My Sager NP9262 Review

My system configuration:

Processor:E6550 2.33GHz Intel® Core 2 Duo, 4MB L2 Cache 1333MHz FSB
RAM:2 GB(2x1GB)
Graphics:8800M GTX 512MB VRAM
HDD: 120GB
Display:1920x1200 WUXGA Glossy
DVD RW,TV Tuner with Remote,7 in 1 Card Reader,2.0 MP Webcam,Wireless card A/B/G,1 Year Warranty

History

So it began around January last year. I wanted to move away from my horrific PC it was so slow and im very sure if I was able to get it to work when I wanted it to that it would have struggled to play Pong. Even though it was bad, very bad it was the size and noise and I really needed something smaller and a a lot less audiable and so I decided to get a laptop.
After a couple of months of searching which at the time was hard as I didn’t know anything about laptops and at the tiem didn’t even consider that I would be able to play games on it. I then came across a good site, maybe you have heard of it notebook review.

For the next couple of months finding a good laptop and then being told by one of the many great members that it wasn’t very good and fidning out games could be played on them which was good for me as I love playing computer games.

Just a few of the selection of laptops that I had considered was the Sager NP5793, the Alienware M9750, the Dell M1730 and the evental beast that I brought the Sager NP9262.

I Would Like To Thank

Well there are many members of this great forum that I would like to thank for all their help and guidence. The first member I would like to thank is RAMBO29 as without him I would not have such a beast of a laptop. Even though it took a couple of weeks for a deal to be completed RAMBO was very helpful thoughout and he must have been getting snnoyed by the end of it with me trying and trying to haggle the price down As much as I could but he just wouldn’t budge.

After the price was set and the delivery service was set I sent a first payment for the laptop to be reserved and then sent the rest of the payment two weeks later and the laptop was sent that weekend, I decided to go for Fedex 3 day international shipping and was very pleased with it it was sent on the 23rd and I received it on the 27th, I would have goten it on the 26th if it wasn’t for it being a bank holiday.

The Laptop

The first thing that hits you when you first look at the laptop is, WOW this thing is BIG, very big compared to laptops I had previously seen or used were 15inchers and the first thing that you think when you first pick up the laptop is, WOW this thing is HEAVY and if you plan on taking this anywhere I really suggest getting a laptop backpack unless you want back problems.

The next thing that hits you is that the laptop looks nice, very nice. Of course this is no Alienware laptop with flashig lights or anything and it looks very nice and very professional. The screen looks very nice even better then the monitor which cost more then my old PC. But I was very disappointed to discover a dead / stuck pixel on the screen which is easily noticable, while im writing this I can see it. It can also be seen in other programs and even some of my games, an example of this S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The keyboard is going to take some time to get used too because its an american keyboard so some of the buttons are in different locations, such as the button: @ and I cant find the £ button on it, any chance I will be able to add this to one of the number pads when using the shift key at the same time. But the size of the keyboard is good and I like the full size number keyboard as well.

The touchpad is okay, not great. As I use it, it some times opens applications or highlights and trys to move them when I don’t want them to be moved or opened, I will most likley use an exturnal mouse when im using the laptop unless im just using word or something with nothing else open.

The shoulder strap bag that was provided is okay, I wouldn’t use it to take the laptop anywhere far though, just round to friends life or something. The laptop has space for the laptop as well as space for some folders or something you could also put the laptop power adaptor and the cable, though as it is heavy I wouldn’t reccomend putting on top of the laptop when it is in the shoulder. But if you plan on taking the laptop on long journies then I would suggest getting a laptop backpack as having all that weight on one shoulder aint going to do it any good.

The laptop also came with the driver disc as well as various other software CDs such as Nero 7 Essentuals which come with software such as Nero Home, Nero Mobile and Nero Show Time 3 as well as other Nero software. The laptop also come with Cyberlink PowerDVD, the only problem that I have encountered on this side of things is that I cant find the driver for the TV tuner on any of the discs.

