**Official Sager NP9270 / Clevo P270WM Owners Lounge**

Would that be a problem in a i7-3970X or i7-3930K system w/ just a single cheap as I can get GPU?

 

I was really looking forward to the re-release of this laptop but now I'm starting to wonder if a m18x is going to be my best bet for a powerhouse laptop. 680m SLI and if I really need the additional CAD power I can just swap out one of the cards to a 3000 or 4000m quadro and disable the other 680m temporarily. That way I get my gaming bliss... yet something useable for all of my CAD college courses and playing with the programs at home to become as proficient as possible with them.

Yes I realize the 7970m technically has more gpgpu power, but I think I would rather have a lower temp, better performing gaming machine and spend a few hundred on a used Quadro card to swap in and out when needed for the extra "CAD horsepower" when needed.

 

You could also consider the upcoming P370EM if you want to stay away from Alienware.

 

So, is the answer on this it shouldn't be a problem?

 

Yes, this is one of my considerations. I really want a laptop powerhouse. I also dont want to be locked out of options to tune and maximize said laptops power as well. So that is one thing that concerns me about staying in the Sager realm for this particular laptop. I like the fact that so much of the AW's bios options are not locked down.

A less powerful 150EM or possibily 170EM will be in the next 6-8 week purchase window though. My girlfriends laptop is about to die and needs to be replaced. So I'm going to buy hers first and push my decision off until the January/February time frame so that not only the GPU issues have time to settle themselves - but the new 370EM and 270WM have time to be released and tested before I rush into a decision.

 

LOL at an old ES CPU chip released on ebay 8c/16t sandy E, but too bad its only at 1.6ghz.

 

Supposedly the X7200 supports the 680Ms if it matters. An i7-980X is more than enough for SLI GTX 570s which is the same thing as SLI 680Ms

 

lol, the whole point of getting that 6/8 cores CPU is to do rendering work, get to brag to your buddies that its more powerful than their desktop, OC the thing to 4.0+ghz, not to check if its enough for graphics or raided SSDs.

imo 980x loses to sandy performance core per core, and loses to ivy bridge core per core, and obviously loses to haswell. so getting a haswell CPU equiv to 980x in frequency/core counts would mean its probably at least 30-35% faster, theres simply no point getting old CPU. plus better CPU chances are better compatible with newer GPUs, thus you get quite a bit more performance out of the 680M, or even 780M when haswell E arrives.

 

Clearly you've no idea what I just said and no clue what you just said.

You use the 6/8 cores for the rendering work... or in other words, those CPUs are more powerful than the mobile Sandy CPUs, which is accurate. I mean, what with most games not needing much more than a 3GHz ANYTHING dual core these days, I'm pretty sure a 3.33GHz hexcore CPU would do perfectly fine. Also, if you're wondering, yes, Battlefield 3 can manage up to 16 threads, so this CPU would do better in that game. (What with most people looking to see how well a laptop can play BF3.)

I've yet to notice a legitimate difference between a Sandy quad and my 920XM aside from what Vantage tells you. I can't tell a difference in games. Framerates are the same in every game I play too...so...yeah...

The X7200 is beastly for games even today. And what I was posting about wasn't even remotely related to overclocking the CPU or anything like that. It was telling you all that I was informed, via outside sources, that the X7200 supposedly/is rumored to support the GTX 680Ms and the 7970Ms, making it a potential alternative to getting the updated SB-E model...if you can do without the keyboard being backlit.

Next time do a little thinking before jumping down my throat about something completely off the point.

 

so basically, you talk about 1 game and thinking of max performance? then i would say 3960x beats your 980x hands down on every application. also as for max performance, ivy 3920xm at 4.7ghz would beat your 980 simply because core per core out performs and max frequency would come similar close or better than 980. do you own a 3920xm? no so maybe you need to do some more research b4 you talk.

a 3930k would beat 980x, and i own a 3930k and in MOST application a stock 3930k lose to my alienware 2960xm at 4.4ghz. you are talking about 1 game and most rendering work, and i know exactly what i do to get the most performance out of my CPUS, desktop or laptop.

and you, Next time do a little thinking before jumping down my throat about something completely off the point

 

A Core i7 920XM does not have the AVX instruction set. While that won't matter for like 95% of things, some compiled versions of emulators use it, such as Dolphin.

