Clevo, New site and Quad Core Rocks! (d900c/d901c)

Hi,

This is now official directly from Clevo.

Just noticed that Clevo changed its site and support for Quad Cores are already in the specs of d900c/d901c ... and so are the 8700M GT

Supported CPU's

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E6300/E6400
  (1.86/2.13GHz, 65nm, FSB1066, 2MB L2 cache, LGA775)
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E6600/E6700
  (2.4/2.67GHz, 65nm, FSB1066, 4MB L2 cache, LGA775)
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E6550/E6850
  (2.33/3.0GHz, 65nm, FSB1066/FSB1333,4MB L2 cache, LGA775)
• * Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor Q6600/Q6700
  (2.4/2.66GHz G0 Stepping 65nm, FSB1066, 8MB L2 cache, LGA775)
• Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Processor X6800
  (2.93GHz, 65nm, FSB1066, 4MB L2 cache, LGA775)

Supported Video Controllers

• nVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7950GTX, MXM-IV Modular
• XP & VISTA SLI ready
• 512MB GDDRIII Video RAM on board
• MS Directx®9.0 compatible
• nVIDIA® GeForce® 8700M GT
  512MB GDDRIII Video RAM on board, support PCI-E*16
• MS DirectX® 10 compatible, HDCP support

http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=18

New video drivers drivers are also available:

http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/e-services/Download.asp

Trance

 

I just don't know if this means that the 8700M GT is ready for SLI too.

Trance

 

That's very interesting... so, what's the difference between the MXM-III and IV besides a Roman numeral?

The 1333MHz bus support is a nice add...

 

So what do we have here? Is Clevo failing to rename the Laptop at the Factory, to be renamed by the reseller? Or have we been getting allot of smoke [mis-information] on this Forum from some resellers, with an agenda, about new board upgrades and such?

Note that the date for the Chipset Driver is old, so does the 1333 fsb recognize or does it come up as 1066 fsb?

 

What I always understood is that Clevo never intended to change the the names of this line of products. I believe this is common practice by Clevo as it is a motherboard revision and nothing else is changed. Nevertheless resellers might change their references and charge for upgrades as they see fit.

What took me by surprise is that these changes encompass not only the Quad Core capability (Well I was not that surprised really) so I doupt this is simply a minor motherboard revision as advocated in this site but a MAJOR ONE (changes on FSB and PCI Express support are not a minor changes in my book).

Indeed I now don't know if the users of the older revision can actually change to a 8700M GT by simply buying the card (or anything else that may come within the 8000M line) , or they will need to buy a motherboard too (upgrade usually means buying something but can be more or less, as it seams that the mobo now supports PCI EXPRESS).

I believe the situation of current d900c/d901c users need to be clarified by their respective suppliers regarding these changes and their upgrade hopes. This would help newcomers better understand what might be at stake finantially when the word "upgrade" is used within this context.

Nevertheless overall these are very good news, but maybe not so good for some. I belong to the last category

Trance
PS: Maybe Chaz can help us here as always. But the previous mobo revision is for sure being discontinued if the all new and revised mobo thing is indeed confirmed.

 

Yes, more important is probably the support for the future 8800. Until that is released and i know of board compatibility and upgradability i wont worry that much about this. The current options are not that interesting anyway, 8700 are worst that the 7950 in every way except directx 10 support and the quads dont do much for gaming, in my book this a non issue. The important question will mainly be future 8800 cards and board compatibility, Pci express support seems strange, hopefully not a new trend for the 8000 series... otherwise we will have to upgrade to a new mobo to get the new cards to work...

 

If you recall Sager did make the announcement that it is a major board revision ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=163825).

I called Sager about the FSB 1333, and was told that yes the newer upcoming board revision will support this, but at the time of announcement they did not have firsthand test results so they did not announce it. However they have testing boards now and it is looking good.

It was also explained to me that reason Clevo didn’t do a model change is because it is just a revised m/b upgrade. Since Clevo only deals with their resellers at bare bone leve,l a model change is not needed. But as the reseller deals with customers at a complete system level, a model name change is needed in order to quickly ID the differences between different revisions.

