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

Hi pranktank, I am not using an external monitor, I am just using the laptop, which is 60hz


For my desktop, I would always want more fps than my hertz of the monitor, since even though my FPS is 120, it still can drop during gun battles and smokes :yes:

 

Does it drop below 60 fps when there's smoke?

 

Well I was maybe too critical. I will wait for next release of ATI drivers. Hopefully they will made non "beta" version in near future. Since they are releasing "betas" troubles can be expected. But based on my experiences so far NVidia is much better in this field. I'm on study "vacation" so my nerves can be l

Still I don't like the fact that (I can't find reason why) HDMI audio is not working. I will have to contact Samsung. But based on my emails to their support before I've purchased the laptop I doubt I will get anything useful beside some generic reply (crap). It's sometimes even problematic to find correct laptop since they have "million" of different ones and there are also many reasons for not working HDMI audio.

Have you (those that use HDMI for connecting TV to laptop) installed any Realtek drivers or any other audio drivers?

Thanks!

 

My GPU is set to a custom version of the Catalyst "balanced" preset which I've set to force vsync and 16x anisotropic filtering for every game. Every other setting is untouched. Honestly I don't think this card can handle more than 100FPS in CS:GO at a decent resolution...

 

such a shame :cry: I absolutely love the laptop itself but it just does not have enough power for me. Anyone know any information about a laptop similar to this with more power? Or even when Samsung is releasing their new models. Any info would be great!

 

This post suggests that the Haswell version may not be far away.

John

 

Well if you want to play games on laptop with (very) high settings then probably best bet is to buy gaming laptop. Look at Asus Republic of Gamers laptop or any similar. Take note that Chronos 7 is considered "multimedia" laptop and that it's pretty thin (less than 1 inch). Asus G5X or something weights more than 4 kilos, so it can be hardly said this is still (portable) laptop anyway...

I've seen some benchmark and Chronos 7 is doing quite well in most of the games. Haven't tried myself any except Company of Heroes 2 for very short time, so can't say much in that field. Yesterday I've noticed that 1080p video on Youtube didn't run so smoothly when sliding the slider up and down (video was paused).

The main bottleneck are probably drivers and CPU throttling.

But as I've said, better ask someone who played Crysis or something.

EDIT:
I've read that Haswell processors won't be so much faster. Integrated graphic will be better but you have dedicated so this shouldn't brings much difference. It will be thinner and would more energy efficient so laptops and portable devices will be even thinner. But regarding raw power - the difference is few percentage. Based on what I've heard/read.

 

Funny? but no buttom "pause/break" ??

 

Notebookcheck has already posted benchmark results for some mobile CPUs in its benchmark list. These confirm that there are no substantial performance improvements for a given clock speed. The gain is lower power consumption such as having a 37W Haswell CPU running as fast as a 45W Ivy Bridge CPU (or 28W instead of 35W). This will leave a bit more power for the separate GPU.

John

 

Hi, im considering to buy Samsung 770Z5E .
Are there any major common issues with this version?
How´s the heating while playing games for multiple hours?
Built quality?
Hinges?

 

Hi guys! I need your help,

I've just replaced HDD with SSD and going to make a fresh Windows 8 install. I've downloaded ISO from MSDN and it asked me for CD-KEY during the installation. But there is no CD-KEY sticker underneath!
Any suggestions how I can do a fresh install and use my factory CD-KEY?

Thank you in advance!

 

Anyone know when this notebook is released in the United States?

 

I just got my Ativ Book 8 and its really nice...

I'm kinda confused why my old Vaio F has a higher Processor Rating of 7.1 ( Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q740 @ 1.73GHz) than my new Ativ 8 (Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3635QM CPU @2.4GHz) that only got 6.3?? Its Memory also edged out my ATIV (7.4 vs 7.1)

 

Probably power saving features. Go into power options, change to higher performance, then go into advanced power options, change minimum cpu power state to 100% and rerun. You should get at least 7.4

PS - Change it back when finished.

