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

Well I am sad to report that my new NP8120 has died after 4 days of use. Saturday morning I went to turn it on and nothing happened other than the power-on light flashed for a second. I tried removing the battery and just using the power supply and I tried removing the power supply and just using the battery. All had the same result.

Unfortunately I am supposed to leave the country this week and there will not be time for a repair or replacement to arrive so I will have to wait until I get back in the fall for another attempt.

I will say to any of those reading that may be considering this laptop, it was really nice! The screen was simply amazing, the system was very quick and responsive as well. There were a few things I would change if anyone asked me though. One thing I didn’t care for was the large amount of space that the gaming keys took. Making that area smaller would have allowed a better keyboard I think. I was also not overly impressed with the coating… very shiny and pretty yes, but only until you touch it and then it just looks like a giant mess of smudges. Otherwise it was an excellent machine.

Good luck to all of you current and future owners!

 

The only other issue of note is that the Speakers are terrible because the radiate underneath the chassis and are heavily muffled. There is not enough output/gain from whatever amp they are using. There is not enough output on the headphone jack either. I can get by with some decent earbuds but not any of my headphones.

If any of you guys are looking for some great earbuds, get the YUIN PK3 buds. They don't look like much but they blow away anything up to 5 times their price. Kinda an audiophile insider's secret!

Ohh, and sorry about you Laptop going feet up...

 

I use the Razer Carcharias or my HeadDirect RE02 (or my GRs or Senns), dont need the Yuin. The RE02 are a similar bargain earphone set though

The speakers seemed loud enough to be me to be fair once turned up and the natural bass enabled, they're never going to be as loud as standalones due to current limitations etc. If you have high resistance headphones, then most laptops will struggle to be honest to provide a high level of volume, but then you're best paired up with a DAC like my Total Bithead anyway.

Actually having to get my laptop looked at as well because it seems to be unable to cope when fully loaded CPU and GPU, for longer periods of time, rather than it being completely dead. Likely something like a defective component in the power management. Sods luck!

 

Hi,
I'm now surprised I haven't run across you somewhere considering what you just said! I have the the RE2's as well but they don't hold a candle to the YUINs. No offense. I have an Audio-GD FUN that will take up duties with the Laptop as an outboard DAC/AMP. I used the YUINs and the output will just get by. Not enough for my Grado HF-2s or SR-225s. I then tried closed canz, the Beyer 770-80 ohm Pros. That would work for a game just barely. Also the upper midz and high end felt pretty rolled off. Bass was anemic as well. All this will be solved with outboard DAC/AMP obviously. I have a load of them laying around not pulling their weight and wanting to get to work!

On another note, can you describe the problems you are seeing in a little more detail. How would i test to see if I have them as well?

Thanx!

 

i still have the Screen Flickering problem described in this post...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6156751&postcount=346

maybe the Bios Update from 1.00.04 to -> 1.00.06 caused this problem... can anyone confirm this ?

post your experience with 1.00.06...

MFG Filly

 

Never said they were as good, but they were very cheap when I bought them, and they're not my best set, just do what I need them to well which is a quick pair for on the move/gym. It'd be interesting to hear your Yuin as well, Im not sure how true it is but a while back I heard that after a certain point they changed some of the components in the RE02 and they effectively became worse value, would be interesting to see how true that actually is, as the ones I've got hold up well for the £20 I paid for them. Even if the Yuin are better really can't complain about the price (headphone kit is more expensive in the UK than the US in general, can make a big difference, compare alessandro/grado prices in the US to UK heh)

Once you've got your DAC sorted out, you should be fine, from your description it really does sound like your problems are caused by the lack of output power and current, the output on laptops like these is usually designed for something mid-low range (ipod buds)/low resistance (like my Goldring), rather than proper kit which is why DACs or low current requiring phones are bloody useful lol

Obviously set the Bithead is far better however, but then its a difference in purpose, economy, scale and ofcourse its external so not subject to the same interference internally. Does a pretty nice job, the fact I can USB power it and its small is also a bonus.

Dunno if you've ever tried the Razer Carcharias, but for a gaming headset, they actually did something pretty decent. Not sure if you've heard the Goldring DR150/100, but they actually sound somewhere in between those with heavier bass, aka they're on a similar level (obviously with bass emphasis) to the Sennheiser 555s.
Surprisingly good considering how most headsets sound, was pleasantly surprised, couldnt really expect much more for what it is, if I wanted something better Id spend more and go with a specialist brand not Razer!


