New Sager NP8952 Max-Q Laptop

NVME ones are, SATA ones not so much.

 

Has anyone purchased this laptop yet? If ever, can you guys give a quick review?
Been looking for reviews online but other than the video posted earlier, there are none.
I am looking into purchasing this within the week or so, hopefully some reviews will pop up.

 

What do you want to know the most about this laptop?

 

Generally on the performance of the 1070 Max-Q. Did anyone have different test results while on heavy load? I am really concerned about the temps. This is the main reason why I want to move out of my MSI GS43VR to a Sager NP8952 - maintaining a thin and light form factor, reducing temps by a huge margin, and getting a bit more performance coming from a 1060.

 

Here you can see a small review at the end:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/new-clevos-with-max-q.805381/page-96

 

My very first Firestrike Graphics result is pretty bad compares to all GTX 1070 Max-q results out there: only 13844 in Graphic score. Even after a few more tries the Graphic score is still not above 14000. I'm not sure whether it is the Graphics driver to blame (I downloaded from Geforce website). Temperature wise, CPU max temperature is 74 degree Celsius max and GPU is 76 degree Celsius max after run through Firestrike. However I do have to point out that I did not fully install my laptop's keyboard back in place because I opened up my laptop to put an SSD in it for some testing and will need to disassembly the laptop later to install another SSD, in which with the keyboard opened up a bit it could be why the CPU temperature is not quite high like what we seen on other review. Also I added extra padding on the bottom of the laptop to tilt up couple degree more to allow better airflow, and I haven't apply undervolt on my CPU yet.

I only tried Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 to see gaming performance. After playing Battlefield 3 for 10 minutes with Ultra setting, both CPU and GPU temperature are around 70 degree Celsius. Battlefield 4, on the other hard, makes the CPU and GPU temperature reaches 83 degree Celsius max after about 10 mins of gameplay with High setting.

 

Well... lower performance and higher temperatures should be expected with Max-Q, along with a higher price tag to cover the cost of the latest marketing gimmick. This should come as no surprise.

 

Check your nvidia driver if it has the whispermode activated. If it is, try again with it disabled to see if there is any difference in performance. Temps are within expected.

 

He said his score was lower compared to other notebooks with GTX 1070 Max-Q, not that it was lower than a GTX 1070. 1070MQ ought to achieve ~ 15000 to 16000 Graphics in Fire Strike, his score is a full 1500 to 2000 lesser. He wasn't talking about MQ vs non MQ, he was talking about the poor performance of the notebook compared to what would be expected of a MQ notebook itself.

 

Yep indeed. I am fully aware that a GTX 1070 Max-Q is not going to performs the same as GTX 1070, but i was just comparing my score with other GTX 1070 Max-Q laptops.

After uninstalling and reinstalling the Graphics driver (completely uninstall old graphics driver using a software from Guru3D.com), the Graphics score is still pretty much the same. But i notice there is something strange with my laptop, in which whenever there is UAC window pops up to notify me when apps try to make changes to my computer, my laptop just stuttered for a bit. I then searched for a solution: go to User Account Control Settings and set the notification to "do not dim my desktop". Problem solved, no more stuttering issue. This solution could be useful for all you future NP8952/P950HR owners . Maybe It is caused by some sort of software conflict between Intel Graphics Driver and Nvidia Optimus. Now my Firestrike benchmark Graphics score is 14664.

 

Hmm i wasn't sure whether whispermode was on, but later on after my first couple Firestrike benchmarks i downloaded the Graphics driver from Sager's website and that particular driver version has no whispermode because it is an older Graphics driver version and i was still getting similar score as the first time (below 14000).

 

That's what I got from it, there's no question about the performance difference between MQ and full cards, that's known and expected. Variances that large between models with the same card are important.

 

What kind of battery life can I expect out of this with light browsing or while watching a movie? Also will the MQ drive VR well? I've looked for other threads without much luck for reviews. Thanks.

 

The machine will do fine with VR, 3-4 hours IIRC.

 

Is there anyone who owns this laptop who is also familiar with the clevo p650, ie the 15" model with the regular gtx 1070?

How do the build quality and thermals between the two compare?

 

Thermals are stronger on the larger device hence the full power 1070.

 

I think battery life is not very good for the NP8952. I can barely get almost 2 and half hours with extremely light browsing and basically doing nothing else. That is with power saving mode on and 20% to 40% brightness. But of course your millage may vary.

 

Aww... that's some bad news :/

I'm also looking at NP8952 but if the battery can't stay at least 3 hrs then I might have to go with NP8950 (it can stay for 3.5 hrs apparently)

 

Reviews of the Clevo P950HR by NotebookCheck:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Euroc...HQ-GTX-1070-Max-Q-Laptop-Review.244590.0.html

 

Performing quite a bit lower than the 1070MQ Zephyrus, which gave a firestrike graphics about 11% higher. Which shows, that the maxq implementation varies by vendor, as expected.

 

Check your GPU is not waking up.

 

And even the GTX 1070 Max-Q MSI GS63VR performs better than P950HR in Fire Strike graphic benchmark hopefully Clevo will release some sort of update to bring up graphic score, or at least better graphical performance.

 

How do i check this? And if the not so good battery life is caused by GPU keeps waking up, how could i solve this? Please advise

 

It seems Eurocom is already working on it!

 

Turn of the GPU activity icon from the desktop tab at the top of the nvidia control panel. It will then list what is waking the GPU if it is.

 

That's great! I hope my Sager NP8952 can take advantage of the performance tuning as well. I'm ok if the laptop fan has to work super loud in order to get better performance

 

There is no program listing there in NVIDIA GPU Activity menu. However, I did find out that my GPU keeps turning to idle, on and off frequently by using NvOptimusTestViewer64 (I don't recall where i find this program anymore...). Turns out I had GPU-Z running on background and it was causing my GPU to constantly wakes up and idle and then turns off somehow maybe because the program obtains GPU data with an interval and it must wakes up GPU. After turning off my GPU, I can feel that my battery life is becoming better than before. I thought getting more than 3 hours of battery life is somewhat impossible with P950HR but now I actually feel confident that my laptop can achieve it with light to medium usage Thank you Meaker for the tips.

 

Yes, that ping to ask for temps which wakes it up has caught out a few people.