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

I can do that. Where can I toggle fast startup feature? From BIOS?

I disabled hibernation mode with the powercfg -h off command (something like that) should I enable it to get the fast startup to work again? I did this because I was concerned about SSD's longevity: what do you guys reckon, is it worth having it disabled or can I keep it on? (And start using fast startup - even with an SSD, which is blazing fast, I'd like to have the fastest boot times possible!)

 

Here you go: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/6320-fast-startup-turn-off-windows-8-a.html

 

Cheers bro

Ok I'm gonna run a test now, while on battery: I wonder if the performance of the startup process will be affected by the power source the computer is running on. Anyway, I'll be back soon with some results.

 

It's all in Windows and actually very easy:

1) Re-enable hibernation (using powercfg -h on)

2) Go to Control Panel - Power Options - Choose what the power button does. Under Shutdown settings you'll see it. It may already be checked now that you re-enabled hibernation. Otherwise click Change settings that are currently unavailable an check it.



Edit: OK, you already got it

I think testing it while connected to power is the most accurate test. Too many other factors affect performance while on battery.

Oh, and thanks for doing this!

 

Thanks anyway Dannemand: every reply you post is so detailed and well exposed - bravo!

Anyway, I ran the tests twice, and here's an average of the results (I'll try to re-run the tests on AC power to see if times change):



FAST STARTUP DISABLED/ENABLED: BOOT/SHUTDOWN TIMES (SAMSUNG 840 PRO SSD 512 GB, ON BATTERY)


- Boot (Fast startup DISABLED): 14.0 seconds
- Shutdown (Fast startup DISABLED): 11.0 seconds

- Boot (Fast startup ENABLED): 9.5 seconds
- Shutdown (Fast startup ENABLED): 7.0 seconds


What do you guys think?


EDIT: After performing the test on AC power, I can say that the boot/shutdown times seems to be the same.

 

Sorry if this has been asked before, but will they release a haswell version of np770z5e any time soon? If not I'll probably buy this on Monday. Thanks

 

Please re run it while on acpower but with these numbers I would disable fast startup. 4-5 sec are nothing and disabling it many unnecessary disk write would be saved.

 

Done, the time taken to boot and shutdown seems to be the same. So you guys would suggest to keep fast startup deactivated on machines equipped with SSD? Man, I'd like to save up those 5 seconds on boot, even though they're nothing. Anyway, I'll see what you have to say and decide

 

Thank your for sharing this, Obyboby. That's a good difference, though I would have thought it was even greater. I agree with zooster, in your case I would probably leave it disabled and spare the SSD writing. Though it's a matter of preference -- there is a ton of writing anyway when you boot.

You inspired me to do the same tests on my old NP700Z3A (Sandy Bridge i5-2450M, 8G RAM, 750GB 7200rpm HDD, ExpressCache). Before testing I ran CCleaner, defrag and ExpressCache bootopt.bat (I know, not revelant to 2013 models):

- Boot (Fast startup DISABLED): 15 seconds
- Shutdown (Fast startup DISABLED): 12 seconds

- Boot (Fast startup ENABLED): 10-11 seconds
- Shutdown (Fast startup ENABLED): 9-12 seconds

Boot times are from power on till Win8 login screen (not including actual user login, which is where most of the heavy loading starts taking place). Shutdown times are from logged in, CPU and disk idle (no background churning) till power LED off.

With Fast Startup enabled, times varied a bit each test. With Fast Startup disabled, they were the same.

I am surprised that Fast Startup makes as little difference as it does on mine. I guess ExpressCache does a good job on regular boot, but with Fast Startup the reading/writing of hiberfil.sys on the HDD takes some time. Maybe after awhile ExpressCache will learn which parts of hiberfil.sys to cache. I just re-built the cache with that bootopt.bat command.

