**OFFICIAL SAGER 8850-Clevo W880CU Owners Lounge**

People who pay get it early. The guy releases the software to the public once he has raised enough money from people chipping in to get the software early. I've actually had it for three weeks and tried the public released one and I still can't edit my voltage, I get a "wrong table version" error.

 

did you report this problem to that guy? he should help everyone who paid for him.

 

I did but I haven't received a response. I also submitted my BIOS file with the email. Seeing how VERY few laptops have the GTX480M and they probably all use exactly the same one (since only Clevo has it atm), I'm pretty sure that the voltage control doesn't work on any GTX480M.

 

How many more laptops have the GTX480M ?

 

Clevo X7200, more expensive lol.

 

Hello,

New to the forum ad from the UK.

I have this model of laptop with the i5 processor, GTX 480m, 4 gig ram and windows 7 64bit installed. Bought it from pcspecialist branded as the Vortex.

Anyway i've had nothing but problems with system crashes. It crashes within minutes from when I add a hard drive, or it sometimes takes a few hours. Also it has crashed a few times whilst on the internet using Firefox. I have been searching and searching for answers but can't find anything to solve the problems of crashing, there are not any blue screens of death, it just freezes and I have to turn the power off by holding down the power button.

Really annoying!

Has anyone else suffered from system crashes?

 

Are all your drivers installed? Did you monitor your temperatures?
It sounds like your RAM is defective. I can't believe someone calling himself/themselves pcspecialist would send a PC out like that. This is ridiculous, we'll help you solve your problem.
If you did not install Windows yourself, I suggest you do that. Also, go in the BIOS and make sure the date/time are right and doublecheck all other settings. And if you reinstall Windows, read this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6749739-post212.html
You don't have an SSD so you don't have to worry about all the optimizations but get the drivers that I linked and install them in the order I explained.

 

Just checking with all SAGER 8850-Clevo W880CU Owners. What is your Vantage and 3DMark scores of late. Below was our demo unit scores...





___________________________________________________________________

 

I got 19.5k in 3DMark06 and somewhere around 11k Vantage if I remember correctly, I posted screenshots earlier a few pages back. I'm limited right now by power consumption though, laptop pulls on average 220W with the CPU running at 3.47GHz according to my wattmeter. I'm disappointed that Clevo left us with the 5.5/2.5mm DC jack because there are no power supplies more powerful than 180W compatible with that. The worst part is, even with no overclocking, the laptop pulls around 190W when playing Bad Company 2. What the hell was Clevo thinking? When they went from the W870CU to W880CU and supposedly made changes to the motherboard, they should have soldered 4-pin DC jacks instead. Now we are severely limited by power consumption. From the start I thought that 180W was not a lot considering the laptop could house a 55W CPU + 100W GPU.
Even if my wattmeter readings are false, the math is easy to see that we get close to 180W easily when maxing out the laptop with Extreme i7s etc.

 

Thanks for your reply.

I'm going back to work in an hour so I will try and fix this problem next weekend when i'm home again, leaving laptop at home this week. I checked my RAM and it passed with the memtest I only done one test, next weekend i'll leave it running all night to see if it does fail.

 

I was also going to suggest that you run memtest, 5 loops would be good.

 

Mcyates, I've done mem tests and memory checks out ok, meanwhile I know for a fact memory was bad. So run many many test, but even so, Memory might still be bad. Try putting one stick at a time.

 

I just got my new 8850 last night. I ordered it without an windows install because I all ready have a valid copy. I took my time unpacking it and preparing to install Win7. I got to the install and right after I got started it asks for CD/DVD or USB drivers in order to install. Ive been thru the provided driver disks and nothing. After some forums searches and the like I found that many people believe SATA drivers are what Win7 installer is really looking for. Especially since it able to read cds and dvds I have inserted during install to look for the drivers. All of the drivers that might have a chance on the disk are .exe installers.

Does anyone have any advice on this? Im sure if I can get windows up and running it will be smooth sailing.

Its a wonderful looking laptop. Finally an all matt black finish! No more of this glossy fingerprint smearing finish hp loves so much.

 

Weird, you shouldn't have to install any SATA drivers like in XP. I know that I didn't have to do anything to install in both AHCI and RAID. What exactly is the error?

 

I begin the install. I have tried disk and USB. Both show the windows animation then i get the mouse pointer in the middle of the screen followed by The three drop downs for Language Time and Currency Format and Keyboard/input method. Click [Next], Then the big [Install Now] button with the arrow shows up. Click that and, Setup is starting screen with the progress wheel then...

Load Driver window popup that says: A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now. [Browse] [OK] [Cancel]

Behind this popup is a the larger Install Windows window that says "Select the driver to be installed."

I have installed this Win 7 to the computer I'm using right now so I know it works.

Not sure what to do next.

 

Very weird but I think I can help you out, are you trying to install W7 32-bit or 64-bit?

 

I have 64.

I just tried a new copy of Win 7 and it didnt work either.

 

IS your SATA controller in RAID or AHCI?

 

AHCI.

I got it up and running. Heres what I think happened. I used a usb but its a PNY brand usb. My thinking is its too slow or something for it to work right. As dor the dvd i went back and burned another fresh disk of my Win 7 iso with a whole new program Ashampoo burning suite. Bam no problems. I installed Win 7 to the SSD drive, should I have done that or used the normal hard drive?

Edit: I havent had time to start installing any drivers past the video (step 2) but then i noticed that there is no hard disc visible only the BDrom and the SSD.

 

Is the extra had drive formatted? Since you installed straight onto the ssd, you might have forgot to format the hard drive.

 

Start, right click "Computer"\Manage, go to drive summary or something like that and make sure the drive is formatted and that a letter is assigned to it, otherwise even if formatted the drive won't show up in my computer without a letter.

 

I did just that. It was sitting there formatted with NTFS just missing a drive letter.

Since the SSD will be reserved for the operating system and a few select apps should I have the normal hard disk drive letter changed to C: since every program will want to go to C: by default?

I havent installed anything else at this point so if I need to reinstall W7 now is a good time to do it.

H-Emmanuel: Should I follow your instructions from post #212?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo-reviews-owners-lounges/497557-official-sager-8850-clevo-w880cu-owners-lounge-22.html#post6749739

 

Hey since you have an SSD I highly recommend you follow my steps: optimal performance, greatly reduced wear on the SSD.
And to answer your question, you won't be able to change the drive letter of the drive you're booting on and anyways, you want to keep the letter C: for the drive where the OS is located because that's how Windows is designed. The mechanical hard drive is a great supplement for the SSD configuration so go ahead and try to do everything I explained.

 

Hello All,

Just got my NP 8850 today, and I'm having an issue already!

After 5-10 minutes of run time, the num lock and caps lock lights start flashing, with system beeps in time to the flashing. After about 1 minute of this, the computer shuts down.

I thought it might be the CPU/GPU temps, and when I checked the temperates they were around 53-54 C just running idle in Windows 7.

The reason I think it's the temperature is because if you restart right after it shuts down, the beeping will start almost immediately after the BIOS loads. If you wait a while though before restarting, it takes 5-10 minutes before beeping.

Don't know if that's unusual for the NP 8850, or if theres a way to turn off the temp warning!

Any comments/feedback would be very much appreciated!

suihanki

 

What site did you get your laptop from ?

 

definitely call whoever u got the laptop from and notify them of the problem so that u can try to get it fixed. if u just received yur notebook then u still have plenty of time, and options, to resolve yur matter. don't put it off!

no laptop, new or old, should have that kind of problem.

 

Wow who are all those resellers that send out laptops like that? I can't believe this. Send it back to them, none of us here have experienced problems like that. The beeping is probably explained in the user manual but since you bought your laptop prebuilt they'll call your warranty void if you open it to check what's going on.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone!

ibraveheart - I got it from Xoticpc, I already received a response from them saying they're going to check with Sager.

houstoned - Agreed! I was getting so excited too, especially after reading all the discussion in this forum... lol just my luck that there would be an issue

H-Emmanuel - very tempted to open it up, but yeah definitely not going to do that! Looked at the user manual, there is absolutely no reference to this kind of thing, just an explanation that the caps lock light is for the...(wait for it) caps lock button.

I'll update when I hear more!

 

Finally got my Sager 8850. It is a nice notebook, my only gripe are the crappy speakers and the trackpad. I have disabled horizontal and vertical scrolling. The drivers are really subpar.

FOr those who want the most current Nvidia drivers 260.89, I was able to get them to install by editing the nv_display.inf file. The default locatoin is: C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\260.89\Vista 64-bit\English\Display.Driver. Here are the edits:

1) open the nv_display.inf in notepad and scroll to the [NVIDIA_SetB_Devices.NTamd64.6.0] label.
2) In that section add the following:
%NVIDIA_DEV.06CA.01% = Section026, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_06CA&SUBSYS_09031558
%NVIDIA_DEV.06CA.02% = Section026, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_06CA&SUBSYS_72001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.06CA.03% = Section026, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_06CA&SUBSYS_81001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.06CA.04% = Section026, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_06CA&SUBSYS_86871558

4) Save and exit notepad. Launch the general setup. This will install the display driver, PhysX support, Audio through HDMI, and 3DVision support. You can select the custom option to uncheck the 3D Vision support.

Hope this helps anyone who wants to install the most up to date driver. The driver is beta and is not yet WHQL certified so try at your own risk.

 

Waiting for official WHQL notebook release. I used to modify infs for desktop drivers to work on mobile video cards but now that nVidia releases one every trimester, I just wait. They should be out very soon for mobile GPUs.

 

Hello again,

After a suggestion from Sager/Xoticpc, I opened up the back panel and found that the fan on the left side was not solidly plugged into the motherboard. Pushing it in with a pencil did the trick, now my idle temperatures hover around 30C instead of 50C!!

So glad to have everything working now.

 

nice! i'm glad everything worked out for u. how are u liking things so far?

i'm probably gonna run some benchmarks some time this week, or weekend. i want to compare my numbers to see if i need a clean install and/or other tweaks.

 

Sounds good suihanki, these little fan connectors are a bit tricky I agree, but still I'm very surprised that xoticpc let that go through.
And Houstoned, yeah scores would be interesting so that we know what's the average score for this laptop. This laptop has the potential to kick some serious but we're limited by the 180W PSU and I'm thinking of modding a 4-pin 220W adapter into a 5.5/2.5mm. A laptop such as ours should have been using the 4-pin DC jack. The W870CU didn't need that because the HD5870 was less power hungry so 180W was just fine, but for us with a GPU that uses roughly 40W more, it's a problem.

 

I just ran memtest86 for 8 hours and it completed 12 tests successfully with no fails. So looks like the memory is fine, I've had bad memory on my old laptop which resulted in the BSOD but at the moment it just seems to freeze randomly. It froze last night when on firefox and it has froze a number of times on firefox if music is playing on Winamp is just repeats itself when it crashes.

It also crashes a lot more times when hard drives are plugged in. I might try using the laptop without the mouse as it might be a USB problem. Whatever it is, its hard to find!!

 

It is very likely that you are experiencing an USB problem. I also have one USB port which exhibits such problems.

Try to remove all USB devices and see if you still experience the random freezes.

 

Are all your drivers installed properly?

 

I just looked and the USB driver wasn't installed at all. But i'm certain I this was installed and its the first time i've noticed this on the device manager. I've installed the USB 3.0 which came with the computer. Hopefully it will cease to crash from now on. Its a great laptop, but the crashes have hampered my happiness towards it lol.

 

Did you cleanly install Windows yourself and manually installed all drivers?

 

Yes I dd. It came with Windows 7 64bit installed but it kept crashing so I installed a clean version then installed the drivers from the disc, restarting the computer after every driver was installed.

 

What benchmark tools can I run to test the performance of the machine.

My system is below for anyone wondering the spec.

**************
SYSTEM SUMMARY
**************
Windows 7 Home Premium Edition build 7600 (64-bit),
1 x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz,
3.9GB RAM,
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M,
466GB HDD,
CD-RW/DVDRW/BD,

 

3DMark06 and 3DMark vantage will give scores that are comparable to ours I guess. To test stability, I recommend the latest version of Prime95.

 

It just froze again. Really doing my nut in!

Might have to re-install windows and start a blank!

 

You can try reinstalling following the directions I explained earlier, use the drivers I've uploaded a few pages back.

 

ok i'll give it a try, thanks

 

Right ive installed it again and all i've added so far is the WLAN driver and Nvidia drivers. Going to leave it like this for a few weeks and see what happens. If it still crashes then i'm contacting the shop i bought it from.

 

I strongly believe it's a faulty USB port.

 

I hope your right in a way as I would then know what is wrong with this damn thing!! But i'm keeping it as it is like I said above, for a few weeks, so I can see if it crashes.

I am away with the Navy for a month from Monday so might not be posting on here for a month, but I will be back

 

Just plugged in my hard drive and it crashed the laptop (no BSOD, it just freezes) after about 5 mins. Now in safe mode with the hard drive connected, see what happens!

 

Well its still crashing and i'm thnking about returing the laptop to pcspecialists.co.uk to get it looked at, i'm in safe mode now with the hard drive plugged in (it crashed the pc in normal window mode after 5 min, any hard drive I plug in via USB freezes the pc) I also suffered 3 freezes yesterday with no hard drive plugged in. I've now re-installed windows but like I said above it crashed a few mins ago so now in safe mode, so i'm waiting to see if it crashes again.

If it doesn't crash in Safe mode does this mean its a driver problem and not hard ware? Been on Safe Mode for 20 min now and everything is fine. Don't like the resolution though! lol

 

Safe mode doesn't make use of all the hardware and does not make use of any hardware acceleration, if it works in safe mode it doesn't mean there's no hardware problem. I would save myself the hassle of troubleshooting if I were you and return it before getting deployed.