*** Official Clevo X170SM-G/Sager NP9670M Owner's Lounge ***

To me, it seems that upgradeable laptops seem to die off for a bit, then kind of make a comeback. There have been multiple cycles of this happening as long as I can remember.

This is kind of like the people who keep saying PCs are dying and are constantly reforecasting the demise of PCs. They've been saying that all my life, but PCs are still alive and kicking. Smartphones and tablets will never replace desktops and laptops because although every device has it's own set of capabilities that may intersect with the cababilities of other devices, each device has its own unique set of capabilities that others will never have. A good example of this is the performance of each device. Laptops and desktops will always be significantly more performant than smartphones and tablets since laptops and desktops have much higher power budgets.

Likewise, there will always be a market for upgradable laptops due to their capabilities, which is why they always pop back into existence. I don't know if we'll ever get another golden age of upgradable laptops like we had about a decade ago, but they are here to stay. It's perfectly possible they may change form though, like in the case of Dell dropping MXM for their DGFF cards.

Something doesn't have to be popular to stay around. BGA devices definitely have their place, and they're good for the applications they were intended for. However, I think MXM should be much more popular. BGA has no place in performance laptops, or really any device geared towards performance.

 

It would be interesting if we did eventually get on package ram as the norm and GPUs shrunk.

 

i tried replicating it in some games, can't see it, so almost positive, stuttering no, do you have it in all games / rendering video and such? does it correlate with spikes in gpu / cpu usage?

 

Finally finished testing my Undervolting / OCing of the CPU/GPU. After getting everything stable and running at very good temps, can't say in the 15-20 games I have tested soo far with gsync on, I have seen any form of ghosting or a single stutter within said games.

Cant even seem to reproduce the ghosting in the games you guys are mentioning. Are you running the games with any weird nvidia control panel settings? I know using control panel Vsync with Gsync has been causing micro stutters on 2 on my systems the past few driver updates, so seems to be a driver issue.

I am running default settings in Nvidia / Gsync on, then Vsync on in game (gynsc/ in-game vsync gives the best results these days). No screen flickering, no ghosting, no weirdness at all that I can see, maybe I just dodged a bullet who knows. Outside of a little backlight bleed (IPS panel, gonna happen) I cant seem to find a single thing wrong with this beast, seems real solid.

Edit: for those wondering, ended up going with -60mV undervolt on the CPU, +110 core / +20 memory on the GPU. This gave me a nice 11400+ in timespy while also keeping the temps in a very nice spot for every day use. Was able to push it to 11700, but the temps outside of max fans was too high for my liking.

 

Normal Nvidia settings, nothing special.
Used same settings with p775 which does not perform these issues.

The issues is there however your eyes are probably not as sensitive and does not see the details as much as mine. This is good since you see problems harder than me.
I asked a friend to look at the x170 and he did not see it either until I showed him on the p775 too. His response was "Oh, I see it now, but I thought that's normal".

This is probably a minor firmware issue in the vBIOS or EDID which slipped through Clevo "testers" and because of this will never be fixed in this model.
As I said the issue differs from program to program. It is really hard to detect in some programs (like Fire Strike or Rise of the Tomb Raider) but it is easy in some like The Division and Gears of War.
In GoW it is easy because right at the beginning there is a spot where the issue is visible with every driver.

Just like I detected this problem a few years ago (it was much more visible then now) many people claimed that they cannot see it. The issue is probably there for you too however you are fortunate enough and is able to see it (yet) or probably believe it is normal because of the response time.
This problem is not caused by the 16 ms response time of the panel because that would cause blurriness and not cause ghosting on edges.

There was an ASUS laptop where this problem was not present with the factory released driver but introduced with newer drivers.

This means that G-Sync could be fine tuned with driver update to fix this ghosting. However just like with ASUS this will never be fixed because NVidia will brush it off and will not care about it and will point at Clevo and Clevo will never acknowledge it and will never fine tune a driver to fix it.

This is the same thing all over again ... I find the problem, most people will not believe me because they either cant see it or jsut believe its normal and manufacturers will not respond to it and will be accidentaly fixed in the next (or later) generation of laptop. The only reason why even the forum I linked above was created because ASUS messed up and released a machine where the issue was so bad that finally everyone could see it. (which ASUS only fixed in the next laptop)

Because of this 1 problem buying a laptop has become a Russian roulette ...

