No more Clevo for me....

Ill see, althought as stated probably there's no need for it.
After pages and pages it's clear that it's EOL.
I've posted this just for non believers.
Anyway it wouldn't harm, I guess.

 

Updated my siggy in support.. !!

 

yep same here altho i should probably include the thread too...

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

 

lets hope something good will come from this!!!

 

Just add a hyperlink to the petition thread or the petition itself on the now existent text in your sig...

 

Well thanks for the read. I was thinking on buying the new Sager but after reading this, I will hold off. I will spent my money with Alienware, Asus, or MSI. Thanks for the heads up on this.

 

Anything except for a Clevo, under these circumstances its a waste of money.

 

looks like this is really having an impact on potential clevo buyers tough break! suits u well

 

Of all of them, Asus is the one with a 0% chance of GPU upgrade, because they don't use a regular MXM slot.

 

At least Asus does not advertise that you can replace the GPU.

 

yea they can't advertise that anyways my g74sx has it soldered on the mobo

 

Clevo sellers only advertise that you can replace GPUs among with what is available during purchase. Nowhere can you find a statement where any of them promise or imply that future generations of GPUs will be plug and play.

If you are going to claim false advertising, prove it.

 

um, with what is available at the time of purchase? meaning the EM wouldn't be able to handle the 660 670 680 7970 because those weren't available at the time of purchase. Clevo states that the GPU's are user upgradeable, they didn't state "user upgradeable with what's available at the moment"

 

if this doesnt get fixed i dont think i would ever purchase another clevo again. this is extremely saddening, and i though i had managed to find a laptop that would be "upgradeable" for at least one more generation. I knew ib wouldnt be supported.

 

Clevo's legal bases are covered because the video card IS upgradeable even if its only to a card of the same generation that is supported in the bios. It lives up to what they advertise even though it fails to live up to consumers expectations. You could always file a complaint with the BBB to get a final opinion.

 

Unless you buy the fastest gpu released for that model to start with, in which case it isn't upgradeable, only downgradable. Strictly speaking, what they advertise isn't universally true for that model.

 

Correction: Only possible to replace the GPU with hardware whitelisted in the BIOS file?
For me its pretty pointless to keep a standard such as MXM and then place a artificial limit on upgrades.

 

Ah, but whats the fastest GPU available? (580M of course but you could take any number of games and claim the 6990M is faster). Gotta think like a lawyer, lie, spin the truth, draw it out into a long uphill battle, twist laws to serve your argument, and do whatever it takes to win.

 

Damn, you're probably right.
Is there a need for whitelisting or is it simply there to restrict upgrades?

 

they would probably argue that whitelisting improves the overall quality of the product cuz only hardware that was thoroughly and specifically tested for this chassis is put on the whitelist to ensure maximum compatibility and an overall greater user experience. thus, in the end, theyre only doing this for us

 

There, fixed mate

 

Makes you wonder what they think the mxm standard is for then. Also, you upgrade, you take the risk.

Edit: cheers, much better answer.

 

I´m totally agree with you.I never buy a Clevo again and now i turn
to Alienware.I think there´s much better support with bios and
upgrades.I´m sure we see the same s..t in the EM series of them
without any support after the period.

 

It doesn't really matter what they advertise, what matters is that their competition has better upgrade capabilities, and their buyers will go buy from them instead if they don't keep up with their competitors... And considering that a big percentage of their buyers do so because of this feature, they have a lot to loose.

 

Signed the petition. I am planning on buying a clevo notebook. But upon reading this I am thinking twice now.

 

to be honest the notebooks are very very good in build quality and performance there is none other that offers you the same quality/ratio. The main problem right now is the fact that they are being so quiet if not ignorant to the customers who have bought a recent laptop only to find it's time to buy another if those customers wanted the latest GFX upgrade.

While it is feasible to make bios hacks and mods, this is not a solution. We need the maker to release an official update, because nothing that they say about the laptop is true. MXM standard laptops should be able to upgrade and downgrade without any major issues, hence the rivals Asus and Alienware are able to without trouble so why can't this laptop dubbed "user upgradable" do it?

 

makes u think if this is the true price we pay for the great and unrivaled bang-for-buck ratio...

