Look what santa brought me!

On this very morning a new Zieo NX680 landed on my door step. I have had it running basically like 5 mins, but i thought id post in here and take advantage of the fact i might be one of the few people in the UK with an 8800M equiped notebook before 2008.

I'm not sure what to try first, so im downloading the Crysis demo to see how she plays. Hopefully a tad better than it did on my M1730.

I don't have a whole lot of time (with it being Christmas Eve and all) but ill try and post more information soon.

 

i think santa's got a wrong address lol
congratulations

 

Hey......wow.wow...please post more pics & benchmark results

 

Damn, nice! You've either been really good, or know how to blackmail very well. Enjoy than, man

 

Yep!....Why santa forget to send one for me.....

 

Congratulations You are lucky man with such a laptop beast. There is no 8800 cards here in laptops yet, so I would appreciate if you can post Crysis impressions with that card on the forums.

 

Oh My God!!!! The total price of this that Santa paid was what? (the price of a small car lol)

 

Still waiting for the demo to download (darn knew i should have saved it).

Right well, I guess ill just post some general impressions. Nothing remarkable really, it does not have much branding except the odd logo in Windows and the small Evesham logo where the Clevo logo would be. Standard stuff, PSU and some various software CD's and a restore CD. It came in the box they got from Clevo as it has the info on the side still (base chassis with no CPU/HDD/DVD ect). They seem to just taped it back up after sticking the parts back in.

So whats inside thats more interesting, 1GB of Intel Turbo Memory, 4GB of RAM (667Mhz) which Vista 32 only see's 3.0Gb of ofcourse . 200GB HDD (7200RPM) the Core2 @ 2.8 and the 8800M GTX. It seems to come preloaded with the 167.43 Nvidia drivers. Noticed there is no finger print reader, but then i didnt need or want one anyway.

I have noticed the fans seem to be a little above the average, they seem to be on 90% of the time. They are not VERY noisy, its mainly the air you can hear moving rather than anything else. Though ive just loaded up some MP3's and i cant hear it anymore so i doubt i would when playing games.

Built-in sound seems to be quite resonable, the speakers seem pretty clear and have a little more bass than the ones on the M1730 (im using it as a comparison a lot here since thats the only one ive had besides this).

Built-in webcam isnt as good as it was on the XPS however, its fine but the colors are a bit washed out. I will tinker with it and see if i can find some sort of control panel.

As soon as i get the Crysis demo working ill let you know how well it plays.

It's a slot slimmer than the DELL M1730 i had.

It was £1,999. Which was a good deal, i could not find a simular specification anywhere near that price. Let alone with an 8800M GTX in it.

 

sooo lucky someones gonna be a happy gamer

 

Beautiful system I must admit. I had to wipe my drool off the keyboard after going to the site and checking out the specs.

 

Lucky you!! Congratulations and can't wait for pics and some benchies.

 

my god pics/benchmarks please, you must be so happy.

 

But...but...but... THAT NOTEBOOK WAS ORIGINALLY MINE YOU theif!!! XD

 

i shall have a smilar system only with quad core soon, and 2 gb of ram (going to up grade later)

 

masterbassist how much did it cost u

 

He was also on the wrong continent

 

Just ran the Crysis Demo. It automatically set Optimal levels to "HIGH" for everything. Anyway i cranked the resolution up to 1400x1050 and ran that benchmark test in the demo folder. After 3 loops it said 23.83 FPS. This is in DX10 mode btw.

I played the game and its playable, its actually running at the above settings much like it ran on my XPS M1730 at Medium at 1024x768. So its looking pretty good.

 

high settings....1400x1050 and playable! Awesome! Er..do you mean 1600x1050?? Though that would be crazy lol. Any chance of a 3dmark06?

Dave

 

Man, what a machine, or should I say beast !

Update the drivers and run the bench again!

 

wow....i like!

 

Bastard

 

well i havnt ordered it yet
but it will cost me around $2700-3000
im looking at getting it from eurocom
since all the other places seem pretty over priced
any references?

 

pc micro works and Xotic Pc i though were the cheapest when i configured one for myself a while back.

i personally think eurocom is over priced especially on the D901.

here

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9262...ship-late-december-p-2273.html?wconfigure=yes

i just configured a quad core, 4GB of DDR2 800 ram, WUXGA, 240gb with raid 0, and one 8800mgtx, another one cost $695.

and that came to about $2873 with the cash discount. and in CAD thats about $2800, so like $3200 with shipping and canadian tax.

where are you located?

