first review!

Clevo M860ETU / Sager NP8662 First Impressions
By Jason S. Ganz

After over 2 years of daily usage with a Dell XPS m1710 laptop, taking it through task with academia, gaming, day-to-day work, etc., I had come to the conclusion that I wanted a performance rig, without the sheer size of the 17” profile. When a friend of mine referred me to Sager, I was hesitant using a small reseller / OEM to purchase my laptop. However, I wound up purchasing a Sager NP8662 on June 9, 2009 from PowerNotebooks and 18 days later, June 27, 2009... the UPS truck appeared at my door with... an NP8662. To give a reference point of the order, it comes across as a mid-range NP8662; sufficient performance for gaming and day-to-day operation (academics, research) without breaking the bank. Here are the full specs

1 Sager NP8662 - Gaming Laptop - $1,939.00
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) Glossy LCD
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M w/1GB GDDR3
Intel® Core™2 Duo P9700 2.8GHz Processor w/6MB L2 Cache (25W) - 1066MHz FSB
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
4GB (2 SODIMMS) DDR3/1066 Dual Channel Memory (64bit Vista needed to use >3GB)
500GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200RPM Hard Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
Combo Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW CD-R/RW Drive w/Softwares
7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (All versions of MS + SD/MMC)
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 802.11a/g/n
Built-in Bluetooth Wireless
8-cell Smart Li-ion Battery
Spare 8-cell Smart Li-ion Battery
Windows Vista Business - (64-Bit installed - 64 and 32-bit CD included) w/Windows 7 Upgrade Coupon
Full Range Auto Switching AC Adapter
Standard Carrying Case
NO Dead Pixel Guarantee
NO Intel® Turbo Memory 2.0 (Robson)
NO eSATA /USB SATA II 7200RPM EXTERNAL HDD
NO "Medialess" Microsoft Office Software
NO Spare AC Adapter
NO 12V Auto Adapter

1 Sager 3 Year Warranty - NP5793/97-8660/62 - Lifetime 24/7 DOMESTIC Tol - $249.00

Total before Shipping: $2,208

The good on this machine far outweigh the bad. For starters, this machine has enough power out of the box to beat even Vista into somewhat of a submission. Further refining of updates and the augmentation of Service Pack 2 to the supplied x64 Vista Business somewhat enhanced the snappiness, although Vista is still going to be Vista at the end of the day: A bloated OS with far too many pretty “features” for its own good. Features such as SuperFetch are positive contributors to the improvement of Vista by putting most commonly opened apps onto RAM (which is faster than an HDD), but Windows Aero, while aesthetically pleasing, is an un-necessary resource hog that from what I can gather was designed to woo people to the point they forget just how “power-hungry” it truly is. Thankfully, great resources such as BlackViper and Les's “TweakGuide” explain in layman's terms how to trim down Vista while maintaining its stability, reducing the amount of resources used, and freeing up CPU cycles for applications that most people will use computers for. (Gaming, work, academics, etc.) However, Vista's greatest malady is the amount of security features that it came with. While XP took a fairly libertarian stance on what is installed / isn't installed, Vista's UAC is incredibly intruding. Anything “not Microsoft” is scrutinized with a fine-tooth comb; a process that while fully capable of protecting the novice user, those who know what they want installed in their machine will be effectively reduced to a standstill. (This isn't a knock on the computer, which is completely capable of flooring it through most applications, just something one should be aware of and not put culpability on the laptop). It makes me very happy to know that Windows 7 is on its way out, and hopefully it will fix the problems prevalent in Vista.

On a more positive note, the np8662 is a 15.4” machine. It's “not quite Desktop Replacement” size doesn't prevent it from being a straight-away performance machine. From an empirical standpoint, they keyboard is solid, with no noticeable flex both in normal typing and impassioned gaming, there is very little screen wobble, in fact I noticed mine requires 2 hands and a good body-to-table push down while opening the screen to make the screen open, and 2 hands and effort to make any wobble happen. Put it this way, the screen is solidly connected. While on the topic of the screen, it is the standard 15.4” WSXGA (1680x1050) resolution screen, which had one stuck pixel (a small rub fixed that), and provides an impressive 33 degrees “south of vertical” closure view (closed = 90 degrees south of vertical) and approximately 170 degrees of side to side view. The screen is consistently bright, there aren't “hotspots” or “coldspots” to speak of, and the WSXGA in a 15” profile feels like a proportional downsize from the 17” WUXGA in my old m1710. That is, nothing feels too miniscule to see, and it feels comfortable switching between the 2 without feeling eye stress or a perceivable change in pixels / inch. One place where the np8662 though, is lacking is that it has no subwoofer (unlike the m1710), which means low-end and mids are limited / lacking. (This is the one area where the m1710 wins). While we're strictly empirical, the ports and vents configuration is typical Clevo / Sager. “Austere yet efficient”. Let's take the stance of sitting in front of the laptop using it day to day. The connections and internal peripherals are as follows:

