New NP5793

After a huge wait (a little longer than usual), I finally got my new NP5793, and it's quite a love affair (seems my car has some competition now) and I have to say, compared to the tons of editing rigs I've been using for work, this thing is miles ahead. A twelve minute 2-pass WMA render took 45 minutes, where they usually take two hours at the resolutions I play with. Of course I suspect it'll slow down with time, but lets make the most of what we've got right now, right? I had a couple of questions about my system, but I've never been in the habit of just asking questions, and like to give a lot of background information, so to be helpful, I've underlined all my questions.

I've been using it for a week now, and it's been sitting pretty on top of a Notepal Infinite, which is about an inch too small either side for this thing, but it'll suffice ( Will it? Temperatures haven't gone over 45C). The expresscard slot's been claimed by an eSATA adapter, which gives me access to a Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB, kept safe in a black Vantec NexStar 3 case, and I'm using a rather unimpressive, but still excellently responsive and precise Logitech Optical Mini.

After installing XP and all the drivers, (there's one tiny, awesome sound feature in Premier CS3 and not CS4 that doesn't work in 64-bit and Avid doesn't have for some reason) I moved on to Vista Ultimate 64-Bit. I'd used Vista on other peoples' systems before, but stuck to XP on my own and all editing machines (except for the scant few times I was blessed with a Linux-only Smoke) and I have to say, Vista's a dream on this laptop. I've customized it to within an inch of its life, and once I see just how far I can push the system, I'll consider going the TripleHead2Go route. a 24" monitor accompanying the 17" display on this laptop just isn't a match made in heaven, especially when I end up viewing my in/out samples on the smaller display, but of course that's all for much later.

I installed the drivers from the drivers and utilities CD that came with the laptop (haven't upgraded the Forceware yet, can't see any that LaptopVideo2Go's modded INFs seem to support my card, so I'm sitting on the stock 176.25, and it has served me well on the limited gaming I've done thus far- Source games, Max Payne (not system-intensive by any standards) and UT3 (drop-dead gorgeous on this system), was just wondering if I needed to upgrade my Forceware, and what was a recommended upgrade to get the best out of newer games, as I intend to get back into gaming which I left out for a considerable while, but want to maintain my video render quality and stability as well.

Also, the fingerprint reader's software has given me much grief. It likes to randomly lay claim to inordinate amounts of memory (in the neighborhood of 400MB+), and with Vista, refuses to save my passwords. Gtalk let me save my passwords to fingerprint on XP, but here it says something about not being an IE module. Same issue with Firefox, which definitely isn't IE. Anyone else having these problems?

On to sound. Laptops aren't known for the best onboard sound, but connecting this to a generic Sony music system has left me impressed, though disappointed at the music system's tendency to bass-ify everything I give it to play. Connecting it to a Pioneer system in my car though almost brought me to tears at how beautiful the music sounded. Recording voiceovers was straightforward, I've stuck to an unbranded, generic headset-mic which has worked well with my voice, considered uniquely deep yet soft. This laptop hasn't responded as well to the mic, and so I connected an XLR-based shotgun from a PD-170, and found the sound to be quite hollow. On looking around for external options, I was fortunate to locate an original, unopened PC Card Audigy 2 ZS. An Expresscard to PC Card adapter wouldn't be too hard to acquire, so I wanted to ask how well that particular sound card would respond through an adapter. I'm staying away from Creative's Expresscard-based sound cards right now, as they're all software-based, and the Audigy 2 ZS's one of the best hardware ones I've seen in a while.

Finally, I'm trying to understand what's claiming inordinate amounts of my system memory. When the fingerprint reader's software (psqltray.exe) isn't popping up and revving the fans (it only seems to do that after I've closed some full screen application like a game or a film), and I've grown to disregard the svchost instance that likes to lay perpetual claim to 150MB+, still when I have nothing else running and just a blank desktop, the memory meters report 31-34% being used up. I tried to play around with a few things, I disabled Aero and all the fancy stuff, and it only dropped the memory usage by 3% or so. I've fired up task manager and opened all tasks, and then added up the memory used, and it only adds up to about 19% of the 4GB I have available. This isn't affecting my computer use (Lost Coast on full settings only takes up about 500MB and gives me a good 160fps when I run the tech demo, I can't for the life of me figure out how to use Fraps). Would anyone know what's taking up the mystery 15% of RAM?

So far I've installed Firefox, Avast, Foxit, Gtalk, Pidgin, Picasa, HijackThis, CCleaner, Speedfan, Nero, Office 2007 Ultimate, WinRAR, Java/Shockwave/Real/Flash plugins for my browser, Startup Inspector, VLC, Steam and some Source games, and all drivers. Did I miss something out?

