**D900F (Sager 9280) Owners Lounge**

And that's why I got the 870 now with 285. I figured I can just grab a 5870 from them in a month and sell the 285 cheap

Speaking of which, how much do you think a 285M would go for in the marketplace?

 

Thanks enanthate,

The new laptop will primarily be for FSX usage. I think the 900f will run FSX in respectable fashion with mid level settings with the current hardware available and higher settings down the road with the Westmere and a true G2XX series GPU. My biggest concern at the moment is XP64 driver support. PCtorque says they know of no official support. Much of the unofficial ones that I found on the threads here and elsewhere seem to reference XP 32bit drivers. FSX has undesirable visual effects in Vista and W7 when the VRAM becomes saturated. The only OS that doesnt suffer from image smearing and or black screen issues is XP64.

Basically it comes down to the M17Xr2 or the D900f for me. I really want the Clevo w/ desktop CPU but until I can track down drivers the decision is murky.

 

It looks that you will actually make money on this exchange as so far the 285 is way more expensive than the 5870. Check the prices @ Eurocom (though they are not to be trusted 100%).

 

I wouldn't do that. I am sure rjtechs price for the 5870 will be the same as the 285 ($490).

I would just want to recoup some of the money with a quick sale. Most likely give it up for $300 or $350 shipped.

 

Well, if Clevo would offer the RGB LED screens, anodized aluminum and dual GPUs, I'd be sold

 

That would be a snatch for Canadians! the 285 is about 700CAD @Eurocom.

 

And I'll gladly ship to Canada as long as they pay for the shipping. lol

 

For most users Dual Crossfire ATI 4870 might be useful, but for FSX is does absolutely nothing except add weight. If the M17x at least offered the option of a single 285m 1GB that would be preferable in my case. I have had performance issues with the 4xxx series cards and how they handle high resolution clouds with High AA, AF. The Nvidia cards handle that aspect of the application a little more gracefully. The bottom line, 4GHZ is the standard for fluid operations in FSX, and I need my new mobile rig to either acheive or have the future capability to run at that clock. Ive read some of the M17x benchmarks and they are impressive however.

 

what?

nvidia gets crushed at high res and when you turn on aa it gets even more crampled then then the 4 series from ati.

 

I am in aggreement with you. But this isnt the case in FSX in my experience.

 

probably 400.00 to 490.00 shipped

how much is it now?

i would not go buy any price from erorcom till other sitews show their priceing.
eurocom has a template they use and just fill in numbers later.

 

$490 here

I would just do $350 shipped to get rid of it quickly ( assuming the 5870 isn't outrageous). I hate having things laying around too long

 

i was thinking about trading my laptop for one of these but the person is real far. i dont know what's the best way to trade with him since he has 10 post. he seems cool though.

i was thinking about making him ship out the laptop to me first and then when i receive it, i would ship mines out to him. since i have done so many sales and have so much rep and alot of people that know me i dont think thaat would be a problem.

what do you guys think?

 

That is fair.

If he doesn't want to do it, forget it.

Your the one with the rep - not him.

 

How is the D900F' latency, guys?
Any DPClat Checker runs?
This issue is omnipresent lately...

 

Is the 286m the exact same as the 280m?

IS there absolutley 100% NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL but the clock speeds?

Or is there some small additions like tougher chip that can take more temp or something?

Or is it truely only the clock speeds?

If that is so I will just oc to the 285 specs because ill be sure its safe since they sell it like that.

 

that is the only difference. My 280m could easily break 285m clock speeds and be stable.

 

hey everyone,

I got my 9280 about a month ago and it works great, until recently...

It will randomly start to "scramble" up with horizontal lines across the LCD screen. I updated drivers, still does it, then i hooked an external monitor to it to see if it was the graphics card itself or the mobo by chance, and when the 9280 screen begins to scramble, the external monitor is fine, i would love to send it in for repair or take it to someone down the street at the local computer repair.. but im in afghanistan right now, we dont have much of those around here heh... any clues on what this could be? or at least how to open the bad boy up so i can check the LCD cables?

Thanks

DMRamirez

 

The service manual will help you on this. Download it HERE

 

I've excluded all devices from my boot order, except the HDD, but upon boot the D900F is constantly checking the cd/dvd drive.

It goes to it three times and burns up close to 15 seconds in the start-up process.....so annoying...how can I stop this?

 

Q56, disconnect the drive cable to the cd/dvd unit and see if your machine boots up correctly, assuming your BIOS doesn't let you disable the unit. Note that disabling drives in the boot order, does not keep the machine from looking for them. You have to go to the ide/sata - master/slave config page, usually the first page in most BIOS setups, and disable them there. I have had several hard-drives go over the years, some do to out right failures, a few due to Windows viruses wiping out the boot sector and causing the computer to delay or totally stall because it can't recognize the drive. Failures withe CD/DVDdrives are generally due to age/dirt or a cable not properly seated. Sata drives, I've had a lot of problems with the Sata cable connectors being intermittent due to poor design. They are a real pain to diagnose and the cure is to replace the cable with a good quality well fitting assembly. I hope this helps.

 

So I installed a 60GB Vertex SSD in my 9280 today. I forgot that the damn laptop doesn't have IDE mode (i am stuck in AHCI)... so I cannot update my firmware from 1.4 to 1.5 x_x

I mean its fast... but based on HD Tune I am no where near where this thing should be performing it and I have done all the settings to optimize it from the OCZ forums.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63273-*-Windows-7-Ultimate-Tweaks-amp-Utilities-*

Any suggestions for my dilemma?

 

Desktop?

 

haha... I was considering that but I am so lazy -_-

 

It takes 15mins dude >.<
Just do it

 

what are your speeds

 

All the desktops in my house are dinosaurs... might not even have SATA

180mb/s MAX 120mb/s MIN... way off.

 

Dude, iv got an Asus board here for benching with, socket 478 almost 10 years old and even IT has SATA

 

that's not about right for the 60 gb?

 

Take a look here:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=145012&d=1266984147

A lot of people's first install speeds are right up around there, I'm quite a bit behind...

 

yes, but where is the picture of your runs?

mine for example..way back when.

 

this is my first run... I optimized and now I am a bit faster.... but it's quite sad... my first run.


Looks so erratic -..-


UPDATE: a little better?

 

they have the exact same model as you or is theirs the newest one out?

 

well mine came with FW 1.4 installed... so I assume it's one of the newer ones. The newest ones come with 1.5 installed already.

 

quite a few drives in there....
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/sata_2_5_solid_state_drives

 

Check your intel storage manager for the option "write back cache" make sure its enabled

 

Device Manager > Disk Drives > Policies > both boxes are ticked.

So it is enabled, I believe.

 

do you not have intel matrix storage manager installed? d/l it from intel if not.

 

Do NOT do that if you have Win 7 and a SSD with TRIM support - the Intel AHCI driver does NOT support trim, Win 7 driver do. Use the Microsoft driver for now, at least untill Intel gets out a new version of the IMSM, that actually supports fully their own Gen2 SSD's ...

 

i see. thanks for the heads up... i have some ssd's in raid so i dont have trim anyways lol.

 

Good info redunzl...I've been running the Intel SSD tool box weekly to get my performance back and was wondering why Win 7 wasn't taking care of it for me....should I uninstall matrix?

 

I did.
And as already mentioned; If you have your 2 Intel's in any kind of RAID setup, you don't get TRIM.

 

I suspect a fair few of us D900 owners have opted for a SSD in the system - I will post this link here; it is a good Win 7/SSD tweak guide, and includes info on how to check if you actually have TRIM or not. (Win 7 internal support, that is - wrong drivers will still void that check)

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63273-*-Windows-7-Ultimate-Tweaks-amp-Utilities-*&p=442158#post442158

Don't mind it's in a OCZ forum, the info is perfectly valid for other brands as well.
Further up on that page is more general Win 7 tweaks; some of those are also directly beneficial for SSD's.

 

Moving on from my SSD inquiry.

I am looking to get run a second additional monitor with my 9280 and existing Dell 2007WFP (20" 1680x1050). Preferably a Dell U2410 or 3008WFP/3007WFP. I know the U2410 will be compatible but... what about the 3007/3008?

The Matrox DualHead2Go Digital seems like a good option for me.

The only question: Is a Dell 30" even compatible with the GTX280M? From what I understand there is some compatibility issue... the 9280 won't run a 2560x1600 (or am I wrong?). Would it work if I hooked it up through the Matrox?


Thanks!

 

Loot, I purchased the Sager 9280 in August and have been very happy with it I'm not a gamer) except for the fact that it does not support true dual-link DVI which is required to display 2560x1600 resolution. Looking at the connector, it looks like a dual-link DVI but it is not. Supposedly, when a monitor is connected to the 'dual-link DVI' connector the motherboard or graphics card is supposed to disable the HDMI connector to allow full dual-link DVI support but this does not occur. My understanding is that Nvidia claims that this is a Clevo problem and that Clevo claims that it is a Nvidia problem. Updating BIOS and video card drivers (including the modification of .inf files) has not solved the problem. Eurocom claims that the follow-up video card to the 280M will solve this problem but I have not seen any documentation that the latest Nvidia card (GTX 285M) actually solves this problem. It seems to be just an overclocked 280M, but maybe other changes have been made.

I'm on the road and don't have access to my 30" NEC monitor but when I get home in about 5 weeks, I may try the 'DIY VDOCK' approach if a new Nvidia card does not solve the problem. I'm not a gamer so high frame rates at high resolution aren't required. I could get my NEC monitor to run at 1680x1050 in cloned or extended or solo mode through the DVI connector. I could also get it to run at 1920x1080 through the HDMI connector but I can't remember what resolution I could maintain with the 9280's monitor under this condition. I'm sure there are guys here that know.

Really, I'm just hoping that Nvidia/Clevo gets this fixed by the time I get home.

 

so it doesnt actually work as a "dual-link" dvi.... this is disheartening as i have a pair of hanns-g 28inchers i wanted to hook up both at 1920x1200

 

you can hook those up to any laptop with a Matrox Dualhead2go Digital

 

yeah i glanced at those... not sure how good they will work with heavy 3d cad software, but ill look into them further

 

treysoucie, If your Hanns-g pair have both DVI and HDMI ports, they likely work; I think 28" comes right in under the cutoff.

My 9280 is connected to two Samsung 24" @ 1920x1200. One uses the DVI and other the HDMI. I've had no issues. I initially considered the ViDock-2 and the Matrox DualHead2Go, but neither is necessary w/9280 so long as each monitors has either DVI or HDMI.

I contacted nVidia and an administrator on the nVidia forum stated the following in reply to my inquiry about GTX280m:

From:
Amorphous
Dec 25 2009, 08:25 AM
Post #2
Group: Administrators
Posts: -5,252
Joined: 13-November 06
From: Discord
Member No.: 29,408
Club SLI Member: Yes
Org.: Guaranteed not to Dramatically Explode

(Amorphous says):
"It all depends on the DVI and HDMI ports on your notebook. A dual link DVI is capable of resolutions up to 3840x2400@33Hz (although 2560x1600@60Hz is more commonly used by displays). HDMI is capable of resolutions up to 4096x2160@24Hz (2560x1600@60Hz being more common) in the latest specs. Even the first HDMI ports support 1920x1200@60Hz."

*******

Also for Hippohills - You may have already checked this DVI connector scheme to determine your interface:

http://www.hisdigital.com/un/news_show-74.rhtml?height=400&width=780

Hope this helps.

 

Disregard, solution found.