Clevo D900F - Core i7 with Nvidia G280 GPU - the new king

with 20 mins of battery time...

 

It might be a bad motherboard design. My T60 got to the point that it would religiously blow the motherboard every few weeks. It was repaired by Lenovo every time.

All I did was take notes on the stupid thing.

 

Whoa this thread made it on Engadget's front page.

 

This is true. My original motherboard was a new board. My second board was supposed to be offered by Voodoo, but they annulled my warranty even though the owner of the company gave me the clear to paint my system. So when it broke, they wanted $950 for the board and installation. The board alone from them was $680. The only other place at the time which had the board at a halfway decent price was RJTECH. They had it for $480. I continued looking, and I found Z-TRONICS. I called and I found the board for $170. Well I took up on that. The boards were labeled as new, but clearly they are used. The first board was severly damaged. However the next boards all had problems with them, all of them being the same thing.
So at this point I finally got it working, and I put my laptop away. It will not be used anymore in case all of my other systems go down. So right now it sits in its steel box in working order.

What the moral of the story is, which I need to tell, is to do your research.
I bought my laptop before I joined nbr, and Gophn didnt have a million posts about it than. The only review their was, was by my friend Albert. He too had a near exact situation as I, except his board died first, and than his gpu burned out. He also got shafted by Voodoo, but the moral is to wait for professional reviews before buying something expensive. Believe me, if you spend alot and get a flawed piece of machinery you are going to get extremely pissed. Especially if you buy it from a company like Voodoo, who will lie and never fix anything for you. Do your research and follow up with people who have used it. Trust me, I know I used to gloat about how good the d900k was, and I sincerely PM'ed people who I told and told them I was sorry because the system really wasnt great. People get caught up in the little things, like most of you in this thread are. Sure the d900f looks excellent on paper, but it will never be great until it proves itself as reliable.
I cant enforce that enough. 100% of the time it is better to get a reliable system than something which is ridiculously fast, but only works 10% of the time.

K-TRON

 

So someone back in the first 2 pages or so said the AC adapter was a "brick" ....does that mean its like the size of the Xbox 360 Adapter? Or perhaps *gasp* bigger?

I can see that as a big hindrance to anyone who would seek this to be a "mobile" solution...But man...someone get me another bucket for my drool.

 

Clevo's high-end D900X systems have been using bricks that are similar in size to the Xbox360 brick for quite some time now. I think they're a LITTLE smaller (I've never compared them side-by-side), but they're definitely sizable. Still, "Brick" is a common term for any laptop AC adapter.

 

First, since when has NVidia within the past year or two released a GPU remotely similar to the desktop version?

Second, where are you getting the idea that a GTX 280 is on par with a 4870 X2? 4870 X2 trades blows with the GTX 295, it's entirely game and resolution dependent.

I'm not an ATI fanboy, the GTX 280 is an excellent card, but it's strengths are in things that simply cannot be transferred to a mobile market.

 

well... the mobile 8800M GTX, 9800M GT, 9800M GTX is using the G92 design of the desktop 8800 GT G92.

a number of reviews... I think the main ones I remember are from HardOCP.

But I think the 4870x2's are quite bang for the buck high-end.... compared to the outrageous prices to get an SLI GTX 280 set.

 

I'm not trying to be a condescending prick, but you really need to read up on the desktop GPU landscape.

They may be using G92 but they're using highly nerfed shaders and much, much lower clocks. The 9800M GTX is a 9600 GSO. At least the Mobility 4850 is just lower clocks, ala a faster desktop 4830 (Desktop 9800 GT/GTX), and the Mobility 4870 will run faster than a desktop 4850 (Desktop 9800 GTX/GTX+).

 

I agree that the mobile version of the desktop cards do get gimped slightly, but perform quite well for using so much less power.

the true mobile version of a desktop 8800 GT (G92)... is the Quadro FX 3700M.
- both with the same number of shaders = 128

the 9800M GTX is slightly slower with only 112 shaders.

 

Hey, the laptop world is changing rapidly and this technology is coming alot sooner then we thought. So Jlbright, and the rest of the nbr crew, lets just wait and see how it all goes down. nVidia might actually make it work and this GTX280 may actually be a gtx260 desktop equivalent. We never know.

All I am saying is lets just wait it out instead of coming to conclusions on our own.

 

LOL this post is famous. It's on Nvidia's stock info on google finance as well as engadget lol

 

Will the Asus W90 be better? it does have a ATI Mobility HD 4870 X2... http://laptoping.com/asus-w90.html

 

only time will tell... when the reviews come out.

 

We're all famous now. But for real, notebookreview comes up for anything remotely related to notebooks these days. I foudn it when I was looking to buy one, cause googling *laptop name* review comes up with this site.

 

Me thinks forums are extremely SEO friendly.

 

WOW!
This thing is going to scream, who said PC gaming is dead, with all the new great games and absolutely fantastic new hardware coming out in the next few months the future looks really good!
Un-frickenbeleivable!
And to those who say "Why would you want such a big laptop,I have a desktop that can perform just as well for half the price"
Because we do!

