*** Official X8100 (Sager 8120) Owners Thread ***

I have heard otherwise and that Clevo have very recently released a BIOS to support them. The company I go through are not going to be customising BIOS, as they arent a big company, and use stock Clevo and they've got the parts on order (delayed). Sager may be a different story, but Id say based on the facts there is at least some support for them.

Not to mention Clevo have now got a 5870 driver for download under vga drivers for the x8100 on www.clevo.com.tw, thats pretty official.

 

What is everyone doing as far as audio???
The onboard Realtek sucks!!!

 

So Alex, how much longer until you get yours?

 

Just waiting for the parts to arrive, as the original shipment got delayed, but it's soon... (tm).

Can't come quick enough from my point of view.

 

External DACs are your friend
I use a Total Bithead USB DAC but there are plenty of other more potent desktop DACs (mines a portable).

Providing everything works like it used to with ATI HDMI audio, I may well just end up running a HDMI lead to my AV setup though and use that.

 

No more X8100 on xoticpc. Update with mobile fermi and/or 5870's impending?

 

I was wondering the same thing.

 

OMG (DAMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) please don't tell me its been discontinued.

 

No it's just on backorder status...

 

Damn I just got my 8120 a week ago
I'm thinking of getting the x7200
This 8120 is upgradable whatsoever
Will $3000 get me the x7200 with just one 480m??

 

There is a new BIOS and EC for the X8100. However, some users have posted issues with it. If you are brave enough to try it please let me know so I can issues a warning in the Clevo BIOS section. pkhetan posted a link to the new BIOS in the Clevo Bios thread.

Thanx

 

What spec did you get on your X8100. If you got the 5870s or 480m GTX, unless you NEED a faster CPU, there's no reason to swap, the 480m GTX SLI x7200s will cost an absolute arm and leg, and the higher end desktop CPUs are very, very expensive, as are the individual 480m. A single 480m is swings and roundabouts with GTX285m SLI, but by all accounts the 5870ms in crossfire are faster overall.

If you got a 285m equipped 8120, then consider trying to return it and reorder with a better graphics setup, or saving your money, but I wouldn't go for the x7200 just for the sake of it.

With the 5870m crossfire, the X8100 is the joint 2nd fastest laptop out on the mass market [not a custom job] (possibly 2nd, as it may well be slightly faster/less buggy than Dell's effort), behind the x7200.

 

Just got my Clevo x8100 ( X-Notebooks Mediator CNI18 )
my specs:

core i7 720qm
2x ati 5870 1024 ddr5
4gb hynix 1333
500gb 7200rpm seagate with shock protection

It surprised me the motherboard allready has 2 usb 3.0 ports, it's a new revision. lucky me
I'm very happy with it.

 

Oooh very nice, no idea whether mine will be USB3.0

Probably not knowing my tech karma, and I hadn't heard about the X8100 getting USB3.0 so that's a nice suprise! More importantly...is it fast, how do games run, any obvious issues?

 

Do you know which tool is best for benchmarking the crossfire part of this beast ?
Then i'll give it a go....

 

3dmark vantage, and some of the free games-based benchmarks like SF4/DMC4 would be a good place to start
Crysis if you have it is also popular but meh thats not really relevant to MOST games! haha

 

Also be on the look-out for flickering. The M17x has had that issue and it would be interesting to see if it is the reason clevo doesn't officially support it.

 

Im not sure about crossfire, but the 5870m itself IS officially supported with this machine although only since recently, Clevo have released a BIOS for it, and there are drivers available to download on clevo.com.tw!

Edit: As an additional update have now heard Kobalt's shipment of the cards were despatched from (?) yesterday and should be with them next week, meaning all going well I should have my machine towards the far end of this coming week

 

Thanks for the correction. It's about time: this machine was begging for some CF 5870 action.

 

For those of you who are anal and love your Sager/Clevo X8100/NP8120 and D900F/NP9285!
The bag that my 8120 came with is sweet but not as protective as my Pelican Case.
I drove to Foamerica.com (Large Pelican Case Dealer) and I tried out the largest Laptop Case they had and my huge 18.4 laptop fit perfectly!!
I ended up taking out the Pick-n-Pluck foam and wrapped my Sager 8120 in a Case Logic 18" Neoprene sleeve from Amazon.com
If you take the sleeve off the Sager fits in perfectly with the Middle foam piece.
I decided to leave the middle section out for now.
Pelican 1495 Case with "Optional" High Density Foam insert.
Cost me $150
Here are some iphone pics

 

No offense bro but I woudln't count on the X8100 outperforming the M17x. It has no bios OC'ing as far as I know right? BTW Dell's releasing a new vbios update..finally! Took enough hounding to get them to budge. Though with their latest driver release, I'm hitting 18.5k consistently in vantage so the X8100 has an uphill battle

BTW I'm still not sold on the X7200 being #1, it may have a desktop processor that will undoubtedly boost it's synthetic scores but it remains to be seen if it's paltry 300W PSU will allow for any meaningful overclocking.

