Sager NP9773 / Clevo P770ZM-G with i7-4790k, GTX 980m with G-Sync Review by HTWingNut INTRODUCTION
SPECS
APPEARANCE
COMPONENTS
- Ports
- Software
- Touchpad: Synaptics
- Keyboard: Full Size with Numberpad
- Wireless: Qualcomm Killer 1525 802.11AC
- RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3L
- Storage: Samsung SM851 M.2 PCIe
- LCD: LG LP173WF4-SPD1 1080p Matte
CPU and GPU
- CPU: Intel i7-4790K Desktop Socket 1150 CPU
-- CPU Benchmarks
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980m 8GB GDDR5 5000MHz
G-SYNC
GAMING BENCHMARKS
POWER and COOLING
- Power Draw
- CPU and GPU Temperatures
- Battery Life
CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION:
Clevo has stepped up their game with 17" notebooks with the P770ZM-G introducing a quality 75Hz LG IPS 1920x1080 FHD LCD, but more importantly, Nvidia's new G-Sync technology. LPC-Digital has provided a Sager NP9773 based on the P770ZM-G as a review sample to share my experiences with you. So be sure to thank them and at least
pay their site a visit if you are considering a new Sager laptop.
G-sync technology I think will be difficult to portray in words or images because it has everything to do with minute details of syncing GPU and LCD frames to eliminate any amount of stutter or tearing noticeable as an inherent result of LCD technology. But I will do my best to share the experience analytically and how it improves (or not) the general gaming experience.
SPECS:
First and foremost though, let's look at the system specifications of the system being reviewed:
Sager NP9773-S (Clevo P770ZM-G)
17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) LG IPS Matte 75Hz G-Sync Compatible Monitor
Intel Core i7-4790k *DESKTOP* CPU 4-4.4GHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980m 8GB GDDR5 with Nvidia G-Sync
Kingston HyperX 2x8GB (16GB total) DDR3L 1866MHz CL10 RAM
Qualcomm Killer Wireless AC 1525 M.2
Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe 512GB SSD
1TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit
230W 19.5V 4-prong power supply (330W optional)
Weight: 8lbs 11oz
Dimensions: 16.5 x 11.1 x 1.5 inches
APPEARANCE
The NP9773 is built with the same chassis as the NP9772, both based on the P770ZM just that the NP9773 or P770ZM-G includes the Nvidia G-sync technology and accompanying LCD. The black surface of the lid and keyboard surround and palm rest have a soft touch surface. Hard angle styling cues adorn the lid giving it a stealth-like appearance.
Sager NP class notebooks are typically considered gaming laptops first and foremost, yet the only visual indications of this are the WSAD keys highlighted by squares around the letters, and the multi-color backligthing, which is easily disabled. The sleek black no bling exterior could easily pass as a business type notebook where nobody would be any wiser, yet it packs the punch of a gaming desktop.
The bezel surrounding the 17.3 inch 1080p LCD is matte black hard plastic and reasonably thin, at only about 1/2" at the sides and bottom with about 3/4" at the top. The bottom of the laptop is comprised of a black matte hard plastic like the bezel around the LCD. Two rear back vents are glossy black with some stylish appeal matching the rest of the laptop, allowing ample open space for airflow.
A strip of light is centered at the vertical front edge below the touchpad that is tied to the keyboard backlighting. A speaker bar runs the width of the laptop between the LCD hinges with the chrome power button and status lights centered beneath the speaker bar.
Underneath the laptop, there are two removable panels. One removes with four screws that exposes the CPU and GPU and associated heatsinks and fans, as well as two of the four RAM slots, and one of the two M.2 SATA slots. The other panel opens up after removing two screws, exposing three drive bays, two 2.5" bays that can each accommodate up to 9.5mm height drives, and one M.2 PCIe/SATA slot.
As far as laptops go, this one is heavier than your typical laptop, but not by much, and in my humble opinion, every ounce is well utilized considering it houses a desktop CPU and the fastest mobile GPU, the GTX 980m, nearly equivalent to a desktop 970.
Overview video can be seen here:
VIDEO
COMPONENTS
Ports: From the left side at the back moving towards the front you have the gigabit ethernet, three USB 3.0 ports, SD card slot, eSATA/USB 3.0 combo port, along the front edge at the right are the power and battery status lights. Over on the right moving from front to rear, ther is a single USB 3.0 port, and the four 3.5mm audio jacks: SPDIF, headphone, microphone, and audio in, with a Kensington lock port at the rear. Along the back edge of the laptop is an HDMI port, two full size DisplayPort jacks and the four pin power port.
