Clevo, Europe, the i5 processor and the ATI 5xxx series

Hello everybody, greetings from Spain! I have been reading and researching countless hours over the last two weeks into getting a high end gaming laptop. If you search you end up finding, and so I found out about clevo/sager and all the resellers(god bless the "clevo guide 2.0" post xD).
Before this, as most people do, I only knew about Alienware, qosmio and little more. I also found this forum and read so many posts that its interfaz pops up in my dreams every night xDD. I am really happy that I came to know all this though. It's a bit hard for me as English is not my mother tongue and I also like explaining things properly but I'll try to go to the point as much as I can.

I'd like to buy my system (M980NU/NP9850, I rather have 2x GTX280M than the i7 processor from the D900F) in the States as I can save over 500 euros in doing so and I have an US friend who can bring the laptop back to Europe. The problem is that as far as I know the support and service in case of some hardware failure is given by the reseller, not by clevo or sager themselves, so in case of an accident I would have to pay for the shipping and going through all the inconvenients of the long wait. That being said, some of my questions are:

Is there any exception to the rule? Meaning, can I buy the laptop from the US and get the service from Clevo-Europe? (they have headquarters in Germany and UK I believe)

There might be some europeans that bought a Clevo laptop from the US. Have you ever had to send the laptop for repairing? How much was the shipping and how long it took?

As I can see the prices from the different resellers are quite similar, and regarding quality service I found many people happy with xotic, powernotebooks and others.... so in order to pick one I've been trying to find who offers the best warranty, so far I haven't found anyone with more than one year on labour and parts without paying extra. Is there any?

In case I have to buy the laptop from Europe, which resellers do you recommend? I know it's been asked already in other posts but It'd be nice to find someone with personal experience with an european reseller.



I have tens and tens of doubts, but I rather find the information myself than bother you all guys. Still, I would like to know what you think of the next graphic cards 5xxx series from ATI, and also on the possible near-future use of the "cheaper" i5 for laptops. It is really tempting waiting for a few months to get a laptop with i5 procesor and a 5xxx xFire. I wouldn't want to get a GTX280M in SLI and then only a few weeks later having tens of games using directx 11 technology and a new generation of graphic cards 2 times more powerful. How long you thing it'll take Clevo to get these series on its laptops? Will they get them at all?

Thanks in advanced guys, nice work you are doing in this forum, I didn't know there was such a huge notebook community out there xDDD, keep it up!




P.S: Does anyone know where to find a list of unlocked processors that are easily overclockable from the bios?

 

The mobile 5000 series won't be out until 2010. Beyond that, we can only speculate on whether Clevo will add them to the lineup.

You can buy what you want/need now, or wait for something that may never come. The M980NU will not be getting i7 processors, unless Clevo releases an updated model in the future.

 

Hi carlosisme and welcome to nbr.
as you mentioned above if you buy from america it would be down to you to pay courier charges and insurance both ways in the event of a failure.also not forgetting it has to travel quite a few thousand miles so it will defo take a lot longer. xotic or powernotebooks are defo the ones to go for if thats what you decide to do.
i think nearly if not all resellers offer only the 1 year warranty and you can extend upto 3 years for an optional extra.

 

There will be a updated model of M980NU.

 

Thank you for the answers

kaltmond, any more info on that future model?

MrDJ, I'm still hunting for a reseller offering 3 years warrany, as you say there might not be such a reseller. Regarding buying from Europe or the US it's just too a complicated dilemma: price or convenience?

Tom's hardware, hothardware and xbit have just realeased their own performance tests for the ATI Radeon HD 5870!
I read somewhere a while ago that the architecture from the desktop and the mobile model are almost exactly the same, which could mean in practice the same performance, somehow similar to what happens to the processors i7 and i5. We'll see about that when the mobile models come out...

 

i wouldnt assume the performance will be the same, albiet the same core etc they are always scaled down for laptops

PErsonally i wouldnt worry about them appearing in laptops in consumer hands before q2/q3 2010 like the 280gtx

Clevo will ofc release an updated M980Nu (which i will prob get) for a dual 3XX GTX series or ATI 5XXX and IX CPU, again i wouldnt expect this for about a year, as they are still just rolling out th M980nu, Sager have only just started shipping, its still a brand new machine

 

Check out Kobalt Computers Carlosisme. They offer 3 year waranty. And they are a very good Company. You can find them here: http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/

 

Not far.......

 

Thanks, they are already one of my first choices for Europe. Also checking daily the currencies ups and downs, the euro-pound parity doesn't seem too far in time.

By the way, I found an european company that offers the default warranty of 3 years labour and parts: Rock.

But in the end it's not that much of a price difference with Kobalt for example, as they offer the 3 years extension warranty for about 75 pounds.

I think I'm gonna be waiting to see how the ati 58xx mobile gpu's do in the next months constantly checking the price for the M980NU as it might suddently drop down cause of having a new generation already out. If they get down to a nice price I'll get it, otherwise I'll wait to get the new generation graphics.

 

Warning !!
I am the (not so proud) owner of a Rock machine. It’s a Clevo D900T and it was the fastest machine I could buy at the time. That’s 4 years ago I think. It came with a 3 year warranty but unfortunately that was not enough. Under that same 3 year warranty it was send back to Rock 7 times (yes, that is SEVEN TIMES). It now sits in a corner collecting dust because it’s broken and the warranty has run out. Over £2000 worth of, well…. Crap really. So if I see the word “Rock” the hairs at the back of my neck start to rise as you can imagine.

 

Wow, was there a problem with the D900T's or was it just your laptop? Because they could have given you a new one.

Thanks for the info, it'll be taken in consideration.

 

Clevo have quite a strong bias towards NVIDIA GPUs in their high end laptops so whilst the new ATi 5 series cards are very fast, run very cool and are cheap (been testing them for our desktop range ) there's no guarantee that they will appear in Clevo chassis. Not saying it definitely won't happen, just that it's doubtful.

NVIDIA will be releasing 40nm DX11 cards in the near future as well and mobile versions will of course follow. As pman said they are unlikely to pop up before next year though but they'll have to impliment DX11 in mobile GPUs before too long seeing as that's part of what Windows 7 is about!

 

That's what I was afraid of, thanks for the info.
To get an ati GPU I would probably have to go for a different make. We'll see in the next few months... also see the price and performance of the nvidea 3xx models

Really helpful guys!

 

Please do so in the future, I had to delete several posts. Thank you.

 

The way you say it it seems that it was me doing something wrong, someone else wrote in Spanih, I have posted everything in English myself... I do not see why my post has also been deleted.

Anyway, they were posts about keyboard layouts... no big harm has been done.

 

I would avoid rock like the plague if I were you.... My M570U went back five times before I decided to sell it and let someone else deal with the problems.

I would personally recommend buying from Kobalt Computers ( www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk) as they offer a pan european 3 year warranty (at a slight extra cost), however from what I can gather, their support is second to none even though they might be slightly more expensive than buying from the US or Rock. I would also avoid Novatech if I were you as even though they are generally good, having had ~8 of their machiens myself for review, they often dont get it right first time so you would probably have to foot large shipping bills.

 

Your post contained a Spanish word and you also referred to the post that was in Spanish. This is a US based forum which is why we require English. Have a nice read of our forum rules so your stay here will be a pleasant one.