Dilemma: P370SM vs P377SM

Hi all,

As the title suggests, I have had some difficulty choosing between the P370SM vs P377SM. I am not including the P370EM in this because it does not accept 700 series or higher GPUs nor will I include the P375SM because of the really pointless lights, even though you can turn it off, and it isn't offered with a 120Hz screen either. That being said, P370EM and P375SM owners are welcome to give their thoughts regarding touchpad and aesthetics.

Please do not recommend me other laptops. This is a purely P370SM vs P377SM thread. Here is what is drawing me to each.

The P370SM can be bought with the GTX 780m, I already have one of these cards and I can save money by buying the laptop with just one card and acquire the heatsink and SLi cable myself to install. I am also drawn to the full touchpad. I have used these types of touchpads such as on the MacBook Pro and some Samsung Ultrabooks and I can easily get used to them, especially if I start using Windows 8.1. But I have read reviews where people say that it is awful and also flimsy. Could some existing owners chime in on this? The P370SM also has a professional looking minimalist industrial design, this does appeal to me somewhat.

The P377SM is offered with the GTX 880m. I feel that it is money wasted if I choose that option as my 780m becomes redundant. The touchpad is also a regular surface-plus-two-button affair which I am used to. The overall design of this laptop is a bit more aggressive, more akin to the ASUS ROG lineup and I am all for the wild laptop designs; I mean I have owned Alienwares for the past 5 years. What I am afraid of is if the aesthetics of this laptop will rub me the wrong way.

Both laptops have Haswell and have identical internal configurations. Any yes, I want SLi. Both are offered with the 120Hz display which is a must for me (don't really care about 3D). I am a bencher so I will be getting two adapters and the converter either way. So it boils down to:

Do I choose the sleek industrial minimalist design that won't really turn heads and take a risk on the touchpad, but I'll save a few bucks?
Or do I choose the more aggressive design which I might end up hating, stick with a safe touchpad option but I'll be spending a lot more money?

I guess what I need is for someone to point out something that one definitely has over the other to sway me.

Looking forward to hearing people's responses and suggestions.

Thanks!

 

Minimalist design. Flashy draws attention and attention draws thieves.

Sent from my XT1053 using HoFo app.

 

Do you use the touchpad much, especially during gaming? If you use a mouse most of the time that can help sway your decision.

 

The P375SM and P377SM have virtually identical exteriors. Aesthetics wise the P377SM got rid of the (IMO) hideous tramp stamp touchpad, and the flashy lightbar between the speakers, as well as having a normal power button, whereas the P375SM also had the tramp stamp logo incorporated into the power button.

If you're not sold on the aesthetics of the P375SM, I recommend staying away from the P377SM because you will likely end up hating it.

As to the clickpad of the P370SM, it felt a bit laggy out the gate, but registers clicks just fine with a light tap. I haven't used it much since I always have a wireless mouse plugged in, but there's quite a few options in the Synaptics software that let's you adjust the pressure sensitivity and momentum so I imagine you can customize it to your liking. Mine definitely did not feel flimsy or cheap either.

Another plus for the P370SM3 is that the 120Hz screen actually supports 3D, whereas 3D support is lacking for the P377SM right now. I know you said you don't really care about 3D but thought I should point this out anyway. Oh and if you flash Prema's BIOS for the P370SM3, you can use 880M as well in case you want to upgrade down the road, so even less point in getting the P377SM (well maybe get the 880M master GPU heatsink, I'll have a short writeup about that in a bit).

 

Yes I do find myself using the touchpad alot. I really only use a mouse when gaming.

 

The touchpad on the P377SM-A is fantastic. I have a defective left button but I've gotten used to it. I had an M17x R1 that the entire right part of the trackpad was a dead zone and the material peeled off over time and I hated that thing... This trackpad is much better but their positioning is awkward... its right in the middle of the palmrest as opposed to in the middle of the keyboard so you'll hit a lot when typing on the keyboard. For that reason, I disabled tap to click and I don't really have complaints with it now. Others have gotten this machine with a working left button, I just happened to get unlucky.

The design of the machine is definitely a little bit over the top but you can shut off all the lights.

My opinion of the 880Ms, however, is not high at all. If you attempt to overclock them, you will end up with the latest drivers crippling your performance beyond what the internal graphics would give you (if the internal graphics worked, it is disabled entirely on these machines as required for 120hz support). I would get the P375SM-A and shut off the lights if I could do my purchase over, the crippled 880Ms are annoying at best and they run extremely hot.

Also do yourself a favor and get the 4810 or 4910, NOT the 4940... This chip is horrible. Its hot and it doesn't scale anywhere near as well as people with 4810 and 4910 chips are getting for overclocks. Its a big waste of money.

