**OFFICIAL W860CU/NP8690 Owners Lounge**

what speakers did you get?
are they portable?

 

this one.

Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere



Much better bass and treble than the W860's laptop speakers. Plus it has a pouch where you can bring it anywhere and an Aux In socket to plug it to any MP3 player/laptop

 

Anyone got a changelog for that bios update ?

 

At one point my GPU was up to 98C and rising before I shut off COD:MW2.

Originally my temps under load were around 85C for the CPU and 89-95C for the GPU. Xotic was great and offered to send me some additional AS5 to replenish my stock. I took off the heat sinks, reapplied Arctic Silver 5, and made sure to follow the screw # order. The factory application of AS5 on the GPU was only a tiny blotch located towards the top of the GPU that didn't cover 70% of the chip. My CPU temps dropped 10C to a max of 75C but my GPU went up I cleaned and reapplied thermal paste many more times, trying different techniques. I could never get the GPU temps to come down. All fans were working so we determined that something was faulty with the heatpipe on my GPU. They offered to send a replacement laptop and the new machines temps are right around 75C under load for the GPU and under that for the CPU and I haven't touched a thing. Very happy!

 

Can someone with a 720QM please run the SuperPi 2M benchmark and post a screenshot of the results when you have a chance? I'm compiling a list, and I'll give you credit in the post. Gracias.

D/L below

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=36

 

Anyone else using the expansion slot? The X-Fi sounds nice, but I don't want to always have to use external speakers. Would just be another thing to either plug in or feed batteries to. Does it work through headphones? I don't want to always use headphones either, but one of the few things about the laptop that might disappoint are the speakers.

Here's a noob question--what program do you guys use to ascertain CPU temps? When I get mine, I want to put it through the paces and make sure its performance and temps measure up to everyone else's.

Here's that YouTube video from the fella who had the whiny fans. Pretty sure there must be something wrong with his. I hope so, anyway, cause it's pretty loud!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzdPwXKcNZU

 

Sure.

I dual-boot, so I'll do this in sections.

Windows 7:
I have to be very careful where I touch if I want it to scroll, and it scrolls very slowly downward or upward. I can't just move my finger to have the document move with it like on a Synaptics pad; instead, I have to wait for the document to scroll to the point I want it.

Ubuntu:
No scrolling at all. If I touch the pad with two fingers simultaneously, even by mistake, the mouse cursor goes completely crazy, zooming around the screen and clicking random things in a split second. The touchpad isn't even detected as a touchpad. It just did this as I was typing this post, clicking the back button a few times.

Justin, I bought this from Xotic PC; this is starting to become a dealbreaker for me. Is this normal behavior for this system? Do you have any Sagers like this that use a good touchpad?

 

You could wait for this - SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCIe, ExpressCard Adapters Coming Soon... but we already have eSata.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=17107

 

I too would like to know what changed in the new bios, didn't see anything else about it when i posted it.

 

cpuid's hwmonitor

 

Hey guys, my 8690 just came in yesterday.

I just tried out playing some games and I noticed that there is no bass.

I watched this video on both my desktop (which has some no-name onboard sound card) and my laptop (RealTec, the default internal one) with the exact same headphones, and on my desktop I can hear sound for the whole video, whereas on my Sager I can't hear anything until about 1m40s in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH_sUK7hJxE

This can't be normal, right?

 

That's normal. Headphones will always beat notebook speakers.

 

No...I mean with the headphones plugged into my laptop, I still hear nothing...

 

Did you reinstall the Realtek driver? Did you plug into your headphone out?

 

By "nothing" I mean no bass. =)

And yes, I tried rolling the driver back and then reupdating it.

 

Yeah, I can confirm this behavior on my 8760 as well.

 

Strange. I have my HD595's plugged in right now while watching the linked YouTube video and it works just fine.

 

i can hear it too but on my jvc speakers
you definitely wont here the whole range adn all teh audio but you will definitely hear a a few of the audio clips in the 30-100hz range

 

I would hope that I could hear the same or better as my Vostro 1500 when using headphones or external speakers. It's not even close.

 

yes the audio out for the headphone jacks arent all that great.

but you could use the spdif for true 5.1 sound though.
that should have enough bass fr you

 

There's something there, but it's very weak.

All of the audio sounds tinny, like on super-cheap headphones.

There's "not all that great", and there's this. My 3-year-old Dell Latitude sounds just fine, just like my desktop. The Sager sounds like @#$%. There's no way this is normal behaviour.

 

What are you listening to? Seeing as how we both have W870CU's and Vostro 1500's, between the two of use we should be able to figure out if this is normal or not.

Edit - or wait, are we listening to that you tube clip posted above?

 

Yeah, I'm listening to the bass test clip. It's not that I can't hear anything, but that I could break my external speakers with my Vostro 1500 if I wanted to. Not the case with the Clevo. The bass output just isn't there. This has to be a driver issue.

Edit: And so there is no confusion, I'm not talking about the highs here. Only the lows.

 

well it did state in a couple of reviews that bith laptops had weak audio output vua the headphone jack.
does anyone have a mini toslink cable to test the spdif 5.1 output? unfortunately i dont have one but would wanna find out if its worth geting one

 

there are new realtek hd audio drivers in their website.
trying to access the readme now...

 

I'm trying the latest right now and they aren't helping.

 

Ok, well I couldn't hear much past 40Hz until I made the following changes (and I agree, Vostro played lower frequencies better..)

Sounds -> Playback -> Speakers (Realtech)

Checked - immedate mode
Equalizer - set to "bass"
Headphone Virtualization
Loudness Equalization.

Then I could hear pretty low.. granted quality was crap, but I could hear stuff down to 17Hz or so..