 

You mean when booting without fast startup? This is cnnfusing LOL.. I think I'll leave the fast startup enabled since you said this, hopefully it won't kill my SSD too quickly xD

 

Yeah, just blame it on me if your SSD quits

What I meant was during boot, every process that loads and initializes causes some writing, if nothing else to various log files (every event listed in Event Viewer is a disk write). But admittedly, it's probably still less than a Fast Startup hibernation write.

If would be great if we could create a Read-Only installation of Windows, where everything that must be written goes on a Data partition, but the core Windows partition is frozen once installation is finished. Our phones and tablets can do that, no problem

I am sure it can be done, given enough knowledge about Windows deployment and enough time to spend studying it.

 

I think you will find much more lively discussion of that in the so-called Intro thread. Check the last few pages, there is discussion of this almost daily.

I know it's confusing with two threads. This Owners' Lounge is really more for actual owners to share solutions and experience, whereas the Intro thread is more for discussion about future models, pre-announcements, what to buy etc. Although there is plenty of overlap.

 

Hehe, good idea. Indeed boot requires writes too but it's not comparable with at least 4gb written at every shutdown with fast start up enabled.
If you shut your pc down 3 times a day your ssd will be weared of 12gb per day...
I really would disable it. Surely ssd are built to last several years, so this amount of writes shouldnt harm your ssd life, but if you can spare al those gb per day with a small downside of only 5sec more to wait... why not? ;-)

 

I don't know how much Fast Startup writes, but I believe it is FAR less than 4GB, more in the order of a few hundred MB. Remember, it's not a full hibernation (which could be a significant percentage of the entire RAM) but only the Windows core state that is saved, and none of user session state.

I just tried Googling win8 fast startup wearing ssd and win8 how much data is written with fast startup but couldn't find an answer to the estimated size of the RAM image being written.

What I DID find is that a lot of people who post information about this feature on various blogs and forums haven't understood what it does and how it differs from Win7 hibernation. Many seem to be still on Win7 and running on pure speculation.

That said, I don't want to recommend whether users should or shouldn't use this feature on SSDs. I just don't think the writing is as extensive as one could fear.

 

Thanks for your opinions guys. I guess tomorrow I'll have to start getting used to those 5 extra seconds my laptop will take to boot, from now on xD

 

Hi Gentlemen out there....first i want to thank u all for all the information u provide, i was reading and learning a lot.... and i could not wait till i could order my 770z5e...so this morning it arrived and all worked so fine, what a nice haptik....but just one tiny little white spot on the screen took it all down...a dead pixel and i tried to flash it with some pixel recovery software but no luck and it took a while i really realized that i have to turn it back , first i thought i could go with it but hey, of all this pixels u look exactly at that one...or what would u do in that case? are there some secret medicines out there for the display?

 

Thanks for the advice, what optimum settings do you use to max out the battery life while having decent performance?

 

I'm afraid but I don't own the laptop yet, so no tweaking for me But I remember someone here or in the other thread posting the details of his settings

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

So has anyone else installed the WiFi and PX Profile List updates? I think the last thing I read was that users didn't have good results with them and you know what they say, if something's not broken don't fix it.

 

help! can anybody tell me if i can use the 'copy to disk' function in F4 samsung recovery for to swap the ssd or do i have to ' recover to factory image'... when i try that my ssd is not recognized..only in the 'copy to disk' the ssd is recognized....i also was not able to format the ssd in windows, it did not find the extrnal eSata to USB caddy....

 

Well I installed the "PX Profile List" update - but dunno what it does. Not installing any Wi-Fi updates as my setup works fine with original Win 8 drivers

 

I am having a problem with my Canadian series 7 - 8870 version not shutting the screen off. Non of the power modes help I have the brightness thing fixed. But between my keyboard not shutting off in the dark and my beautiful screen not shutting off i am a little peeved. Anyone know how to resolve this? Also I have one red pixel stuck on in the middle of my screen the 30 days to return it is over with future shop . Should a bad pixel be under warranty? I do love this laptop. Tonnes of power and battery.