 

Southern California
Irvine, CA to be exact

 

o ok, so like wht 8% tax for you...so its less money in the long run.

 

well is xotic pc based in CA?

if it it then i have to pay for the 8% tax
but if the merchant isnt located in Ca then i dont have to pay tax

 

Hmm, 23 fps is below what I would consider smooth frame rate. What is the max resolution you can crank, all details high, 4x Anti Aliasing and still get 50 to 60fps?

 

hopefully as better DX10 drivers and updates come out, that will increase to at least 30ish, cause i read that there is a %10-20 percent decrease in performance compaired to the DX9 Drivers

well thats awesome that it gave u all high settings automaticly, now im deff excited to get my notebook with the 8800M GTX

 

Wow awesome laptop, must be nice to have it default to high. This makes it much harder to wait for my NP9262.

 

santa forgot to save some money for my gifts. nice laptop thoug. enjoy!

 

2000 pounds for that machine, that's like what - 4000 dollars?! damn...never would i spend that much on a lap! lol but then again, that's just me.

 

That looks awesome. However, I also can't justify $3000+ on a laptop when I can buy a kick ass easily upgradeable desktop for $1500 and a decent laptop for $1500.

 

the only reason im buying a kickass 3 grand laptop is because of two reasons

1) im never home to use my home comp, so if i invested in a kick as comp, id never be able to use it since im never home
2) i can carry it to work and play cyrsis or somthing when im bored at work


and also most of the higher end laptops, most of the hardware can be upgradable i belive

 

That's fine. I know there's a market for it otherwise they wouldn't make it! I just think that $3K for a step above an 8700m is a little steep - essentially it is over $1000 cost difference for those graphics. The added benefit, however, is that it should last you a few years. But for that money they should include 3 year warranty and HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.

I just purchased my first "power" notebook recently (my Dell Vostro in my sig) and have to say I love it. I used to have a small form factor PC that I'd lug with me whenever I wanted portable gaming. But now I use it more often than I thought. And with our new baby, it's great. Our desktop PC's are set up in our basement, but its too cold down there in the winter not to mention hiking up and down the stairs all the time with a baby. But I digress. So now I can game and surf with my PC next to the basinette.

 

wel its not only the GPU that makes it a $1000 extra, its also the processor the extreme processors are like $500-700 extra depending on were u go,
the combination of the GPU and the CPU are what make it it generally soo expesnive

the quad core i want is only like a $100 extra with an 8800m + a 3 yr warrenty it turns out to be roughly $3 grand

 

Congrats!! I don't want anything from Santa . I just want my lappy in my sig to sell so I can buy a gaming desktop. I can barely play CoD4 on my laptop, and I want something better, and more upgradable. So that = Desktop.

 

Crysis also detects my 8600m GT as 'high settings' (which is BS because a 8600 can't play Crysis at all high), so it means nothing.

 

Yeah. Whatever algorithms developers use to determine those settings is beyond me. Those things never work. It would be great if it were actually accurate and could detect settings based on a preferred avg framerate, even if that meant running an automatic benchmark a dozen times to determine it.

 

Really? Hmmm it set them to "Medium" on my 8700 GT. Perhaps it was because they only have 256MB each on the M1730.

Anyway, on the price, £2000 is actually damn good. It cost me £1800 for an XPS 1730 in November (which i returned). That had a 2.4 C2D, 2GB RAM, 320GB RAID, 2x 8700's. As you can see, the current notebook beats the pants off of it in every respect (except the 320GB RAID - but then the new one does have 1GB TURBO MEMORY to compensate for a small bit of the performance lost at least?).

From that perspective, the Zieo was only £200 more for quite a leap in specification. One that will play games a lot better than the M1730 could, and will run on battery just as long.

I have to give that the DELL XPS wins on presentation and "extras". The zieo was bundled in a pretty standard affair, but the specification more than makes up for it. Well on to some more information....

