Sager NP9262 SLi Update

Sager NP9262 with 2x nVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX SLi complete system, ready to ship starting Monday 3/24/2008 for windows Vista. Windows XP driver pending.

System BIOS needs to be updated to version: 1.00.13
Video-BIOS both parent and daughter card will require version: 62.92.34.00.08
Windows Vista Video Driver version: 174.33

XP driver is being tested Version 175.20

For end-user upgrading:

Due to licensing limitations with Microsoft OEM OS, system that were purchased with Sager OEM Pre-Activated Windows Vista will be deactivated with the system bios update. Customers will need to call Microsoft and reactivated by phone when prompted.

We apologize for the inconvenience, licensing limitations does not affect new orders. Only BIOS versions prior to 1.00.13

 

More good news!

 

Could you make a thread with the 8800m gtx sli setup performance results?

 

It`s about time the XPS M1730 met his match :twitcy:

 

meet ​

 

More like

 

Justin, any news on Penryn Yorkfield (eg Q9450) compatibility in the NP9262 ?

Do you think it is far off ?

 

We shouldn't be too far off from more confirmed information on these processors. Sager has stated they were planning on resolving the SLi issue first and then move onto other items such as this.

@eleron & shyster - good pictures you found there. :laugh:

 

Justin, is Sager shipping the upgrade kits for SLI yet for 9262 owners? We noticed that PCM has done so.

 

Yes they are.

 

So...how about those benches?

 

bhattsan, unfortunately detailed benches might take a little extra time as we are very busy trying to fill back orders and upgrade packages. We plan on shipping SLI machines starting today and some users here will surely chime in with their SLi results.

Here is what I have so far:

3D Mark 06 w/ E6850/2GB Ram/7200RPM HDD received a score of 128xx.

 

Eurocom told me that they had about 14k on 3dmark for initial 3dmark 06

funny because I got 11.5k with my single oc'd to it's teeth.

when I get my second. I will have to hax0r the bios i spose as well.

btw I allready have the new BIOS on my machine. Eurocom Released it a few days ago

 

Some PCMW users reported 13700ish with a Q6700 CPU .
I`d love to see real life benches.Hopefully soon.

 

no doubt if justin is only getting 12800 and i'm getting 11.5k and my bud with the q6700 is getting 12300 hmmm. something must be very wrong with the drivers.

btw gangsta got 12300 with his q6700 oc'd 630-1500-950 1 card

 

That is quite the OC. I`m sure 14k is reachable, but with XP stock,not Vista stock.

 

both cards in Xp should get 17k

people with the dell are pulling 14.5k with the x9000

 

Sager told me that they would be shipping the upgrade kits end of this week or early next week. should be exciting.

I will be adding the SLI benchmark results to my existing review

 

Here are some scores with SLI and the E8400 Below 3D Mark 06 scores done at 1920x1200. The first one with no AA and 2nd with 4x AA.

Keep in mind that there are still open bugs with these new processors and Sager is aggressively working to resolve them. It is not quite ready for release but it should be soon.

 

about the same as the dell guys were doing with x7900 @1900x1200.

the higher res shows how the SLI holds up. because SLI is really only good at resolutions higher than say 1440.

I really can't wait to see what I will get with both my cards @ 600-1500-950

 

OK, so we can conclude 2 things

1. Sli drivers are not working properly (Both dell and clevo)
2. Desktop Penryn 4 9262 has bugs

 

1. >.> you did see the resolution he ran it at correct?
2. he never said it was working properly.

 

Some people with the x9000 and OCing their GPUs managed to squeeze out 15.5k in vista. Not sure what their clocks were at though.

Looking forward to seeing what you guys get out of the 9262.

 

and you just reitterated what he just said.

 

The results show that a SLi setup shines when you set it to higher resolutions. The images posted with the latest scores were at 1920x1200.

 

^yup, and that's what counts.

 

why didn't you just post the default resolution score so we could get a comparison?

 

What resolution did you run that 128xx test Justin?

QC proccesors do better at high resolutions, where the difference can be seen

 

^Original test was done at 1280x1024

 

what were the results from the benchmark's default res? the pictures you posted in this thread is from wuxga runs.

 

Argh, please refer back to post #12 in this thread and you will see the first score I posted before the 1920x1200 results.

