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

Good question. I'm sorry, I didn't test that before switching back to my Win8 installation (which is my daily driver; the LeeKM was on a test installation). But that is indeed a reason for me to stay with the old Samsung provided driver, which I've been using since upgrading to Win8 last February.

 

Hi Pranktank, thank you for all the extremely useful info you've posted over the past few months. I've lurked and gained a lot of valuable knowledge about my Chronos !

Did you by chance get your hands on the 13.11beta1 drivers you were referring to earlier? I also tried LeeKM's drivers and haven't been able to get switchable graphics running. A lot of applications don't switch over to the dedicated GPU at all. My specs are the exact same as yours, 8870M and all. I was using the stock Samsung drivers until now, and saw a lot of reports of performance increases -- getting my hands on the beta1 drivers would do wonders for me.

Thanks!
Eric

 

You're very welcome .

Sadly , no I haven't found a download yet.

Whenever I install leekm's drivers and rightclick the desktop, there's no switchable graphics option. Is it there on your machine?

AMD messed up. They not only suddenly dropped support for switchable graphics, they pulled off any older driver that did support it off the internet.

If anyone has a working 13.10 or 13.11 beta (not 9.2 or 9.4) install .exe PLEASE share it.

Thanks. The sw update drivers on windows 8 are still from november 2012. So far they're the only ones that work since I can't download anything before 13.11 beta 9.4.

 

AMD Catalyst 13.11 BETA1 (13.200.16.0 September 26): http://www.mysn.de/driver/aktuelle_Komponententreiber/AMD%20Grafikkartentreiber/amd_catalyst_13.11_mobility_betav1.exe

 

thank you but that download doesn't work. All these sites download from the AMD servers, on which the drivers are no longer

It can't be that no-one has that driver package on their PC.

 

Try the updated link above. If that does not work, I can upload the drivers.

 

thanks but those are not the mobility drivers. Yes that would be great.
In the depths of my hard drive I could find where AMD extracted the 13.10 mobility beta 1 driver package on my previous windows install. It works flawlessly! I could upload that one. What file sharing site do you recommend?

 

Mirrorcreator - Upload files to multiple hosts

 

Found the 13.11 beta 1 mobility drivers and a working link, check edited link from previous post: #3404

 

Don't do it. Save up for an SSD and you'll be much happier. If you check the reviews of the SSHD, they really offer very little in the way of a performance increase over a just plain drive. They only have something like 8GB of high-speed flash that they use to cache the drive access. Seagate may market them as having the performance of an SSD, but when you look at reviews that measure real performance you'll see that on access time, seek time, and throughput the SSHDs fall far short of a true SSD.

Going to the model that you mentioned would undoubtedly be faster than the stock 1TB drive, but most of that improvement would be due to the SSHDs being 7200 RPM drives instead of 5400 RPM (which is what the stock drive is).

 

Nice. What procedure did you use to upgrade? Was it from a stock image or clean install? Have you run some games and benchmarks to confirm everything works?

 

Hi, I've just noticed that my CPU keeps throttling while gaming. I mean, by using HWinfo, I see that the core0 frequecy keeps jumping from 3.2 GHz to 1.2 GHz. I'm worried this could be another issue caused by an erroneous application of the thermal compound.. How can I check that? I don't want to be opening the laptop to find out that the compound was ok...

Btw temps stay around 70 C!! They've never reached 75! That's why I'm puzzled.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Is this 1,2 Ghz happening on all cores or just switching around all the time? If it's the second it's the same behaviour my cpu shows and it's most likely power saving. Very few games can push four cores to 100%

 

Sorry, I wanted to ask you. In HWinfo the AMD graphic card is not showing up, is that normal? please help..

 

Thanks a lot. That download did work. Sadly, AMD seems to have dropped switchable graphics from 13.11. The most recent driver I get working like it sshould is 13.10 beta.

That is normal. Have you tried choosing "sensors only" upon starting the program?

 

When I use sensors only this is what I get



Are those value fine? Thanks a lot for replying

 

Has anyone tried the 8770m with battlefield 3 or 4 multiplayer? How does it hold up? Those are probably the most advanced games I want to play.