Software: Sager offers a number of useful utilities for free with the laptop, and ordering the system with Windows 8.1 pre-loaded did not install any additonal bloatware or shareware or other unnecessary apps. What it does come with is the following:
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Clevo Control Center that offers convenient access to power profiles, limited fan speed configuration, enabling/disabling devices like the webcam, touchpad, and Windows key, and launching other apps like Flexikey, Sound Blaster X-Fi, and Intel Extreme Tuning Utility.
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Flexikey has a powerful Macro editor and also allows programming of the three zone backlit keyboard and the light strip along the front edge of the keyboard
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Sound Blaster X-Fi enhances the audio with presets as well as user configurable SBX, EAX, and VoiceFX
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Intel Extreme Tuning Utility is Intel's free overclocking utility which offers easy slider changing of clock speeds, voltages, and a number of boost and TDP related options.
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Killer Network Manager of course is only offered if you get the Killer wireless card which this sytem came equipped with. It offers packet prioritization and network statistics.
Touchpad: A large 4.25" x 2.5" Synaptics multi-point touchpad is centered below the spacebar with two independent soft click buttons positioned on either side of the fingerprint reader. The touchpad is responsive and has not exhibited any errant movement during use of the keyboard or while resting my palms on the palm rest. Of course it can also be quickly disabled and enabled through use of a Fn key combo. The individual mouse buttons are quiet to click and have a deep travel, but activate before the buttons bottom out. A fingerprint reader sits between the two mouse buttons.
Speakers: Speakers have been the Achille's Heel of Sager laptops from the last few years. Even though the Sager NP9773 continues to use Onkyo speakers, they are vastly improved on the NP9773 over other models. Perhaps the larger size laptop with speakers aimed at the laptop user, and decent sized subwoofer helps in this aspect. Audio is crisp and clean with good positional audio. The included SoundBlaster X-fi app also helps improve the audio quality and volume, and offers tuning options if one is so inclined.
Keyboard: Clevo carries over their full size three zone backlit island keyboard from the P750ZM and P770ZM into the P770ZMG. There is little flex with regular use, although increased pressure can cause the keyboard to flex at the YUI/GHJK area, but it hasn't been an issue or noticable with typing or gaming in any way. It does not have island keys, but square key caps spaced tightly together.
The keyboard is common between the 15" and 17" versions, and despite it being a good quality keyboard, it would be nice for Clevo to develop a unique keyboard on the 17" laptops to take advantage of the added width. There is no space between the keyboard and numberpad which can lead to some errant key presses if you're not used to this type of layout. One unique issue I noticed, and not sure if it is an issue with Windows or the keyboard, but repeat rate is reduced compared with other laptop keyboards I use regularly.
Programming the keyboard backlight is managed through the Flexikey software provided with the system. Each of the three zones, four if you count the bar light at the front, can be individually programmed for color. They can also be programmed for different effects like breathing, random cycling, dance, flash, etc.
Wireless: Sager offers the option of Intel 7265AC or Killer 1525 AC 802.11AC M.2 wireless cards, this specific Sager NP9773 review model came with the Qualcomm Killer 1525 AC M.2 wireless adapter. Large files sustained about 47MB/s on average about 25 feet unobstructed from the Asus 802.11AC router, and small file sizes transferred at about 5-10 MB/s
RAM: Considering the Sager NP9773 comes with a desktop CPU it is only fitting that this laptop is equipped with fast DDR3L RAM. The system can accommodate up to four sticks of DDR3L 1.35V laptop RAM up to 8GB each for 32GB total RAM, and this laptop comes with two sticks of Kingston HyperX DDR3L 8GB RAM running at 1833MHz at CAS 9. The RAM is automatically detected at 1866MHz and 16GB is ample RAM for most any task out there, and no issue for gaming. But if you need more RAM there are two additional slots available to add your own. The two primary sticks that Sager installs are located underneath the keyboard. The other two slots are under the main panel under the laptop easily accessible.