 

Thats some sick scores in 1920*1200!! The 1280*1024 don't impress me that much, compared to what people gets with a single card, but guess thats due to the problems with the CPU and GPU drivers. Still cracking 10k in 1920*1200 is insane on a lappy

 

And I pulled 10500+ in 1920x1200 with my XPS M1730 8800m GTX SLI and only a little lower with 4xAA enabled at 1920x1200. The Quad Core got an edge in 3D Mark 06 with it´s CPU score, that´s why they usually get higher scores than en equally fast Core2Duo. In real life gaming it doesn´t show that much compared to a Core2Duo in terms of gaming performance. I am CPU bound when running synthetic benchmarks like 3D Mark 06, but in real gaming performance I am not CPU bound since I play at 1920x1200.

Those XPS owners who pulled 14000+ had their´s overclocked to 3.4GHz so you see what kind of increase a faster CPU does in synthetic benchmarks as opposed to real gaming benchmarks where it doesn´t count that much.

 

Humm,

So basically on laptop's SLi only shines at higher res? That is a novelty lololol even for these systems.

My system (check below) without SLi gets ~5400 score, With SLi get's 8800at default 3dMark06 res. That is a ~40% increase! Overclocking the video card, the system would mantain the same differencial ratio. The same thing for previous cards.

What this means is that you can max out settings at a lower res if not max it out at 1900x1200 in 99% games today (if stuttering was not on the way ... remember)

Now with the 8800M, we get around 9800 with a single card, and we get 12800 in SLi ~24%. So you can play the same settings at higher res as you do at lower .... big deal ... while you don't benefit by being able to increase the settings at lower res?

Humm, yes drivers need to improve. But considering previous driver update history ... Another take could be that Clevo or NVIDIA is capping something down to keep the systems cool and power consumption low.

Considering these values, it is not worth it IMHO as reducing the resolution does not affect image clarity that much in our LCD's (unless you want to play it on your FULL HD TV).

Considering that people have been managing to run Crysis smotly on medium to high only at 1280x1024 (30-40 FPS) with a single card who cares if you can do the same at 1900x1200 (personally I can't notice much of a difference when running FPS Games in our LCD's). What would be nice is to be able to run Crisys at fully High or Utra High at least at 1280x1024. In that case I think it would be worth something to be "proud" of.

Let wait for tests in games. For now, I'm not impressed (aka is not worh a 100bucks much less +$1000 for an SLi upgrade kit). I also would like to see how stuttering goes with COD4 with this new SLi (chipset built by NVIDIA).

Trance

 

If there is no stuttering, particularly at the highest resolution, that would suggest that the stuttering problem was in fact due to the two GPUs in your setup tripping over each other - it may be that the higher resolution gives each GPU so much work to do that the system never hits a point where the first GPU gets blocked by the second GPU because the second is still processing its part of a frame that both are working on (a condition which would cause frame stuttering because both GPUs would have to finish in order for that frame to be displayed).

 

SLI was always of most use in higher resolutions, when the machine is GPU limited. There is a big difference in running 1900x1200 native resolution compared to 1280x1024 where the card has to scale the image up distorting it in the process.

 

"There is a big difference in running 1900x1200 native resolution compared to 1280x1024"

Clearly either we don't play the same games or we are not looking at the same screens

In 17" LCD during a game there is very little difference in sharpness between say 1400x1050 and 1900x1200, even 1280x1024 in some games such as COD4. Things only start to get really blurry during a game when bellow 1280x1024. For some reason people say they play very well Crysis at 1280x1024 on the d900c (check those emazing snapshots with a the Go 7950 GTX in SLI and with a single 8800M GTX).

Now if we are talking about a 21" or above such as 40" FULL HD TV then yes there would be a big difference in image sharpness, I accounted that in my remark.

Having said this, there is nothing like playing at full res at highest quality settings. But it seams that these new cards have not been able to deliver it some way or another with the latest First Person Shooters (the ones that take the GPU to the extreme). Heck not even at 1400x1050 due to stuttering in my case unless I disable SLi, so the value is not there IMHO.

Trance

PS: I bet that very few people actually play at the highest resolution while sacrifacing detail in most games. Most people prefer in these cases to lower the res and rise the quality drivers then actually the other way. Why? Becouse you get BETTER QUALITY. This happens in most games with the few exceptions were you can max out settings at 1900x1200. So I am not impressed with this scores at all for now.

 

I`m wondering if we`ll see a 9800M GTX X2 in a laptop any time soon . An SLI of those cards would surely impress even DFTrance

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed at those scores at 1900x1200. Yes I am.

But in real life we play games and we bought this lappies to play them. So in this context as long we can max out QUALITY SETTINGS (not resolution) at some sharp resolution while getting decent FPS, that what makes most of us happy (the ones that actually have experience with this lappies).