 

What about overclocking of the CPU? Considering the I7 920 can be clocked to 3.2ghz+ without voltage change, would this be possible within the thermal/wattage envelope of the notebook?

It would be a shame for great overclocker like the I7 920 to be limited in that department.

I wonder if mobile I7s will be out in Q4. The QX9300 have shown itself to be a good overclocker and almost on par with the desktop penryn CPUs at similar clock speeds.

 

I`d hardly think a core 2 duo can compete against an i7.

Don`t forget though, a notebook has limited cooling space, even though per say, the voltage would be enough.
Clevo has always brought the best of the best so I have no doubt it will definitely scream and be the fastest laptop on the planet. Again

 

Well, T9400 currently has 35W of TDP, P series has 25W. Where as i7 at the present tops at 130W. Yes, you would get more power on any i7 chip granted, but your comparing to a mobility chip, which is suppose to be easy on battery.

Kentsfield XE (QX6700/6800) first came out with same 130W TDP, though the likes of G0 stepping on Q6600 and Q6700 reduced it down to 95W; early this month, Core 2 Quad Q9550S came out with 65W of TDP, 2.833 GHz. What I'm saying is, that intel managed to reduce the TDP of their original quads by a halve with updated, almost identical but higher clocked chip.

It seems the history is repeating it self, new architecture comes alone, raw and powerful, but not refined; to be honest imo, its a bad time buying into i7 even in Q2 this year, not only intel refresh it many times with tweaks+features, price will also come down drastically.

But hay if you've got the money, want to keep up with latest, desktop i7 great, since mobility i7 doesn't turn up until this time next year; since this design has impressive cooling, slightly high TDP is nothing wrong; for those who get this, most are only going use it on a desk the battery as UPS anyway...

 

You are right rot, price/performance is important too.

 

Anyone want to guess the price range this thing will be in when fully loaded?

 

And in other news, half of the Notebookreview community declared bankruptcy half an hour after the release of the new Clevo D900F

 

what a monster!!!

too bad no many pc games now adays....so a good mid-high end lappy will do!!

but reaaaaaaaaaally great...

 

i wonder if the g280 will be a dual gpu to one board, since they never said this lappy was even sli...yet!

wording in articles is a mofo...

 

i think it will have to be SLI .. no way it wouldnt that woul just be stupid SLI is the future embrace it now thinking about it SLI 280's whoaaaaaaaa goodbye crysis lagging

im guessing 5000-6000(loaded since the priemium for the 280's and i7's will be ...alot....

edit -- i unno but im leaning more towards sli thn dual gpus on one board

 

First maybe i was wrong with you ktron, i can be lost in translation...
I was thinking you just kill 6 boards who was supposed to be new, i have to admit its not seem to be the case, so the resellers who sell you these bad boards are not honest.
I dont know voodoo because i live in a small old country, maybe they sucks.

i own a d901 and i never have any problem with this one, it rocks, i own a desktop too, and its not the same purpose of course. People who dont like laptop : dont even read this post !

So of course we have to wait for reviews about this new Clevo, but i m very confident about clevo's product right now...even if 900f is not out yet, it can be crap but i doubt about that...dont you say people "wait and see"...

Ktron, actually you seems skilled, so i wasnt joking : i m interesting with your homemade laptop ! i want to see it !
Sorry for my bad english again.

 

lol i7 is super fast why oc just to get more bench marks? lol it would be like sticking thermite in your mobo and if you've never seen thermite google it

and i cant wait ether but just saying it would run stuff just fine but i dun have the OC'er mentality

 

yes, one is hoping mr moo. sli/crossfire is the way of the future.. in terms of gaming

edit: i don't know about that over clocking bit...since the cpu is 130 watts... the quads in the d901 now are 95 watts and the extremes are 130 watts, but yet they still locked the bios.
it would be doable with one vga card or two very low watt vga cards, but the the 9800m gtx is something like 70+watts(speculation) or so....

 

Typically, Clevo is VERY careful about overclocking. Even on the M57RU and M57TU systems, overclocking is ONLY supported on the extreme edition processors (the BIOS locked it out otherwise). Given the much higher TDP on a Core i7 versus a Santa Rosa/Penryn/Montevina, I doubt Clevo will offer any OC options in the BIOS. I could be wrong, but if they do offer the option, bet on it only being available for Extreme Edition processors.

 

Wow awesome specs, can't wait to see what the price is. If it is half way decent I might have to upgrade but with the current state of PC Gaming, it probably won't be worth it. Either way I am glad to see beastly new hardware coming soon!

 

only one slight problem with that...the extreme cpus are rated at 130 watts and when over clocked run at about 150 watts or so....so it's looking more like a locked bios all the way around. this would be why some we're hoping it was built on a mobile platform. more room to work with in terms for watts....but wanting to be the first i7 laptop out does have his place though....

