Sager 8800 Update

SLI will be FULLY SUPPORTED with the 9261. Pre Orders for the 8800 (single and SLI) will begin 12/6. The only thing that is pending with 8800GTX SLI is the SLI Driver which is expected sometime after January.

 

do ya think we will get any money back from trading in our existing 7950GTX or Intel PM965 mobo? When i was a desktop-person, whenever i upgraded i was able to sell my old parts, what happens here?

 

Please stop telling me what to do or what to post, you have your opinion and I have mine. Feel free to address the points I raised in my posts if you wish, if you find it acceptable to swap the motherboard fine, I do not.

Thank you

 

So do you get the previous motherboard and video card back if you do the swap?

 

That is a great question.

 

Sager will not keep the swapped out components. They will be returned to the customer.

 

Oh man I can't wait till January 15th to order the upgrade and I am going to order the 8800M GTX SLI for sure thanks Justin for the update in price now I know how much I need to save up! So is anyone going to go for the SLI on January 15th?

 

I really dont care what you do with your system. All I was getting at is we did not have any details on the upgrade. All your post was based off of was your own assumtions, Which it is ok to assume things but quite a lot of others had already posted it to death. And if I dont like your post I have the right to say so. I apoligize if I offended you.

Now we do have confirmation on the upgrade and it does not make any sense for Sager/Clevo to release the new MB with no 45nm CPU support. I hope you are correct Justin with the SLI support will be in the driver release

 

what am I going to do with an old laptop motherboard and graphics card?

 

Sell them on ebay

 

there has only been ONE 7950GTX sold in the past couple of months on ebay, and it was one of the proprietary Dell versions, not MXM. there really isn't a market for used laptop gfx cards and especially not mobos.

 

"No one ever promised that the 8800M GTX would work. We were all warned that it might not."

A new component might always not work for all sorts of reasons. This one does not work becouse someone is playing word games over the MXMIV interface as far as I understand, period.

I don't understand how can you now agree with me now with the new information you got. As before no one promissed 8800M GTX in SLi either on the new mobo, neither 45nm, neither anything. "Dear Customer I promise you blablabla" .. no one does that ever and that is not what the complain is about.

The point is those abiliities are implicit in the MXMIV marketing message (like the "Fresh Fish" thing) precisely to create EXPECTATIONS and fuel the sell. Not only EXPECTATIONs really, it is actually say that is WORKS. When you go out and buy a new USB Key do you doupt that will work on your lappy? Of course not. We understand that in the MXMIV world things are a wee bit different in the sense that probably you have to buy the components from a specific manufacturer, but you don't expect no problems apart from that in terms of protocol.

As I said before, I tottally understand that a motherboard upgrade will be required for the next gen CPU (Penryn). There is no marketing message regarding super dup interfaces supporting multiple types of CPU's either so there are no NO EXPECTATIONS on my part regarding that.

Trance

 

Were I in that position, Id try to get a cheap CPU and some RAM / HDD's, etc. and then attempt to find a "used" chassis somewhere as well

I think it'd be fun to try to put it all back together inexpensively, but that's just me

 

Hi, sambun that is a grate idea I might just do that. I can't wait till i upgrade mine system on Jan 15th.

 

Here is is a link to the latest MXM spec. Now read the Key Features:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_13290.html

Also look what is says about EDID and LVDS.

"Panel can be EDID or non-EDID. In order to support
non-EDID panels the SBIOS must support INT15h callback function 0x5F80,
function 2 as described in the MXM Version 2.1 Software Specification"

So basically is really a software thing as far as i understand. You go and read the Software Spec and it seams that is not even a CHIP thing. The problem is on the fact that the software in the new chips don't implement Function 2 (very convinient) as far as I understand what was said. So is actually a matter of implementing that function and flash the chip (bang automatically supported).

Actually on previous specs (MXM-III) only EDID panels where supported. Function 2 is a "recent" thing. Only on the latest specs (I think is strange that now Clevo says ther the current chips do not support EDID).

Also look here: http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/compatibily.html

Trance

 

Now all I have to figure out is what the heck I'm going to do with my old motherboard and 2 7950's...

 

Another mob update/replacement...great, and another one down the road for Penryn, and Gods knows what else they can think of. Sound familiar? Very similar to Intels roadmap strategy. Helps to keep abreast of the market, but also generates significant revenue from all the upgrades to the point where keeping ahead of he competition becomes a screen for fleecing the sheep (the consumer).

ATI where are you?? Nvidia has such a lead in the market they can do what they want, including dictating to laptop manufacturers, not that the manufacturers mind at the moment as they can use the Nvidia smoke screen to also fleece customers (who already have their products- bad form). Anyone who thinks Clevo/Sagar etc. are crying into their sleeves in sadness over this is deluded, because if you look more closely you'll see that those are tears of joy.

