glue it or see about getting replacement bumpers from your reseller, either through warranty or maybe they will sell a kit, which I think they should do, for a few bucks.

I've been waiting weeks to get my replacement bumpers though. Not sure what the hold up is.

 

Why is that?

 

Just wondering, has anyone tried overclocking this laptop yet? I noticed that it came with an Intel extreme tuning utility.

 

How do i enable 5.1 surround sound for gaming? I can only get the spdif port to output 2.0 sound for games...however it works fine in 5.1 for dvd movies. There must be some setting i'm missing. Everything is set to 5.1 in the realtek hd control panel.

 

Well well! I contacted Brett the other day because I had not heard for a bit. I was at phase 2. He told me that it "looked" like the laptop was on the operating table. I thought, cool, moving forward. Today, I just received notification that it has shipped. I had to go dig in the back yard I was so excited. Thank you Brett!!

When I get the 8170 all loaded up, I will be giving a comparison of my G73 to the new 8170 for the graphics artists out there. I will be doing benchmarks using my rendering programs Vue 9 and 3dsmax, and the only game ... er simulation ... that I use will be F1 2010.

 

Aww I wish I saw that comparison thread. Hands down B173HW01 V.4 wins imo. Sexy viewing angles compared.

I've been in touch with Xotic and they've been great. We're pretty sure it isn't defective, though they will look at it when they have it in hand to be sure. It could have been a less than quality batch, (though I'm thinking maybe an intentional money and/or time saving choice by sager?) since the reviews pre recall didn't have anything bad to say about the stock screens. I know when Asus was filling back orders they had inferior screens in the g73 helter skelter depending on where you got the machine last year. I know from experience the configuration Best Buy had SUCKED. (Really, not even a $600 lappy should have came with that crap screen)

I understand the screen I have is still better than most out there and that LEDs generally aren't as sexy as the older high end CCFs were. Still, I think for the price Sager should have these shipped with something more like the V4 in quality for starters.

 

Ordered today

(Patience is a virtue, that is if you were waiting for 6970M. Finally)


90% LCD
2720QM
6970M
Blu-ray
8Gig RAM
120 GB SSD 510
500 GB 7200 RPM
W7
Intel W 6300

From Xotic, I wonder how long it will take

 

Hopefully not as long as me. I ordered January 24th and I'm still waiting.

 

Curious why you went with the 6970M?

 

Go to your realtek HD audio configuration, set your speakerconfig to 5.1
lower the center speaker output!

enable surround in the THX pro software, "tip play with the crossover -frequentie bar to get better bass sound "

 

P170HM service manual now available in my sig.

Linky

 

Because it's 90% or better of the performance of the 485M with about 25W lower power requirements for $245 less. Money better spent on a screen upgrade.

Have you considered changing your order to the 6970M? You could pocket the difference or get the 2820M. The extra cache probably won't help in anything you'll do, but it's always fun to brag about numbers. Could also up the SSD size.

 

I posted some HD benchmarks of the Vertex 3 in my new p170hm here.

If anyone wants me to benchmark any games on Steam, just let me know.

 

Pretty ridiculous to advocate changing to the 6970m to save money, then getting the 2820... That is the most overpriced-to-performance-boost ratio upgrade possible.

 

Some Sager News....


The Sager NP8170 system will be split into 2 internal models, one with an NVIDIA GPU and the other with an AMD GPU. Note that these two models each require their own system version and GPUs will NOT be interchangeable. So, if you order an NVIDIA GPU system you will not be able to swap to an AMD GPU later, and vice versa.

System Freezing Issues: With help from many of , users, we have been able to sort out all the issues that were causing system freezing, and have worked with Clevo to resolve them. To just share some quick facts – since the B2 to B3 chipset revision, sager has shipped over 3000 units and we have only received one freezing system report, and that was a notebookreview forum user. Even this isolated incident was resolved by our latest BIOS revision.

We understand that many of other users on the forums may be experiencing issues still, but these should be on the B2 revision systems that are still due to be recalled. We are working diligently to provide recall program details in May-June’11, and assure you that your unit will be returned without freezing issues. We appreciate your patience.

Screen: We have read some user comments on our stock LCD screens. These stock screens are quite high quality, and are the industry standard. However, we understand some professional users may desire an upgrade to screen options with a higher NTSC color gamut. Unfortunately, these screens are in relatively short supply, and Sager is unable to offer them as a regular option. Some of our resellers are able to secure these screens on the secondary market, but please be aware that those screens are not covered by Sager warranty but rather by whatever warranty terms the reseller offers.

 

What does the below quote actually mean?

Will we have ship our systems back to be fixed?

