**OFFICIAL W860CU/NP8690 Owners Lounge**

You shouldn't uninstall ReaalTek first, just install SRS directly. Apart from greatly improved sound quality, I don't even notice it was there. You should check out the 15 day demo. I got no slow downs or problems at all.

 

So I bought myself this REI bag
http://www.rei.com/product/778821

Supposed to fit a 17" laptop but it's super small. Even after I squeezed the 8690 in, a good couple of inches was still sticking out the top and I couldn't properly close the little strap for the laptop compartment.

The thing is that the laptop compartment in the REI bag seemed larger than that in the Timbuk 2 2.0 Large. And those were the largest bags they had at REI. I think I might be forced to check out Fry's...

 

Bought the Pakuma Choroka K1, supposedly for 17" so it should fit hopefully.

 

that still a cheap tax
i mean, in Indonesia, the tax goes about 10-20% (usually 17.5%)

here, local manufacturer sold Clevo W860CU for about US$ 1600, and Sager version was sold in more than US$ 1900 (those prices already tax included)
(both are with FHD, i7 720, 4 gb ddr3, gtx 280m , and 320 GB HDD)

 

no such thing as cheap tax

 

In Malaysia, no tax for notebook! Yahoo!

 

Got a question about 8690 disk partitions (Win7x64), copying the image over to a SSD and 'alignment' of the sectors.

Lot of discussion on Crucial's web forum about 'alignment' of the sectors affecting SSD performance in Win7. Meaning, the starting sector should be aligned on a 4k boundary or you will likely experience a performance hit in transfer of data.

I got my 8690 the first week of Mar and before I even fired it up the first time I used Acronis to image the factory build directly over to a C300 256Gb SSD.

After reading the article I checked sysinfo and found that my starting sector was indeed 'misaligned'.

Upon investigtion I found that there were two partitions (as delivered from the factory) labeled 'System' (and is bootable but contains only 42mg of whatever in a 203mg partition), and 'Windows' which contains the OS and everything else and is obviously the remainder of the drive space.

If Win7 is done as a fresh install it will automagically align to the first 1024 sector and the drive will be in alignment. I'm just wondering why there is this 'System' partition that doesn't seem to really have any data on it (42mg) but is the boot partition.

Is this partition needed by Win7 and is created on every fresh install or was this something Sager did during their build?

I want to delete that partition completely if it's not needed and reimage the factory build to a properly aligned partition to hopefully regain whatever measure of performance I'm losing due to misalignment of the starting sector on my SSD.

Anybody know if this 'System' partition on the Sager factory Win7 image is needed for anything important?

Link to article: http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Re-alignment-without-data-loss/td-p/4829

Thanks,

S.

 

im not able to turn on the laptop when it isnt plugged in. what is the fix for this???

 

hold the power button for a couple of seconds until the light comes on. Its a strange Clevo feature, I guess to stop you accidently turning on the laptop whilst on battery

 

Didn't know that. Thanks. Rep +1.

 

Hold down the power button.

 

i thought it would be quite obvious to try "holding" the power button. I figured myself.

 

Hi, I've had my W860CU for about a week now. I'm just wondering, is it normal for the fans to never turn off when the notebook is on turned on?

My CPU and GPU are i7-720qm and ATI Mobility 5870 (downclocked to 100/150)

Idle temps
CPU core 1: 40C
CPU core 2: 40C
CPU core 3: 43C
CPU core 4: 38C

GPU DispIO: 42C
GPU MemIO: 47C
GPU Shader: 48C

 

Yeah the 5870 keeps the GPU fan running constant... Not loud but audible enough to know its running ...

 

Well whether it is audible or not really depends on your environment and your annoyance threshold. For me, it's quite loud considering it's more of a fan buzzing sound than a air flowing sound. Notebookcheck puts the idle sound output level at 41dB min compared to the 32dB on Macbooks (15 cm away from laptop).

 

Ah, thanks Quad and void. The fan noise isn't bothering me, but I just found it a little bit odd.

 

does anyone know how to set the srs to maintain the trusurroundxt setting. it keeps switching to wow. anyone have this problem?

 

Oh wow, those are some nice temps! My idle temps are
CPU (range of all cores): 48C-52C
GPU: 58C-60C (max recorded on HWMonitor is 84C after BC2)
Ambient RT: 25C-26C

How are you achieving those temps? What paste are you using?

Quite frankly, I'm a bit concerned...Just had my 8690 for a week so I was waiting to see if the temps stabilize somehow, but those seem to be consistent.

EDIT: actually, I had powerpoint running that I was working on, so the temps weren't perfectly "idle". I'll try again after I finish my work.

 

Idle temps have more to do with room temp, on load temp is more important. I'm having 51C CPU, and 57C GPU idle as well, room temp is always above 30C, it's so damn hot here.

 

My ambient temperature is pretty low, around 25C.
I have my CPU locked at 933MHz using windows power management feature and my GPU is downclocked to 100/150 with ATI GPU Clock Tool.
As for thermal paste, CPU running on friend's stick of AS5 and GPU on some MX-2.

My GPU memory does go over 90C pretty easily when I run furmark on stock clocks though... not sure if i should be too worried since SC2 maxes it out at 87C.

Edit: GPU at 100/150 is crashes the comp, I set new one at 250/300 like ninja2000.

 

Is the issue of the thermal pads of the heatsink of the MR 5870 in a 860CU not being flushed to the RAM chips of the card itself already solved?

 

Our ambient temps are about the same, but yeah, I guess it makes sense since you downclocked your system. I'm running at stock clocks and stock thermal paste.

 

What I see for most is that the memory temp is higher than core temp, but it's a bit different for me though, my memory temp is always around 2-3C lower than my core temp.