Also it is very true that a 3.0GHz+ modern dual core (Core i5) can take gaming easily these days. However, that is likely to change once the next console generation hits--whenever that will be.

 

looks like i wont be getting ivy E octa core when its out unless this thing go with haswell chipset which has only sata 6gbps port. no more raid0 with only 2 SSDs, time to raid with 3-4 =D

 

Yes. Kind of a bummer that the laptop based Sandy/Ivy Bridge chipsets only support one SATA III.

 

another reason why extreme processors should be out before mainstream ones. =D

Edit: at this point, i dont think its possible to have 8c/16t cpu at all other than xeon processors. ivy E and haswell E prob still be 6c/12t simply its still 130w CPU, cause too much heat and uses too much power. most likely something like broadwell another die shrink, then it would make sense intel brings out octa core for extreme mainstream

 

There are bunch of laptops out there with 2xsataIII ports (Precision M6700, M18xR2, M17xR4?, etc).

 

Sorry Aik. I should've been more clear. I was thinking something like 3 or 4 SATA III ports.

 

single chipset, which 6 and 7 series contain only two sata III ports and four sata II ports. desktop mobo with two chipsets got four sata III ports and so on.

this haswell is probably a very good thing to wait for and unfortunately i dont see a possibility in this laptop, haswell chipset along with IVY E. but since ivy E is out mid next year, and haswell chipset might go something like x89 who knows with still LGA2011 (for extreme processors), clevo laptop just might get it to work.

 

Haswell is supposed to have 4 sata 3 ports and 6 usb 3, but...
Do you really need more sata 3 ports? I mean, the real life performance difference between a sata 3 and 2 ssd is so negligible, most people will never even notice. And since most will also use mechanical drives for storage and ssd as the main system drive, there's absolutely no need for extra sata 3 ports. I mean, yeah, it's so nice to have 4 sata 3 ssds in perspective, but unless there's also a proper RAID support, which is both stable and reliable, - it's all good only on paper.

Same with usb 3. How many usb 3 devices do we actually need? I barely ever use one, lol. Most gadgets are usb2 and you can also add an expresscard with 2 or even 3 usb3 slots.

Haswell is supposed to get a huge boost in IGP power, which is totally useless here, lol. As for CPU performance it's not going to be 2x anyway.

 

intel stated cpu performance is only around 10% over the Ivy, imo i think its already pretty decent. considering how intel does their thing, haswell is probably a better cpu and HOPEFULLY runs cooler than ivy, although its the same die size (like comparing 2960xm and 2920xm from the same generation, but a better chip overall). at least thats what im hoping for.

as for four sataIII ports, damn it all lol. was thinking they just might provide six but maybe its too much to hope for? im trying to push external storage to over 350mb/s and only way im doing that is through esata and has to be 6gbps including two or three raided drives externally to give something near 400s area.

as for internal storage, i plan to raid some SLC SSDs which wont kill my drive for at least 3 years lol.

basically, two-three drives in raid0 MLC for the OS, two drives in raid0 SLC for storage within the computer. esata 6gbps, then external raid storage enclosure, something like two or three barracuda or velociraptor in raid would do.


edit: also i thought haswell lyon chipset would be ALL sataIII ports, all 6 ports. not four sataIII and two sataII, or i could be completely wrong

 

Aik, by now you know I'm not most ppl. And in my line of work. Yes, I notice.

I will be switching to all SSD in my next config. Over time, as SSD prices continue to drop I'm sure others will soon be joining me. In my world RAID over SSD is looking more and more attractive. Just need to decide if it is worth the hassle to take an image and securely erase the drive every so often when write amplification issues get out of hand.

Perhaps perf gains on AW is not as good as on Clevos, but benches and real world tests on my last two Clevos in my test environment always show larger perf. gains when I go to RAID 0/5.

