*** OFFICIAL Sager NP8760 / Clevo W870CU Owners Lounge ***

Why me?! Ugh.. I'm hoping it will still come today, but we'll see..

Code:

ADDISON, IL, US  	12/09/2009  	2:35 A.M.  	[b]ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS[/b]
DES MOINES, IA, US 	12/08/2009 	4:06 P.M. 	DEPARTURE SCAN
	  	                        2:30 P.M. 	ARRIVAL SCAN
		                        1:56 P.M. 	DEPARTURE SCAN
		                        1:13 P.M. 	ARRIVAL SCAN
SYLMAR, CA, US 	12/08/2009 	        7:55 A.M. 	DEPARTURE SCAN
	 	                        4:45 A.M. 	ARRIVAL SCAN
ONTARIO, CA, US 	12/08/2009 	3:30 A.M. 	DEPARTURE SCAN
ONTARIO, CA, US 	12/07/2009 	9:44 P.M. 	ARRIVAL SCAN
BALDWIN PARK, CA, US 	12/07/2009 	9:05 P.M. 	DEPARTURE SCAN
	 	                                        7:32 P.M. 	ORIGIN SCAN
 

 

^ That sucks, hopefully you get it today. Atleast yours is close to you, mine is in phase 2 at xotic. The wait is killing me, lol.

 

I'm hoping I do.. Addison is ~20 miles from my house, and while the weather was bad last night, it's hardly more than a light snow fall at this point.. though I suppose the roads could be bad. We'll see, I could hardly sleep last night being so excited about getting it today, don't want to go through that again!

 

Anxious here too. Ordered mine on Dec 4 and its in phase 2.

I7-820QM
4GB DDR3 1333MHZ RAM
320GB 7200RPM HDD (x2)
Windows 7 Pro

I have followed this thread and considered much of the same paths discussed by BrandonSi and streetxdreamer. Thank you both for sharing all that you have. It helped me tremendously.

I am looking forward to both of your future posts.

 

Yea, I think we are getting what's left from that storm up here in New England. Most of it is turning to rain now though.

Haha that's when I ordered mine too.

 

You're very welcome pcgeek! Looks like we'll have very similar systems! I don't think I'm going to do an actual 'review' like I did for the W860CU/8690 but I'll certainly run the same tests at the same resolutions, so we can get a feel for how the 820QM vs 720QM runs.. See if we got our $200 worth! I don't expect a large increase, but I'm hoping for 10-15%.

 

Hopefully yours doesn't become like mine and have a status of Out for Delivery for 3 days, having you phone UPS ask what is up. Then having them lie to you three times. LOL Then you get pissed off, tell them you will never use UPS again due to being lied to. Then after I get angry they sent out a truck right away and get your laptop at 10:00PM. Now I can understand it being late because it's Christmas time and they are swamped, but tell me the truth and don't lie to me. Of course I was very anxious and waiting and waiting for it to come. And having a out to delivery status made it even worse because it should of been to my house very soon.

 

I was wondering why my display is SO Gorgeous! My replacement has the AUO109D not the HannsStar one. The blu-ray movies for example is jaw dropping indeed, looks perfect! I love it!

 

Nice babyhemi! Interested to see which panel I receive, though anything will be better than this old Dell!

I must've missed it, why did you get a replacement?

 

Excessive light leakage started to happen after a while. This panel though is super!

 

I got the AUO as well. Was expecting the HannStar I guess -- probably because I saw you got one. Glad to hear this one is better! It certainly is very bright.

 

I think all of us have the AUO panel. I too have it as well and it is simply stunning.

 

I hope mine has the AUO panel too

 

Well, the UPS tracker hasn't moved all day. It's 7:30P now, so I'm giving up. Going to be coming home late tomorrow night too, so I'll likely miss UPS, meaning Friday at the earliest.

C'est la vie..

 

hey babyhemi does hyper x actually boost your 3d mark , gaming etc or is it just faster loading ?

 

Yeah, but this baby is worth the wait!

 

I'm not sure since I have from day one had the hyper x in my system. You might ask ones in the Alienware forum like scook9 or Mandrake since they I believe tested it before and after. I just know that with my Corsair SSD it's speed is blazing!

 

It helps with stability when trying to get a couple MHZ faster on your overclock.

In your case it will not help

 

Hey hemi, is the corsair SSD you have a rebadged Samsung?

 

Not sure. But it does have the Samsung controller and MLC NAND flash in it.

 

Hi, guys. Because w870 BIOS not OC function recently, could anyone of i7 920 xm owners test intel turbo boost utility and report about results?
Lies here: http://www.station-drivers.com/tele.../TurboBoost_1.03(www.station-drivers.com).exe

 

I'm not sure what u really want them to test. This utility just shows what each core is running at

 

That's correct. The Intel Turbo Boost Technology Monitor, is just a CPU monitor in the form of a Windows desktop widget, that graphically represents the CPU load. babyhemi's avatar is the widget monitor at full load for the i7 920XM, (3.73 GHz). (The blue bar on the left actually rises and falls with the CPU load). The CPUID folks' TMonitor application, while not as slick as the Intel one, does show more info, like the load per core, and the load when it goes over the stock speed. Also the latest version of Real Temp has some great i7 monitoring support as well.

babyhemi, I noted from your Everest screenshots that your BIOS is dated 11 of 09, whereas mine, 1.00.01, is dated 09/22/09. What's the version number of your BIOS?

Thanks..

 

Don't see what you've got to complain about. I put my order in Oct 28th. It shipped two days ago.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to get a package to a small base in Afghanistan? I'll be lucky to get it by New Year's.

In case it makes you feel any better.

NTM

 

Apparently, a long time!

Post a screen-shot of your temperatures when you get it. I'm morbidly interested to see what Afghanistan's ambient temperature does to your CPU/GPU temps.

 

Probably not much. Highs are in the mid -60s right now, with lows in the mid-40s.

Besides, I've a heater and aircon in my hut, so it's all pretty normal by way of an operating environment.

NTM

 

I am a very happy fresh owner of Sager NP8760. I really love it. Everything works well (so far ). I have only one problem and I hope somebody can help me.

My laptop is playing only from two speakers. It has a subwoofer and four speakers but yet it can play only from 2 beside the screen. I have tried different settings, update'ing the driver didnt help as well. I am using Win7 x64. Any ideas please ? Thank you in advance.

 

Well, as luck would have it, UPS ran late today and dropped my laptop off at 6:00PM. After unpacking it, I noticed it was really, really cold. Seeing as how it's been at 1F here for the last couple of days, I've unpacked it and it's sitting on my desk warming up. I have no idea at what temperature liquid crystal freezes at, but I think I'll play it safe and let it hit 40-50F before booting it up.

And yes, I started a fire and turned my thermostat up to 75 on purpose.

 

Congrats on getting it. Still waiting on mine to move from phase 2. hopefully i'll see it by the end of next week if i get lucky.

 

So, I've got some questions in regards to the fans:

1. Are the fans really suppose to be running 100% of the time? I mean they are never ever off from the get-go. The majority of the time is okay, but I guess I ever expected them to be on all the time.

2. I'm noticing nothing different at all when I hit the Silent Mode button. I mean I literally cannot tell what the point is besides that it's making my 3dmark scores worse. Worse performance, same fan speed and noise. What's the deal here?

3. Is it normal for the fans to intermittently become confused as to what RPM they want to run at? Every now and then they seem to "take off", then several seconds later they slow down. Rinse and repeat. Almost seems like they are dying, but seems more likely that they are just confused.

4. The blowing of the air doesn't bother me so much, but the "whine" that accompanies the fans is a little bothersome. Could probably get used to it, but is this also normal?

Ugh.. spent most of tonight just worrying about this laptop. It just feels like something isn't quite right and I'm not enjoying it like I thought I would. I spent a lot of money on this thing and I want to love it, not just deal with it. Time for bed I think.

PS - I should mention that I've done zero gaming with this thing thus far. Only been getting this thing set up, surfing the net, and the occasional 3dmark test.

 

Yes guys, that is not thing, we really need.
Anyone heard about this thing :
http://www.intel.com/cd/products/services/emea/eng/processors/corei7ee/mobile/overview/429558.htm. Named Intel Mobile Iron City 1.3.
Could anyone try to get it from their Clevo vendors?