Edit - Actually, just make sure it's on high performance. That along should get you a better score.

 

Did you download Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro?

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

After having my Chronos for nearly 2 months I've noticed my first real problem. Sitting in an area where I have reflection on the screen has shown up a small circular "fold", it like of looks like a small melt - sounds bizarre I know. If im not in an area that causes screen reflection then I can't see it which is why it has only shown up now! Has anyone else notice this screen issue. Mine is showing up in the upper left area of the display, it's behind the glass.

 

can u take picture of it?

 

Windows 8. I've called Samsung support and they told that if HDD was replaced there is no way to install genuine Windows 8. Only to buy a new copy. Because Windows 8 was linked to this HDD. Is it true? Any chance to got a such version from MSDN or web? Because old HDD with the distribute is no longer available for me.

Thank you!

 

That's not true. The key is in the BIOS. So it should be activated for you regardless of the hdd installed

 

Thanks for the reply jocelyn84...

I followed what you taught me... To change the power option to high performance then re-run the assessment. Sad to say nothing has changed and it still at 6.3. Did I miss anything?? The one I have is the NP870Z5E.

 

I'm not sure why that would happen, I doubt that it's because of Silent Mode as WEI changes the profile to High Performance when running the tests. It's not a problem with the processor, as I'm scoring 7.8 (with 2 x 4GB ram). Try running Task Manager, and under performance check the clock speed of your processor.

I'm not sure what you're seeing, could you possibly upload a picture? I've had the laptop for over 2 months and have looked at the screen under sunlight, but didn't notice any of these 'circular folds'. Due you think it might be because of the heat dissipated up on to the screen from the vents?

 

I've bought 9 Samsung ATIV 8 books for my colleagues, and asked the webshop to install a Samsung SSD PRO 256GB instead of the usual 1TB Sata. What I didn't anticipate was that the webshop would do exactly that. ea just replace the discs, nothing else.

After trying different methods mentioned in this treads, I finally found a way that worked flawless for us, but quick as well:

Placed one 1TB SATA disc back in the notebook, booted with F4 into the recovery menu.

I bought a Philips 64GB USB 3.0 memory stick and placed that in the powered USB 3.0 port on the left side.

Chose the option factory reset, where you get the option to make a backup of the factory settings to an external device. Selected the USB drive and waited 7 minutes.

(First i tried only this, but after booting on a different notebook from the USB it couldn't find a factory reset image).

So I also made a backup from within the recovery menu and placed the backup on the USB 3.0 drive (this is one of the options in the backup menu).

This took another 12 minutes (for about 32GB of data). and with this new stick, I easily installed all the notebooks. these notebooks al had a 256GB Samsung Pro harddisk, when booted from the USB 3.0 stick it asked how big the new C-drive should be (and you have an option to make an extra data partition as well if you want this). Since the target drive is smaller than the original drive, it suggested a C-partition of about 213GB (becaus of the other aditional system partitions it would create).

Than I pressed start, and with 100megabyte per second it installed the notebooks. In less than 6 minutes per notebook I've got a completely functioning Windows 8 Pro (incl all Samsung drivers and applications) and also the special Samsung partitions with a working F4 function!

The 1TB drive I don't need anymore. (to be sure I will keep the USB 3.0 drive handy, but I don't think I will need it anymore. The 1TB disks will go on ebay, this saves us a few quid).

 

thanks for your reply pickypurchaser...

I followed what you said and it and says the speed is at 1.15GHz (max speed is 2.4GHz)... Is that ok??

 

@gnbspop & PickyPurchaser: In fact Silent Mode ALSO limits the CPU to a low speed. I originally thought it ONLY worked by switching to the Power Saver profile (which would be changed to High Performance during WEI as per PickyPurchaser's response), but John pointed out that it also physically limits CPU speed -- which my own tests have since confirmed.