The laptop come with Windows XP Professional and though I would have prefered Windows Vista, I still like Windows XP Professional but I do plan on upgrading to Windows Vista in the future. I also plan on upgrading the DVD drive to a Blu-Ray drive and then I would like to upgrade the RAM from 2GB to 4GB and then im going to upgrade the hard drive from the installed 100GB drive and add two 250GB hard drives.

im looking at a 250GB Western Digital 250GB hard drive for £79.99 and I plan on buying a second at a later date and plan on using the first hard drive for the Operating System and some application and then using the other two for games and any applications that wont fit on the first hard drive. I then may decide to add a second nVidia 8800m GTX in the future.

Inputs and Outputs

The Sager NP9262 has many input and output options as listed below, however it is ashame that it does not come with HDMI

VGA and DVI outputs for external displays
S-Video output for TV
TV-Input for optional TV-Tuner card.
IEEE-1394 Firewire Port
4 USB 2.0 ports
1 Express Card 54/34 Slot

Right now on the the most important part, the part that you allwant to read, the game performance and the first game that I tried on it was Call Of Duty 4 and during the game I was getting around 30 Frames Per Second, which wasn’t as good as iexpected but still good and then I relised that the laptop wasn’t plugged in and that sorted it out making the Frames Per Second jump from around 30 up to and some times going past 50 Frames Per Second.

Well what can I say? It looked great and was very pleased with it but I had the settings at the default and I think that with some tweaking I think I could improve things. The controls were strange and took some time to get used too as I used to be a console gamer, the ammount of buttons were daunting to begin with and the touchpad didn’t help things either and I kept killng my own team members because the mousepad was used to move the character as well as shoo this was solved when I got a exturnal mouse.

The second game that I tried was S.T.A.L.K.E.R and though the controls were confusing to begin with I got used to them and the graphics were good with Frames Per Second were around 40-50 which was great and it never stuttered. Though on the opening video the screen flickered abit but I think that because the screen was set at 60MHz.

I next played Supreme Commander and even though the only other RTS game that I had played was Command and Conquer 3 on the Xbox 360 but it was only like £7.50 I decided to get it along with S.T.A.L.K.E.R as part of 2 for £15 and I am very glad that I did, it’s a great game and I manage to lose many hours in it when I only want to play for like 30 Minutes.







Anyway onto performance I get around 30-40 Frames Per Second which is great and very playable but on a map that im playing at the moment with me against 6 AI commanders the Frames Per Second can easily drop to single digits but I have set the uint limit at 1,000 and I have just destroyed one of the commanders and have begun my war against another one. I have about 160 units and I love the big explosions that occur after a commander or big unit has been destroyed. I have the settings at default so I think that I could improve things if I lower some settings.

The next game that I played was FEAR and I have to say, WOW great graphics and very good gameplay. They looked a lot better then the Xbox 360 version that I had while it perfromed great with default settings igot around 50-60 Frames Per Second but when as high as 120+ in some situations and they never dropped below 40 Frames Per Second and I think that I could improve things again changing some of the settings.







I then tried Oblivion and was pleasently surprised at how when it ran I was getting around 50 Frames Per Second with some settings changed, I had grass and distance settings on full as well as having distant buildings, land and trees on as well as having shadows on grass as well as tree canopy shadows on and I had water details and ripples on















Though you may not know about it but I also have Crashday got it for like £3.20 and I have to say for a very cheap game it was great, the graphics were very impressive for such a cheap game and the Frames Per Second were also great managing to get over 60 Frames Per Second.

My temps seemed high, please tell me if they are or not but my GPU temp was exceeding 60 degrees and with this as well as the heat coming from the CPU as well as HD meant that left hand side of the laptop started to become hot and uncomfortable will continued use.

Conclusion
Wow this is a great laptop that I got for a great price with a similar confguation here in the UK I was looking at £1,900 and I got it for over £800 less at just over £1,100 or $2,200 and that included the great shipping, sure it’s a bit on the big side and sure its heavy it’s a desktop repleacement and very powerful and even though I got average specs with mine it still performs great and can only get better with various upgrades that I have planed. If you are looking for the best of the best and money is no object to you cant look past this beast of a laptop.

