Current owners would you recommend NP8278-S / P170SMA?

Thinking of getting one, stock, 16gb ram, I-7 4810mq, GTX 870m, 6x blue ray. I'll install my own 2 ssd hard drives and run in Raid-1, with Windows Vista Ultimate. It will never be overclocked.

Coming from an older 9280 that was maxed a few years ago.

Any problems with the new 8278-s, software, or otherwise? Read that some are having situations, but don't know if it's been fixed with new updates, etc.
Please let me know if this should be a good buy, as I think it is.

Douglas.

 

Wait until the 970M/980M set comes out, then go for one of those if you can wait a month or so. It should be a LOT nicer and will last you that much longer. Also, wow, never thought I'd meet someone who wanted to stick with Vista. I thought I was the only one who really liked it XD.

Anyway, the config you have is no problem. Haswell CPUs are inherently extremely hot, so you may (whether you like it or not) run into some heating issues in certain games/programs, but there isn't a notebook on the market I think that would prevent such things. The best you could do would be to repaste the CPU with Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra, assuming you have a good, flat heatsink. Otherwise, grab IC Diamond and enjoy.

I also recommend avoiding Bigfoot Networks Killer cards entirely and using the intel 7260ac as your WiFi Card. Other than that? I guess get a nice screen and you're on your way. Default should be great anyway.

 

My wife has the 870M, and while it runs warm, I'd not say it's 'hot'.

She plays SIMS4 all the time, no laptop cooler, and doesn't elevate the back.

Her GPU hovers in the high 70's. More than respectable.

Her CPU is low 70's.

The 870M stays fairly cool, but the 880M (that I have) gets a bit warm.

I play Borderland 2 and my GPU can get into the low 80's (82c so far)

Supreme Commander Forge Alliance with 2000 units max with 4 AI's (a total of about 8000 units on the playing board) can load up the CPU somewhat. I had my CPU (i4810) hit about 83c playing that (though my GPU only hit 77c).

But I mean, come on, nearly 10,000 individual pathed Ai units all firing 3D random projectiles at about 10 rounds a second. Yea, that's a lot of computational power


Still more than respectable, and well in the tolerance level, but as mentioned, the 900 series is reputed to run cooler.

 

Guys thanks for,the updates. I will stay away from the killer n. Heard it's a bummer.
As to running hot. Hey, I own a 9280. We all know about the tropics even when on a laptop cooler.

 

You may want to get Windows 7/8 instead of Vista as you may have problems finding proper drivers.

 

Yup, I'd suggest Win7 pro. It's similar enough to vista to be recognizeable and allows the full 32G memory.

 

Thanks for the heads up on Win7 pro. I don't want to lose all the programs I already have installed, and I don't know if I can find the install discs. I have photoshop cs5, adobe designer, act pro, and a few others. I really hate re-installing and copying files so as to be made whole again.
Maybe, I can just plug in my current two SSD drives in Raid-1,once everything is up and running then upgrade to Win7 Pro.

What do you guys suggest?

 

If I order from xoticpc, how long would it be for build and delivery to Los Angeles?

Also, I can install my two SSD hard drives (not m-sata) and still use the blue ray drive, right? Or do I need to take out the bue ray drive for the second hard drive? If this last is the case, which other model of sager could I buy that gives me access to two installed hard drives without having to take out the blue ray drive?

 

Yes, you can use two mSATA slots PLUS two HDD slots PLUS the ODD caddy. Only if you wanted a third "hard drive" would you run into problems.

Secondly, as to what the user above said about his 4810MQ, I want to say that you CANNOT determine how hot a game or program will make a CPU. I can run Handbrake on "slow" while encoding a 15 minute 1080p video WHILE playing Black Ops 2 at max (1080p, 16xQ CSAA, 120fps) WHILE watching two livestreams... and my CPU didn't crack 85 degrees. I put on BF4 alone and it hits 90 instantly. It's how the programs USE the CPU that matters, so just don't worry about it unless you actually run into a problem.

 

@D2 Ultima, thanks.

 

If you upgrade, do a clean install. Upgrading an existing OS has always had issues and performance problems later down the road.

I've heard rare few that were successful in a totally clean environment for an upgrade.

Windows 7 is basically a polished Vista. Things that worked in Vista should work in Windows 7 with few exceptions. I sadly don't know if the apps you use are exceptions or not, but you can likely google it and see how they work on Win7.

What D2 Ultima said on CPU is spot on. With his running B4 with a high cpu, if he ran other things in the background and then ran BF4 it could potentially bring the CPU to a much lower temperature just in how the CPU is doing task sharing between the cores and hyperthreading, how it's allocating the address spaces and how active it's hitting the memory.

Lots of things will warrant high thermals, and it can change each time you run it based on conditions.

So do what D2 said. Just don't worry about it until it happens.

Get IC Diamond, elevate the back, clean out the vents periodically, basically do what you can to maximize the cooling and you should be fine.