The problems I was having with the X8100 (that it is faulty and likely cause based on symptoms has already been established) were one ram stick dying, now this may well have been killed by the other likely fault, which is a bigger, key issue - the motherboard or PSU.
I was getting complete freezes/major instability. Turns out the power regulation in my machine just could not keep up with the system when the CPU and GPUs were both under heavy usage, after a period of time it'd just keel over. The theory was all but confirmed using OCCT Power Supply test (runs a furmark-esque test on the GPUs, and simultaneously linpack64 stress tests the CPU...pretty much top level for heat and power consumpton, and beyond what you'll get out of a game), with the help of Pman as a comparison point (his machine works fine, no issues). Pman's machine was fine after about 12 minutes of testing, and exhibited no issues whatsoevers, mine keeled over (hard power off) 3 times in a row, lasting less than 10 minutes each time.
Likely to either be a duff power pack, or the power regulation section of the board, knowing my luck more likely the mobo which means a chassis replacement.

That said I have all faith in Kobalt getting it sorted relatively quickly for me, the machine was collected today by courier and should be with them tomorrow.

 

The RE2's are good no doubt for the Pound Sterling or Dollar. I just feel the YUINs clean them up for the price. I traded some Koss PortaPros for the RE2s. If you get a chance to snag the YUINs, dew eet! You won't be sorry.

I played Crysis the other night for about an hour and everything was stable and pretty cool. My GPUs were up around 73C. That obviously doesn't stress the CPU a lot. I think I'll DL that utility and see how mine does. A good time will be had by all!

 

OT ofc but got my mate some of those Porta Pros for his birthday, he's pretty happy with them, just a shame the build quality feels so flimsy!

 

I think the "feel" flimsy but they are in fact pretty robust if that makes sense? I just didn't like the SQ is as much as people rave about.

 

Yeah I get ya, I think the problem with the Porta Pros is we've both used better kit.
They're decent for the cost though (£15) and this is why they get raved about I think, they're cheap and still sound reasonable which as we both know is usually NOT the case, with a few notable exceptions. I mean they only cost a little bit more than your average set of generic cheap phones, but definately sound better than that.

 

What's the best way to confirm that my SLI is working properly? I ran Furmark and see both GPUs ramping temp up. Is that sufficient.

 

oh yeah. temps will ramp right up on both GPU's if SLi is working. again, i tried some newer drivers from laptopvideo2go.com a couple weeks ago (v 197.25 i think they were - they were non WHQL'd anyways) and with settings at 1920x1080, and 8x MSAA i saw a jump from 60 FPS on my old driver to 81 FPS with this one in furmark! not too shabby i gotta say.


On another topic, Les I see you are dual booting with ubuntu. have you tried the 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) beta? i had a whole heap of video related issues with beta 2 when trying to get 3d accelrated graphics going. this is the first time i have dealt with Nouveau and im already not liking it

 

How did you do 1920x1200? Or was that a typo?

I never got 10.04 to install properly for some reason.

 

was thinkin of my desktop PC's monitor for whatever reason lol. indeed i did mean 1920x1080

 

My computer feels hot...

Here is what that HW Monitoring Software is saying:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hardware monitor ACPI
Temperature 0 67°C (152°F) [0xD48] (TZ0_)

Hardware monitor Intel Core i7
Power 0 65.04 W (Processor)
Temperature 0 65°C (149°F) [0x23] (Core #0)
Temperature 1 63°C (145°F) [0x25] (Core #1)
Temperature 2 64°C (147°F) [0x24] (Core #2)
Temperature 3 67°C (152°F) [0x21] (Core #3)

Hardware monitor NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285M
Temperature 0 57°C (134°F) (GPU Core)

Hardware monitor NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285M
Temperature 0 68°C (154°F) (GPU Core)

Hardware monitor WDC WD64 00BEVT-22A0R
Temperature 0 39°C (102°F) [0x27] (Assembly)

