Current State of NP9150 Issues (if any)

I'm getting real close to picking up a NP9150 with GTX 680M and I'm trying to get an update of the issues I've read in this forum and elsewhere. The frustration in researching this stuff is people pop into 400+ page threads to report an issue and vanish, or the "issue" is so old it may not exist anymore. So any thoughts on:

1. CPU Throttling. Is the 180W power supply actually adequate for the job with a 680M? Or is the NP9170's 220W really the minimum? Do you still need Throttlestop to keep dips from occuring?

2. Keyboard Ghosting. Any resolution? I can't be strafing only to find I can't jump.

3. SATA III SSD. Are the Crucial drives to be trusted for the OS? Are the Intel's considered bullet proof? Are they equivalent to HDD in reliability for the long term?

Thanks for any help.

 

I have not encountered any ghosting with the keyboard. I can jump and strafe anytime. According to MSI, their steelseries keyboard has anti-ghosting I think. It's the same keyboard pretty much, same manufacturer, the layout is nearly identical, same size etc.

CPU throttling? Haven't encountered it myself. The XTU support is disabled on the P150EM, I think the P170EM has 200W because some may want it for the XTU support on the higher end CPUs.

Crucial and Intel are all great, so is Samsung from what I've read. Haven't used any of em, but then haven't heard any bad things about em either. There is a forum dedicated to SSDs on NBR, try asking there for input.

 

Seconding what Hulawafu said,

The ghosting problems or simultaneous key press (seems like they were often thrown around interchangeably) haven't really been reported lately.

With the higher wattage power adapter, the 180 will do just fine. We sell a lot of 9150 machines and I personally haven't had a customer mention this to me.

We definitely recommend the Intel 520 series. When problems do occur, they happen more with the Crucial than the Intel. They're rare either way, but they happen more often on a crucial drive for whatever reason. I personally use a Samsung 830 series drive and have been for about a year now with no trouble. The new 840 pro version is supposed to be pretty awesome as well and I'm looking forward to trying that one out soon.

 

missed a few letters here and there but thats happened on previous laptops as well. not noticed any other ghosting.

ive had throttling but as long as i can play games on max im not bothered. dont give a monkeys about how many fps i get.

the crucial drives are brill so far. 12 seconds from hitting on to being on the forum. the samsung drives have faster read/write time but of course they are more expensive. im happy with my M4 512gb ssd

 

Put in an ssd AFTER you buy the laptop on your own. It's very easy to do and wayyyyyy cheaper.

 

You can add the gpu fan bug to the list of issues. AFAIK, affects all P150EM/NP9150, and a few 9170.

Basically, when the laptop switches from the dedicated to the integrated vga (e.g. you exit a game), it will never turn the gpu fan off, unless you open something that switches the dedicated card back on (like 3dmark, the card's control panel, etc.).

 

It comes from the GPU's driver, not an issue of the laptop.

 

Happens with both amd and nvidia cards. How can it be a driver issue?

 

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I like the idea of the 15.6" screen (I'm on a behemoth Gateway FX p7805u now) but I would consider throttling a show stopper. I've *heard* the NP9170 does not have this issue. Is this true? And how bad is it and why? It smells like power starvation which brings me back to the power supply adequacy.... thoughts?

 

So it is an issue with both AMD and NVIDIA drivers. I myself have an P150EM with 7970M which automatically shuts the fan off on 12.11 beta driver (on stock driver it didn't though). So it is not a problem of the laptop itself.

 

Which brings the question: are you sure the dgpu is completely turned off?

 

Jonny27 is correct. The fan table is in the BIOS/EC, not the drivers. It's not the vBIOS of drivers.

 

OK so I just read all 65 pages of the MSI GT70 thread and the consensus is that a 180 watt PA can't power the 680M even at stock levels with concurrent high CPU loads without throttling. In fact a NP9150 owner chimed in complaining of Throttling under OC, suggesting a 230 watt PA is the only real solution. I'm going to extrapolate then that *any* brand 680M is going to experience some Throttling barring some "super hero" true power 180 brick which is probably non-existant.

This brings me back to the big question: should I abandon the NP9150 in favor of the NP9170 with its 220 watt PA? Who is building a laptop that can actually feed the 680M power in all conditions? aka mild OC, lots of physics on CPU, lots of polys on GPU???

Aren't there 3rd party power supplies like the desktop world? I use to buy "True Power" units back when I built them.

 

What came of this? I'm about to order a NP9150 and was wondering if I should sucks it up and get another 17.3 inch in the NP9170 again to replace my old 17 inch if it performs better.

portability ain't my biggest down fall


how many people have experienced throttling on their 9150s

Any updates?

 

guys, as long as we talk about a "mild oc" theres nothing to worry about. i bet that guy who chimed in saying his psu gave out with his oced 680m actually gave it a run for its money with an overvolted bios coupled with a 50% oc. now THAT of course could potentially cause the 180w psu to get to its limit. when u add to that an oced cpu then of course u need a bigger psu.
BUT!
on stock clocks and on the max. oc the stock 680m vbios allows (+135mhz core) theres absolutely NO throttling issues ive come across with the 9150. sure, i dont have the machine myself, but the only nbr users ive come across in need of a 220w+ psu with that laptop were extreme overclockers. if u actually plan to go that extreme, then u should also have the knowledge on how to properly take care of power throttling and how to modify a psu. cuz if u dont, then i doubt ure ever gonna reach such high clocks stably that ull run into any power issues with a 180w psu.

just my 2c

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Thank you for that input

 

ure welcome buddy i can say from personal experience that the 180W psu was more than enough for a 7970M maxxed out at a 25-30% OC coupled with an unlocked bios allowing the CPU to draw up to 70W instead of the stock 45W. only when i swapped that out to an XM cpu and overclocked it by 1 Ghz (= 27%) and also flashed a modded bios with TDP levels raised from 55W to 85W did the 180W psu start to give out on me and i had to switch to a 240w model by dell just to give u an example...

 

Once I realized nothing would stress the 680m I sort of forgot about the PSU (potential) bottleneck. Just running stock for now. Fantastic lappy...