Sager NP9377 / Clevo P377SM-A Review by HTWingNut

Introduction

Specifications
- Sysetm Specs
- Weights and Dimensions

System Overview
- Ports
- Keyboard
- LCD
- Storage
- Speakers and Audio
- Inside the laptop
- Software

System Performance
- CPU Intel i7-4810MQ
- GPU nVidia GTX 880m in SLI (dual card)

GPU BENCHMARKS

Power and Cooling
- Power Consumption
- Cooling Performance
- Surface Temperatures
- Battery Life

Conclusion


intro INTRODUCTION

Portable PC gaming machines have been around for a while, but it hasn't been until recently that the laptops can match higher end desktop components. Sager is introducing the highest end mobile graphics cards, GTX 880m, in SLI in their new NP9377 laptop based on the Clevo P377. While the chassis is pretty much carryover from last year's models, it does come with refreshed components like the two 880m's, as well as Intel's Haswell i7-4810MQ, 120Hz LCD, and options for storage including Intel's new 730 series SSD.


specs SPECIFICATIONS

The laptop used in this review was provided by LPC-Digital and was configured as shown here:
Laptop: Sager NP9377 / Clevo P377SM-A
LCD: 17.3" 120Hz 1920x1080
CPU: Intel i7-4810MQ
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 880m SLI
RAM: 2x8GB DDR3-1600
Storage: Intel 730 240GB SSD
Network: Intel 7260 AC
OS: Windows 8.1 64-bit
PSU: 19.5V, 16.9A (330W)
Battery: 15.12V / 5900mAH / 89.21WHr

Weights and Dimensions
Laptop
Sager: 16.50 x 11.61 x 2.16 inch
Measured: 16.5 x 11.7 x 2.2 inch

Sager: 8.82 lbs (single GPU)
Measured: 9 lbs 9 oz (9.75lbs)

PSU
Measured:
Measured: 3 lbs with both cables


overview SYSTEM OVERVIEW

First here is an unboxing and overview video of this machine:

<iframe width='640' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mw8DkmUGYQo" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

The Sager NP9377 is a gaming system at heart, and Clevo offers some visual cues making it look like more than your typical Clevo. The styling includes hard lines and some bright chrome trim on the back end enhancing the grille exhaust area, as well as red "tail lights". The LCD lid top surface is black and smooth with the bright chrome Sager logo in the middle. The surface around the keyboard and LCD, however, are black with a matte type finish. All exterior chassis trim is plastic, but overall it is a very solid machine with little to no flex anywhere. Lid hinges are plenty firm for the 17" screen and require a little effort to rotate, but the screen stays in place with no noticeable movement with fast typing or during aggressive gaming sessions.





Speaker grilles are located just below the LCD on the main chassis and angled up at about 45 degrees aiming the sound right at you, with the Onkyo logo proudly displayed at the upper left corner above the keyboard. The touchpad surface is integrated with the palmrest but with a slight depression around the perimter and has a raised dot grid pattern which seems to improve finger tracking. Two individual mouse buttons rest below the multi-touch Synaptics touchpad with lightly audible clicks. A fingerprint reader sits on the palmrest near the right side of the laptop. A thin glossy strip runs along the top of the keyboard that has the status light for caps lock, hard drive activity, scroll lock, etc, and runs through the bottom half of the round blue illuminated power button at the upper right side of the laptop.

Underneath the laptop has your expected air intakes for the fan, and seem adequate for the size of fans and airflow they provide. The subwoofer grille is also located underneath adorned with a hexagonal chrome trim ring. The xxx WHr battery is removed with two slide latches and is located at the front center at the bottom of the laptop. Bumpers at front and rear raise the laptop an appreciable half inch off the surface which one can only assume will help with airflow and cooling.

Ports
Around the laptop at the left is the Kensington lock, ethernet jack, card reader, and four 1/8" audio jacks: audio in, optical out, mic in, headphones. There are no ports along the front edge, but a slight kerdunk at the center where the touchpad is located offers easy access to lift the lid. Power, battery, touchpad, and airplane mode indicator lights sit along the front right side. On the right of the laptop is a thunderbolt port, two USB 3.0, a USB 2.0/eSATA combo port, and the optical drive bay. Along the rear is an HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, and the power jack.





An interesting feature for this machine is the inclusion of two cameras. One on each side of the LCD lid.

So in total there are:
4x USB 3.0 ports
1x USB 2.0 ports
1x HDMI
1x Thunderbolt/Diplayport
1x eSATA
2x Webcam

Port locations are a bit questionable, since all the side mounted USB ports are on the right hand side, which can get in the way of using your mouse, and none on the left side. Also having only two video out ports prevents users from being able to run a triple monitor setup, which a machine with this power could easily drive.

Keyboard
The backlit keyboard wtih numberpad is carryover from last year's machines, and is fully configurable for the three backlight zones as well as different levels of luminosity. The two rear "tail lights" also toggle on and off with the keyboard, but do not change brightness. This year, however, the software for programming the backlight has changed considerably, making it easier to use. Details on this can be found in the Sager NP8268 review I completed recently.


LCD
This review sample came supplied with the 17.3" 1920x1080 120Hz LCD panel, but there is no 3D emitter. In any case the screen is vibrant and beautiful with no dead or stuck pixels. Unfortunately I have not been able to find specs or detils on this display except from a NotebookCheck review of the Asus G75V which uses the same panel ( Review Asus G75V Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews). The Windows device ID is LGD02C5. Overall performance is great, colors look great, and brightness allows it to be visible even outdoors (yes, finally we have sun and semi warm weather).

A calibration showed little shift in colors, so stock settings were pretty good. While this LCD works great with 120Hz refresh on the Windows desktop, I was unable to try games with it at 120Hz since there seems to be a driver issue causing the screen to go blank with 3D applications. Sager has indicated that this should be fixed with future updates, hopefully sooner than later. But this did not prevent using it running at 60Hz.

See below viewing angle of the LCD.






Storage
The NP9377 can be equipped with two mSATA drives and two 2.5" notebook drives, either HDD or SSD fitting the 9.5mm or thinner form factor. This specific model offered the new Intel 730 240GB SSD. I took this opportunity to compare performance between a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, Crucial M500 960GB, and Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA drive with CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, and AS SSD disk benchmarks.

Spoiler

AS SSD Incompressible Performance







ATTO Compressible Performance





ATTO Random / Incompressible Performance





ATTO Incompressible at QD4





CrystalDiskMark Compressible Performance





CrystalDiskMark Random / Incompressible Performance

Speakers and Audio
Clevo continues to provide Onkyo speakers in their laptops. The audio on the NP9377 is much better than on some of their other laptops. Whether that is due to placement or actual better components, it is unsure, but fidelity, volume, and bass are much better when compared with the audio in the NP8268 (P150SM-A) or NP7338 (W230SS). Speaker placement is good with the stereo speakers are just below the LCD on the main chassis angled up at 45 degrees. The subwoofer is underneath the laptop, and provides enough bass to make it noticeable, although it won't wow you in any way. Soundblaser X-fi software allows for some EAX effects, SBX Pro Studio, and even some VoiceFX.

Inside the laptop
Accessing the primary components of the laptop can be achieved simply by removig some small philips head screws at the bottom. This exposes the CPU, dual GPU's and associated heatsinks/fans, two of four RAM slots, an mSATA slot, and separate compartment that houses two 2.5" hard drives or SSD's. A second mSATA slot, other two RAM slots, and the wi-fi card rest underneath the keyboard, easily removed by popping off a small trim strip and removing five screws. The CPU and each GPU get their own independent heatsinks and fans, with the CPU in the center with GPU's on either side of the CPU.




Software
Since the software is common between Sager noteooks, I will refer you to the comments made on the Sager NP8268. But I will state that with a factory Windows 8.1 installation, there is no bloatware, only Sager drivers and necessary apps.


sysperf SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

CPU Intel i7-4810MQ
The Intel i7-4810MQ is just a refresh of last year's Haswell i7-4800MQ with a 100MHz speed improvement. Performance of this CPU alone was provided in the Sager NP8268 review, and some quick tests indicated performance was comparable in the NP9377. However providing enough performance for a system with two powerful video cards like the GTX 880m is where the real test comes in. CPU utilization was tracked for a round of Battlefield 4 set to Ultra settings at 1080p, which is one of the most resource intensive games currently for CPU and GPU.

You can see from the chart that the CPU leveled out in the low 90C territory, and CPU speed maintained 3.4-3.5GHz throughout. You can also see CPU utilization ranged from about 40-80% with average right down the 60% line.



During two of the CPU benchmarks, Cinebench and wPrime, where the CPU was consistently at 100% load you can see the CPU speed drop off from 3.5GHz to 3.2GHz, which falls in line with the extended turbo time of 20 seconds





GPU nVidia GeForce GTX 880m SLI
The 880m GPU is basically a refresh of the 780m released about nine months ago, but with slightly higher clock speeds. A review of a similar version of this laptop (NP9390/P375SM) with SLI 780m was done and will be compared with the performance of this laptop with SLI 880m's.

You can see from the GPU-Z screenshots below, that the 880m is really just a 780m with slightly faster core clocks, still based on their 28nm Kepler architecture. From last years's results it can be seen that the 780m can perform at 880m performance and then some with a decent overclock, just nVidia made that the new base level. As is typical with nVidia, there is limited driver support for the 880m at this point in time, although if history is any indication there should be ample support going forward. Unfortunately this point in time, whether through vBIOS, BIOS, or driver limitation, the 880m's could not be overclocked through conventional means. The GPU's also rarely ever boosted to the 995 MHz boost speed.


Kepler refresh basically same as 780m with higher clocks.

Note that the GTX 780m SLI OC results were based on a system that had the GPU clocked at 985MHz and vRAM at 6000MHz. Compare that with the 954MHz and 5000MHz vRAM of the stock 880m speeds, and you can see they fall within similar performance. It's clear from the results that any game you throw at it can perform admirably at the highest settings running at 1080p. Perhaps an external monitor with a 3K or 4K screen would stress the machine to the point that FPS will be straining. We'll leave that experiment for another day (hopefully soon).

gpubench GPU BENCHMARKS

ARTIFICIAL BENCHMARKS
3DMark 11



3DMark FireStrike


Allbenchmark Catzilla


Unigine Heaven Ultra 4xAA


Unigine Valley Ultra 4xAA




GAME BENCHMARKS

Battlefield 4 64MP Ultra


Bioshock Infinite Ultra DDOF


Company of Heroes 2 Max


Crysis 3 Very High


Dirt 3 Ultra 4xAA


Grid 2 Ultra 4xAA


Hitman Absolution Ultra 4xAA


Metro Last Light Very High, Tess Normal


Resident Evil Highest


Sleeping Dogs Ultra


Saints Row IV Max


Tomb Raider Ultra + TressFX



power POWER AND COOLING

Power Consumption
Power draw was measured from the wall, understanding there is some efficiency factory, typically about 90% for these type of PSU's for actual power used by the laptop. Games and benchmarks were run with the LCD and keyboard backlight at full brightness, speakers at 50% volume, and in high performance mode.

The results indicate that the 330W power supply is more than adequate for this machine, and it's always good to have a power supply that provides at least 10% more than maximum what the system can draw, especially on a consistent basis.






Cooling Performance and Fan Sound
The Clevo cooling design is adequate for the GPU and CPU at stock settings, and maintained the CPU at peak performance while at load. Below are the CPU and GPU temperatures taken during benchmarking, showing peak temperatures.

CPU Temperatures





GPU Temperatures





Fan Noise/
The fan sound was quite low when idle, but during gaming it could be quite prominent, but I guess to be expected considering 250W of CPU and GPU being cooled. With system speakers over medium or with headphones the fan noise was nearly or completely inaudible. Hot air could definitely be felt being pushed out the back.


Surface Temperatures
Surface temperatures remain quite cool throughout, top and bottom. Although temps on the bottom aren't quite as important for a machine this size since it's unlikely to be used on someone's lap considering the size and weight. Measured surface temperatures are shown below.






Battery Life
People don't buy a 9lbs 17" laptop to use unplugged usually, but I'm sure there's times it might be used without AC in light load situations. I wouldn't even fathom gaming on the battery since it can greatly degrade the battery life if power draw is too high, but surfing and watching a movie seem reasonable.

In a light web browser test, the system was set to power saver mode, screen at 30% brightness, backlit keyboard off, the battery life was 2hrs 17mins. That is quite impressive considering it's running two high end mobile GPU's.


conclusion CONCLUSION

The merging of styling from last year's Sager laptops is a welcome sight. The chrome grille and red tail lights offer a little style but not going too crazy with added bling. Otherwise most of the machine is pretty much carryover with the same keyboard, touchpad, even LCD options, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sager is the best bang for your buck, and personally I'd rather see the engineering go into the cooling and overall performance of the laptop moreso than styling. And it goes without saying that user customization at time of order as well as ease of expansion is always a great reason to buy a Sager.

The Sager NP9377 packed with the i7-4810MQ and dual GTX 880m's in SLI configuration is certainly a powerful system that can compete with a hefty desktop for gaming. Clearly a system with SLI 780m's can easily compete, but gaming performance is significantly better than a single 880m, and far and away better than systems with the first generation Kepler 680m. Not to mention, comparing with other online benchmark results, this system can even compete with a desktop GTX 770.

An SLI system has it's advantages and disadvantages and quirks, but the end result is a system that can crank out FPS especially on a 1080p screen. The 330W power supply is more than adequate to fuel the system even with the most demanding games like Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, and Grid 2. Unfortunately even these days when SLI is a fairly common configuration in desktops many games still do not support it or have lackluster support for it. Games like Titanfall is limited to 60FPS except with some work arounds, and Hitman Absolution doesn't take full advantage of SLI. In any case, a majority of the more popular titles do without any issues. And for those concerned, the Intel i7-4810MQ is plenty to power the dual GPU's for gaming.

The system cooling is sufficient, but as with most laptops propping up the back of the laptop helped improve cooling. Without recording exact values, I did notice component temps at least 3-4C cooler if not more in some instances by doing so. While this definitely helps, the bumpers on the laptop are a reasonable height to raise the system for pulling in cool fresh air.

While some things could be improved, like USB port placement on the left instead of right side, and limited thermal overhead for overclocking, there's little to complain about. The NP9377 is a solid package that can be configured with the latest top end components from CPU, GPU, LCD, RAM, and storage. This machine is highly recommended for anyone looking for a powerful desktop replacement who don't want to compromise in performance or component selection.

 

Nice review (as always)! I almost got this one instead of the NP8278-S. Maybe next upgrade cycle I will go with an SLI rig.

Battery life is really pretty good considering Optimus is disabled on that model.

 

I wish they had this design for the 780M SLI machine; the bling trackpad and lightbar is what made me stay far far away from the P375SM. This however actually looks decent, and I like it better than the P370SM.

 

Great review sir! Always love all the information you provide and the time you take to do these.

 

Thank you very much HTWingNut!! Very thorough indeed!

 

A nice and thorough review HTwingnut, indeed 2.5 hours of battery life is superb, also the cooling factor and the fan noise is top notch in my opinion. 880m sli cranks up a lot of demanding games, hopefully in time they will release mature drivers soon.

 

Well they just need to be properly added to the stack since it will use the same driver path as the 780M.

 

Thanks for the review. Excellent job.

 

I agree, excellent review. Out of curiosity, are others getting their 9377s yet? I know mine will take some time because I opted for the m290x cards in crossfire.

 

This specific review laptop is for sale if anyone is interested: http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...s-sager-np9377-clevo-p377sm-sli-gtx-880m.html

 

Man kinda makes me wish I never bought my P370SM, for $2500 that's a bargain.

 

Indeed, I'm finding a 500 dollar minimum premium with an Alienware hard to justify.

 

Hah I wish mine was $2500.

 

Fantastic review as always, thank!

Could be my next notebook - or the successor of it. Will stay with X7200 / GTX 680m SLI one more year or so, maybe with the second generation of Maxwell I will buy one .

 

SLI does seem to buy longevity. Maybe my next one will be SLI.

Sent with love from my Galaxy S4

 

Greetings , might get out of topic a bit but wana ask tirenz if there is a backlit keyboard for
The x7200 , apparently am an owner of a sager np7280 and still love that machine .

 

more like $5200 amirite

 

Unfortunately not, only the P570WM, it´s successor, does have a backlit keyboard (doesn´t fit in the X7200, though - no connector to the Mainboard). I didn´t see any mod or anything on this topic.

 

Same rules would apply as other mods, you would need to find a 5v pin at a place that can deliver the power.

 

I have to ask though... How does it stack up against the 680MX? Because I told someone else that is was an upgrade to that and they said it really wasn't.

 

It is basically a 680mx = 780m = 880m each one just core clocked slightly higher (720/823/954 respectively).

 

The 7 and 8 have different turbo mechanics and clamp the tdp down.

 

It's all vBIOS and driver though. Even using 780M inf with 880M has better results atm than using its proper inf on the same driver.

 

Okay.
Last question... Was there any throttling during any of your stock runs?
Thanks.

 

For 680m? I don't recall. But I don't believe so. Perhaps BF3 and Crysis 2 it did once hit 89C.

 

I'm sorry. I meant the 880m of this review.

