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

There is a rumor of a new 580m or something like it I believe but do not quote me. There are people that follow notebook happenings much more then I do here.
The temps in these notebooks are fine imho. I never feel heat on mine on the keyboard nor really even on the bottom when I pick it up.

As far as the screen goes. Its personal preference. I have a couple 30" 2560 rez displays in my house and this screen is good enough for me. No probs with it at all on my end.
All depends on what you will use it for I guess.

 

^^^Also if you opt for the 485M or higher GPU, the 120Hz 3D-Ready Full HD Display with Matte Finished screen is rated highly from customers...
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You can run dual 30" 2560 displays off of a notebook? wow I didn't know this laptop was that powerful.

 

Yeah Baby, that's the way it should roll, thanks!!

 

@babyhemi i don't think i could afford both the screen and the gpu. I am just wondering if downgrading the gpu to get a better screen is worth it. I'm not looking for an amazing screen just one that gets the job done and dosen't look like crap.

 

Yes, but you're limited to two displays total. Also, don't plan to game on that much space either unless you really want to crank down the settings. Driving multiple 2D displays isn't hard- it's driving 3D output that kills performance. 1080p alone can be a challenge for some of the most demanding games with a notebook GPU. But for basic productivity work, you shouldn't have a problem.

 

no no. I do not run them off the notebook. One for my desktop and my wife's lol.
This laptop does have DVI on the back but I am not sure if it is Dual Link or not.

And MALIBAL #2 is right. I would not try to game on a 2560 display with either the nvidia or amd card. It takes a boat load of power.

 

I understand. I would say 9 out of 10 of our customers that ordered the NP8170 with the standard screen have been happy with it. This is a rough estimate.
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Sorry for the quick derailment but did anyone see the article about that pc screen coming out I think next year? I cant find the article but its native rez is like 5000+ by something and costs like 45+K$ lol. Crazy.

But so its not a total derailment...I like the screen lol.

 

Is sager going to release a new laptop ie p150hm to p170hm to x anytime soon?

And 45k is a ton of money for a screen. for that much it should make me food too -____- haha i wonder how big it is though o.o

 

Rough is almost a good word for it. Based on comments on these forums, if you ask anyone here with a stock screen on the NP8170 / P170HM I'd garner 70% don't have an issue with it. Maybe I'm being too critical, and maybe I just got a bad screen, so don't let me dissuade people wanting to buy one of these otherwise excellent machines. Everything else about these laptops is phenomenal. I have never been very picky about my screens, but this one is worse I've ever owned. If the viewing angles weren't so bad I'd probably be ok with it.

IMHO, choose the GPU over the screen, because the screen is less costly to upgrade later. The screen is functional and may be fine for most people.

 

Intel has confirmed that Ivy Bridge will not be compatible with any of the current notebook chipsets.

 

I'm not afraid to swap out the screen, I know how to do it and relatively simple it is. It's just the added cost. I already blew my budget buying this machine as-is!

Well, all the more reason to sell my NP8170 then, and go for a much less costly laptop. My upgrade options would be only an i7-2920XM which even in a year or so will be astronomically expensive. Of course I'd be more concerned about my GPU than CPU. If there is no significant upgrade path for the MXM IIIb I'll be severely bummed.

 

The P170HM / 8170 has DVI Dual Link with only the NVIDIA cards.

 

I owned 2 different NP8170's (Two different resellers that were both great). One had the stock screen and the other I got the upgraded screen. I ended up returning the one with the stock screen because the viewing angles were bad. There was also some light bleed on it as well. For some reason this laptop also blue screened a couple of times. I tried to order another screen and I was more than willing to install it myself. I placed the order but the next day it got cancelled by the company since it was out of stock. The only other place I saw it for sale was from Taiwan EBay and I wasn't comfortable with buying from them. In the end I returned it because for the money I spent for it I wasn't 100% happy. (This was my first personal laptop).

I ordered my second NP8170 from another reseller (since you can't order from the same one you made a return to ever again) and got the upgraded screen. I also upgraded the CPU and RAM just to justify to myself for waiting to get another one. lol Once I saw the upgrade screen it was a world of difference. I was 100% satisfied with the decision.

Here is my advice to everyone. These forums drive you nuts. If I didn't read this forum I probably would have been OK with the stock screen. Since I am new to the higher end laptops I probably wouldn't even have known. (I did have problems seeing all the icons playing RIFT though.) Earlier in this thread there are pictures of the stock screen if you want to see them. If you can scrape up the money the upgraded screen is worth it. I wouldn't downgrade the GPU to pay for it though. At least get the 2720, 8G RAM, 485 or AMD GPU. SSD and monitor next if you have the cash. Problem solved. lol

These laptop are very nice and my friends that are the experts drool over mine. I just worry about mine too much. I dont want to damage it lol Enjoy it!

 

Thank you and I agree with your response.

But that comment about not being able to order from the same reseller again if you return one (I marked in red above) is concerning. I'd like to know what reseller told you that because afaik that is not true. They were probably just bitter, and that is poor business practice. All resellers order from Sager, and Sager manages the returned material.