 

just tried to install AMD Catalyst 13.11 Mobility BetaV9.4 SG. Fix Driver with driver signiture staff off, but won't work either . Too bad, maybe we cannot install any more AMD drivers and we will have to wait until Windows 8.2 when Samsung will be pushed to refresh drivers?

 

Yes they are definitely fine .

I have a little bit more faith in it. Every single beta from the official launch of the 8xxxM series until 13.10 worked flawlessly, straight from AMD. Maybe 13.12 will support switchable graphics again.

 

Thanks a lot man! What is the best driver for the AMD card at the moment? I tried a beta from AMD but didn't have the switchable graphics and assuming that this meant that it wont switch to AMD GPU while playing games I went back on the SWUpdate drivers.

On another note do you reccommend upgrading to windows 8.1 driver-wise?

Thank you!

 

No problem! I recommend mobility 13.10 beta. It supports switchable graphics and is very stable and installs without any problems. I can't find a working download link though. I'll try to upload it myself as soon as possible (on my phone right now).


I haven't tried 8.1 yet so I'm not sure yet. Personally, I'm going to wait a little longer until someone reports he got his 8870m working like it should on a recent driver.

 

Hello everyone, I'm new at this forum. I received a NP780Z5E-T01UK today and I've been using it non-stop.

I decided to start from scratch and installed Windows 8.1 and use SWUpdate after to get all the drivers... worst decision ever, as you may know. Many problems arised, like no illuminated keyboards, many gestures disappeared, couldn't play any game...

I rolled back to a clean Windows 8 installation and now running SWUpdate, hopefully everything will go well.

Unfortunately I cannot read the whole thread (343 pages, wow), so I'd like to ask you how's the current situation now for 8.1. Is Samsung going to release something better at some point? Is there any way to solve the current issues with Windows 8.1? I have read that installing AMD beta drivers would solve the graphic issue. What are other known problems?

Sorry for being a newbie here and asking many questions, but I came here to get a summary of what is going on and try to solve it all together.

 

Hi guys, I have a NP770Z7E 17''.
I've been looking up in this thread how to downgrade windows 8,1 to windows 7 and I just need to know 1 more thing, do i need to diisable the secure boot, put it in UEFI, CS-MOD or Both??

Can someone help pls? thanks

 

You're welcome. A bit strange really as 13.11 beta 1 has switchable graphics on my side under Windows 8.1, but beta 2 onward is a no go. I agree and hope support comes back soon.

 

Is there any news of a haswell refresh or 8870m in the US?

 

My samsung settings (FN+F1 key) configuration keeps resetting after reboot. Anyone know how to fix this or update Settings?

 

Prank, can I know your BIOS version? Need to further confirm that the switchable graphics is broken due to BIOS.

Can I know your BIOS version as well? Thanks!

It might be due to unsupported version of the Samsung Settings your are using or it couldn't save the changes you've made in either the registry?

Just to add, my BIOS version is P05ABU.142.130905.SK using HWiNFO64.


Added the Intel AC 7260 to one of the Chronos 7 as well.

You should disable Secure Boot and set it to CSM.

I believe the only gripe with Windows 8.1 on this series of laptop is the AMD dynamic graphics switching or technically called Enduro.

Somehow along the line, I suspect that a BIOS version has broken some code for the dynamic graphics switching, thus the reason that certain models of the Chronos 7 or Ativ Book 8, model NP7xx or NP8xx, either AMD 8770 or 8870, each with their own BIOS versions has mixed results with different AMD driver revisions.

 

Thanks for answering. Well, I hope they fix it because 8.1 brings some nice features. BTW, two more questions:

a) Using Windows 8 (not 8.1), is it recommended to use the graphics drivers from SW Update, or would be better if I use the beta ones?

b) I saw that there are drivers for Windows 7 as well. I wouldn't mind going back to Windows 7 (because I prefer it), but I'd like to know if drivers are working well there.

As a side note, I think this laptop really rocks and I'm quite happy with it even with the drivers issue (which AFAIK it happens to other brands such as Lenovo).

 

I maybe need to try installing it again.

It's P05ABU

 

I've seen mention of the 'Battery Life Extender' software on this thread, but I can't for the life of me find it on my laptop (NP780Z5E-T01UK).