CPU-Z RAM Information
Storage: As noted earlier, there are four storage slots, one M.2 SATA/2x PCIe slot (with "B" key) accommodating up to 80mm length cards, one M.2 PCIe 2x or 4x or SATA slot up to 80mm length cards (with "M" key), and two 2.5" 9.5mm max height drive bays. This particular model came equipped with a Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x SSD and a 1TB 2.5" 7200RPM hard drive.
Note that you cannot equip two 4x M.2 PCIe SSD's since the second slot is only an M.2 SATA SSD slot and keyed so that only SATA drives or 2x PCIe drives will fit ("B" key - 6 pins). The primary M.2 SSD slot can accommodate either PCIe 2x, 4x, or SATA M.2 variants ("M" key - 5 pins). So it is possible to RAID two SATA M.2 SSD's or two 2x PCIe M.2 SSD's, but honestly not sure why one would desire this considering a single M.2 PCIe drive can easily outperform a set of M.2 SATA drives with performance restricted by the SATA bus or 2x PCIe.
The SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD is Samsung's latest high speed SSD champ, with a whopping theoretical throughput of 2150 MB/s sequential read and 1200 MB/s sequential write speeds, easily blowing through the 600 MB/s max throughput offered by SATA 3. Granted the M.2 slot is limite to 4x PCIe which equates to maximum throughput of 1600 MB/s where about 1350 MB/s sequential transfers were achieved in benchmarking. Performance is high across the board when it comes to larger file sizes but smaller files size performance is about on par with some of the faster SATA drives available with actual speeds of about 45 MB/s Read and 125 MB/s write with a 4k file size.
Drives like the SM951 are fast, very fast, but it comes at the cost of heat. In the NP9773, the drive idles at about 45-48C and even higher if there's other 2.5" drives populated in the compartment with it. It also can quickly attain 80C with sustained writes, and was actually having throttling issues once the temps hit 80C and was difficult even getting a full CrystalDiskMark or Atto benchmark completed without throttling. Thankfully LPC-Digital and Sager attempted to address the concern. They provided two thermal pads which helped slow the rise in temperature to 80C, although with extended file copies the temps would still rise to 80C. The cool down time from 80C to 50C was about three minutes with the pads installed, and about seven or eight without them.
Aside from the CrystalDiskMark and Atto benches, I also ran three file copy scenarios:
- copy 40GB disk image file:
565 MB/sec
- copy 5 ISO files totaling 17GB:
620 MB/sec
- copy FlightGear Folder consisting of 1.2GB with 1433 folders with 11673 files:
75 MB/sec
All files were copied from and to the same Samsung drive, because it would result in the largest load. Copying from a SATA SSD would still be limited by the SATA speeds and not stress the SSD as much. In any case, the drive temps approached 80C during all three tests but none of them reached it, highest was 77C, and normal drive performance was maintained.
LCD: Considering this is a G-Sync laptop, a quality monitor is a necessity and as far as 17.3" laptop LCD's are concerned, there are few choices out there at the moment. Thankfully though Clevo and I'm sure with involvement by Nvidia, Sager can offer a quality 1920x1080 IPS 75Hz LCD. It is pretty much the ONLY option at the moment to go with a G-sync laptop, but thankfully it is a very good eDP LCD. No 4k LCD's exist that I am aware of for 17.3" laptops let alone one that supports G-sync. But personally I would rather have a 1080p LCD with G-sync to offer the high frame rates that it deserves.
The specific LCD in this laptop is the LG LP173WF4-SPD1 1080p matte. Windows Device Manager shows it as Hardware ID LGD046C. Details can be found at Panelook if you desire:
http://www.panelook.com/LP173WF4-SPD1_LG Display_17.3_LCM_overview_24463.html
17" LCD with 75Hz refresh even though paper specs call it out as a 60Hz LCD.
Viewing angles are excellent, as are brightness, contrast, and overall color reproduction. I'm not sure of the exact refresh rate, but there has been zero issues with ghosting or lag. It is plenty fast for this LCD at 75Hz, which technically would require about 13-14ms refresh to avoid any ghosting issues. It is also possible to overclock the LCD some more, some users have clocked this same panel up to 100Hz, although each LCD is different, but honestly 75Hz seems to be plenty adequate for gaming at 1080p with the 980m and using G-sync.
I was able to overclock the LCD to 100Hz using Nvidia Control Panel, but G-sync in full screen would still only run at 75Hz. If you enabled G-sync in Windowed mode, you could run at 100Hz. Not sure if this is a driver issue or encoded in the vBIOS or just part of a G-sync limitation.