Hardware monitor Battery 1
Voltage 0 14.94 Volts [0x3A59] (Current Voltage)
Capacity 0 68820 mWh [0x10CD4] (Designed Capacity)
Capacity 1 70640 mWh [0x113F0] (Full Charge Capacity)
Capacity 2 16191 mWh [0x3F3F] (Current Capacity)
Level 0 n.a. [0x66] (Wear Level)
Level 1 23 pc [0x16] (Charge Level)


Processors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of threads 8

APICs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0 0
-- Thread 1 1
-- Core 1
-- Thread 0 2
-- Thread 1 3
-- Core 2
-- Thread 0 4
-- Thread 1 5
-- Core 3
-- Thread 0 6
-- Thread 1 7

Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 8)
Number of threads 8 (max 16)
Name Intel Core i7
Codename Clarksfield
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 989 rPGA (0x4)
CPUID 6.E.5
Extended CPUID 6.1E
Core Stepping B1
Technology 45 nm
Core Speed 2373.9 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 18.0 x 131.9 MHz
Rated Bus speed 2373.9 MHz
Stock frequency 2000 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 4 x 256 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L3 cache 8 MBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes

Turbo Mode supported, enabled
Max non-turbo ratio 15x
Max turbo ratio 24x
Max efficiency ratio 9x
TDP Limit 55 Watts
TDC Limit 47 Amps
Core TDP 47 Watts
Uncore TDP 8 Watts
Power @ 9x 18 Watts
Power @ 10x 21 Watts
Power @ 11x 26 Watts
Power @ 12x 32 Watts
Power @ 13x 38 Watts
Power @ 14x 46 Watts
Power @ 15x 55 Watts

Are the temps out of the ordinary?

 

Here's mine. It is running about 12 hours at ambient temp 78F. No cooler, sitting on a desk flat.

 

One thing to note is that if you run in High Performance power mode in Win7, you'll idle hotter than running balanced power profile.
When you're set to High Performance your cores all spend quite a lot of time flicking up to ~3Ghz which does up the idle temps by about 10 or so degrees C (although obviously the difference between idle and load temps are also that much lower), whereas in balanced, the cores will spend a lot of time mellowing out sub 2Ghz.
They seem a little more 'hyper' on High Performance haha

 

Alrighty...so it sounds like everything's fine.

I should probably not run the game so long.

It's usually it's hottest running that game, and if I have it plugged in and running the game, it gets up there.

 

YOU DIDN'T SAY YOU WERE RUNNING A GAME! Or did I miss that?

 

Also do you have SLI turned on because you have a considerable temparature difference between your 2 GFX cards?

 

Yes I do believe it's on, and yes one card runs hotter than the other.

 

As far as in game flickering goes, I have not had any trouble with NW2 or Witcher EE on my 8120. But, RF:G would not run on my desktop until I installed nHancer and ticked a few compatability flags. I also suggest making sure that the game is actually profiled manually in the NVIDIA control panel and has a set of instructions that is game specific, then you can try the AFR 1 and AFR 2 settings to see if the makes flickering go away. If that fails, download nHancer and play with the flags until it stops. This has helped me in several games.

 

Hi everyone here in the X8100 thread, seems I might be joining the ranks soon. I'm going to be selling my G51J soon in favor of this, wanted to get everyone's opinion.

Our goal is a portable desktop, it usually won't travel farther than the next door neighbor's house. We might pack it up for a trip every once in a blue moon but that's about it. We chose this for its screen size and storage capacity, it's perfect for entertainment.

I will likely go with the following specs;

Screen: LED Backlit 18.4" widescreen 1920x1080
CPU: Intel i7 Extreme 920XM
GPU: Dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 285m in SLi
RAM: 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333
OS Drive: Mushkin IO 256GB SSD
Storage Drive: 2x Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM HDD in Raid 0
Wifi: Intel 6300
Optical Drive: Sony BD-ROM/DVD+RW Drive
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

I wanted to find out if there are any concerns with this laptop. I've read through this thread and some reviews and I'm concerned about the audio. Seems like the problems are when using the built-in speakers? How is this when connected to external speakers? I'd also like to ask about connecting this to en external display, such as a 1080p HD. I saw that some reported problems.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Matt & Isabelle

 

The onboard isn't amazing, but is much better once you activate Dolby Natural Bass which is included in the Clevo drivers.
Its certainly listenable in leiu of dedicated equipment, and not THAT quiet.
Obviously external equipment offers a lot more potential

Also, before you order, see if you can get your supplier to confirm the exact screen model you will be getting in yours (everest will tell you). It seems there may be some X8100 batches out there with LED backlit, and some with dual CCFL. Not that the CCFL is that bad

Regarding external display issues, they tend to be down to the Nvidia driver variant used.