Can anyone tell me where I need to look to switch it on?

 

Strange, 13.11 beta 1 does not install entirely like it hould but swicable graphics definitely is there.

In the bios under advanced tab. (press F2 repeatedly when booting. You can also acces it in windows: fn+f1(samsung settings)>energy management>battery life extender

 

So I went and bought a 256GB SSD Samsung 840 PRO, I've been reading online about how to make the switch to SSD. Want I wanted to ask is that should I initialize the SSD as MBR or GDT on this particular laptop? I plan to clone the HDD using the EaseUS Todo Backup software as it does the alignment of the SSD properly I think

 

Hey, sorry I was out all day yesterday and hadn't seen any of the new messages. I do have the installer of 13.11b1 and it's working fine on Win8.1 with switchable graphics and everything (although I haven't played anything in a while so I'm not so sure ). My BIOS version is P05ABU.142.130905.SK. Did you manage to get the exe from somewhere else? I could try uploading it to the file sharing site someone else recommended, although my internet connection is very slow here so it might take a while.

BTW, I tried those drivers but I couldn't get them to work, it was as if they couldn't find the touchpad or something. I'm pretty sure it's my computer's fault though, because I haven't been able to install some other third-party drivers that I could use before, so I'm sticking with the ones from SWUpdate for now.

 

First try using the Copy option in Samsung Recovery Solution 6. It will also copy over the Samsung Recovery files without breaking the link to the recovery files.

If you don't want to do that then the general rule for Samsung notebooks is that if Windows 8 was pre-installed then use GPT, otherwise use MBR.

John

 

Hi everyone, I have a book 8 (X03 Canadian model) which has an I7-3635QM, 8GB ram and AMD HD8770M graphics.

When I run the Windows Experience Index (under High Performance power mode, plugged in), I get a score of 6.3, 7.2, 6.7, 6.7 and 5.9. The first two scores for processor and memory are lower than expected, according to this review. I've updated everything from Windows Update and SW Update. What gives?

 

I would prefer to save space on my SSD. So basically I plan to clone (using the EaseTo Do Backup software) the contents of the C:/ partition to the SSD. As you said earlier for this I should initialize dhe SSD as GPT right? Additionally I plan to keep the HDD intact as I already have an external 1TB hard drive so I haven't got much use for the space, would this make the recovery process later viable and won't break the link to the recovery files? Just want to make sure I have got everything planned right before starting the process. Any suggestions is much welcomed and thanks for the time answering my questions

 

Hi,

I'm kind of new here however I suggest you try running the Windows Experience Index again with Silent mode off if you haven't already done so. Personally I get 7.8, 7.8, 6.9, 6.9, 5.9 but I have followed some of the guides in this forum for removing the bloatware sammy has installed. Intellimemory was a BIG ram hungry piece of software.

 

Ahh, that solved it. DIdn't even know that menu existed lol. Thanks!

 

What means the new AMD drivers have lost the capacity of switching GPU, means that you have to stay always on Intel GPU or means that you have to stay always with AMD GPU?

The drivers status is getting worse instead of improving... I really don't understand why Samsung is slowing down this notebook, and I'm referring to Haswell update too.

 

Presently, it means AMD Catalyst Mobility drivers after 13.11 Beta 1 no longer support switchable graphics on Samsung products. If you install 13.11 Beta 2 to 9.4 drivers, you will only be able to use the Intel GPU.

 

Do the fixed drivers( AMD Catalyst 13.11 Mobility BetaV9.4 SG. Fix Driver) of LeeKM work?

 

I cannot also no longer install Intel IGP driver from Intel. Something terrible going on...

 

I just fresh installed Windows 8.1 on another of my test Chronos 7, but this time I installed the software and drivers from SWUpdate. Everything seems to be working including the dynamic graphics switching so far, did a 4 hours raid in World of Warcraft last night and not once did the performance suggest that it ever switched to the Intel graphics.

On the other hand, I noticed that temperature of the Chronos 7 with full Samsung drivers and software has lower overall temperatures compared to the other Chronos 7 with Windows Update only drivers. Both runs World of Warcraft just as well, but the latter has a higher temperature recorded. Temperature recording is done via MSI Afterburner.

 

I think Samsung is getting greedy. They have an excellent laptop and they want to clear out their stock. Probably we'll see a Haswell update at CES in January and until then, they are probably wishing for selling the stock during Christmas.

Over here, there was a good offer on the 870Z5E last week and its sales were so high that its price got up again (!)

However, the situation with the drivers is really disappointing.
I was (and still am) considering this laptop, BUT if I buy it, I WANT to use Win8.1 and currently it seems it's a hit and miss concerning drivers (not only graphics), let alone the reduced battery life.

It's really a SHAME, because the competition is IMO -STILL (despite their Haswell processors)- inferior. Probably the closest competitor is the Dell inspiron 7000 series with its 750M GDDR5 (nice move from Dell going the expensive VRAM way), but you get a dual core i7 ULV processor,no option to change the glossy screen (quite bad if you will use this outside), and no "Silent mode" which is an excellent touch in the 7/8 series.

The showstopper is nevertheless driver support. I think it's unaccpetable going to a store, looking at the Samsung with its glorious "upgradable to Win8.1" sticker and knowing that you have to pray to get it working under 8.1. Really a shame because it's really an excellent device (hardware-wise). Personally I'll wait a bit more and see if the situation gets any better.

 

Thanks for that - found it now.

 

This will most likely break the recovery software. I tried the same thing with Acronis and recovery was broken. Then when I tried to upgrade to Windows 8.1 and actually needed the recovery, I swapped the hard disk back in again, did the proper copy using the Samsung method, then swapped the hard disk back out.

I guess technically I could have just used Acronis to clone the hard disk from an external enclosure again, but I would still have broken recovery functionality. Now I've got it all on SSD with proper recovery functions, so when I decide to go from a 256GB SSD to a 512GB or 1TB I'll be able to just copy the disk from its current state (using the Samsung method) rather than going back to the factory install image.

Also, incidentally, without doing the copy the proper way some of the updates from SWUpdate won't install properly. I can't recall if it was a BIOS update or something recovery-related, but it was something important and it failed every time that I tried to install it on my laptop UNTIL I did the proper Samsung copy process.

 

So you recommend I do it the proper way then? How much additional space do the other partition except for C:/ take?

Is there a guide around on how should I do this the proper "samsung" way? thanks

 

Hi,

thanks a lot for this post in particular, as it led me to finally taking further measures. So finally, I completely removed the AMD drivers and delete all corresponding entries as described in leshcat's manual ( UnifL Manual). This involves using the Driver Fusion tool (which looked somewhat fishy to me as it has OpenCandy support - dont'use express install and uncheck the bundled software - but did the job) and several boots in Safe Mode to make sure all AMD and Intel entries are actually removed.

Afterwards, I downloaded the *complete* suite of downloads from SWUpdate and reinstalled everything to make sure, including the Graphics Driver package, of course. Reboot and voila, War Thunder boots in high performance mode for the first time ever. WoT finally seems to work, too; could only briefly check while at work, but none of those nasty GPU switches in hangar or elsewhere occurred anymore (up to now), and in general it runs smoother than ever too. Temps, as measured by HWInfo, are slightly higher now, with a max of 74 degrees (Celsius), but I think the book will survive that.

So now I guess it's actually not the BIOS, but some driver remains, possibly still from Windows 8?

Wouldn't have tried again without your WoW raid

Thanks again for sharing,
-- Ch.

 

Sorry, no luck with the modified driver and having to disable driver signing enforcement is not ideal.

 

Can I have an update on the image retention issue....

I have been reading over this thread and it seem that no one has been recently posting about the retention issue on the Ativ 8. Last week I purchased from best buy a NP880Z5E-X01UB and I was in love with it until I noticed the image retention issue. I only notice the image retention when the brightness is on full and on a solid background.

I have read some post that say that the image retention issue goes away with time. Can any one confirm that the image retention will go away?

I am also thinking about exchanging the laptop for a different Ativ 8, but I am not sure if all Ativ 8s have the same degree of image retention. Has any one had luck with exchanging for a different unit?