*** Official Clevo P150EM / Sager NP9150 Owner's Lounge ***

Here... you should be able to maximize your heat management (or at least get ideas) for your 7970M:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...glected-clevo-solutions-here.html#post8694123

 

I ordered mine through XoticPC. It's on Phase 3 as of yesterday.

 

This fix works perfectly. I had an issue setting it up because I used to use the protector suite password bank which you can add passwords and websites while still in the browser. This one you have to go through the program to set it up.

 

3 days until my laptop is in my hands...

 

That's some awesome work. Question: Is the vinyl with the picture just done directly on top of the DI-Noc carbon fiber film, or did you just manage to cut out and line up the vinyl perfectly? lol

 

Has anyone found the service manual for the P150EM?

 

The vinyl wrap I had printed for me on 7 year gloss vinyl and its also matte laminated to protect the picture below and cos I prefer matte on the notebook to gloss it feels more classy IMO.

I can't seem to find a good vid but here is my method that I use to wrap... The pictures are mock as I already wrapped the notebook.

The kit...



Clean the notebook and get it ready for application using a lint free cloth and de-natured alcohol (doesn't melt plastic or leave white marks). I advise working on pre cleaned surface where dust is less likely to be (for example kitchen that is not carpeted or curtained and has a hard un-clothed work surface. Wash yourself to remove lint and dirt from yourself and wear a T-shirt. Dust ruins the finished look if it gets under.

For fitted pieces with no corner stretches...
1) Cut to size.
2) Keep the backing on the vinyl.
3) Line it up into the correct placing on the laptop.
4) Hold the vinyl in place by taping it centrally so that either side of the vinyl can be lifted up as a flap.



5) Make a squeegee out of a flat piece of wood and some good kitchen towel (stops scratching and helps application).
6) Lift one of the flaps and remove the backing back to the centre line where the tape is.



7) Cut the backing off to remove it out completely.
8) Take the squeegee and while keeping the vinyl lifted gently work it onto the surface letting the vinyl stick while avoiding air bubbles. If you get a bubble lift the vinyl back off and re-apply.





9) Once you have the first half laid remove the positioning tape off the centre line.
10) Squeegee into place the rest of the backing.
11) To ensure that the vinyl sticks to minor curves heat with a hair drier but don't melt the vinyl as it gets hot quick.
Done


The keyboard was as guessed 3M DI-NOC.

Wrapping a piece not cut to size around the keyboard is a bit more difficult. The process is similar.

1) Cut away the finger pad which I did using the original protective cover that was included in the packaging as a template.
2) Remove the keyboard.
3) Line the vinyl up with the finger pad and masking tape the vinyl down to the finger pad to keep it in place.
4) Lift the vinyl flap to side of the finger pad and remove the backing.
5) While holding the flap up gently work it onto the surface with the squeegee ensuring no bubbles are trapped (just lift back off and re-apply if you accidentally get any under).
6) Remove the tape of the finger pad that was holding the vinyl in place
Remove the backing from this side and apply as before gently working it onto the surface.

...Once you have the flat of the vinyl down

7) Heat the vinyl with the hair drier gently while working it over the edges and into dips holding it in place as it cools with the squeegee.
8) To get the corners heat the vinyl and stretch it tight over the corner stretching it and pressing it into place as it cools for a seamless corner.
9) Using a blunt kitchen knife or you nails and the hair drier press the warmed vinyl into the the seem of the laptop enough so you have a cutting guide.
10) Very carefully remove the excess with a craft knife or scalpel using the laptop seem as a guide.
11) Cut the excess from the keyboard area and tuck it down with the hair drier and squeegee.
12) Re attach the keyboard.

Done. Laptop protected when vinyl sticks fully in a few days.

Vinyl can be removed with gentle heat and residual glue with de-natured alcohol.

Want more info PM me... back to topic...

 

Alright, so I got my np9150 and it is totally awesome. My main problem is that whenever I plug it into my stereo speakers I often get a weird echo effect. It mostly occurs in games when the source of the sound occurs on the side of my character.

 

Ridiculously excited, as my machine just shipped! I am very impressed, as I just ordered a week and a half ago! I have to say, Xotic PC really is fantastic. They are extremely helpful and patient, and I really like that they regulalrly updated me on where my laptop was in the process at any given point in time. I can rest easy knowing they will always take care of me in the future.