 

(So far), the W870CU BIOS won't support the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), so running the Windows software utility won't work. My guess is that since Clevo includes overclock support for the 920XM in the W870CU Phoenix BIOS, they probably won't support the XTU method of overclocking as well.

Good Luck..

 

Recently (from December) probably all W870 Cu have version of BIOS without OC function.As i got explanation from RJtech, Clevo compels them to sell machines without this function.Cause OC through BIOS was main reason, why i choose W870, not W860, now i am in some confusion.

 

True but the W870 overclocks well with the EVGA E-LEET Tuning Utility. You can get the same performance numbers for the extreme 920xm at least.

 

Thks, babyhemi .May be Evga utility is really helpful ...Did you try it by yourself? But..BIOS OC function must be better, anyway.

 

The W870CU 9/22/09 1.00.1 BIOS does have the Extreme overclock support. This means that with this BIOS and the i7 920XM, you can enable the Extreme OC support through the Advanced Chipset control, and have a choice of 1x, 2x, 3x, and 4x overclock support enabled in BIOS.

babyhemi's Everest Ultimate screen captures, show a W870CU BIOS that is dated 2 months newer, at 11/18/09. So babyhemi would best be able to provide the info on what version of the BIOS that is, or if the Extreme overclock support has been disabled in it.

Good Luck..

 

I've confirmed with a reseller that Clevo has removed OC from the W870CU bios. No reason stated, and no idea if it will be returning.

 

Probably not. It was not stable. My system was going well over 4ghz at times with the 4x in the bios but not with better performance results.

 

This is link to W870CU BIOS file with OC function: http://rapidshare.com/files/319486371/W870CU01.zip
Enjoy, guys.

 

Is this a SAGER bios or Clevo type. Thanks.

 

Thanks Bratella!

 

Do you also have the KBC/EC firmware? It would be nice to give more details about this BIOS before anybody tries to flash it.

 

There are two versions of the 1.00.01 BIOS: one with overclock and one without. The newer one is without the overclock feature. The reason Clevo removed the feature to overclock is because, as babyhemi mentioned, there is almost no performance change despite relative to the clock speed the system is reporting. The feature will not return in future BIOS versions.

 

Interesting! Any results to back that up, or was that just what you heard? Not that I'm doubting you, I just have a hard time believing that. Did I miss babyhemi's OC results somewhere demonstrating this?

 

The two versions of 1.00.01 are different. The only noticeable change that I can see is that one has the feature enabled and the other doesn't. The checksums between the two BIOS are different but not that much so I'm guessing that it's only the overclock feature that was changed. I have both copies and I just flashed the one without overclock onto my notebook right now.

BIOS overclocking on the W870CU works a little bit differently than conventionally done before. Unlocking the bins in the BIOS will not increase the max base clock, rather it will increase the max Turbo Boost clock. On four cores, the overclock will not affect the speed whatsoever and the CPU will remain at 2.26GHz. On three cores, the system will exceed 2.26GHz. The same with two cores and one core as high as 3.73GHz. Forgive me if I phrased my last post poorly, but the negligable change in performance that babyhemi is talking about is when Turbo Boost decides to act stupid and skyrocket the frequencies to over 20GHz at times, or so the system reports. When it does work properly, the performance increase of the overclock on three, two, and one core are still present.

I am guessing that the 920XM will not exceed 2.26GHz on a full four core load because of the immense power demand needed to run at higher speeds. The CPU socket can only supply so much current to the CPU and knowing that the PSU is only 120W rated, the system would be stretched for power. Nevertheless, because it is Turbo Boost that controls the CPU speed past 2GHz, there is no way we can test if the CPU can handle speeds past 2.26GHz on four cores because Turbo Boost wouldn't allow it as it dictates the safety and stability of the CPU. Had this been like a desktop, Turbo Boost can be disabled and we can juke the QPI to our hearts content until something fries. But that's a totally different world.

I have still yet to further test how the overclock works and to what extent it will work. But my last question that I have is if overclocking through BIOS will guarantee 2.26GHz on four cores at high temperatures or if it will still revert back to 2GHz when the CPU reaches the red zone. Then again, I won't dive back into this until I finish modding my CPU heatsink.

