CLEVO WUXGA+ 7900GTX, any pitfalls?

Hi all this is my first post so please be lineant. I've read most of the posts, enough to get now a direct opinion. I'm planning to buy a Semi Portable that can endure the next 4 years without much assle. As a developer I love performance the more the better, as an ocassional gamer, the last thing I want is not to be able to run a game decently in the next 4 years.

My current options are:

* Sony AR31S
* Toshiba P100-432
* CLEVO WUXGA+ 7900GTX

I plan to install Vista Ultimate, how is CLEVO with it? Will ever NVIDIA support a decent driver for 7900GTX and Vista and if yes when? The last time I bought a portable with NVIDIA in less then an year better driver were not coming out.

Any pitfalls regarding CLEVO i need to be aware off?

Is this ok to carruy in the backpack every day to the office and put it on the desk and leave it there? I don't need to move it one room the other that much, maybe once every two days or so.

Best regards,

Trance

 

Welcome to NBR.

The notebook itself is very good, and is quite liked on the forums. It is built very well, and it is a very powerful system considering the specification it has. If you do game alot, then the graphics card is one of the best you can get, and it will last a long time. You may want to read a review of the notebook below:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3260&review=WidowPC
(Don't worry about the different name, it is the Clevo M570U that is rebranded)

If you need to carry around the notebook, then you should be aware that this notebook is quite big, like all other 17" notebooks. For a better idea of what you might have to carry around, have a look at a 17" notebook in a shop, and get a general idea of if you can live with one.

 

i have a Clevo with WUXGA and 7800GTX, runs perfect at high settings for all games.

The Clevo M570U (Sager 5760) is definitely a beast and you should not feel it lag on you.

 

As someone who owns a m570u w/ 7950GTX, I can attest to the power of the machine. That being said, however, if you can wait, I'd suggest holding off until the release of the new Santa Rosa chipset. NVIDIA has announced that a mobile 8800 series part will accompany it, and bring DX10 (and faster all-around graphics of course) to notebook computers. You can read more about this part on Engadget.

I'm certainly happy with my machine, but as usual, if you have the patience to wait, you can get even more.

 

actually its not going to be a mobile 8800, its only going to be the mid-range 8600 only.

the 8800 mobile has yet to be announced or seen, it will probably take til the end of this year before Nvidia figures out how to modify the 8800 to be able to run on a notebook.

 

Thank you for all the quick answers and support.

* Do you believe that the 8600 will beat the 7950GTX in terms of performance or is this just a dumn question of mine?

* Even if it is slower, should I wait becouse of the DX10 support and compliance with future games? Or can I be more or less safe with this top of the line graphics card.

I can wait but I was not thinking about waiting more then 1 or at most 2 months if necessary.

Nuno

 

the final specs for the desktop 8600 cards aren't even out yet, and even with the rumored specs, it's hard to compare them to older cards since they have a new architecture. then of course we don't know how good these cards will do in dx10 games.

if you get the high end 8600 ( it think it's the gts model), you'll probably be fine compared to a 7950gtx. We know that the 88 series are good at dx9 game, so it should be around the same as the 7950gtx, and the dx10 support gives it the edge. I don't know when the 8600s are coming out though.

since it sounds like you don't need the laptop now, you can wait a bit for new technology to come

 

Any speculation as to weather or not the 8600 will be an upgrade option for M570U owners w/7950GTX cards?

 

I'm one that's waiting for the Santa Rosa chipset. The fact that Nvidia has recently said that they'll release a G84 chipset is really just a bonus for me. The estimates I've been seeing for Santa Rosa are April/May - with probably a slight emphasis on May. The main reasons I'm waiting:

• Draft 'N' wireless capability
• 800 MHz frontside bus

Of course, if the price for all these "new" components is too high, then the current 'top-of-the-line' should also see a price drop once these are introduced. I've started to see a couple of stories on the main page here for the Santa Rosa platforms, and those announcements will likely get more frequent as the release date approaches!