Cannot wait to finally get it, especially since I've been researching gaming laptops since late January! I am very happy I waited for the Sager line refresh, Ivy Bridge, and the current generation GPUs

 

Wow, you're really lucky - a week and a half!? I ordered mine on June 8 and it's finally arriving on Monday. At least I've been able to get other work done in time for me to fully enjoy my Sager from Xoticpc. Monday can't come soon enough!!

 

I know, I'm just as shocked as you are! I mean, I didn't get any Xotic upgrades (Copper Cooling, etc), so that lets me skip Phase 3. Also, I believe since I ordered the more expensive 680M (they said less are buying them due to the high price), that also saved me a lot of time. I'm also wondering if I just happened to order at the right time...lol I just can't wait to get it

 

Can somebody post a guide on how to overclock?
I saw the one on this forum, but it's a bit confusing. Any noob friendly ones so I can understand how to do it?

 

What do you want to overclock? If its the video card (Radeon 7970) you can do some overclocking in the catalyst control center. Anything beyond that and you should probably do some research on your own

 

Yeah sorry, I meant the gpu. How do I overclock it using catalyst? I can't seem to find any options to do so.

 

Anyone else notice the backlit keyboard is always blue when you turn your laptop on? And then once it enters windows it changes to whatever you have it set as.

Is there a way you can change the start up colors?

Also my backlit keyboard control center is bigger then my screen and I can't resize it to fit. Any suggestions on making it so I don't have to scroll all over the place when I want to change things up?

 

I'll explain the one from the forum a bit simpler

1) Download MSI Afterburner. I believe it will download 2.2.1 automatically, which is good. I don't think 2.2.2 works with this.
2) Go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner"
3) Open MSIAfterburner.cfg in Notepad or any word editor
4) Scroll down until you see these lines:

And replace them with:

5) Save (File > Save) and exit that document.
6) Click the Windows logo to bring up the start menu.
7) Type "regedit" in the search box and open regedit (the logo is a cyan blue cube thing)
8) In the program that opens up, navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}". That's just a normal directory path. Make sure you click on "{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}". There will be a few folders with similar names, you have to make sure you get the exact one.
9) Under that number, you should see some more folders. I have three, named "0000", "0001", and "Properties". The only ones you need to care about are the number ones.
10) Click on the first number folder. No need to expand it, just click on it so you see a list on the right half the window.
11) In the list, look for a property with the name "EnableUlps". The name is obviously the left-most column.
12a) If you see a property with that name (exact name, don't go messing with things like EnableHDMI or anything), double click on the name. A window should pop up. In this window, you will see a field titled "Value data". By default, the number in it should be 1. Change it to 0. Once you do that, click OK.
12b) If you don't see a property with that name, go to the next number folder. In my case, I did not have the property in 0000, but I had it in 0001.
13) Go through every number folder that you have (some people may have more than others) and check for that property. Every time you see it, change it.
14) Once you go through all the number folders, close out of regedit (just hit the X, no need to save or anything).

That's it! Now when you open Afterburner, you can overclock. Just remember that Afterburner won't show the clocks for the 7970M unless you open it while the 7970M is running. What I do is open Kombustor and then open Afterburner. If you don't have Kombustor, just open any high performance app. You can close it again after you open Afterburner.

 

Why do I need to do that? I just found another guide: How To: Overclock Your AMD / ATi GPU

This one does not say anything about doing those things.
I'm such a noob haha

 

You can probably skip all that other stuff, for overclocking with afterburner, you actually don't even need to change the ini file unless you want to O/C faster than what is allowed by default. I'd say just do steps 1-5 above and see how that works out for ya.

 

Actually, I don't know. It doesn't change anything as far as I can tell.

So yeah, just do the first 5 steps.

 

Hello

how much is the difference between 8GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) and 8GB - DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) for gaming ?


Thank you

 

For anyone who is interested... If you have a large amount of RAM in your machine and want applications and games to fly... place the page file onto a RAM disk as this really improves things! (Primo RAMDiskPro)

I have also cached the hard disk using system RAM which has improved data transfer for writes to the hard disk using system memory as well. (Fancycache)


One question though... where is the microphone in this notebook... from tapping the machine it would appear to be located between the Windows button and the front of the case. If so what a stupid place as who talks to the keyboard!!!! It picks up every key press and mouse swipe pretty loudly but for dictation is absolutely rubbish! Surely placing it next to the cam would have made sense!!

 

So, is it normal that my 7970m only displays the GPU usage at like 50-80%? It never reaches up to 100% and its hardly above 70.
In games like BF3, Saints row 3, and others, msi afterburner says it's only at those percentages. And saints row 3 specifically has a pretty low framerate while only using 50% of the gpu.
Is there something I'm doing wrong that is making the GPU not use its entire power? Or is that normal?

