To all NP9260 owners

Greetings all..

I have owned the Sager NP9260 for over 2 months and I am content with it, not overly thrilled. Don’t get me wrong it is a great machine but it could be better. As far as benching it gives out impressive scores, heck it is faster than a lot of high end Desktop systems. I opted for the single GPU the 7950 GTX. The rest is maxed out. At the time of my purchase the sales man advised me to go with WinXp and 2 gigs of 800 Ram, I agree with him given that Vista still has some growing up to do. In case you are wondering about my Benchmarks well here are the Benches I did. I am not a very big fan of Benchmarks. Benching individual components is not the same as real world operations where all the parts have to work together. Any way..

3Dmark 05: 9843 (stock)
Wprime: 33.547

This is the first Notebook I own and all my other systems were Desktops. I build them and I overclock them. Now I understand that Laptops will never be as fast as Desktops. I am a gamer and while most games ran fine on high resolution with maxed out setting a few had hiccups “a momentary pause” mostly I play at 1400X1050 or 1280X1024, depending on what the game offers, I don’t see a reason going beyond that so frame rate is never an issue with this machine, however hiccups are. For a rig with such high specs and an E6700 running Raid0 there should not be many hiccups. Occasional hiccups are the nature of the beast. I am sure you want to know what games caused the hiccups. I had a number in FEAR and a lot in Call of Juarez. I realize Call of Juarez is very heavy on systems yet there should not be too many hiccups. Other games ran fine, occasional slight yet irritating hiccup. Prey ran very well.

I know I am getting long winded but there is a moral to the story. Dell XPS offer tweaking options in their Bios. One of them is actually overclocking the CPU now GPU is easy to overclock thanks to cool bits, Riva Tuner etc... I have only owned one Intel motherboard and during my brief ownership of it, while it did not have any tweaking options, it had a PERFORMANCE Setting and it made a difference.

This machine runs cool and in my opinion underclocked. The most important piece of the computer is the motherboard. Now why did the manufacturer (Intel) never gave us at least a PERFORMANCE setting. I am not asking for major overclocking options, thought it would be nice, just at least give me a PERFORMANCE options where the system runs close to its potential.

I talked to the Tech Support at Sager and they told me if enough people called and request a Bios with a few performance options they will put in a request to the manufacturer.

So, I ask you kind NP9260 owners to please call Sager and request a better Bios. Wouldn’t you like your NP9260 to run at its optimal level or at least close to it? Now the reason I bought this machine is because of its upgradeability potentials. I will eventually, when Vista gets more stable, upgrade the OS and add 2 more gigs, and when the 8 series become available I’ll upgrade that too. I am sure all that will help the performance and all, but fact remains, in my humble opinion, we need a better Bios.

BTW, the folks over at Sager, be it Sales or Tech Support, are absolutely wonderful..

Thank you

 

I asked sales at Targa Computer if the X6800 could be oc. They said "no". I asked why have an unlocked multiplier, when you can't change it due to a poor bios. They had no answer.

In another thread, Wu Jen mentions that he is looking for the PLL, that can be used to oc with Clockgen. As the dates on the software go back to 2006, I doubt that that will be successful, but... Also Notebook Hardware Control is supposed to be working to update NHC for the desktop processor in the Laptop. Hopefully one of the two software solutions will be available soon. Keep an eye on the D901c owners thread for more info...

There was another thread regarding 3dMark06 test. This test runs lower numbers than the 05 version. Using RivaTuner for oc the GPU, several owners have reporting breaking the 10k mark. For a Laptop, the system rocks. But I agree that the bios is like putting a 2-speed powerglide transmission in a Dodge Viper!

 

I doubt Clevo will give us the option to overclock the CPU, honestly. They had so many problems with the P4's overheating I think they are still fixing those machines lol!

I would like to to have the option myself and would vote for it if I could but I'm just an end user. I don't have much say so. It would take all the resellers to ask for it. And for them to ask for it would mean more problems with people overclocking recklessly and wanting them to fix it.

Sad but true. We can, at least, overclock our GPU's So that's something. I'm working on Clockgen trying to find out if we can overclock the CPU but I may end up with nothing in the end. At least we will know....