The M17x doesn't have any flickering that's unique to it. The flickering is/was 100% ATi's fault because of their shoddy driver support. Their newest 10.8 beta's took care of the problem.

FINALLY some friendly rival competition! Bring it on guys, X8100 vs M17x-R2..GO!

 

My X8100/NP8120 i just got 2 weeks ago with new drivers from Nvidia hit 13567 in vantage. I even overclocked both 285m's and the scores stayed the same and actually lowered. But i only have an i7 720QM

 

just wondering why you went with x-notebooks - the same configuration at deviltech or cybersystems would cost you at least 250 less...

 

With the right BIOS it does, fairly basic stuff, but its there. There were bugs with the earlier releases, but extreme processors should be overclockable, and that was Clevo's initial intent, so its just a case of getting a BIOS without the clocking issues.
I only have a 920XM though so unless I was seriously lucky I wouldnt catch you anyway (and knowing my luck the clocking bugs only affect the 920XM and not the 940 ). Actually after how bad my lucks been I will be happy to have a fully working machine.
I'll concede you have the possible edge if the clocking issues aren't culled though.
Has your VBIOS update sorted out any of the issues you were having? Hopefully the Clevo VBIOS will be more stable/problem-free than Dell's initial release.

In terms of the desktop processor, even without heavy overclocking, there is still a chance the more powerful processor will allow the SLI/Crossfire setup to stretch its legs more successfully, dual cards do like CPU power; and usually scale with it to some extent, even with the same cards.

 

I got the SSD and I"m kind of regretting, while it has write speed that makes moving files or installing programs super fast, the seek time is still a little slow and you really don't notice the difference since you can not put large amounts of data on it any way. There is no boot time difference form my old machine and all of the programs run just as fast as they would on a 7200RPM drive. Once they drop in price and raise in capacity then SSD will be the way to go.

 

I PM'd the Alienware guy about being part of the new vbios beta, he hasn't gotten back to me yet. I think the new vbios beta + drivers will be out in a week or so. Right now I'm using Catalyst 10.8 beta that Dell gave us a little while back and with some mods of my own, it's fairly stable. I'll just warn you that Crossfire itself has issues because of ATi's inept coding. I think that's another reason the X7200 seems like an attractive alternative is because of nVidia's drivers + SLi scaling. I'm looking forward to seeing how it does.

How come nobody with the X8100 + 5870 xfire has put up any numbers yet?

 

I've used both SLI and crossfire before so I'm used to the way it works. All told my experiences with it have never been too bad and not noticeably worse than SLI, and all told drivers from both sides have been equally good and disappointing, I'm relatively neutral on that side to the point I think ATI have ways to go, but I also don't really think NVIDIAs drivers these days deserve the golden reputation they acquired. Scaling is swings and roundabout really from series to series, the desktop 4 series was very good but then the 57 desktop cards were lauded as exceptionally good too, before that the 8800gt etc.
They are improving the tech all the time, we have come a long way since 3dfx's version.

I'm a little disappointed on the lack if results so far too, guess its really not a very common setup so far. I wasn't expecting to still potentially be the first owner on here to go run some benchmarks. Providing my machine does arrive in the next week you know I wont shy away from providing data even if I have issues.

 

Can somebody tell me what kind of battery is the X8100 having- different resellers report that is from 4 to 12 cell polymer.
Overall a lot of the specs are reported differently- for example clevo website says that the camera is 3.0M pixels, everybody else- 2.0, clevo says 2xUSB 3.0, most of the resellers don't even mentioned it, same for the HDMI-in port...

 

They all have HDMI in. Battery life on these is an afterthought but I believe it is 9/12 cell. The camera depends as there are two different cameras, and USB3.0 seems to be limited to a new revision of the motherboard.

 

Just was told to do a survey....Would there be an interest in upgrading your x8100 with the ATi Mobility HD5870 cards (2) in Crossfirex with the new Heatsinks and Cables for this model?

 

Babyhemi...you should know well enough by now that if the price is right, high end laptop owners will eat it out of your hands
I know if I still had 285s I'd be interested dependant on price (although I have more reasons than speed to want ATI)

 

Yo Alex, dell delivered with the new vbios It's running the latest reference ATi drivers and Dell's own (newer than Cat 10.8) driver as well. Looks like they fixed it right on time. I'm still waiting on some X8100 numbers. Right now the M17x-R2 is about as perfect as a gaming laptop can get.