Disagree on iGPU being useless. If I could get the P570WM w/ out a discrete GPU and spend that money on a better CPU, better OC'ing or another SSD, I'd do it in a heartbeat. The GPU does nothing for me as I'm not all that interested in speeding up Solitaire or Minesweeper.

 

i too will be moving to SSD storage if i can afford it, not external though for sure. getting 20tb of external storage on ssd doesnt seem possible at this point LOL, but as for internal, i would like to have two eMLC or two SLC SSDs in raid 0.

 

Maybe not 20tb lol, but SSD keeps getting cheaper. At that rate it just might be possible next year.

 

scratch that, wrong thread LOL

 

RAID 0 works fine on AW.

RAID 0: the least reliable of them all, increasing the number of drives above 2 would mean greatly increasing the failure chances. If a single drive fails - the array is gone. You'd still need a backup drive and the more data in the RAID - the bigger is the backup drive. Best practices would include 2xssd in RAID0 + 1 big backup HDD + 1 big HDD for less important data (movies, ISO's, etc) = 4 drives in total.

RAID5: minimum 3 drives required and can still function if one of the drive fails. Performance is way lower than that of the RAID0. You are still recommended to have an off-side backup or hot spare. So, 3x ssds + 1 backup/storage HDD or 4 SSDs with no backup.

RAID6: Requires 4 drives min and will function with up to 2 failed drives. However, performance is still way below RAID0, it drops significantly when one of the drives fails and like RAID5 takes a long time to rebuild after replacing the faulty drive.

So, what do we have? With 4 Sata3 ports you can go with up to RAID6 and have 4x512GB SSDs = less than 2 TB of storage (due to the RAID config) and no additional internal backup. Performance is still below RAID0. Now, compare this to a RAID0 (2 SSDs) + 2 x 1TB HDDs for backup and additional storage = 3TB + speed of the RAID0. (only requires 2 Sata3 ports). Increasing the number of drives in RAID0 would result in lower fault tolerance and reduced max storage capacity, at least until we have fast 1TB SSDs, but by that time there will be 2TB HDDs

As for the IGP comments, there's no IGP in IVY-E, period. If you are talking about mobile Haswell, then we are in the wrong thread.

 

the thing is, i move most my files onto external storage. the laptop raid 0 with two or three drives is for speed/performance sake lol and brag rights i guess =/
ontop of this since i'll be getting SLC SSDs for storage (hopefully) it will not fail. i mean i still got harddrives working after a long time from my first sony laptop chances of 1 drive fail is pretty low, or maybe not. just have to go with a decent safe brand and cross my finger lol.

 

If that's your production/main machine, crossing fingers isn't good enough. SLC or not any ssd can fail and reliability nowadays isn't great at all. If you're using external storage, you can go even with 4 SSDs in RAID 0 but 4k R/W will still be pretty low. So, you are sacrificing TBs of storage and increasing the chances of failure for sequential R/W? And you are willing to wait almost a year to get a new lappy for that?

 

for most my files are just videos, games and audios. games folder with bunch of small files are zipped so i only really need sequential read. i have a dedicated external with esata/usb3 with SSD in it for window installation for its 4k read but yea i get what you mean. the 4k read dont really stack up lol, kinda a waste.

SLC SSD can fail, but i think failure rate is less than that of a MLC but the same goes for mechanical drives, and im using 3 hard drives in raid0 for my external storage already. but tbh, i dont even know if i can purchase this SLC SSD yet. SuperSSpeed 301 isnt sold anywhere yet =/ maybe not even for another half a year.

 

Unityole, Like your choice of ssd drive, probably the fastest Sandforce controlled drive when it becomes available, it really performs with the Intel SLC memory, be interesting to see how reliable they are, not many drives outperform Intel's 520 or Sandisks Extreem ssd's, this drive does it easily, well worth the extra price, comes in double the price of the average 120gb drive, hopefully we'll see more ssd's with this Intel SLC memory, leaves the Toshiba toggle variety for dead. Very impressed, be nice drives for raid.

