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

So I just got an ATIV Book 8 yesterday for college, and have seen basically everywhere that swapping out for an SSD is a necessity. My question is, how is 256GB enough for most people? I know for a fact that with all of my data ill be really pushing 256. Do you all keep most of your data somewhere else or what?

Also, is getting a smaller, maybe 32 GB or so, SSD to put Windows on an option? I'm fairly noobish when it comes to computer hardware so I wasn't sure if 2 drives was an option in this laptop.

 

Thanks damo, you've been a massive help to me with this laptop!

Done all that and so far, so good. Give it a week to see what it's like and hopefully I'll remember to report back. Fingers crossed!

 

256GB is enough for most peoples' day-to-day needs. You can put the internal HDD from your Book 8 into an external enclosure (preferably USB 3.0) and use it for bulk storage and backups. Do not reformat the disc so, if you encounter a problem with your Book 8 you can put the HDD back in knowing that it will boot.

The 2012 Series 7 included an optical drive which could be replaced by the HDD in a caddy. However, the 2013 model does not include an optical drive.

John

 

Alright so let me get this straight (sorry for my slowness, very new to this hardware stuff) I would remove the HDD and put it in a case basically turning it into an external hard drive. I'm assuming they sell these enclosures specifically for this purpose? I would then install the new SSD into the laptop and have to reinstall Windows. Very noobish question I'm assuming has a simple answer, but would I need to buy a whole new copy of Windows or what?

 

There's a big range of enclosures such as this.

Samsung's Recovery Solution 6 lets you make a bootable flash drive (you need 32GB size) which you can use to install Windows on you new SSD.

I'll leave others with first-hand experience of this upgrade to give further advice but the difficult part of the process is getting the bottom off your computer.

John

 

Thank you for the advice! I tried running 3D Mark but I keep getting an unknown error. I'll try another program and let you know what the results are.

 

No, your license is stored somewhere in the BIOS. When you install a copy of Windows 8, if it is the same version you got with the laptop (Win 8 or Win 8 Pro), it will read your license in the BIOS and activate your Windows, no matter whether you install using Samsung Recovery, or a Windows DVD or bootable USB stick


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Which version of 3D Mark did you try? 09 and 11 definitely normally work, I ran them both on mine in the early days of ownership. There's a massive difference in the performance, visibly and in the scores with both of these tools, with/without switched graphics.

If you're not able to run these, then it's possible you've got a corrupt driver or windows installation.

 

I did what John Ratsey has recommended to you. A slim portable enclosure, using the drive that came with the machine, which I swapped out for a 256gb SSD - total storage, around 1.25tb, with a little bit lost to the recovery software. I've actually deleted the Windows install from the main partition of the original drive, because I figured that I had several copies of the recovery partition useable (old drive, new drive, USB stick) was enough protection to ensure I could rebuild the laptop.

Just to be clear, this whole process IS really easy, there's a good guide on the first post of this thread explaining how to do it. Just make sure to follow the instructions carefully and you should be fine. It's well worth the upgrade.

 

Hello! Just bought the Best Buy model ATIV Book 8 and I'm loving it. I am, however, having a frustrating problem. During games of League of Legends, my screen will randomly freeze for about 10 seconds, then the screen goes black and I briefly see some sort of Windows-8-looking overlay, and then the desktop appears and I can click back into the game. I've tried everything I can to make sure League uses the dedicated gpu, such as setting the League .exe to maximum performance in the switchable graphics app, and turning on the "High Performance" power management profile, and I still can't fix the problem. What's odd though is that the freezes usually only happen at the beginning of a game where I get ~70 fps, but I don't see any freezes in late games and my fps is ~20. Can anyone think of what the problem might be?

Edit: I also seem to be having an occasional issue with the laptop not charging when plugged in. I currently having the power cable all the way in, and yet when I hover my mouse over the battery icon of my taskbar, it says "XY% available (plugged in, not charging)". Perhaps this could be the issue?

