HTWingNut's Sager NP6110 / Clevo W110ER First Look & Review

Hey HTWINGNUT,

Just wondering, would you wait for the Lenovo Y480 with GT650m? or are you happy with your W110er?

Thanks.

 

Where did you find the fan? Also check the fan voltage. If it's 12V you won't have a chance. If it's 5V it still may not start. Likely it's a 5V in which case you could pull power off the USB connector. But a Y connector might work too.

Prema posted a screenshot of someone that mounted a fan internally right by the CPU and had heatsinks on the CPU too. Not sure what result of that was.

Personal preference. I wanted something small, portable, and powerful. Would personally prefer a 13" but there seems to be nothing of similar performance in 13". The Y480 may never come with a GT 650m either. Right now it's a GT 640m, and it's a 14". If I were to go with a larger machine, I'd choose the NP6165 over the Lenovo because of better screen and resolution, but that's just me.

 

I was in this doubt too if wait get a y480 with gtx660m (the people here talk will have a gt640 le(now), (to be released) gt650m and 660m option) when I order my NP6110. but I decide the NP 6110 because the size 11,6. I plan to change my thinkpad w510 when the W530 be released for it, and for mi a 14" not is a good choose in this situation.

I like to have my note for work, and a note for every day use and fun.

The 2 notebooks, y480 and NP6110 have style diferents, one is super portable, and the other is the normal.

[]'s

 

Hi @ all... thats my first post with my brand new Clevo W110er

But i got my first big problem:

does anybody know a link, where i can download the nvidida driver for
Windows 8 64 Bit version for the GT 650m ?

I don't find any

Best regards, bikerboy030

 

I don't think there is a driver for Windows 8, you'll most likely need to download a Windows 7 driver and install it in compatibility mode and maybe as administrator etc.

 

Thank you for the fast answer, but nope....this also doesn't work

 

Check LaptopVideo2Go - Forums, they might have one for you.. although I couldn't find it

 

also the same: thanks for fast reply but no answer for me

 

I am sorry to disappoint you.. but try keeping a eye on this thread: Geforce 650m Driver, Where? - NVIDIA Forums or else wait until MrDJ posts new nVIDIA drivers

 

hmm....so i / we need to wait...

 

Well, you could always kill time on Windows 7 while not wasting any of ours.

 

i think i will do it tomorrow, because Diablo III is unplayable ....~5-6fps with low details....

thanks

 

Not sure if this is what your looking for but the top driver is Windows 8 64 bit.

Drivers | drivers for mobile cards and laptops | laptopvideo2go.com

 

that COULD be the right file, but now i installed windows 7....

but thanks, maybe i change back to windows 8, if windows 7 isn't fast enought

 

Damn i just read the last 17 inches samsung laptop review on notebookcheck.com. It has core i7 3610qm on board and GDDR3 650MGT and this thing can idle at 9W. While my Clevo W170ER hardly idles at 20W with minimum brightness...Power consumption varies a lot from one manufacturer to another on exact same chipset...I'm sure even ur 11,6" W110ER does not idle that low.

 

I know it *should* be able to idle at about 10W. The funny thing is the 17" screen draws more power, and the fan never moves on the W110ER. Mine idles on average 14W. So there is room for improvement.

 

Just idle curiosity, but what can you do with 8 that you can't currently do with 7?

 

Go METRO, lol.

No, the concentration on Windows 8 was with the Metro UI for use with touch screen devices. However, there are supposedly some pretty marked improvements with optimization with common hardware like AMD and Intel CPU's and GPU's. But we will see. What I have seen of Win8 I'm not real thrilled with it. Start menu takes you to the Metro UI even on a mouse/keyboard environment which I find is awkward and stupid.

 

Unless I'm setting it up for my 7 yo to use I don't think so

 

Metro is the most ugly interface, which was ever designed. I don't know how Microsoft can use that for their Windows mobile and Windows 8....

The reason why I wanted to use Windows 8 is, that it should be fast than Windows 7 (at Benchmarks and Games).

But now I went to Windows 7 because of the ugly interface and the driver issues.

 

I've always skipped every other windows release and I've been generally happy that I did.

I.e. Win 95
skipped 98
Win 98SE
skipped Win ME
Win XP
skipped Vista
Win 7
going to skip 8

just my .02

 

Ah same here. Go my M1530 delived with Vista, installed XP right away and W7 when it got available.

W8 seems .. out of place for me

 

I'm not even bothering with W8 for my main laptops. Instead, I have an iPad 3 just in case W8 turns out to be amazing

Mr. Mysterious

 

How do you check power consumption at idle? also, I've already got 2% wear on my battery, is that a bad thing? i've barely used it, I'm always plugged in with my battery out.

 

If you keep your battery out, keep it at ~60%

I liked metro UI design, at least on phones.
It's not perfect yet, but I like the way it started to look at first.

Too bad that's on windows.

 

The battery wear indicator isn't accurate except right after you do a full cycle on it. It is a estimate except immediately after the cycle completes.

Speaking about the battery, I do wish this had the option of a 9 cell and that it would include the circuitry for batterybar and others to get a accurate current draw.

 

So then.

Is this thing worth getting?

Or should I hold out until they get better cooling and a backlit keyboard?

The GPU drivers sucking the life out of the battery to NP9150 levels of life, is problematic as well...