So I would check in Settings whether Silent Mode is unintentionally turned on.

 

As alfling and pranktank already pointed out, a clean install of Win8 should automatically pick up the key from BIOS -- ASSUMING you are installing a version of Win8 matching the one originally delivered with the PC (Pro vs Non-pro). I would assume it also has to be the same language version, although I do not know that.

 

Welcome to the forum, 4Lph4Num3r1c. And thank you for sharing your experience. Great job there.

I took the liberty of moving your post from the thread where you originally posted it ( here) to this thread, which is the proper Owners Lounge for your model. It will benefit more people here and you are much more likely to get some response and feedback, since your approach is already discussed here.

Again, welcome to the forum.

 

IT WORKED!!! Its at 7.8!! Wow... Thanks so much guys.


"Simplest solutions are always the best..." Thanks again!

 

What about Eco mode??? It's always on on my laptop but I'm not sure if it's limiting any resource..

 

Hello
I recently acquired a Chronos NP780Z5E.

For those who have the same model, how hot does your laptop get while gaming?

I've been trying some MMOs out and I think mine gets ridiculously hot along that horizontal strip that holds the power button and power source lights. I don't know if it's supposed to get that hot or if I'm just not used to the metal frame.
...Or if I messed up some where along the way.

The games are set to the highest performance setting through the switchable graphics and silent mode is off.

 

Good question. As far as I can tell, Eco Mode does the same as Silent Mode (capping the CPU at a low speed and switching to the Power Saver profile) PLUS is also disables the radios (Bluetooth and WiFi -- configurable). At least that's how it behaves on my older NP700Z3A.

 

Hi congratulations on your wonderful purchase.

Have you checked whether you have proper airflow? Lifting the back of the laptop can help a lot. Have you monitored your CPU and GPU temperatures, if so, what were they?

It's normal that that part gets hotter than the rest of the laptop since that's exactly where the heatsink is located and all the heat is dissipated. On my laptop it gets warm, but not hot.

 

So... I've got a 770Z7E with an 8870m and it's been great except for when playing really demanding games like BF3. I get a pretty good 45 fps on 1080p with a mix of medium and ultra settings, but the game dips to the 23 fps range for maybe 30 seconds every minute or so. Would this be the throttling problem I've been hearing about? Is there a fix? I've checked my temps and the card reaches a maximum of 88C, which doesn't seem unreasonable...

 

Thanks! I sent my brother to hunt me down a good laptop to replace my old desktop & laptop haha he found a good one

My CPU temp gets up to the 75-80C range and has not exceeded that.
As for GPU, I cant find a program that supports the 8770M card lol

Thanks for the information!

My laptop sits on a wooden desk with its lid near a wall when its open, does that have anything to do with it?

How can I check if I have good airflow and how can I improve it?

 

Well I only play LoL right now but that strip you talk about gets really really hot, but I've monitored temperatures with HWinfo and they are acceptable I guess, if I remember correctly they never exceed 80°C (neither CPU nor GPU). I have a cooling mat and it does help somewhat with internal temperatures, although it still gets quite hot on the outside.

Now, something you have to take into account is that I live in a really warm-hot area. Lately room temperatures are between 25-30°C, so yeah, that probably has a lot to do with how hot it gets...

 

bawww, GPUZ is supposed to support the 8870M as of v.0.6.9...I've had the ativ book 8 - 870Z5E and neither that version nor the most recent supported it. in fact, when trying to run the soft, it would just freeze in the first screen....as for cpuz, pc wizard, hwinfo 64 neither detected my 8870 although it ran properly (crysis 3 lol) and was detected in dev manager.
the only soft that detected my card was msi afterburner, but since I wasn't interested in oc, I preferred that gpuz would give me the temps, clocks etc...

