M860TU/NP8660 - Quad-core supported officially by Clevo

hey emmanuel!

i see you made it over. glad to see ya.

sorry to hear that it didn't work.... i was hoping it would, but after further reading...seen it did....dammn shame!!

 

An M570TU running the newest BIOS for TU/ETU will not run quad cores, only the ETU mobo will do that...So good luck with your M860TU...

 

I'm selling the Q9100 for $460 shipped, I paid $500 for it... Ya Johnkss, I thought it was a good idea to join here as well since it's all about laptops.
By the way anyone interested in purchasing the CPU? I accept Paypal, personnal checks etc.

 

Well after one month without a CPU, finally back online with my M860TU and a X9100! My 3DMark score was 11 605, I'll try lowering clocks a little to see what happens but I'm sure that my score will start decreasing. I'm pretty happy to hold a record on a 15" laptop!

 

Why isn't the X9100 offered by resellers yet if people are obviously doing it with decent results?

 

Because Clevo says no, so Sager says no, so if a reseller wanted to offer it they'd lose Sager support and thus would have to supply their own warranty.

Eurocom is the only vendor with the brass to sell them equipped.

 

They don't sell the X9100 with these laptop simply because they fear that it will overheat since it'sa 45W TDP CPU, however with the proper application of some Arctic MX2, overheating is not to be feared. Yeah of course if you run IntelBurn Test while having your laptop laying on your bed, of course it'll overheat, just like with any other CPU.

 

It's not necessarily a question of having the "brass;" for example, as you point out, any vendor who were to do this would lose any protection they might have otherwise had from up the food-chain; however, in the case of, say, a retail reseller such as xoticpc or powernotebooks, my guess is that not only would they lose their warranty coverage, they might also lose their right to distribute Sager systems, in which case they'd be losing a substantial part of their business - putting your business at risk in that manner isn't "brass," it's stupidity.

Sager, of course, is not in the same position as a retail reseller is; however, it is entirely possible that their agreement with Clevo obliges them to follow Clevo's lead or lose the right to purchase and distribute Clevo products in the U.S., which they would - obviously - be loathe to put at risk. On the other hand, it would also require that they put a lot more capital at risk in their business if they were to attempt to go it alone in that manner, even if it didn't put their agreement with Clevo at risk, and there is nothing wrong with choosing not to follow that path, it's a basic business judgment.

Eurocom, on the other hand, is willing to go that route, which means that, at bottom, their management have a more aggressive appetite for risk, and they are willing to put the additional capital at risk in their business in order to take a more aggressive technical stance than Clevo is willing to publicly commit itself to; again, that's just a basic business judgment.

 

I wasn't referring to resellers with that comment, only vendors. Of course resellers are compelled to follow the guidlines set before them in the contracts signed. "Brass" isn't referring to bravery, it means that Eurocom is willing to forgo Clevo's coverage, taking full warranty upon itself. That's a pretty bold move in my opinion, yet I doubt it would take place if the company's business relationship with Clevo would at all be put in jeopardy.

 

Fair dinkum. Unfortunately, too many others arent' as fair-minded as yourself.

 

Wow man thats crazy, congrats though. I think definately the best score for an M860TU. Makes me a wee bit jealous but I can live with that

So basically they have the biggest brass?
Hahaha sorry I had to say it.

 

I'm not sure how it works but IF there was a motherboard upgrade/revision wouldn't that boost up the price for the 8660? I'm planning on buying this laptop over the summer and I'm going to use it for college...basically my rig is going to end up about 1750 with a T9800 processor. Is there a possibility that when the quad-core is implemented in the 8660 with a motherboard upgrade the price would rise? I would rather buy the laptop cheaper now than wait 5 months and find that its price is higher.

 

I think it would only count if you were purchasing a quad core itself. Otherwise, perhaps even a better thing might occur, the unsupported quad core m860tu go for a cheaper price, a la, the 5793.