Positives

Price – what more can I say what a great price for a great performing beast

Performace – the perfromance is great even with the average specs

Upgradability – the upgrade options are great with Quad Core and 8800m GTX SLI as an option

Looks – sure not as flash as the Alienware, but still great looking

Negatives

Weight – as said its heavy, very heavy but I wont be carrying it around everywhere so it doesn’t matter

Size – not sure if this could be considered a positive or negative, its positive for the screen and keyboard size while its negative that so big

Dead / Stuck Pixel – very annoyed that I got a dead / stuck pixel on the screen in less then 24 hours

NOTE: screenshots of games will be added soon and pictures of the laptop will be added tonight or tomorrow i hope. i will also be updating this thread with any games that i play.

 

Good review.

A couple of things.
- you can swap keyboards .. its very easy (just order a keyboard with your language.. from almost any Clevo vendor)
- which drivers are you using, which can explain some performance differences in games
- make sure the games are also updated... and V-sync disabled (to see the peak framerate)
- temps, if the GPU is under 90C then you are good.

This is the last notebook I can think of that would overheating.

 

yeah but how will that help with how the buttons are laid out, can i change them, say that shift + 3 = £ and not $?

i have no idea what drivers im using and i have never updated drivers before how easy is it?

yeah v-sync is disabled and im sure the games are all updated, will check them all though

thats great too hear

 

There are many threads about driver updates.. especially for these current Clevo notebooks.

Here are the latest official drivers for this notebook:
http://64.208.175.44/pages/notebooks/download.cfm?ProductType=9262

As for the keyboard, its extremely easy to swap keyboards.... no screws required.

 

but woudlnt the keys the buttons represent still be the same? or will the change as well?

whats the best driver to use for games?

 

THe keyboard for your country would most likely come with keys similar to those that you would see on a laptop at a local retailer.

 

Good review waiting for pictures

 

Finally, but where are the pics?

 

they are taking ages to upload via photobucket they were all 1900 x 1200 but are going to get resized down

i have screens for Oblivion, Supreme Commander, FEAR and a single one of the desktop there are 17 of them i will be doing some more tonight of my other games as well as taking pics of the actual laptop

 

yeah but im saying will it come of software or soemthing to change what each button is, for example will it change shift + 3 will make £ and not a $

 

Ok, make sure you take picture of the laptop also, from the side and front and etc , I`d like to see how big it is again.

 

here most of them are. anyway to make it so one of the gaming buttons can be sued to screen print as save the image so i dont have to screen print, leave game, open paint and paste and save?

Supreme Commander







Oblivion















FEAR







Desktop


i will be adding more.

 

hay if you want to swap a key or two you can the pop off really easy but be gentle and then pop them back on.. so if you change the keyboard and want the $ instead of yours then swap them out..

 

what? i would think you would need some software to make it so some buttons are different, like pressing shift and 3 would make £ on the screen and not a $

 

oh yeah forgot about that.. i was mainly just thinking about the keys themselves. im sure there is a way to change that though.. has to be somehow?? hmmm

 

Sharpkeys or auto hotkeys might work.

 

okay thanx, i will have to look out for them.

anyone know where i can buy the UK version of the Keyboard? thats from inside the UK?

 

im sure you could email sager or call them and ask who they can tell you is in the uk. i think rock was back in buisness, i have heard of devil, and i know there are more also..

 

You could ask Neil or Andrew from Kobalt.

 

Thanks for the nice review and the pictures.

 

i might try Novatech or Kobalt see if one of those could get hole of one, thanx.

also what do you think of my screens? its really hard trying to play the game and take a screenshot, open paint and save it all at the same time any idea if its posisble to make it so one of gaming buttons can be used to take the screenshot, open paint, paste it, and save it? with all having different names?

