Sager NP5855 :: Clevo N855HJ Review from Project Equatis

Hey Guys,

I got to take a look at the stock $799 Sager NP5855 over the weekend and put together a little video to help potential buyers.

If you don't want to watch the video then here's an incredibly short synopsis:

The GTX 1050/7700HQ combo handled 1080P on high quality presets with surprisingly good FPS. I didn't mention in my video, but the FPS might even be a little higher considering Shadowplay was running. The mechanical hard drive was my only complaint, as it makes a powerful laptop like this feel like it's from the stone age which might throw less techy people into thinking the computer is just slow and cheap. Also, the mechanical drive caused tons of in-game stuttering as it struggled to run Shadowplay.

All and all a great option for people looking to explore PC gaming that might be hesitant about dropping thousands into their initial purchase.

 

Someone immediately posted "Do a 1050Ti Review". I don't have one, but there are plenty of videos on the 1050Ti as well as really good tech articles from various online reviewers out there. It seems that, for the most part, you could add about 12% to the performance you see generated on my FPS to get a rough idea of what you'd get.

Also remember that Shadow eats up a small amount of performance (very small) and not running it should improve numbers slightly.

 

Your shadowplay was probably screwing with your pagefile since the HDD was likely 5400 RPM there. I'd even say shadowplay was doing a number on your FPS for that sole purpose. It's too bad you did not attempt to use a 250GB+ OS SSD (which can be had for about $100 more I think) with your pagefile and your games to test on that (assuming they could fit) and any recording done be straight to the HDD.

 

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I had even mentioned it in post. Unfortunately, I don't have an extra one and wife would kill me if I bought one for that purpose. I'm hopefully going to play around with a 1050Ti soon that has an SSD and HDD setup.

 

You mentioned that shadowplay is a hit. I was stating that it's likely far more than you estimated, due to a single 5400 RPM HDD being used up (which fights with your pagefile, and thus your RAM, thus potentially hurting performance).

 

The good news it wasn't, as I have the figures for both setups. I really like your out-of-the-box thinking though. Thanks for contributing.

 

Actually, I think rather in-the-box when it comes to PCs. My box is just very, very large compared to most people in the business =D.

For example a user was complaining that their CPU utilization was maxing out in a game but others with similar setups don't have nearly that issue, and no fix tried was working. I checked the c-states of the processor; it wasn't using c0 at all, and was stuck in a power-saving mode.
Or another time a friend had stuttering in most games he played, both online and offline. Once I heard that offline games had it and was convinced temperature/throttling wasn't an issue, I made him raise his pagefile size. Instant problem rectification.

I just like to expand my knowledge box as much as I can. That way eventually I could figure out the problem with any PC without doing much troubleshooting =D

 

Well said. I definitely know who I'll come bugging next time I have an issue

 

Rapid troubleshooting is just down to experience, so jumping in and trying to root cause issues is an excellent way to learn.

 

Yup, hence why I say my box is just pretty big. I have lots of things I can think of =D