 

I'm sorry, but (assuming that all stock screens are the same for all resellers of this notebook) that's simply not true. There is no way the LCD screen I received could be considered "quite high quality", it's literally the lowest quality screen I've had in any notebook in the past ten years. Color gamut isn't the issue, the atrocious viewing angles are the issue, where you literally cannot find a position that avoids some part of the screen being bright and washed out. It's not just "professional users" that need a better-quality screen, it's anyone who wants a mostly-uniform screen from a typical viewing position.

The screen is truly terrible and has significantly hurt my chances of buying a Clevo notebook in the future (and this was the third in a row that I've purchased). You guys need to be telling Clevo that low-quality screens aren't acceptable, not telling customers that this awful screen is "quite high quality".

 

Yes if yours was shipped before the fix came out. Please contact your reseller for this info. Thanks

 

What is the cutoff date?

I 100% agree with you. This is the first laptop that I bought. The only other laptops I have used were company provided ones for email. My desktop computer is worth about $800 as well. I am not a professional and I feel the laptop screen is really bad. I can’t even comprehend why the viewing angles are so bad. I can’t get into a single spot without some sort of washout. I also thought the only difference between the stock and upgraded screen was the color gamut and not the viewing angles. Big Difference.

 

I figured out what the problem is, spdif ports only send Dolby Digital and DTS audio streams through it. All pc games use uncompressed pcm tracks for the 5.1 channels, which can't be sent over an spdif port. So pc games always come out of the spdif port as 2.0.

Really sucks and i blame the pc game industry for not adopting Dolby Digital or DTS tracks in their games. Only way to get a DD or DTS stream out of this laptop with gaming is to buy an external X-fi sound card which decodes the pcm stream into DD or DTS. Kinda sucks cause i thought this laptop could play pc games in 5.1 out of the box, now i have to spend $65 more on an x-fi card.

This, combined with the default screen being sucky has put a damper on my enjoyment on this thing a bit. But anyways, here's a clip i made of Crysis running on my rig.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD3Y23vt1-8

 

This, Xotic PC was much more sympathetic towards me when i told them how bad the default screen was. Granted, you get what you pay for, but they didn't trying informing me the screen is high quality like i shouldn't complain. They pretty much acknowledged that the screen has been reported by many people as being subpar.

I don't blame the resellers though, i blame sager/clevo

 

babyhemi can you share with Notebook Review users of Clevo P170HM with this new BIOS which fixes freezing issues ? My reseller is mySN and latest BIOS in their opinion is 1.01.02. I sent them 20 e-mails about my problem I received only not clever solutions, which didn't help also. It sad that not all resellers are interested in customer satisfy.

EDIT: Again I had unexpected freeze (I was testing Clevo on one module of RAM) and after hardreseting Windows 7 can't detect any network adapters ? I checked also in Ubuntu 10.10 that same situation. I entered into BIOS and I can't believe my network card disappeared. So now I have limited Clevo P170HM without any possibility connect to internet. It's some kind of joke right? Please help.

 

Here is my take on GTX 485M vs. ATI 6970M:

They are both basically the same except for cost. The benchmarks are pretty much the same. It comes down to past experiences and that crazy loyalty to brand names. I have always had some sort of problem of sorts with the ATI cards. I have never had problems with nVidia, at least not yet. I ordered the 485M because I KNOW that it will be completely compatible with my graphics rendering programs. I am excited to get back to CUDA cores for rendering. I also run some very old games, Nascar Racing 2003 and Grand Prix Legends. I am having some game play problems with the ATI card on my G73JH. And yes, I have the latest and greatest BIOS and video drivers. My old Links LS 2003 will not play on the ATI card. I expect it to play on the new NP8170 with the nVidia card because there is now fixes for Windows 7 and specifically a fix so the game will play on newer nVidia cards. There is no fix for newer ATI cards that I know of. I know it was more expensive but I "trust" nVidia more with the software I use. I consider the performance so close as to not even worry about it. Depends on what one does with the computer eh?

As to the 2820 CPU, I want the 8MB level cache for rendering, that is where it really is worth the money.

For reference:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 485M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

AMD Radeon HD 6970M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Great, all this talk about system freezes and crap LCD panels is making me nervous. Still going through with the order just seriously hoping I don't end up with buyer's remorse or having to deal with recalls/returns. Kinda scary to see problems like this plaguing a ~$2000 plus laptop.

 

Nah, not buying that, one bit. Outside of needing a new heatsink or BIOS when switching teams, there can't be much of a difference.

 

Right. I see no reason the heatsink can't be swapped out with the CPU unless the attachment points are different, but that would be stupid too.