 

Hi Enzian. Welcome to the forum, and congrats on your new machine.

If you go back a few pages, you will find fairly extensive discussion and guidance on exactly that subject. Oh what the heck... is starts here.

Also, since this topic is covered extensively in many different threads here, I recommend using Google with the following syntax to locate more discussions: site:notebookreview.com/samsung F4 Recovery factory image. That's what I use all the time to find answers when people post questions here.

Also, I noticed your post in the Intro thread about the dead pixel. I hope you find a solution to that. Otherwise best to swap it while there is still time.

Let us know how it works out for you.

 

Although not an exact answer to your question, the discussion starting here (in this thread ) covers the power options of Samsung laptops in general. It's simple enough, but not everything is as you might first expect.

 

Hi Dannemand, thx, all done...i was a bit surprised though that the ssd drive (samsung pro 840) was not recognized, as said, only in the ´copy to disk` option....so i copied the disk and swapped and it was quiet forward...only that with this method i lost a bit of ssd space...from 256GB it left me 177GB....so much for the less good, the good is that it flies now, wow...i use it primarely for photo editing and my CS6 is full of filters and it comes up instantly ( maybe 2 sec )...or loading 200 raws, peng, its here, processing batches is a no brainer now......talking of a laptop this is amazing power....!
BTW...opening the case is not that hard, i remember this video on youtube where this guy had it already dissembled and said how hard it was and that you dont wanna know how hard etc...what a bluffer! For anybody who is not sure about, do it, all you need is 2 plasticcards and the right screwdriver....it pops right of, i had it done in 2 min.....

than...the stuck pixel...or dead pixel? i really dont know how to valuate this...sometimes i see it, sometimes not, its like a dustspeck but when the screen is black the speck is white....i tried one of this pixel doctors and flashed the pixel for 2 hours but it did not change it.....i think anyone with a little bit of sense and patiance would send it back...but me, iam already installing all my stuff, and more badly, i took already off the stickers, i must be crazy ....but in real world usage i never see it...actually most and nearly only evidend it was on the start up with the samsung logo...but since i swapped the drive that goes sooo whooping fast that i am not bothered anymore....long story short, i go on some more days with it and look...
for the rest, surely i already fall in love with my machine, it has such a personal touch to it and apart from the SLIGHTLY anoying sensor managed keyboard backlightning the feel and haptik is superb....

 

Thank you so much for this thread Pranktank. It's been a massive help. I've looked through most of the posts in the thread, but haven't been able to find the last information I'm looking for, so I hope someone can help me answer these questions:

1) I'm experiencing some corruption in the Windows 8 tile interface in the native apps such as Mail, Settings, Store and so on. Most of it is black and then when I mouse over it the real white elements and text is revealed. It doesn't happen in games or in desktop programs like Chrome. It happened after installing graphics driver 13.5 beta 3 and some Windows 8 updates. I'm unsure exactly what caused the errors. Any ideas?

2) Are there any Windows 8 tweaks one should do, to increase network performance (mostly thinking about latency in games)? Anything specific to this device?

3) Are there any suggestions on bios changes to increase performance? Is there an unlocked bios?

4) Has anyone found some good software to tell you which graphics card is in use? So you can be 100% sure it's activating the Radeon for games. Also is there any well designed software for monitoring temperatures and throttling? Maybe even adjust the throttling that I've been reading so much about on Samsung laptops?

Thank you so much in advance for any help you can provide!

 

Can anyone tell me the registry setting to change to allow the touchpad to be able to be used at the same time as the keyboard in games.

 

Also for those having erratic behaviour on the touchpad now and again - i've narrowed it down to when the network is under strain. I tested it by downloading games on steam and when the bandwidth is high the erratic movement of the touchpad occurs

 

I'd like to remove some useless bloatware, can you please help me find something I can remove? Here's what's shown on SW Update:




Thanks

1) if only you read the previous pages before asking, you would have found that this issue is caused by the 13.5 beta drivers and the only solution is to rollback to the previous stable drivers (the ones you can find on SW Update).

