*** Official Sager NP8170/Clevo P170HM Owners Lounge ***

I expect my chosen processor in the configuration to be obsolete in months!

That's technology for you.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/7086478-post728.html

Really it's not that bad. I have enjoyed having this laptop a lot, I would do it again if I had to do it over, and IF I upgrade to an 8170 the CPU of choice for me would be the 2920XM.

I do have a new situation here at the house that has me looking at a basic set up of the 5160 with a Dual core when they get released.

 

The i7-2920XM.... if you're solely a gamer, that's like.... wow buy a sick SSD or something.

I skipped last gen, because I have a bias against CPUs which are below 2Ghz, but I almost jumped in when the 920XM ES was $500. So I can even understand springing for i7-920XM, because the other quads were pretty lame. This gen? Anything above the 2720QM is just burning money with no tangible performance advantage, in games.

 

Sad, but I do agree with Kevin_Jack.

For the P150HM, where Sager left out Intel XTU, there is no reason to opt for the 55W 2920xm. But depends on how overclockable the 2920xm might be for the p170hm, as it is overclockable. We'll see how it goes.

But honestly, other than CPU performance in CPU demanding applications,

GAMEWISE - the best should be either the 2630QM or the 2720 QM...

 

Excellent! Do you have pictures on your website showing a side-by-side comparison?

Now if you can get keyboards with dedicated keys for Home, End, Page Up Page Down which are integrated with the number pad. If number lock is disabled they can exist as dedicated keys, however you lose the functionality of the number pad.

Apparently no one at Clevo/Sager uses these laptops to edit documents or write code.

 

I have zero experience with matte vs glossy, and if someone could enlighten me I'd appreciate it.

I guess bottom line for me is this: On which one will my games look better, as far as colors?

 

One of the games that I like is very CPU dependent and that's Flight Sim. You can never have enough horse power with that game. Flight Sim can eat top end desktop CPU's for lunch. For FS9 the 920XM is very good, but I may need to migrate to FSX which even an 2920XM will be struggling a bit.

 

The big advantage of Matte is no glare or reflection.

The big advantage of glossy is more vivid colors.

 

Sorry, I have not been keeping-up with new wireless cards. Are these better than the Intel 6300 with three antennas?

 

I don't have experience with matte in a laptop, but I do with large screen TV's. I had a Sony matte and now an Samsung glossy screen. While I liked the matte for not being reflective with lighting in the house or from the sun outside, I do like the more vibrant colors or POP from the samsung. Course TV viewing is different from a computer

 

The Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 802.11a/b/g/n wireless LAN + Bluetooth™ Combo Card only has two antenna prongs as you can see from Babyhemi's pictures, but the advantage is it is a Bluetooth combo card.

The Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 card uses 3 antennas and is faster with better range, but no Bluetooth. If you need Bluetooth with this card you need to get a mini USB Bluetooth device. They are so small you can just plug it in and leave it in.

 

As much as I like matte, it is nowhere near worth $220, nor the $150 that Clevo resellers are offering. I'll stick with a $30 anti-glare protector. But nice that they're offering the option.

 

Gloss if you want a good picture for games or movies. The Matte may not show reflections but it lacks contrast and vivid colors that the gloss screen has.

Edit: I would also like to state, its really preference in the end... how often will you be taking the laptop outside during the day? or how often will you be playing in a setting with so much light that it gives too much reflection, that's something you should ask yourself if you consider the matte. Other than that just go with the Gloss for games.

 

I dunno. The gloss screen on my M11x was so bad, it was distracting inside or out. I bought the green onions supply screen protector and it is awesome. You don't even know its a screen protector.

 

Do you have a matte protector already picked out for this machine? I'm curious enough to buy one just to see the difference.

Truth.

 

Any benchmarks for Flight Simulator with different processors?

 

No, I'll measure and have it cut at Photodon.com. It's about $25-$30 with shipping unless one of the pre-cuts from there or greenonionssupply.com works.

See my tips for installing a screen protector...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...773-tips-installing-lcd-screen-protector.html

 

Do these screen protectors leave any residue if you decide to remove them from the screen a few years down the line?

 

Nope. It's a silicon based adhesive. You can remove and readhere later if you'd like. Just have to be super careful not to get any spec of dust or fingerprint on the back. See my guide I just edited in my post. It's not quite as simple as stick on and go in 60 seconds. It was somewhat of a pain on my M11x. I can imagine it won't be real easy on a larger screen either, but once it's done, it's done.

 

That might be true for just gaming. For those that work on CPU-bound applications (or games) it comes down to how much can the 2920XM OC. If it's possible to have it stable at (say) 3.5+ ghz base on all 4 cores without extra cooling, then it will have my attention.

Other than that I'll end up going with the 8150 with 2720QM and 485M (mainly because of CUDA performance).

 

2920xm can it oc? i heard sb cant oc does it have unlocked multipliers?

 

All XM processors are unlocked, but there's no OC option for the P150HM.

 

dear forum members,

Thanks for all your posts, that really helped me to make up my mind for my new laptop. I just have ordered it at MySN in Germany (just another brand of the same thing). I use this machine for heavy simulations and gaming, so I chose the 920XM for largest cache and highest clock and maxed out the RAM to 16 GB 1333 (mainly because of VMWare). Please note that according to the User's Manual only two out of four memory banks are user-accessible. For graphics I chose the 485M, because of CUDA and gaming (nothing like demanding games as Crysis or Metro though). I needs lots of storage, so I settled for 2 x 500 GB hybrids as a compromise (besides, Linux doesn't TRIM SSD's, as far as I know). I will make it dual-boot Win7 and Linux. REgarding the BD burnber and TV card: well, I expect this to be my main mean machine for at least three years, so let's have some fun whil using it

Expected delivery date is two weeks from now.