 

Does this seem like a normal CrystalDiskMark score? I ran this after restarting my computer and before opening any other programs.

 

Don't know if this is the issue and can't really help with your problem since I don't get that problem sorry but i do also occasionally get the plugged in not charging thing which would almost seem like it's some sort of BLE although we have no control over it..does this happen to anyone else? my gaming experience on this laptop has been alright i was expecting better but maybe it's because the driver for the gpu isn't updated, only problems i've encountered is that sometimes it freezes during any game for like a split second oh and the heat too can't really complain though since it's really slim.

 

?

Handschriftlich von meinem Note 2 gesendet

 

Just uninstall Intellimemory. I had the same problem when I first got my laptop, and purging my computer of Intellimemory fixed the problem.

 

Would it be helpful if I posted a new thread detailing how to upgrade the standard HDD to a different HDD/SSD? I know that the process for me was very complicated and I could never find a unified explanation of the entire process. I ended up spending more time and money than I needed to trying to get it working and I'm sure that there are others out there who want to upgrade. Just to clarify, I'm talking about backing up the entire system as well as installing samsung recovery on the new hard drive.

Also, have people worked out the intellimemory/switchable graphics issues? What drivers are best for the 8770m?

 

I also play LoL on the BB chronos model and have never experienced bugs like that, I usually get between 40-60 fps and I set the cap to 60fps. Maybe try installing the beta drivers and see if it helps (I'm still on 13.5b1 I think)

I wouldn't really call it a bug unless in your case it lasts for a lot after boot, in my case it goes away after about 5 minutes.

 

Already uninstalled it about 2 months ago, but didn't solve the Problem

Handschriftlich von meinem Note 2 gesendet

 

1. The Processes Tab in Windows 8 Task Manager shows the disk activity. Did you look there for the culprit?

2. Try installing Intel Rapid Storage Tehnology (or uninstalling it if already installed).

John

 

So basically I have a 2013 Series 7 Chronos, but just because it doesn't have the Ativ name (and its basically the same thing), Samsung didn't push the sidesync to it. Very unfair. I found a way to get it anyway.


1.Open SW update and choose "find model"

2.Choose a new model, the Ativ 8 or 9.
3.Choose Windows 8

4.Choose sidesync, download it and install. Newer updates will be pushed from SW updates.

5.Working great with my Note II

 

Looks about right for the standard HDD shipped with these laptops. Using intellimemory is your best bet to improving load times of software, if you can't get an SSD installed, but note that intellimemory will not make any difference to these disk benchmarks as it is designed to optimise the software and functions you use the most.

 

By beta drivers do you mean Catalyst Control Center? When I open "Devices" and check the driver version of the Radeon GPU, it says its 9.3.5.0. I don't know which version of Catalyst I have.
Also, I tried LoL in windowed mode, and when the blackscreen happened, a box popped up from the toolbar saying my display driver has crashed.

Ok thanks. I will be installing an SSD and popping the 1TB in an external case, but I have to find out first whether swapping hard drives would void a warranty I'll be buying from my university.
Speaking of hard drives, should I bother getting a USB 3.0 external case since the max data transfer rate of 2.0 is faster than the read/write of the 1TB drive?

 

It's a good idea, but there's a fairly comprehensive guide in the first post of this thread, so i suspect that just adding another thread will be confusing and yet another place for people to start posting and then hunting for information (its bad enough with the two or three already in progress on he Samsung forums for these machines).

If you want to write some instructions and post that here, then it's possible/probable that pranktank, who opened this thread would add it to the first post if you add useful information beyond what's already available.

Unless the Mods want to advise otherwise?

 

I can't help you right now with the drivers, as I'm not at my machine, but as far as the HDD goes, you may TECHNICALLY void the warranty, but there are no tamper seals that you can damage. So provided you're careful, you can swap the HDD back in if there are any faults with the laptop (other than the SSD, obviously).