• Left Side:
• DVD+RW or BD Drive, depending on option chosen
• Directly in front of us:
• Headphone / Speaker port
• External Microphone port
• S/PDIF port
• IEEE 1394 port (object using IEEE 1394 must have its own power)
  
• Right Side
• 7-in-1 media reader (good for P&S digital cameras, basic D-SLRs, etc.)
• ExpressCard Slot (good for card SSDs, a Creative X-fi internal sound card, etc.)
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• Ethernet cable connection jack
• Phone Line connection jack
  
• Rear-End
• Kensington Cable Lock port
• AC Adapter port (120w adapter goes here)
• 2 USB connections with 1 of them a powered e-sata connection
• HDMI connection
• DVI connection
• Big vent with copper heatsink peeking through
  
• Bottom
• Vents for CPU / GPU / RAM
• Battery port
• HDD / SSD goes here

And all of this works within an “all grey/black with a few wraparound stripes of silver” body that unlike many other gaming machines, doesn't exude to the outside world that your machine is just as capable of surfing Firefox or operating in OpenOffice, as it is playing “NFS S”, all while at your local library or coffee shop. It is truly a “it's not what's on the outside that counts” machine... and thankfully, otherwise we'd be stuck with a G105 M and a pentium dual-core.

This brings us to the important part. My first impression of this machine floored me. It had enough power to make vista start up at a “realistic human rate!” Combining an Intel P9700 Core 2 Duo with an nVidia GTX 260m, in early benchmarking, floored me. I knew the np8662 was a beast, but I hadn't thought that with following a simple tweak guide, no OC'ing anywhere (and please do not ask me to OC anything on this machine, I want it to be reliable for at least 3 years!), and no further upgrading, a 10,507 was attainable. I was floored. With better drivers and further optimization (ie: later drivers with further refinements, Dox's drivers, etc.) I wouldn't entirely put 10,800 out of reach. The only quirk is that occasionally CPU-z will show a speed of “2,928 Mhz”, which I am presuming is when one core is run it overclocks itself slightly... not 100% sure, but I like the premise. GPU-z shows that the core / shader / memory clocks are 550mhz / 1375mhz / 800mhz... not sure if that is significant MXM wise, but I have seen nvidia say that some GTX 260m's are up at 950MHz. It works, it stays cool, I'm happy. The P9700 is no different. I initially wanted a T9600 for the best in performance and price, however school doesn't care if your computer dies mid-class or mid-assignment, the less watts used, the better, and being as the P9700 = T9600 performance-wise, and the P9700 uses 10w less in its TDP, I figured on spending the extra $35 and getting the P9700 instead. The less watts used results in less heat being produced, the fan doesn't run as much (even on performance mode), and it stays cooler on the palmrests. Even on the bottom during normal use it's fairly cool to the touch. Please note that this isn't permission to put this notebook on your lap, as it may render you unable to genitally proliferate, but hey, whatever floats yer boat. I keep it on a hard surface, and everything stays cool. Even where the HDD is, is cool to the touch even when writing.

I won't have many pics yet to post, as I'm still figuring out how this machine works, however I will provide the CPU-z and GPU-z and 3Dmark06 scores to give some idea just how much this laptop has to offer. I have 2 big upgrades I'd like to do down the line. 8GB DDR3 to be able to put more apps on superfetch and RAM for faster opening and operating, and reducing the paging file, and when win7 comes out, the next-gen intel SSDs. Time will tell how this machine truly works, and more details on real-world rates will be added as I figure out how these benchmarks work.

Addenda: 2 hrs 45 battery life at 70/30 "power saver / balanced" and still 10% life left!
Addenda #2: Now has 8GB DDR3 RAM from Corsair and nVidia 190.38 MobileForce Se7en driver.

Jason

 

Got a similar setup coming from xoticpc, thanks for the review, hopefully this 3 day long duststorm will clear up and we can start getting mail again....

 

i have also seen some people say there cpu overclocks also. so i don't know what's up with that.

 

vista experience index posted in initial post!

 

That's a beautiful review. At first glance, i thought i had written the review, but had forgotten. Are you an English major ?
And yes, I'm thinking of getting the 8662, so please, test her, and post detailed results.

