Sager NP5960 20" Screen Notebook Review

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by Sinan Karaca

The Sager NP5960 notebook features a massive 20&quot; LCD display. It has a dual graphics card power in the form of 2 Nvidia 7950GX cards, and an AMD Turion X2 processor. While performance was actually a little dissapointing relative to what you would expect looking at the specs, the huge and beautiful screen makes this &quot;laptop&quot; quite a stunner.

Configuration of Sager NP5960 as reviewed:

• Processor: AMD Turion X2 1.8
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Hard Drives: 2x 200 GB SATA 4200 rpm Drives
• Screen: 20&quot; LCD
• Graphics: 2x 512 MB NVIDIA 7950 GTX (SLI Mode for 1 GB Video Memory)
• Integrated RAID Controller (0,1)
• Sound: SRS WOW Capable Sound
• Optical Drive: DVD+-RW, DL Capable
• TV Tuner
• Price: $4,500
• Ordered At: www.sagernotebook.com

Reasons for Buying

Sager NP5960 20&quot; screen notebook (view large image)

So why this notebook? Because it's the biggest notebook on the planet - literally! You will not find one that is bigger. I don't consider Dell's 20&quot; pseudo-notebook XPS M2010 to be a fair comparison, simply because it's not really a notebook - it's more of a modular unit that folds into a bag. Some people may find that more interesting or even practical, but I wanted a single unit - nothing less, nothing more. I also looked at Alienware's 19&quot; mALX model, with its exciting finish and paint job. The problem there was - it was going to take them a month to deliver the unit to me (according to their own online estimate), and it was overpriced. I don't want to pay a premium just to have the priviledge of owning a particular brand. And it's a system with an obsolete single core processor and graphics card at that (the 19&quot; Alienware ships with an NVIDIA 7900 GTX and AMD Turion, the 20&quot; Sager comes with NVIDIA 7950 GTX and Turion X2). When Sager let me know that I'd have my unit shipped as soon as payment cleared, the winner was clear. Indeed, I did have the computer the very next day.

17&quot; screen Alienware perched on top of 20&quot; Sager (view large image)

The biggest problem with Sager is that the &quot;purchase high&quot; seems to be low. Unlike other brands like Dell or Alienware, who provide expensive systems and attractive wrapping to come with it, Sager gives you a totally generic package. Sager notebooks are so generic that when you actually open the box, unlike Alienware's internal &quot;space&quot; box, you get a totally generic box that literally says &quot;Notebook Computer&quot; on it. Yes, that's probably how the manufacturer packaged it all the way back in China - a suitable generic branding for all possible resellers. Ultimately, you get what you pay for - and despite the initial disappointment, I doubt anybody would rather drop an extra $2,000 on a system just to have more attractive packaging. So hats off to Sager for providing the lowest prices, if albeit no frills. I knew the Sager wasn't going to have Alien gills on it when I placed the order, but still it hurts when you first see the laptop in all its &quot;industry gray&quot; glory.

Packaging / Design / Build

Plain vanilla box the Sager notebook comes in (view large image)

Unpacking the box, there is the NP5960 notebook computer (of course) along with a large construction of cardboard-foam, which was surprisingly empty except for the power brick (the power brick is really massive and heavy - providing 200 watts of power to the laptop). Seeing nothing but the AC unit, I first panicked assuming that all the drivers, manuals, etc. had been forgotten during packing, but they were to be found elsewhere, inside the backpack. That's right folks, this laptop ships with a backpack, nothing that looks nice for sure - just a standard run of the mill unit from China - but I guess the emphasis here is more on utility than looks. The backpack does have a special area to carry the laptop (which barely fits in it), but it does feel secure, even if it hurts your back after carrying it around for a while. This notebook is heavy and not for the faint of heart.

(view large image)

Another panic attack came when I pressed the power button, but nothing happened. I tried again, still nothing happened. I pressed it real hard, and it started booting this time. Phew! Most of the buttons on top of the keyboard seem to have a hard time acknowledging &quot;clicks&quot; - but at least they work.

(view large image)

Keyboard

The keyboard is fairly nice, and has a numeric keypad. This shouldn't be taken for granted, I know the Dell 17&quot; models lack it even though there is plenty of wasted space on the laptop case. The touchpad is OK too, though it would have been nice to have a disable button.

