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

thanks man, that's gonna help me out for sure.

First problem: I don't have Easy Software Manager installed, do I need to download it first? (Can't I just use Windows' Uninstall?)

I removed Norton Internet Security and this morning when I turned on the laptop I noticed that it's still running, and it's not appearing among the installed programs. How to get rid of it?

edit: OK I ran SWUpdate and it's showing some new stuff to be installed - I'll have a look at it before getting confused

 

Yes, yes, Easy Software Manager has since been superseded by SW Update anyway. But you can certainly just use Windows Programs and Features to uninstall.

As I recall, there are two pieces of Norton bloatware (I forget exactly which): Any chance the other one is still installed? Also, make sure you choose Restart after uninstalling these. Shut down is not enough, because Win8 doesn't fully restart after Shut down (it merely micro-hibernates). Many apps don't clean up after themselves until after a full restart.

Update: Just because SW Update suggests you install something doesn't mean you have to: The other post I linked ( here) lists the (relatively few) items I let SW Update install.

 

Augh, looks like the HD4000 drivers have broken my Catalyst - Skyrim's performance has tanked significantly. What were the steps you are supposed to take to get it to work again? I cannot find them, but I remember other people in this or the other thread had a solution.

 

Oh yes, I shut it down last night, so that might be the problem; the other norton component was successfully removed.

And yes, I had a look at SWUpdate and noticed there's a lot of sh*t that they suggest you to install, I'll just ignore it. Now I'm gonna start studying the best method to install the SSD and then Win 8 as clean as possible keeping all the right partitions in the drive


I noticed one weird thing: while in the dark (on battery power) the keyboard backlight goes on and off randomly. I thought it could be because of some random light activating the light sensors, but there was no other source other than the laptop's display (and I wasn't switching between pages so there was no change in the brightness of the display)

 

Good job on the progress.

You have several options for that SSD install. It's been covered quite a bit in this thread (also the 2013 Chronos Intro thread). I strongly recommend you spend some time reading those.

The same goes for that keyboard backlight issue: it's discussed at great length both in those two threads and in various other threads here, such as the one linked below:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/713775-disable-2013-series-7-chronos-keyboard-backlight.html

Keep posting us on your progress. And don't forget to enjoy your new toy

 

Thanks mod for your reply. Yes I've finally managed to do a fresh install on my machine and still able to do factory reset (retaining the F4).

I'm now interested to get a 7200rpm harddisk to replace my stock hard disk. Any recommendation? How is the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hard disk? Or is there better recommendation? SSD is out of my budget as I prefer higher capacity.

 

I really am puzzled by what the gpu is doing. While playing bf3 the gpu usage ad fps constantly jumps around. I get the same fps on low, medium and high, fluctuating between 24 and 40 fps. I tried a very small overclock and the trick that previously helped in fc3 with msi afterburner but it didn't help for bf3. How can the gpu usage drop to 30% on high, 1080p .

edit: forgot picture

 

Excellent. Again good job there.

I have an 500GB Momentus XT (with built-in SSD cache) in my old HP HDX18. My Samsung NP700Z3A came with Hitachi 750GB 7200RPM (and ExpressCache). Momentus XT is indeed a bit faster -- although benchmarks are not a good test when you have an SSD cache in between.

I also tested another version of the NP700Z3A with 1TB 5400 RPM (possibly the same as yours). Although it was a bit slower than the 7200RPM, the difference was less than you might think -- probably because the 1TB has a higher density platter.

I'll probably get an SSD for the Sammy at some point -- but like you I am cost conscious, yet need the storage. So I'll probably just get a small SSD then move the HDD to the Optical Bay.

 

Ok I got the tutorial for the HDD/SSD swap. First of all: OMG YOU CAN USE A SIMPLE EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVE INSTEAD OF A 32GB USB STICK? Cause I bought the usb stick and it's gonna be delivered next week (I went for the sandisk extreme, good write speeds) and if you tell me I can use any external USB drive I'll do the swap procedure tomorrow using my friend's external drive instead of waiting for the USB. If I misunderstood, and you can only do the procedure with a USB drive, I apologize

Then: where is the part where you put back the recovery image made on the external drive as first step? I can't seem to understand the procedure this guy followed.. Is it like this?

