NP9260 hindrance..

The NP9260 will rival any high end desktop computer in every component except one; Hard Disk speed. That in my opinion is the biggest hindrance of the NP9260. Benching all other components will give benchmarks that some high end desktops will not reach. I posted an earlier post complaining about the puny Bios included with the NP9260. Like AlanP said, it is like giving you a Viper with a motor scooter transmission in it..LOL To that I will add: and we will limit your RPM to only 3000 while we know the Red Line threshold is at 7000 RPM.

Those machines will handle anything you throw at them, there is really no need to overclock. The reason we get, or at least I get, hiccups here and there while playing games is simply because the Hard Disks are slow.. Yes I have 2 7200 RPM hard drives running Raid 0 but still the hard drives are slow. 2.5” hard drives will never be as fast as 3.5” desktop hard drives.

So I hit the internet in search of 10,000 RPM Notebook hard drives. Fujistu apparently make 2.5” 10,000 RPM notebook hard drives, however they are a SAS Interface; do not have clue what that is and if it will work with the NP9260. I think it is some sort of SCASI interface. I am hoping that someone, and there is a wealth of knowledge in this forum, will be able to know if those drive will work in our NP9260. If not, well maybe a Firewire external 10K RPM hard drive.

I have been keeping an eye on this forum for ways to overclock the NP9260. Now I am no authority on overclocking, but if we were to use FSB overclocking, wouldn’t we be overclocking the Memory as well? Unless we can drop the Memory speed say from 800 to 677 I don’t think we will be able to go very far overclocking our CPU. Does not that also overclock the PCI bus?

Anyway my 2 cents and that does not mean I will not try FSB overclocking if it were available. I am not savvy enough to hack the Bios but I am brave enough to try a hacked one.. Ah the quest for squeezing ever bit of performance I can.

 

Er, very few games will have any problems with load times. Something else must be wrong with your system if your having problems. With my 3 Hitachi 7k200's I've never experience any hiccup because of loading. Then again I usually turn my page file off.

 

Hello Wu Jen

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the system. Don’t get me wrong the system runs fine but I do get occasional hiccups. Maybe SLI with dual 7950’s you get to load more graphics in your VGAs than a single VGA thus reducing hiccups. Turning off page file, well that would improve performance but the recommendation is that you keep it on. It is worth a try though since I have 2 gigs of 800 ram.

Any luck finding an overclocking program with the right PLL?

 

i havent noticed any hiccups...with a single hdd (160gb 7200rpm) the load time is very fast (for CSS), and i dont have any problems with any other games.

 

Hmm, well when I first got the laptop, I re-formatted the hard drives, since in Raid 0 it shows as one HD, because I wanted more than one partition. I don’t know if having more than one partition has anything to do with it. I can’t see why though. Maybe when I re-formatted I missed something.. I don’t know, I mean the computer runs fine and most games play fine, a couple I had hiccups with.. and an occasional hiccup here and there. Who knows maybe I have a gremlin in there.. It just irritates me when I have hiccups, both myself and the computer, I mean a computer with specs like that should not have any….

 

well not trying to imply anything or be mean, but if you did miss something, it wouldnt run that well...it could be something you missed, or it could be hiccuping... i know it would take a lot to make these 9260s hiccup though..

 

I'd suggest turning off the page-file like Wu Jen said. If your laptop is using virtual memory for any reason, it would take a huge toll on performance. Then again, it shouldn't be digging into the virtual memory unless you're running the game and other memory intensive applications in the background.

 

While building my Desktop, I looked for 10k rpm SATA II 300 transfer speed drives. It's like memory latency all over again, faster rpm and slower access speeds. I could find 7200 rpm Sata300 or 10k rpm Sata150. In memory, higher bus speeds generally means higher latency numbers. Repeat after me, Latency Bad! A gain yes, but a minor loss of what could have been.

Not all 7200 rpm hard drives are alike born alike, the typical drives offered by some of the Clevo resellers are rated at half the transfer speed of the latest released designs. Powernotebooks for example [not to pick on one supplier by any means] lists lots of SATA150 7200 drives and a couple 3gb/sec 7200, simple translation, that some are 1.5gb/sec versus 3.0gb/sec transfer rates. It makes a difference. And an informed customer can insist on the faster drives. The model number of the drive is listed in the bios, do a google search to find out the specs of your hard drives. If they're the slower version, don't panic, it's and easy upgrade for the future! It's always nice to have a project to look forward to

By the way, it's a great Laptop, but it didn't take much effort or cost to buld a Desktop that runs circles around this machine. The Clevo works hard to break 10k on 3dMark06, while the desktop would need a minor oc on video to crack into 13k. And I don't have SLi in the Desktop, ... yet ...

But a LARGE part of the Desktop performance comes from idling a E6700 at 3.4 mhz. Gigabyte uses a much better bios...

 

Got to love this forum. A lot of knowledgeable people, a lot of help and a lot of good suggestions. I ordered my laptop with 2 7200 rpm 150 drives running Raid 0 under the assumption that Raid would run faster. From what I have seen that gain is negligible in Laptops. After reading AlanP’s reply, which made a lot of sense, BTW AlanP thanks for your reply, I was wondering when you are going to get around to replying to my post..lol, I did some research and found out that the ones with no complaints about hiccups are the ones running SATA II; the 3.0/gb transfer. Wu Jen has them on his machine as well as pbcustom98 as well as others. Guess it is time to call Sager and order a 160GB SATA II and see where it leads. I guess running Raid 0 in a laptop is not the answer.. Wonder if Sager will take the 2 150 drives back.. NOT..