One final question, what do you use to clean the screen? I hate fingerprints!

Thanks a ton. Also, I would recommend this computer to anyone and everyone. Can't get these specs for this price anywhere else, though for that reason, seems it won't be available for long. Glossy's already unavailable.

 

There is almost certainly nothing suspect consuming your RAM - what you're almost certainly seeing is _Vista's superfetch functionality at work, preloading RAM with the data and code that the superfetch algorithms have determined you are most likely to be needing sooner rather than later. It's an efficient way to use RAM that would otherwise just be lying around idly rusting away (so to speak) - why pay for all that RAM if you're not going to be putting it to good use?

 

Thanks a ton. I just wanted to make sure that something malignant wasn't eating up my memory. I installed things as carefully as I could, and I've kept UAC active.

 

Nice write up. I am having some of the issues you are having. But I have to ask you, are you sure your screen is "glossy"?

I just got mine on the 10th, mine has a "matte" finish but compared to my HP laptop with a "matte" screen, it looks glossy. It's definitely a great screen since it takes the best from each type. Mine does not have fingerprint problems or glare but it has great color and look.

 

Just ordered my NP5793, $600 off....finally the excuse I was waiting for. Got it without HDD as I just bought a new one for my dying Dell, so it should work. Will acquire OS after I speak with my friend. I'm very excited to get this thing, tired of junk from everywhere else, for way too much money.

 

I placed the order November 1st, it reached my cousin in Canada on the 15th, I still had to wait a bit for it to get to me in India though, I finally got it on the 5th of December. We wanted to make sure everything was working out before bringing it to the other side of the globe

 

If you want a good soundcard for music and movies.... look towards external pro-audio soundcard like:
- M-Audio Transit (fully powered by USB and sounds better than any consumer level stuff)

If you want to play games, music, movies.... then you might consider:
- Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Expresscard (will give you hardware EAX support and good for music/movies).

 

I'll check out the M-Audio Transit one, but the reason I'm staying away from the current X-Fi expresscard offerings is that they're software based. When I'm working on commercial projects on Digi Beta and HD, I need all the processor power I can get my hands on.

Is USB as good as expresscard/pc card? I know the data transfer rates have a huge difference, but does that apply to sound quality and recording?

 

I use the M-Audio Transit when I am not home when using Nuendo and Cubase... works fine.

When I am at one location for a long time, I use the M-Audio FW1814 (firewire)... probably the best pro-audio soundcard at the moment for the money.

The on-board sound card is fine, you can fine tune it to give it even more quality....

to make the sound better on the on-board soundcard:
- go into "RealTek Sound/Effect Manager"
- set Environment to "Carpeted Hallway"
- enable Equalizer
- set Equalizer to Soft (as in Soft Rock) or Powerful (if you want it louder)

 

That definitely improved the sound here, but I'm going to look at some of these M-Audio products, I could do with an XLR input. Using an adapter to connect the mic to the laptop defeats the whole purpose.

 

I had one more question, is it normal that Speedfan doesn't display any fans for this laptop?

 

SpeedFan is not a good utility for notebooks, it mainly for desktops.

Clevo notebooks (unlike others) already have Fan Toggles:
Fn+1 for Max Speed or Auto Speed
Fn+3 for Medium Speed

___________________

If you want to monitor temps, use:
- HWmonitor (all-in-one simple tool)
- RivaTuner (for GPU, is best for in-game monitoring)

Visit the NBR Cooling Central for more info

 

I do play with that a little occasionally, my hard drive seems to be the first (and mostly only) thing to heat up in the laptop, but the GPU did get pretty hot after a few hours of UT3 at 1920 x 1200 with full settings turned up, hit 57C and that little fire icon popped up in Speedfan. I'll give these two programs a shot.

Thanks a ton, you've all been quite helpful. I did follow this forum a lot and read what everyone wrote, it helped in great part deciding what laptop I eventually went for, and I finally made the account once I had my own laptop so I could (possibly) contribute a bit as well.

 

your temps should be fine in that notebook.... as long as you do not block the fans/vents on the bottom.

 

I'm not blocking anything, but I am using a Cooler Master Notepal Infinite, which is about an inch too small on either side width-wise. It was the only cooler I could find in Delhi. I haven't tried using the laptop without the cooler, so I have absolutely no idea how effective the cooler really is.

 

the CM Infinite should do fine

 

That's good to know. It seems to line up with vents at the bottom of my laptop better than I would imagine the Zalman NC-2000 would.