- Press F4, make image of all the recovery partitions on an external drive (so NO backup of the data, apps etc installed so far on the laptop by the user)
- Create bootale device with win8 64 bit (still looking for a post which says if you can download it from microsoft legally)
- Install SSD
- Install Win 8 on SSD using external drive
- Installing drivers, updates, etc via SW Update

By doing this the various partitions won't be put back on the drive... What am I getting wrong?

Anyway I'm definitely going on reading the thread, trying to clarify my doubts. Any help will b appreciated guys




edit: I'm getting some audio glitches during music playback.. I can't quite describe them in english, but It's some kind of buzzing noise similar to when a speaker is going to die. What could it be? Don't tell me I have to get my unit replaced.... :'( It happened on both the speakers and while wearing earphones...

 

Did you increase power limit in afterburner? Was the power adaptor plugged in? Umdrr powerplay in catalyst cc is the option of "plugged in" menu set to max power?

 

Thanks a lot for replying! How do I perform 'move the HDD to the Optical bay'?

Does it acts like an external portable hard disk with usb cable attached to it?

 

Only the 17" model has an optical bay...

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Thank you alfling.

I have an old NP700Z3A (spring 2012 model, Sandy Bridge).

All previous Series 7 Chronos models (before the 2013 models) had optical drives. So even my tiny 14" can accommodate an SSD (where the HDD currently is) and moving the HDD to the optical bay by swapping out the DVD drive.

 

Aww I see. I have the 2013 version thus not having the Optical drive. So only option I do have is to change it to HDD (7200rpm) instead? Also is there any difference on the stock HDD (5400rpm) and HDD (7200rpm)?

 

Yeah, I should have made that clearer, this being a 2013 model thread. My bad.

As I mentioned previously, in my comparisons of the Momentus XT 500GB 7200RPM, the Samsung 750GB 7200RPM (Hitachi) and Samsung 1TB 5400RPM, Momentus was fastest and the 1TB slowest -- as you would expect.

BUT the difference between the two Samsung offerings (7200 and 5400RPM) was not huge -- probably because the 1TB has a higher density platter, which increases transfer rate and makes up for the slower rotational speed. Seek times were faster in the 7200RPM.

But since you also don't have ExpressCache in the new models, I would say the Momentus XT (which has built-in SSD cache) will improve quite some over your current 1TB. But NOWHERE near as fast as a good SSD.

 

So, I installed a 840 Pro 256GB SSD - laptop bottom cover pretty tricky to crack off - but now SO much faster than the 1TB spinner.

Now there is an option in the bios for HD password and I have set this (you need to set supervisor password and power cycle). BIOS now prompts for password when starting up, but not on resume from sleep (EDIT: nor on restart). So you have to shutdown (or hibernate?) to secure machine.

Not wanting to crack the machine open again to remove the drive, I have no idea whether or not the drive is really encrypted. How can I tell? Boot to a DOS USB stick and try to see the drive? Has anyone else tried this?

 

i would just use a bootable Linux distribution or Windows PE and try to mount the SSD, and then see what happens.

 

Another note on this machine:

You can set silent mode in the "settings" utility which turns off the fans. However, doing so seems to cap the CPU clock to 1.2GHz. If you want full performance potential, you need to have silent mode 'off'.

It would be nice if setting it to 'auto' would allow clocking up to the maximum when demand (with fan switching off when things cool down). But no, if you want full CPU power, you have to have fan on permanently.

 

First off, I haven't even used silent mode so I'm probably wrong on this, but I noticed in the settings there are three options: off, low and auto. Have you tried using low instead auto to see if a higher clock speed will be utilized?

 

'auto' also seems to cap the clock to 1200MHz. 'off' is the only way to get full performance.

 

Instead of Silent Mode, you can just manually switch to the Power Saver profile and tweak that to your liking. Silent Mode DOES switch to the Power Saver profile, but in addition does it cap CPU speed at a low level.