There are also some pre-defined buttons on top of the keyboard - the standard duo of web and email for starters, and then a bluetooth and camera button. One very odd button is the blue colored &quot;3D&quot; button, which according to the manual when lit indicates &quot;hyper 3D performance&quot; being enabled - an option not available when running from battery power. Seems like a pretty pointless button to me though, it's not clear what it really does, and would have served better as a custom application launch key anyways.

Screen

The screen is gorgeous. I have a 20&quot; stand-alone LCD at home and this laptop screen actually looks better than that. Really! It's the brightest and crispest display I have ever seen on a laptop. Since the screen size was a primary - if not the entire - reason for me buying this laptop, I cannot say how satisfied I was with the purchase decision, after the initial shock of having a non-decorated system faded away. This is a beautiful display, people. It is pretty and it's great on your eyes and the resolution is just right so you don't go blind when trying to read text on the screen.

Performance and Benchmarks

I ran the standard suite of benchmarks. As seen, the graphics performance is pretty good - as expected, since we've got dual SLI graphics cards here under the hood, with a total of 1 GB video memory (that's half my system memory - I do wish there was a way to use that the graphics memory as regu memory when not gaming). The hard drives are the most spacious you will ever have in a laptop - for now, at least. 400 GB - yep, four hundred gigabytes of storage - awesome! The only drawback is the spindle speed, which actually could not have been worse at 4200 RPM. The fact that the unit ships with a RAID controller does help alleviate the speed issues, so I guess my overall feeling with this laptop is that it performs on par with a machine that has, say, a 5400 RPM single 400 GB drive. Of course, when Hitachi releases their 7200 rpm 200 GB later this year, those will be a sure-buy and a great way to boost the performance of this system (and any laptop, with or without RAID). The processor benchmarks were also pretty standard, we all know the Turion X2 is not as top a performer as the new Core 2 Duo's. Intel has finally woken up from their &quot;NetBurst&quot; architecture blunder, and now that they are doing their homework again, AMD does seem to be on the &quot;budget&quot; side of the spectrum once again (meaning, they make cheap and poor processors). Still, it's a dual core performer, fairly snappy for most uses.

3DMark06 Results

3DMark06 tests the overall graphics performance of a PC, the Sager NP5960 scored well here, as expected:

Notebook	3DMark 06 Results
Sager NP5960 (AMD Turion X2 1.8GHz, 2x 512 MB NVIDIA 7950 GTX)	6,234 3DMarks
Asus G1 (Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, NVIDIA GeForceGo 7700)	2,389 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744 3DMarks
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB	1,528 3DMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	794 3DMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60 Nvidia GeForce Go7800GTX)	4,085 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks

 

SuperPi

SuperPi measures CPU performance by calculating Pi to a specific number of digits.

Notebook	Time to Calculate Pi to 2 Million Digits
Sager NP5960 (AMD Turion X2 1.8GHz)	1m 57s
Asus G1 (Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz)	1m 02s
HP Compaq nw9440 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0 GHz)	1m 03s
Dell Latitude D620 (Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83 GHz)	1m 21s
Dell Latitude D610 (Intel Pentium M 750 1.83GHz)	1m 41s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Asus A8JP (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz)	1m 02s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s

 

HDTune Hard Drive Results

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Everest Results

Everest is a tool that scans for the system hardware and produces a report, following is a link to a report generated by Everest:

Everest benchmark results

Gaming

Then came the ultimate test of all times, which failed, miserably. That's right. The test failed miserably. I installed Flight Simulator X on the machine, maxed out the settings, and started the game. It was a slide-show. Extremely disappointing, needless to say, after a near 5 grand investment, dual SLI video cards, and this beautiful 20&quot; screen. My only consolation is that - to date - there is no machine on the surface of the planet capable of running Flight Simulator X, out-of-the-box, with reasonable performance. Perhaps when the dual core patch is released things will look better. Or perhaps if this laptop had a Core 2 Duo processor, things might have been better too. Right now the performance on this laptop with its all-so-mighty SLI video cards is actually slower than my Alienware Core 2 Duo 2.33 with its humble ATI x1800 video card, offering only 256 MB memory. I believe this highlights how this system is truly under-powered by its Turion X2 processor, running at 1.8 GHz. In a way, bad design choice, and in fact, what a waste of GPU power. Perhaps it was the NVIDIA chipset that prohibited the usage of Core 2 Duo on this platform, but I'm pretty sure if the newest Core 2 Duo 2.33 with overclockability to 2.5 was on this machine, results would have been a lot better.

