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

Is there anyone who plays The Sims 3?
What performance you got with this laptop?

 

Thanks - hope you are enjoying the holiday season as well! I really appreciate all the help that you and John provide to the Samsung community! You deserve a raise.

 

Considering that the Sims 3 is not terribly graphically demanding, it will probably run excellently with either the AMD 8770 or 8870 GPUs. Enjoy!

 

hi guys i've got a problem with my np880z5e, stock without any ssd upgrade

updated to windows 8.1 at the start of the month, everything went well, no issue with drivers etc

however, since a few days back, i'm having issues with waking from hybrid sleep/hibernation. my notebook takes at least 15minutes from wake to become usable, and I note that during this time, the disk usage is 100%. any help? i don't think this a hdd vs ssd issue because it has been fine till just recently

anyone facing this issue too?

cheers

 

Hey you guys,

I bought this NP880Z5E from BestBuy in late August of this year. Everything was running fine until this past week when the battery won't charge anymore. This is the message I got after booting up into Windows 8.1. "The battery is not operating under normal condition. Replacing the battery pack is highly recommended. If the adapter is removed in current state. You may lose your data. Please save your data immediately. The battery pack is consumerable device. This pack is not working correctly or life is ended. Please stop using the battery or replace it for your safety."

When I remove the AC Adapter from the laptop, it will shut down immediately. I already contacted Samsung and they want me to send the laptop in for service at no charge. I really don't want to send it in with all my info on the hard drive (SSD). Is there any other easier solution to this problem. Thanks for any info!

 

So its finally safe to upgrade to update to 8.1 with this ati driver? Performance is there with switchable gfx?

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

If you are willing to carefully remove the base then you can temporarily take out the HDD, put it in a USB enclosure, connect to another computer and retrieve / remove your data.

Officially, removing the base is not considered a user activity and Samsung says that it will invalidate the warranty. However, there are no seals and people who have been inside haven't had problems when they have needed to send their computer in.

John

 

Sorry, I only tested it on Win 8.

 

Installed 8.1 and those drivers, it seems to work! How can I truly test if switchable graphics is working at full speed?

 

I'm a proud owner of a NP780Z5E-T01UK (the one with the ATI 8850M/8800M). I installed W8.1 when I bought it and it was a disaster - you can imagine why.

But it seems that things have changed. My question is: is it possible now to have all the drivers working with SW Update (except the graphic ones) under Windows 8.1? With all drivers I mean: keyboard light, sound, wireless, etc

 

Does anyone else get a creaking/cracking noise around the hinge of the screen. Seems as if the plastic around the hinge isn't clipping on completely. I am still within the return period just wanted to hear your thoughts before I even considered it.

 

NP780z5e S01UK here, I've had win 8.1 working perfectly for some time now INCLUDING the graphics drivers. The trick I found is to let SW Update install everything it wants to do, but DON'T let windows update install it's version of the AMD drivers (which are an optional update I think). It's all been working well for me for a while now!

 

I occasionally get a slight "springy" whine as I open the lid but nothing that you wouldn't expect and it's not loud. If you think it's excessively loud, I'd contact Samsung - from my experience (in the UK) their customer service is very good, I'd only return it after contacting Samsung first!

 

Not sure if you ever got a response to this, but if not...

I occasionally get erratic trackpad behaviour, but it's not regular and only occasional. If yours is permanent, I'd recommend the following, if each solution doesn't work, move to the next:

1. Clean the trackpad to remove any grease/dirt (I use a screen cleaning solution and lint free cloth).
2. Check your trackpad settings in control panel - reset to default, it could be an issue with sensitivity.
3. Uninstall and reinstall the trackpad drivers (using SW Update).
4. Rebuild the laptop to factory settings using Recovery.
5. Contact Samsung support (in the UK, at least, they've been excellent with me when my battery died! So no reason to suspect they won't fix this problem if you report it to them! That will also help them identify if it's a common fault and manage it appropriately).

You've not said which version of Windows you're running! I'm assuming you've had this problem since the beginning, but if it's only occurred since upgrading to Windows 8.1 then it's possibly driver incompatibility and is something that's been mentioned on the Win 8.1 upgrade forum for these machines, try step 4 and then reinstall 8.1 if this is the case!