Unfortunately these photos don't do the LCD justice. I do not see what looks like the blue washout at angles, just shows up in the photo for some reason.
CPU and GPU
Overview of CPU and GPU video can be seen here, at 17:00 mark:
VIDEO
CPU: Intel i7-4790k One desire of most any laptop, PC, or PC gaming enthusiast is the ability to have removable components. The NP9773 offers all that, storage drives, RAM, wireless cards, GPU and even the CPU, despite all Intel mobile CPU's have all become integrated chips soldered directly to the motherboard. Thankfully the Clevo P770ZM-G offers a desktop CPU instead of a mobile one, and accommodates any FCLGA1150 socket CPU. Aside from being socketed, the i7-4790k offers tuning abilities through Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (aka XTU) for overclocking, underclocking, and voltage adjustments for improved performance or cooling, whatever the user desires. But this also means the cooling needs to be substantial to manage the 88W TDP chip, where most mobile CPU's are around 45W to 47W TDP. The cooling system is sufficient, and with some tuning, primarily voltage drop and slight underclock, can maintain 80C peak temps at 4.0 to 4.1 GHz without any throttling, for sustained periods of time. But more on the cooling system later.
CPU-Z Desktop and Mainboard Info
Some users may wonder why not go for a lower TDP CPU considering this is a laptop and all, like the i7-4790s at 65W or an i5 even (which lacks hyperthreading), instead of the i7-4790k with 88W TDP. The answer is simple, flexibility. The i7 "k" series of CPU's are unlocked and offer the flexibility to adjust CPU clocks and voltages as desired. Granted this is usually used to overclock in a desktop scenario, but it can also be used to underclock and undervolt for better thermal control. The i7-4790k can go down to 4GHz minimum with four cores, but this seems to offer a significant drop in temps while not affecting overall performance noticeably. Users might also want to consider the i7-4770k which has a base clock speed of 3.5GHz vs the 4.0GHz of the i7-4790k.
A desktop CPU also means more power to fuel the powerful GTX 980m, as well as offer improved performance for productivity apps like AutoCAD, Photoshop, video encoding, compiling code, etc. While the performance of the i7-4790k was evaluated fully in the Sager NP9752 (Clevo P750ZM aka "Batman") review I did earlier this year, I have provided a handful of CPU benchmarks for reference. Temperatures are evaluated in the cooling section of this review.
CPU BENCHMARKS
A few CPU specific benchmarks were run in two conditions:
- Stock Settings
- CPU at 4GHz and -50mV undervolt
Benchmarks run:
- Cinebech R15
- wPrime
Lower clock and voltage did help overall CPU temps and power consumption considerably and you can see it also did not adversely affect general CPU performance by a large margin.
Cinebench R15
wPrime 2.10
x264 v5.0
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980m Nvidia has been naughty lately with their whole debacle with desktop 970 cards and the performance issues when GPU vRAM usage exceeded 3.5GB, and then blocking any kind of overclocking with mobile GPU's both through a lock bit in the GPU themselves and in the drivers. Thankfully those items have been addressed, at least partially, but there's no doubting that the 980m is *THE* supreme ruler of mobile video cards today. The 980m in the Sager NP9773 continues to use the tried and true MXM 3.0b form factor meaning it not only has its own PCB separate from the laptop motherboard, it's also removable and replaceable. Its 8GB of GDDR5 5000MHz vRAM on a 256-bit bus offers a high performance package in a mobile form factor that can eat up games at 1080p at maximum details, most running well over 60FPS.
Considering the requirements of G-sync, no Optimus is used or supported on the NP9773, but for users that want this laptop, that is a good thing. Battery life will be short, but likely not a consideration for most wanting a laptop like this. This means you have direct control over the GTX 980m in the Nvidia Control Panel and not having to pass through the Intel GPU.
Specs of the GTX 980m can be <a href="
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-980m/specifications ">found at Nvidia's website</a> but I will reiterate them here:
CUDA Cores: 1536
Base Clock: 1038MHz with Boost up to 1126MHz
Video RAM: 8GB 256-bit 5000MHz effective
Memory Bandwidth: 160 GB/sec
DirectX 12 capable with 12.1 API
The 980m is possible to overclock using the appropriate drivers. 353.06 drivers were used during the testing of the NP9773 which were the latest WHQL offered by Nvidia at the time. Of course overclocking is limited to +135MHz over stock, resulting in 1173MHz at stock running up to 1261MHz with Boost using a utilitiy like NvidiaInspector. vRAM overclock peaked at +300MHz or 5600MHz effective compared with 5000MHz stock.