Overclocking

I was able to overclock the machine using software, which is always a nice thing. I despise hardware manufacturers who lock processor speeds artificially - if people want the freedom to burn their systems, what's wrong with that? Thankfully, Sager is not one of those. So my first attempt was to overclock the system to 2.0 GHz, which promptly failed with an immediate blue screen that seemed to come direct from the AMD or NVidia chipset driver. Then my second attempt was to overclock the system to 1.9 GHz, which was a massive success - as in the system ran very well for an extended amount of time until normal shutdown. I also overclocked the PCI Express bus to about 110 MHz. No problems there either. For those adventurous souls out there, just download ClockGen at www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php, and begin barbecuing your system.

Input and Output Ports

Left view of Sager NP5960 (view large image)

 

Right view of Sager NP5960 (view large image)

Back view of Sager NP5960 (view large image)

Front view Sager NP5960 (view large image)

Though it doesn't make up for performance issues, there's plenty of connectivity on this machine, starting with 5 USB ports. Because I have a printer, a scanner, a keyboard vacuum (yes!), a phone, mouse, keyboard, external DVD, external floppy, and a few more accessories on top of that, 5 ports are not sufficient for my needs anyway (I need two USB microhubs) - but 5 is still a good number, more than the 4 you typically end up with these days. Also built-in is a combo memory card reader, 1394 port (FireWire), PC Card slot, TV antenna, standard and digital monitor outputs, TV output, network/modem/camera inputs, and 4 sound jacks (digital out, line in, headphone, microphone) round up the ports on the machine. There's also an IR receiver for the TV remote. The placement of the ports is pretty decent and everything remains generally accessible.

OS and Software

The first time booting this machine was fast. As in, very fast. Part of this is of course the clean machine syndrome, meaning how Windows manages to work very fast when first installed. And by implication, Windows exponentially slows down as you install and remove software. But part of this is due to the fact that, unlike some companies (which I shall gracelessly name here - Toshiba), Sager does not seem to be on a crusade to stretch the system tray all the way to the Start button. The system is not loaded with any junk - or software pretending to be useful but really slowing down your system. This machine is actually usable out-of-the-box without any reformatting or need to reinstall the OS, hats off to Sager for keeping it clean. Let's see...Dell, Alienware, Toshiba, HP - all these guys load lots of &quot;productivity enhancement products&quot; coming from their wealthy OEM software partners, which really benefits them - and not you, so this is a good thing.

Custom Sager Applications

Two custom applications ship with the drivers that accompany the system, one is a wireless application, the other is an automatic &quot;email checker&quot; which notifies you when you have received new mails. Unfortunately, both of these applications are rather confusing and poorly designed at best - as evidenced by their screenshots. The wireless utility is the diametric opposite of Toshiba's custom wireless tool, which portrays in 3D signal sources in close proximity and certainly looks a lot more attractive and interesting than the native Windows tool. In our case however, I have no idea why anybody would want to use the custom application, since it is certainly harder to use and more confusing than the Windows tool (and provides no benefit - visual or otherwise). The mail checking tool is similary confusing and difficult to use, with error message boxes randomly popping up.

Automail checker application (view large image)

Wireless application utility included with Sager NP5960 (view large image)

Heat and Noise

When gaming this notebook is loud and hot! But not uncomfortably so - provided you are wearing gloves and the music is turned up real loud. Kidding aside, be prepared for a noisy and warm notebook.

Audio

There are 5 speakers on the laptop along with an SRS-WOW concoction, environment settings are surprisingly missing in the audio drivers however. The sound from the speakers is OK - I won't lie about how great the subwoofer works, but there is one if you care about those things.

Battery Life

Do you really care about this with such a notebook? I think on average it loses 1% of its charge every minute (or less), so expect to run dry in 60 to 90 minutes. Hey - it is a 20&quot; machine. Let's just say it's got a built-in UPS power supply and leave it at that.