I would bother with USB3, USB2 is actually slower than your HDD (USB2 is a max of about 30-35MB/s throughput - I suspect you may be getting MB/s and MBit/s confused!), and USB3 makes a big difference (400MB/s throughput)- it's also more future proof, and virtually no different in cost. Plus dont forget that USB3 is backward compatible, so you can still use it in USB2 ports, should you need to.

 

This forum is all about sharing information, and I certainly want to encourage thatoneguy -- and indeed any member -- to share whatever information and experience they have. We can never assume that there is nothing new to be discovered.

And I generally agree with damouk that this is the right thread for it.

That said, writing and testing comprehensive guides takes a lot of time (I know that from personal experience) and I wouldn't want you to discover afterwards that you spent hours writing what was already common knowledge.

Do note that in addition to black83's steps, which are copied in the opening post, there are numerous other discussions about this procedure, in this and other threads -- including discussion of the two different approaches known to preserve a working Recovery on the new disk: (i) Bootable factory Image backup to a 32GB USB stick, and (ii) Disk Copy to the new disk in an external USB enclosure. I know that I have personally written dozens of posts about these topics, and many others have as well.

But if you want to take a stab at writing a truly comprehensive guide, I think that would be great. And in that case a new thread might be in order -- particularly if the guide covers more than just a single model.

So please, don't hold back!

Oh, and welcome to NBR

 

D'oh! I did get MB and Mb confused. Got any external enclosures you would recommend? I know there was a Protronix posted earlier.

 

I've been waiting for this e-SATA/USB3 docking station to come down to $25 where it belongs - it's almost there.

http://www.amazon.com/Uspeed-External-Docking-Station-Chipset/dp/B00BQ52TSY/

It allows you to use any 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA drives you may have lying around (or get in the future).

But if you're looking for an elegant, portable enclosure, then off course this isn't it

 

Okay so I was playing a game (Awesomenauts) on my keyboard. It required you to use WASD to move, the mouse (or touchpad is this case) to aim, and left click to shoot. My pointer was being very jittery when I was in motion in the game (using WASD.) Whenever I would press a key, my pointer would instantly stop, then move again (if I was trying to move it) for just an instant before it went back to frozen. While I'm in motion, the only time I can get a response from the touchpad is when I switch keys, and even then I just get the instant of motion like before. I also don't get any response from my mouse click when I'm using WASD. Anyone have any ideas why?

EDIT: Tried Minecraft and a very similar thing happened. I could get it to work while I was pushing a key sometimes, but sometimes it would lock up like in Awesomenauts.

EDIT2: So I'm stupid and forgot to try it outside of a game. Same exact thing every time. Unresponsive if I'm holding down a key, responsive for a millisecond when I switch keys.

EDIT 3: SOLVED. This was probably a very common problem that I was making more complicated than it actually was. To fix touchpad not working while typing...

1. Control Panel
2. Touchpad
3. Advance
4. Bring the "Palm Tracking" slider down all the way.
5. Close Touchpad settings

And it was as easy as that. Sorry for this big post for such a simple problem.

 

Very interesting.

People normally have to do a registry hack as discussed in this thread to change the DisableWhenTypeEnable entry.

John

 

I am having the jumpy, intermittent touchpad problem on my new NP770Z5E. At least once per minute the cursor will freeze and after a short while will move again.

I have done all SW Updates and Windows Updates. But same issue.

I have seen some suggesting removal of the touchpad driver and either installing a new one or reinstalling the old one.

Is that what I need to try? If so, how do I do this? (I thought I was very computer literate until I arrived on Windows 8)

 

When doing the F4 Factory Image to the USB flash drive, does it matter if the flash drive is formated as FAT32 or NTFS?