In the power profile, System cooling policy under Processor power management determines how CPU speed and fan speed interact. Choosing Passive will allow the CPU to go to full speed -- but only as long as temps stay down. Choosing Active will keep raising fan speed to keep temps down.

Read the thread linked below for more information:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/714633-thoughts-samsung-silent-mode.html

Also, Google site:notebookreview.com/samsung silent mode for even more discussion of this.

 

I have installed the Leshcat’s Catalyst 13.4 WHQL v2 UnifL drivers....

Works well on my NP770Z5E-S01SG. Got about 10% increment in graphics performance.

Will post some stock vs this new 13.4 WHQL v2 benchmark results soon...

Stock Drivers

System Info:

Catalyst Driver Version 9.3.5



Intel Driver Version 9.17.10.2875




Benchmark Results:

Furmark @1920x1080


Furmark @1280x720


3DMark 11 @Performance Setting


Leshcat’s Catalyst 13.4 WHQL v2 Drivers

System Info:

Catalyst Driver Version 12.104.0



Intel Driver Version 9.17.10.3062




Benchmark Results:

Furmark @1920x1080 - Gain of 9.97%


Furmark @1280x720 - Gain of 11.68%


3DMark 11 @Performance Setting - Gain of 1.36%


So in summary the Leshcat’s Catalyst 13.4 WHQL v2 drivers do offer an improvement over the stock ones.

However there were 3 small issues with using the Leshcat drivers which I have managed to work around :

1. The stock drivers must be fully uninstalled from the system before the new one can be installed. Refer to UnifL Manual for instructions.

2. The Catalyst Control Center was not installed with the Leshcat installer. I had to manually run the ccc-utility64.msi file from the this folder which was created by the Leshcat installer - C:\Drivers\Catalyst_13.4_WHQL_UnifL_v2\Packages\Apps\CCC2\Utility64-Net4

3. Screen brightness toggle (Fn F2 & Fn F3) keys do not automatically work after installing the new drivers. But the installer did come with additional tools to rectify this. Refer to the Brightness Resolver section of the Leshcat manual. I found the option to use for my laptop is Generic FFFF.



Hope this bit of info can help fellow Samsung Series 7 Chronos users out there.....


I am loving this machine !

 

Thanks once again. Any recommended HDD to choose from if I intend to have HDD rather than SSD? As my area doesn't has the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 7200rpm hard disk. But it does has the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 5400rpm though. Do they come in different speed?

Or I can get any 7200rpm hard disk?

 

Great work man. +rep
I'll try this tonight

 

I would be very cautious of putting a 7200 rpm disk into this laptop. I don't think Samsung put in a 5400 rpm disk just to be cheapskates. 7200 disks tend to run a lot hotter that 5400s. With these laptops, Samsung is cramming components into a surprisingly thin chassis, and at the same time designing a cooling system that lets them include a full v cpu, and a top notch graphics card, and still have quite a silent machine. The whole thing has got to be in a delicate state of balance. It is one thing to swap in an SSD wihich will be expected to use less power and generate less heat, but going the other way might be asking for trouble.

 

I would consult the Tom's Hardware Mobile HDD charts. These include standardised measurement of power consumption under several operating conditions. The results for the 5400 and 7200 rpm drives are more intermingled than one would expect. I think it would be more accurate to say that the 7200 rpm drives run a bit hotter. They also tend to be a little noisier.

More important, I doubt that the 5400 rpm Momentus will offer any significant improvement over the stock HDD and might be slower due to lower data density. You need the new SSHD version.

John

 

That's a good point there, Neizvestno. But remember, those heat challenges were also present in previous generations of the Chronos, yet they still came in versions with 5400rpm as well as 7200rpm HDDs. My NP700Z3A is tiny (and packed, even with an ODD) and has a full voltage Sandy Bridge CPU that draws more power than Ivy Bridge, and it was still delivered with a 7200rpm Hitachi HDD. Admittedly, there WERE reports of throttling in some of these Chronos models, and the hotter the drive, the more pronounced that throttling would be.