 

This post lists my take on what bloatware to keep and what to lose (spoiler: lose most of it )

As you know, I am on an older model that came with Win7, so some of this may not be exactly what you have. But much is still the same.

For more extreme trimming, there is always the original thread on reducing latencies which I think you've seen before.

If you're doing a new install and want to keep it to a minimum (but not necessarily as extreme as in the latencies thread) you can check this post. If you compare that post to your SW Update list, you should get a good idea of what you can uninstall.

Pranktank and I actually had a discussion about it a few pages back. If you start here that sums it up pretty well.

 

Thank you for your reply. I had looked a few pages back and then looked from the beginning of the thread and many many pages forward. I did not find that information.

Please does anyone else have information on the other questions?

2) Are there any Windows 8 tweaks one should do, to increase network performance (mostly thinking about latency in games)? Anything specific to this device?

3) Are there any suggestions on bios changes to increase performance? Is there an unlocked bios?

4) Has anyone found some good software to tell you which graphics card is in use? So you can be 100% sure it's activating the Radeon for games. Also is there any well designed software for monitoring temperatures and throttling? Maybe even adjust the throttling that I've been reading so much about on Samsung laptops?

 

3. I disabled turbo control and cpu powersaving to prevent cpu throttling but it's still present.

There isn't an unlocked BIOS yet, but according to this post it's easy to make one yourself: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=9164712 . I'll give it a shot when I have more time. An unlocked BIOS could be very useful. I've seen some pretty interesting settings in the screenshots that I'd love to try out.

4. The perfect combination for monitoring for me is HWinfo64 and MSI afterburner. HWinfo64 will give you all the data you need while afterburner can be more useful to check your gpu usage, temps and fps in real time, during a game. The +20% power setting also helps a lot to prevent gpu throttling.

Both those programs will tell you what gpu is active. What I did was setting afterburner to 'high performance' in the switchable graphics app so that it automatically activates the dGPU.

When you configure switchable graphics it will work like it should. Any game/program you configured to 'high performance' will use the Radeon.

Don't forget to turn off silent mode and plug the battery in for maximal performance and set power plan to 'high performance'.

 

this could be quite a found. I will make some tests since I recently updated to version 11.14.1.3 of the Elan drivers trying to find a solution for some iisues that I have with the touchpad

 

I was wondering if people have experimented with this further and whether they've found anything of use in the BIOS.

Also, have any of you tried using the WiDi app? I keep getting the error message to update to the newest wireless driver, even when I tried the latest one.

 

Hello!

Anyone has similar issues with HDMI sound on TV (page 89 I think)?

I've also bought Samsung 840 PRO SSD and boot time is much faster than somebody had written few pages back. Last was: 2,9 seconds. Probably had to do with installed programs. My laptops is also fairly new.

Thanks!

BR

 

2,9 seconds???

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

I'm thinking...not a cold boot, but Win8 Fast Startup...?

-Matt

 

I think CubaLibre was referring to the comparisons of boot and shutdown times posted back here. And they were indeed part of a discussion about whether Fast Startup provides enough speed benefit to warrant the additional writing (and wearing) on an SSD.

2.9 seconds is still insanely fast, even with Fast Startup enabled. CubaLibre, are you sure you're not measuring resume from Sleep?

2.9 seconds is also insanely accurate. Personally I was only able to measure my times down to about 0.5-1 second accuracy -- particularly since they change a bit between boots.

 

Hello!

I've probably made a mistake. I was actually referring to Last BIOS time, which probably isn't the same. I was googling a little bit and couldn't find precise explanation of the term (some were arguing what it means).

Here is the picture from the last BIOS time (Win 8 > task manager > startup). I've turned off computer and started it again.