Just to make sure I send it back for an RMA and hopefully they change the screen and VGA to roll out hw issue. But as I said with the P775DM3-G this was done and it did not help because it was a manufacturing issue but Clevo never fixed it because I was the only one who complained and everyone else thought that it is "normal" and users who actually have a voice that canbe heard did not look into it because they do not actually use their machine for gaming and only buy Clevo machines for e-penis growing and benchmarking where the issue most of the times can not be seen.

 

I dont know about the 144 hz LG panel, but as of now I am positive that the 240 Hz panel + GSync does not work correctly and in some games cause unexplained stuttering and in all games (depend on game on how visible it is) cause ghosting and white ghostly line can be seen on the edges at some scenes as I show off on the photos above.

I dont believe that this issue is only present in my machine and I believe it is a either a bad driver, bad EDID or bad vBIOS design which will not be fixed (by my experience) and not even @Prema will fix it. Maybe @j95 could fix it with a modded and fine tuned driver, however he misteriously disappeared ...

I dont want to hurt anyone and I am sorry if I sound like I do, but the people who claim that they dont have ghosting are saying it because they actually have it however they cannot see it because they dont actually know what to look for or they just believe that it is normal. This will be probably the same as with the P775DM3-G and most people will only ackowledge it years later.

So as of now only buy this laptop if you dont mind paying a ton of money for a laptop which has:
- heavely locked BIOS -> Prema BIOS will fix it
- unjustified stuttering in some games
- ghosting issue (no, not blurryness like it should be, but actual ghosting) caused by G-Sync (only 240 Hz panel confirmed so far) -> PremaBIOS will not fix it
- RTX2080 Super which only runs at RTX 2080 speed -> Prema BIOS will fix it

( Original post with the issue)

 

Why did you go from 130 back up to -60?

Heres my ghosting..

https://ibb.co/QpyjypY

 

That combined scored absolutely tanked in FS due to 2666 memory. 128GB ram is cool I guess.

 

It's amusing that the long awaiting/promised XMP, even the maxed out 3200MHz stick for Aw's gaming flagship contribute to destroy the bench results. This means Clevo and wimpy cheapo Samsung OEM DDR4 @ 2 660 MHz sticks works wonders vs. Dell's premium ram, LOOL

 

is the 240hz screen better? I don't care about refresh rate

 

The 240 Hz screen is the one with the ghosting issue which I mentioned and I assume @Entropytwo has that one too.

 

Yes have the same one

 

Can you see the ghosting if you disable G-Sync ?

 

On a different note: how does the sound compare to the P870 / P775 ?

 

Next-gen Clevo notebooks will incorporate Creative Super X-Fi audio at a hardware level

What you think? Double up.

 

No the ghosting that i see (green and red hue) is fixed when gsync is off, in skyrims case minimizing and maximizing fixes it as well

 

The sound is excellent

 

+1 on that. SOund is better, not to mention that it does not have the manufacturing defect that P775 series had. The old subwoofers had bad membrames and with high pitched sounds they sounded terrible. The quality differed between systems however the worst ones were unusuable.
Perfect way to test it was run the main theme music of Crysis 3. The worst one I found sounded like this:

 

Okay, thanks. I will go for the 240 herz if gsync turned off fix the problem

 

Paying for Gsync even if you can't use it ?

Mmmkay....

 

If you're not using gsync, then don't bother.

I got the 144hz panel in mine, since I felt it was unrealistic to expect to hit anywhere near 240fps with the card I picked (2070 Super).

It looks great and runs great with gsync on. Good colour range, sharp picture, absolutely no complaints.

 

Huge news, turns out Origin PC let monkeys install the after market components. I was running some final benchmarks and noticed the ram was single channel. I was like, hmmm, yep, turns out they installed the ram in two separate channels, they even had to remove the keyboard to make that happen. With ram in the right place, we hitting 12k Timespy benchmarks no problem now with max 80c on the cpu.

I know people want to be doom and gloom a bit in here, but damn this thing when setup can pump.

 

The 240 hz panel would be great if not for the ghosting with Gsync enabled.
(Maybe the stuttering I am seeing is also caused by the buggy Gsync)

Maybe someone who has contacts with Clevo could ask if they are planning to fix the 240 hz panel+ghosting issue with a bios or vBIOS update ?

@XMG @Spartan@HIDevolution ?

 

Sure a Nvidia driver update would fix this as if you look closely at the inf file it does have screen timings in them. Else it would be only possible with a reprogramming of the screens EPROM.

Sent from my SNE-LX1 using Tapatalk

 

Which will never happen since Nvidia doesn't care. When the issue came out with Asus people stormed Nvidia forums asking for a fine tuned driver but they closed the thread with "there is no problem with the drivers".