 

Only the nvidia cards have dual link dvi? Thats messed up and pisses me off lol. Would of gotten the 485m if it want so dam expensive =p

 

"since you can't order from the same one you made a return to ever again"

I have no knowledge of such a rule...
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That you cannot order another model, or even exchange for the same model, from the same reseller if you return one to them is absolutely not true. In fact, you are doing your reseller a disservice by going somewhere else.

As long as your reseller handles your return or exchange courteously you should definitely stay with them.

However if a reseller told you that was a rule, I would run, not walk, away from that particular reseller

 

So I thought I would test the Hibernate mode. Before this I had only Shutdown, Restarted & Slept. Upon waking from Hibernate, I had full speed fans for the first time. Used the computer for awhile, Fn+1 did nothing for the fans. Restarted, Fans still @ full speed during this use. Shutdown and during boot screen pressed the Fn+1,and all is well again.

It appears that a parameter is set upon waking from Hibernate. Why this is so is puzzling.

 

Tested Fn+1 again, this time while in Windows, and it does indeed cycle the Fan Speed

 

Yea its real odd Wakon. I think its just random lol.

 

Hey, happy Clevo P170HM-3DE owners... Can you, please, share pictures/video of your beast with a matte screen? thanks

 

The laptop that I returned was from Malibal. I could have sworn (99.99% sure)that their site said if you return something that you are prohibited to buy from them again in the future (return Policy). I remember being upset because I liked the company and I liked the way the Malibal emblem looked. I just checked on their site right now and it doesn't say anything about being prohibited about future purchases now. I don't know if they recently changed that or if I was seeing things. I specifically remember thinking about not being able to buy from them again in the future though. Regardless they are a great company and I would recommend them to anyone. The return process was handled very well too. Keep in mind that if you return something you also should get insurance to cover it. That can add up.

I went with Xoticpc for my second one since they had the option to get the upgraded screen. They are also a good company and I would recommend them to anyone.

Both laptops looked 100% the same physically but Xoticpc's says SAGER on it where as Malibal says Malibal. The Malibal tag looks a little nicer then the SAGER one though. (Just my opinion)

The BIOS are different as well. The SAGER says SAGER when you boot up and the Malibal says Clevo I think. I don't remember for sure. Just FYI

 

You must have misread it; no company would ever make that their official policy :/

I know xoticpc has been amazing with my returns and subsequent orders.

 

Hi, yes we allow customers to purchase another laptop from us, even if they have previously returned one for a refund. However, if a customer plans to purchase a replacement notebook right away, then we ask that they do an exchange as oppose to a return. The difference being that on an exchange we don't refund the entire payment back to the customer's credit card and then have them resubmit full payment for the new notebook, rather - we simply refund or charge the difference between the cost of the returned notebook and the new notebook.

Either way, there are no additional costs to the customer - they just have to pay the return shipping charges for the new notebook.

 

This is why I really like this forum. Hearing from the resellers in writing about various things is way cool, including this whole never buy here again thing. So many places on the net are so filled with vitriol that I will not waste a second there, everybody flaming everybody else. I feel the camaraderie here is pretty awesome, let's keep it that way!

 

We hope to keep it this way ...welcome to the forum!
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What do you mean by that you stupid jerk!

j/k

 

That's effin beautiful! BTW, how did you ever find a toothbrush precisely curved to match your head, what with parallax and all.....

Does anybody have a Premiere Pro test resource? As described in an earlier post, I appended my GPU to the list of "officially supported" GPUs in a text file that PrPro looks at when it starts. So, now the power of CUDA is in my hands, well, the hands of Premiere Pro, well, the program (with apologies to the 9th Dr. Who) can utilize the GPU for accelerated effects. What I would like to do is run with and without (GPU accel) tests to see what is up. Anyone, anyone?

I can't resist movie quotes, Apologies Dominus....yeah it's Spartacus

 

Forgive my foolish question, as I don't have Premiere pro to test this out, but can you just disable acceleration in the options? You could run tests with it enabled and tests without to see if it's actually helping. I know Photoshop gives you the option, so I presume Premiere would do the same.

 

Good (& certainly NOT foolish) question..... To test: it is a matter of selecting whether to use the Mercury Playback Engine GPU acceleration or the MPE software only setting in the new project dialog's general tab.
I have been thinking about what to test and instead of using someone's idea of a test, I will create a test sequence maybe 10 minutes long (I have 80 hours of DV and about 50 of HD- scoring footage will NOT be an issue ) and apply a number of effects that have the icon which indicates that those effects can be GPU accelerated. Then render the thing with /without GPU accel and time it. As the GTX 560M card is not "officially sanctioned" this will also be a test of PrPro's stability while using the "add your GPU card to the list of supported cards ploy" and of course the CUDA drivers. I hope to get to this real soon, well, pretty soon, well.....