 

Mine says CMO1807. I couldn'r find anything else on it?

 

If you get Everest Ultimate trial and go into the specific monitor section, it should give you more details.
I know with mine it listed the manufacturer, product code, model, max res etc.

Off my head I think the 1807 is the dual CCFL but I cant remember, model N184H04-***

The LED model would be N184H06-***

 

Here's mine and it is supposed to be LED

Just found it, it's LED

http://www.screencountry.com/index.php?section=products&part_number=N184H6-L02

 

Yep you've got the LED backlit screen which should be slightly better, congrats

There are still X8100 out there with the H04 dual CCFL screens though, my one (which is being chassis swapped so I'll be getting another chance at the LED) had one, as did my M980NU. The dual CCFL screen likely has some equally unenlightening name like CMO1806. The everest info is more handy.

The N184H06 is actually CMO's current laptop multimedia screen, here are the rated stats:
(as per http://www.chimei-innolux.com/openc...products_notebook_N184H6_L02.html?__locale=en)

Panel Size 18.4" FHD
Technology TN
Resolution 1920 x 1080
Aspect Ratio 16:9
Pixel Pitch(mm) 0.213
Active Area(mm) 408.96 x 230.04
Outline(mm) 422.5 x 248 x 6
PPI 119
Luminance(nits) 220
View Angle (U/D/R/L) 25/45/45/45
Contrast Ratio 650:1
Support Color 262K
Power Consumption (w) 8.8
Response Time(ms) 8
Weight (g) 650
Electrical Interface LVDS
Backlight LED
Mass Production Now
Remark Multimedia

 

It blows every screen I've ever seen away. The text looks like it was cut out with an exacto-knife! I had to turn the brightness down, it was hurting my eyes full bright. You can turn up fill brightness and the contrast does not wash out. It looked awesome out of the box, I just noticed in a few hours it was too bright, and turned it down a little.

 

Hahah yeah, the CCFL isnt quite that bright

 

This is the first Laptop screen I've ever turned down. I just got rid of my MacBook Pro and it made it look pretty sickly!

 

Thank you for the response! I've emailed RJ Tech and asked about the monitor, I'd much prefer the LED one naturally. So I'm waiting on that before I pull the trigger.

 

I contacted BabyHemi here on NBR, who works for a reseller, he said that the dual CCFL version is the only option at this time. I also contacted RJ Tech, whom I was going to purchase this kit from, and was told that they cannot test each one to see what scrren it contains. I'm not picky about where I purchase this from as long as they are reputable, but I do need this as a barebones kit since I already have the CPU, RAM, SSD, and dual HHD's to install.

Considering this laptop in total is about $3500 I was hoping for the better screen.

Any suggestions?

Matt

 

I don't know if they will do a Barebones, but try PCTORQUE.com. That's who sold me mine. What about Sager directly?

 

PCTorque also lists it is having a Dual Lamp CCFL screen. Did it say that when you purchased it as well and then you got surprised? Or did they somehow stop offering the LED screen?

 

Might want to call them. Read under "display" on this page:

Sager 8120 Laptop, Gaming Notebook, Best Gaming Laptop - PC Torque

I ordered with LED backlight, that is edge lit I believe and maybe you can call it dual lamp LED Edge backlight for all I know. But I was under the impression they all came that way.

 

There is only ONE DISPLAY for the 8120 or Clevo X8100 it is the "dual lamp type" no matter what else one can say about it. Sorry to disappoint but users are very happy with the beautiful output of it.

 

Hmm, interesting. On that page it does indeed show a LED screen, but when you go to customize it shows a dual lamp screen. Very confusing. I've seen a few references to this LED screen but most places still list a dual lamp screen instead. I will give them a call tomorrow.

My best guess it that it was updated without much fanfare and most places haven't updated their pages to reflect it?

I'll let you know what they tell me as well.

Thanks again!