EDIT: I did a factory image on 2 flash drives. I formatted one FAT32, and the other one NTFS prior to doing the image. Both drives completed the image process. However, in imaging to the NTFS drive, the Recovery program said that it needed to be formatted prior to proceeding, and offered to do that. I checked the structure on both drives after the process was complete, and both were formatted to FAT32.

Also, those that are having wifi problems with the intel 6235, I did, too. What worked for me was to go into Device Manager-Properties-Advanced, and change Roaming Agressiveness to "Lowest", Wireless Mode to "802.11 b/g", Transmit Power to "Highest", Preferred Band to "2.4GHz".

 

I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly the backup image is a single file, and it's 16+ GB. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, FAT32 can handle files only smaller than 4GB, so I'd say that you need to format it to NTFS.
It's also possible that the same recovery formats the USB stick automatically before starting the backup, and in this case it wouldn't matter what format you have.
Sorry for the not definitive answer, I don't own the laptop

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

FAT32 (usually the default for these devices) is fine, you do NOT need to format as NTFS (and may experience issues if you do). Just make sure you have a min 32GB USB stick.

EDIT: Just seen alfling's response, so got my Recovery USB drive to double-check - it's definitely FAT32 (sorry Alfling).

I wouldn't recommend changing the wifi properties you've mentioned (they're in the "Advanced" tab for a reason, and only power users really ought to change these settings). For most people, the latest drivers from SW Update seem to fix the wifi issues, if you're still having problems with the latest drivers after that update, follow my instructions here.

 

Got my Ativ Book 8 today. Love it so far, well everything besides the 5400RPM drive!!! my 840 pro is on the way

 

You'd think Samsung would get the hint and start fitting SSD's, nearly every user on here has, so far. Congratulations on a great machine that you've got there.

 

If Samsung fit the SSD themselves, they would charge much more than retail price and probably for slower SSDs. I think this way is better, both financially and as it gives the user the choice of SSD or HDD.

 

Ahhh all this SSD talk is making me jealous. I love everything about this laptop (ATIV 8) except for that hard drive. 256 GB just doesn't seem like enough and I don't have too much money to spend on it. Just with all my music, all my programs, and a couple games I'm using 180 GB. The only option I see for me is the 500 GB,$350 model, but it's not a pro. What's the difference between the 840 and the 840 pro?

 

You might have seen this mentioned before, but some users are opting for a relatively cheap 256GB and then a USB enclosure to re-use the original HDD - a cheap but reliable one of these can be got for about $10-$15 (£7-£12). It does mean having the external device, but how often do you really need ALL your data/media? I generally use the external for mass-storage, and the SSD for my software, what I'm working on now and a cut-down media library of my current listen-to music, but keep everything else on my external, and then only carry it with me if I think I might need it. Doing this you get about 1.25TB of storage, plus the benefits of SSD. And, FWIW, my SSD is still over half empty.

 

Well I've always kept everything I need on my internal drive, so the idea of keeping anything other than backup on an external seemed so foreign to me when I first saw everyone talking about it here. I'm just really paranoid that I'll get the 256 and then need more than that for one project or something. Like I'm about to be a freshman CS student, so I'm afraid I'll be working on some game or whatever I'm developing and need more than 256GB when I'm not near my external. I have a very vague and probably flawed view of how programs are developed so all of that probably sounded uninformed, but that's sorta the point. I never imagined not having all of my data on my internal drive so it sounded crazy to me at first to only have 256 GB, but now that I'm actually thinking about it it doesn't seem too crazy. Just incase I do decide I need 500 GB, is there a massive difference between the 840 and 840 pro?

 

The difference is withing the type of nand the SSD models use, the PRO uses MLC and the non-pro uses TLC, which is newer but also less reliable (in theory), as it's expected lifespan is much lower. The pro has a 5 year warranty however the non-pro has a 1 year warranty. While read speeds are relatively close between both models the write speeds are nearly doubled on the 256GB pro model as opposed to the 250GB non-pro model, also IOPS are slightly higher on the pro.