So I captured the first of about 80 DV tapes that I am going to archive via Premiere Pro. I worked out a pretty good workflow (capture via Firewire using scene detect, automate all clips to the timeline, use Project Manager's "Collect Files & Copy To New Location" function, select my external 3TB USB-3.0 drive as the new location. Bam. It works beautifully. Funny, I looked all over the web, well not all of it, well just some of it (hey it's late & I couldn't resist going all Tardis over here) and I never did locate a concise guide to archiving a bunch of DV tapes. Gotta get this done while the DV camcorder still operates.

Bottom line I got to check out my Satori's (love how that sounds) Firewire port, USB 3 port, & logged my first tape to external drive. Only about 79 hours to go.....

 

Hello everyone, just joining the club so to speak. I ordered mine via Xoticpc who were fantastic every step of the way. I ordered it on 6/14 with the 6970m and it arrived at my place in the States on 6/24. I was kind of worried because Sager delisted the 6970 the Friday after I ordered mine but I still got it. Unfortunately I'm still in Japan for another month, so I'm having my folks run some tests for me, so I can enjoy it vicariously through them (it helps a teeny bit). So far boot from power up is 22 seconds, and so far heat isn't an issue though I won't be able to test gaming heat till I get there. The only benchmark so far is 3dmark2011, ran 2x with P3123 and P3115 for the results which seem to be pretty much on par with what I expected.
Can anyone recommend some other testing benchmarks that I could use? Specifically ones aimed at both graphical performance, and stability? I really want to make sure there are no problems as I will only be in the States for 3 weeks so my window to return/repair and still have the laptop when I depart again is fairly slim?

 

You can run Prime95 cpu/memory benchmark and Haven benchmark for gfx.
Heaven DX11 Benchmark 2.5 | Unigine (advanced 3D engine for multi-platform games and virtual reality systems)

 

Thanks! I'm hoping I didn't draw any bad luck with the 6970m, having to replace it from Japan will be a p.i.t.a.

 

Nah its a nice card. Runs pretty much any game at native rez playable.
Only thing I dont like is the dvi port on the back is not dual link, but its is with the nvidia card.

 

On a side note. I have configured all the audio settings and tried the Fn+5 thing and I still can not get any base what so ever out of this.
I put my hand over the "sub" and there i no difference. Driving me nut lol.


edit

also like to add that i just tried crysis 2 with the high rez texture pack and new direct x 11 patch and it ran better then expected on extreme quality. playable imho.

 

BTW, because many have asked, the below is the 1600MHz memory now shipping in the Sager models if you choose this option.

http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/KHX1600C9S3P1K2_8G.pdf
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I would appreciate your clarifying a point concerning the memory modules in the NP8170. I seem to recall from previous websites that you have a choice of either 1) 8gb of 1600MHz memory or 2) 16 gb of 1033 MHz on the i7 processors. Is this true as I have seen recent customizations showing 16gb of 1600 MHz memory being offered?

 

Question regarding display/gpu. On my desktop, I have separate controls on my monitor for such things as contrast, brightness, etc. Are the brightness, contrast, color management settings on the NP8170 through the Catalyst Control Center or are they accessible directly for the screen display (and if so how do you get to them)?

 

16GB DDR3/1600 is currently offered.

However please do not rely on it being Kingston. That is what is shipping now, but there are no guarantees that is what will ship in the future.

 

Brightness is via hotkeys or control center. The rest is via the control center.

 

From what I understand, when the next motherboard for these comes out it will likely be supporting the next...PCI slot for graphics card. The new graphics cards will no longer work in the current set-up being shipped.
How far out are we looking until the new graphics card set-up comes into effect? How much would it cost to upgrade the mobo in one of these or, in 3-4 years when it can no longer keep up, is it simply going to be smarter to buy a new one all over again?

 

This machine uses MXM IIIb for the GPU slot. It has already been in existence for some time, but I haven't heard any word of it being phased out soon. I am hoping for another significant GPU revision that will work with this slot as well. But I would expect a new slot/configuration by end of next year at the latest.

 

Finally!! I'm now a proud owner of Sager NP8170!

What a beauty it is. Everything is working fine, no dead pixels etc.

Thank you Ken @ GentechPC! I hope you'll do well with your sales in the future.

 

Is the 17.3-inch 90% Gamut NTSC Screen option for the NP8170 the AUO B173HW01 Version 4. Note the NTSC value listed on the last row in the attached Page 6 of the Product Specification.

 

Sager just released the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M 256bit w/2.0GB GDDR5

 

The prices for this model....

For the Sager NP8170 THE nVidia® GeForce® GTX 580M 2GB GDDR5 DX11 is a $595.00 upgrade

For the nVidia GeForce GTX 485M with 2GB GDDR5 it is now only a $395.00 upgrade

YES THE 485M's pricing has been lowered!
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Here is Crysis 2 with DX11 and high res textures running on my 485m. Game looks so much better now! Definite framerate hit though, i used to get over 60 fps at 720p, now i only get 30-40 fps.

YouTube - ‪Crysis 2 - GTX 485m - DirectX 11, High Res Textures‬‏

 

A screen shot of the 580M in NP8150!

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