Sager has also confirmed to me that the revision changes are only related to Quad core and to enabling FSB 1333, it has nothing to do with the VGA. And that Clevo has still confirmed that the 8700M GT will be just a swap-in for current board version. 8800 is still too far in the future to tell.

 

Thanks Tenchi for clarifing things. I live in Portugal so I could not call Sager myself

Trance

 

I guess the big question is whether or not the 8700M GT will be able to installed in SLi with the new revision...

... does anyone know if the 8700M even supports SLi?

EDIT: Just found a site that "sells" the 8700M GT in SLi mode:
http://www.malibal.com/products/laptops/configuration/series9.shtml

 

The intel P965 chipset doesn't support a FSB above 1066. So the current 9260's will not be able to take advantage of that new bus. Probably another aspect of the mobo update to the D901C is a new chipset.

 

Thanks for pointing that out, Kozi because somewhere at the back of my mind I thought the FSB upgrade would have to be something beyond a simple revision.

At the same time, I find it hard to fathom that they'd be changing chipsets based on how things have been presented. Anyone know offhand if there are any specialty P965 mobo's out there that have gone beyond spec and added 1333 FSB capability?

 

Nevermind...I see now that this has been done by a few manufacturers on the enthusiast versions of their motherboards

 

I called Targa Computers today regarding the Clevo confusion. They claim to be one of the older Clevo resellers in the market. They were aware of resellers jumping ahead to supply quad machines, and had not been advised of any new revision boards currently available from the factory, so they have not posted any new chip offerings on their website.

It was mentioned that the Clevo sales department displayed 8800 video Laptop announcements at Shows long before there was any possible video card to support the claim and that the Clevo online changes to chip list offerings was concurrent with the Clevo online Webpage upgrading. The long and short suggested by Targa is that: 1) some vendors are taking risks by installing quads ahead of Factory authorization, 2) Clevo sales is pushing hype before engineering has finalized product approvals and 3) Targa did expect to hear reasonably soon about the official Clevo stand on the quad. The Targa tech was anticipating possible changes to cooling heat sinks, and that these should be available to the customer for installation. Sounds like the old wait and see message again, and again, and again...

 

If Clevo website content is not official what is official then? The more I think about this annoucement the more I believe it is irrelevant to most of the owners, unless of course one inteded to upgrade to Quads but then probably one should not have bought it in the first place as support was not garanteed. Now is with a motherboard upgrade as far as I was told.

All in all these are good news for everyone

Trance

 

Sager has the one of the first words from Clevo... official words.

Targa is not a main distributor of Clevo... they get their barebones from one of the "big 3"
- Sager
- Pro-Star/M-Tech
- Eurocom

 

If this is the case, as you say, then which of the main three Clevo distributors does Pioneer Computer [remember the group in Australia that was smeared in this forum as not knowing what they were doing as the offered Quads for sale] buy from? And why are they getting the Quad Laptops first? Oh, the answer must be Eurocom, as they are offering the Quads also. Sorry, I should have seen that coming...

Additionally, if they purchase through only these three groups, why did I get
a customized Clevo with (3) seagate 3gb/sec, not the slower 1.5gb offered online by some of the other groups, which I can verify in my bios by part number... along with 800 mhz ram and a E6700, and the list goes on.. AND it shipped in TWO days... I've read the trials of people on this Forum that have WAITED a long time for shipment of their Clevo thru the big three in Clevo. Targa Computer got it exactly right AND they did it in TWO days! Including installing and loading XP Home Edition and sending a complete unopened shrink wrap from Microsoft.

So when they give me input, I'm sorry, but I believe them...

There are quad Laps out there, and there is no indication that anyone has received the new version board. Therefore one might conclude that the Quads are running in the existing Laptop motherboard version....

One way to find out, I suggest that we email Pioneer Computers to please shed a little light on the situation. Australia like to be on the cutting edge, are very driven to give their customer's great values in Computing, and tend to be down to earth straight talking people in my limited experience....

 

From Austrailia, the main distributor is:
ITC