If AMD/ATI were smart this would be an excellent time to bring out something close to the 8800 that we 9260/9261 owners could slot in without a motherboard change. It would be a shrewd killer blow. A coup de etat that could possibly have ATI reign again and humble Nvidia. Maybe even change their attitude back to being consumer orientated??

Oh by the way..yes I am ticked off with this nonsense, Sager should be doing free upgrades or at least have a non-profit upgrade. No labour costs, only what mob and card cost, with option of a 7950gtx/8800 swap or trade in. Discounted is not enough!

 

You should be able to dump the 7950's without a problem.

 

It doesn't make sense that Sager require customers to have a mobo rework for the M570RU as Rock in the UK who sell the same chassis, will give current customers with the 8700M/7950Go cards an upgrade option to the 8800M GTX in the New Year. They have not said anything about a motherboard rework or replacement.

 

Yeah, This makes so much sense, Sager what's going on! just release a SBIOS update! Don't make us go for a new mobo!

too bad I think there is something else hardware wise that needs to be changed.

 

This could all be true.

One way to find out is to mark your old Motherboard with a small dot, so if it's changed you will know for sure. Dab a Cap with a sharpy....And send it in..

As for no information before now. I found this Wiki Entry Intresting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

Maybe avoiding 1000's of users doing Video card upgrades themselfs is a great reason to make the Motherboard upgrade mandatory?

Conspiracy theories Abound.....LOL

 

Perhaps after things are released a software workaround will be found; or perhaps only 1 person needs send their mobo in, and then dump the SBIOS and the rest of us reflash and away we go

/me awaits the detail of S3 (sleep) versus S4 (hibernate) ..

jeff

 

I am pretty sure that Nvidia is creating all this confusion about the MXM standard. They could easily release just one standard of MXM. But this is not the case, you have so many different standards and Clevo is part to blame with the MXM IV.

Maybe AMD/ATI will start releasing more powerful notebook GPU's that are upgradable and give Nvidia more competion so they stop screwing with the consumer, and get a handle on there product.

 

I am seriously thinking of not upgrading. If we all said screw Clevo and none of us upgraded, I wonder how this would effect Clevo and Nvidia's attitude toward this situation.

I was totally giving Clevo/Sager the benefit of the doubt, but to release this upgrade without support on the upcomming 45nm CPU is just stupid in my books. There is no reason why they cant get this corrected with the release of this new MB. I am willing to wait a month or so for them to get the 45nm supported

I want support for more upgrades than just the 8800 with this new MB.

If we do this MB revision then in 1 or 2 months we are going to have to go through this again if we want to switch to a better CPU in the near future, why Sager why.

 

Since when have standards been easy?

Today's standard is old by next year. We have SATA now when the standard back then was IDE wasn't it? PCI? AGP? PCI-Express?

Building a 2008 video card on a 2005 standard would surely create limitations on how good the card is, as you would be limited by a lot of technology from 2005. Of course this is only a hypothetical example but I am sure you see my point.

Two years from now nobody is going to be using MXM IV I'm sure. Probably two years from now nobody will be using PCI-E because some other crap is going to come out and require better motherboards.

It is all worthless to argue against the grain of technology, yes it sucks we can't upgrade, but yes it is nice that they are coming out with even faster stuff. I'll take the latter solution anyday.

 

My point is even the MXM IV is useless and it is a MXM new format. PCI-Express has and will be around for a while, it is a current standard interface for desktop components. I did not say stop advancing technology. And AGP goes back 5-6 years ago, PCI goes even further back.

Wikipedia "PCI Express, officially abbreviated as PCI-E or PCIe, is a computer expansion card interface format introduced by Intel in 2004" not sure how you come up with this comment "Building a 2008 video card on a 2005 standard would surely create limitations on how good the card is, as you would be limited by a lot of technology from 2005." the fastest gpu 8800 GTX is PCI-E.

It would be nice for Nvidia (MXM) to at least have a momentary solution (standard) that would be usable on most platforms for a period of time until new technology takes over. This is not the case. I think that Nvidia should stop notebook manufactures from changing the MXM interface to suit their motherboards, what should be happening is the notebook manufacturers should be changing their motherboards to suit the MXM format that Nvidia releases. IMHO Nvidia would be selling a hell of alot more GPU's for notebooks if they would make this happen so I could buy a newer Nvidia GPU that supports the current MXM interface from other sources not just the company that made my notebook.