On the down side, the 980m tends to throttle... slightly. Clock speeds and voltage tend to fluctuate with regular gaming. However, clock speed rarely goes down or below stock speed, and remains in the zone somewhere between stock and full boost speed. Even with a +135MHz overclock, it would throttle between the new "stock" speed (at +135MHz) and the ful lboost, so it will still benefit from that overclock. Note that Prema is working on a vBIOS that eliminates that throttling and offers a consistent clock speed and voltage. LPC-Digital went to bat for me though and discussed the throttling issue with Sager, but Sager did not have an answer for it at the time of this writing. Thankfully Prema will likely come to our rescue with an improved vBIOS to eliminate these bottlenecks.
G-SYNC I think we've seen performance of the 980m enough from various reviews, so I decided to focus on the G-Sync aspect, although a multitude of synthetic and gaming benchmarks were still performed and results will be shown for those.
If this is the first time you've heard of G-sync, let me just say it's basically a dynamic Vsync, so your LCD and GPU frames are rendered and displayed in sync all the time resulting in a very smooth video display experience that is completely tear and stutter free up to the maximum refresh rate of the LCD. Additionally, this benefits the user by eliminating input lag associated with typical vsync.
One limitation is that the max FPS is also limited to the refresh rate of the LCD, so the 75Hz refresh of the LG IPS LCD in this NP9773 laptop would restrict FPS to 75MHz maximum. G-sync can be easily enabled or disabled across the board, however, through the Nvidia control panel with a simple click of a check box and selecting Apply. It can also be engaged by specific game like most other options through the Nvidia control panel.
G-Sync will not work with any LCD either. It requires a G-sync license in the same manner as 3D displays do, and must be accompanied by a white listed eDP LCD. G-Sync will also only work with the integrated LCD in the laptop, so any DisplayPort external LCD's will require their own G-sync capable monitor.
Since I am not a degreed computer scientist nor have the equipment to perform such precise measurements and video capture, I will link you to an excellent article at Blur Busters. They explain in very good detail, about the finer workings of G-Sync and also Input Lag.
Part 1: G-sync Fluidity
Part 2: G-sync Input Lag
For what it's worth, here's a video running the Nvidia Pendulum Demo for G-sync as well as Grand Theft Auto V and Metro Last Light Redux with and without G-sync. I don't know that you'll gain anything from it considering the low quality camera I used, encoding process, and compression from YouTube it will lose any fidelity that is worthwhile. But here it is nevertheless.
VIDEO
Enabling G-sync is as simple as choosing the option in the Nvidia Control Panel, and can also be individually selected by game. There is little to no control over anything, but that's OK, it just works.
Enabling G-sync in Nvidia Control panel
Playing games with G-sync enabled in general is an improved visual experience. There is no downside that I could tell, however, it all depends on the game as well how much it improves the visual acuity of the game. Some games run great out of the box and can maintain 60FPS or 75FPS nearly all the time with low frame times, resulting in an already great visual feel. Other games, are just a wreck all around when it comes to frame rates, frame times, and overall video playback. Battlefield 4 online was an entirely different and vastly improved game with G-sync, whereas games like Grid 2 it was hardly noticeable.
G-sync is also only able to improve the gameplay experience within a fixed set of FPS. I found anything above 30 up to the 75 FPS maximum allowed was very fluid. Anything below 30 FPS just can't be fixed depending on what your eyes can detect. So it's not really a saving grace for underpowered GPU's that can hardly keep up at 30FPS, but moreso for higher end GPU's that can maintain FPS over 30, preferably over 50FPS.
Without a high frame rate video camera and high frame rate playback, it's difficult to portray the video experience through the likes of YouTube or other online video service, so I will do my best to explain the experience. You literally have to see it to believe it. I also thought about what makes for a fluid display experience, and one thing that came to mind was frametimes. So I measured frametimes along with the FPS of a handful of games.