 

Thanks! So it sounds like the Pro is worth it. One last question for anyone who knows, is it worth it to wait for the Evo line to come out? I heard somewhere that the 1 TB Evo drive will cost $600 or something, but that just seems really cheap and I can't find that confirmed anywhere.

 

The Crucial M500 960GB also sells for $600 on crucial.com -- and even a bit less in some stores. So I think Samsung has to price the Evo in the same range, even if it has some performance edge.

 

Another good reason for keeping your data on a separate drive is the reliability of SSD, it's much more read-write limited than an HDD, probably good for several years, but I have had one fail and I wouldn't want to rely on them for storing my whole life's work!

Makes sense to me to have the power of SSD for day to day and the reliability of HDD for backup and mass storage.

 

If you are looking for a high capacity, relatively high performance SSD then yes. From what I've seen (and based on the price tag) the EVO will probably line up between the PRO and non-PRO versions. If you can't wait then a couple people have already mentioned the crucial M500 for the same price.

I just got done calibrating my laptop with my colormunki (yes, yes, I know I didn't wait for panel aging), here's the ICC V4 profile if anyone is interested, I turned Display Color in Quick Settings > Display to No Effect first. Calibration is performed on 100% brightness.
View attachment Display 1_Native_V4_AUG05.zip <-- ~100 backlight hours
View attachment Display 1_Native_V4.zip <-- This one is good for new panels.

Edit: Whenever I re-calibrate my display to compensate for drift I will update this post. All profiles will be ICC V4 unless otherwise requested as V2.

 

Be a bit careful, I'm not sure on the specs of the Evo or M500, but the Samsung Chronos 7/ATIV 8 will only accept an 8mm or thinner drive, such as the samsung 840/pro. Most hybrid (and a lot of SSD) drives are thicker at around 9.5mm.

 

Thank you for pointing that out. I wasn't recommending the Crucial -- I haven't tried it myself -- merely pointing out about $600 being the price range where Samsung has to sell the Evo 1TB.

 

Samsung unveils 1TB 840 Evo solid-state drive | Reviews - Peripherals - CNET Reviews

It looks like the Evo will fit, but will it be as good as the Pro? My knowledge on SSDs doesn't extend beyond what's been said in this thread, but from what I'm reading the Evo is consumer grade while the Pro is pro grade. Not really sure what that means, though.

 

Just reading up on it myself, and you beat me to it, at 7mm it should fit fine. Looks like it will initially retail for around $760, or £500 - probably plus sales tax/VAT where applicable, as they usually quote it that way initially to make it sound cheaper/attract businesses.

Not sure I'd trust my data fully to an SSD, yet, at least without lots of backing up, but i bet a 1TB SSD will be the norm in 12 months or so!

 

Anyone have a guide to install linux distributions in this model? I'm looking to install Backtrack 4 or 5? anyone knows if I can inject data traffic with the antenna on board? Thanks

 

Hey guys, just ran my Performance Information Tools and am getting a very low score for my graphics. Not quite sure why this would be? I've set Maximum Performance in Switchable Graphics and High Performance for Power Plan. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hey guys. I installed GPU-Z to watch my GPU temps while running a graphics-intensive application, and for that application I installed Heaven Benchmark because 3D Mark 2013 wouldn't recognize my GPU. I ran Heaven in windowed 1600x900 mode and had GPU-Z open on top. When I ran the benchmark, the gpu clocks and temp intitially didn't change, but eventually the clocks went to max (core 825, memory 1125) and the temp began to rise. The Windows toolbar gave me the "Display driver has crashed" message four times, then the screen went black and the sound seemed to freeze. I had to force power down the computer since it was unresponsive. Tomorrow I'll be going to Best Buy to try the same test on their floor model. In the mean time, I would like to try a different graphics driver in the hopes it would be more stable. Where can I find the previous graphics driver for the Radeon card? And how do I go about installing it over my current driver?