Another 5720 Review!

Well I wanted to post my own experiences with this laptop without starting a new thread but what we really need is a nice sticky thread for this latest laptop which is certainly going to be a hot topic for some time. Admins? Anyway, I wanted to post an easy to read review and hopefully start a discussion on the machine’s strengths and weaknesses and what others may have done to improve their own experience with the Sager 5720. I spent some time writing this so please enjoy and hopefully some will find it helpful and useful.

First off, this machine is an outstanding value. Once in a while a laptop comes out that is a breakthrough machine in terms of value, performance, and the right combination of technology and features. I decided this was going to be my next laptop within minutes of reading about it back before it was released. I ordered it the day it came out from powernotebooks.com. I paid with cash via a wire transfer to save some money. I was skeptical at first but knowing the vendor’s reputation I was comfortable enough to do this. Vendor reviews is another subject but my experience with powernotebooks.com has been first rate.

I travel frequently with my professional occupation and am also an enthusiastic online gamer. I knew that investing in a solid gaming laptop was going to give me a worthwhile return in enjoyment, utility, and value. I need a machine for work so why not spend a little more for something I can also play with and turn heads at the same time.

My last machine was an eMachines M6805 (1.8 GHz Athlon64 3000, 64MB ATi 9600, 768MB PC2700) and had served me reliably for work and play the past 18 months. The dated 64MB graphics card was really dragging in Battlefield2 and other recent games.

The Sager 5720 was a huge leap in performance with the 7800GTX and can outperform my highly overclocked custom desktop (see specs below) in graphics benchmarks. I find, however, that my Sonoma 760 2.0GHz mobile processor in the 5720 is no match for my high end Athlon64 when it comes to gaming, but then again, neither are the high end Pentium4s. The PentiumM is no slouch and performs in games very well, especially for it’s clock speed….better than my older first generation Athlon64 socket 754 chip on my last laptop but not by much. This laptop is going to be CPU limited in most games but that’s to be expected in almost any system running a 7800GTX, it’s not necessarily a drawback or a reason to not consider this system. It’s like saying your new Ferrari is limited by all those darned turns on the Autobahn.

Graphics Performance in games is impressive, especially in graphics intensive games like FEAR. Battlefield 2 tends to be more CPU intensive and will drag a little even with the graphics turned way down, which you don’t need to do. It’s still very playable and smooth so it’s not a limitation, just an observation when comparing it to my desktop Athlon64. I only wish more games would natively support increasingly popular wide screen resolutions….this baffles me. Overall this is the best feature of this machine….it’s a 7800GTX! What else can I say?

The WUXGA display is great. I have no major complaints. I have not noticed any dead pixels but I haven’t searched either. I imagine they would be near impossible to spot with the naked eye on a 1920x1200 display resolution. The screen resolutions scale down very nicely and it’s hard to tell when you are running at less than native resolution. My major concern was if I would enjoy working on such a high resolution on only 17 inches but I find it so sharp I can’t notice. I have increased the standard font size in Windows and Firefox to improve readability. This causes some website to look a little funny but it’s not a real problem. There is a built in camera which I plan on hooking up with my kid’s computer at home so I can video conference with my kids while I’m on the road….haven’t done this yet since I am planning on placing their camera under the tree this weekend. I plan on testing this with Skype beta video phone software.

There is a cool feature that allows you to play a music or MP3 CD without actually booting the computer while the lid is closed. I haven’t tried this but I expect the battery life would be phenomenal when using only the CD player. The audio-visual console is not covered when the lid is closed. This up front console is also very handy when watching DVDs and works great.

The built in speakers are better than average but I’ve heard better. I hooked up a pair of external Creative Audio notebook speakers (about $35) that sounded better. The built in surround audio system works well but I suspect it is CPU intensive since I get stuttering and slowdowns occasionally in Battlefield2 using the on board audio. I installed a Creative Audigy2ZS notebook PCMCIA card and noticed a measurable improvement in game performance framerates but for unknown reasons the audio quality was terrible. After extensive research and troubleshooting I’ve arranged to return the card to Creative under warranty. I would like to discuss this in a separate thread to see if anyone else has had success with this card. My symptoms were a loud squealing and popping noise when playing any of my games even though the card worked fine with movies, MP3s, and other audio applications. I will continue to test after receiving a card back from Creative.

The touchpad is not great, the software drivers are weak and conflict with my Logitech mouse drivers. I normally wouldn’t install Logitech mouse software except it’s needed for the adjustable sensitivity of my MX518. The scroll bar is difficult to use, inconsistent, and doesn’t work at all with Firefox. The four way toggle switch between the mouse buttons is a great idea but you can’t program it to do anything useful. My guess is that this is purely a software driver issue. Elantech needs to get off their collective butts and fix this. 95% of the time I keep my Logitech mouse plugged in and ignore the touchpad. The Logitech MX518 (as are most high end Logitech devices) is an outstanding piece of hardware with excellent drivers.