The power adapter is a bit of a brick in terms of size (view large image)

Conclusion

Ultimately, I might have wanted to wait a couple more months. If I had more patience, I might have ended up with a 20&quot; Core 2 Duo portable, and one with a graphics cards that supports DirectX 10 natively. Alas, patience has never been one of my virtues. For now I am really enjoying the spacious hard drives and the glorious display. I think especially for people on the move who need to have lots of screen real estate, this laptop is well worth the cost. I would recommend getting something near the minimum configuration since the processor is already obsolete and the graphics cards are about to become obsolete. The great thing about this machine is its size - both in terms of screen space and hard drive space - performance wise, sadly, it falls flat on its face.

Pros

• Gorgeous and large screen
• Massive amount of storage at 400GB
• Good selection of ports
• Good graphics performance

Cons

• Poor processor
• No native support for DirectX 10
• Very pricey

 

Nice review! I cannot believe that this machine, with 2GB RAM and the dual Go7950GTX graphics cards, couldn't run FSX at decent frame rates.

 

Wow, what a behemoth! Thanks for the review on such an out of this world laptop.

The screen: Resolution? Viewing Angles? How are the brightness settings?

Design and Build Quality: Do you like the design and quality of the entire laptop? From reading your review, I kind of like the subtle look of the laptop.

CPU: I'm curious as to why or if possible can you use a C2D? Like does Sager offer a Intel version of this? Despite the CPU being a possible bottle neck, your right it 1.8ghz shows how it performs in superpi, .

Gaming: Do other games work fine? I do know that a Top of the line desktop with 2x 8800GTX achieves roughly 15000 points 3DMark06, while 1 8800GTX gets about 12000 points in 3DMark06. But it is not really a matter of the 3DMark. I find that if you get SLI or Crossfire, your ability to support higher resolutions greatly increases, whereas a single GPU can't push such high resolutions.

I have never played Flight Simulator X, but now that you mention it, I should get it and test it.

HD: Any particular reason going for 2x 200gb @4200rpm vs 2x 100GB @7200rpm or even 5400rpm hard drives? I do know that having bigger platters would help yield better performance. Just curious.

All in all quite nice to see that someone owns one of these and nice to see a review on one, I find that we are missing out on so many high end Alienware and Sager laptops.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Good review but maybe you could post some more benchmarks and more things about the screen.

But a Turion X2 1.8 GHz? Talk about a CPU bottleneck...

Charlie

 

I can't believe how huge this monster is. Still though, the performance turns out to be a little dissapointing for $4,500! I love the picture of the 17" Alienware perched on top of this thing, that's a great demo of how massive this thing is.

 

The 17" Alienware on top of the Sager makes it look like a 14" or 15.4" notebook - that's insane.

I agree on the processor, the Turion X2 is a very poor processor to pair with a machine of this caliber. The X2 is nothing more than two regular Turions stuck together. Considering that most games are not multi-processor enabled, it really has no advantage being dual core. A 1.8GHz Turion is probably as fast as a 2.8-3.0GHz Pentium 4 - big bottleneck. It's a shame this is not available with a Core 2 Duo, otherwise we would see much better gaming performance.

Thanks for the review, this is the first one we have of an SLI notebook as far as I know.

 

I wholly agree. I think the developers at Microsoft should know that it would be cheaper to get a real pilot's license than to purchase hardware capable of running FSX

 

Native resolution is 1680x1050. I think this is a great resolution because the text isn't too small while running native, so its easier on the eyes; if the native was higher, text would look worse when resized to a lower resolution.

Viewing angles are SPECTACULAR. You can look at this from any angle - top, bottom, left, right, anything you like: you get the same crystal clear picture. Colors do not change, no washouts, this is a truly marvelous LCD. Even my stand alone LCD monitor does not have this kind of viewing angle support.

Brightness is solid, brighter than any other laptop LCD I've seen, and again, it compares at least as well (or better) than most stand-alone LCDs.

The laptop is solid, actually encouragingly so, because usually these generic "Notebook Computer" machines have a few loose parts here and there, cheap plastic that breaks off, like the LCD latches, and so on. Not with this one - its quite solid.

Are you really sure you want to do that You will be disappointed.