 

I think that the protest should go from "Please don't stop the BIOS upgrades" to the more truthfully "Please stop your whitelisting in the Clevo BIOS".
If there is a concern with a possible spike in the warranty requests, they should at least provide an unlocked BIOS after the EOL or after the warranty goes away.
The false advertising is both entertained by some sporadic reseller remarks that the Sagers are/may be upgradeable (not as direct as 3 years ago) and indirectly by the community's effort to make them such with different hacks.
The MXM standard has been designed mostly with the ODM/OEM profits rather than the customer upgrades in mind.

 

A thread about this topic, "are Clevo really upgradeable?", could be made sticky in the forum.

 

Just for clarification, the Clevo x7200 is also affected by this problem? No bios support for the 7970m?

I sent an email anyway.

 

nope, the x7200 supports the 7970M both in single and crossfire mode

 

........
isn't the x7200 even older?
Anyway I was #106 on change.org and sent them an email to help out

 

Im looking at MSI this year.

I see MySN sells their barebones but they are the older ones with sandy bridge.

Still no clue who sells MSI in europe though

 

The main issue with MSI has always been build quality, though. potential upgradeability across generation of GPUs is one thing, but build quality is something else entirely. Everything I've heard about MSIs is that they have a pretty mediocre cooling system, which when you stick a powerful, hot GPU in there can result in a pretty short system life. Then there's the cheap/flexy keyboards, and tacky finish. Plus, I've heard sketchy things about their stock panels, although that probably won't make a huge different if you're buying at a boutique site, which you probably are. All that said, I still seriously considered an MSI because they offer some pretty legit deals, but build-quality/superb cooling being my top concern ruled them out for me.

I think one of the reasons why I'm so bewildered by this thread is because upgradeability never even entered into my mind when I weighed my purchase options! And I was assuming that I wouldn't be able to change my GPU/processor *at all* once I bought my laptop - I've always thought that was more or less the industry standard (clearly I was wrong at least with regard to some of these newer "gaming laptops). In any case, I bought my Sager/Clevo because it offered a great price and setup with a top-of-the-line GPU, combined with an understated and attractive chassis, superb build quality and fantastically impressive cooling, and a really high-quality LCD panel. Then there's the attractive option of having the pleasure of dealing with an above-board company like xoticpc for my initial purchase and possible warranty/repairs down the road, as opposed to having to navigate through corporate BS hell with a company like Dell - I've already done with my M11x once, and it was NOT fun. Not in the *least*.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there's a bigger picture here, goes. Buy whatever laptop appeals to you the most, but don't mistake the forest for the trees. It's not like the extent of the upgradeability of Clevo laptops is the sole factor to consider - from my perspective it's a small enough consideration that it's fairly minor. It's certainly something that could potentially be improved upon, and if other gaming laptop manufacturers are doing it, then it's almost a foregone conclusion that Clevo will "keep up with the Joneses", so to speak.

I get that people are upset right now, because there are lots of folks with HM laptops, and it just so happens that they probably won't be compatible with the GPU that is currently at the top of the market.


Now, I have a serious hypothetical question for you guys. Fast forward a month and a half from now, and the 680m comes out, and it matches the 7970m for performance or maybe even beats it slightly. It then turns out that the 680m *is* compatible with the HM Clevo models. If this happens, how are many of you folks going to feel? Will you still be denouncing and boycotting Clevo because they refused to offer support on the HM series to make it compatible with the 7970m? Or will you outfit your laptop with the 680m and not look back and give a second thought to the 7970m.

Serious question. I'd really like to know. Because I honestly think a lot of this has to do with sheer gratification - not that there's anything wrong with this. A lot of you folks have Clevo laptops that were sold as "upgradeable" to some extent, and at this moment in time it just so happens that you *cannot* upgrade your laptop to the current "best GPU on the market". So you get angry about this, and blame whomever there is to blame that makes sense. But would all of this really be an issue if there were a better GPU on the market that your laptop could upgrade to? In that case I think a lot of you would just be totally gratified and happy and excited and really pleased about the state of your Clevo laptop.