 

Anyone seeing temps above about 80 under load probably Have a gpu heat sink that is not seating right. There are multiple discussions on how to fix this in the various threads on the 860 and 870.

 

There is a feature that automatically changes sound profiles depending on what you are doing. Open the SRS GUI and where it says ''Auto tech'', click on that once. If that doesn't work, click on it again because it is not very obvious whether it is on automatic mode selection or not.

 

Yeah i also got crashes if running it too low. Managed to get it down to 200/300. Nowjust wish i could lower the voltage

 

Hmmm... is it true? can u give the link... tq

 

i guess this is good news for ati 5000 series users

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6128415&postcount=595

 

GPU or GPU memory? My GPU rarely goes over 80C, its my GPU memory that's always around 87C under load for regular games. Furmark has made GPU memory go to 100C after about 5 minutes of running it....

 

Memory temp only 90C after 10min of furmark OCed to 800/1100, 3C lower than the core temp.

 

hey guys...my 8690 should be arriving in the next hour or so and I really want to get updated drivers for everything before i start installing programs and games...

Any recomendations for drivers would be appreciated..be they wifi, gpu, etc...do i need to update BIOS or any other stuff i should do

Its the 8690 with the 5870 and i7 820 same as fzhfzh sig above

 

Drivers are all included in the CD given, Bios should be rather up to date already since it includes the 5870 ID. IMO, a GPU driver update is good, for the other drivers, not much point, just use the drivers in the CD.

 

Here's a link to the improved multitouch driver, courtesy of thedanks:

 

Nice temps.

And yeah, default touchpad drivers are pretty bad... I think I'm gunna give those updated drivers a run.

 

I tried the driver at MSI and it does work, but it conflicts with the 3 button touchpad driver. As soon as you press the mail touch pad it locks up the mouse cursor. I had to do a hard reboot to get it back. So as long as you don’t mind loosing that you are ok.
One thing I learned using the new driver is it has small videos that show how to use the features of the touchpad and the scroll function. It turns out you do not use it like you normally would to scroll by sliding your finger up or down. What you do is put your finger on the pad in what would be an up or down “zone” location and hold it. The scroll work just fine if you do that. The driver works the same way for left and right scroll as well.

 

Hello everyone,

Long time reader first time posting. I finally ordered a Sager NP8690 from XOTIC after reading these forums for a long time. I'm replacing my HP Pavilion that had a GeForce 9200M GS that was suprisingly snappy, considering I didn't buy it to do any gaming. It did excellent through 3 trips to Iraq, hopefully the Sager will do was well on trip #4.
I'm very happy with my desktop 9800GT and hope the NP8690 does as well or better.
COD 5 & Bioshock were awsome, I'm enjoying Wolfenstein to death, and now I get to go buy Bioshock 2. YEAA!!!
Sorry if I'm over excited. Does anyone think that 6 GB of RAM would have benefitted me a whole lot over 4? If I make any upgrades maybe 8 months from now it would probably be that and maybe a SSD.
Anyway, thanks to all of you for sharing your knowledge on this forum or I would have ended up with an alienware or a sony or something. But listening to all of you I think I got the best brand. Thanks!

 

Welcome to the club. Great configuration on your new 8690. The benefits of 6GB of ram over 4GB are minimal at best unless you need some application that specifically requires the additional memory.

Walk softly over there in Iraq.

 

Agreed. 10char

 

Currently running furmark hwinfo32 gives these temps as max:

GPU Thermal Diode 73
GPU DispIO 70
GPU MemIO 73
GPU Shader 71

This is at stock 700/1000 frequencies.

 

I tought i read somewhere on here that the wifi card drivers that come needto be upgraded too..its that true?

 

btw, when i update my gpu drivers...any recommendations on how to go about it?

ive only dealt with nvidia gpus, and what i did with that was unnistall driver, retstart in safe mode, run driver cleaner, then install new driver.

is it the same?

 

get the ssd (doesnt matter how much gb's), then just get an external hd for extra storage. you'll be blown away by the speed. And wiith a 920xm processor you'll have a pretty dominant laptop

 

im thinking of buying an ssd, i know the intel ones are the fastest but is it worth the extra $$ compard to other brands ssd, from what ive seen a corsair 256gb ssd costs as must as a 160gb intel x25. Is the difference in speed noticable?

 

^ you get what you pay for but i'd recommend just reading a bunch of reviews online. (an ssd is great tho, im workin on gettin my boot time down to 30secs flat, its at 32 now) also programs start immediately when you click them, i really cant say enough about it to be honest

Does anyone know how to disable the touchpad zoom function on this computer (google returned nada) It's when you put two fingers on the touchpad and spread them apart or together which zooms in or out the web page respectively. This is happening constantly on my computer, any way to disable it???????????

 

The multitouch driver posted by thedanks has the option to disable each gesture individually. Just go into the config and find the multitouch options. Each gesture will have it's own config, and there's a check box labeled "use this gesture" or something to that effect. I'm at work right now, so I can't tell you exactly what it says.

 

nvmnd, i was counting in my mind. my boot time is actually around 18secs, 15 with some tinkering..



OH YYEEEEEAH

heres the boot timer program if anyone wants to fool around:

http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...um.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=459125

 

how did i miss that? thanks!
tried to give u deserved rep, but it says ive given u too much already lol

 

I thank you, sah.
I actually just use the driver to adjust sensitivity. I have all the gestures disabled.

That is unbelievable. Time for me to get an SSD

 

What "mail touch pad" are you referring to? I was just about to install the driver when I read your comment. The touchpad driver I am currently using is whatever came on the Driver CD.

Also, would the better way be to uninstall the current Sentelic driver first, then install that MSI one? Are there any other compatibility issues?

 

just make sure you got an external, cuz i only have 25gigs free and ive only installed a few programs and some music, sheesh