EDIT: Thank you Hemi, if there is only one that is good to know, I know everyone that has it loves it, it's a beautiful screen, it's just confusing when there is conflicting information about it. Plus different users here have different models, one was supposedly dual lamp while the other was LED. I don't want to focus too much on the screen, but I'd like to know what I'm getting in the end

 

The only thing I know is those pages look just like they did when I ordered mine from them a few weeks ago and it is an LED Backlit screen. There are lots of typos in these specs unfortunately. Like I said before, give them a call or send an email. They are quick to answer emails.

 

About the poor sound coming from the onboard speakers; It's pretty crap on my D900F as well. I guess sound quality is not a primary concern for Clevo. But then, I have never come across a laptop that has anywhere near a decent quality from their onboards. But some better than my D900F.

No issues with the external speaker sound though. I get sufficient quality from my cheap Logitech X-230 2.1 set. Actually they sound rather good for being that cheap.

The feinschmecker music listening I leave to my stereo anyway; it's cost is 10 times that of the D900, so it makes sense, eh?

 

Ok, I called PCtorque, who were EXTREMELY helpful, much moreso than RJ Tech, the gentleman I spoke to named Ben was unable to offer a barebone, since they are a Sager dealer and it must have the CPU, but they offered to sell it without the RAM, HDD, and Optical drive. They even contacted Sager to find out about the screens and called me back with an answer:

In the last few weeks all NP8120's are shipping with LED screens instead.

So yes, if you bought it recently from PCtorque, you'll have the LED one

Babyhemi also confirmed this by running everest and it is the LED screen he has as well, the N184H6-L02. I can't wait to put this together I'll take pictures in case anyone else is interested.

Matt

 

I Love it when a plan comes together!

 

Hello --

I don't mean to derail the thread, but am hoping to get some advice from owners.

I'm thinking seriously about getting the Sager NP8120 and have been reading around in this thread pretty carefully. Lots of great advice and insight into this amazing laptop! I had been looking at the Sager NP8760 and the Asus G73JH, but the more I hear about the NP8120 / X8100, the more I'm leaning in that direction.

I'm trying to figure out what configuration of processor and RAM makes most sense, in terms of bang for buck. I'm primarily going to use the laptop for gaming. I'm not sure the 920XM makes much sense for me -- just too pricey. Is the 820QM worth the extra $$, or is it just not going to be enough of an upgrade over the 720QM to make the price difference worth it? I know the clocking differences are not huge (1.6 GHz vs. 1.72 GHz), although the 820QM does come with an extra 2MB of cache.

I have read that if it's between the 720QM and 820QM, just go w/ the 720QM. Still, isn't a faster processor always perferrable?

In terms of RAM... 4GB, 6GB, or 8GB. For gaming purposes, is more than 4GB RAM going to make a noticeable difference?

My overall goal in getting the NP8120 would be to get pretty much the fastest gaming laptop currently available. Is a 720QM + 4GB DDR3 RAM config. going to do the trick? Would it be worth the extra money to go with 820QM + 6GB RAM (or 8GB RAM)?

Lastly, I'm thinking of just getting a single 500GB harddrive to save some cash. Would a 80GB SSD + 320GB SATA II config. be much preferrable?

Greatly appreciate any advice --

 

Processor and RAM won't make much if any difference for gaming. Within Reason that is. SSD would help with Load times of WIN and Game LOAD, probably not much on the performance once the game level was loaded. GPU performance would be obviously critical for "some" games. I have a 720 and have no complaints except when extracting large rar's and then every bit of processor helps of course. I've played Crysis, Crysis Warhead and MW2 and this Platform games well for. But I'm not a serious Gamer by anybodies yardstick!

 

No worries about derailing the thread, we're all here to help! Welcome to the forums by the way.

For the best bang for your buck the i7 720QM and 4GB DDR3 1333 is a great way to go. Of course faster is better but the price/performance ratio gets crazy when you start thinking about the 820 or 8GB RAM. The real world difference with that extra 2mb cache isn't much either.

If your going to perform alot of video decoding, the 920XM will defintiely offer a boost, and if you will do much graphic design/CAD work the extra RAM is something to think about, but for gaming the 720/4GB is perfect.