 

I tested my W870CU with the BIOS enabled Extreme Edition Overclock feature, and the differences, (with these admittedly quick and dirty tests), were minimal;

W870CU BIOS 1.00.1 09/22/09
(Intel Turbo Boost, CPUID TMonitor, and Real Temp, monitors all running in background)

Advanced Chipset -> Extreme Edition Disabled
============
Intel Turbo Boost Monitor shows Intel Core i7 processor at 2.00 Ghz.
Peak speed reached 3.19 Ghz

Windows 7 64 Bit Pro - Experience Index
---------------------------------------
Processor - 7.3

Real Temp 3.40 - XSBench
------------------------
Score - 1244
Time - 11.764 secs
Speed - 3120.17 MHz

SuperPi 1.1e
------------
2m - 30 seconds
8m - 2 minutes 29 seconds

Fritz Chess Benchmark 4.2
-------------------------
Processors: 8
Relative speed: 16.97
Kilo nodes per second: 8143

Advanced Chipset -> Extreme Edition Enabled - 4x Overclock
============
Intel Turbo Boost Monitor shows Intel Core i7 processor at 2.00 Ghz.
Peak speed reached 3.73 GHz

Windows 7 64 Bit Pro - Experience Index
---------------------------------------
Processor - 7.3

Real Temp 3.40 - XSBench
------------------------
Score - 1466
Time - 9.979 secs
Speed - 3666.83 MHz

SuperPi 1.1e
------------
2m - 26 seconds
8m - 2 minutes 16 seconds

Fritz Chess Benchmark 4.2
-------------------------
Processors: 8
Relative speed: 17.18
Kilo nodes per second: 8244​

As Soviet Sunrise has pointed out, it seems that this Overclocking, or Intel Turbo Boost, is really a dynamic CPU scaling that runs whether a system is "overclocked", (per Intel's definition), or not. At least in the case of the W870CU. I would also agree with Soviet, in that this really doesn't qualify as overclocking. I did have the CPU speed spike above the 2 GHz rated speed, with the Extreme feature disabled in BIOS. It appears that the only thing that this BIOS OC feature does is increase the range of CPU scaling from a max of about 3.1 Ghz to a max of 3.7 GHz. I can see a slight boost with the OC feature enabled, but it's not something to write home about. I also haven't seen any heat or stability problems with the OC enabled, but I haven't run any extensive tests either.

I can confirm, with CPUID's TMonitor, (a much better i7 monitor app than the Intel one), that when the speed spikes to the highest OC speed, it's only doing that on one core, not all four. When I ran Fritz's Chess Benchmark, which loads up all cores at the same time, it pegs the speed to the 2.27 Ghz speed, the same max 4 core speed rate, whether the BIOS has the OC turned on, or disabled, (most likely for the reasons that Soviet has pointed out). That's probably why the Fritz Chess Benchmark test differences were so slight, (although all of the test differences were pretty slight). So if your usage patterns depends on loading up all 4 cores, this "overclock", is the same as no overclock. In fact it's hard to imagine a test where a momentary spike of 1 core to the 3.7 Ghz range would be useful, but heck, I'll leave it turned on anyway.

If Clevo did remove the feature from the BIOS, it would be interesting to see if the version without the feature allows the full range of dynamic scaling, (or Turbo Boost). In other words if you have the W870CU with the 920XM, and you don't have the OC support in BIOS, download the Intel Turbo Boost Monitor widget and see if by maxing the system you can get it to spike to 3.73 Ghz. If that's the case, then the BIOS with the "feature" removed is exactly like the BIOS with the feature enabled at max.

Good Luck..

 

Thanks jas! I agree, I don't see much of an impact there.

While I get..
2m - 30 seconds
8m - 2 minutes 38 seconds

Single-threaded apps... fail.

It's also possible that the "OC" had no impact on that Fritz score. I've found a margin of error of like +- .2 on that relative node speed.

 

^^^ Interesting. I got...

Fritz Chess Benchmark
Processors: 8
Relative speed: 17.75
Kilo nodes per second: 8520

With no overclock in bios with the evga tool

 

So you got that score with no bios OC, but OC with EVGA?

 

Yes...