 

yep, thats EXACTLY one of the things were pissed off about here thanks for ur help@petition, much appreciated buddy

www.deviltech.de changed their barebones from Clevo to the new IB MSI ones. go check them out, this is also where i got my machine from only culprit with the new barebones: no separate cooling fans for CPU & GPU, they both share one fan :/

i highly doubt that the 680M is gonna be compatible. the great thing about AMD mobile GPU cards is that they lack the implemented MXM structure software base that Nvidia cards DO have, thus the latter need many more BIOS modifications in order to ensure compatibility. so in my book, if the 7970M doesnt work, then the 680M is even LESS likely to work. and please dont draw a comparison to the 670M and 675M. im aware that they DO work in the HM models, but consider that these are the exact same Fermi cards (570M and 580M) that have been used previously, thus its no real surprise that they function properly. with kepler, this is gonna be a whole different thing.

whats ur point? of course there wouldnt be an outcry if there werent any faster GPUs on the market at that specific moment in time. but since this is real life and technology DOES advance, there of course IS at some point a faster GPU on the market and OF COURSE people would rather just upgrade to that instead of buying a whole new system every 12 months and yeah, as said before, its not gonna be very likely that the 680M is compatible with the HM laptops. aside from that, it would STILL kinda suck cuz its definitely gonna cost way more than the AMD card, thus forcing us to pay a premium vs. other OLDER laptop models that actually DO support the 7970M (MSI, Alienware and even some Clevo machines like the X7200). and THAT, in my opinion, just seems way too random and artificially manipulated not to be pissed off about!

cheers

 

First, we would like to say sorry that we took so long to post in this topic. It was a long weekend, and we wanted to give time for users to make their comments.

Second, we would like to clarify why Sager has voted 'NO" on the poll. It is simply because Clevo has never supported an end user directly and they shouldn't. In the past, when they have made their base BIOS available to the public, it has caused nothing but trouble -- from simply wiping out customers’ windows activation status to bricking systems due to missing customization tweaking. Sager stands 100% behind Clevo in its decision to remove their standard base bios from their public servers.

Those of you seeking support should seek support from your point of purchase, and the retailer’s will come from their supplier and Clevo. Therefore again the poll is simply invalid as the HM model is marked EOL as it should be. This does not mean your support resources for any bug and trouble issues have been cut off. We hope that any users that voted Yes in the poll understand this.

Sager has always and will continue to give our users our 100% attention to any issues reported to Sager, and give it our best efforts to resolve issues. If we can’t do that in house, we pass the issue to Clevo and in return Clevo will give Sager their upmost support to reach the goal of satisfying our customers’ needs so long as the issues can be resolved without any limitations or unacceptable side effects to the user experience.

Now we come to the main topic -- AMD 7970m support on the p1x0HM series. Many of you may have received a reply from Clevo the last few days saying that the 7970m is not supported on the HM series due to a chipset / design limitation. This is true. If you reread the Sager news thread you can see that the HM series (Sager NP81x0) was originally released with the NVIDIA cards, then later added the AMD lineup.

At the time of release there were limitations that forced us to create an alternate internal model number due to an inability to swap between NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. This limitation was caused by the LCD panel as well with the way the motherboard was designed to double validate for standard and 3D panel. The AMD GPU thus requires special non universal timing to the LCD panel that caused significant side effects if GPUs were swapped (e.g., GPU running at full speed all the time, no power management, flickering or fuzzy output) without matching SW / HW tweaks.

The tweaking requirements are different depending on mother board revision and LCD panel. With so many combination of the HM series hardware, we simply cannot give an answer quickly until we are able to get the card tested on as many main board and panel revision and combinations as we can. After that we will be able to determine if an upgrade package can be offered. Just a couple of simple examples of what might be needed which includes LCD EDID firmware updates (which require the unit to be sent in for support because special HW tools are needed) or mother board revisions.

Also you should be aware at this time there are open issues with the second batch of AMD 7970m cards. Both Clevo and Sager are swamped using most of our resources on getting the 7970m back on track Once that is accomplished we will be able to begin our research and testing of the HM series in regards to the 7970m.