@b0ib0ii: As John said, I wouldn't expect much speed improvement by installing a 5400rpm Momentus XT. And I am surprised that you cannot get the 7200rpm version where you are. (At $100 with free shipping, it's actually a great price on Amazon just now.)

That heat issue aside, I don't think there is a better balance between capacity, performance and price at the moment. If you DO manage to locate it, make sure you get the XT version (not just plain Momentus) since that's the one with 32GB SSD cache. Since the new Chronos don't have ExpressCache, this will definitely help with performance.

 

I decided to try out a 120W PSU just for fun and curiousity. GPU usage and performance is better than ever but there is not much of CPU improvement (yet). A detailed post will follow when I've done more testing.

EDIT: temps are still very good.

A question: If not all cores are at turbo clock, does this mean it's throttling or could it also mean that not all CPU power is needed? Because in far cry 3 I managed to keep both CPU and GPU at turbo clock but in battlefield 3 some cores slow down.

 

Thanks guys for all your useful replies! I'll try to do a lookout once again if they do sell the seagate momentus xt version. Apart from this, may I check if the default chronos 5400rpm hard disk height ?

Will it be 9mm or 7mm? From what I understand the seagate momentus xt version is a 7mm in height. Will it fit into the chronos perfectly?

 

That's a valid question. It's quite possible that the game doesn't fully load the CPU.

The best way to check for throttling is to use the method described in this notebookcheck review.

7mm will fit into a 9mm space without any problems. The fixing screws are along the bottom edge and 2mm of fresh air at the top won't disrupt anything.

John

 

Moderator, feel free to delete the repeat posts (I've also posted the same info in the other chronos thread) - but making sure everyone has the info.
FYI - for those in Canada considering the NP7805ZE-S02, or those who have purchased one in the past 30 days, it is on sale at Future Shop ($200 off the original price of $1699).

 

@Bomber-Stud: Yeah, I saw that, thanks for pointing it out. Forum rules (and common sense) normally have us delete cross posts -- particularly impatient questions and rants. But this is useful info for members, so I think it's OK to leave them for now. Admittedly, with three different threads covering the same models, it's not always clear where to post. If I remember it, we may delete some of the posts later, once the sales are over.

 

I tried installing it but it didn't work at all. I uninstalled everything first, but it didn't work. My 8870m remains in device manager as an unknown device... ccc won't install either.


EDIT:

I gave up on trying the 13.4 driver since it didn't do anything. I read in the discussion thread 13.5 beta 3 supported the 8000 series so I decided to try that one. I didn't have any 8870m drivers installed. I downloaded 13.5 beta 3 from here: http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/GR...ity-Catalyst-Graphics-Driver-135-Beta-3.shtml . I literally just clicked install and it worked! Switchable graphics, brightness control, CCC, everything!

 

Would you benchmark it with and without 120w power adapter? Of course at same drivers..

 

Really...what's the procedure for getting the refund, you just go there with a receipt?

 

Can you please try to run again Far Cry 3 with the 120W PSU? And while your cpu and GPU are both in turbo mode, can you check what is the power consumption on the laptop? It would be useful to know whether it can actually draw more than 90W or not

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Did you uninstall the old Catalyst driver prior to installing the beta driver?

 

I tried the Beta 13.5 ones from the AMD site (with the switchable graphics controls) without uninstalling the original Samsung provided drivers - worked fine, but I lost brightness control!

Edit - Reverted back to the Samsung drivers and Catalyst Control Centre now crashes as soon as anyone logs into windows! I feel a complete rebuild coming on!

 

I finally managed to install the SSD in my laptop. It's another world now!!! It's way too faster than the stock 5400 rpm HDD! I would highly recommend considering the option of installing an SSD. The whole system is much more reactive now!!! With the HDD I got stuck in loading apps and tools and the boot took a bit long, and I was a bit disappointed (on battery power). Now with the SSD I boot my machine in a few seconds and everything is performed immediately! No waiting at all, LOL it's even faster than my desktop. I love it!!!!