 

Is there any other difference between the 880z5e and the 870z5e besides the touch screen? As I am able to purchase them at the same price, which would you say is a better choice? Is the touch screen very responsive and snappy?

 

Hey so whats the best graphics driver to install atm. is it the recommended one from page one (13.10 beta) or has this driver been officially released?

 

Finally a working Samsung Ative Book 8 (NP880Z5E-X01) with Windows 8.1.

All Fn keys works, Keyboard backlight works, switchable graphics works, automatic and manual brightness mode works.

To get this working, you need to download the following:
Latest Intel HD4000 graphics drivers from Intel, AMD Mobility Catalyst driver 13.12, Samsung SWUpdate version 2.1.21 and Samsung Settings version 2.2.05 (Use SWUpdate to get this version from model NP940X3G).

1. Install Windows 8.1
2. Install SW Update version 2.1.21
3. Use SWUpdate to install Intel chipset drivers
4. Reboot
5. Install Intel HD4000 graphics driver
6. Install AMD Catalyst driver
7. Install Samsung Settings version 2.2.05
8. Use SWUpdate to install: Intel Rapid Storage drivers, Sound, LAN, Touchpad, Airplane Mode, Multi-Memory card, Win8.1 Brightness Patch.
9. Do NOT install/upgrade graphics drivers from SWUpdate.
10. When running Windows update, do NOT install AMD or Intel HD4000 graphics drivers.

Violla, you got a fully working Windows 8.1 notebook

 

You've only listed the main part of the model number - you need to beware of other variations, which can be made up of the bit after the main number - eg X01##, X02## (## being the country code). Also, different countries have different variations of these laptops, so if you're comparing the NP880Z5E X01UK with the NP8 70Z5E X 02CA (just as completely random examples), there could be significant differences in the specifications.

However, if you're comparing like-for-like, eg NP8 80Z5E X01UK against NP8 70Z5E X01UK, then the only difference we're generally aware of is the touchscreen.

The touchscreen is very good on these Samsungs, though you might find you use it less than you think as it's not comparable to using a tablet. You have to reach over the keyboard/touchpad area and quite often it's quicker just to swipe the touchpad or hit a key - I mainly use my touchscreen for the Win 8 start menu and certain game/navigation uses (also, constantly using the touchscreen hurts my shoulder as it's a stretch and you're having to hold your arm up all the time).

If the price is the same and everything else is equal, I'd still get the touchscreen, it does make your investment more future-proof and versatile.

 

Wow thats great, this is what everybody has been waiting. Thank you for making such deatiled step b step guide. Just wonder how about battery life, did you notice any kind of decrease after upgrading to w 8.1 as it has been reported previously?

For future references what is the bes way to upgrade video graphic card drivers (sw upgrade, windows upgrade or directly from Amd?

Thank You Very Much !

 

Hi haakeik, welcome to NBR. And thank you for sharing that nice install guide. What a great first post!

This is obviously a clean install, and particularly for those installing on a new SSD, it makes more sense than struggling with an upgrade process from Win8 to 8.1.

 

1. I have not measured battery life.
2. I guess I would use the drivers from Intel and AMD for now.

 

Thanks
Yes, I have upgraded with a SSD disk and Intel Dual-band AC 7260 wireless card. I always do clean installs when upgrading the OS, as a rule.
It was just pure luck I made it work. When I read an earlier post about the Catalyst driver 13.12 bringing switchable graphics back, I decided to try Win 8.1 again.
After a few reinstalls I had switchable graphics, auto brightness and fn keys for sound. Then it hit me, should it not be a Settings app in SWUpdate, but I could not find one. So I installed an older version I had on my disk, but it did not work. When I ran SWUpdate again, there was an upgrade to the Settings app, so I installed it and suprise -> Every fn key worked
Hopefully this will work with other Ativ books.

 

Great, good job!

You can always use the Find Model feature in SW Update to look up drivers for other models. In the case of Settings, NP940X3G (Ativ Book 9 Plus, the only Haswell model at the moment) has Settings 2.2.0.5. But note that it may not be the best choice for all models. For older Series 7/5 models with ExpressCache and Battery Life Extender, Settings 2.0.0.55 (available under NP880Z5E) may be a better choice.