When i said playable @ 1400x1050 i maent that the FPS was not slide-show like. Infact it seemed pretty solid, dipping only when lots of light sources seemed to be present (like having the flashlight on the gun and flares and stuff). I know the FPS count on the demo benchmark is just an average and not a max/min, i have never tried it before so ill take another look.

Anyway in DX9 mode it runs even better, and looks the same (from what i can see) so i played it like that. Very happy with performance, might even buy a copy of the game now.

I downloaded the UT3 demo, that ran flawless ~ 1900x1200 everything on high. Couldnt fault the FPS anywhere. I was playing offline with bots too so the CPU had even more work... Very pleased as UT3 was a game i wanted to work especially well, and on my M1730 the demo ran too slow @ 1900x1200.

I tried to run 3DMark06, but when i went to view the results it wouldnt load, something wrong with Futuremarks website? I will try again later.

I might try and write a full review when ive had more time with it, but id say the 8800M GTX is definatly a significant leap up in performance. Im sure most people are going to be pretty happy with any notebook they buy with one.

 

Funny, for me games always detect a lower setting that would give me a constant 40FPS.

The desktop 8600GT probably can at 1280x1024 though so that's why I think

 

Ok got 3DMark to load the result page at last.

9119 3D MARKS.

Not too shabby.

 

WOW my desktop gets 10,5 so yeah, thats awesome for a laptop, wish I had some $$$$$

 

I was happy for you but not to impressed until I saw those marks.

If thats stock speed imagine OCed and with tweaks and all to your system. You can definitely easily push that past 10.5k, grats man Merry Christmas .

Edit: When I say impressed I mean for the costs considering the Penryn processors are about to drop, but considering what you said you are right, you definitely have some nice upgradeability in that system to so thats +2 for you brosef.

 

nice lappy.... i got jealous the first 5 seconds

i recieved cloth and some money

 

I might get this notebook (Sager version) or the M1730 (when the 8800MGTX becomes available) could you post more of a comparsion of it to the M1730, other than performance (with a 8800MGTX in the M1730 performance should be the same)? Which design do you prefer? Which screen? Thanks man! Enjoy your new toy !

 

That's awesome!

Can you please take some pictures with a camera, or tell us something about build quality, noise, heat all that stuff?

Cheerio!

 

The one I built would cost me $5386.41 with cash discount

 

lets find out where he lives, kill him and steal it!

 

I'd love to take some pictures but i dont have a digital camera. However it looks just like all the other Clevo's so its not hard to use your imagination..

See this link: http://www.evesham.com/products/info.asp?e=F2FBE0BA-A6F3-4F3C-AAEF-00BCBCACF336

Build Quality:

Solid. Not sure what else to say, but even the DVD-Drive has a solidness to it, and isnt as flimsy as ones ive seen previously. The only issue i have is that one side of the keyboard seems to flex... im not sure if this is a design fault or just the way they installed it. It's nothing major though, the rest of the notebook seems solid and has no creeking on the lid like on the M1730.

Screen Quality:

Very minor light leakage at the bottom, but it is minor. Nothing like the problems i had with the M1730. The screen is very crisp and clear, seems to have good color balance. Can't complain.

Noise

This is where im going to be slightly unsure. It was November when i sent my M1730 back so its been a while. The notebook does have a pretty near silent state, but its only on that during boot. It pretty much kicks it into a sort of 'low' performance mode as soon as it gets to windows. You can hear it, its more moving air, but im not going to pretend its silent. It's not much of a leap from the M1730 (if at all).

Heat

It's hard to say without measuring devices. But it seems to be running cooler than the M1730. The only heat ive noticed is coming out of the back, and a slight warmth on one side of the wrist wrest (which is handy in winter ). When i had the M1730 it got to some uncomfortable temps at times, and the heat coming out of the back seemed to be pretty steamy.

I think this wins in the heat department. I downloaded some temperature measuring tools, not sure if they are accurate or not. But for the GPU it runs about 38-44*c idle and 64*c at load. I checked the CPU temp with NHM, and it said it was about 52-62*c idle. I don't think thats 'chilly' but i dont think its dangerious either. Im sorry to say i never got any direct temp readings from the M1730. Though as ive said, its possible the readings are wrong for the CPU.

 

Damn, 600+ Mhz and a 8800M GTX got you a score almost 4000 points bigger...that is awesome O_O
Enjoy your beast and keep us posted