9261 Unorganized review...

Just thought I'd post a review of this. I bought it a few months ago from a place in Quebec called, AET i think.

I'll give the specs I opted for, the price paid and from experience, the worth.

System
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Manufacturer CLEVO
Model D900C
Total amount of system memory 4.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 4

Storage
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Total size of hard disk(s) 168 GB
Disk partition (C 4 GB Free (62 GB Total)
Media drive (D CD/DVD
Disk partition (E 26 GB Free (75 GB Total)
Disk partition (M 428 MB Free (14 GB Total)
Disk partition (P 3 GB Free (17 GB Total)

Graphics

Dual 7950 GTX.

I have 17'' WSXGA.

So basically, Quad -core, 4 gig ram, 2X 7950 GTX, 100gig 7200rpm sata drive. (one of those is usb up there). Vista x64.

I use this thing for basically everything, from games to chat to work to design. I initially bought it because my old crappy gateway couldn't transfer HD video to it, let alone edit. So I started looking for something I could edit hidef video with. I had a bit of extra cash and I found Sager. I also needed something I could have no slow down or rendering issues with 3dstudio.

Performance wise....everything runs great. I haven't done anything too graphically intense on it but editing 4 hours of high def video in adobe premiere was a breeze. not one glitch or hang up. Tho premiere crashed a few times... but ...thats premiere being premiere... and I'm sure VISTA doesn't help.

I am not a gamer really.. I like playing tho.. I have so far played, FEAR, company of heroes, bioshock, Crysis, call of duty 4. I played them all out of SLI mode. As I pop them over to my 50'' LCD tv to play them. the DVI out to HDMI looks very nice on the tv. For all those games they played great at high settings. I never noticed any slow down or lagging. Not sure how much better would be with SLI mode neabled but seemed to run fine for me. I'm sure people could tear the games apart with negatives but I didn't notice anything. Details seems clear and games were smooth. Crysis crashes ALL the time in Vista. I got sick of it after 30 mins and uninstalled it. the rest ran great. Call of Duty 4 is amazing all the way through, graphically and gameplay-wise.

I haven't done much as of yet to tap true potential. As I have been busy with a lot of other projects but I have edited two one hour movie segments. High def with great success. And did some minor graphic designs. I am now delving into some more intense 3d scenes and as i build on them I will see how the system holds up. So far I am quite impressed.

Cons

Cant have SLI mode with multiple screens
Weight. Weighs like 15lbs. The power brick is the size of my.... well its big.
Heat. Mine sits on a crate with holes in it. So the heat can escape through the bottom. It gets very hot sometimes. Top of keyboard and at the back.
Bag, har dto find a bag that fitrs it. The bag that comes with it can hardly be considered statisfactory. It provides no protection and I don't think it can support the weight very long. I got a Kensington contour bag from tigerdirect which has wheels and a handle. I wheel it to and from the office. Too heavy to carry around over shoulder or on back. Definitely dont get a briefcase with a hand handle. Your arm will go numb.
Not that I use it but laptops shouldn't have builtin webcams. I don't like that it's always open. Also if you did want to use it it's pretty stationary. If you have 2 kids wanting to talk to their grandma you all have to crowd around the little laptop screen.
one bad pixel upon arrival
SPDIF out I haven't really been able to use as of yet. most stores have no idea what kinda adapter to give u for this, nor do they carry it. I did find 2 solutions in the end. a custom stero cable and I did find an adapter at the source. But the 4th one I went to. Still donno how to really hook it up to anything to make it work right.

i paid $3250cdn (or something around there) for this. incl shipping. This was a better price from AET (who buys direct from Sager) than sager, xotic and eurocom(i think the name was) could give me with shipping. Thats in Canadian funds by the way. Also received it 2nd week after placing order.

Other than the one excited (green pixel) which I have no idea if it will ever go away, I am quite happy with this purchase. Depending on what you want to do with it though it may be more than you need. If looking for a gaming laptop I'm sure a duo core, or jsut one video card would do the job as mostly I play on just one anyway.

Just thought I'd write this for anyone who was in my position who does what I do and was unsure about making a big purchase. I don't think this laptop's hardware will be actually outdated in the next 2 -3 years. What I mean is, I'm sure there will be newer hardware but I think this laptop will be able to keep up. I foresee an upgrade in 4 years tho. I had my gateway for 2.5 which did the trick until I got the HD Camcorder. Course I'd never go back seeing is how the rendering is so much faster and smoother on this one.

Of course that's an upgrade in 4 years providing I don't break it by moving it around in its absurdly gigantic size and weight.

Side note, on retrospect I prolli woulda been better going with two 8000 series cards... oh well.

 

AET is not really known around here. It is an alternative to Eurocom. Canadians should know about this (even though it has been mentioned a few times around here, no one really mentioned it afterwards).

 

Thanks for posting your impressions Will. Yes I agree, the NP9261 is an excellent performer, it is no doubt the fastest notebook on the market. The multi-monitor problem with SLI is Nvidia's fault unfortunately.

Two Go7950GTX video cards are still ridiculously powerful, and match a single 8800M-GTX in many games. You'll be fine for a couple of years.