 

Lets hope its the latter! I'm just worried that they'll make a motherboard which supports both the quad and the dual at a higher price and stop the production of the current motherboards.

 

Yeah the 9800m GT really works wonders, I can send you the BIOS that I edited for that card that I'm using but I really can't guarantee it'll be stable at the clocks I'm running on your card.
The only thing that annoys me on this laptop is Powermizer, there is no way to turn it off on battery... I would want full GPU performance if I want to game for 40 minutes on battery. I've tried setting all the different performance levels (Extra, 3D, 2D etc.) to the same clocks, but I can't adjust the voltage for each performance levels, so I end up with the GPU locking up as soon as Windows load since I guess that it tries running at full performance clocks at 0.85v instead of 1.05v.

 

Have you tried that program that came with DOX modified drivers called PowerMizer switch to take it off on battery?

 

I did try the Powermizer switch and it didn't work, did it work for you?

 

Powermizer Switch has never given me anything except a BSOD, though some people swear by it.

 

The only thing it does basically is change the perflevel to 3333 or something in the registry. Never worked for me anyways. I don't understand why nVidia doesn't allow us to take full control of our video cards, if I want to sacrifice battery life for a few minutes of high performance, that's my choice...

 

didn't work for me either....

 

didnt even see this thread before.. i have sent the person a email who told me they had the system run with a qx9300 to make fully sure they were correct in what they told me. i directed them a link to this thread as well. so if they were telling me the truth which i see no reason this particular person has to lie to me they can post up info, i know this person has access to a lot of chips so im hoping it was the qx9300 and not a x9100 and they misinformed me about what they were talking about

if they did i apologize i was simply stating what i was told as i said it was not me who tested it. i have known this source for many years so i hope they were correct in what they told me. i do know they also told me the x9100 ran very very hot in the 860 as well so thats why i am making sure he was not reffering to the x9100 and said qx9300 by mistake since we were discussing both at the time. either i will or they will report back with their answer. sorry if the info was wrong i was just relaying what i was told.

 

Well, we have another source that says that qx9300 and q9100 do not work.

 

thats why i assume at this point he was wrong in what he said. i asked him twice but he must have been in la la land or something.. sorry again.

i do know the x9100 runs pretty hot in there..

 

Meh, It's not too bad for me. And undervolting brought it into a very comfortable range. 88 C before and around 70 C now with undervolt under load.

 

wow 70C is still pretty warm for comfort.

my OC'ed AMD FX-60 @ 2.9-3.0GHz does not exceed 65C... with undervolt.

 

if its 70 under orthos or something else thats fully loading the CPU both cores etc, thats pretty darn good i would say in such a small form factor.

 

thats true.

I am still amazed that a single fan can efficiently cool such a high-end 15.4" system.

 

Yeah and I have proof with pictures of the QX9300 actually seating in the M860TU's motherboard and a picture of the Q9100 laying around somewhere. Some guy on ebay selling QX9300 engineering samples said in his auction that the QX9300 was compatible with the M860TU, that kind of convinced me to purchase an OEM QX9300 to happily find out two weeks later after it got stuck in the customs for 10 days that it wasn't compatible even with the latest BIOS. So really, if what I'm saying is not enough proof for some people, hopefully they'll be able to get a 100% refund on their QX9300 purchase.

Down to what voltage did you undervolt your X9100? Mine doesn't run as hot as yours did before undervolting but it could save me some battery life anyhow.

 

Ya I used Orthos to test, or heat and stability after the undervolt so I am very happy. Especially when they said it could not work.
Clevo Kicks A$$

1.0 v for all multipliers except for max multiplier is at 1.0250v. I could definately go lower and be stable on the lower multipliers but the changes wouldn't take. Didn't really screw around with it too much though. I may try Crystal and see if I can get them lower then keep my .5 multiplier as well.

