**D900F (Sager 9280) Owners Lounge**

No probs man, let us know when you get it

 

I have not timed it, but after BIOS is up (BIOS is about 4 seconds for RAM and all that stuff) The OS (win7) is up in 7 seconds or less, once in the OS easily 2 more seconds and all my services are running - its seriously in a hurry. I think its a combination between the SSD + Win7.

shutdown is 4-5 seconds max (if no programs are running) ... is freaky fast compared to Vista.

I can try time it next time, but I find perception fine when it comes to measuring.

 

System says, INTEL SSDSA2M160G2GC ... if that helps, cant recall if was gen2, could be they sent me one when my older SSD went dead on me (that was not fun, being on the road and having to fly back home early to fix it)

Seems very stable now.

 

INTEL SSDSA2M160 G2GC
Aye Gen2 meaning new controller board with enabled TRIM support so less fragmentation etc

 

ok i timed it:

shutdown 7 seconds (no programs running).
Starts up after it says (mouse init) to all services started: 18-20 seconds

It feels faster must be after vista ... vista was a dog.

 

I really think one of the best upgrades one can treat yourself to in a notebook is a SSD drive. The performance on this drive rivals my VeliciRaptor WD 300gb drive ... and this is a notebook. So this SSD + 7i Core is really heaven in a notebook IMO

 

Where did you get your X-25?
2x WD Velociraptor 300's in a notebook = screaming fast firey bringer of death

 

I have a G2 X-25 in mine also. Have you tried putting it in Standby Mode yet? It's darn near instantaneous.

 

I wanna G2
So expensive though :/

 

I got my notebook from XoticPC, for the most part they have been pretty good. I have nothing to complain about, their service is good and their prices are good too. I had bought both notebooks from them.

When my 1st SSD HD crapped out, Sager replaced it directly. They were seriously good about it

It still suxs though having to move to a normal HD whilst I was waiting for the replacement SSD. Even once I got it back, it took some time to move back onto it ... I consult so I can only do this type of thing when I have a good block of time.

@mutant_tractor
I should clarify, my VeliceRaptor is in my desktop PC.

Here was my thread regarding my initial issues with my SSD (moving it to another slot resolved my performance issues):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=404886

 

Haha, i knew it was in your D/T They have a 3.5'' heatsink for a reason

Ill have a look at it now, cheers man!

 

Hi teri,
I happened to run across your chat with MT on page 140. I also have Stereo Mix (Realtek) on the Sound panel of my 9262. But mine doesn’t work. It used to work initially on my 9262, but then later failed. The tech support person, who I have confidence in, stated that MS Windows is the culprit that disabled the Stereo Mix function (tho the hdw is there) because supposedly the Recording Industry put pressure on Microsoft to change it to avoid lost record sales from people recording songs on internet.

He said, what you must now do is get a short stereo cable with two male 3.5mm plugs and when you want to recor the internet, simply jack-plug the headphones female jack with the microphone female jack on the exterior case of your notebook. If your Stereo Mix works, great! If not, try the workaround I just mentioned. Good Luck.

Hopefully this won't discourage you from getting the 9280; great machine!!
garuda

 

Has anyone used the ViDock2 PCI ExpressCard adapter (with the ATI Radeon HD4670 graphics card inside) with their 9280?

I want to buy one, but the ViDock manufacturer has never tested one on a Sager, and claims to sometimes have problems working on some notebooks because of BIOS issues.

 

You said the stereo mix used to work on your 9262? Did you change the OS? Did it work with Vista but not win 7 ? Maybe it worked with XP but then stopped if you upgraded to Vista. I would like to know what happened. If anyone else out there has a 9280 with windows 7, I would like to know if the stereo mix works. I know that their are workarounds. I have been using special programs that can record the streaming audio dispite the lack of a stereo mix. But it is a nice feature to have. So lets hear from some other 9280 owners. Does it have stereo mix and does it work ? with windows 7.

 

Someone emailed me and told me that stereo mix appears, but it is not functional. I would appreciate it if someone who owns a 9280 with windows 7 could test the stereo mix recording device. Do this by first selecting it, enabling it , and make it the default recording device. Then Start your favorite recording program, such as "audio grabber" , and just play a song through the media player. You should see the level meters in audio grabber deflect with the music. Make sure the recording program is not getting the audio through the built in microphone. Test this by tapping on the laptop while recording. The meters should not respond to the tapping, just the music being played through the media player. Play back what you have just recorded, and it should sound clean.
If stereo mix does not appear as a recording option, right click on the speaker Icon on the task bar, select recording devices and right click in the white space under the visible devices. A popup should appear allowing you to enable hidden and disabled devices. Check off any devices listed , and look again for stereo mix. Once you have it follow the above instructions to test it.
If you have never used stereo mix in the past, it is a convenient way to record anything playing through your computer speakers. Just open your favorite recording program, and select stereo mix as the input, and away you go. All older PC's had this functionality. But lately it's not a given that your computer will have this functionality.
NP9280 owners: please check it out. So far I have one person saying it works and 1 saying it's there but not functional. Thank you.

 

Works for me. Windows 7 Home Premium, Audiograbber, VLC.

 

Many Thanks!

 

I have recently bought Sager NP9280 and the screen is the worst I have ever seen in any laptop. I got mine with AUO screen and after 3 weeks couldn't bare it anymore (it was very grainy) and sent it for replacment. I have been waiting over 3 weeks now and no screen yet. I do not recommend AUO screens to anyone and make sure it will not be installed in your model.

 

Agreed

I don't know if I have the LG or AUO screen but it is garbage. Major back light bleeding on top and bottom, not bright at all, and way too reflective.

Currently obtaining a quote from Eurocom for their 17" matte screen... we'll see how that goes.

 

That's a real bummer. I haven't checked my 9280 screen's manufacturer but it is a serious retina burner. I turned the brightness down to 25% to get it where I like it. I've never seen a laptop screen this bright at all.

 

When is the refresh coming?

 

Hello fellow owners...

I just placed my order with xotic. My specs:

i7 975
12Gb 1333
1st HD 160SSD/2nd HD 160Gb SSD in RAID 0
3rd HD 500Gb 7,200
Hauppauge TV Tuner
W7 Ultimate
3 year P&L (w/ 30 day no dead pxl)

and custom A+C surfaces

OMG! OMG! OMG!

And when it gets here, I'll be adding Ubuntu (+swap) partitions.

OMG! So pumped!

 

Hello everyone,
I just joined the crowd and ordered a Sager NP9280 from xoticpc. I have not owned a Clevo before. Right now I have a gateway that I bought in 2004 so this one should be huge upgrade. The question I have is, do they make a keyboard that is backlit? I know there are laptops with backlit keyboards like alienware but I wanted the clevo d900f from the reviews I have read. Thank You.
1x Sager NP9280 (Built on Clevo D900F) Ultimate Custom Laptop
- Warranty: 3 Year Labor* 1 Year Parts Warra
- Operating System: ~Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit I
- Battery: Smart Li-ion Battery (12 Cell)
- Case: Basic Black Business Case - Incl
- Sound Card: Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audi
- Camera: Integrated Digital Video Camera
- Wireless Network: Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 530
- Bluetooth: Internal Bluetooth + EDR
- Memory Card Reader: Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/
- Raid: Raid 5 Stripe with Parity Enable
- Third Hard Drive: ~ 250GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 3
- Second Hard Drive: ~ 250GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 3
- Primary Hard Drive: ~ 250GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 3
- Optical Drive: ~Combo 8x8x6x4x Dual Layer DVD +
- Exterior Finish: Standard Finish
- Ram: ~ 6,144MB DDR3 1066MHz Memory (3
- Video Card: nVidia GeForce GTX 280M 1,024MB
- Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
- Processor: Intel Core i7 Quad (Nehalem) 960
- Dead Pixel Policy: Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- Display: 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Cl
Total came to 2901.01 before the cash and military discount.

 

No, as of right now Clevo doesn't have backlit keyboards as an option on their laptops. Hopefully they will in the future.

 

thanks Crylo,

Oh and nice pic.

 

Luckily I checked the site today while waiting for my rig to be built...when I was originally configuring with Joe at xotic, I was bummed that I couldn't get IC Diamond thermal compound. Lo and behold, they added it today. AND Sager is having a sale, which saved me $250.


Unfortunately, I have to wait a while because of the custom A&C surfaces. waaa!

 

I dont suppose there are any owners out there who have Dirt2 by any chance is there.
I am just sorting the last of the finances for my next laptop and this badboy is the favorite as it stands, I was tempted to wait for the 5 series Radeon card but I dont know if clevo will put 1 on to this core i7 beast.
i do game quite a lot but I desperate want the power and longevity of the desktop cpu over the mobile cpu.

Anyways if anybody could run the Dirt2 benchmark at full resolution and post the settings used and score I would very much appreciate it.

 

Here you go.

