Sager 5793 XPSP2 Review v. loooooooong

Boogieman117’s 5793 Review

Let me know via PM if I have any typos or anything. This review took over a month to write, so I'm a little blurry-eyed on the whole thing.

Overview and Introduction
This review is about my new Sager 5793, purchased from Justin Nolte at XoticPC. Specs are as follows:

• 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1920x1200)
• Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB
• 512MB PCI-E nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX
• 2 1GB sticks of PC2-5300/DDR667 RAM
• Stock Black Paint Job w/ Orange Trim
• DVD+RW Drive (Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530B)
• 100GB 7200RPM HDD (Hitachi HTS722010K9SA00)
• Internal Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR
• Built-In Intel 4965 802.11 a/b/n Wireless
• Built-In 1.3 Megapixel Camera
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2

The Machine





The Bios and Boot Screen



The Really Cool Stuff




My lizard approves, says that this much heat is bad.


Reasons for Buying / Where and How Purchased
If anyone read my Sager 5791 Review and started crying, consider this: For the past month Mr. Nolte has found a way to hone his salesman skills on me. After some talking about his findings on the Sager 5792’s 8800M benchmarks, he convinced me to upgrade my old 5791 to a 5792 with the nVIDIA 8800M upgrade. I happily sent my machine back to Sager, since it fell within the 30 day return policy, and paid for the upgrade to a 5792. Simply put, getting a 3,000+ point increase in 3DMark06 was well worth the price I paid.

While the 5792 was in Sagerland, CA, I got another call from Justin. This was an offer to upgrade the processor from the well-known Merom Core 2 Duo processors to the brand-spankin’ new Penryn processors. Once again, I opened my wallet and dropped the cash on new technology. Before shipping, the powers that be decided that since 8800M’s were coming in 5793’s, I received the 5793’s custom “Extreme Edition” heat sink area for Extreme Penryn processors.

After some back-and-forth over some scratches on the unit I sent back, I finally received my Sager 5793 through UPS and have been EXTREMELY happy since.

Build and Design
The design of the laptop is to be portable, yet stylish. I compare the style of this laptop to the import tuners of this generation; flashy looks with the black/orange color combo and curiosity about what was under the hood. The hard plastic case and metal lid gives the feel of strength, while the screen lid feels extremely sturdy. I took my fingernail and placed just enough pressure on my nail that turns the color from pink to yellow and ran it across the screen, no ripples. I tried gently twisting the screen to feel for flex at both the top and the bottom of the screen; the top bent very little and the bottom made the base of the laptop shift.

Screen
The 1920x1200 screen is extremely bright and sharp when leaned back a bit, if the screen is at its strongest at a ‘right angle’, the screen is sometimes too bright to see, but to me it’s a non-issue, since it can be turned down. This Sager came with two dead pixels, one white and one red; they’re both on the absolute top set of pixels of the screen, so it’s very hard to see. I inspected the sides of the screen for any light leakage or bleeding, but couldn’t find any at this time.

Speakers
Upon receiving the laptop, I listened to the speakers and was pleasantly surprised at the crispness of 64Kbps streaming audio and my ripped CD’s at 320Kbps. I tested with a set of headphones; the sound is louder coming from headphones, but my assumption is that it is designed that way to bleed out other surrounding noise when using them.

Processor and Performance
The Sager 5791 I had seemed very fast compared to the older Sager I have, and this new T9300 Penryn processor seems to create a noticeable difference between my old T7500 Merom processor. Not only are my games benchmarking higher (partly due to the 8800M), but the day-to-day Windows, Microsoft Office, and other programs respond very quickly.

Benchmarks
See the attached Gridz.pdf and CPU-Z.pdf for detailed numbers; I created the game demos in Excel and saved the files as a .pdf for easy reading.

3DMark06


Cinebench



HD Tune


PCMark05


wPrime



Heat and Noise
The 5793 came pre-flashed with the adjustable fans. When playing any game, whether it be a high-intensity game like Crysis or other Windows Pinball, the machine is not very loud at all. The only thing I can compare the maximum loudness of the fans to is an Xbox 360 when it is spinning.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is much more ‘tougher’ then I realized. Of course since it’s newer that is to be expected. This keyboard doesn’t seem to have any flex at all, and I personally like that. The dull, minor ‘thump’ is the auditory tick I need to hear instead of the ‘clack’ sound of old style desktop keyboards.

The touchpad is a bit new to me, as the old touchpad I had didn’t have the ‘autoscroll’ feature on the right and bottom of the actual touchpad. I will admit when I first browsed a rather large message board thread and needed to scroll, I accidentally released my finger from the right scroll and found myself at the bottom of the page  I now know to keep my finger on the scroll pads.

Input and Output Ports
The 5793 has four USB 2.0 Ports (two on the back, two on the right side). I like the fact that there are two on the right, this way I can quickly connect the mouse and anything else that I may need to quickly connect via USB instead of blindly trying to plug in devices using the back ports. The fingerprint reader between the touchpad buttons is a new addition to me considering this is where my touchpad scroll button was located before. The ability to unlock my machine via fingerprint is a nice touch. Along the right side of the laptop with the two USB ports is the ExpressCard slot (which I’ve never used on any computer), the 4-in-1 card reader (which I use a lot with my digital camera), a mini-IEEE 1394a port (see ExpressCard slot note), a telephone jack, gigabit speed Ethernet jack, and a CATV jack (I can’t think of anytime I’ll need this, but I’m glad I have it). Moving to the back of the machines, we have the S-Video out (which I’ll be using to show widescreen stuff off on TV’s); a DVI port (DVI to HDMI anyone?), a serial port (for god knows what), and two other USB 2.0 ports.

