No more Clevo for me....

The most disappointing part in this all is that out of the old Alienware, MSI, and Clevo models, only one of them has proven NOT to easily work with the 7970M. Yep, that would be the Clevos. How do you spin that when your competitors are walking the walk? Okay, AW may charge a premium. What do you say about MSI laptops working then? If they were in a vacuum, the "business decision" could be good move for them, but all that is going to happen in reality is people will jump to MSI or even AW.

 

If automotive performance improved every year the same amount that computers do I'd probably consider it. Since it doesn't, that's not really a good analogy.

 

You're question is legit. Clevo doesn't like to reply emails. Our confirmation comes from resellers and builders.
This has been confirmed from two known German builders, and two major builders in the USA.
They are the first who got the information that the HM models are EOL.
Also a lot of emails have been sent to Clevo headquarters so unless they don't reply to them, your confirmation will arrive soon.

By themselves? Like it happened with older models I suppose, you take the risk and do it by yourself.
But why I should hack and tweak the stuff out of a laptop that I bought for an upgradability reason?
Prema already ported the EM bios structure to HM. If an experienced user did this why they shouldn't. Officially.
I want them to support those new Gpus officially. And they don't have to find excuses like "this would mean more manpower to support older models" because that will mostly happens anyway.

 

Just FYI, I agree with most of what you've said, but someone has to play the Devil's Advocate

Mr. Mysterious

 

clevo is based in taiwan right? maybe sending emails in traditional chinese would work better?

 

You'd have to be familiar with upgradeyourlaptop's previous post, where he claimed that the HM series were completely incompatible with the 7970m card, for what I bolded and explained to make sense. Although perhaps you're right, and I suck at explaining things. I'll try to clear it up.

-There was *one* batch of working AMD 7970Ms that went out from Clevo. This entire batch went *exclusively* to Sager, and passed QC both with Clevo and Sager techs with flying colors. The laptops used in this batch were then distributed to customers who were among the first to preorder NP9150s and NP9170s from vendors affiliated with Sager such as xoticpc, powernotebooks, etc. Other vendors who are not affiliated with Sager such as Mythologic, Malibal, Eurocom, etc did NOT receive any AMD 7970Ms from this shipment, just Sager. I personally own one of those laptops, a NP9170, and it has been working without issues.

-There was then a "second" shipment that followed, and at least started to go out. I believe this shipment began to get distributed by Clevo, and was then recalled. Sager received more from this shipment, as well as other larger resellers such as Eurocom. This was the shipment that had the GPUs which were full of problems, one of the main ones being a "black screen" that would continually pop up. The eurocom employee whom I quoted (upgradeyourlaptop) claimed that voltage regulators were one of the main components at fault, but it's possible that there may have been other issues as well. What *is* clear is that AMD was *not* at fault with regard to this problem - the actual chips that were provided by AMD worked just fine, the issue had to do with the third-party components that Clevo were using to complete the full 7970m unit.

-The misunderstanding came when the employee from Eurocom (upgradeyourlaptop) made a lengthy post explaining that he and his team knew about the issues and failures in the "second" shipment, but that they had extensively tested the "first" shipment of 7970Ms from Clevo, and stated that the failure rate of these were far higher than could reasonably be expected from a retail product, and that they would not be sending any out from the "first" shipment". The Eurocom techs also tried using these 7970Ms (problematic ones with faulty third-party components and high failure rates) in some Clevo HM laptops, and were unable to get them to POST at the time.

-In reality, the "first" shipment that was received by Eurocom was from the same batch as the "second" shipment received by Sager. Eurocom at no point received anything from the "good" batch of working 7970Ms that are currently only found in Sager-branded laptops such as the one I own.

---

So that's the story, as I understand it. And the issue here, as I see it, is whether we trust that because these Eurocom techs were reportedly unable to get their Clevo HM laptops to POST with the bad/faulty (and eventually recalled) batch of AMD 7970m GPUs, it means that all Clevo HM laptops are totally and completely incompatible with the 7970M. They could be right, and the HMs could be incompatible with the 7970M. But I think it's currently very unclear, one way or the other. If some has heard something from a different, perhaps more reliable source, I would very much like to hear it! Any corroboration or refutation would both be very much welcome, at least as far as I am concerned.

So niffcreature, in any case, I sincerely hope I did a very clear, accurate, and easy-to-understand job of explaining the current situation, and managed to do so free of any rancor or bias.

 

Strange people. Who promised the new videocard will work with old chassis? Is it written in your contracts with Clevo or Sager? Why should Clevo claim to the overheated or burn-out your laptops? 7970m completly new card basic on new technology process. I think its impossible in laptop upgrade all components of your choice

 

haha whats going on here......see post like this first time
you buy from a reseller and they "promised" you its cpu/gpu can be upgraded to 7970m/ivy before sale and now cannnot?
1.if yes, its kind of fraud
2.if no, thats your bussniss, you choose to bet it can be upgraded, but u lose

we all know laptop soon to be eol, those laptop can continue support new card is just luckily, the company might do something on new card/old machine's bios/circuit to prevent support newer card, but never do anything let eol machine eat new card intentionally

 

^^Which makes it just borderline legal but unethical business!

 

Actually it's a great comparison if you at top of the line models with regards to both their feature/performance/safety. Though if your talking about your "cheap" 20k Honda then no, you're not going to see a performance/quality increase, hell those things haven't changed since the mid 90's. However when you talk about makers like Bugatti, Aston Martin, and Pagani then ya, their stuff changes very rapidly and is usually in relative terms "superior" to the previous model.

 

It isn't unethical, just bad customer service. If all it takes is a bios update, then they could at least try. Customers won't return if they have the feeling clevo can't be bothered.
Of course we don't know yet, there are too many IFs surrounding this issue. The question in the poll is a little premature. In isolation though, it is reasonable to be disappointed that a company won't support a product which has only recently been discontinued, if indeed that is the case. We'll see.

 

Yes, but what matters now is that the companies depending on Clevo and their very many resellers take just as much due interest in the matter, as the customers, in contacting Clevo and getting the official word from them regarding the matter at hand, if they want their customers, be it the old and/or current customers being happy over just a single year span.

 

Please show the proof with this kind of promisses from Clevo and resellers. You mean that "before sales" p150hm 1 year ago resellers promissed upgrade to 7970m? Lol

 

One thing is contacting Clevo.

Another thing is contacting Sager and seeing if they can make us a custom BIOS.

Number 2 seems easier

 

Let's not have this thread degrade into childish semantics, the bottom line is when you spend $2,000+ on a piece of hardware you expect to receive a certain level of support. Clevo declaring the HM line EOL and ending BIOS support for it after barely over a year on the market is a complete joke.

No body is asking for hardware to be permanently upgradeable (no rational person is anyway), these people are just asking to be given the opportunity to update their machine with hardware that is physically compatible, but cannot function due to Clevo not updating a simple BIOS.

Hell, I'm sure that if Clevo unlocked the damn BIOS that individuals on this forum would have a functioning updated BIOS within days.............and that would cost them nothing.

 

+1000 for me.very good statement man!!!

 

Good point.
I wouldn't bother contacting Sager, they showed where they stand in the poll. Taken your money, can't be bothered with you anymore.

 

Not by 50-60% year over year like GPU's tend to be...

 

Indeed this is a very saddening issue, it brings back flashbacks of when the first Xbox came out then all of the sudden xbox 360 came out and M$ dropped the old one like a hot rock in favor of the new one.

I'd say if Sager/Clevo released the source codes to the bios someone well versed in the matter can pick it up from there, instead of waiting for them to update they can count on the community to update it for them.

This is similar to AMD/nvidia GFX support on linux, where nvidia has always realeased the drivers for people to build upon AMD (former ATI) on the other hand kept them closed source and people had to make hacks and patches to get their cards to work in linux. After peer pressure from ATI/AMD card owners they began to realease support for the cards under linux, while not as advanced as the nvidia counter part at least people were happy the maker did something.

Clevo should start doing this, for the better of their business, they should begin to look beyond the farm and out into the green fields, people will stay loyal as long as there is "mutual" love .

 

The Same thing happened with the 8800M GTX, you could upgrade to the 9800M GT which was essentially the same GPU rebranded but couldn't really upgrade it further to the 280M without a bios update, and to be honest I don't see them changing their policy anytime soon.

The bottom line is it's a business, and how they make their money is by selling the whole caboodle. If they suddenly changed tack and made the GPU user upgradeable their profit margins would take a nosedive. Another thing is if they don't specifically advertise that the GPU is upgradeable, it's more likely they mean ram and hard drive, so there is not much anyone can do about it.

 

Clevo's upgradablility and ease of access to components is one of their main selling points. If they decide to ignore it then they will be the ones losing. You might just as well buy an Asus or an Alienware, since they have better long term support as far as I know.

I like Clevo because in my current laptop I changed 2 GPUs, 5 CPUs, 4 HDDs, 3LCDs, countless sticks of RAM and so on. I can't think of any other brand that allows me to change components with such ease.

 

Funny you should mention that.. they basically stop all production on the old Xbox, insane. Although the first Halo was made on the original Xbox.. oh man good times.. I remember Sony still updating and releasing games for their PS2 aw man

 

Thanks for this post, this helped clear things up for me. To bad people in this thread just want to rage instead of stepping back and trying to understand the full scope of this issue. With an NP9150 on they way, I obviously have a stake in this game, but I'm going to wait until I have something from Clevo saying they do not/will not support older models. An email sent (but not shown here that I can see) from a re-seller does not count in my mind because the re-seller might not have all the details or may be providing misleading details as you outlined above.

 

Yes, we really need some confirmation. Some with HMs have ordered the 7970m, so we should have a better idea soon, and if there is a problem, maybe a fix too.

 

ummm....ok lets clear things up here a bit.

first of all: sure, true that the batch eurocom has been using is the faulty one that has been recalled. BUT the errors have been reported to occur at random, sometimes only when a card has been tested with several furmark / 3dmark runs already, thus POSTing was never an issue with those cards. thus, it COULD be shown what laptops were able to handle these cards and which not. the latter includes the HM machines, where no single card was able to POST. for me, thats a very strong indicator that the HM indeed is NOT able to handle the 7970M, no matter if it has faulty third party components installed or not! since the exact same cards HAVE been shown to POST and run on other laptops, albeit with randomly occuring black screen of course.

secondly: sure there have been a lot of HM users ordering the 7970M, but after eurocom´s message it stands to see if any at all actually kept to their order, since most ive seen here actually cancelled and got a refund already.

so, the way i see it, we can either hope for the eurocom techs to figure something out on their own or supply prema with everything he needs in order to hack his way through clevo´s/sager´s "virtual brick walls of customer upgradeability-doom"!

cheers

 

This looks like a quite simple problem to me, Clevo can allow GPU upgrades and sell GPU upgrade kits just like Dell to make some money or not and lose business to Alienware and MSI. Don't like the way your being treated, vote with your money and buy elsewhere.

Wish you luck in your fight HM owners.

 

Or mod the bios to make it work making the policy look unworkable and ridiculous. They're not helping themselves by ignoring their customers.

 

You shouldn't have to mod anything to have an equal footing with gaming laptops of other brands.

 

You're absolutely right. However I'm not buying a new laptop to replace something that could be upgraded. I'd consider going elsewhere next time though.

 

Is there any way we can contact resellers to start putting pressure on Clevo/Sager? Because its the resellers businesses at stake if this thing makes a big enough splash...

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

 

I have a 7970m order with Eurocom and ordered May 1.... They told me May 14th I should have it [I was one of the first pre orders]. Then they pushed that back to telling me I should have gotten it today. Then thursday they told me they have errors with the cards.

Now if I want the 7970m I'm going to have to wait another 2-4 weeks most likely.

Honestly .