And of course, models without discrete graphics (such as Series 9/AB9) don't have the issues with Switchable Graphics, and have generally had an easier time with 8.1 upgrades.

One warning about clean install of Win8.1: Several owners have reported it borked their Recovery. That's no issue if you install on a new SSD, of course, only if you install on the original HDD or an SSD with intact Recovery.

Again thanks for sharing - to all who share

 

Hey new here and just bought the laptop. Currently im updating windows and sw. Should I be on the look out for anything? I cant wait to play games on it. Btw, anyone have any idea on how to improve gaming performance? Theres 300 pages and its hard to know which is the best method. Planning to play off steam (l4d,counterstrike,etc)

 

After updating all apps from the store. They now crash on that splash screen. I am on Windows 8. Does anyone know how to fix that?
Fixed it: It had to do with Catalyst and the Morphological Filtering option.

 

I have the exact same problem on my NP680Z5E-02US Ativ 6. Where you ever able to resolve this annoyance?

Thanks
Joe

 

Hey all, I have the NP780z5e-s01ub model. I'm not sure if this is possible with uni-body laptops, but I was wondering if it is possible to make the laptop receive its power supply only from the AC Adapter and not the battery?

 

No it is not. The battery is connected to the motherboard. There is only a battery disconnect button that will automatically re-enable the battery the next time you plug in the AC Adapter. I am pretty sure that you can physically unplug, the battery from the mother board, but then you might void the warranty.

Good Luck
Thomas K

 

For e gaming performance is already pretty good. I play bf4 at 720p at 60fps on medium settings, just provide proper ventilation, the cooling is already pretty good, but i sit the back 2 feet on 3 quarters to give it an extra few cm of clearance, never goes above 80c while gaming, and the gpu stays at 65c while gaming. Throttling starts at 90C.

 

I think Samsung's Battery Life Extender is available on that model (you will find it in Settings (Fn + F1)). If present, it will let you limit the battery charge to 80% which should help its longevity.

If you try to remove the battery you are likely to discover that the computer will tip over backwards if you push the display back.

John

 

I'm having some problems with gaming performance. Sometimes I run a game and the FPS rate is really low, and I can only fix it by re-running the application or going to the desktop and then back to the game. I'm using 13.12 WHQL drivers, is there anything I can try (other than reinstalling the previous drivers) to fix this?? it's really annoying. For example on Counter Strike: Source I sometimes get 50-52 fps when it's usually around 200. Any suggestions? Thanks

Edit: I'm about to remove 13.12 drivers and see if that fixes the issue. The machine feels really slow sometimes, even while I'm typing. I can't understand if it's my impression or the laptop is having some sort of issue..

 

Hi there,

I am on the screen resolution page and i see a small notification below

"your screen resolution is less than 1590*1116. Some items may not fit your screen."

Can some one please help?

 

So I've finally gained access to a TV with WIDI / Miracast support to try the wireless display functionality of my 2013 Chronos on, but it seems like the upgrade to Windows 8.1 (which ironically now has inbuilt WIDI support) has removed the ability to use it.

I had a go with their Widi update tool available here:

Support for the Intel® Wireless Display (Intel® WiDi)

and it installed new wireless network drivers, which seem fine, but it mentioned something about getting custom Intel graphics drivers and getting updates from my manufacturer. It still doesn't work (the option to add a wireless display doesn't appear under Project under Devices in Charms), so it seems new Intel graphics drivers are required.

A bit of searching in SW Update suggests that Samsung hasn't put out any since version 10.18.10.3304 which are dated September in Device Manager. Although if anyone knows where to find newer ones for other models in there I'd much appreciate giving them a go.

As I understand it, if I use Intel's own, I'll lose the ability to use the AMD graphics chip? I wonder if the new, working-again WHQL AMD drivers might improve matters?


I might try experimenting with that, if nobody can offer any advice.

Cheers.

 

So i finally got this PC. Its realy a good Notebook! the best i have ever had!