This is fastest boot time of any computer I've ever had.

Because of some circumstances I hadn't had and option to test it with classic HDD. It has Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB since the first day I've purchased it. Win 8 Pro, faster startup. Note that I've reduced startup programs to only those:
a) I know b) don't have big influence on startup (can be see in new Win 8 task manager). I have Avast AV with default settings (free version, not some "bloated" version).

Also I must say that compared to Macbook pro (more than 4 years old) awakening from the sleep mode is kinda long (compared to turning it on). Maybe because of entering credentials or the way lid opens. On MBP as soon as you open the lid you can continue working, whereas here could take some time (maybe the disk turned off). The lid is also one of the major complaints since I need two hands to open it, and it don't run as smoothly as MBP. There is much to learn Samsung.

I will try to find some other programs for measuring startup time.

I'm really impressed with overall performance. So far no lags or anything.

 

No worries. Thank you for updating us. I don't even know what that Last BIOS time is, and a quick Google search didn't yield any real answers. I suspect it is a number calculated only when running UEFI BIOS. WIn8 doesn't display it on mine (and I don't use UEFI).

The boot and shutdown times I posted were simply timed with a stopwatch (I think Obybody's were the same): From Power On till Win8 login screen. And from Shutdown till power LED turned off.

I would be curious what your comparable times are with that excellent 840 Pro.

 

Lol, I've been using this nickname for ages, since I was something like 11, and still you guys call me obyboDy sigh...

Anyway, so that 2.9 seconds was not measured like we did, right? Cause I'd be really worried to know my laptop takes so much longer to boot

 

Oops, sorry about that. I got your handle all right, this was just a typo while tapping on my phone. And yes, I think the 2.9 seconds is something else. Still, I'll be curious what times that 840 Pro can deliver.

 

I will try to make few measures myself. Since I'm quite busy this probably won't be possible before weekend.

Btw, is there any option to change number of posts per page? It's a little "weird" having 95+pages with 5 topics per page. There is even smaller chance to fast read previous posts since everybody would say: "man it's 95 pages. I would need have my life to read it).

840 Pro really is amazing. Avast scans aprrox. 500 MB/second (can't be sure about precision of the number).

If you have this notebook you must have SSD! I'm really sad that SSD wasn't option in the beginning (it is in some countries, but sadly not mine :/ ).

Will keep you updated.

Thanks!

 

It's no rush, I am just curious. No doubt that's a fast SSD you got there!

This thread isn't really that big yet

The forum default setting is to display 10 posts per thread page. You can change it if you go to Settings (top of screen) - General Settings (left side navigation bar) - Thread Display Options (scroll down about halfway on that page) - Number of Posts to Show Per Page.

 

AMD 13.6 beta mobilty drivers are out

 

Installs like a charm. Brightness works. Seems like we'll always have up-to-date drivers.

I remember reading that someone had issues with hdmi audio. It's in the fixed bugs list from AMD for 13.6 so it may be fixed .

 

Now someone should check if rendering problem in modern ui is gone...

 

I finally got around to putting an SSD in (Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB) and I seem to have a problem with the front of the laptop near the touchpad being slightly apart (enough that I can squeeze it and it will make a sound). Has anyone else had this problem? And if so, is there a fix to it? What about people who have installed SSD's/Hybrids, do you have this problem? Thanks, it is much appreciated.

 

Nope its still there :/ doesn't bug me much, my workaround allows me to restrict the dedicated card to only when I really know I need it

 

That is so great to hear!
AMD Vanilla drivers on a laptop with AMD GPU and switchable graphics...I still cannot believe it!!
Hopefully AMD learned from their huge mistakes and this is not just a dream, or testing aspect of the beta driver... I really really really hope this is will be the case from now on for the AMD GPUs.

So just to clarify, you can independently update the Intel Graphic driver and independently update the AMD Catalyst and then switchable graphics works as they should?