 

Probably less than 1 FPS.

 

There is a hole to the top-right of the touchpad. That looks like it could possibly be the mic.

 

Would you recommend this for those that have 8GB @ 1333mhz? Also, how exactly do you place the page file onto a RAM. Let's just I - I mean a friend - does not know much about computers and I - I mean he - may want to do this. Thanks!

 

Virtually nothing. I got the 1333MHz and it is perfectly fine. Gave me $50 saving too.

It's "normal" in a way. The GPU usage should be much higher, but Enduro/drivers are limiting it in some games. So it's normal in that everyone is having this problem and it's not a problem on your end, but it is a problem that will need to be fixed by AMD.

 

Putting the page file on a ramdisk is a bad idea. Just make your page file small (like 256mb) and you will get a better effect.

Windows by default (as well as linux and most other OS's) use ALL un-used system ram as disk cache. There is no need to use any apps for that, they don't really do anything but mess with windows' algorithms. I would suggest not using apps like that.

 

Oh, pssh that's pretty lame. Any idea on when/if that'll get fixed?

It still runs pretty great, but it'd be nice if it was better :>

 

AMD is notoriously slow for driver updates. So probably a while.

 

All you'll get is a slightly faster HD 4000. The difference is barely noticeable. Go for the 1333 MHz.

 

Can anyone link me to a disassembly guide for this laptop? I thought I fixed my letter "m" but it's just not registering sometimes no matter how hard I pressed it and I'm not interested in returning the laptop for something I can fix. Please help!

 

Sorry, double-post. Please delete this one.

 

Puget Systems Traverse Pro M550i Component Replacement - YouTube

 

You beat me to it. I was actually going to say that because it does this, a friend of mine who is a linux programmer and knows more about this stuff than I suggested that the best idea may be to just disable the swap file altogether, if you even have 8 GB (and are not setting up a RAM Disk). I personally ordered mine with 32 just like GTMonster, but my plan was to disable the swap file altogether, which eliminates an entire extra process, then create a RAM disk probably with either 20 or 24 GB RAM Disk on which I'll install my games. Then, once installed, I'll copy the entire directory to a folder on my 256GB SSD. Any time I want to play that game, I just copy the folder to the RAM Disk, which will take very little time, and then I'll basically be playing games straight off the motherboard. Only time it will ever access the SSDs will be when it writes saved games and such to my OS SSD. Most games still put their saved games somewhere in the My Documents folder, don't they? Latest game my old computer could handle (and barely) was Mass Effect 2...

 

Tbh it seems more trouble than what's it worth. I have never gotten any lagg due to ssd when I'm gaming, so I doubt gaming on a ram that's 100x faster than my ssd is gonna improve my experience :/

 

Thanks Chaytup! That was a very fast reply. Now, my other question would be after removing the keyboard, I've read somewhere that a ribbon needs to be aligned for the keys to register properly upon pressing. Anyone have any experience/tips on how to do this?

 

Am I the only one for whom the 95% gamut display makes all internet video look appalling quality? Every bit of compression appears much more obvious. I installed the NP813_5_LEN40B2_Matte_95_NV_V2 color profile as they suggest here .

Secondly is there any way to control the GFX fan? The fn-1 does not work on this one and it just goes full blast when it switches to the 680M. And then it stays on after I finish gaming, even when it's blowing out cold air.

 

This is my problem!! I absolutely love my laptop but this is driving me insane! Now it's not just the"m" key but it I just found out it also does it on the "," key. Any help would be seriously appreciated!

 

To get it to turn off, try opening a program that uses the 7970M like Kombustor after it cools down and then close it again.

 

Why it is bad to store the page file on a RAM disk?

 

Because you are just creating extra work for the computer, and limiting it's options.

If you have enough ram to put the page file on a ramdisk, just disable the page file (or keep a very small one so windows doesn't get mad) and then get rid of the ramdisk that you would have used for page file. Now you have much more free memory, and trust me, the windows kernel know how to better utilize the ram than you do.

First off you will have more free ram, this will allow you to have more ram available for disk cache which speeds up the entire computer, and second of all if you have lots of ram then you dont need to have a page file in the first place.The page file is just for when you run out of ram. It really is counter-productive to do this.

One of the key points to remember is that all free memory is used as disk cache. So that means a system with 32GB of ram today will have tons and tons of room for disk cache, which means everything will be significantly faster. This works along with windows prefetcher/superfetch which figures out what apps you commonly use, and then puts them in the memory disk cache BEFORE you use them so that they are already cached and ready to go when you do use them. This is compared to traditional cache which you would have to use an app before it's cached.