XMG P701 PRO Gaming Notebook 43,9cm (17.3")
. 43,9cm (17.3") Full-HD Glare (1920*1080) mit LED - Backlight
. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 485M 2048MB GDDR5
. Intel Core i7-2920XM | 2,50 - 3,50GHz 8MB
. 16GB (4x4096) SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM 1333MHz (nur mit Quadcore-CPU)
. 500GB / 4GB SSH Seagate Momentus XT 7200.1 SATAII 7200U/Min (ST95005620AS)
. 500GB / 4GB SSH Seagate Momentus XT 7200.1 SATAII 7200U/Min (ST95005620AS)
. Panasonic UJ-240 Blu-ray Brenner 2xBD-RE 6xBD-R DVD±R/W/-RAM/±DL
. Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6230 (inkl. Bluetooth)
. Hybrid MiniPCI DVB-T+Analog TV Karte
. Keyboard U.S. International

 

Linux does support TRIM (ext4 and brtfs at least).

 

@fernandes:
thanks! I have not looked into newer Linux distros yet, because my tools limit me to CentOS 4, certainly nothing fancier than Centos 5.5

 

Congrats on your purchase!

Just as a comment, Sager just recently revised their assembly so if you only get two RAM modules they will install it under they keyboard, leaving the lower two slots free for user upgrade. A couple resellers here posted instructions on how to access the top two modules. XoticPC put up a nice video. It's pretty straight forward and not too difficult.

Just realize that the Momentus XT hybrid HDD won't give you any real advantages as a data drive. Unless you dual boot, one OS from one drive and one OS from another then you won't see any real benefit. You're almost better off buying a 640GB or 750GB drive as your storage drive.

 

Can you post the link to the video?

 

Hope it helps.

 

Thanks, beat me to it, was just about to post! Note that the video is of the NP8150, but it should be the same for NP8170. No confirmation yet, but most of that stuff carries over between models.

 

I think it should be the same.. right?

When you get yours, you can make a comparison video, htwingnut!

 

I ordered mine the day it was advertised on xotic pc- still no word on when it expects to ship out! I mean, apart from end of jan.

 

Yeah I ordered mine from Malibal on the 14th almost two weeks ago and it hasn't shipped. Trying to learn patience at the moment. They have four more days yet so might as well give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

Yes unfortunately, units are coming in at a slow pace from Clevo. This happens many times when new technology is released. If you think about it, this situation is not new at all because this has happened to Dell/Alienware and others who put out cutting edge notebooks. Many have had to wait much longer than expected for delivery of their sytems. Put that scenario with the fact that there is a huge shortage of video memory worldwide, well it is easier to understand...

 

Patience.. I hope it gets here fast!

I can't go on with schoolwork!

 

Do you still think you'll be getting a shipment in this week?

 

May I ask why? I ordered the ssd version as my only and primary hard drive so I'm interested in knowing. I was under the impression that it would improve load times and some issues while gaming.

 

The 6970m is not better than gtx 470

 

what are you talking about? Are you referring to 470sli against 6970m single gpu?

 

Just got a call from xoticpc, they're putting together my laptop! Booyah! lol...I ordered January 16th in case anyone is curious, also got the 460m so that might of sped things up for me.

 

Congrats! I ordered mine January 12 but stupid echeck didn't clear until Jan 18. Hoping mine makes it in this initial shipment.

 

Shipments are scheduled to start tomorrow. The next shipment @ Sager is expected 2/7. Some of you will get a notice early Saturday morning with a tracking #

 

Tracking number for 2/7 or shipping next week?

 

Would I be able to run the DVI separate from the HDMI? (For dual screen) Or is it one or the other? I realize I already have 2 screen with the laptop being one, but if I were to want to run 3 screens would that be possible? I'm buying this laptop to mix audio with so running multiple screens is a plus. I can manage with 2 screen but it's nice to have that extra for my purposes.

Thanks.

 

You will need another video adapter to run the 3rd screen. The cheapest way would be with a quality USB to DVI adapter. They can run from about $80 to $139, so I would recommend getting the good one because for a tool you want it to be fast and cool. The cheaper ones will be slower, and a lot hotter if they don't have their own built in heat sink.

 

Cool! I will definitely have to check more into that. Would this be compatible with ATI Eyefinity? I'm just trying to visualize how I would configure the USB card display separately from the internal card.

 

You have an nVIDIA card so Eyefinity will not be applicable.

You set up all three monitors in your Display Properties.

 

Sorry I should have mentioned I was thinking about waiting for the ATI card to come out. I guess I was picturing driver clashes that's all. But if it just shows up as a 3rd monitor then no worries.

 

You're kidding, right? The 6970M has a stock Vantage GPU of over 11k.

 

It's getting close ladies and gents. My order from Xotic is:

I'll be glad when I don't have to religiously check this board every 20 min for updates.

Edit: In case some people were curious, I ordered mine on 1/10/11. Hope this gives some idea where you might be in the que.

 

I am waiting for that email. This wait is unbearable