Capacity, and yes, slightly better performance due to bigger platters. Essentially my Alienware already has 2x 100gb @7200 drives, I wanted to see what would happen with 200gb @4200 drives. Ultimately, I'm waiting for Hitachi's 200gb @7200 drives, due first half of this year. And, I really like the space that I get with 400gb drives. My Alienware with only 200gb now really seems small to me!

 

I wonder if the Acer 9810 has similar or better performance than the Sager NP5960.

 

I agree! After using this 20" screen, looking at my 17" Alienware screen is very, very unfulfilling. I am getting spoiled by the clarity and vividness, as well as all that desktop real estate!

It is hard for me to understand why AMD chips are being used more frequently nowadays in gaming laptops - I realize Intel totally shot themselves in the foot with their "NetBurst" P4 architecture, but their Core 2 Duo is really solid, and more manufacturers need to become aware of that! Intel should thank their team in Israel for championing the Pentium M, then the Core Duo, and then the Core 2 Duo. If it weren't for those guys, we'd be stuck with very poor processors now.

Great to hear people enjoying it! Basically, I am in a conundrum...do I use the faster Alienware with the poor screen, or do I use a slower, but more spacious machine with a gorgeous screen?

 

Since its a Core 2 Duo, you can bet its processor performance will be dramatically better. But dramatically worse will be its graphics performance - its got a very low end video card - I am so surprised that people who are actually designing these machines have the nerve to pair one great component and one utterly poor component with one another! Makes both unusable in a way.

 

Well said! I concur.

 

I don't even know why fo manufacturers make such large laptops. Isn't the point of making laptops is to be portable?

 

This beast qualifies for the abso-looney ridiculous award! Really crazy specs though, if you got the money to spend on.
LOL, that 17" AW looks like a baby sitting on top of the Sager.

Ouch, how many fans are there in that thing? I counted 7!!! Massive heat!

About the SLI underperforming the single X1800 in AW, goes to show that not every application benefits from that kind of setup, considering the CPU being used is TurionX2.

 

I don't mean to flame but whats up with the crappy CPU. and why not raid two 100gb 7200rpms they cost just as much.

That just limits the amazing graphics capability you could have had...

return it and get c2d sli if you can

 

mimarsinan,
I have to hand it to you. You spent $4500 on a notebook, and were still able to candidly point out every single thing that you were disappointed with. I was shocked to see the Super Pi time in particular. LOL, now you're never going to be able to go smaller...if even your baby 17" Alienware is too small. That shot of it on top of your Sager is priceless.

It's blasphemous that they continued to use Turions with SLI gaming notebooks for as long as they did. Thankfully, Alienware is going to release its 17" SLI notebook with Core 2 Duo processor--the first of its kind. I think they should be available by Q2 of this year.

 

That late? I was hoping they might have some available sooner. Alienware already released the upgraded version of their 5750 machine - with a 2.66 Core 2 Duo CPU instead of 2.33, Blu Ray drive, and ATI x1900. So I was hoping the SLI version might be coming out soon as well.

Does anybody know when Santa Rosa is coming out? With Santa Rosa, DX10, Hitachi's new line of 7200 rpm disks, Intel's new wireless card, it might be best to wait a while longer before getting a new machine. I wonder if Alienware's new SLI machine will include any of these features or not, if it really will be released so late.

 

Santa Rosa is slated to come out in Q2 of this year, around April-May. It's definitely worth it to wait in my opinion and get a notebook based on that platform.

As far as I know, Alienware's Core 2 Duo SLI notebook is based on the current Centrino Duo platform and the Intel 945 chipset. Otherwise they would not have announced it yet.

 

I think the 3dmark scores of an x2 with sli are higher than a c2d with sli.

Its because the memory interface in on the chip.

As a matter of fact theres finally a machine that can show this, theres a alienware 9700 and 9750.

Unless they only put a higher gpu in the 9750 the 9700 with its old school turion is going to have a higher 3dmark score.

 

May have a higher 3dmark score but what about real performance?
Id be interested to see benchies from other games because FSX could just be badly optimized.
Mabey it is a driver issue as well-I remember AW's stock drivers for mine had all sorts of problems with games-try getting an updated one directly from nvidia or a modded one from laptopvideo2go or tweaksrus.

 

The thing I've always liked about Sager is how plain and normal it is. I like the "industrial grey" look. =P I'd rather have that then some ugly alien stuff.

