2013 Ativ Book 9 Plus owner's lounge (NP940X3G)

Mine is very smooth with IE, pretty smooth with Chrome, but very choppy when scrolling with Firefox. Tried all Firefox browser tweaks with no real improvements.

 

Why is that though? This is a high end machine and the specs are better than a lot of laptops that don't have these issues, but I think that it may be due to lack of optimization for ultra high res in chrome and firefox. Try watching a 4k youtube video in chrome then try it in IE. In chrome it stutters like crazy, but in IE it plays perfectly. Same idea with 4k videos windows media player and media player classic or vlc. It plays perfectly in windows media player but shockingly stutters in the other programs. I was pretty stunned considering it's usually the other way around. So basically, I think its due to lack of support from those programs rather than a limitation caused by hardware, but I could be wrong.

 

I think you're right, I tried running 4K videos in Chrome and Firefox, it's un-watchable, however it's a very smooth with IE. Since IE is integrated with the Windows OS, it's optimized by default to work with the hardware the OS is running on. I guess IE is not bad after all if you're using a QWHD screen.

 

Did you try right-clicking on a video and changing the Use Hardware Acceleration setting?

Normally, Hardware Acceleration should be enabled so the GPU handles the video playback.

John

 

FWIW, I have pretty much equally smooth browsing and playback of 4k Youtube video from all three major browsers. Turns out I had hardware acceleration turned off in IE but changing didn't make a very noticeable difference. Does hardware acceleration benefit the quality of video output when your "gpu" is just Intel IGP 4400?

 

The Intel GPU can handle 2D graphics competently and has built-in decoders for the the most common video formats.

It falls behind the discrete GPUs on 3D work (3D CAD and 3D gaming) because it has fewer pipelines.

However, the Intel GPU uses system RAM and this can also cause performance constraints either because of limited available RAM or the RAM is single channel which reduces the memory bandwidth. While RAM constraints don't normally create a noticeable performance bottleneck with normal resolution (FHD or lower) they might be noticeable when a QHD display is used. This does raise a question for those with graphics performance problems: How much RAM do you have?

John

 

8GB, and I believe it's dual channel.

 

Mine is laggy in chrome and FF and mine has 4GB, so that may be the explanation.

Still hope there will be a tweak / upgrade of chrome that makes it as smooth as IE.
Since it's unfortunately not possible to upgrade the RAM of the ativ 9 Plus.

 

Hardware acceleration is enabled and I have 8 GB of RAM and an i7 processor, so it's definitely not a hardware limitation.

 

I just picked up this little gem of a laptop for a good price with i5-4200u, 3200x1800 LCD, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD. I got sick of my Vaio Pro 11 keyboard and touchpad. I can't believe they charge such a premium for that laptop for such crap keyboard and touchpad. I did like the 2lbs light weight and 11" form factor though. It was like I was never carrying anything. But this Samsung is solid, oozes quality, and feels so much more robust and worth the just under $1000 I paid for it. Not to mention there is zero bloatware. I don't know if that is because I bought it from Microsoft Store or what, but there is no sign of any bloatware.

In any case, has anyone figured out how to remove the restore partition on the SSD? That's 8GB of premium real estate on the small 128GB SSD that I don't really need there. I already backed it up with Windows Restore, and would prefer to free it up if at all possible. I did delete it with Easus Partition Master, but that resulted in a the system as non-responsive, so I did a system image restore and back to normal.

Also has anyone done a successful clean install? I may just go that route. Blow away all existing partitions and start fresh, but I know that doesn't always work well either without some headaches.

They did? What the heck, first Sony, now Samsung. I love it over my Sony, it's like a night and day difference, yet the Vaio Pro gets all the attention.

 

Welcome. This notebook is getting relatively ancient and the price has worked its way downwards.

Regarding the recovery partition, see about half way down the General section of the sticky list. You will need a (probably) 32GB flash drive (preferably two so you have duplicates) and make sure you can boot the flash drive before you nuke what is on the SSD.

I haven't tried it myself: The original SSD gets cloned onto a higher capacity one where I rearrange the partitions to my liking in the knowledge that the original SSD is stored away in case of emergency. If you consider upgrading the SSD note that this machine uses the M.2 2280 format.

John

PS: The NP940X3G is relatively obese compare with the NP900X3G which Samsung does it's best to keep from public attention (but does have premium pricing).