Befere G-sync, there were essentially only a few options users could implement to help improve the visual experience and minimze tearing and stuttering, but they had their own caveats: V-sync, Frame Limiting, and High response/refresh LCD.
An untouched system with no G-sync or any kind of V-sync will throw up a frame as soon as the video card finishes rendering it. This can result in variable frame times depending on the frame being rendered which can also result in a less than ideal experience. Aside from the tearing tha can occur if frame times are high enough, they can also contribute to high visible stutter despite a high FPS.
Frame limiting is also commonly used to keep tearing under control. By limiting the top FPS below the maximum refresh rate of the LCD, it should minimize tearing, but frame times will be no different than a system that hasn't been altered in any way.
Traditional V-sync will constantly adjust to one of the applicable LCD frequencies or ones divisible by it which can result in a jerky experience if FPS of maximum refresh of the LCD cannot be maintained. Frame times typically will also be affected adversely as well as it bounces from one refresh to another.
G-sync should be the most smooth because LCD will constantly remain in sync with the rendering frame rate of the GPU, which also should result in consistent frame times. In theory at least.
So I took nine game benchmarks to test this theory and ran with four different scenarios mentioned above:
- Stock system with no V-sync, G-sync, or Frame limitation, I call this "No-Sync" (TM HTWingNut 2015)
- Frame limited to max refresh of LCD, in this case 75FPS/Hz using MSI Afterburner / RivaTuner
- Traditional V-sync (not adaptive) through Nvidia Control Panel
- G-sync enabled through Nvidia Control Panel
The frame times of these results were graphed on top of each other to check if frame times were positively or adversely affected in any way due to G-sync and how it compared to No-sync, V-sync, and FPS limit. Resultant FPS were also graphed.
Results from the frame times are a little ambiguous, but it appears that those games with high FPS that ran closer to the LCD refresh limit, resulted in the most consistent frame times. No-sync resulted in better frame times some of the time, but they also had a much larger span overall, meaning more variation. Granted, frame times in general were well below 30ms so any variation would hardly be noticeable.
The FPS is also as expected, peaking at 75Hz with G-sync, V-sync, and Frame limit, while going to maxium limit with nothing restricting the frame rate. It is also clear that 75Hz is a good match refresh for a 980m at 1080p if you desire maximum details, since the 980m does not greatly exceed this frame rate in most cases.
Traditional synthetic benchmarks were also run, and you can see that general performance numbers were not gimped much by enabling G-sync. But of course to determine maximum performance G-sync should be disabled.
GAMING BENCHMARKS Most of the game benchmarks shown here can be seen in this YouTube video provided here:
VIDEO
Synthetic and gaming benchmarks were run with three scenarios:
- Stock settings
- GPU Overclocked +135MHz GPU / +600MHz vRAM (1260 boost, 5600 MHz vRAM effectove), with CPU undervolted and underclocked to 4GHz and undervolted -50mV
- Stock settings G-sync enabled
GPU overclocked from stock 1038MHz with boost to 1126MHz to +135 of 1173MHz with boost to 1261MHz and GDDR5 vRAM from 5000MHz to 5600MHz.
You can see that undervolting and dropping CPU clocks slightly but overclocking the GPU improved minimum FPS overall. And with the CPU clocks reduced to 4GHz and undervolted, even with the GPU overclocked, the overall power consumption was dropped considerably as were CPU and GPU temps. The i7-4790k temperatures dropped from 6 to 14 degrees C cooler with an average of 9C cooler, with peak temps dropping from a span of 80 to 91C to 71 to 79C. GPU temps dropped from 0 to 6C cooler with an average of 2C, and power consumption dropped, spanning from 1 to 22W with 12W drop on average with peak of 234W in Witcher 3 dropping down to 216W.
ARTIFICIAL BENCHMARKS
Spoiler
3DMark 11
3DMark Fire Strike
Catzilla 1.4
Unigine Heaven
GAME BENCHMARKS
Spoiler
ArmA 3
Batman Arkham Knight
Bioshock Infinite
Crysis 3
Grid 2
Grand Theft Auto V
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief
Witcher 3
POWER AND COOLING
Power The Sager NP9773 can be ordered with either a 230W or 330W power supply. At stock and with the limitations of the +135MHz GPU core clock overclock, the 230W power supply seems like it would be adequate, however it can't hurt to bump up the power supply for a cooler and longer running power supply if you plan to game often.