 

i think i might have seen you in another forum, maybe it was Australia OCforum that they wanted to purchase these drives. too bad i live in canada and cant group purchase T_T.

the SLC is indeed way faster than any of the 120/128gb MLC, and is actually faster, and still quite a bit faster than any of the 240gb MLC drives. only down side to it is that its sandforce based and currently there are tons of issues with TRIM not working for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2. then theres 5.0.3 which isnt so good, if you see the latest sandisk extreme review with 5.0.3, it clearly shows drive loses lots more performance when data present, only about 50-60% of its original speed, thus making intel 520 240gb drive currently the fastest SSD simply because it uses sandforce 4 series firmware.

 

Performance will be lower; however, I cannot say if "way lower" is true of false in the case of a RAID based on SSDs (write-amplification issue aside). On my next machine, I would love to provide bench results of a 2 drive RAID-0 vs. 3-4 drive RAID-5.

In regards to backups, that is not a problem in my case either, and with most ppl I know as well. Most of us have another physical backup server where important files go or the very least a USB/Firewire external drive.

Yes, I covered this here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...orage/633747-raid-not-raid-2.html#post8256333 . While I personally would only use RAID 5, there are some ppl (as seen in earlier posts) who may want to try to push some crazy RAID -0 benches. If they know/understand the risks... more power to them.

Yes. Sorry about that, I misread your post. We actually DO agree on that point. IGP doesn't matter in the case of the P570WM. I mixed up threads while thinking about the P370EM. Sorry 'bout that.

 

P370EM does not support it either since it has SLi and crossfire support.

 

You would have seen me on the Extreme Overclocking forum, got a sticky on ssd drives there. I know all about Sandforce controlled drives firmware problems, Corsair have updated there firmware to 5.0.3, Sandisk is waiting for 5.0.4 due in a month, 5.0.3 apparently as other issues. I'd say the SLC drive's issues trim issues may be resolved by the time it's released. Most if not all ssd drives have noticeable performance loss above 50% full, this was a big issue until recently on the Vertex4, new firmware as improved the issue, the Corsair Neutrons due for release shortly also have this issue, maybe it will be resolved by the time they are released.

Not a great fan of Sandforce controlled drives, my preference as been for Marvell controlled drives like the Intel 510 and the M4, I have two 510's and a 512gb M4, the M4's new, the 510's were expensive but trouble free, I was more impressed with the SLC memory rather than the actual drive, I would like to see more drives using it, I should add the SLC memory made a huge difference with the incompressible write figures, 496 MB/s with incompressible data, that's far better than any other ssd drive on the market, with trim now working in raid0 with the latest Intel chipsets it would be interesting to see how well a pair of these drives perform.

 

I think we agree on all points here, considering slightly different preferences. I never really thought about using external storage

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the P570WM and really hoping to see some black magic there, such as a 250W+ CPU heatsink, 4.5ghz overclocking, 8 cores, 5 hard drives, CF/SLI and matte screen

 

im my honest opinion i do not think 8 cores at this point is possible at all unless in a desktop/server platform. IVY E having 8c/16t just because of a die shrink seems unlikely, the heat produce from a IVY E 6c/12t *should probably be a bit better but still similar to that of a sandyE. but then intel could totaly surprise me with ivyE and maybe somehow pair it up with haswell lyon chipset with a 8 series mobo that sports a 2011 pins socket.

only thing i like marvel is its low access latency. i couldnt believe when i saw the access ms when plextor m3pro came out, and of course OCZ vertex 4.. 0.02 ms LOL and imo, sandforce pairing with SLC doesnt really make sense to me simply because SLC already reduces access latency and gives near max read/write, no point of compressing files to reach max read/write anymore. if this SLC paired up with marvel based drives then it would proabably be amazingly fast, in both speed and latency.

 

TBH, since it has the IVB-M CPU, just assumed the iGPU would be in play. I never really thought about what happens to Opteron/Enduro in a SLI/XFire based machine with a CPU which has an iGPU.

 

I'm looking for an i7-3930k+GTX 680m laptop, and seems the P570WM is the fabled one. Thing is, is it rumored to come out in November or is it for sure?

 

We don't know yet. I'd love to give you an exact time frame, but that is not possible. All we have is this single post by the reseller from their forums: Viper III replacement (Clevo P270WM) SLI GTX 675M DELAYED INDEFINITELY - Page 2

It gives the revised specifications and the same November time frame. We have had no fresh news since that post was made over 2 months ago.

