Sound on the 9170?

Now that the 7970's are shipping, I'm really on the fence to buy one soon.

Or wait and see if/when MSI start throwing a 7970 in their GT series (as I've read that the sound in those laptops is top notch).

I'm talking about speakers, not sound cards. Am I over thinking all this audio stuff? Does the sound, like the screens, vary from the different resellers around?

-=they=-

 

Even the best laptop speakers that I have heard (Toshiba's Harman Kardon) at the end of the day were still tiny laptop speakers. Every time I listened to music or watched a movie I preferred using my Sennheiser headphones instead of using Toshiba's native speakers.

But you are not overthinking this point either. 9170 is an expensive gaming laptop and everyone wants best bang for their buck. I have never owned either MSI or Sager laptop before (this will change in two weeks) but I too, like yourself, have heard that MSI laptops speakers are top notch. If you have the patience to wait for MSI to announce and release their 7970M capable laptops and don't have brand loyalty towards Sager, then I would suggest waiting.

 

As far as I know, MSI hasn't said they're putting the 7970m in any of their laptops. You might be waiting for something that'll never happen.

 

This is what I'm afraid of. They do offer a 580 option which is just about the same TDP, so I'm hopeing they will, but I'm really eager to upgrade my old system.

I'm more hoping that there are some 9170 owners who could help me turn a blind eye... or ear.

-=they=-

 

Well from what I understand the 9170 speakers are better than most other laptops, but not quite as good as the MSI's.

 

IMO, we will not see MSI with AMD cards.

Sager 9170 has some advantages over MSI, as follows:
-support for 3x3WiFi cards (MSI has only 2 antennae, so no 450mbit there)
-better cooling
-has more In&Out ports
-is cheaper by default
-doesen't attract so much attention, hence people won't know its true power
-comes with a more powerful power brick (220W vs 180W)
-has 2 slots for HDD + 1 msata (MSI has 2 msata slots and 1 HDD)
-supports a HDD caddy for 3-rd HDD
-can RAID 3 HDD's
-has 1 more USB (that comes from the MSATA combo port)

So, MSI just gives you some good internal speakers. The keyboard from MSI can be installed in a Clevo too.

Go Clevo and support the cause.

 

One of the BEST investments I ever made was a Logitch N700 speaker lapdesk. Amazing accessory. It's USB-powered and in addition to having a very effective cooling fan and making your notebook extremely comfortable to rest on your thighs if need be, it also offers *incredibly* nice sound for what it is - far better than any USB-powered laptop speakers you can buy, and worlds better than any actual speakers that come in your laptop. I would recommend this thing to everyone who owns a bigass gaming laptop, because it just functions beautifully. I couldn't imagine using my laptop without it, whether it's on my lap or not, it's basically permanently attached to it whenever it's being used in my home.

 

A few other people around these boards are thinking the same. They do offer support for GTX580's and 675's so its not a TDP issue...

-=they=-

 

@neologism

Its not about support, its about marketing.
The MSI laptops perfectly support the 7970m, some people on the MSI forum section have replaced their gtx670m with amd 7970m and its working perfectly.

Its just that MSI has some relationships with Nvidia and they won't offer models from the competition (AMD in this case).

It will be VERY expensive to get an MSI GT70 and buy the 7970m and install it yourself. The MSI is expensive to begin with and buying GPU's separate will only make it worse.

There is also some risk in replacing the GPU. The heatsink needs to be modified by hand in order to fit on the GPU, if something doesent fit well, the GPU wont cool itself good enough and might die of overheating.

There is one such case, the owned (back in the MSI section of NBR) said he knew what went wrong - he didnt do a very good job with the heatsink mod.

)))))

 

Hello,

I don't have a NP9170 but I do have the 15.6" version(P150EM) from Malibal. I did have to tweak the settings between Realtek and THX Studio Pro to get a decent sound from the laptop speaker (2.1). I can tell you there is one very important tweak to do before achieving decent sound on these built-in speakers. Use "External Speaker" as the option in Speaker Setup in THX Studio Pro and pull the crossover frquency all the way pass 250Hz or even reaching the 500Hz mark. Without this tweak the sounds will really sound thin. The output option "Built-in Speaker" THX Studio Pro just makes things worse, you won't find much joy with it, it's basically a big no no .