The good news is that there are no quality concerns with the first batch of AMD 7970M cards. Many of you should already know, but we just want to stress once again that the first batch of the AMD 7970m received and shipped by Clevo has passed all Clevo and Sager QC with less than 1% fail rate. Please take comfort in the fact the unit has proven to be remarkably stable and enjoy your AMD 7970m. Obviously, with the rigorous tests the unit has passed, there is no recall planned.

The second batch received by Clevo was different and extensive Clevo QC revealed a 20% fail rate. The remaining 80% of cards passed without any issues on standard QC as well as extended QC.

In the case of the AMD 7970m card, Clevo has chosen an extremely careful approach to deal with this new batch of cards that has displayed a failure rate that is both high and strange. That is why they took their quality control process to another level. It's also why they have been working closely with AMD to find a solution to this problem. Clevo could very easily have shipped out the 80% of cards that passed through their QC testing, but instead they chose to hold back all of the cards until they can get to the bottom of this problem with this new batch. The bottom line is that shipments will not resume until Clevo can give customers complete confidence in the product they purchase. While it may be an inconvenience to some users, the decision was made with the best of intentions and with the goal of delivering the best product possible. We applaud Clevo for taking this issue so very seriously and for working so hard to make certain our customers receive the kind of quality product they deserve.


Thanks again for your patience.

 

i dont get it... how come that other OLDER laptop models can switch between AMD and Nvidia GPUs without any hiccups (even including Clevo models!), whereas the HM series had to basically be "redesigned" and be subdivided into different "internal models", one specifically for AMD and Nvidia each? i mean, its not like it came as a big surprise that AMD released the 6970M after the 485M, something HAD to come from their side after the 5870M... so it wouldnt make sense that Clevo/Sager were caught "off guard" and suddenly had to come up with some halfassed solution in order to be able to offer both Nvidia and AMD in the HM series.

i dunno Clevo/Sager... im still not convinced, this all just sounds totally chaotic / unorganized and random, seriously.

cheers

 

basically means Clevo doesn't want to hurt their bottom line.

 

This is all that matters. Support for the 7970M has not yet been ruled out.

Now we just wait and see.

 

But, but, but......people would prefer to wail, gnash their teeth, create online petitions and put links to them in their signatures. Wait and see is not nearly as dramatic as throwing a fit prematurely.

 

10chars

 

I did this because i dont want the issue to fall back in the priority list. Getting peoples involved makes it possible in a way that cant be ignored.
No one can tell us if without our contribute the issue would have been sorted no matter what.
Probably if they noticed no one cared about it, they will neither bother.
But we got a Sager reply which acknowledges the problem.
This means something.
But please, forgive me for being stupid and silly and immature into doing this crusade and putting links in my signature.
Ill be sure to not do this again.
As long as i got someone "officially" speak of the problem, that doesnt rule out a possibility - it means a victory.

 

For me it´s clear.They don´t want make upgrade possibel!
They only want to sell their new Models and don´t care how much
money we spend in their old Models in believing to put later a new
GPU in.All i can do now is ignore their products and look for
other Gaming Laptops or go back to Desktop!
It´s almost a joke what they tell us

 

They already said they will do everything they can to make the 7970m work in the HM models, what more do you want?

 

People want guarantees apparently. Clevo needs to use their time machine apparently to make sure all their new models are forward compatible with every card that will ever be produced.

 

When a thing is "official", it puts to rest alot of assumptions/theories/angers.
Alot of peoples are missing the point. We've moved from the state of being totally unheard and invisible to something better like "we'll do everything in our possibilities to look in the issue".
How hard is to miss this? We reached our goal.
An official statement will put everything to rest. Thats what we need.

 

Sometimes when a business loses certain customers... they really aren't losing out.

Until we know FOR SURE what's going on... lets stop the bickering guys and gals!

 

wait a sec....if my hm is 6990m, can i upgrade to 7970m?

 

Yes....
This is what this thread is trying to confirm and achieve..

 

So basically, the LCD panels required factory hw/fw updates(special plug/adapter) in order to be compatible with the new AMD 7970m graphics card?
Is this the gist of it guys what do you think?

Would I be correct to assume the ec/fw bios of HM series is therefore compatible with 7970m cards?