I should add, I'm listening on my fatal!ty or whatever headset with the mic out and headphone in jacks.

 

Does anyone know of a sleeve case (Like the one in the link below) that will fit the 8690.

Here is the link of what I am talking about. I am looking for something like this that will fit the 8690. The one below is meant for a 15'' Macbook which is a lot thinner then the 8690 so I don't think it will work.

http://store.apple.com/ca/product/TR633LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA2Ng&mco=MTA4MjU0MzE

Here are the dimensions of the 8690

14.75" (w) x 10" (d) x 1.65"~2" (h)



Thanks
Shawn

 

Speaker driver (transducer), or software driver for the speaker?

And just to be clear, I listened to the clip on the Vostro 1500 and the W870CU via my headset.

Vostro 1500 was clearly better, it went down to almost 32Hz before dropping off (or my ears quit hearing, whichever). With the W870CU it dropped out right at 40Hz until I made the changes in the control panel, I mentioned above.

So to answer my own question, since it "sounds" like we're hearing the same problem, with different speakers (headset vs external), it has to be software related.

 

good find
this helped a lot
but as mentioned its probably something that can be ci=orrected with better drivers in the fuutre.

 

Glad it helped! I have no idea what most of that does, I'm an absolute novice when it comes to all things A/V so feel free to try other settings, those were just what worked for me after trial and error.

 

i tried using party in equalizer settings thoug it sounnds better.
youre right though about the bass setting sounding like crap

 

I can't live with a $3000 laptop that makes everything sound like tinny crap... hopefully Sager can help me out tomorrow, or I'm sending this one back.

EDIT: I just realized that I have a headset (Plantronics) that has a USB connection. That is, it has a little USB dongle that then has an audio-out and mic-in port. Plugged that in, and it finally sounds right. So it's definitely something to do with the audio card/jacks/drivers, not system settings.

 

This is kind of scary. I was telling myself it's okay if the on-board speakers are just "okay" because I could use headphones if I wanted good audio. And I thought that if the audio output from the headphone jack was lacking, I could live with that by just turning the volume way up.

But... it sounds like there are some serious issues here beyond just lack of on-board subwoofer and less than great speakers.

 

Glad you got it sounding OK, at least on the headset -V-.

I'm still amazed at the amount of people who use a laptop as a speaker/audio device. I never would've imagine that.

 

Do you play your games on mute or.. ?

 

if you look around the forums you will see that weak bass is such a tiny issue compared to the crap that other notebook owners have had to put up with.
just saunter over to the AW or HP and check what real issues and problems are like.
my former HP gpu fried on me. i was first thinking of getting an asus for the international warranty but after seeing the numerous problems with their 260m notebooks i just got turned off. same goes for the AW notebooks having multitude of problems, from the gpu underclocking to intermittent sound and much more. and a lot of those laptops cost much more...
i like my laptop but im no sager fanboy. but i feel that these issues are so minor as compared to the rest.
hopefully though we get a software fix to this.

 

I agree, 100%.

Ah, sarcasm. I see what you did there.

No, I don't play games on mute. I use my headset. I was talking about people using the laptop as a speaker (when I said "I'm still amazed at the amount of people who use a laptop as a speaker") and expecting "real" speaker performance.

The games I've played (CS:S/MW2) have sounded fine, the only time I noticed a difference was listening to the youtube video, specifically testing the bass range. It sounds fine to me while playing games, but as I mentioned earlier, I'm far from an audiophile.

Regardless, I hope new drivers or whatever you try next gets you the sound performance you're looking for.

 

if the audio is really bothering some of you these could be some options:
use the spdif out with toslink capable headsets
or get an xfi 24bit 5.1 external sound card

either way, its gonna cost you 100-150usd but im sure you get the audio quality you want and more...

 

The best of the best. http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=ze...p3286.m270.l1313&_odkw=zeroshock+15&_osacat=0

You may also want to look at a WaterField SleeveCase. I just bought one for my W870CU and it fit's like a glove and offers excellent protection. Size 31-21 should fit your W860CU properly. http://www.sfbags.com/products/sleevecases/sleevecases.htm

 

ha, i got that waterfield sleeve. I used it for my dell inspiron but now I can use it for my 8690 =D

 

I tried out the 15" zeroshock sleeve in the store on my W860CU and it didn't fit by a long shot. You'll need the 17" version (at least) because the zeroshock sleeves are not build for such a thick machine like this Clevo model.

 

Then I don't think we're having the same problem. I'm not complaining about the quality of the sound, or the quality of the bass, as much as the total lack of bass.

If anyone has played Left 4 Dead 2 - you know when you take the adrenaline shot, and all the sound gets kind of flat and tinny? Yea, the whole game sounds like that.

 

Can anyone run this for me? It shouldn't take long. I've posted a 720QM vs 820QM thread in the "Hardware" forum with benchmark results here. Unfortunately I won't be able to use my 860CU with 720QM for a few weeks.

People ask the 820QM vs 720QM question so often I figured I'd put that up for reference.

 

here it is
came in at 35s

 

Awesome! Thanks man, I'll add it now!

 

I got highier. I got 38's. I will run it again and see it I get it again.

 

I just ran it again a couple times and it ranges from 35 seconds at best to 38 seconds. I ran it a total of 10 times and this is how it went. It hit 35 seconds 2 times, 36 seconds 3 times, 37 seconds 3 times, and 38 seconds 2 times.

 

Thanks for your help Stevenson! Looks like the 820QM runs anywhere from ~17%-25% faster at 2M.

 

yeah just like i mentioned in your hardware thread brandon, you will see significant gains in number crunching apps