 

Oh no, if I ran anything else in the background with BF4 my CPU would spike MORE in temperature. What I was trying to say was, forcing my CPU to 100% constantly with rendering, gaming AND stream watching still managed less heat output than simply playing BF4, which doesn't use more than 50% of a quadcore, ever. It's how BF4 uses the CPU that makes it so hot; but other programs will never let it get that hot. So it's very program dependent. You can't just look at a game and say "wow, that's gotta use the CPU a lot" and assume that's gonna make it really hot. It might run super cool. Hell, Skyrim with about 30 mods and lots of 4K textures runs at 55 degrees on my CPU and 60 on my GPUs... at most. But Hearthstone will make my CPU and GPU even hotter than Skyrim would. Does it make sense? No. But it is how it works. Borderlands 1 makes my GPU run FAR hotter than Borderlands 2, for example. I'm talking like a 20 degree difference in celcius. You just can't tell by looking.

 

OK, bit the bullet and ordered the stop NP8278-S.
I'll update you guys when I get it and hopefully installing my two SSD drives won't be a problem, and I'll be up and running in no time. Now to wait for the laptop to arrive in about 2 weeks. Hopefully I can get it before then.

Any current owners, please post here any situations you encounter with yours. I haven;t heard anything bad about the 780M video card.

 

Congrats on the order, do you mean 880M or did you get the 780M?

 

I ordered the stock 780M. I've heard the 880M had problems. I read the 780M should be stable, and that the 880M was build on it, but with bad coding or something of that sort.
I just would like to hear from the ones that have the 780M, if they are happy with it and hopefully not experienced any problems.

 

780M is an amazing card. You will have no problems.

 

The stock card is the 870M, Sager actually no longer has the 880M available. That must be the card you got right?

 

Hutsady, you are correct. I mistyped the number. The stock graphic card I'm getting is the 870M.

Ha, ha. My bad!

So, for those of you that have an 870M, how's it working out for you?

 

My wife has the 870M. It runs warm, but by no means hot.

The 880M runs a lot hotter for me, but still well within margins.

Some games will absolutely pound the graphics card (as you're aware) and in such a case, just lower various specs.

I had planet explorers when in beta had a crappy AA encoding that would bring my 880M to 91c (without laptop cooler). I remove AA and it hovered around 82c.
The next revision they cleaned up the code and I had AA back on and was hovering around 86c. Still warm, but within limits.

I've since gotten a laptop cooler to help with the cooling. Same game now tends to get 81c or so. Much much better.

But anyway, on the 870M, yea, unless the game has something wonky with how it does shaders, AA, etc that just crank out the GPU, then you should be more than fine.

 

It's also better to install the operating system yourself, unless you want Windows 8 lol. I absolutely CAN NOT STAND Windows 8. I've tried to make myself like it, but it's just plain ugly and unusable. Also, try to keep away from the 880m, it's got issues. (Temps & throttling).

PS. All the stuff I said here may or may not have been already stated in the thread. Sorry if I said it again.

 

There is no real bloat ware from sager/clevo to be fair.

 

The tiles or Metro interface just was never received well. You can get to a regular desktop by holding down the Windows key and pressing D. Or you can install a program like Classic Shell which will always boot to the desktop.

 

Yeah, I also hate Windows 8. My wife has it on her Dell. I tremble when I'm forced to borrow her laptop for an emergency. That's the main reason I was still using Vista Ultimate on my 9280 Sager.

I heard that Windows 8.1 was supposed to be better, but I haven't had the luck of trying it out. I'll stick to what I like - as far as OS, and keep my laptops with the latest. Sager all the way!

 

I'd still take windows 8 over vista.

 

I take windows 8 over anything now, but if you install a Win Vista x64 SP1 march 2009 or later build, you will have the same reliability of Windows 7 without the libraries or the removal of certain advanced options from the system tray and its shortcuts (Win 7 removed them and made them only accessible from Control Panel or various amounts of clicking via menus from said shortcuts, some too complex to explain to people). I always have and always will prefer Vista over 7, and the only reason I ever moved to 7 a couple years ago was because some programs flat out would not work as well on Vista as on 7, like Mumble, because the developers refused to properly update it for Vista.

Underneath, they're the same OS. I prefer 8 though because of its improvements in task manager and load times as well as the multimonitor benefits and monitor capture benefits. It has some issues to work through with CPU performance and vSync in windowed mode etc that just annoy gamers, but I do a lot more than just game and for that Win 8 is wonderful. Hoping Windows 10 fixes the downsides 8 had while keeping its benefits.

 

Yes the backend of 8 with some tweaks along with a proper UI would be nice.

 

Huh.

I noticed that the 880M's are no longer available for any of the Sager branded laptops.

Curious if there's a recall on them or what the reasoning is for discontinuing them.

 

Its because the 970M and 980M were released today. They are available to order but wont be available until late Oct.

 

Hum, with all the issues on the 880M's is there any word on reduced prices for offering upgrades?

 

In case anyone was wondering we talked via PM. Basically waiting on Sager to get these cards in stock to find out pricing and if/when they will sell individual kits.

 

Availability on the new cards is pretty tight so i would not expect cards to be available super quickly either.