The performance of this thing is really disappointing though. And FSX...I would bet Microsoft releases some sort of Vista-only patch that makes it run better there than on XP because it was intentionally designed that way. I could see them pulling that sort of stunt to try to force people to migrate over.

 

That thing is a monster, in more ways than one.
I thought my 17" was big.
Imagine trying to find bags for something like that.

 

I would like to see some proper benchmarks of things like games, compared to you other Alienware system. FSX isn't exactly a well coded program, and slows down any machine.

 

^ Agreed.
You run one admittedly badly optimized game, and call it crap?
That's not a test.

Post benchmarks or FPS charts from more than one game.

 

could be worse, you could have a celeron M in a 17inch screen that has a super pi score of 2mins22sec but very nice laptop I too agree that picture was priceless.

 

lol hadnt seen such monster, nice. Sucks that it doesn't have a better cpu, that is surely the bottleneck.

 

Run different games. You score higher than me in 3dmark and i run everything smooth @ 1440x900 . Did u have AA on? What resolution did you run?

 

Great review! I have the previous Clevo Model M590k, and agree the screen is gorgeous. You still have the fastest notebook out there, despite the Turion.

Just to let you know: to turn of the touchpad (drives me crazy!) press Fn F1.
The "3d video button" turns off SLI - try running 3dmark w/o sli - big difference! Sli won't run when on battery (no surprise - is it ever going to be on battery anyway?).

I recently managed 6001 3dmark06 by turning absolutely everything off (nic, antivirus, printer software (HP especially is a hog), setting performance to maximum, defragging etc. As I have a single core Turion 2.4 Ghz and 2 7900GTX's (512) you should be able to score at least 20-30% better - given a lot of benchies show the 7950 to be 15+ % faster than 7900's and about the same for the Turion x2 over the single core. Am too chicken to try overclocking. Stock drivers etc.

I would love to have your version (M590ke) but then I too am impatient - couldn't wait the 2-3 months (i thought!) it would take to come out - turns it came out 1 month after I bought mine from Hypersonic (another budget reseller).

I say who cares, it should keep you going for a while, and we could be waiting forever for the latest and greatest anyway. Love my beast obsolete as it is after 3 months. Hopefully the clevo's will take dx10 cards due to MXM format.

Hypersonic/Clevo M590k Turion 2.4, 100GB HD 7200rpm, 2x7900GTX 512's, 19", $4125.

 

Oh my god, that is a large notebook.... You have successfully made a 17" DTR look small.

Its a pity about the CPU, possibly it could become a bottleneck in some games? At least its better than the previous 19" SLIbooks that were state of the art, except for the budget Turion64 CPUs.

 

Great review,
i havent had time yet to do one myself, so now i dont need too I love mine, havent even turned on my desktop in a month. If your interested i made (more like modified) a custom cooling pad for mine using 2 targus chilmats http://www.notebookforums.com/thread185267.html Ive seen on a few websites that AMD is supposed to come out with a tl-64 proc but havent heard anything about it or seen anything official from AMD yet, so im sitting on the fence about buying a tl-60 now (if i can find one) or waiting on the tl-64. What vid drivers are you using? ive tried divfferent versions from laptop2go (?) and ngo but they all seem to lose about 5-10% in both 3d05 and 06

 

Interesting benchmark to note - The pentium M 760 outperforms the Turion X2 TL-56 in single threaded apps. Haven't seen multi-threaded yet.

 

It would indeed; as I said, the Turion X2 is no more than two unchanged Turions stuck together. The Pentium M is a faster processor by a small amount than a Turion at comparable clockspeed generally speaking.

 

was the system optimized for dual-core use?

I know that AMD-based dual core systems, benefit the most by using the XP hotfix or the AMD Optimizer.

 

I just had a closer look at the hd tune scores of this machine and notice they were insanely high. How come the 4200rpm drives are faster than every 7200rpm drive??

 

The two hard drives are set up in a RAID 0 array, that's why you get the high transfer rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

 

uh, about this part right here

you just gota hold the buttons, lol. guess its to prevent you from accidently pressing it.

i get around 6500 in 3dmark06

all specs are the same except i got a 100gb 7200 rpm hard drive

got the laptop for 1700 on ebay

edit: also, about the sound, i just learned today that you can toggle SRS by pressing fn+2, not sure if its enabled by default