Better yet Nvidia should be manufacturing the MB's for notebooks. Keep the MB to a usable and standard size for current and future cases and for different types of laptops, this would help stop the notebook manufactures from ripping off the consumer with there lack of forsight.

 

Heh - you forgot VESA Local bus.....

As to the merits of upgrading vs. not upgrading and the effect that would have on Clevo / Nvidia, please remember that Clevo 901C owners are only a VERY small % of the total units out there. I mean tiny when compared to the total amount of portable computers in existence.

Above and beyond that, existing customers (who will need the MoBo upgrade) are virtually non-existent when compared to the number of units that will be moved in the future with the 8800m series cards. My point? Nvidia won't care one bit if you upgrade or not. You won't hurt their bottom line at all. You also probably won't hurt Clevo's either. They are too far removed from the customer to feel the impact of such a small sub-set of end-user customers.

Who you WILL hurt are the resellers. The people you actually give money to for your systems. People who have absolutely no control over this situation, nor have any input as to the technological implementations resulting in the need for MoBo upgrades.

Also, to address one other post..... ATI will not be releasing ANY card that will fit in an MXM slot. MXM is supposed to be a "standard", but it is still completely owned and controlled by Nvidia, so don't think for one minute that any company will be able to utilize it that Nvidia doesn't OK first.

 

If you bought from PCMicro they will give you a 'credit' for your 2x7950's and motherboard. I don't know how much but I'll be looking in to it when and if 45nm support is added.

I keep thinking back to 'Pirates of the Caribbean', where when asked about the pirates code Captain Barbosa replies "It's more of a guideline"......I think the same with MXM.

 

What about PCI-E for example AMD MB's have PCI-E? This is a similar situation.

 

MXM-III Spec is of 2004. So this standard is not really that new. The difference between I, II, III and IV and are the size of the video cards, thermal contraints (both affects performance of course). So basically everything is well studied becouse it does not take 4 years for an engeneer to understand a spec and implement something fully compliant.

If they told me that a new motherboard is needed due to thermal conditions, well I might had believe on it and bite the bullet on April, but not like this. As for the current prices, I'm not really that worried they will come down for sure, so that is not really what I'm complaining.

So basically, as I've said in some other post and was so criticized by some people, someone is getting very gready.

I hope people give me some reps at least due to my persistance and coherance in a debate of opinions

Trance
PS: A Specification is not a Guideline. If you say that something is/supports MXM Specification means that it fully implements the MXM Specification otherwise is bull* (one can implement part of it, like I, II, III or IV, but you need to implement each su-spec fully otherwise is not conform, Function 1 (EDID) was never Optional)

 

Totally agree... thats what I am doing...

I even talked to xotic... and you could do the upgrade yourself...

Joe

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but there are ATI MXM cards. Fujitsu is using them among others.

MXM is a typical example of a modern hardware or software "standard". Most of these standards are so vague or incomplete that it takes years before everyone agrees on one interpretation.

 

The proposals offered by Sager and some of their local resellers are weak to say the least. Passing the buck and offering insulting discounted mob upgrade paths is disingenuous. The truth of the matter is in the short term they will make a lot of money (maybe not, depending on how people express their frustration) but in the long term I think any money made will not cover the loss in sells that will result in a tarnished reputation. Having to replace the motherboard so often is a joke that people who already own said laptop don't find funny.

Any good company knows that reputation is essential in a competitive market. For instance I cannot in good conscience recommend Clevo reseller's machines to anyone looking for the same things I was looking for in my machine: great performance, play latest games, solid construction, good support, and some measure of USER UPGRADEABILITY (not requiring a motherboard change every few months). They are starting to get a reputation for frequent MoB upgrades which isn't good. As such the upgrade offers are too high in price to be genuine or absolve fears of a rip-off going on. Being genuine counts for a lot in customer loyalty and recommending same/ similar products to friends or even in forums, or like me having bought my Sager from abroad to other people who want to do the same thing. What it is not, is looking at what the other resellers are doing and trying to match them (i.e. offering to do the MoB upgrades for non-indigenous Clevo laptops etc.).

I remember when I was researching for a new laptop (as most people do whenever they are going to part with a large amount of money) that we were all speculating about whether a future 8800 upgrade would be possible for the 9260 (D900C) carnation. We torn the issue apart and to death looking at power consumption, thermal design, MXM HE (IV) backward compatibility, SLI capabilities, CPU vs Gfx bottlenecks, and even planetary alignments. Who would have thought of a motherboard change? Obviously not Clevo who actually make the things right? Is it in Nvidia/Clevo (etc.) interest to have a totally user versatile machine?