 

I tried my hardest to reproduce today what you showed. Nothing, no trace of this ghosting at all even with my face right up to the screen running back and forth and the angles in your pics. I would RMA that one, seems something is really off. I am running the latest Flight Sim driver if that makes any difference.

That said, its hard to tell any difference between Gsync on and off at this refresh rate, really hard.

 

Oh yesssss, did I see that correctly @Donald@zTecpc ? zTec X170 powered by premamod.com

 

Just received my X170 and currently installing drivers at the moment. Does anyone know if there is a creative app this laptop is supposed to have? I currently do not have anything that allows me to change to different equalizer settings.
Ran some quick stress tests and temps are pretty impressive for a laptop with a 10900k and 2080 super. I checked my ram speeds and they are reporting @ 3200mhz speed on all 4x 16gb samsung dimms.

Ram Modules are M471A2K43DB1-CWE

 

Did you get it with the OS installed?

 

No I did not, had them ship it without OS

 

Did they not provide a full driver set?

 

SBX download

 

They included a "Driver CD" I haven't owned cd drive in years.

That's the same driver package I used but the only software that I see after system restart is the creative headphone amp software.

****EDIT I figured it out, so I reinstalled windows and installed the drivers in order before going online, after going online, windows automatically installed (Sound Blaster Atlas (pc speaker equalizer) and SXFI ( Headphone amp) applications. The initial issue beforehand was when I was staging the laptop I had the put the computer online and windows installed everything by itself but would skip the sound blaster atlas app and just install the realtek audio console.

 

What game did you try ? Can you please try Gears of War ? I found that the issue was really visible with that one .
If you can could you please record it with your phone ?
Thanks !

 

I have talked to HID about all the issues people have been experiencing with the X170SM-G they said they haven’t experienced any overheating/performance issues also no 240hz screen ghosting
They also said the OC and XMP ram bios issue will be fixed with the prema bios coming soon so maybe people just been getting some bad defect batches of screens and CPU ,GPUs ?

 

Is it a driver or vbios issue? Best to avoid this panel until 300hz becomes available or get 144hz. Unless you are heavy into FPS shooters like Fortnite and Apex you cannot really tell the difference between the 144hz and 240hz unless you squint.

 

Hello, what do you consider good temps? Performance mode plus undervolt in taxing games go cpu 80 degrees+ and gpu 72+

 

I wonder how many games did they test ?
It is barely visible in benchmarks.

Years ago when I first found this bug big names said that they can not reproduce it.

I bet if I was there is person I could point it out in 1 min with a game...

 

Would be quite ironic as a seller/merchant to talk negative about the product you are trying to sell

 

300 hz 3 ms panel was showed to be working in this laptop with Gsync and that has been certified by Asus so maybe it does not have Ghosting like this 240 hz panel.
However it was showed by that Chinese guy Dave Nup and no telling if it supported by default or he modded the bios to make it work.

 

Hi guys,

I haven't read all recent posts in this thread, but I did write a report to the ODM about these two cases of G-SYNC Inverse Ghosting.

Entropytwo is actually our own customer and we are in touch with him on Reddit and via e-mail.

DRevan, I will send you a PM to ask for further details about your configuration.

And some public questions to DRevan to make it possible to reproduce:

• What CPU do you use?
• What Memory Modules do you use (Module Part Numbers please)
• Your Screenshots show "The Division 2", right? Or is it the first Division?
• What FPS are you getting during those screenshots? According to this thread, you can enable an fps counter in uPlay settings
• What quality settings do you have in the game to get to your FPS numbers?
• Does the ghosting disappear for you if you Alt+Tab out and back into the game?

On a related note: our XMG ULTRA 17 will soon upgrade to a 300Hz display for a slight purchasing price uptick. According to what we've been told, the 240Hz screen is already End-of-Life.

I'm not sure yet from which batch this will go into effect. We haven't launched the panel in our online shop yet but we'll soon decide when to launch it and what the price gap is going to be.

I will edit this post with the new panel number and an ETA shortly.

Regards,
Tom

 

Hello!
I am sorry but I already packed the laptop so I can not check fps numbers.
Only checked fps numbers in Gears of War and that was normal.

It is The Division (1), not 2.
Cpu was 10700k and ram used was this;
https://www.crucial.com/memory/ddr4/bl2k16g32c16s4b

Ghosting did not disappear when I alt tabbed out and only disappeared when I completely disabled Gsync.
Everything was set to max except for aa and shadows .
Same settings were used with the p775.