 

Double post from drunk DROID driving

 

Hey I bought this laptop ^^" It really quite amazing, I didn't get it with the same HDD's as you though. I only went with a single 7200Rpm 1Tb

Sager NP9377 - Imgur

I just finished the mass effect theme for it and added a red and white stripe down right of the back of the lcd I'll update my post tomorrow.

so does anyone know how to get a stable overclock on this unit my GTX 880m's will not say at a stable core clock they jump from 888 - 1105(OC)Mhz
I'm (Fn) + 1 (Maximum fan speed ) and my temps are cool but yet i'm still throttling really bad on both cards.

 

You probably won't be able to overclock without a third party vBIOS.

 

Not to any significant degree especially without power level control.

 

Yeah, that's not going to happen with a factory vbios. And we haven't released our working vbios for it.

Some unforseen things going on with nvidia drivers at the moment as well.

 

Great review...a few questions though.

I have an older m17x r3 and love the 120hz display and 3D but as you can guess it's not up to par anymore in terms of GPU speed.
I was surprised you mentioned there was no 3D emitter, so basically it's just a 120hz display then? Though, that's not a bad thing, do you know if an emitter will be integrated in the future? Or will that possibly be a whole different model?
If I wanted to use 3D vision on this laptop, it seems I would need to use a USB based 3D emitter, correct?

Also, how is the fan noise compared to say the new Alienware 17 or the Asus G750 w/880m?
Cheers!!

 

With careful selection of emitter you could maybe put one in, you would have to check the window on the bezel and the port on the motherboard.

 

So you guys do have a working Vbios for it, great. I don't mind waiting for it to be put out. (estimated date?)
So what's up with NVidia's drivers?

I'm comfortable installing custom vBios's, I did it with my Lenovo Y500 a year ago.

Oh I finished the theme for the computer imgur: the simple image sharer

 

I'm sorry, at this time there is no date.

 

RL can often get in the way of community projects.

 

Ooh, as someone with a P370EM I'm quite interested in the new heatsinks, none of that CPU/GPU sharing stuff from my model. Anyone know if those are available separately? I'm just about to go in to add copper shims anyway so I'm taking another look at decreasing temperatures on this laptop.

 

Yes I'm almost certain once there's enough stock the heatsinks can be bought separately. I'm definitely going to try it out on my 780M, the one piece construction and void-filling foam will hopefully help enhance airflow and decrease temps by a touch.

Also, that triple heat CPU heatsink would've worked great on Haswell given how hot it runs (I have a thread about it here), but Clevo will have to redesign the slave GPU heatsink to prevent heat dumping from the CPU.

 

Yes because people cried out for the heatsinks to made separate without understanding the implications. They do actually listen to the forums for better or worse in some cases.

 

I bought an NVidia shield for my NP9377 I'm excited to see it in action. I picked up a 64GB micro sd card for $20 off eBay.
Will I be able to upgrade the 880m's in sli to the next generation gpu's assuming there still MxM 3.0b (and fit the heatsink)?
Will I need a vbios mod for it to work?

 

I like the theme looks good

 

Well it's good that they at least pay attention to the users. But the design in the P370EM was just not up to snuff, I mean having a void large enough to poke one's pinkie into just isn't good for the slave GPU.

And while we're on this topic, I'd like to see Clevo implement a MUX and use 4 pin fans for manual fan control. With both of those implemented, I see no reason to <del>get abducted by an alien</del> grab an Alienware over a Clevo apart from brand loyalty/flashy looks/for some reason you want an 18.4" laptop.

 

First, nice review.

I know the processor I'll likely get (i7-4910MQ) supports virtualization, but I just wanted to be certain the 9377 does.

I'll be doing plenty of VM work when I'm not gaming.

Thanks!

 

Clevo deliberately lock fan control. Too many users baking their systems.

 

Is it really that easy to completely screw up fan curves and cook your system dead?

 

sager noob here, not sure which category of sager owner's lounge the np9377 belongs to?

 

It's a new model that thus far doesn't have its own lounge yet. Although it could be lumped with the 9380/9390 since it's basically an updated 9390.

 

People have been using the NP9370 thread which is the previous model. Very similar except for GPU refresh http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...clevo-p370em-sager-np9370-owner-s-lounge.html

 

You can see details on this chip here: ARK | Intel® Core™ i7-4910MQ Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)

It supports VT-d, VT-x, and VT-x EPT.

Pretty much all the latest Intel technologies are supported by this chip.

 

Thanks, HTWingNut!

Just wanted to be certain.