2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E)

Thanks again for your information! I think I will replace the bottom. I already glued the parts that broke, which is a good solution. A new palmrest costs about 190€, which is quite expensive. Good to know you can buy the service manual (770z7e should be fine, though its only in englisch available).

 

The palmrest includes the keyboard which makes it expensive.

Hunt around to see if you can find the bottom at a reasonable price, ideally from a dead notebook being sold as parts.

John

 

Hi guys!

Can someone tell me if Samsung fixed the random error which caused the extra 8GB of RAM not to be recognized? I don't know which version of BIOS i'm running but I suppose it's the latest since SW update does say i'm fully updated.

I was thinking of buying an extra 8GB module (Kingston KVR16S11/8 seems the best option?) but i'm afraid i will get the problems of not being recognized...

Thank you very much!

 

I have all those problems exactly to the dot. Thanks for the links, I will try it out and see if performance improves
While on the topic, I also want to ask if anyone has been experiencing display stuttering/blackouts etc. in W8 apps, because I've been experiencing it since the beta update

 

You can run Samsung's BIOS Update program (link and instructions in first post of this thread) to check if there is a newer BIOS but I don't recall any report that Samsung have produced a fix.

While I recall people reporting success with that Kingston module it would be worthwhile trying to find a supplier that will let you return the RAM if it proves to be incompatible.

John

 

I have the 770Z5E, today the SW_Update did a BIOS-update. Now the fan seems to be louder/rotating faster.

I had "P05ABU" and "P07ABU" was installed.

How can I go back to the previous BIOS?

EDIT:
I just found the thread "Samsung Laptops - Roll Back Bios Updates?". Will try it.

Does anyone else encounter louder/faster rotating fans with the new bios?

 

Thanks John, I will check it tonight. I will buy it from Amazon, which never puts trouble when returning things.

 

Has anyone tried the new AMD Omega (14.12) Mobility Driver? I don't want to go through the trouble of having to uninstall and re-install the old driver if someone has already tested the new driver and found out that it doesn't work.

Thanks!

 

Guys, in my 770z5e swupdate permanently shows an audio driver update. The version to be installed is 6.0.1.7299 but all the times I try to (extremely slow) download it installation fails. So I thought to download the installation package to manually proceeding to the installation but surprisingly the driver package is not available in the list.
So my question is, did anyone manage to solve this installation failing issue? Alternatively, can anyone kindly download the package and upload it somewhere so I can download it too?
Thank you.

 

I have had the same issue with the audio and the BlueTooth driver updates on my 770z5e for many months. I just let it go and gave up on installing them. As far as I can tell the older versions that I am currently using are working properly.

TBH, this model is approaching two years old. At this point I don't expect any further updates unless something is required to get Windows 10 working properly once it is released, so I'm not that bothered by the lack of a working update.

 

I successfully installed the additional 8GB (Kingston KVR16S11/8) RAM module, and the computer recognizes it. Task manager says I have 16GB in total, and CPU-Z confirms it with dual channel. Everything worked out right

 

i have the 770Z5E, that has 2 slot for the ram, 1 soldered.
Actually with stock 8gb, the only upgrade i can apply it's to buy a 8gb module, to arrive at 12gb in total ?
I will have problems with synchronization and the absent dual channel mode, it will be worst (in performance I/O etc...) than the actual 8gb configuration ?

 

I'll refer you to this table I prepared about 3 years ago.

TheRAM will run as pseudo dual channel which is only slightly slower than full dual channel. The extra RAM should provide some performance improvement if you actually need the extra RAM.

John

 

Solved!
I let swupdate download the package. Then I went into temp folder of swupdate (called compresses) where the package is downloaded as zip. I unzipped it in another folder then I tried to manually ran setup.exe, but it failed again, because some required previous update was purportedly missing. So I just thought to update driver only (without setup installation), through manual driver update in audio adapter properties, pointing to the folder where I unzipped the temp package. The update went fine, audio works fine and now swupdate doesn't show audio driver update .7299 anymore.

 

Did anyone tried the unlocked bios?

 

About audio driver, as I recall, I removed manually all old drivers and by opening new driver package with 7zip and finding correct installer, so you can say manual install too. In that way I was able to access installer error reports and correct those errors. Sorry that all what I remember, it was year or so ago.