Just for reference I checked another x170 and gpu clock is much stable there and reaches higher scores in benchmarks.

The stuttering might be related to ram not being supported by Clevo however ghosting is definitely a problem vBIOS, edid or both.
Probably a qc issue with the 240 hz certification.

The 300 hz auo b173han05.1 has been used for much longer time and has 5 ms response time over the 240 hz panel which has 16 ms.
Will it support Gsync ?
Maybe would be a better idea to skip the 240 hz panel and just wait for the 300 hz one.
Higher refresh, much faster response time and has been Gsync certified much longer .

 

If this should be the case i'd probably rather have a recall of my device and have it fitted with the new panel, instead of getting it fixed

 

That would cost a lot of money.
It is cheaper to keep quiet since most people will think it's normal and won't complain and just release a new fixed hardware instead of a recall.
Asus did it and Clevo will probably do the same.

 

I assume clevo or in my case xmg lives off the so called word of mouth, if alot of people talk positive about your items and your company you become more famous and sell more units. However, if you turn around and say hey, 2 weeks after release they are exchanging a vital part for a much better high quality one without comming back to the people who in alot of cases preorderd and waited a month+ you would get alot of negative feedback, in our case it could be my family and your family. If you stretch that further and they go shop for a laptop and see clevo/xmg they will most likely recall this and recommend some inferior brand.

That is how i see it

 

Hi. I want to get that Clevo Laptop. Can you guys help me with some considerations?

1. Can anybody confirm if Corsair 3200 CL16 Modules work in that Clevo, or will they only run at 2666 CL 19/20 because the BIOSS does not support XMP?

2. Would it be better to get Samsung 3200 CL22 JEDEC instead? Is there a big performance difference to expect compared to CL16?

3. Is there already a PREMA Bioss that allows XMP profiles? And if yes, can I buy that BIOSS directly from Prema instead from a reseller? Can I therefore get the 3200 CL16 Modules anyway?

4. Will XMG provide a BIOSS Prema mod at any time ? Are they Prema partners?

5. Were there any issues with the UHD 60HZ display or are the issues only with the 240HZ Full HD display? Because I was planning to go for the UHD version.

6. If there is a new Batch Version of the Barebone using 300Hz displays, will they also improve on other things or is only the display different? Will that make a difference if I go for the UHD 60Hz display anyway? I mean will the batch of the 60 UHD displays be also upgraded or does this only affect new 300Hz displays?

 

Thank you for the info. You have a PM now.

Stuttering related to RAM - unlikely but theoretically possible. Difficult to say.
The Ghosting: we will see. This could also be a problem on single units of this screen not a general firmware issue.
You said you checked a second unit of X170SM - I guess at a friend? Does that one also have Ghosting in 240Hz?

Yes, the 300Hz panel is slated to have G-SYNC support.

Can't confirm, but fair warning: X170SM only runs 1.2V memory voltage out of the box. Most overclocker modules needs 1.35V.

We consider Prema support for this model, if it ever appears. We haven't been Prema partners yet, but XMG ULTRA 17 would be a good place to start.

We haven't seen any issues on the UHD/60Hz panel yet. Most of the XMG ULTRA 17 we've sold so far had this UHD panel in fact (because it shipped earlier).

The ODM might make minor improvements/revisions over the course of a product's lifetime and these are usually not tied to any LCD choice. There is currently nothing to indicate that further batches will have any modifications besides the new panel itself.
If any revision would appear, they would equally roll out to the UHD/60Hz versions as well. The same logic applies to firmware updates.

Our current position:

1. If you want UHD/4K, go ahead and order now.
2. If you want FHD and can wait a little, you might want to wait for the 300Hz panel.

BR,
Tom

 

Thanks for the information. I checked and the Corsair 3200 CL16 sticks have 1.35V instead of 1.2V. Would it then be better to go for the standard Samsung 3200 CL22 that is offered by the reseller or is it worth to buy Patriot CL19 or Kingston CL20 (all of them 1.2V and 3200mhz)? I am just not sure whether there will be problems regarding XMP compatibility. How can I see what timings/speed will have a kit under JEDEC specs instead XMP?

What Performance differences can I expect between timings CL 16 vs 19 vs 20 vs 22?

 

http://blog.logicalincrements.com/2018/11/choosing-ram-cas-true-latency/

 

Clevo have already changed panel specs for X170SM-G. The old release specs (17.3” FHD 240Hz / 144Hz Refresh Rate Panel)

https://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodetails