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

Good morning guys! I noticed I'm having a problem with my webcam: it's not a big deal actually, but it's kind of annoying...I guess I always had this problem but I noticed it just now because I'm using a lot of Skype in this period. Basically, when I'm making a call I can see that my webcam shuts off every 30 seconds (more or less) for a very short time (maybe half a second) and then it turns on again automatically. The result is that people who I'm talking to see a black screen every 30 seconds, and that is the annoying part...
I have the stock drivers, and they have never been updated if I remember correctly (that's why I think I've always had the problem). My Windows Update and SWUpdate don't show any available update, and i'm running the stock Windows 8 (no clean install).
What do you think can be the reason?

 

Hey Guys, just got done installing a Samsung SSD EVO and am looking for the best/compatible graphic drivers to use for Windows 8. I tried downloading 13.9 but the link in the OP reroutes me to 13.11 beta 2.

 

Is there a fix for 2 Seconds Black Screen after Log-In?

And my mousepad is still squeak, I want to spray Silicon Spray in it.

 

13.11 beta 1 is great !

 

I dont think thats the case at all. I think its more the fact that this 8.1 update is still in large part being ignored by samsung. we are just stuck in the 'no news' void. They still do not have compatible drivers for the current operating system that these laptops are built for. its completely unacceptable IMO. even though this thread isnt getting as much activity, it doesnt mean its solved. ignoring a problem does not make it go away, and you should not give samsung a pass here. the lack of support is pretty baffling to me honestly.

 

I agree. I don't have much hope for updated graphics drivers for 8.1 when they never released proper graphics drivers for basic 8.0

I have talked with Samsung tech support based in the US, and they told me that they are aware of the lack of graphics drivers but they also can't say when or if they will ever be updated. They suggested I talk with 'executive customer support,' but the two people I talked to did not have a good understanding of computers at all. They just told me that drivers are a software issue, and they don't warrant or guarantee software.

 

'IF'? 'if' they will be updated? thats infuriating. These laptops are still brand new, and they are talking as if there is a possibility drivers will not be updated? I find that hard to believe, but the fact that their representatives are talking like this is unnerving to say the least

 

Hey guys, has anyone successfully got OS X Mavericks running on the laptop yet? I've had 2 attempts in the past, both failed miserably. Best I could do is get it to boot in safe mode, but FakeSMC has issues on normal boot.

 

I recommend this one too.

 

For those who are saying that the graphics switching isn't working, can try disconnecting and connecting the power connector to your laptop while the application is running. Just pull it out and plug it back in again.

I noticed that certain applications aren't using the AMD GPU despite me having set the application to performance mode in the Catalyst Center, and accidentally found this workaround that worked on all 3 machines I have in my store.

Let me know does it work for you guys.

Cheers.

 

Unfortunately the 13.11 Beta 1 drivers are removed from AMD site, do you have alternative downloads?

 

Couldn't find one on the AMD site, but found this one from a reputable site.

Download AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 1 | techPowerUp

The size is 236.1 MB, if somebody with the version from AMD can confirm this.

 

I have mobility 13.11beta v1 x64(directly downloaded from amd) and mine size is exactly 235 MB

 

Hi, great thread

Just received the NP780 and it works great

Question, If I need to install new drivers, how can I save the old drivers in case
I need to restore them. Also how do I reinstall them if needed. Other than that
great laptop.

Ucario

 

First of all hi to everyone and a big thank you for all the useful information.

I'm following this thread from page 1, as I have kept a close eye on this laptop for quite some time.
To be honest I was waiting till now for either a price reduction or a Haswell model and although the second hasn't arrived, I recently saw a crazy offer on the 870Z5E which is HIGHLY tempting (possible early Christmas present for me ).

However, since I first saw this laptop competition has some interesting offerings, namely the new Inspiron 7000 series with the 750M and a Haswell (ULV) i7, or Acer V7 (again 750M), among others (e.g. ASUS).
In my view the 870Z5E is the superior machine, BUT I'm heavily concerned about support mainly in the GPU drivers and all the issues reported after the Win 8.1 upgrade. It seems Samsung has given up support of this laptop and AMD haven't released a proper driver for a year. On the ohter side, Nvidia has more mature drivers and even the weaker 750M can now at some gaming benchmarks reach or even (rarely) surpass the superior 8870.

The questions to current users is the following: Are you happy with the stability/performance of the machine with the beta AMD drivers? What is the record 3dmark11 score for the machine and for which driver? Are you happy with the battery life after a couple of months of use? and finally, would you go for this machine again if you were buying now? Sorry for the amount of questions but I'm struggling between the Samsung and the Dell Inspiron, which are now at the same price both, both marginally under 1k (if it wasn't for the driver issues I would get the Samsung in a heartbeat, but...) Thanks in advance guys!

 

From my earlier problem of games randomly locking up the system, and it getting worse with crashes during cutscenes, i've reformatted the whole thing back to Windows 8 Pro. I have the standard SW Updated drivers from Samsung.

Now, I have the impression that the video drivers might be to blame. Before starting with a fresh OS, I did try the link to the AMD released drivers on post #1 here (which took me to a Beta set to download). After installing that, it no longer provided switchable graphics settings and Catalyst Control Panel said something like No options available. Device manager had an exclamation point over the 8870 in the list, driver not working properly.

What's the best driver to download then? I really don't want Beta, but I would like to try to get out from under the seemingly junk drivers from Samsung.

 

Knowing what I know now about Samsung's extremely poor driver support (especially w/ the GPU), I would not buy this computer over again. That doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it, and I really don't know what else is out there right now. Unsupported drivers may not be a big deal to you if you have the experience and time needed to deal with problems.

Also don't forget to include a new hard drive for this model when comparing the price to other computers. The stock hard drive is very, very slow, and you won't want to use if for longer than a few days. (I actually think something is wrong w/ the controllers because I've never had a hard drive perform so poorly.) An SSD or a hybrid drive will work fine. But again, it takes time and experience to be able to switch it out and format it correctly.

 

*Comment Removed*

 

I would purchase this computer again for the fact of the quality and performance alone. I don't use samsungs drivers for the GPU so that doesnt driver me, and from my experience with multiple brands (HP, ASUS, Apple, Samsung) the only ones I would repurhase are Apple and Samsung. Build quality is essentially even execpt the bottom panel of my samsung isnt metal. I actually like this more than my last notebook (MacBook)

 

This is such an epic thread I wish there was a dedicated forum that could be broken down into sections! Can anyone give me a link to a quality 120w power supply hopefully on Amazon prime? Only people I can find on here posting links are to some sketchy looking Chinese knockoff

Sent from my XT926 using Tapatalk

 

That's for desktop, I tried and it couldn't find any mobility drivers to install.

 

Are you able to upload it somewhere that we could download? I couldn't find any links to the mobility 13.11 beta 1...

 

You can use Samsung Recovery Solution to make a full backup of your system and you can use Samsung's SW Update to Save Setup files for the driver and software packages.

John

 

Thank you for the reply.
I don't have any problem using beta/unsupported drivers and I already consider adding a 500Gb Samsung Evo SSD right after the purchase. However, after my initial investment (in time) to get things working properly, I would expect a worry free operation. That's my main concern right now. Otherwise I will do the same upgrade (large SSD + clean install + a bit more memory maybe) to whatever laptop I'll buy.
By the way, since I skype a lot did anyone else have the 30sec blackout problem reported above?

 

I updated to window 8.1 today and sound is gone. I try to install drivers form SW but they dont do anything. i contact samsung, they told me that will release new sound drivers in 1 week or 2.
Am i the only 1 or anyone also faces the same issue after updating to window 8.1.

thnaks

 

Same here ...
Re-upload would be great

 

i havent had any sounds issues. sounds like we are all havign random issues, the consistent one being the GPU drivers. Sounds like they gave ou teh same token line about 1-2 weeks. they said the same thing almost a month ago

 

I jast saw my notebook has the full 8gb ram onboard so I can extend to 16GB - I'm so happy
Which module should I buy? normally two identical modules should be used but the bultin is very rare:

 

Anything that is 1600MHz DDR3 SODIMM should be OK.

The BIOS will figure out the optimum timings for best performance.

John

 

ok but I should check my CL timings first. Which seems to be impossible with linux. I try to install WIn8 on a usb3-hdd now -_-

 

I wouldn't spend time on that exercise unless it's a challenge you want to overcome. You would need to use a memory benchmark to detect the performance difference between CL9, 10 &11. If in doubt, look for the RAM with the lowest latency. The BIOS will compare the timings of the on-board RAM and the SODIMM and use the slowest.

John

 

Upgraded to 8.1. I have no sound problems. Video drivers were updated to the version 13.9, the WHQL version. Running smoothly so far. BTW, I have the Best Buy Chronos model.

 

I've done further testing and did an AutoHotkey script that switches power plan from Balanced to Power Saving and back to Balanced.

I used this script whenever I noticed the drop in FPS in my games which somehow is using the Intel graphics and immediately the FPS shoots up reflecting that it has switched to the AMD GPU.

So far it has been working well and from this I came to the conclusion that somehow the BIOS of our laptops are not switching the graphics properly.

My current laptop is a fresh installed Windows 8.1 OEM with NO Samsung drivers, software, recovery partition etc. Which ascertain my suspicion that the whole drama behind the GPU switching is down to the BIOS and not the drivers. Somehow along the line of BIOS upgrade, the switching broke...

 

To everyone desiring 13.11 beta v1 Here : https://app.box.com/s/4ri1k4ca1mtuaoq2gxklLet me know if it doesn't work
Hope i don't break site rules with this.
on a side note(for confirmation)
i have intel driver installed(from samsung 9.17.10.2875 right?)and i'm gonna install 13.9 whql,so in order to get gpu switching work i have to install samsung intel driver again.Is that correct?

 

Thanks for the link.

I believe you do not need to install the Intel graphics driver again after installing the AMD driver, do correct me if I'm wrong, because from my investigations. it seems that the graphics switching is broken by a BIOS update...

 

Why benchmarking? CPU-Z shows the clock timings.

 

My point is that the actual performance difference between CL9, CL10 and CL11 is minimal. It's also most likely to help with the Intel graphics, which isn't a major concern on a notebook with a separate GPU.

John

 

I propose that you go to Kingston websites and find there the memory module which is made just for your laptop model. It is a bit more expensive that so called general modules, but the selection is more safe.

 

LAPTOP FREEZING

I have 880Z5E-X01SE, bought 10th September. It has the original W8 which came with the laptop, no external AV, only basic drivers and updates from SWUpdate, some bloatware is removed, IntelliMemory is in use, automatic Microsoft Update is in use.

I did normal working (Photoshop) with my laptop on the external display and went for coffee. When I came back the computer was freezed. The display was same when I left half an hour earlier, it was not asleep. The mouse cursor could be moved and all I could see was that the Action Icon shows that maintenance is running. Nothing could be opened and even ctrl-alt-del did nothing. After two hours I forced the laptop to close by holding the power button long enough.

After the boot the automatic maintenance was marked as to be done later. I examined the laptop and found out that at the time of freezing the Microsoft Update "Intel driver update for Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235" failed (it is wlan driver). It was failed also one day before, but earlier I had no problems with the maintenance. Now it was among optional updates.

The sympthom is described in may places, for example Windows 8 freezes when Automatic Maintenance starts - Microsoft Community

Finally I started the automatic maintenance manually and continued my work with another computer. I folllowed the mainteneance in the task manager. The laptop was not freezed and all was ready in 80 minutes.

Automatic maintenance can be found also in Windows 7. I have used W7 in two computers since it was published and now I have W8 also in an old PC (since last year), and I have never before experienced computer freezing during the automatic maintenance.

 

I can't use the AMD card in linux (and I don't want to due to battery time).
But I see your point. However I just want the best possible setup even if the differences would be small.

What is the difference between general modules and normal modules with same values?

 

Thanks, I owe you one !

 

Apropos linux, radeons and battery life: kernel 3.11 with radeon.dpm=1 parameter should solve this particular problem. After update my R522 running Feodra 19 seem to do a bit better than under Win7.

Unfortunatelly I haven't found a way to get detailed mem specs on Linux. Only usefull info from lshw is clock and bus width.

 

1. Thanks for the clarification.

2. I'm 99% sure that there are no notebook-specific modules. The memory manufacturers just offer the appropriate modules from their general range. I would note that Samsung messed up the latest BIOS for my NP900X4C so it no longer works with my 1.35V Crucial RAM (it previously worked OK) so you might want to avoid 1.35V modules in case they also made the same mistake with the BIOS for your notebook.

John

 

about radeon: I turn it off via acpi which increases my battery time from 3h to 8-9h, I don't know what the kernel parameter does but the amd graphics card isn't detected at all in linux(lspci show's the intel card only)

about ram: that's why I need to boot to windows to get the CL info with cpu-z.

 

Hi
i recently bought a NP770Z5E, It had windows 8 on and was working flawlessy. I had to update video drivers because few games werent working with those onboard, and then i upgraded it to windows 8.1
i have no issue besides the occasionally freezing of the video and audio, while the computer keeps working in some ways (hd still blink). The only way to recover from that freeze is rebooting.
In some games i get also the GDXI error of the 8870m crashing, but then i don't have to reboot, i simply need to relaunch the game.

I'm using
Windows 8.1
ATI mobility drivers 13.11b1 drivers
latest Intel Drivers from intel site

That is the only problem i have.. no audio problem, no brightness problem, no wifi problem.
but having to restart the compuer many times while playing is really driving me mad.

anyone have any advice?

 

Guys, I'm still on w8 but checking new drivers under windows 8.1 section of sw update, I found newer version of drivers for 770z5e, video drivers and others... Did anyone try them? Are those long expected official Samsung driver for w8.1? And can I update to them before installing w8.1?

 

im on 8.1 and havent seen any new graphics drivers. just checked, nothing

 

What bios version could cause this
it would explain random high-performance assignment despite my choices in CCC
BTW i'm using win 8 not 8.1

 

The win 8.1 touchpad driver took away the ability to set 3 finger swipes and even when you ran it from the elan folder the settings wouldn't save. I ended up rolling back to the Win 8 driver which works perfectly. Can someone confirm that the new win 8.1 touchpad driver mentioned on SW updates behaves the way it should or should I stick with the old driver.

 

I did a full reformat and install of Windows 8.1 on one of my Chronos 7 and NOT installing any Samsung drivers and surprisingly it is working smooth like butter, albeit the graphics switching bug which currently I'm using a AutoHotkey script to toggle the Windows power plans which solves it...

And so far I've yet to encounter any black screen, games crashing, etc that I've experience on the two other Chronos 7 in my store...

Looks like I'll be sticking to the windows update drivers for now. =)