Review NP8660 / M860TU with WUXGA

Ordered from PowerNotebooks.com (Paladin44): http://www.powernotebooks.com/

Sager NP8660 - Gaming Laptop
15.4" WUXGA (1920x1200) MATTE LCD
nVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS w/512MB GDDR3
Intel® Core™2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz Processor w/6MB L2 Cache - 1066MHz FSB
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
4GB (2 SODIMMS) DDR3/1066 Dual Channel Memory (64bit Vista Required)
4GB Intel® Turbo Memory 2.0 - (Vista Only)
320GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
Blu-Ray Read - DVD-CD R-RW
7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (MS/MS PRO/MS DUO/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RSMMC)
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 802.11a/g/n
Windows Vista Premium - (64-Bit installed - 64 and 32-bit CD included)
Built-in Bluetooth Wireless
8-cell Smart Li-ion Battery
Spare 8-cell Smart Li-ion Battery
Full Range Auto Switching AC Adapter
3-Year Labor 1-Year Parts Warranty (Year 2 & 3 Paid by PNB)-Lifetime 24/7 DOMESTIC Toll Free Support

1st Impressions:

Beautiful Exactly what I was hoping for. Small (ish), stylish but not glitzy.





One of the first things I tried was the fingerprint scanner - works very nicely. Then the Blu-ray movie player, it came with PowerDVD for Blu-Ray - after an update - worked straight out of the box, and wow looks great.

By this time I've had enough exposure to the 1920 x 1200 screen to love it. I was a little worries about that resolution on a 15.4" screen, but honestly if you have good eyesight it's wonderful.

So I loaded up the monitoring software and ran 3DMARK06, with no tweaks and got 9289 - was hoping for a bit more, but will update drivers



Temps look fine, during 3DMark06 GPU maxed at 64 and the HDD at 53, this is on a NC2000 cooler at lowest fan settings.

One happy camper!!!! :yes:

 

Congratulations.
Lets get some Game benchmarks shall we?
Yeah I'm expecting a higher 3Dmark score from T9600+9800M GTS too.

 

The default driver is really crap. You'll gain a lot of points after you update.

 

that 3DMark06 score is pretty good especially out of the box.

congrats on the new mini-beast... glad you even got a great notebook cooler as well.

take care of it and it will take care of you.

 

nice scores and temps dude. I'll be reordering mine soon as i get the refund

 

Which drivers do you guys recommend. I've tried a few different ones from laptopvideo2go and I'm getting worse benchmarks lol.

 

For pure performance, go with 177.92; for overall best driver, try Dox's Custom Forceware 180.44 or 180.30

The site's regular 180 drivers have all been rubbish for me, but Dox's tweaked 180s are great.

177.92 gives me the highest benchmarks though.

 

Superstar thanks Kevin.

 

Congratulations!

I want one too

Do i need a cooler for such a system? Where is best to get it?

 

congrats UKBananas
9100 to 9300 are the norm scores for the 860TU
i started off with 9223 and since the bios update ive gone down to 9177

a cooler always helps keep the temps down but you dont really need one.

 

Congrats! Looks sweet

I'm looking at buying the NP8660 and I was wondering if you could tell me how the keyboard felt to you. I'm looking for a keyboard that feels natural to me (examples: the asus g50 and the gateway P-7811 feel great), so any insights you can give would be appreciated.

 

congratz. may i know how much d u pay for it?

 

Like most things in life, it depends what you do with it! If you want to game at 1920 x 1200 for extended periods I would say a cooler is pretty important if you want your laptop to last. If you're more into video editing and music, probably not so much. Guess which I am

 

Yes I read comments about the keyboard, and I must say it's fine. Maybe not the best I've typed on, but certainly a lot better than many laptop keyboards, including the HP I use for work. I wouldn't worry at all.

 

About $2.8k with the turbo memory, top CPU, 4GB RAM, Vista, oh and a spare battery etc..

 

is the matte finish looking good?