 

Samsung laptops come with a rather useful tool called Samsung Recovery Solution (SRS) which is a WinPE platform running from one of the Recovery partitions (there is a second Recovery partition with the factory image). It can be accessed by booting F4 or through a Windows app. It provides various imaging and restore features, including the Bootable Factory Image backup mentioned by John, which essentially puts the entire Recovery and factory image on a self-contained flash drive, and allows new (or messed up) disks to be re-imaged to factory state.

Unfortunately SRS relies on a hidden F4 link in the partition table, and is easily disturbed by 3rd party partition tools -- of which EaseUS is one of the most notorious. So if you imaged your partitions with EaseUS, that F4 link was most likely destroyed when you restored the images. It is VERY difficult to repair, as you will see from hundreds of posts here in the Samsung section.

But you probably didn't have SRS in the first place: Microsoft Store is known to strip SRS as part of their Signature treatment when they clean bloatware. The fact that you "only" have an 8GB Recovery partition is an almost certain sign of that. So no need to worry about SRS

And that's not necessarily a bad thing: You can use the standard Microsoft backup/restore/imaging/recovery tools, which are better supported by 3rd party tools. And the recovery/factory image Microsoft create takes up less of the precious SSD space than SRS.

Clean install is generally quite easy on Samsung laptops, as long as you know your UEFI stuff and have properly formatted Win8.1 install media. There are some important BIOS settings to change before you start. See this recent summary for guidance. Also, do extract your Product Key beforehand, in case Windows Setup doesn't pick it up automatically during installation.

 

Do you have the i5 4gb or i7 8gb version? Not that it honestly should matter when it comes to web browsing. I was curious if you had to do any tweaks or anything like that to get chrome to work as smoothly as IE because I just can't figure out why it would be lagging when I'm scrolling through a lengthy web page, and sometimes with pages that are full of images and graphics. I also really like the chrome touch gestures they incorporated in the recent releases and would like to use chrome because of them.

Also, I use switched youtube to the html5 player, so there is no hardware accelerator option.

 

Anyone that has some kind of color calibration software, like spyder, want to tell me what your contrast/brightness/gamma settings are in the intel control panel? My screen has a slight yellow tint to it and I'm trying to figure out what the best color calibration settings are. Thanks.

 

Thanks! I use Macrium Reflect usually for my imaging. It seems to be the most robust for me and hasn't failed me yet. But I don't think there was any "F4" restore option. I may try a clean install though, actually might go for a 256GB XP941 if I can find one cheap. I have one in my Clevo notebook, and I don't see any issues with it, and if nothing else, the idle power use is very low.

 

Got it. I hear good things about Macrium, though I don't have experience with it myself. I bought an imaging tool from Terabyte Unlimited many years ago and use it to image/restore just my Windows partition.

Generally all 3rd party partition imaging tools destroy the F4 link when they restore SRS partitions. A few (such as EaseUS and Paragon) have been reported to also do so when just restoring Windows partitions or even just resizing partitions (presumably because they load and rewrite the partition table instead of just editing individual table entries). Clonezilla has been reported to preserve F4 when imaging/restoring an entire disk (as opposed to individual partitions).

For those who might see this and wonder how to backup their Samsung Recovery Solution (since 3rd party imaging tools tend to harm it) we gathered all the various techniques in this guide, which covers both the current SRS6 and earlier versions.

I've been on the lookout for a 500GB EVO myself (I have a Series 7 which takes regular SSDs). 250GB SSDs have really come down this season, I expect 500GB's to follow. It'll definitely be a clean install, though for others, cloning makes more sense. The post here sums up the various options for getting software onto a new SSD, including how to preserve SRS.

As you begin tweaking your AB9+ you will find a great crowd of owners in this thread!

 

I keep waiting on a laptop to mod it by soldering a logitech unifying receiver internally. This may be the machine to do it on. I bought a couple Logitech receivers, and I was going to disassemble one and install it internally in the laptop, solder it directly to the USB pads if possible. I wish Logitech would work out deals with laptop makers to include this as an internal option. I believe they sell the most mouses, it would be a good feature to add-on. I'm sure the power draw is low and bandwidth is minimal.

 

I thought there was a patch for this. Search for "NP940X3G mustard".