You're in the waiting boat like the rest of us until it shows up for pre-order or it is outright released.

 

its disappointing they using sandy E, by the time laptop comes out, CPU is about a year old. may as well wait for ivy E with new mobile GPU 780m or 8970m. oh right, and x79 isnt considered a 7 series chipset so i dont know if ivyE would be compatible with x79. i know ivy mobile cpus cant be equiped on laptop with 6 series chipset, simply wont work. also another thing is with 6 series chipset, it will NOT support trim in raid0 and thats from intel. we'll just have to wait and see the specs of this thing, the CPU will still be part of the reason why i buy it if i ever do make a purchase but it would not be 80% on decision making unlike before. now i will be looking at chipset, cooling capabilities, ports bandwidth a lot more than just CPU power.

no point having IvyE or sandyE if it cant cool properly when overclocked, no point having them if i cant have 3-4 sata6gbps ports and definitly wont getting it if wont support 7+ series chipset for Trim support in raid 0.

 

Yeah, doesn't look too good. November means Xmas till people start receiving them, and by then we'll be looking for haswell. Mobile Haswell will wipe the floor with the 3960x, IMHO.

 

Haswell maybe, next gen GPU probably not. I don't think either party is going to release next gen until late Spring.

 

We'll see. People tend to want new things fast

 

Well I sure want new things.. If they design this for Haswell then it probably won't be released until next year.

 

Yes. It will probably be able to support Haswell and one would be able to change it afterwards once Haswell is actually released.

You lost me there...

Trust me, if they experience both, they WILL. Especially if buying such a machine. But you know what I mean, people who do not need the power of such a machine, tend to overextend their needs

 

Sad isn't it...but given what's happened over the last few months I feel they are better off missing this CPU refresh and being on the leading edge of the next one, better having everything 100% ready and sorted with the Haswell as opposed to having the 3770k running top spec a few months before the Haswell comes and and being behind again.

 

Like I mentioned before, there are very limited scenarios to make good use of extra sata3 ports. And it only makes real sense if you move all your backup to external storage, which IMHO, kills the idea of having a laptop with 4+ hard drive bays in the first place. Personally, if there are that many bays, I'd rather have the backup inside as well, 2xSSD in RAID0 + Data HDD + Backup, or something like that. I know, there will be enthusiasts willing to run a 4 drive RAID0 but it doesn't make sense for production environment since you're killing the space and increasing the failure chances.

 

with the crazy fast SSD's now I can't see the point of more than two of them really, is your computer going to be able to deal with data at over a gig per sec anyway? how often would that sort of stream rate really going to be useful? I figure if you're transferring more than that externally you'd be better of with Esata3 or asking Clevo for a 10gig connection in there!

Still I suppose if you spend a lot of time offsite with your laptop you could always have an additional HDD in there to store your boot image etc in-case it does fall over, think I'd just use an external though and save the weight/space/heat.

 

Good good we agree.

There is always some people... so yeah

 

Perhaps this is a personal opinion, but I *like* having my backup OUTSIDE my laptop.

All my :data backup: eggs are not in the proverbial single basket. A stolen lappy, lappy badly damaged during a trip, or whatever the Murphy's Law that would strike, would lead to total data loss. IMO, it is just a tad bit more secure to know the backup survives elsewhere.

 

100% agree.

A valid point. But here's another scenario: you take a lappie with you on a business trip and leave the external storage array at home. What if you still need backup on the go?

So it makes sense to have your backup with you at all times and an off-line copy as well. Same way I have a dedicated dev cluster network for all my virtualization needs and still have an entire virtual forest on my laptop at all times. It happened before more than once, when I needed to test a scenario on the fly and couldn't access my dev cluster.

 

For me, I merely VPN to the home network and copy things to/from the backup device if needed.

But with RAID-5, I'm less worried about hardware failure. And with RAID-5 over 4 SATA III ports on SSD, I'd still be less worried and things would be just that much faster (at least I'm choosing to believe so until I run some real-world bench marks).