Considering an NP9150, have a few questions

Hey all,
I'm seriously considering a 9150 now that the 680m is available (well shortly). I had a Sager a few years back, miserable experience, but I blame the technology more than the company. It had one of the last gen Pentium 4's when the clock speeds were 3.8 to 4.0 ghz, even in desktops they ran stupidly hot and were horribly unreliable, so you can imagine how that went in a notebook. But from what I've read, Sager is making some reliable products these days, and with Ivy Bridge and Kepler, heat shouldn't be a problem. Who's the best reseller in everyone's opinion? I really want top notch customer service and warranty support in case there is a problem.

Thanks in advance.

 

what part of the world do you live then we can advise

 

Ha, good point, sorry. I live in the US.

 

XoticPC, Malibal, LPC Digital, Powernotebooks, Mythlogic all seem to have solid reputations on this forum and they are all located in the US.

I'd advise getting a 7970m over the 680, I haven't seen the comparison benchmarks, but i doubt its 300$ better than a 7970m.

 

^^ as Exposed88 said

 

I think the Kepler architecture really appeals to me for heat / power consumption.

 

so you want more heat and more power consumption?

 

No? I thought nVidia was a 22nm process vs, whatever AMD uses, 28 I think?

 

They are both 28nm

 

Ivey Bridge is 22nm. Nvidia has no fabrication at all and have to go through TSMC or whatever are called at 28nm...

And 680M, dunno if it will use more power yet. I think it's dumb to assume it will be better than the 7970M though.

Also give Pro-Star a call. Give all the Clevo resellers a call, they all have their own promotions if your configurations are over $1500 and with $680M it most definitely will destroy $1500.

 

Looks like you're right, I was confusing the CPU (22) with the GPU. How is the driver support for the 7970?

 

Nvidia and AMD/ATI lately have both been on the ball with drivers, so I wouldn't worry about that to much.

If you don't need 3D and Cuda, i'd def go with ATI, spend the other 300 on screen upgrades/SSD

 

3D I hate and could care less about
What does CUDA get you?

 

Nothing. Every industry in software is moving away from proprietary and working with OpenCL instead. For gaming, CUDA never has done anything. For graphics work, GPU accelerated only good for quick rendering for editing, but for final production, CPU is still better, can run higher quality filters etc.

So if 3D and CUDA don't matter and game developers now openly expressing hate for PhysX, just go with whatever you feel will be the best value for the money.

I've never had issues with ATi or AMD drivers and their graphics cards and loved em. When I had Nvidia, that was when their GPUs were melting left and right and were sued by every major laptop brand. And in the last year I know of 3 instances in which drivers were shown to smoke GPUs (Literally).

I've noticed driver issues with AMD/ATi are almost always user caused/stupidity/ignorance, take your pick. And hardware issues on laptops depend on the brand. Alienware and Clevo have had great success, so have MSi. Asus is pathetic and craptastic support for GPUs on laptops.

 

This is quite educational, glad I posted here, thanks for all the input.
$300 is quite a difference. And you say they won't be much heat difference?

 

What is CUDA | NVIDIA Developer Zone

 

I actually think the 7970 will end up running cooler

 

What are you basing that on, past experience?

 

Yup, AMD seems to go for cooler running card, Nvidia are usually always power hungry/hot

 

I think in terms of cooling, that is up for grabs. Nvidia been good with cool running chips last few years, so it really comes down to the laptop brand's ability to create a proper cooling system.

Clevo are overkill, so cooling shouldn't be an issue for either. MSI only uses one large fan and dual exit radiator. Asus use humongous heatsinks on humongous board... it's idiotic, but it works.

For power, HD7970M does use less power than the GTX 675M, and 580M. Don't think it's been proven to be less than 680M yet.

 

Thanks all, I appreciate the info. So no worries going with Sager / Clevo? I'm thinking Xotic PC as well, their support looks good.

 

I'm ordering mine through them. Although my order is still waiting for 7970m to be back in stock, so far their customer services have been very helpful, polite, and responsive.

 

I would suggest the extended warranty. From what I've picked up, serious problems are rare, but parts aren't often readily available outside of going through the resellers, and they're not terribly cheap (no reason to think they would be on lower volume products like these.) One person posted up being out of warranty and facing an easy $500+ bill if it turns out he needs a motherboard. Even as someone who can do a lot of my own work, the $150 for 3yr warranty strikes me as easily being worthwhile, even if the general failure rate is as low as it seems to be talking to folks around here.

On the plus side, the design looks to be very service-friendly, so if there was an out of warranty issue, and you could locate the parts, it shouldn't be a huge pain to replace things. It's also a huge plus when it comes to cleaning out fans. I regularly do tune-ups on laptops as a service of my business, and many consumer level laptops require dismantling darn near the whole laptop to access the heatsink & fan just to clean out the inevitable dustbunnies (or as is often the case, a solid layer of what looks like carpet developed across the entire heatsink). On these its' a few screws to remove a panel, and *bam*, you've got access to just about everything. Very intelligent design from a service standpoint. This is extra important with dual fans that will be running much of the time (sucking in air & dust).

 

They seem to have the best cooling setup of any manufacturer from what I'm reading and from what you said, thanks.

 

Xoticpc seems like a good choice and there customer support is one of the best I've dealt with