That's an interesting idea. Can one connect more than one device to a USB socket (without using a hub)? ie solder the receiver to the inside of one of the USB sockets and then still be able to use the socket.

John

 

I believe so. USB can be daisy chained. I just don't want to fubar the USB port because there's only two, and need them both!

 

Then do any surgery on the port that is on the daughter-board (it might be this) so that if you did have to replace something then it wouldn't be too expensive.

John

 

I'm not referring to the mustard yellow fix. I think they actually patched a fix in for that by default by now, but I could be wrong. I mean the screen in general is a little too warm. I looked it up and apparently it's a common complaint with IPS display. Calibrating the color can fix it, but I'm not a photographer or anything, so I don't have spyder or any of those other types of software. I was wondering if anyone had calibrated the monitor and if they could tell me the changes they made in the settings. It's really not a big deal at all, but I was just curious if anyone had tried it out.

 

I find using Google Maps and other heavy web-based apps to be extremely brutally laggy

 

You can try this profile posted earlier in this thread.

Notebookcheck also do display calibrations but the link to their file in their NP940X3G review seems to be dead.

I bought the Spyder 4 Express a couple of years ago and consider it to be a worthwhile investment. check what the price is in your part of the world.

John

 

Which browser? I find FF is definitely taking a down turn in performance lately, but Chrome seems pretty good.

 

Every day SW Update pops up a message saying, "An update that will improve your system's performance is available. Open SW Update and install the update." But when I open SW Update, it says Updatable software not found. Under "All Software" it says that everything is installed. Any ideas?

 

Does anyone know what this gray spot on my screen is and if it can be fixed? You can see it in the white window.

http://i.imgur.com/G9hE2Ot.jpg

 

That looks like what is called a bruise. It's unfortunately not repairable without swapping out the screen.

 

I have exactly the same issue. Very annoying!

 

The work-around is, is SW Update has an icon in the notification area, to set the properties to hide the icon and notifications.

Then remember from time to time to manually run SW Update to see if there are any updates of interest (the likelihood of Samsung releasing any new updates for this notebook is progressively decreasing as it is being superseded).

John

 

I just got a Spyder 4 Express and calibrated all my displays. In most cases the changes are subtle, but the specs achieved are quite impressive. I imagine certain images will emphasize the improvements more than "average" ones. Likely to be especially useful for editing my own photos.

BTW, even before the calibration I found my screen had no problem producing bright yellows and little "mustard" appearance, on AC or battery power. Either the latest patch or other updates seem to have made this a non-issue in this screen.

My biggest concern is not the annoying SW Update interruptions when none are available, but the popups I get because I haven't yet installed recent updates to Intel graphics or wifi, as I've read too many complaints about them causing problems. What is the latest thinking among the cognoscenti as to which recent updates are actually beneficial, which are at least harmless and which should be avoided. Also, since things are working so well for me right now, I'm inclined not to make any changes; is this unwise?

Thanks, and Happy Holidays to All!!!!:hi2::hi2:

 

Can you zip up the .icm file and attach it here so that other people can try your calibrated profile?

If you know that the updates might bring more problems than benefits then you are wise to avoid them.

John

 

I decided to buy a very lightly used NP940X3G-K03SE (the Swedish version of the best model) and the quality is just amazing. I have seen no reference to any of the new models (besides the ones with lower specs) being sold here.

Now, I'm basically wondering which drivers I dare to update? Has the problem where certain intel drivers remove the option to disable auto-brightness been fixed? Is this the fix? SW Update also suggests a bunch of other drivers (bluetooth, wifi, Intel ME, Intel Storage etc.) and a BIOS update.

Any other important information I need to know?

 

Samsung have stopped selling new notebooks in Europe as discussed here. (We thought they were completely leaving the notebook market but appear to have decided to make some new Book 9s which are currently listed only for Korea and USA).

First update the BIOS, for which I recommend using the stand-alone BIOS Update program as described here. BIOS updates done within the SW Update program have been know to stumble.

I would them make a restore point (or check out the Samsung Recovery Solution) before letting SW Update apply the other updates it is recommending. You may well find that Settings includes a control for the auto-brightness. If not then try the patch.