wooden desk is ok, near the wall not so ok lol. the hot air is probably being sucked back in

on a side note, when I played crysis 3, even though lifting the laptop a bit on a glass table with no obstructions in the rear, that area near the screen where the heat sinks are, got really hot anyway - haven't noticed throttling, so probably the own chassis was helping a bit

 

Hi,
I am starting to have serious problems with my np770z5e : It is the third times that I found it waking up by itself ! I stopped it with stop button in win 8, after putting it in a sleeve bag and taking it away, when I go to take it out again, I find it really hot, with the fan spinning at maximum. Screen and led are all off. If I hit the power button, led goes on but nothing happens. I need to press power button for 5s to stop it. Then it reboot normally. Battery was drained in about 2 hours.

That occured to me after upgrading with a sandisk SSD. This is a fresh windows 8 install from windows iso with all the drivers from sw update.
Any help with this is welcomed.

 

In order to have HW Info detect your dedicated card, you must first launch a demanding app that will activate it, and then run HW info itself. It will detect the VGA and show its details (temps etc)

Btw: how was crisis 3 going? I'm having about 40 FPS on crysis 2 at 1920x1080, with details set to "very high". I was hoping to be able to play the third episode but I don't want to be below 40-50 fps..


Also, I'm curious to see what they will present today at samsung's event in London. I'm thinking of selling my series 7 to buy the ativ book 8 if they include haswell and other interesting features.. This laptop's awesome, but if haswell makes a lot of difference in performance and battery life, I'm pretty sure I'll end up changing it to the updated one

 

hi obyboby,

Hmm, guess I didn't tried that I don't ha ve the laptop anymore, so (for now) can't retry what you advised.
As to crysis 3, don't recall what settings I used exactly, but it wasn't playable with more than just one or two options at max...I remember, setting shadows to low, aa, sync etc to the minimum possible, and then those "pretty" settings like scenarios etc to medium or high. I do remember that playing at fHD or 1366*768 didn't gave as much of a difference as tinkering with the settings.
Was playable, but indeed crysis is one of those games not really meant to be played on a lappie.....having said that, I must recognize that for a laptop this thin, I was amazed on what it could handle though

 

So London event comes and goes and still no word when the Ativ Book 8 (Haswell or not) will be available in the US. Samsung is trying real hard to push us to another vendor.

 

I have a question about the 8770m version that samsung offers in the US. It says 1 GB VRAM but doesn't specify whether its gddr5 or gddr3 anywhere, does that mean I should assume its gddr3? And does anybody have benchmarks for the 8770m because I can't find anything on the 8770m that actually shows how strong it is. I know its supposed to be around the 650m but there have been no benchmarks released to prove that as of yet.

sigh...if only Samsung gave US the 8870m T-T

 

Pretty annoying indeed. I need a new laptop for college and was counting on this event to announce a Haswell update for this machine (especially considering they posted this screenshot on their Facebook page a while back). The current version is certainly no slouch, but I want a machine that's as future-proof as possible. A newer GPU would be nice too, but since I was already looking into a laptop with a GT 650m, I'm probably just getting greedy.

Interestingly, though, I noticed that neither the Series 7 Chronos nor the ATIV Book 8 are listed on Samsung's US Store right now. Maybe they'll do a quiet release on their site like Lenovo did with the Y510p. After all, high-resolution ultrabooks, dual-OS convertibles, and crazy phone-cameras likely drum up more attention for a big event like their Premiere than a simple refresh of a 15-inch laptop.

Here's hoping.

 

Guys, look.

There seems to be some issue as to whether that's an 8770M or an 8870M (initially listed as 8870M, specs tabs show 8770M). Hopefully this is the (quiet) US release of the 8870M.
Still on Ivy Bridge, tho :<

Edit:
As of posting this, it seems Samsung has revamped the entire "laptop section" of the site. The new site (I think it's new) is really sloppy, however. It seems the old site and the new site coincide quite a bit (going to Series 7 Gamer redirects you to the old "laptops" section, and the Ativ Book 7 page is a black hole), and all the info on the new site seems to have been C+P'd from the old one. The features section of the Ativ Book 8 includes a black Ativ Book, but the specs page only lists the grey color, along with the aforementioned flip-flopping between 8870M and 8770M. The "shop" button also flat out doesn't function.