If I was asked to do my purchase over today, I'd not pick the 377, just because of the 880Ms. Even with an unlocked vBIOS, they aren't performing near what the 780Ms can and the 780Ms are cooler which gives them more overclocking headroom and, at least as it stands right now, the extreme performance crippling mode that these cards drop into isn't enabled on the 780M... Oh and its not just overclockers seeing it, some are seeing the throttle out of the box. Avoid the 880Ms.

 

Thanks for the info Ethrem! I have heard of some issues with the GTX 880m's but I didn't know it was that bad. I'm pretty much leaning toward to the P370SM3 at the moment I just need to find a reseller that will build one for me here in the UK.

 

PC Specialist has it

PCSPECIALIST - 3711 Laptops, 3711 Gaming Laptops, Build Your Own 3711 Laptop

And yes, it really is that bad... http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/750830-just-got-my-880m-twins-51.html#post9694075

 

Thanks! I missed that one.

 

No problem. I used my Google-fu

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

What is this Google you speak of...


Thanks all the info. I'm currently awaiting some info from the folks over at mySN to see if they can do me a P723, if not I'll order from PCSpecialist.

 

I have not really been keeping up with the 880M developments since I have not been interested in it, but it's throttling with the modified bios?

 

Its much worse than that.

Modded or stock, if the video driver crashes too many times, it performs slow as hell... like P2000 range on 3DMark 11.

The only "fix" right now is to go to older drivers that don't officially support the 880M.

There was one user who suggested that cutting the A/C power, removing the battery, and doing a power drain would fix it but others have tried it and said it didn't fix it.

There are also a number of cards showing up from vendors that are throttling like that out of the box.

 

I'll see if I can dig up the posts but here's John's quote from his original review:

And recent findings:

 

Interesting, I wonder if this is hitting desktop cards too...

 

There isn't any reason for it to hit desktop cards as TDP can be virtually unlimited on a desktop platform and the manufacturers would disable any such feature anyway. You really think a company like EVGA, who sells dual BIOS enthusiast cards, will put up with any lock down shenanigans from nVidia?

It also only affects 880Ms. There are reports of some performance crippling on the 780M but not like this. Either it isn't functioning as intended (as something like this could easily open up nVidia to a class action lawsuit) or nVidia is doing it because Maxwell isn't living up to expectations and they don't want 880Ms to be able to run tow to tow with Maxwell cards. Some Liquid Ultra and a voltage bump would probably set these cards on fire but not if this driver crash + throttle crap exists.

I haven't seen an 860 or 870 report about the issue yet.

 

The unlocked bios has an unlocked TDP too, this is not about TDP levels or anything else, it's running the card too fast and causing a driver recovery too many times.

 

Right but considering that I made it crash probably 20 times messing with my 780 Ti the other night, the throttle is only on mobile chips which makes sense. They have much more limited cooling capabilities than desktop chips do. My 780 Ti was crashing because it didn't have enough voltage. Since it was running temps of 70C under load with the fan only hitting 40%, there is plenty of room for modding so I'm contemplating a vbios to give a voltage boost.

What sense would it make to throttle desktop cards like that? Besides that, the throttle is extreme... Performing less than an Intel HD 4600 goes way beyond extreme and its a huge slap in the face to people who spend thousands to get a machine with these cards with the expectation of it being an enthusiast card and not be intentionally (and potentially permanently) punished if you try to get the performance out of it that should have come out of the box.

 

So if you are not into overclocking, everything is fine?

I'm not sure that I agree with the fury behind this driver change. Intentionally crashing the drivers multiple times, even due to just overclocking, and getting undesireable results hardly warrants a class action lawsuit. Overclocking is not guaranteed, right?

 

Its throttled out of the box. You won't see boost clocks any time because of the voltage limit in the vbios.

And the throttle is happening to people with brand new cards, not just per people who overclocked their cards.

Overclocking not being guaranteed is a given but I guarantee you that nVidia can be sued for throttling the card to the point that they are. Dropping from a stock 9k fire strike to a 2k or less is worthy of outrage.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

The part you're missing here is that after one too many driver crashes, the driver writes something (a code or flag) to the GPU that basically makes it perform even worse than the Intel HD4600 iGPU. And this persists through harddrive formats or windows reinstallations. Basically once the flag is set, you're stuck with a useless GPU. There are ways of removing the flag but there's no foolproof way to do it, and results seem mixed based on what I've read so far here and in the Alienware forums.

The most troubling part of all this is that if not for the efforts of a few enthusiasts, the average Joe would never even know what hit'em, because all of this is completely undocumented. So if you somehow trip the flag, you're going to waste countless hours trying to find a solution to the mysterious problem unless you know the score, and even then it's not guaranteed that you'll actually fix the problem.

 

I wonder how many warranty replacements the vendors are going to have to do for this... its happening to some people out of the box!

There is no doubt in my mind that this can happen to anyone who has driver crashes, regardless of whether they were overclocking at the time or not.