 

Oops, yeah, I meant to say an 8000 series piece, not 8800. Yeah, it won't be nearly as fast as the 8800s we're seeing in desktops or whatever finally makes it to the mobile platform, but it will be DX10 (which may or may not matter right away, but at least will serve to future-proof you a bit), and I agree, I would be very surprised if the GTS model didn't show marked improved over the 7950.

Couple that with the aforementioned other advantages of the Santa Rosa chipset, and Q2 sounds like a great time to be buying a laptop. The major downside? It's not right now.

 

The nVidia 8600 specs have placed it to perform (in DX9) between the current 7900GS and 7900GTX... it is still slower than the 7950GTX by a good margin.

So the 8600 is still considered a high mid-end videocard..... But for those that have a 7900GTX/7950GTX now will not feel too bad since the 8600 does not perform as well (in DX9).

 

Its not know if it will be upgradeable. The notebook does have a modular graphics card, however, I don't think Clevo engineers will want to fit a weaker card in to it. Your Go 7950 GTX is still very powerful, and it will last a very long time to come yet.

If Clevo did want to add support for some of the newer cards, they may want to consider a change of chassis, so they can support a range of cards. They will most likely want to support a high end card, like the Go 8800, and they may build support a Go 8600 with it, but we don't know.

 

So much information to absorbe. You people are awsome.

I'm buying new Portable to run Vista. I believe there is no going back. In an year entertainment PCs will be running Vista. So this is my main concern at the moment. If NVIDIA really made a good driver for Vista and 7950GTX I would buy it tomorrow, but by experience I doupt they will, even if they could.

I think I'll wait for May and then decide what to buy. I wish also that Clevo would tell us more about their plans regarding upgrades and new laptop release schedules. I will not shell out this amount of money for a machine that in a year is totally absolete in terms of what software and games demand. Then again this is a problem that most manufactors have at the moment regarding Vista, people al holding for compliant DX10 video cards.

Nuno

Nuno

 

There is alot of "stuff" happning in the next few months, which manufacturers have to work around. Santa Rosa and DX10 cards will be released sometime in the next few months, and it is a big problem for some manufacturers. Clevo are caught quite deep in the trouble at the moment. They have muliple suppliers they have to provide notebooks to, and then on top of that, two very big changes in the mobile market are fast approaching.

Clevo engineers will want to use a chassis that is compatible with both standards to save cost. So, if a high poerr DX10 graphics card cannot be inplemented into the current 17" chassis, then they will have to do something about it. Most likely, the will deisgn a new chassis. But again, we can't be sure. Perhaps the current chassis still has enough strength in it to take them into the new age with Santa Rosa and DX10.

 

I would be fine if they just put the Santa Rosa into the current M570U. I'd rather have a 7950GTX than a 8600 anyway. I wouldn't think the santa rosa processor would have any problem replacing the current processor.

 

The Santa Rosa is probably going to require an new chipset revision to have proper support. I really do not think that the performance difference from the current Intel CPUs (Core 2 Duo) and the upcoming Santa Rosa is going to be a significant... marginal at best.

 

A new motherboard needs to be designed to support Santa Rosa. Its a little more complicated from when Intel changed from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo. In that, all they did was replace just the process, because all other components were the same. So, we didn't expect many manufactures to come out with new models. Most didn't.

Santa Rosa is a processor, chipset and wireless adapter change. if you change the chipset used, then the motherboard also has to be changed. Normally, it becomes more intricate, because newer chipsets use newer technology, so its not possible to slap a new chipset onto the exisiting motherboard, because of pin incompatibility.

If your main work/tasks on the notebook will not be video editing and/or encoding, or other processor dependant tasks, then Santa Rosa is not going to help much else. The processor will be a little faster, and thats the only real performance difference.

 

Don't think the 800 FSB will be much of a boost to gaming?

I was also interested in the addition of N wireless, although I can probably add that on later with just an external card or something.