 

nope,I'm a poli-sci / psych major. I used to write reviews more often, I did some on other forums for my old XPS m1710 and my sisters' dv2000. I also write guitar reviews from time to time on the modifications I do to it. I'm hoping to do a Pi-test and a SiSandra Test sometime soon, which will be augmented to the original post. I don't have any games yet, so I can't do anything for you there as of yet

Jason

 

SiSoftware Sandra

Display on Screen
Connection : Local Computer

Processor Arithmetic
Analysing...
Combined Index : 20.64GOPS
Result ID : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P9700 @ 2.80GHz (2C, 3GHz, Turbo, 6MB L2, 1GHz FSB)
Finished Successfully : Yes

Processor Multi-Media
Analysing...
Combined Index : 53.35MPixel/s
Result ID : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P9700 @ 2.80GHz (2C, 3GHz, Turbo, 6MB L2, 1GHz FSB)
Finished Successfully : Yes

Memory Bandwidth
Analysing...
Combined Index : 5.66GB/s
Result ID : Intel PM45 Mobile Controller Hub; 2x 2GB Apacer DDR3 SO-DIMM (1GHz) PC3-8500 (x7-7-7)
Finished Successfully : Yes

Physical Disks
Analysing...
Combined Index : 76.45MB/s
Result ID : ST9500420AS (500.1GB, SATA300, 2.5", 7200rpm, NCQ, 16MB Cache)
Finished Successfully : Yes

Video Rendering
Analysing...
Combined Index : 110.21MPixel/s
Result ID : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (112 SM4.0 1.35GHz, 1GB DDR3 2x800MHz, PCIe 1.00 x16)
Finished Successfully : Yes

Performance Index
Combined Index : 366 (total)
Finished Successfully : Yes






SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Aggregate Shader Performance : 109.84MPixel/s
Dx10 (SM4) Float Shaders : 199.63MPixel/s
Dx10 (SM4) Double Shaders : 20MPixel/s
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Windows Experience Index
3D Graphics Performance : 5.9
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Performance vs. Speed
Aggregate Shader Performance : 81.24kPixels/s/MHz
Dx10 (SM4) Float Shaders : 147.65kPixels/s/MHz
Dx10 (SM4) Double Shaders : 14.83kPixels/s/MHz
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Performance Test Status
Result ID : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (112 SM4.0 1.35GHz, 1GB DDR3 2x800MHz, PCIe 1.00 x16)
Platform Compliance : x64
SMP (Multi-Processor) Benchmark : No
Total Test Threads : 1
System Timer : 14.32MHz
Rendered Image Size : 1680x1050

Video Adapter
Model : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M
Driver Version : 8.15.11.8585
Chipset : NV92
Speed : 552MHz
Shader Speed : 1.35GHz
Peak Processing Performance (PPP) : 302.85GFLOPS
Adjusted Peak Performance (APP) : 272.56WG
Unified Shaders : 112 Unit(s)
Raster Operation Units (ROP) : 16 Unit(s)
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) : 56 Unit(s)
Maximum Pixel Fillrate : 8.83GPixel/s
Maximum Texture Fillrate : 31GTexel/s

Logical/Chipset Memory Banks
Total Memory : 1GB DDR3
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 800MHz (1.6GHz)
Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth : 50GB/s

Bus
Type : PCIe 1.00 x16 2.5Gbps
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 4GB/s

Performance Tips
Warning 341 : Emulation was used as native support is not available.
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

 

Even though I have read a lot reviews about this laptop this one is different in a way. Good job with the review!

 

can u post your temps using hwmonitor please?
curious in particular about your cool hd =D

 

Yeah, nor am i. Writing frequently seems to have that effect. I know it has made me adept at writing. BTW, it was a pleasure to read your review. Anyway, i am concerned about the Hard drive temperature, as i have heard that it idles around 60*, while the maximum safe operating temperature for Hard Disks is around 55*. Can you post your Laptop Hard Disk temperature. Also include other components temperatures(GPU, CPU and laptop surface temperature), and include your analysis pertaining to the Hard Disk overheating issue.
As for the gaming test, if you don't have any, then i recommend the "FEAR" demo, its about 650 mb(compared to the almost 2gb demo of Crysis). http://www.gamershell.com/download_10167.shtml

Also, take a look at this. - http://cgi.ebay.com/For-PC-Laptop-2-Pin-VGA-Video-Card-Cooling-Fan-Heatsink_W0QQitemZ110407755992QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_LaptopAccess_RL?hash=item19b4d0a8d8&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1205|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

Would it be possible to attach this cooler to the 8662, VGA unit, or the Hard Drive ?
One more thing, enjoy your new laptop...

 

great review ganzonomy. thanks for sharing.

+ 1 rep.

 

While downloading stuff!

After 10 min of playing FEAR:

I can't find the "benchmarks button"

Jason
2009-06-29 18:46:10 - FEARSPDemo
Frames: 53001 - Time: 150538ms - Avg: 352.077 - Min: 2 - Max: 2399

2009-06-29 18:49:01 - FEARSPDemo
Frames: 21670 - Time: 72127ms - Avg: 300.442 - Min: 28 - Max: 548

my 2 fraps demos. As you can see, this game averages over 300 fps on a P9700 / GTX 260m combo, and this is maxed out.