And then I wanted to downgrade to the GTX 670m and just planned on upgrading next year to the newer cards. I emailed the person I've been in contact with at Eurocom and told them to just downgrade me to the GTX 670m and refund me the $200 or so difference when they can get a chance.

He didn't reply that day, so now it won't even begin getting built until next week......

Really really not enjoying this.

I hoped that I'd have it 2 weeks ago with the card 7970m that I wanted.

Now I've waited an entire MONTH and am not going to get the card I wanted.

I could have gotten a machine with a GTX 670m within 1 week if I ordered it May 1.

Seriously..... So much stress and lack of gaming etc. for a gamer/PC addict and then I dont even get a prompt response to try to get me a DOWNGRADED PC, faster?

....

 

Not to rub it in but should have ordered with Xotic or one of the other resellers...Eurocom doesn't have the best reputation. I'd wait for the 7970 either way as well.

 

Yeah, Sager horded all of the first shipment of 7970ms and everyone else was left with the faulty batch and delays, I ordered April 29th and have no ETA in sight

 

Its ridiculous Eurocom originally told me they would have the cards faster than anyone else; thats the only reason I ordred from them. Then they lagged MORE than everyone else... They definitely are not being very business like; if that is how they do business in Canada I'm not doing business there again. In the U.S. it is always CUSTOMER FIRST; not check your email when you get a chance even though you've already royaly screwed them....

If I ordered from Xotic or anyone else I would still have to wait a few weeks for the 7970m because now they are out of stock; I wish I would have just ordered from Powernotebooks [they don't charge tax which is very nice]. People who ordered there the same day as me already got their computers with 7970m yesterday. Gah. I mean the 670m is fine but now I'll have to spend an arm and a leg for a 8970m next year and spend 50-100 to get it installed for me.

 

I dont think so you can upgrade next year.....

 

yeah if this year is a vision of whats to come (HM not being able to be upgraded (at least officially) to the 7970m then chances are your EM won't support the 8 series :/

 

How do you figure that?

Mr. Mysterious

 

He said "if" and "chances are". And most of us agree with him.

 

he just said it @"if this year is a vision of whats to come" ^^

sure enough, if clevo continues this kinda business strategy then u wont be able to upgrade to the 8xxx series, cuz those would be exclusive to the EM series successor with Intel Haswell CPU

 

I thought I read you couldn't swap between the AMD and Nivida cards, regardless of if that generation of card is supported in the bios or not?

I forget where I read it but it was a credible source, so one of the resellers or builders would have to chime in to confirm. Perhaps it was a different model laptop though, that would be the only hope. Otherwise I know it was a sager/clevo because they have pretty much been the only laptop on my radar lately.

Though with this recent bios support issue, or lack there of it does have me thinking!

 

it was probably one of the 120Hz screen 3D models, those are restricted to Nvidia cards. otherwise its no big deal at all to switch between GPU brands, works flawlessly as long as the FRIGGIN BIOS AND EC SUPPORT IT, of course....

cheers

 

The M860TU shell was used for almost 3 years, correct me if I'm wrong. Now they are coming out with a new shell every year.

 

huh, interesting! didnt know that. and yeah, the past three years it has been a new shell every year, as far as i know. before that no idea, since i hadnt entered the clevo arena yet

 

I think the 75% disapproval rating is sign enough that if they continue this policy they will only lose market share in favor of short term sales.

 

Any comments or info on this from resellers or clevo itself or are they all too scared to explain?

 

Start here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/666375-no-more-clevo-me-2.html#post8554175

 

After several months, the M860TU was replaced with the M860ETU.

I think the W860CU came out a little over a year after the M860TU.

A little over a year after the W860CU came out, the P150HM was released.

And about a month ago, the P150EM came out.

So it seems like they've been coming out with something new every ~14 months.

 

Link to the post?

 

Niff, which post? First or second?

#1 http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...eon-7970m-sager-resellers-92.html#post8550655

#2 http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/658084-amd-7970m-available-buy-165.html#post8553867

 

I'm hoping that they will learn from this mistake and give BIOS updates etc. to allow upgrading the EM. Otherwise I would have just bought an Asus or Alienware...