 

Hey guys,

My laptop (880z5e) recently forced me to update to windows 8.1. Now my brightness controls are gone, can't use the fn + f2/f3. The screen is very dim. I searched the thread and downloaded the brightness patch but it doesn't install. It just opens and a popup windows says "installation may take several minutes, please wait..." then it closes. I even installed the windows 8.1 brightness patch in Sw update and it did nothing. I tried disabling the adaptive brightness in the power settings too and it did nothing. I've updated to the latest intel graphics drivers as it says in the first post and I even installed the 14.4 amd graphics drivers according to the guides provided here.

Please, help me. The screen is so dim that this laptop is almost unusable in daylight. Thanks in advance!

 

I would try uninstall the Samsung Settings program, rebooting, reinstalling Settings then rebooting again. Settings does background configuration during installation as well as providing an interface to various Samsung control features. The configuration may have been trashed by the Windows update.

John

 

Do you mean the "Sw update" program? If so, where do I find the installation file to install "sw update" again? Thanks

 

See here for a description of Settings (press Fn+F1 to see if it installed). It is not the same as SW Update.

There is also a link to SW Update in that explanation.

John

 

I have the same problem - also with a 880z5e. Can anyone help?

Specifically:
I had issues upgrading to 8.1 in December 2013, and ended up performing a factory reset so that I could have the switchable graphics functioning properly.
Now, after a year of saying 'no' to 8.1, Windows suddenly told me it was happening anyway whether I wanted to or not. When the update finished applying, the screen was stuck on the dimmest setting and couldn't be changed.

Now I usually play World of Warcraft on the laptop. I get ~50FPS. I was getting that level after the update, but with the brightness so low it was unplayable. When I've got a bad combination of drivers, or when I need to uplug/replug, I get ~20FPS. When I've got a really bad combo, I get ~5FPS.

I've tried multiple different configurations of drivers from both Intel and AMD and the problem is not completely resolved: I am now stuck and full brightness. The brightness function keys will show the slider on screen, but the brightness doesn't change. I'm having the issue where I can increase my graphics performance by unplugging the power for a second, and this hasn't been fixed with the EnduroFix patch. For some drivers I've been able to adjust the brightness from dim to medium, but it never goes all the way to full.

Current settings/drivers:
Intel HD Graphics 4000: Driver version 10.18.10.3958 (date 30/09/2014)
AMD Radeon R9 M270X: Driver version 14.501.1003.0 (date 20/11/2014) (This has actually renamed my card from 8870 to the R9 M270x)
Win8.1 Birghtness patch applied
Chipset Driver ver: 9.4.0.1027
BIOS version: P05ADH
Samsung Settings version: 2.0.0.72


I've disabled auto driver updates. Adaptive brightness is off,power settings are set to maximum performance. I notice that I actually need different power settings for On/Off battery for the 'unplug and replug' trick to work.

Any ideas on how I can make it all better? Or at least, is there anyone with the 880z5e that has all the issues resolved and could post which drivers/versions they are using?

Thanks for any help!

 

For the FPS fix try the 14.4 driver a couple of pages ago that someone gave me. Worked wonders for my 770z5e. As for the brightness, I have no clue.

 

Excellent! I will give that a shot this week and see what happens.

 

Hi. Can you send my working Bios file as ROM please. I bricked my np770
email. [email protected]
Thanks

 

If your computer is not completely dead, you can use the procedure discussed in the thread linked below to unbrick it. You want to study the entire thread to make sure you understand the process.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/762595-samsung-series-7-np700z5c-s03ca-my-last-hope.html

Otherwise, if you are looking for a "hard re-flash" with an EEPROM writer, use isosunrise's guide in his BIOS Roll Back thread to locate the latest BIOS for your model and extract its .CAP or .ROM file. That procedure can be performed on any computer (not necessarily a Samsung).

When searching for your three-letter BIOS family, note that there are several NP770 models (NP770Z5E and NP770Z7E) which I imagine could use different BIOS family.

 

I am playing Call of Duty 1 online and my FPS set to power saver in switchable graphics gives me about 120 130 FPS and when i set it to high performace i get about 70 80 FPS very strange...any idea what could be? Thanks

 

One possibility that in High Performance the CPU is taking more power so the GPU then suffers because of the overall system power limit. In Power Saver mode the CPU power requirement is reduced and the GPU can run at full speed. You may need a 120W PSU to enable both components to run at full speed. Do you have a quad core CPU?

John

 

Thanks for the reply John but im talking about power saving set in the AMD panel not in the power plan of windows 8... thats why its strange. When i set i to high performance its cleary running on amd because the vents went high and the temperatures as well, but when i set it to power save wich means Intel graphics the vents doesnt run that high and the temps are pretty cool and getting much FPS.