 

Glad to hear it mate, for the sort of money they're charging it SHOULD be damned nigh on perfect, especially as in my experience, European support is pretty poor (Alienware are much more expensive than Clevo in the UK)
Glad you no longer need custom drivers and can use reference like the rest

I'm HOPING I will see my laptop Saturday, or early next week *Bank hol on Monday *, so figures....well...ASAP


Are the Dell drivers definately newer than the 10.8WHQL? Last I heard the build date on the officials was something like 3rd August...which is cutting it fine on the WHQL process! Either way Im intending to use the 10.8s on mine when it arrives, I've heard from desktop crossfire users they seem to be a decent set after a couple of poor ones

 

Yup the dell drivers are 8.763 and the official whql 10.8 from AMD are 8.762. Not a big difference but I guess they gave Dell access to the newest build. I look forward to your impressions of the X8100's 5870 xfire setup.

 

Many more will chime in soon on the X8100 (Sager NP8120) with the ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire setup. Pre-orders are being taken now at your favorite seller or reseller for the first part of September delivery! Also at a very nice price....

 

An entire message dedicated to advertising. Don't be one of those lamers hemi.

 

Well the good news is Kobalt have the cards now and my machine is in testing. I've also asked them to look into whether Clevo have fixed the clocking issues. Downside is because the cards only arrived yesterday its not received enough testing to go out today, and will be next week.

Shame it won't be this week but better testing is completed, and my days off this weekend have been shifted by work anyway.
Figures will come as soon as I have it next week, I have a couple of days off towards the end of it anyway.

Starting to get excited now I know its actually in testing, I've been waiting for the machine for over a month and a half, my last x8100 went back over two months ago.
Last few days are always the hardest.

 

Yeah the last few days are always the toughest because you know it's so close. Well be sure to put up some unboxing pics/vids + benchmarks and impressions, looking forward to it!

 

Alex, are there any others in the UK or Europe getting the this Ati setup that you know of in the forum?

 

It would feel wrong putting up unboxing videos...because I've already unboxed one! Only difference is the last one had GTX285ms [well only difference I know of haha, any free upgrades are appreciated ]
My luck's been appalling with laptops! I actually can't REMEMBER what laptop number I'm on. (Pman laughs at me for it)

@Babyhemi - I know Pman is considering it (user) and I think its possible one or two of the german resellers may be looking at them/have them, but otherwise, not sure. Because of the delays, Kobalt took the cards off thier site and I dont believe they've put them back yet.
Im sure users will appear in time, but given how 'fresh' stock seems to be for most resellers (we tend to be behind the US), its probably going to be a month or two before they become popular
Its a shame this machine couldnt have launched or got these cards sooner, it'd be more popular as an enthusiast machine if it had, I'm sure!

 

I'm not Alex, but yes, there are- most of the German resellers: mySN, cyber-system, deviltech are listing it on their websites, also in Holland xxodd and xnotebooks, France- clevo.fr

 

What US resellers are starting to sell the CF 5870 setup? All the ones I've looked at still list the 285 cards in sli. Hell Xoptic has even removed the damed lappy.

 

Powernotebooks.com has CF 5870.

 

Almost any US sellers or resellers should be able to help you. Many may have not updated their website yet. The x8100 / NP8120 in time will probably not be sold with the 285's at all but only with the CF 5870's...

 

make sure you check which revision the reseller has- things like screen(LED or CCFL), USB3.0(x0,x1,x2), camera(2.0MP or 3.0MP), battery(4, 8, 12 cell), etc. may vary

 

kalawera,

Thanks for the reminder, the resellers I'm thinking about mostly have the old stuff (USB 2.0, camera 2.0 etc) but not deal breakers. I just checked the resellers, I'm interested in getting the beast from and they most have updated their websites because its a CF happy world. anexanhume, thanks for the powernotebooks heads up, that got me back to checking the sites. Now I have a decision to make of who to go with.

 

To be fair, I've only seen the CCFL screen variant from UK resellers, but even that's not a bad screen.

 

Below is the backlit LED screen that has been shipping...

 

I have the CCFL on my current laptop (N184H4-L01)- it's very good (after reducing gamma and red with win7 tool), but for 1800euros I want the whole package, not just a (serious) graphics update

 

Can someone here please tell me whether this beast I have stumbled upon(Sager NP8120) is capable of playing FF14 without problems? I'm currently in the market for a gaming lappy and the G73 has a lot of driver issues so I would gladly look into joining the Sager club if this baby can!