Sager NP9377 / Clevo P377SM-A Review by HTWingNut

Originally driving cars was a problem. Frame dips into the teens. The new nVidia drivers fixed that but the game has frozen the system twice and this morning I was playing and got the "Watch Dogs has stopped working" message.

Since nothing else is crashing, I'm assuming its a Watch Dogs problem. It sucks to pay 70 bucks for a game just to have it crash but hey, that's Ubisoft.

 

Yeah ubisoft and pc gaming have always had a shaky relationship.

 

Its not much better on the consoles. I have a PS4 but I refuse to pay 70 bucks to play a game at less than 1080p and fixed at 30FPS to boot.

Live and learn, I guess. uPlay is down right now so neither consoles nor PC's can play. Go Ubisoft.

I hope its not something with the machine but I checked my temps and I'm running 70s on the 880s under load and 80 on the CPU.

 

900p 30 fps for the psu and 780p 30fps for the xb1 i believe.

 

Yeah 792p for the XB1 but close enough.

Still unacceptable given the rather poor graphics quality of the console versions.

Then again, they're probably not freezing and crashing... Once logged in anyway.

 

So will flashing the vbios of my sager np9377 from this link work for me in sli?

NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks

 

Well considering who is posting that you would have had a notice if it did not.

 

I am looking forward to buy this laptop. But before placing an order, I want to know the difference between the NP9377 and NP9377-S. Can anyone please tell me?

 

BOTH models, the NP9377 AND the NP9377 - S are the EXACT machine. The S or Special Edition is just a higher configuration starting point.

If you are going to build a more fully configured system for your order, wanting more upgrades, it is good to go for the S model, it should save you some money in the end....

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Anyone know if the P377SM is compatible with the GTX 780m? I know it was released with the 880m and they are essentially the same card but I'd just like to know. If so, will the 780m SLi work with the 120Hz display?

 

It does not happen often so i have not heard of someone trying. The 120hz should work assuming it's a 120hz chassis, but 3d may not work.

 

Thanks Meaker, guess someone will have to find out. anyone know where in the UK can I get me a Clevo barebones with the backlit UK keyboard and 120Hz display?

 

I don't know of anyone doing it barebones but I have to admit I have not looked that hard.

 

Thanks for this very informative review ...

I'm in the market for a new laptop and have had my eye on this model for it's relative bang-for-the-buck value. My usage will be primarily photo editing, light video editing, web surfing, and light gaming. (I'll be going for a non-SLI configuration with the 880 Card and a 512 or so SSD hard drive, as I use external hard drives for storage)

Temperature is a concern of mine, and most of the suppliers are offering an IC Diamond upgrade on the CPU and GPU, but Xoticpc offers an additional "cooling option" with a "cooper cooling upgrade" for 85 bucks ...

But based on your photographs, it appears the machine already comes with a good amount of copper heatsinks and tubing ... is this standard for this model?

Would what Xoticpc offers be of any additional benefit if this is indeed standard?

Thanks in advance ....

 

I had the copper cooling upgrade, that's what the heatsinks are.

In using this machine, I can't recommend it if you plan to do anything heavy with it. The out of the box experience is fine but the 880M is currently broken with nVidia saying they are working on a vbios fix and the heatsinks are not flat which results in higher temperatures than they would be otherwise.

With that said, out of the box it's a decent machine but with some tweaking, it gets better. The 880M really is a flop of a card though. I wouldn't recommend buying a machine right now, rumors put the 980M coming very soon (Oct/Nov) and I've already had to replace my 880s once. They really are terrible cards. They are faster than the 780M is stock but they still aren't as fast as they should be and they run 5-8C hotter as a 780M does clocked to the same speed, likely culprit being the 8GB of RAM.

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Thanks for the quick reply ... I had you in mind knowing the issues you've had with this card .. (been reading these threads for a good two weeks now ..)

However, a lot of the suppliers are packaging the nice 120hz , 72% Gamut screen with the 880 card only ... if the standard screen is almost as good, I could live with it ....and dropping down to a single 870 card with 6gb , and 16 gb of standard RAM puts this much more withing my buget!

I'm starting to think this is the way to go ...what do you think? ... I'm not one to tweak a system much and want a speedy machine out of the box ....

thanks ....

 

... oh, and getting the copper upgrade is still within my buget!

 

I haven't been seeing the issues with the 870M that the 880M has, that may be a better option, just make sure the 870M can play the games you want it to. Reviews put it under the 780M but over the 770M which is still a pretty strong card and MUCH lower temps.

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The extra copper ramsinks should be used in conjunction with drilled holes in the base cover and a cpu cooler underneath to get an improvement in load temperatures from them.

 

870M is about 10-15% slower than 780M at stock. If you fancy a little overclocking you could probably bring them up to 780M performance. Just keep an eye out for temps.

 

It would be a little behind at higher resolutions but yes some delicate tweaking can get things moving along.

 

After finally running a full battery of benchmarks, I've come to the conclusion that the 880M benchmarks on NotebookCheck are correct and that if you get the 880M expecting those numbers, you won't be disappointed.

There is no doubt that there is much more performance that is currently locked down tight but I did every single benchmark they did (although Specviewperf crashed and I didn't feel like letting that run again) and was above all of their numbers because I'm running Prema's modded BIOS (the machine they tested was a Clevo SLI machine as well, presumably with the stock BIOS). Since I based my purchase decision on the numbers I saw on that site, I've shut the core monitoring off on my OSD and left the temperatures, CPU temp, and framerate on, and I'm just going to stop complaining because I'm getting the performance that I expected to get before I came on NBR and found out the cards are locked down

So yeah, anyone looking to buy this machine with 880Ms should look at notebookcheck because that's the performance you will get out of the box. If you're happy with those numbers, call it a day, just don't expect much more without putting in a lot of work.

 

The 880M is effectively pre-overclocked by nvidia.

 

Ehhhh... Its a broken implementation.

I decided to bump them down to 849 @0.896v - 72C max and totally stable. 954MHz @0.981v 82C max but I don't need anything faster than a 780M really and its nice because if I want to game without fan noise, the fans never spin up @849MHz because they hit 83C max and the fan curve kicks into high at 87C.

Huge win!

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It's as fast as you can get given the power limit, going faster requires more wattage.

 

Their power limit should be raised. There is no excuse for setting a policy that doesn't even allow for stock vase clock. And it appears Asus agrees since their 4GB cards bench around 5% higher than an 8GB 880M.

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780M Classified 8GB Edition WITHOUT ACX cooler

 

Then it goes out of power spec pretty quick.

I don't agree with the settings, a 780M with a slight bump in clocks and power would have been better but to a tweaker it does not matter anyway.

 

Well the 4GB 880M is a 780M with higher clocks. I would be curious to see an MXM board with one but it seems to be Asus exclusive.

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Asus create their own board so may have played around with power levels (the vbios is in the system bios too).

 

anyone know where the location of the 2nd ssd bay is?