View attachment DiRT2_Benchmark_10-43-16_on_23-01-2010.xml.txt

View attachment DiRT2_Benchmark_10-46-45_on_23-01-2010.xml.txt

These are done on a D900F with the 1GB 280m, i7 950, and 12GB of RAM. The first benchmark is with default + "ultra" settings and the second default + "high" settings.

I normally play DiRT2 on a desktop with a 512MB GTS250, an Athlon X2 7750, and 4GB of DDR2 RAM. The benchmarks are a good 10 FPS better on this desktop. Given that the graphics chip is the same on both systems except for clock speed, and everything else is better on the D900F, we've got to assume that once again it all comes down to the graphics processor clock speed.

/Peter

 

Thanks

This really is a most impressive laptop.

I hope to be joining the growing band of owners very soon

 

If your into gmaing your best going for a M980 over a D900F, I was thinking of up/downgrading to a dual VGA mobile processor unit

 

Hi MT,

If you don't mind my asking, can you tell me why you pick M980 over D900f for gaming? I don't have enough gaming experience to know all the system advantages yet... I'm learning.

Thanks, garuda

 

Hi Teri,
This is now old news; but in reading the latest posts, I noticed I didn't reply... thought I did, but obviously not. I visit this forum infrequently.

The "stereo mixer" doesn't work on my 9262 with Vista 64, but not because of an O/S upgrade; my earlier explanation is my best guess reasoning.

However, the "stereo mixer" feature in the 9280 w/Win7 x64 DOES work fine, just as another earlier post claimed. But this reality sort of blows my earlier theory with my 9262 out of the water. Can't imagine Micro$oft reversing the industry's wishes.

To enable the stereo mixer in 9280, you must choose Sound, then "display devices not shown", select "stereo mix", then properties, then "enable", then "set as default device". I think I recall that as being the sequence... but you likely already knew that.

So, good luck if you decide on a 9280.

garuda

 

Many current video games played on current systems are graphics card limited, meaning you will max out the video card capabilities before the CPU. The 900F provides the current fastest CPU with a single 280M video card. The M980 has dual 280M video cards with a selection of CPUs that are a generation older. In short, with current games, you will get higher frames per second with more visual effects on the M980 than the D900F. The numbers vary wildly depending on the game, OS, drivers and any number of other factors.

 

I think I can answer that. It's very simple; The M980 (soon to be the X8100) has 2 graphic cards in SLI as opposed to the D900's one card. The weaker processor in the M980 doesn't matter; it's still going to outperform the D900 in most 3D games.

Edit: Well, seems you got 2 answers

 

Exactly what CF1973 said
2x 280m's is better than one, scalability is about 1.5x of 1x 280m
also games arent as cpu dependant as GPU dependant so the i7 desktop chip wont really effect the FPS that much, depends on the game of course

 

I fully understand where you guys are coming from with regards the performance boost of SLi but I work in the compliance department for a Games Developer and from my experience SLi is a vast amount of spend for a minor perfomance boost on the majority of games that I have tested.

I personally prefer to go the for the single best GFX card I can get and run with 1 card. I have been toying with the idea of running the M980 with a single GFX and ramp up the CPU as imo the M980 is a far nicer looking Laptop but after using a Core i7 965 at work it is a phenominally fast CPU even running at the stock clock speed of 3.2 and as I will use this Laptop for many other things other than gaming I find the power of the CPU very appealing.

I do game everyday on my laptop but it just isnt the be all and end all to me so as a result the D900F will probably be the right choice for me.

 

If you feel that you dont need SLI then go for the D900F, as you say the M980 is a better looking piece of kit but lacks the CPU performance,

Its your decision at the end of the day but based on what you have said you should stick with the D900F

 

Not disagreing with you at all - your sentiments is why I went for the D900, and not the M980. But the question was; why would you prefer the M980 for gaming? And I think we gave him straight answers without adding our own preferences, yes?

Some games will favour the D900 greatly - strategy games, like Civilization or Hearts of Iron; sports management games that mainly deals with number crunching and handling of huge data bases. One example is Football Manager (World Soccer Manager in the US) - having a desktop i7 makes a big difference in processing all the data.

In all things computing except those last few FPS's in 3D games, the D900 is the fastest laptop out there. And particularly in conjunction with a SSD ... switching to a "normal" laptop, you really notice the slowness and you're thinking; "how can they work on this!?"
As a work tool for the sensible gentleman or lady, the D900F is unbeatable ... and not only just now; I can't see anyone else but Clevo putting a desktop cpu in a laptop, in the near future. And that is what makes the difference.