 

If this happens, it will only be in a year or so.. decide now I think it's worth it

 

Well, i also think its worth it... if you need an all powerful 11" system.
Batterylifetime is a little bit annoying, but the rest is fine

 

i think it's totally worth it to get this laptop. It's small, it's ridiculously powerful, and my only complaint is about the battery. I love it.

 

Well as the two W110ER owners above have stated, the machine is INSANELY powerful considering it's size.. really powerful

but battery life and power does not go hand in hand maybe one day they will.. currently they disagree a lot, but hell with that 3 hours is enough (for me that is hehe)

 

yeah it really is. i'm going to hope that Prema's bios mod helps with battery life, because i'm about to go to college, so there's going to be a lot of time where I need to work off of battery, but if the battery is no good then i'm screwed. I might buy a second battery or something, which would be worth it for me.

 

This right here. 9-cell would help with cooling to help prop up the laptop, and yes proper circuitry to detect the battery draw would be nice, and really surprised this doesn't exist. While I don't agree with throwing a bigger battery to fix a battery draw issue, it would be a good temporary solution until they get it right.

 

Bloody hell.. why isn't there a 9-cell battery out for this machine.. I surely hope some Asian guy finds some battery that matches this one and is a 9-cell ................ amazon is a great tool for importing

 

don't underestimate the battery, you can get a solid 3.5 -4hrs out of it since when you are unplugged, you pretty much only using the CPU + HD4000. My average lecture block is 2 hrs and its rare that I'll be in a theater without a powerpoint.
I can lug this think around uni so easily now compared to my ASUS N61jq 15 inch laptop yet I can also crash the CompScience Lan parties as well without embarrassing myself.

 

This is completely ridiculous. I hope that they are able to fix the issue with the power draw. How certain are we that the power draw is due to faulty graphics card switching? I sure hope they can have it fixed by September... I'd like to buy a new notebook by then to replace my Acer 3820TG!

 

You might be able to compare to what kind of power draw Alienware M11x users are getting, as the idle power draw of the 35 watt ivy bridge chips and the ULV SB chips should be pretty similar. On my r3 i5, I draw about 11-12 watts when doing light non-flash web browsing with they keyboard backlight on. The CPU is drawing anywhere from 3-5 watts of that.

Most of the computer's hardware components' power draws are known quantities--hard drive, ram, wi-fi card. So unless the Clevo has a really power hungry screen, the only real variable in the equation is Optimus. Too bad there's no way to monitor its power draw directly.

 

I don't have it yet, but if you can disable one of the gpu in BIOS you can easily test that. Either with HD4000 or 650M it shouldn't idle at more than 10W...
I guess it's a driver issue.

 

The problem is that if you disable the GT 650m either in device manager or in BIOS (requires modded BIOS), the power consumption goes UP. I believe it has to do with the GT 650m getting the proper driver signal to put it in a "sleep" state for lack of a better term. Otherwise it remains charged.

The modded BIOS at one point we had the option to disable IGP but it would only give you a blank screen because the GT 650m is muxed through the IGP, so the IGP is required to be running to get signal from GT 650m to the LCD.

 

Sometimes... just sometimes, I don't understand what the designers were thinking seriously

 

Well with Optimus this is the way it has to be unless they run separate video out to each card. Blame Intel because they didn't want anything to do with nVidia yet nVidia was able to make Optimus work, and this is the result.

 

So, let me get this straight. The battery issues are because of the graphics card? If so, has clevo an plans on fixing it?

 

It's probably because Microsoft didn't support switchable graphics with muxes in Windows 7.

 

In device manager, this may be normal behavior.
In BIOS, it should work, but you say there's no option in original bios ?
I assume the modded one just reveals hidden stuff.. and hidden stuff may be so because they're not working.

Well, another way to check would be to compare power consumption while doing nothing and with a low load on gpu (video), then guess based on those results if the gpu management is faulty. If it's indeed at a higher frequency than it should without using it, then a low load shouldn't add much impact.

 

Prema and I just spent many hours going through all the options to determine what works and what doesn't. Disabling GT 650m in the modded BIOS does disable it, and Windows can't see the card at all. But power consumption increases. So I believe it doesn't idle activating whatever power saving options are there.

The problem is that when it's not active (by Optimus) speed is at 835MHz, 1.05V. When it's active but idle, it's at 135MHz and 0.887V

GT 650m inactive (no Optimus trigger)


GT 650m active but idle (using nVidiaInspector to activate it)

 

So if you keep nvidia inspector open, you're getting more battery life ?
Are there other laptops with 650M around, and do they behave fine ?

On a sidenote, can we put a mSATA ssd in ? Would be so nice =)

 

So when the NV card is supposedly inactive, it's still drawing power? My HD 5650 is completely invisible to the OS when on integrated, and it's literally off. I get the identical power draw as my friend's laptop (same model laptop, just no dedicated GPU).

Maybe there's a way to bypass Optimus altogether and just cut power to the GPU?

 

Man, if they added backlit keyboard, fix the battery problem and use the 11" IPS 1080p that asus has for their ultrabooks, I could see this laptop taking the ultraportable crown from Sony. I want one, but I also require better battery life than my Arrandale Vaio Z

 

No, I get worse battery life with GT 650m turned ON. It just seems that it's the only variable that would contribute to the higher than expected power draw and results in bouncing power draw. Just seems weird that it would report running at full speed even though it's turned off. I'm just thinking it's getting some power to be able to report its status.