Yes i have a quad core the NP780Z5E and recently i played Bioshock infinte set to max almost and worked like a charm, but in this game i dont know whats going on . sorry for my english

 

Thank you for the clarification. It appears that the Intel GPU does a better job of running that game than the AMD GPU. AMD do seem to have problems getting their drivers right.

John

 

I feel you, this is so irritating.
My touchpad somehow also got worse. The touchpad does not react as good as before when I tap with both fingers to right click. Sometimes I have to click 3-4 times before it registers a mouseclick. I don't even know what is up with that.
This and the brightness error makes this laptop garbage. The problems I've hade with this laptop were so stupid. I've had tons of problems too. I'm not kidding but I've probably spent over 8h trying to fix the brightness error. Worst part is that I can't sell it because no one would buy a nonfunctional laptop for anything near the price I paid for it. I regret buying this expensive piece of crap and I'm happy that samsung probably won't make any more in the future.

 

14.12 omega is great. For me it finally fixed the "need to unplug every level" bug. I recommend it to everyone, install proces same as always, as described on post #1

 

Did it fix issues with autocad?

 

I don't use or have autocad so I wouldn't know, sorry.

 

Hi guys. I'm at my first post in this thread.

I'd like to share with you a useful patch I've found. Its purpose is to prevent/limit the Image Retention problem.
I'm not sure if this may be defined a solution to the issue so, for caution, I would call it an "expedient" to limit the IR.
My np880z5e was suffering from an unacceptable IR, all concentrated on the edges of the screen. After the intevention I'm going to propose you, the problem is almost gone!

As you know, IR is mainly due to a ionic contamination inside the liquid crystals. These unwanted charged particles migrate near the cell electrode (with their own inertia...) due to the electric field.
The amount of charge that migrates may be assumed as proportional to level of the cell polarization. In other words, the stored charge will be larger for the brigtest pixels.
When a pixel is forced to change its status (as example, from white to grey), this parasitical charge will avoid the complete release of the interested crystals to their final position.
The effect is that the related pixel will result temporarily brighter than it should and this determines ghosting.

In relation to the above, here is what I have observed on my np880 and some personal considerations:

1- The Image Retention along the edges of the screen is strongly related to the pixel overdrive (electrode polarization above a certain critical value)
2- Under pixel overdrive, the excess of charge tends to migrate near the screeen edges creating a sort of frame on it
3- An acceptable reduction (20 -30 %) of the pixels drive leads to a strong reduction (about from 10 to 20 times) of the ghosting effect along the edges
4- While not excluding that the IR is a degenerative phenomenon (as known), it is also plausible that the increase of IR reported by many users immediately after a windows and/or video driver upgrade may be due to the different pixel mapping curve implemented by the new driver
5- All my invesigation applies to the IR concentrated on the edges of the screen. I do not have any feedback about possible benefits when the IR is distributed uniformly over the entire screen!

So, how to reduce the cell drive and test if the above is effective in your system?
Proceed with the following simple steps:

1- Right click od the desktop and open the "Intel HD Control Panel"
2- Click on "Screen" and then open the "Color" tab
3- Make sure that "All the Colors" tab is active
4- Reduce the "Contrast" slider from its default value (in my driver version is 50) to a lower value (in my driver version the minimum value supported is 40). As example, on my system, the best compromize was between 43 and 45.
5- Click on the "Apply" button, confirm and close the Intel Control Panel

Notes and suggestions:

The tuning of the new Contrast level has to be made taking into account that the target is to find an acceptable compromise between the reduction of the IR effect and the corresponding reduction of the screen brightness.
Do not touch the "Brightness" slider!! (its value must remain equal to 0)
To test the amount of the Image Retention before the intervention and after it (i.e. with the new contrast value), I suggest to use the classic black and white grid for a time of about 5 min (i.e. LCD Image Retention Test).
Before to repeat the test, remember to allow the liquid cristals recovery their initial status using the grey screen for not less than 10 min!!
On my system, the brightness measured on a white area with the new value of the Contast (43) was 185 lux (with respect a previous value of 250 lux - reduction of approximately 25%)
The increasing of the backlight of one step (or two) will restore exactly the same image you had before the contrast reduction.


Okay. At the moment that's all!

I look forward to your feedback, comments etc.

 

Avelion, you are a genius!

I had the same problems as you. I set the gamma value to 43 and the image retention is (almost) gone. Im glad there has been such an easy way to solve this problem, since I lost my warranty

 

@Avelion: Welcome to NBR.