 

I appreciate all these candid expert opinions of experience. Saves me from wading thru volumes of reviews, benchmarks, etc. I originally configured mine for rendering 60-120GB video and 3D files. So max clocks, multi-threads, and big RAM are important. I once swore I’d never be interested in gaming for reasons not important here; but then I made a crucial error by watching a preview of the HAWX game. Big mistake!! Now I’m hopelessly hooked, and don’t expect the honeymoon to end any time soon.

Now my interests shift somewhat to gaming performance. So I suspect that hardcore gamers are some of the best resources; and game developers may even be a premium. About the time I think I have it figured out, along comes the trickster and ruins it all by presenting facts, figures, benchmarks, or practical experience. Being new in games, advice from seasoned vets is invaluable. Saves time, money, mistakes, and hair follicles.

As all know, 9280 was the fall of D900 SLi. I agree GPUs often weight in heavier than CPUs, usually. But sometimes device combinations surprise us. I learned from others that playing with the numbers can yield an unexpected result. For example, I suspect boot SSDs to impact game performance when housing the game core, settings, profiles, etc. Read/access equals .01, pretty close to zero. And, though 900F has a desk i7, the 280m is no match for the 295 or 5970.

So I consider possibilities for combining both business and gaming, maybe the 900F with an external vid card (maybe Radeon5970) plugged through an ExpressCard/cable into the ExpressCard 54 slot. Since I mostly use my 9280 as a desktop, portability doesn’t matter. So what!.. if the external video card drags on the floor as I walk to the bathroom… no big deal.

So I try to configure for the best of both worlds if possible, to avoid having to build a desktop tower. I can never get those towers to balance well on the edge of the bathtub; although I must say, Sager has repeatedly failed to integrate any sort of auto-inflatable floatation system into the NP9280 either. Enough futile attempts at humor.

I was just curious what the M980 had to make it a formidable contender. Thanks to all for their candid opinions and insights. I hope to learn more from you all.

 

Placed an order from xotic the other day for a 9820 i7 960 (since these can't be OC'd, I figure 3.2Ghz is close enough to extreme speeds). Intel SSD's, yada, yada...almost $3k. Ouch...There goes my budget for upcoming fermi & gulftown this year!

Not quite sure when I'll get this thing. They said 5-7 bus days to ship. Anyone have experience with their order turnaround?

Another Q: I ordered two drives. Will the 3rd HDD bay come with necessary harness/cage to install a third drive? (xotic did't get back to me yet on this)

 

So when is this going to have a refresh? Backlit keyboard, customizeable like alienware lol, and how about gtx 285? probably in March correct?

 

I'm sorry but I didn't feel like skimming over all 145 pages. How hard is it to upgrade the ram on the bottom? Do the heat sinks that cover the ram stick to any components at all? This is for the NP9280 that I am considering on purchasing in the future.

EDIT: Oh and how does the video card in this one compare to the one in my existing system?

 

The graphics card is slightly more powerful but it also has a 256 bus like yours.

 

The ram on the bottom of the motherboard is covered by the cpu/chipset heatsink and so is a bit more involver to replace than most machines, but still not difficult. The 3rd ram stick under the keyboard is easy to replace.

 

Q56_Monster: I also ordered mine from xotic, shipped on the 2nd business day after it was was put in production, I'm in the middle east right now and haven't received it yet, but then that's how mail goes getting here.. Also I've read they ship it with all necessary hdd cages, comes in a small plastic bag in the box

 

Yeah like always i get ignored.

 

freedom16: It is quite possible that no one knows the answer to your question. Anyways thanks for the answer to mine.

 

Yeah no problem, yeah it happens i know, there is a refurbished m17x R1 at microcenter i might order soon for my birthday, or if that guy who is selling his clevo d900f or trade with me then i will be happy! This machine is a true powerhouse, not that expensive much but man this thing needs a facelift. Thanks for the rep point.

 

don't hold your breath...
they already have the bios locked tighter than Fort Knox, so all the refreshing in the world isn't going to keep it up as a competitor...not to mention they dont want to allow the 5870's and who knows about these 300 series cards....right now....everything is speculation and im speculating that it's probably going to be a bit farther than march

 

What is the bios based off of? Phoenix? Why can't you unlock it? Why won't they allow ati 5870? Can you put 4870 in this? So this is going to be refreshed after march hmm should hold out huh its just an amazing notebook. Also if I don't like the CCFL screen can i change it to a matte like the guy who said he wants to change it to that and has been contacting eurocom? You can also put a Quadro 3800M in here?? Awesome why doesn't xotopic pc allow these options but of course raises the price. Do they modify the motherboard or you can do aftermarket upgrades?