 

I'm going to install latest Intel 4000 graphics driver from Intel's website. And latest ATI driver 13.6 beta from ATI's website. Will switchable graphics work correctly?
Or I should use only drivers from SW Update (but seems that those drivers are outdated). Thank you!

 

The site is updated compared to yesterday, but yes the Ativ Book 8 page is a mess. Some parts of it says 8870 some say 8770. It seems to be a mix of last years Series 7 Chronos and this years. So which is true? Does the US Ativ Book 8 have 1 or 2GB of video memory and what is the GPU?

 

Ahhh okay. It is expected heat then lol
Other than the cooling mat, do you ever get concerned with the heat or stick a fan towards that front strip?
Im not certain if I should be concerned or not :\ It does worry me and I certainly don't want the laptop to get fried.

Ouch that is warm. Im luckily in an area that hangs around 20C.

Out of those I did try cpuz & hwinfo.
Ill definitely give gpuz & msi afterburner a try and see if their claims pan out.

Good to hear the wood desk is ok. I'll pull my laptop forward away from the wall when I play games to help it a bit.

Assuming the card temps and % cpu utilization is ok , In your opinion I shouldn't be too concerned about the heat at the front strip?

Ill have to try this again

Im not sure, but It should switch fine
You can always double check by right clicking on the desktop >> configure switchable graphics and set the program to the highest setting to use the ATI card.

 

Hi guys

Again many thanks for all the help provided by this thread.

I've just had to, for one reason and another, do a restore to Samsung factory settings. I've been re-installing the various updates advised by this thread, inlcuding the ATI 13.5 b3 drivers.

I've run the Windows Experience Index and I get the following scores:

CPU 7.8
RAM 7.8
Desktop graphics 3.5
Gaming graphics 7.2
HDD 6.0

I can't understand why the desktop graphics score is so low. Everything else is exactly as I was seeing it before the restore.

I'd appreciate any help you guys can give. The low Desktop Graphics score does concern me.

Kind regards

Acavus


EDIT: Desktops graphics were previously at 6.9

 

Hi,
So I've been lurking around this thread and the other intro thread for a couple of months now, trying to decide if I wanted to finally get this laptop. After yesterday's lack of an Ativ 8 haswell refresh, I decided to pull the trigger and go for the best buy Series 7 Chronos. Apparently, it got discontinued today, so I couldn't get one shipped to the store. However, their system showed a couple of Ativ 8's at a different store, which surprised me because I wasn't even aware they launched in the US. So I went to the other store, and sure enough they had one in stock, ash black model shown on the box, contrary to what's reported on their site.

I take it home, and pull it out of the box, but to my surprise it's a silver model. No chronos branding though, so I feel like it's a silver Ativ. Are there any differences between the Chronos and the Ativ besides color?

Model number: NP880Z5E-X01UB

Thanks

 

It's unclear at the moment, because of conflicting information available on their website. One thing we think might have changed is the GPU. Could you check on your model and see if it has an 8870M or an 8770M?

Edit:

Just chatted with a rep online. They told me that the Ativ Book 8 has the 8770M. I'm going to still hold out hope, though, in case the rep got the wrong information!

 

I have a NP780Z5E-S01UB and when installing linux ,I opted to encrypt the os. This ended formating then entire disk, including all of the hidden recovery partitions. I have a vanilla clean install of win 8 now, but I would like to go back. Does anyone have a default recovery file they could place in drop box or drive? Thank you in advance!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

Can you check whether you have 4 GB RAM soldered + 4 GB slot, or 8 GB soldered + free slot?

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