 

Fraps has a setting for it(granted,you need the profesional version to save as jpg-or BMP as standard,and you have to revert it as jpg.)

 

yeah i forgot about kobalt im sure they will help you out. pm him i think neil is on the forums right??

 

i would prefer it to be one of the gaming buttons, then having to have another app open, i mostly have a game, Itunes and several word files open

thanx anyway

@ Zfactor

thanx ill send him a message

 

No man, you can set FRAPS to take screens with a touch of a button.
I use F4 for it.

 

really? cool you know where i can download a free version of it (does it work with the free version)?

 

http://www.fraps.com/download.php
i think it will save it as a bmp file unless you upgrade (read "pay").

 

okay thanx.
i found FRAPS 2.8.2 will that work?

 

Hey
The Max temps used to be 62 for crysis.And for TV Tuner the driver I don't know which one is it yet.But I will upload it somewhere.

PS:Good review

 

The driver for the TV Tuner is the CD labeled MPC788.
I checked in device manager and it says YUAN MPC788 MiniPCI Hybrid TV Tuner.

 

okay thanx, it doesnt ring a bell but ill have a look for it tonight, thanx

 

If you can't find it I can send it to your e-mail address.

 

i think that would be easiest, coz im sure i went through every CD and still couldnt find it
thanx

 

Nice review, kind of makes me glad I didn't get the 9262 now though you make it sound way to big to even move it. I'll do a review of mine the next few days.

 

i wouldnt say it was huge, bigger then average

 

bwhxeon you buying NP5793 again?

 

I already did, http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=254169.
I had no problems this time and he shipped it out express. Paid for it the same day rambao did a return to sender. Not what I really wanted, but I needed a computer this week and bestbuy doesn't take paypal =/

 

right update, i will be adding screens of COD 4 and STALKER as well as pics of the laptop on monday

 

just an update, going to be adding some COD 4 screens tomorrow and i hope some pics of the laptop, my phone is kinda screwed and only wants to work when it wants to

 

hey amergeddonash.. are you running xp or vista now. how are your 3dmark scores like...? just wanted to compare the different values we get on our beasts
im running vista x64 by the way.

 

ive got XP Pro SP 3

but i think there should be about 1,000 point difference due to you having quad core, 4GB ram and dual 8800's while i only have 2.33 dual core, 2GB and a single 8800.

im getting just over 9,000 but i think i might be doing soemthing wrong or using the wrong drivers as i believe chrisvolker who has the same setup as me got closer to 9,500

i really want to move to Vista, i just dont have the money at the monment my next upgrade is going to be for the HD. im adding 2 x 250GB drives

 

awesome..!! yeh i shoulda have got the 2x200GB sata II hard drives but i opted for the 160 instead. i will add a 3rd one later if need be. maybe a 320gb sata II monster when it comes out hehehe..

well i posted in the d901c thread that i got 13188 3dmark 06 with these overclocked cards.. and basically guys were telling me i shuld be getting more that 14K at least but i was running it on the balanced power mode.. maybe i should change it performance and see what happens.

 

wow 14,000 dam i think i should be getting around 10,000 but i havent overclocked anything, maybe its my driver? what one are you using?

 

ive oveclocked my cards using the flashing bios method. they are now running at 600/1500/900.

im using 175.75 modded drivers from laptopvideo2go

 

im not sure what drivers im usng but will have to have a look.
any idea of how i can boost the score without overclocking?

 

put your lappy in the perfomance mode that will be in the battery settings i believe.

turn off all unnecessary processors things like antivirus etc

downloade the latest directx components.

and run 3d mark again. see what score you get this time.

 

okay thanx i will give that a try

 

Post your full score details... not just the total score.

We need to know:
- SM2.0 Score
- HDR/SM3.0 Score
- CPU Score

Although I think your score is fine... since you CPU is just a dual core.

 

RAMBO said that he got 9,500+ from it,
i will post scores tomorrow along with the COD 4 screens

 

awesome..!! go the NP9262 Woooff!!!