Considering that you get 10% difference between scores at 1280x1024 and 1900x1200 in favor of the first, and you get a 21% difference from a single card it rises the question that you can actually rise anything else in the current games besides resolution when you go for the new generation SLi. For instance play Crysis all HIGH (really all) at 1400x1050 or 1600x1200. Something that with the old generation you could easily with previous generation games (STALKER, FEAR, COD2, etc etc).

So those scores is not what I'm looking for, so I'm not impressed ... for now Show those scores on Crysis, the benchmark tool of today as F.E.A.R was last year. Or even show the F.E.A.R results so we can compare the gains to a 8700M GTX in SLi OCed, that should be fun considering user can't overclock the 8800M GTX without doing BIOS modifications.

Trance

 

I can give Crysis score at 1920x1200 all graphical options on High and running in Vista 32 DX10. I average 33fps at that res and this isn´t bad at all considering how demanding Crysis is in DX10. If I would run it in XP DX9 well then I would get at least 10+ fps average running in the same res.

 

Now, that is good IMHO. That is a huge jump from mine considering that I can't do the same at 1280x1024 in my SLi rig

Now for a single 8800M GTX the the only thing that is higher in your statament is the res so it does not impress me.

Can you tell us, if by lowering the res to say 1400x1050 you can get some relevant things at Ultra High in DX10 (increased realism)? That would convice me And if you can, what settings do you prefer in terms of realism given the option?

Trance

 

Yeah I can try that res and see what I get, will post benchmarks soon

 

I`m curios also about those results. Hell, while you`re at it, try 1280x800, very high.

 

Allright guys I ran the benchmark this time at 1600x1200 DX10 and all options Very High and this is what I got Not bad at all considering this is VERY HIGH DX10!!!!!! Sorry for shouting but it is pretty amazing, no joke here. I will post some screens later on.

!TimeDemo Run 3 Finished.
Play Time: 84.66s, Average FPS: 23.62
Min FPS: 4.99 at frame 1935, Max FPS: 29.36 at frame 70
Average Tri/Sec: -6631293, Tri/Frame: -280693
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: -3.27

 

is that cryisis?

I get 30fps 1680x1050 with that CRYSIS TIMEDEMO.

all options HIGH.

my card is oc'd and I get 11.5k in 06

and yes, i run XP. that's not a problem.

if your using Vista your giving yourself a handicap.

 

He is using Vista and VERY HIGH at 1600x1200.

That is nice Manus. I was expecting around 30 FPs to be good, but guess that will be only on XP so it is nice indeed (aka, ok).

In order for us to make a fair gain comparison we need to establish a resolution (say 1600x1200) and settings, say VERY HIGH. Test this on both systems (time demo) and compare values. Also report on any stuttering (I really did not like that LOW 4 FPS so far from the MAX).

Anyway, let's see how will Clevo do the job. The reason I still have doupts is becouse I belive that the DELL SLi solution is actually two cores in one silicon plaque if I'm not mistaken, rather then two cards. That theoretically could give the XPS an edge unless I'm mistaken.

Trance

 

Nah no problems DFTrance, when actually playing Crysis in Very High it never drops down to 4 fps, I usually run around in 28-30 fps and hit maybe 20 fps during some heavy firefights. I have not seen any drop down to 4 fps anywhere so far

Yes the Dell has two cores in one silicon, though I don´t know if that actually would give any edge over another SLI solution. But the SLI works for sure as can be seen

Yeah I know Dexgo that Vista handicaps me some, though every game so far runs great in Vista, no issues so far. Crysis I could run in XP of course but that would not be DX10, this is just for benchmarking and DX10 and Very High is very very demanding on any computer so an average of 23 fps is in my opinon pretty darn good I might install XP too as dual boot.

However when running in DX10 and High in 1920x1200 I have 30-40 fps so

I know one thing for sure and that is Crysis loves Quad Core CPU´s, so anyone with a Quad Core CPU has an edge over a Core2Duo at least in CPU benchmark I think

 

Try 1280x800 and very high and you`ll get at least 30 fps average,or more.
I can`t stand playing a game in under 30 fps, it`s driving me nuts.I`d rather lower the res and get maximum details.
I run crysis 960x600,all high except medium object at 25+ average I lower some other options at time to keep it above 30,but shaders and shadows stay high. They make the game IMO.

 

1680x1050 is higher than 1600x1200.

why would you run a 4:3 resolution on a 16x9 screen???

it is skewed if you look closely.

1680x1050 is proper 16x9 widescreen 1600x1200 is 4:3

 

it still uses a SLI chipset and is essentially SLI, with SLI drivers.