John

 

I've got a sad tale. I own a NP940X3G-K05US and it worked great out of the box ... until during Christmas wrapping, a vase accidentally was dropped on the cover. I ouchingly paid the $450 to have it replaced by InteliSol, and they did a good job and returned it. It worked fine, and I was happy. I updated the bios and all the suggested SW Updates, and w/in an hour I started to see erratic behavior out of the graphics. Right from the flash screen for Samsung, it would snow/flicker/and cut out. It was very hard to work with, but I attempted try to reset the machine to factory conditions. Bad move. Eventually, the machine got to the point where it tried to start, would saying "Analyzing system for repair" ... and then restart ... and say the same thing ... over and over and over. I couldn't get it out of that loop. Time to send it off again.

This time, Samsung advised sending to to Total Tech Solutions in New Jersey, which I did. They updated the bios, wiped and reset the drive and voila! It worked again. I received it back on 12/19 ... and again, there was less to do, and no bios updates, but I ran SW Updates and loaded the most recommended updates. I was happy to see it working fine ... even after the updates.

I got up Christmas morning, and ... the flicker was back. It was less frequent than before, but it flickered ... cut out on me, and then came back. I shut the machine down and restarted it. The problem was gone for the moment. Over the next few days, there were "echoes" of the issue, but for the most part it was fine. Last night I closed the book and went to bed.

This morning, right from the get go, the problem returned full blown. It comes right from start up on ... through the manufacturers flash etc ... I had the most recent Intel HD Graphics driver installed, and I tried to update it further ... but got the "not valid for this machine" error. I flipped it over the the native Windows HD Graphics Driver in 8.1 and ... now it's mostly off and flickers occasionally.

Here's a video of the issue just prior to flipping it to the native windows driver and having the screen go mostly dark. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Best,

Kev-

 

Follow up. to above post:

I'd turned it on and then let it sit w/ the cover open until it went into sleep state. My logic was that if recovery from a sleep state had caused the issue, perhaps recovery from a sleep state would fix the issue. So far, so good.

Upon reawakening the device from said state, it works perfectly. There's not a hint of flicker, and the graphics are rock solid.

I've gone to the power options and turned off anything that would return it to sleep state ... setting it instead to hibernate. We'll see if that improves things. I also noticed consistent errors in the event log from SideSync 3.0 ... so I removed that program too.

 

Thanks for the help. Updating the BIOS via the tool you linked worked fine. Updating the Intel drivers messed around a little with the scaling setting in Windows 8.1 but resetting it to the correct value fixed it. The option to disable auto-brightness seem to be retained in the metro settings interface which is what I wanted.

I just ordered 3 USB sticks to use as bootable recovery and Admin tool sticks that I plan to stash away. Seems like a sensible precaution.

It's really too bad that they have stopped selling their Book 9s here. It has redefined what a modern laptop is to me. It's just such a great experience.

One thing I would like though is a way to make a middle-click with the touchpad (to open new tabs, new windows in Explorer etc.). The Elan settings app seems to have a setting for easily right-clicking but not for middle-click (the bad translation references middle-click but doesn't describe how to perform that gesture). I'm currently not using the latest version of the driver since I'm sort of hesitant to update it reading about the problems other people have had with their touchpads with certain versions of the driver. How have you guys solved this?

 

Having some problems with my fan, wondering if you guys had any similar issues. Whenever I watch a video (either streaming online or one that is downloaded to my computer), the fan turns on very loudly. It does this in any position (happens when I have it set on my desk). I can't seem to figure out why the fan runs so loudly while a video is playing (regardless of video quality or anything else). The quiet fan setting does seem to make the fan quiet down, but then I have problems with my computer acting slow when I do things like surf the web or even compose word documents. Anyone else have this issue?

 

Hi everyone, I purchased a NP940X3G-K03US in May and cant say i'm very happy with the Touchpad so thinking of changing it for an X1 Carbon to go back to the IBM touchpoint. The thing is I installed WIndows 8.1 clean and did not create the recovery disks in order to get it back to stock. Does anyone know how I can download the original factory reset disks so I can return it to factory default? I erased all the samsung recovery partitions so if I resell it I would like to do it with the original image installed? Can anyone with a K03US make a recovery disk and upload it so I can use it, or is this not possible?

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks

 

How much did you pay?

The new Series 9 looks like something I would love. Shame it won´t be avaliable in Europe.

 

I have a colleague who got the X1 Carbon as a work laptop. He hates the touchpad on it so unless you've tried it I wouldn't expect it to be any better unfortunately. I prefer the touchpad on this laptop to his.