Power draw results show power in Watts as drawn from the wall. Actual laptop usage will be 10-15% less due to an efficiency factor of the power supply. These results are all from using the 330W power supply as well. Note that power draw in general was less with an overclocked 980m but running the CPU 200Mhz slower at 4GHz.
Also, there are no real inherent power advantages or disadvantages to using G-sync.
Cooling The CPU and GPU share a common heatsink/heatpipe assembly, although there are two fans, one that primarily cools the CPU and one that primarily cools the GPU. Basically four pipes run off the GPU with two pipes shared with the CPU and the CPU also having an additional dedicated three heatpipes going to its own fan. It's quite a heavy mass of copper used to cool these components but necessary considering the nearly 200W TDP components it has to cool. The heatsink is painted black, assuming for appearance purposes but probably also to protect from any oxidation.
Note the cooling system heatsinks, heatpipes, and fans and with it removed:
The two fans are quite powerful and can move a lot of air at full load. Fan speeds are customizable using the Clevo Control Center, and also full fans can be engaged at any time through the Clevo Control Center or by pressing the Fn+1 key combination if the noise is bearable at 100%. Otherwise even at max configurable 80% fan speed, the noise levels are not bad at all and tend to keep the system cool.
During benchmarking, in all cases, the stock fan profile was used. You can see results of CPU and GPU temps below.
Running the CPU at 4GHz with slight undervolt (-50mV) resulted in a much cooler running CPU and system overall. Idle temps run in low 50C's with light loads running up to low 70's but the fans barely kicked in. Peak loads during gaming wiht the tuned CPU rarely exceeded 80C.
G-sync doesn't seem to offer any improvements in cooling, but it's not detrimental either.
As far as the keyboard and surface temperatures are concerned, the keyboard at load was 35C or below everywhere but the center section which was about 40-41C. On the bottom it is very cool as well, under 40C across the board, although this laptop isn't real conducive to using on your lap, it won't scald you either if you do.
CPU: i7-4790k Temperatures
GPU: GTX 980m Temperatures
Battery Life When you buy a laptop like the Sager NP9773, you don't buy it for the battery life especially considering it runs a high end CPU and GPU with no power saving features like Optimus. But in any case, I guess in a pinch it can manage reasonable time on battery. Note that the CPU and GPU clocks are greatly restricted so one should not expected full performance as when plugged in. It can manage just under 2 hours with 1080p movie viewing if you turn off the keyboard backlight and set LCD to 50% brightness and set the laptop in Airplane mode turning off any wireless devices. Light web surfing it's possible to run a bit over two hours using same settings as above except of course with wireless devices turned on. In both cases it was run in power saving mode.
CONCLUSION
It's exciting to see Clevo offer G-sync in a notebook, and also ones housing desktop CPU's no less. G-sync definitely improved most gaming experiences, especially those that ran between 45-75FPS, except those games that are coded very well and run at high FPS, tight frame times, and never any stuttering or tearing to begin with like Grid 2. Couple G-sync with the 980m, desktop i7-4790k, and the 75Hz IPS LCD in the Sager NP9773, the package was definitely well rounded and performed admirably. G-sync did not negatively impact the system in any way for gaming, as frame times were consistent and low, overall gaming performance was as expected, and power and heat were in line with other test scenarios. The cooling system manages the heat very well, especially if you tune the CPU clocks and voltages a bit, without any detriment to overall gaming performance.
G-sync is something that has to be seen in person to fully appreciate. I can't say that it is a game changer, but it is definitely a vast improvement for games that are problematic with tearing and stuttering, and works across all FPS ranges from 30-75 FPS. In general the 980m provided very good frame times, below 30ms in most cases, and G-sync offered consistent frame times, even though typically slightly higher than a no synced configuration.
Where this system falters a bit is with voltage and speed throttling of the GTX 980m for no apparent reason. Performance was still in line with where it should be, but voltage and clock speeds should be consistent, not varying wildly. Also, while the Samsung SM951 is a very fast SSD, it also tends to run quite hot because it *is* a very fast SSD, which can result in throttling over 80C, which can be exceeded through lots of large file reads or writes, but likely never during regular desktop use.
Overall though, the Sager NP9773 is an excellent value and basically offers performance of a desktop gaming PC in a laptop form factor. I'd highly recommend it for any gamer looking for a mobile platform or general DTR.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