This explains why it is bad to disable prefetcher/superfetch on an SSD, as prefetcher/superfetch will actually still speed up your computer. Also remember that disk cache memory is not blocking the available memory for other apps, if an app needs memory, then disk cache memory can immediately be erased (as it is just a copy of stuff on the disk) and used for something else.

By making a huge ramdisk you are crippling the ability of the windows kernel to manage all of this, and people much smarter than you or I have designed the algorithms behind the scenes that handle this. If the page file is on the ramdisk, then you will run out of memory faster and cause the cpu to have to page things in and out of memory, which means it is copying data around memory for no reason. Much better to just leave the page file off/small so that you can allow the OS the utilize your RAM to the fullest extent.


EDIT: I didn't realize that was a link at first, I thought you were actually asking the question. LOL, oh well my response is still useful.

 

+1

This guy, deserves more rep.

 

+2, i rep'ed too, the post explain many things to me

 

Lol. You all do realize the original question was actually not a question, but just a link to explaining in detail somewhat what he summarized.

 

Thanks for the rep guys

Heh I didnt even notice it was a link until a while after I posted it and came back to it lol, kinda funny. That link is worth reading too, it covers some different material than I do, and my post covers some stuff that the link doesn't

 

These kinds of questions have rumbled through these forums dozens of times. It's like religion, nobody ever fully agrees about what to do. Anything relating to ramdisks, page files, superfetch, indexing, etc, especially with SSD's. My thought is to do what you feel is necessary, although I've learned to leave things be except setting my page file to a range so it doesn't automatically reserve 16GB of space and turning off hibernate because I don't use it (saving another 16GB of space).

 

I see your point, however let me point out it's an experiment. People on here jump their GPU clocks by 50 mhz at a time just so they can get an extra 10 points on their 3dmark11, or a minimum fps of 1 higher and that's fine. I'll probably overclock mine for the sake of this experiment as well, though I'll probably cool it back down for while I'm out on the road (at least until winter). It gets hot in my truck.

Anyway, here's my hypothesis. In this day and age, with the high end hardware that's available, bottlenecks are growing fewer. The number of parts that could possibly throttle you are few, and they are all quite capable of doing their jobs at this point.

The CPU - If i were trying to crunch some complex mathematical or scientific algorithms, or even trying to make bitcoins, this might be the bottleneck, but I'm not. Games won't touch the performance my 3720QM is capable of, and that's not even top of the line. Back in the day, though, this (the CPU) WAS the bottleneck on games, and so overclocking made a lot of sense.

The RAM - This has not been a bottleneck in higher end systems for a long time. Advancements in speed aside, the only real problem was ever quantity, and we now have that in spades.

The GPU - This replaced the CPU as the common bottleneck for games quite some time ago. It handles the majority of the important work in games, so overclocking this has become much more important than overclocking the cpu to improve performance. As newer games come out, it will still be a factor, but for the first time I can remember, we finally have mobile cards that can handle modern games at full capacity with some performance to spare.

The Storage - Until SSDs (or better yet until they started becoming reasonably priced), the HDD was an inescapable necessity. As slow as it seems now, it was always significantly faster than other common storage mediums (floppy disks, optical drives, etc.) so it didn't seem so bad, and programmers found ways to minimize affects on gameplay by putting the most important information in memory during a "load time". Now that we DO have something so much faster, that can NEARLY eliminate the load times, why not take it one step closer? Why not eliminate this step altogether? No need to send that data with all its headers all the way across the disk bus to an SSD controller, which then has to find a place to put and report back that it was done. Just load it straight from the memory to the processor, to divvy up duties.

Who knows, maybe we'll find that it gives a few extra frames per second. It's unlikely, but maybe we'll discover that by removing that step, we've jumped from 3 out of every 5 cycles being dedicated to the game, to 3 out of every 4, giving a 15% jump. Maybe by removing differences in SSDs and HDDs, it'll give us a more pure way to test our GPU performance.

I'm just going to try it out, and see if it's something people may want to consider.

 

Quick question for you techies. I do not have an SSD, just a 750GB hard drive. My page file was set from min 16mb to max 8008mb. I changed the minimum from 16mb to 8008mb. Will that have any effects on performance?

 

it shouldn't

 

Simple answer... no. These days a pagefile is hardly necessary, but I won't go there. There's many people that will skin you for making such a statement.