Thanks to everyone who helped!

Btw I followed the tutorial on the first page no issues at all, took about one hour to do everything (from the bottom cover removal to the installation and recovery of the partitions)

 

Installed the AMD 13.5 Beta 3 mobility drivers and although they installed fine I lost brightness control as usual - how did you manage to keep the brightness working! Did you uninstall the Samsung Drivers first?

 

If you fix the brightness issue your system will not recover from the sleep state properly and you'll need a full reboot. So you'll have to choose between brightness control and sleep until there's a fix. (thank you flickerdart)

After re-installing 13.5 beta 3 I did lose brightness control as well, but I managed to fix it.

Here's how I did it: ( this is at your own risk, please don't blame me if something goes wrong)

First it's very important to uninstall the AMD video drivers.
1. Go to programs and features and run AMD Catalyst install manager. Check "Express Uninstall all AMD software" and run it.

2. Go to device manager > display adapters and right click on your AMD graphics card. Click uninstall and check remove drivers & software.

3. I do not know if it is necessary or not but I did the same process in 2. for the Intel HD4000.

4. Reboot if you didn't already.

5. download the drivers from here: Download AMD Mobility Catalyst Graphics Driver 13.5 Beta 3 Driver for Windows Vista / Windows Vista64 / Windows 7 / Windows 7 x64 / Windows 8 / Windows 8 x64 - Softpedia

6. Install them.

7. Reboot.

If your brightness control is gone, do these steps:

1. Download this: Leshcat
direct download link: https://mega.co.nz/#!5NgQGZIZ!IAfLAUlpVmL3ZPwHrqP8SVT6UjRNMb6o-QmxPb051PE

2. Run the .exe you just downloaded. Do NOT install the drivers. Instead click brightness resolver.

3. Make a backup of the map as you are told in the brightness/wakeup fix menu.

4. Select the option " Generic FFFF" by pressing I
(thank you fat_boyz for pointing me to this solution).

5. Reboot.

You now should have brightness control, catalyst control center and switchable graphics working.

 

Thank you pranktank for your directions. I also upgraded to 13.5 beta 3 yesterday and had issues with the brightness control. The solution posted by fat_boyz did fix it however I now have issues with sleep mode. Can anyone else who's installed the drivers test and see if sleep mode is working properly? When I come out of sleep, it seems like the screen is black but if you look very hard its there but just really dark. I would advise changing the power button setting on your laptop to either hibernate or shutdown so at least you have a way out if its black. This is the only feature I think we would lose if we decided to upgrade drivers. I restored back to the previous driver for now since I use sleep mode alot but I guess for those who dont use it, it may not pose a problem.

Thanks,

kia0001

 

That's definitely an issue with the backlight not turning on. Why that would happen and how to fix it though, I'm not sure. But I definitely had the same issue with a desktop monitor due to a faulty inverter (supplies power to the backlight) and all I could make out was a barely visible image.

 

Strange. I'll have a look at it.



I'm testing the newer drivers and I've seen some great performance improvements. Is there anyone with the stock drivers and 8870m that could test catzilla ( http://www.allbenchmark.com/download) please?

 

Yeah, you should just need your receipt.

 

I'm having the same issues when coming from sleep.

 

Ahhh will wait for the sleep issue to get fixed before I try the drivers then seeing i put it to sleep numerous times during the day

 

I love you man, I can finally run wow at a decent framerate.

 

Maybe it's fault of brightness fix? Someone should check if there's the sleep bug without the brigthness resolver.

 

I have installed the beta drivers, and tried putting the computer to sleep and then waking it (with both lid close and Power menu). System resumes correctly. I will try installing the brightness fix and repeating the procedure.
Edit: Did the fix. System does not wake properly. Confirmed: brightness fix responsible for bug.
Edit edit: Curiously, the brightness fix was causing things to perform weird (Skyrim)/crash (Civ V). Uninstalling it fixed both issues. Not having brightness control is a dealbreaker, though...looks like I'm stuck to trying to roll back to the old drivers now.