Great investigation work you did there. Thank you for sharing it!

 

Then pheraps now it's clear why some users have image retention only after w8.1 update. Maybe because their image retention was already existent but not noticeable and, after the w8.1 upgrade, drivers or new w8.1 files changed default contrast value, making it more noticeable.

 

Hi everyone,

I've been a longtime lurker on this thread and I finally feel like I need to post this issue I'm having, as I've delayed doing so quite a while.

Long story short, I've got windows 8.1 and everything is working just fine. HOWEVER, the Windows 8.1 update 1 which was released sometime over the summer (about a 600 mb file I believe) continues to haunt me. It totally slows down my laptop and causes my disk use to spike at 100% The computer will start to lag when I've got multiple programs going, particularly if I have chrome open + a game. This was never the case prior to the update.

What I've done to rectify this is use system restore and just ignore the update. But I decided yesterday that I was going to tackle this issue for good, so I'm not planning on going backwards yet again. And just think, this was a huge update over the summer, and it's now late December and I'm just doing it!

So here's what I've tried, all to no avail...

- disable "prefetch"
- updating windows via windows update
- disable indexing of "xml" files
- uninstalling unnecessary programs
- keeping my startup programs to a minimum
- defrag
- registry cleaning via things like CCleaner
- temporary file cleaning
- Optimizing my graphics card for performance over quality
- updating drivers (admittedly not all of them, but sometimes SWU is a pain in the butt)

I just don't know what to do. My laptop is not infected, and the hardware is not faulty. I can prove this simply be restoring my system to before I proceeded with the update. Any ideas guys? This is driving me crazy, and I'm not ready to shell out serious cash for a solid state drive. Not sure I trust those just yet.

 

Guys did anyone tried to disable HT? i just disabled it and it feels that in windows it moves faster opening windows and folders or is just my imagination? also the temps are lower

 

14.12 drivers don't have performance issues like the drivers after 14.4?

 

Haven't been able to test many games, but on the ones I tested the problems were gone.

 

Here a screensaver fot those who still have some image retention issues:

https://mega.co.nz/#!zIUXkRpQ!bef-ucIo_eCp8s2PKfwIKhV1aqHMHXN3inmqVXxPX6c

 

Oh man, someone else with the exact same issue as me. I've been putting off asking this in the forum and thought that it might be my hdd starting to fail. Would love to see a solution to this

 

I really don't know what could be causing your problems but I often notice my CPU spiking after installing certain windows updates. I do have an SSD though, so I don't think I've seen high disk usages very often. My best advice: disable automatic sleep (although you should let the screen turn off) and maybe also disable your HDD from turning off in advanced power options and then let your computer idle for a long time.

I remember reading somewhere that sometimes there's some sort of windows compiler running after updates, and it tries to finish its job when it considers the computer is idle, which reflects as high usage. I think there was a cmd command to allow it to finish but I cannot find information on that anymore (or I don't know how to look for it). After installing an update as big as Update 1 for Win8.1, this procedure might take a long time.

Fairly often I notice my fans spinning really fast as soon as my screen turns off (i.e. when my computer is idle), and every time I just let it sit like that for a minute or so until it goes away on its own... It's worked very well for me.

 

I have Windows 8, not 8.1, so I cant use omega?

 

AMD officially says you can't. May I recommend updating to 8.1.

 

To be honest, I doubt that AMD power problem is driver related. Because, for example on my laptop I haven't seen such problem, no matter what drivers I use. From that I asume that there is hardware problem, as I use latest bios, driver etc. updates, So basacly my laptop is as all another, with same software without that problem.

 

I'll check if my bios is up to date. The problem lies in the high performance profile for the gpu not applying, only being able to trigger it by switching battery plans, which happens by unplugging. This should happen automatically.

 

By the way, hou you guys enable perfomance tab on new amd drivers? Can find how to get in overdrive.

p.s I haven't have that problem even before bios update.

ok I have problem with powerdvd, after installing 14.9 drivers I enabled those new video quality settings, and then update to newer version, and that f**k up my video playback - powerdvd shows 1/4 of movie and 3/4 is simply green screen But VLC still works. And reinstalling/uninstalling intel or amd drivers don't make deference. At this point to correnct that I think only solution will be win reinstall, but I am to lazzy for that, way to much work and time for configure un install all soft, that I use and is needed for work.

 

Can anyone please reupload the enduro fix?
The download link is broken plz!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...7800-7900-8500-8600-8700-8800-8900m-gpus.html