 

I really can't see this getting more than 1 hour of battery life, but I guess most people won't ever use this on their lap, or move it from the desk anyway.

I could see this going for about $2800 to $11,000 depending on the reseller and configuration, whereas $2800 would be the minimum config.

 

It will definitely surpass the D90xC in terms of pricing, the GPU and CPU alone are probably double the price of the older versions, if not triple...

 

For my own needs in my day to day job, if the D900F only comes with 2 memory slots, then I find it limited. I really hope they have 3 or 4 memory slots to support 12GB or 16GB.

 

two slots of DDR3 can go up to 16GB (2 x 8GB)... when those sticks become available.

 

actually if you can get a barebone. it would be about the same i think. i7 is not very expensive. especially the i7 920.

edit: ie for the price of a t9800, you can get a i7 940.

 

I don't see it coming in at more than the price of the 9262 was when it launched. This will likely be in Q4 of 09, where there will have been several price cuts on the current i7 lineup. Hopefully ATi's 48xx mobile lineup will have forced Nvidia to release its new cards at more competitive pricing, meaning sub-$500 for a G280M.

 

well...the i7 runs in slots of three for memory if i remember correctly...

battery life: it's a desktop replacement so most don't care

price wise: close to about what i paid for this one maybe a little more.
because i7 920's are only like 300 bucks. dual gtx's are around 1k. and given the g280..who knows... and adding them 2200 dollar ssd's would surely put you over the top. at around 14k, but with out them. around 5k

 

i7 920's have been selling post-tax for around $245 at Microcenter lately.

GTX 280's regularly drop to $300.

So it's reasonable to expect this won't be priced too high, yes, it'll be expensive, but no more than previous iterations of top end technology.

 

i'll give you that on the i7
but umm, that mobileg280 is going to be far more expensive.
2 9800m gtx's run 1k so more like 1300 to 1800 for two mobile versions. (speculation of course)

 

Keep the faith with me John! If the 4870 really does come out around $400, do you truly believe Nvidia will keep selling 98GTXs for $800?

 

you know i want to keep the faith, but if ati comes out with a 400 dollar mobile 4870 performing like the 3870's did with all that system wide over clocking to keep up while the gtx was just gpu over clocking..then nvidia just might stay with the off the wall pricing for it's mobiles....

watch what a 9800m gtx scores with an i7. with a qx9650 or q9550 it scores 13.5 now. all with no fsb or cpu over clocking...

 

I'm sure a 9800M GTX with an i7 would score high in 3dmark06 and Vantage, but how about games? So far, most games don't see a benefit of going i7; only the few CPU intensive games like GTA IV and SupCom will see a boost. Even a stock clocked QX9770 beats an OC'd 965EE in some games.

 

Yeah, and benches won't even matter... a 9800GTX with a Core i7... *drool*

I want nVidia to drop the $$$... but who knows... If 4870 stays processor dependent as john says...

 

Why i did not wait
& went and got a Alienware m17

anyone wants to buy my & $5000 Alienware m17 .....

 

when put against vantage mark, it would be easier to tell against real gaming.
example: 3870s did not perform well in vantage mark, but there are a few reasons for this. vantage mark doesn't acknowledge allot of them system tweaks people try to shoot in. from what i seen, it still over writes the system values with it's own. so you load up a negative lod bias or too many drops in ogl or d3d and vantage marks says...not today, not during my run you don't..lol (speculation of course) and when it came to gaming..allot of folks we're not truly satisfied. when they seen the 3dmark06 score, it was like this is the new champ of laptops, but when the gaming benchmarks started to filter through. they weren't where everybody thought they should be.... beating out a stock sli 9800m gtx rig at pure gaming.

3dmark06 is a speed test of sorts.

not sure about the qx9770 against an oc'd qx9650. so you could have a point there.

and as far as encoding or trans coding...i7 will smoke them all.
most like to game, but a vast majority do use these things for other things..especially if it's the only laptop some people have. and for those occasions...the i7 shows through. i game on mine, but i also use it for far more than just that....

and i have ran a few more gaming test and found that the cpu is used quite a bit in almost all games i have tried. dmc4/cod4-5/far cry 2/ but when spread across four cores (sometimes good some times bad) will turn the tide on gaming performance. so with i7's on some games you would have to drop down to 2 cores instead of running 8. (speculation of course) haven't had a chance to run one of those through the ringer yet.

 

Just so you know, he said qx9770 vs. i7 965. And yes, the only real improvements that i7 brought over the previous gen core 2 was hyperthreading.

 

You're joking right? What about the entire over-haul of changing from FSB to on-die memory controller, basically the only thing that AMD processors still had over Intel. Not to mention the triple-channel ram (although not available on this laptop).

Sure it might not be a huge leap on a lot of programs, but there are still many programs that are going to benefit a good amount from more memory bandwidth, more than hyper-threading....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7

 

ah, thanks.. but isn't one a quad and the other has 8 cores? 2 core?