It is probably still best to wait just for the fact that current stuff should drop in price when Santa Rosa and Geforce 8 series is released.

 

An increase in FSB will ehlp certain applications out, however gaming still remains totally limited, in most cases, by graphics cards. So, an increase in processing ability and bus width, will not have a dramatic affect on overall performance. When Santa Rosa does release, it will most likely be priced quite high, and not many notebooks will be equipped with the platform. Dell will most likely be the first to offer the platform, but at high prices. After a few weeks, however, the price may decrease, but it depends on supply.

 

doesn't the nand flash drive also come with the santa rosa platform?

that by far sounds like the best feature coming out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino#Santa_Rosa_platform_.282007.29

 

Pardon me as I go off-topic for a small moment...

Man - I wish you would reconsider. Vista - in terms of multimedia - is the MPAA's way to continue forcing the DMCA down everyones' throats. "Entertainment PCs" - by which I take you mean HTPCs or similar - still aren't mainstream enough IMO to say that Vista is "needed". There are so many solutions out there already built on XP, Linux, and OSX that don't deal with all that extra garbage. Yes, I'm on a small soapbox, but I feel it's necessary to let people know that YOU are paying extra money for the MPAA/RIAA to beta-test their anti-fair use policies on yourself! A quick search on google will show just some of the negative comments out there.

...
ok - now back to our originally scheduled program!

Indeed. Here you can see that Merom isn't even pin-compatible with "Napa" - the desktop version of the processor. So there could be even a little more work involved than you might expect!

 

I tend to agree that pushing Vista may not be at the moment for our best interest in terms of OS features etc etc.. But believe me there is no going back. Either people choose another OS or Vista is the way forward. Myself I don't have musch of a choice as I use my PC in an environment were Microsoft OS rules.

Back to the topic.

Honestly I don't care that much for the Santa Rosa chip set overall. If I was goint to wait everytime a new chipset or processor comes out I would never buy a PC. My main problem is support for DirectX10 on the video card. In 1.5 years I believe that all games will come tunned for DirectX10 and if I'm spending today 2 to 4 thousand bucks on a PC today I honestly don't want to be left behind that soon regarding compatibility. My PC needs to run games that will come out in three 4 years, it can be slow but it needs to run them. My last video card (very poor indeed) simply refuses to play the latest games (GTA, etc etc), and my portable was bought 2.5 years ago. Maybe I'm just being over zealus.

It was a 5600FX. It was bought when everyone was moving to 6000s. Now everyone is moving to 8000s so it seams that I have a pattern here. NVIDIA support to past video cards is poor, very poor. Specially on laptops IMHO.

Nuno

 

{offtopic}
OK - I can understand your point, but I'm hoping Vista "slows down" as much as possible while still being the default OS for OEM. I know most businesses aren't deploying it for many other reasons...

{ontopic}
I know what you mean about the gfx cards. My laptop is nearly 4 years old - AMD64 3400+ with a GeForce GO 440M chip. It was the best 'mobile' gfx chip/card I could find at the time, but now most "newer" games/some Beryl effects want a pixel shader - and my chip doesn't have one. I don't blame Nvidia though - they still provide drivers that make the card work as well as it can. It's really the industry as a whole that pushes out the latest and greatest. For me, "holding out" for over 44 months so far is actually quite good! I'm basically waiting for Santa Rosa products myself to see what happens in terms of prices of both old and new components. Then I'll make my decision on price/performance amongst them. Maybe we'll be able to mix and match too (N-wireless separate from Merom, etc.)?

I'm not too worried about the "DirectX 10" label, as really the main difference between the DX9 and DX10 cards is the ability to configure how the shaders are going to be used 'on-the-fly'. So games and/or drivers will still be available for "DX9 cards" for a long time. Market penetration for the so-called "DX10 hardware" is still relatively low due to the high cost of entry so far, so there is some inertia to fight there as well.