I paid 10 000 SEK including shipping for it (listed price 15 000 SEK). It was close to mint condition and the i7 version was nowhere to be found since Elgiganten ran out of stock recently so I decided to pull the trigger. The i5 versions with half the ram, SSD and the lower res screen can still be found new and used.

If you don't mind the US keyboard layout you can probably import it yourself from the US via one of the reshipping companies like Borderlinx etc.

 

Ok. But the i5 still has the 3200x1800 screen. Or what do you mean by lower res screen?

I´m secretly hoping the new Series 9 2015 will show up here some way. But shure, a US version could eventually be my only option.

 

Hi jajaramillo, welcome to NBR.

If you did not backup your Recovery with a so-called Bootable Factory Image Backup, there really is no way to get it back to factory state.

If someone were to share their factory image (which we don't allow on NBR, since it contains copyrighted Windows and Samsung software) it would have to be for the EXACT same model, and would have to be an ISO of their Bootable Factory Image Backup. There is also a more complex procedure using a so-called AdminTool USB, but it too requires a Factory Image of for your EXACT model.

Samsung offers to re-image the SSD for a fee, but that's the only other option.

 

Follow up to the follow up. The Intel HD 4400 driver has a known flickering problem. It is not a hardware issue with this particular machine, it is a very common issue.

The solution is simple. Let it sit. It fixes itself and becomes stable. When it goes out, it comes back ... only patience is required. It would be nice if Intel paid attention to fixing it, but the current driver allowed by Samsung prevents the most up-to-date driver to be installed.

... and the problem persists on my personal machine. But the work around is simply patience.

Should a machine that costs this much work right? Yes. It really should.

 

I've found if you uninstall the Intel driver through device manager (it should install a default MS driver) and then you can install the latest Intel driver from Intel's website.

 

Some versions of at least the i5 model use a 1920x1080 display instead while some use the 3200x1800 display as far as I know. I also chose with the i7 model because of the higher amount of ram and storage. While the SSD can be replaced, the ram can't. The integrated GPU claims a GB or two so with the 4 GB model you risk running out. Maybe that one reserves less for the GPU though.

 

don't these come with 2 rams slots? What's the best version I can buy with 3200x1800 screen and cpu, I can ad the ram and SSD as 256gb is too small for me. Thanks

 

The RAM is soldered so what you get is what you have to live with.

The SSD, however, is upgradable and the choice of M.2 2280 SATA drives is slowly increasing.

John

 

Soldered ram is quite common in ultrabooks unfortunately, probably because it's hard to actually fit ram slots in the space they have to work with. The best version in Sweden was NP940X3G-K03SE (the last 2 letters differ per region). That's the i7 version with 8 GB ram and 256 GB SSD.

True, which is probably why the price of the used i5 models with 4 GB ram dropped in price a lot more than the i7 8 GB model.

Btw. John, do you know of any way to get a gesture for middle click on the touchpad?

 

Our accumulated knowledge about the Elan touchpad is in this thread.

You may need to extract and use the Elan control panel (ETDAniConf.exe) from the touchpad driver installation package.

John

 

Thanks! It occurred to me that I was acting like a spoiled brat for some reason, I'm usually the one who fix those kind of problems myself (must be the long holiday or something ). At first I couldn't get the registry tweaks suggested in other places to work and for a while was stuck with notepad opening whenever I made a 3 finger tap. It turned out that the tweaks that unlock the additional features in the GUI don't seem to work in later drivers but enabling them through the registry did, as long as you rebooted. Most guides about it made it seem like it would take effect immediately. I have now set both 2 finger tap and 3 finger tap to middle click until I decide which I like more.

Three finger tap = middle click:

1. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPad

2. Set the key "Tap_Three_Finger_Enable" to value "1" (Similarly "Tap_Two_Finger_Enable")

3. Set the key "Tap_Three_Finger" to value "2" (Similarly "Tap_Two_Finger")

4. Reboot

Good links:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-functions-elan-touchpads-zenbooks-etc-2.html

Unlocking Elan Touchpad Gestures - Operating Systems and Software - Linus Tech Tips (Contains a list of what the numbers for the different actions mean, ie. 2 == middle click)

EDIT: I now see what you mean about ETDAniConf.exe. That would probably have solved it too and seems to be the GUI that gets affected by the registry changes people talk about.