As far as the Hard drives, the 500GB to save money is fine in my opinion, but given you have 3 bays to work with here (you can raid up to 2 drives btw), I think the sweet spot is one SSD for the OS and up to 2 storage drives. You can always add the SSD later on of course

EDIT: I agree with Les about the SSD, it will definitely help the windows boot times and program load times, but it won't have much to do with in game performance.

I hope this helped

Matt

 

Thanks very much for the feedback -- greatly appreciated & very helpful

This is a hard decision... The NP8120 is gorgeous, but when I compare it to the Sager NP8760, going with the 720QM + 4GB Ram config. in both cases, the difference in price works out to about $850 more for the NP8120. Essentially then, I'd be paying $850 more to get the GTX 285M SLI GPU's and slightly bigger screen (the NP8760 is 17.3" full HD, same res, 1920X1080, as the 8120 -- although the 8760 is LED backlit, whereas the 8120 is LCD... not sure if that makes a big difference though).

Is that crazy?

If I went with the NP8760, I'd get an ATI Radeon Mobility 5870 card rather than the nVidia GTX 285X (single), as I understand it is faster.

So I guess what it boils down to is: is the GTX 285M SLI worth $800+ more than the ATI Radeon 5870? Is the boost in gaming performance that I'd get with the NP8120 worth *that* much more?
...just thinking aloud here -- I don't expect y'all to have definitive answers to these questions! But I'd certainly welcome any further feedback you may have!

 

If you see a 17.3 next to an 18.4, it's a pretty good difference.

The 8120 as discussed above is LED backlit, and it is spectacular, the best display I've ever seen.

I was looking at the G73 but didn't get it due to reliability issues. Just too much going on with that box for me.

The ATI may be a better Game performer than the SLI setup, not sure there. Some say better than the 285 Sli setup.

The $$$ difference is substantial for sure. Make sure the one you look at has great cooling capacity. I've had a Clevo based Laptop that went thru 5 motherboards in 2 years because of bad design. Cooling design and performance was a big reason for choosing the 8100.

Also make sure you can deal with the size of the 8120, it is a Beast if you have to pack it and Lug it!

 

This is what is so puzzling ... It's really the crucial issue for me. I've read reviews that suggest the *single* ATI 5870 (I think on notebookcheck.net) outperforms the *dual* GTX 285M SLI... that doesn't make a whole lotta sense to me. Is it simply that driver support for the laptop SLI config. is still evolving... and that eventually (soon?) it will outperform a single GPU the way you would expect? Or that most games currently on the market can't take advantage of dual-card GPU (not sure if that makes sense... is it the GPU drivers that would determine whether a game can use SLI, or the way the game is programmed?)

If the single ATI 5870 for the most part matches or even outperforms the 285M SLI in gaming, it would really be no contest for me -- I'd have to go with the NP8760. I thought the whole point of getting dual GPU's would be that it clearly outperforms a single card! Wish there were some way to know for sure.

 

I think you are done searching then. Find a Platform like the Asus G73 that has been tested well with the game you are interested in and one that was tested with the 280 or 285 DUAL setup and then make your choice. It's not hard to understand why a new technology single card would best older technology dual cards though. On another note, the Nvidia 480m was announced recently and surely will be available shortly for the 8120 as a Dual setup no doubt. You might want to contact PCTORQUE and see when that would happen, you may want to wait a month or so.

 

I wish I had your confidence Les Garten! I keep going back and forth on this...

Also, I may have not read the review of the 8120 in Notebookcheck carefully enough, as it has this addendum at the end:

"The gaming performance with SLI is enormous, but you should consider the purchase carefully because of the typical SLI/Crossfire diseases, such as the ominous micro-stuttering and the massive dependability on drivers/games."

[addendum]:
"Because a few games couldn't benefit from SLI, we subsequently installed the latest Nvidia driver, 197.16, to see if there would be any performance differences. The answer is YES. All "problem tracks" ran noticeably faster under SLI after the driver update.

The resolution was, as in the test, 1920x1080; the 197.16 driver version was used, instead of 187.82."

Bad Company 2 (High, HBAO on, 4x AA, 8x AF) 25.9 fps --> 50.6 fps + 95 %

...That suggests to me that the dual card SLI setup has gotten to the point with driver suppor that it really does make a big difference..

...in which case, I am very strongly tempted to go with the NP8120!!