Once again I want to thank everyone for replying to my post
Cheers

 

how long ago did you order it? they may let you....give them a call..

 

Been 3 months to the day. I already called Sager, they will not exchange them. However they told me to try only one partition instead of three before I buy a SATA II. They seem to think partitioning Raid 0 affects performance, at least that’s what the Salesman thinks. Tech guy was not so sure. I am reformatting, as we speak, with only one partition, C. I don’t think it will change things but hey its worth a shot since I have nothing better to do..lol I’ll let you guys know if that helps. I simply hate reformatting, have to put all programs and apps back in.. Grrrrr

 

cool thread guys, but i think you are forgetting something here...np9260 is a notebook..and you will ALWAYS pay a price for that. and i mean price as both $$ and performance hit. it is simply not possible to pack more performance in smaller package. thats it.
did any of u see 8800GTX live? this card is almost 1/2 of whole np9260..and cooling system is just ENORMOUS. you can put two of those in desktop without any issues..due to thermal limitations you will not be able to do the same with notebook. same thing with quad core or dual socket motherboards - it just won't fit in.
so you can't really compare a notebook with a desktop..even if notebook happens to be the most advanced and fastest mass-production DTR on this planet.

 

Well you can get extremely close, your just about 6 months late with laptops, but with the new 8800m (supposed to be a bit less performant than the real 8800) a nice sli 8800 setup becomes possible and quad cores are just arround the corner. You can still smoke most pc s out of the water... just need more money to do it lol (yeah sure big gaiming rigs will be hard to beat but right now performance would be marginal... quads are not that better for gaming)

 

My view is that is not difficult for a desktop to beat a NP9260. Same CPU, put int a 8800 GTS and dang you get better results (over 10000 easy on 3dMark06), put two well .... You have to have other reasons to buy this notebook rather then a desktop besides performance.

Nice review of 8800GTX with scores comparing each model here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/428/11/

Concluding IMHO this notebook does not rival any new high end desktop (with Intel Core 2 CPUs) in terms of sheer performance. It does rival desktops that are anything between medium to high but not high. I'm leaving outside the SLI desktops as these ones ... well would be too unfair for my lovely d900c. Nevertheless the d900c is the fastest notebook in the market for the time being.

Trance

 

I agree with all of you. Like Student1 said you can come close and like DFTrance said this laptop will not rival high end desktops. If you were to take the same exact specs for a laptop and a desktop the desktop will always run faster, at least that is my understanding. Yet the D900C is one hell of a machine and the beauty of it is the easy of upgrade.. Yet if you want more horse power you have to dish out more bucks..

For those curious about my battle with hiccups, I should have an update later tonight, I am trying different things here..

Yep yep yep one of these days I'll get something right

 

I'm not sure I can agree about the "easy upgrade" part, but at least I can agree about the dishing out of more bucks

Was all set to pull the trigger on a 9260/D901C (due to the delay with Dell's M1730) when all of a sudden I read about a new 9261

If an "easy upgrade" involves swapping out the motherboard, then I give up! In truth, I don't really care about quad core support anyway...but if I was nervous about future DX10 support before, this unexpected 9261 announcement didn't really help to raise my overall comfort level

 

I believe that changing motherboards to support "new" processors is not uncommon in the desktop world, why should they be in notebooks?

What would be a real hindrance for me would not be able to install the next 8800M cards in SLI when the time comes on the NP9260/d900c/d901c. Expecting to be able to upgrade the video card without much hassle and re-investment was precisly one of the reasons I bought this 4000 dollars laptop!

After all, what is the point of stating MXM-IV all over the four corners of the world, upgradeability bla bla bla ... and then be stuck with the only card being offered unless one changes the motherboard.

Anway maybe I'm jumping to negative conclusions too fast.

Trance

 

Well the way I understood the reason for the D900C (9260) not being stable running the quad is the power supply. The quad will draw more power. As for running dual 8800M, the theory behind it is the same as the quad, drawing more power. Now the 8800M is still in the developing stage. My guess is by the time it is offered by Nvidia all that would most probably change. I mean take the 9750 GTX everyone was saying it will run too hot in Laptops, draws too much power blah blah etc.. End result you are able to run 2 of them with no issues. I believe the same will be true of the 8800M.

My guess would be a BIOS upgrade plus maybe a more powerful Power Supply. At least that would be the way I would do it if I were the manufacturer.

I don’t really care for Quad at the moment and I think the duo E6700 can handle all games now and the near future. The important things are the VGAs. I have one 7950 now and it runs everything fine. I will probably go with one 8800M when the time comes, or maybe 2 depending on the success of DX-10. By the time DX-10 is stable and has a lot of support and by the time the 8800M is out and stable if that means swapping the mobo for that much better performance then I’ll do it. Remember there are a lot of savvy computer owners out there, they will figure a way to make all that work in the D900C. I mean look at Jhaxton, he is running a quad in the 9260 he got from xtreme notebooks. They modified a bunch of things in it but it is working.

I just would like to see a better Bios where you can do some tweaking is all..