Wireless
The wireless on the laptop seems to be outstanding so far. I’ve gone about 500 feet from a G-based router and access point and have had no problems. As of this writing, I haven’t worked with a Draft-N network. The only thing that happens from time to time is when the machine is taken from stand-by to ‘awake’ that the wireless card sometimes automatically pick up on the wireless points it’s been connected to before. A release and renew or Fn+F11 on and off fixes the trick. I’ve gotten in the habit of just disabling the wireless before sending it to stand-by, so problem solved.

Battery
Needless to say, I’m extremely happy with the battery power on this laptop. One last thing that I did happen to notice is the quick release on the battery latch. Replacing the battery on this laptop is dirt simple; just pull on the clip, pull the battery, put the new one in, listen for the click, and done! Simplicity is bliss.

The life on the machine is incredible as well. When doing small stuff like general web surfing and non-intensive work, the machine run for 1 hour and 40 minutes before it started yelling at me saying the battery was down to 10%.

I’ve over the past few weekends packed it up and taken to the fiancee’s home. I’d pack it up on a Friday morning at 7:30am and have unpacked it Sunday night at 10pm and noticed that the battery is only down to 40%. To me, coming from a machine that didn’t go to stand-by at all, this is a beautiful thing.

Operating System and Software
Now that I have an 8800M in my machine, I have no fear of upgrading to Microsoft Vista (in a few years or so). Since Windows XP is extremely native to me, and all of the games I play as of right now run best on XP, it was my choice of OS. I’m happy to announce that this is the first system that when powered off, goes from power button press to the Ctrl+Alt+Del / swipe your finger screen in less then one minute. Time from standby to Ctrl+Alt+Del is less then 10 seconds. The hardware in this laptop works great with the now six year old operating system.

I’ve always enjoyed Nero’s Burning ROM Series; the DVD burner works like a charm as it should. As long as it works, I’m happy. Something useful that this installation of Nero has is Home Essentials, which can stream content to, in my case, my PlayStation 3. So having a laptop with this software lets me expand my home entertainment throughout my house. Win all around.

Customer Support
As I touched on in the beginning, I had a few hiccups with scratches on my 5791 when I sent it back. I will say that even though understanding a sometimes thick accent is a bit annoying at times, the service that they performed was excellent. With the help of Justin @ XoticPC and David Liu @ Sager, they were able to work with me and my situation and save me some money on the price of the scratches. That personal service is something you don’t find often, I applaud them for that.

Conclusion
I will be happy to continue supplying Chase Credit with my $100/month payments to pay off this laptop over the next year and a half. The fact that I can game portability without bringing external equipment makes me smile. The fact that my new laptop is extremely quiet makes me smile even bigger. To know that it is possible to upgrade the RAM to 4GB and future proof this laptop with the 8800M makes me smile even bigger, and giggle like a school girl.

Pros

• Excellent screen clarity and lighting
• Sleek-looking laptop
• Powerful GPU makes for great gaming
• Feels very light
• CPU is upgradeable to the Extreme Penryn series
• Excellent battery life
• Excellent customer support

Cons

• Wireless sometimes needs to be released and renewed
• Fingerprint magnet on the lid of the machine
• Sager customer support can be a little tricky due to the tech support Asian accent
• Two blown pixels (not a big deal, since they’re hard to see)

I plan on updating the benchmarks when I install Service Pack 3, RC1 or final release.

 

Nice Review dude.

You should PM Chaz or Andrew and get this on the front page.. listed as:
- Sager NP5793 User Review

 

Yes m great. Repped. Get it on the front page !

 

I am happy for you! It is good to read how cooperative some resellers are.
Still regreatting I didn't order by Xotic.

 

That's a really great review, and thanks for putting in a description of your workings with Xoticpc and Sager - as you state, where else would you get that kind of customer service - certainly not from Sony, HP, or Dell (I know, I've tried, repeatedly; I seem to have a thing with brick walls and my forehead :confused2: ).

As I now need to replace my late (unlamented) vaio - which I've managed to quasi-resurrect for the time being - it really helps to hear about other peoples' customer service experiences because, at bottom, that is what makes the difference between a good purchase and a regretted purchase.

 

Thanks! Nice review Very encouraging too... I have a similar config as yours, just more RAM and other stuff. The 3D Mark 06 for a non-SLI laptop system is truly encouraging

 

Thanks for all the kinds words, trust me when I say this but when I hit "Submit Thread", I let out a deep exhale and cracked open a cold one.

There has already been a 5793 Review on the front page, but it was for a Vista rig. I'll PM around and see if it can be put there.

 

you sure you dont have a 2meg camera on your laptop?

 

Not all of them have it.

 

if he got it from XoticPC it should have.

 

Not necessarily, as I have seen some people with 1.3 Mpx cameras, despite the 2.0 Mpx one being here for quite some time.