 

My temps are great actually on my X9100, I just ran IntelBurn Test, 5 loops brought my CPU up to 67c and 65c on both cores, and that's seating on a desk, no notebook cooler. However the GPU runs hotter, depending on games, Crysis for instance without a notebook cooler will keep my card at around 74c while Dead Space will take it higher. Of course that changes according to display driver used and ambient temps, but that gives a good idea though.

 

wow better than the x9100 i saw they were seeing 85+ but that was without any undervolting to it. imo thats way to hot. great to see you got it to around 70 or less..

 

Yeah seriously I don't understand how some people have their X9100 running that hot. I have the latest batch of X9100 Engineering Samples (it doesn't even show ES in CPU-z) so I don't know if Intel made any thermal adjustments to the CPU in their last batch. Anyhow usually all it takes is a small, nicely spread layer of Arctic MX-2, tightening the HS properly and it should be all good.
If I did lose 18c if I undervolted, that would mean less than 52c under full load!

 

Will you do me a favor? Run Orthos for 30min to 1hr while HWMonitor is running, then take a screenshot and post it. I need a QBEE spec run for my records.

 

kevin didnt you score over 11k 3dmark? doesnt seem to be much advantage to the x9100 unless you can oc it a ton imo

 

Yeah I'm pretty close to 11.3k. The T9800 is close enough to 3.0Ghz to me. Since quads are out of the picture, I'm done upgrading CPUs. GPUs are still an option if the 48xx ATi chips work out well in this chassis.

 

Hey,
Ya I'll do that tomorrow afternoon, however I'll use Realtemp and not HW Monitor for CPU temps because HWMonitor is off (5c higher per core).

 

That's weird, because for me, RealTemp is always 5 degrees higher than HWMonitor. Right now:

HWM: 39-39
RT 2.7: 44-44

Do you mind running both programs at the same time?

 

What is the word on this, are we waiting to see which type of interface the 48xx will use?

 

How do you know that realtemp is the one that is right?

 

Realtemp is known to be accurate with 45nm CPUs. Anyways I'll run all these tests when I get back home.

 

^^^ agreed real temp is the one that is known for 45nm accuracy

 

I use the temps from HWMonitor because they are the highest temp readings. I would rather know what the higher temp is just in case thatone is actually more accurate. Just to be on the safe side anyway. Plus RMClock and HWMonitor are the same for me so I go with that.

 

Alright, screnshot is up after more than 30 minutes of Small FFT Orthos stress testing. The laptop was sitting on a wooden desk throughout the whole test and it barely got over 60c, mostly stayed just around 59c. The cooling on this laptop is pretty amazing if you ask me, if you properly apply your thermal paste etc, you shouldn't be too far off these temps.

 

Nicely done, I ordered Eurocom to put the thermal paste on mine, but maybe I will tear her apart and throw a fresh coat on.

 

Yeah however make sure that you have enough thermal paste to also do the graphic card because the heatsink is shared for the graphic card and processor, so if you remove it, I really advise against keeping the stock dried up thermal paste on the GPU. You'll need about 3x the amount required to cover the CPU to do the GPU.

 

all this thermal paste stuff.. ... i barely have any on mine and it stays 32/32/37/37 about 55'c max a bit higher if i run it on the bed with vents covered. about 60 if it's really warm in the room (90 degrees).

 

Ahaha lol, you don't need tons of it, actually the more you put and the less efficient it is, all you need is a super fin layer right in between for optimal heat transfer
Really nice laptops by the way Johnksss, if only we could pack all this power into the M860TU! We'll see this kind of performance in 15.4" next year I'm sure.

 

lol, tis is true emman..

i told you you would be happier..

 

called today a reseller here and they say Q9000/Q9100 are already fully supported. Should be a new revision Motherboard.

 

If only there could be some kind of trade in program so that we can trade our current M860TUs (keeping RAM, HDD, GPU and CPU) and receive the one with the motherboard revision, this way we keep all of our components, especially the 9800m GT that has been discontinued.