The battery life is about what you would expect, a couple hours with active use, a wireless connection, and the screen up on full bright. But it never gets really hot and the fans adjust their speed as needed. The machine can get a little noisy under load but I suspect that’s the 7800GTX flexing it’s muscles and demanding some air. I haven’t really tested battery life but it’s adequate for me and should play a full length DVD on a full charge.

I ran some memory bandwidth benchmarks on my 2GB DDR533 and the results were terrible. This is clearly because the system bus throttles down when idling and without spending too much time trying to figure it out I was unable to fool the system into running full speed for the benchmark even after turning off the power management feature in BIOS. Any suggestions?

The 80GB SATA hard drive is nice, more than I need on a laptop. At 5400rpm it loads Battlefield2 levels noticeably slower (about 50%) than my 7200 SATA RAID0 desktop array. Both systems have 2GB RAM but BF2 load times are also greatly affected by CPU speed. BF2 will cache textures so loading a second level is only slightly slower than my desktop.

I strongly recommend getting 2GB if you play games these days.

What else? I think that is a pretty comprehensive. Overall I think this is probably the best value in gaming laptops you can buy today and I personally am very happy with the purchase. I would really like to get my Audigy2ZS PCMCIA card working and I hope Elantech fixes the touchpad drivers for those rare occasions I use it. I’ll leave the hardcore benchmarking for others although the 6700-6800 range 3DMark05 scores people claim is consistent with my own results. Keep in mind that 3DMark05 does little to show overall system performance in games and while some games are highly dependent on the graphics card, others are more CPU dependent and will run faster on a higher end CPU with a slower graphics card.

I’m new to this forum but have been browsing it for some time. Thanks to all the others who have posted on this machine.

 

Welcome to the 5720 family! Nice review on a fantastic machine. I love mine. My desktop was a 754 Athlon 64 3200+ and my 5720 outperforms it in every respect. I've been using a Logitech wireless keyboard and my Dell 2405 LCD with the 5720, and it makes for a superb desktop replacement setup. Congrats on your new notebook!!!

 

Very nice review, you obviously are a big performance guru.

I have the same problem with my touchpad - I like the pad itself, but it doesn't work in FF, and the updated drivers don't help that either. We can only hope that ElanTech will release newer drivers that enable scrolling in FF.

I noticed that if you set the view distance down in BF2, it is a lot smoother. Try that, may help the studdering.

2GB is definitely the way to go for games. I had one in mine, but I bumped it to 2GB of OCZ - much improved. Don't forget that the memory in the NP-5720 is DDR2 - latencies are high compared to DDR. I'm guessing that the latencies in yours are 4-4-4-12. You can check with CPU-Z.

I put a link to your review in my Sager Model guide.

Cheers,

 

When I said stuttering and slowdowns in BF2 when using the onboard audio I actually meant audio stuttering. By slowdowns I meant framerates dropping into the 40-50 range which is not a big deal but doesn't happen as much when I was running the Creative PCMCIA card. The game itself runs very smooth even at mostly high settings and resolutions. View distance will have a huge impact on BF2 performance but will sacrifice gameplay when engaging targets at the extreme limit of your visibility. This machine is powerful enough not to have to make such sacrifices in any current games in my opinion. I find that because the 7800GTX is so powerful that reducing image quality doesn't have much impact on framerates.

Thanks for the warm welcome. As a notebook enthusiast I have found some valuable information here.

I can't figure out why the text I entered into my profile signature isn't showing under my posts. The option box below is checked.

 

I'm using that Creative Soundblaster Audigy notebook card in my 5720, too. It definitely makes a huge improvement in games, videos, music, etc. I've not heard any of the audio irregularities you reported, so I hope the replacement solves your problem.

 

I might have to pick up the Audigy 2; however, with the release of the X-Fi...I might as well just wait for that.

Hey Woody - if you go into the User Control Panel, under Options, scroll down and check the box that says "Show Signatures". That's why you can't see them.

Cheers,

 

Nice review.

Can you or anybody else give me an idea about power supply (watts) and battery life? I am thinking about getting one, but information out there is limited on Sager.

Can you get an air adapter for the Sager?

 

I'm hearing about two hours of life from most owners, not much more. An hour and a half to two hours is a reasonable amount of time for a notebook of that caliber.

Power Supply should be 120W. I have not seen an air adapter avaliable.