Hopefully there is a software workaround for this particular issue or Open the heavens and let loose the Dogs of War

 

Well... a laptop isnt upgradable, buy one... use it... than buy another one...

 

Thank you for your opinion, even though you don't know what your talking about it is greatly appreciated.

 

Do you actually own a laptop?? Or read anything on this forum at all. I suspect not.

 

I am really frustrated with the upgrade/mother board upgrade to do this. I am just going to hold off a while until we see whats up with 45nm chips. That and I wont be back to the states until May. Not sure what I want to do about this entirely yet. But after a long time of looking around no one else is currently offering anything close to what I want. Nvidia changed the standard but the change is like 10$ to the cost of the mother board. I think the next question is how many manufactures put both methods on their mother boards.

 

And this is why I`m pissed on ATI

 

Don't get me started on ATI. They do build a good product but they have a real hard time delivering on drivers and lets not talk about their support.

 

Buy a laptop... upgrade it... buy a new motherboard and a new videocard... than you have to buy another motherboard for a new processor... and oh theres another new videocard... lets buy another motherboard...

yep its very upgradable...

Sorry

 

wow are you people never pleased? apparently not, whining and complaining because you cannot change you gfx card to the most current or have the capability to go to 45nm? 45nm is atleast 6 months off for notebooks, considering it was JUST released in the high end for desktops.

by all means wait for it, but theres going to be something better right around the corner and you going to end up spending alot of money for what you wanted, and then wanting to get more....but if your made of money then go right ahead :|

 

I think people should focus their complanins on the MXMIV/PCIE compliance and implicit benefits. That is only thing in the specs that is not being delivered accordingly. Otherwise the upgrade to the 8800M GTX would be a breese. As for the rest ... that is whishfull thinking that was not even in the specs of the machine.

So three things can be facts, either we are being deceived now (the only think required is really a software upgrade on SBIOS), or we were deceived before on over MXM compliance (maybe not deceived but someone did a bad job on it), or there are thermal and power issues that we are not being told are are fixed in the new motherboard. Which one is it?

As for the, rest, pricing etc etc, I have no complains. It is quite natural when something new kicks in the price is high.

Trance

 

exactly

this has nothing to with the resellers at all, but with the way technology is they cannot make some thing truly upgradeable.

blame intel or nVidia, they obviously do not care a whole ton to completely change how things work for them so things can work for those upgradeable laptops.

 

Actualy, The 45Nm Tech chips for the D901C Desktop chips will be out the first quarter of next year.

And there are examples of desktop p965 motherboard chipsets that can run the new tech.

Other than no voltage adjustment in the D901C's Bios, there should be no reason they also can't run the new 45Nm chips.

Actualy, the 45nm chips can take the extra .1 volt that the current bios would give it, but that may set it over the thermal limits of the cooler on the laptop.

Only time will tell.

 

"... but with the way technology is they cannot make some thing truly upgradeable.

blame intel or nVidia, they obviously do not care a whole ton to completely change how things work for them so things can work for those upgradeable laptops..."

I'm not so sure about who to "blame". What does NVIDIA have to win when a video card is not easily upgradable to a new card of them? They sell chips/cards, anything that facilitates further chip sales they like it! We are not talking about upgrading to an ATI card or anything like that.

The ones that might have something to loose are the laptop builders. Imagine if we could buy video cards from any brand not just Clevo for Clevo, DELL for DELL, Alienware for Alienware where etc etc (customer lockup). Remember that more then half the price of these laptops go to the video cards.

Anyway, I'm not even complaining about that but the fact that even within the Clevo world a motherboard replacement is required in practice when it should not according to the publiished MXM-IV spec.

Trance

 

which is what i said?

im sure if it pulled in alot more profit they would mafe more of an effort to make this work.

 

Thats the part that does not make any sense. The new 45 nm should work from all the indicaters, but when I spoke to Sager they said that the 45nm will not work on the new MB. If Sager/Clevo put some effort into it I am sure they could make the MB work and make us all happy.

 

According to Intel the 965 chipset does not support the new 45nm processors (or indeed the current 1333 FSB processors). It can be usually made to work by having a never BIOS which is able to recognize the new CPUs and set the FSB accordingly, altough that requires increasing the latency of the chipset (sometimes called "chipset strap") and running the memory on a different divider, with the corresponding decrease in performance.

However the situation is further complicated by different voltage requirements on the new CPU.

The bottom line is while it may be possible to get the new CPUs to work in existing motherboards, it would require a number of fixes, and given the previous Clevo track record, a new motherboard will almost certainly be required.

 

They should get the 45 nm CPU's to work with this MB update. So we wont have to do another MB revision to upgrade our CPU's

 

lol... and they wont make an extra 200$ ?