The only thing is. I uppgraded to Win 8.1. and now my screen is blurred. The oprerating system looks nice. But Chrome web browser, spotify etc. Is not sharp and looks pretty bad.

i have tried to instal the AMD_Catalyst_13.10_Mobility_Beta.zip - Solidfiles And followed the instalation guide on page 1. but no succsess.

Can someone please help me fix this? would be really nice! Win 8 looked like a dream. and now. iam crying.. lol!

Cheers Brad

 

Hate the be that guy, but the sticky on the first page of this thread - adjust to Smaller (100%). I suggest you read all of that first post, it's incredibly helpful for this computer, it's really nice, but also quite finicky

Welcome to the club!

jfletcha

 

Hello to everyone and Happy New Year!!! All the best to everyone guys!!!

I wanted to share an annoying problem I had and the solution that sorted it out.
Normally I keep the laptop plugged to AC power, so it's something I noticed when I wanted to watch a movie at bed (battery mode, preferably silent mode as well).
For movie viewing I like Media Player Classic and without hesitation I installed it as soon as I got my laptop.
HOWEVER, I never noticed that after Catalyst 13.9 and now on 13.12, the most popular video players are assigned and LOCKED to HIGH PERFORMANCE MODE!!!!! What the hell AMD? Are you serious? Even a FullHD movie is a piece of cake for the HD4000, but according to AMD it's a good idea to use the 8870 for viewing AVI, MP4, MKV, etc., etc...... The result:
Watching a 2.5 hour movie drained almost ALL of the battery (unbelievable) and the fans were constantly kicked in (with wife complaining about the noise). Unacceptable, totally, as even a tablet can easily handle such basic tasks. Anyway...

Since there seemed NO WAY to unlock the MPC-HC from the 'High Performance" mode I decided to try renaming the .exe of the MediaPlayerClassic (MPC-HC64.exe) to something like: MediaPLayerCL.exe and then associate the new .exe to play media files and of course configure the exe in switchable graphics to Power Saving mode.
Thankfully it worked well and now I can enjoy noise free video viewing. I also tried VLC as well (which as well goes into High performance mode) and the same trick will do the job.
I hope this will help out some of you that don't use the default windows media player (which is in power saving mode by deafault!!! and locked!!!)

 

Is it safe to update to 8.1 now?
Its 2 months now, since I got the last update with Samsung Software.
And I looked into BattyBar and already lost 4,1% of my Battery, after 2 months.
Is there a fix to get it back?
And which is the current best Graphic Driver, I am unning 13.9 Beta 2

 

HELP!!! My keyboard is now not working after sw update on my new 880Z5E. If I hit the k it registers as a y...hitting the u registers as a 2 etc. WTH

 

Hi guys, It's been a while since I calibrated my display last, so here's the ICC profile from today. FYI I used a brand new (manufactured in nov-2013) I1 Display Pro to calibrate the display this time... It's totally worth the extra 50 dollars over the Colormuki Display. Anyway, here's the profile for D65 (6500k white point) calibration. the display was warmed up on a 50% gray image before calibration.

I don't believe there's any hardware calibration for these laptops, so the profile should be pretty universal (be sure to set display color - in quick options - to "no effects"). If these panels are not White-LED backlight this profile is incorrect (as far as a standard gamut calibration it looks about right to my eyes).

Enjoy!
View attachment Display 1-2014.zip View attachment Display 1-2014.zip

 

Wow, sounds nasty. First try a restart (not shutdown, since it doesn't actually reload Windows, it just hibernates it).

Then check they keyboard settings in Windows control panel, just to see if something strange was set.

Then try Windows System Restore and roll back to a restore point before the update. You don't need keyboard for that.

If none of that works, reboot to recovery (F4) and restore to factory.

 

Tried all of that and nothing...damn thing wouldn't turn back on after the restore so I took it back to bestbuy and walked out the store 10 min later with another one. Thanks BB

 

You're saying you restored to factory from Recovery and the keyboard was still acting up? If so, an exchange was definitely in order, since something must have been wrong with the keyboard. Good thing BB helped you out so you didn't have to send it in for repair.

 

the color turns out far too yellow for me even with "no effects"

 

Proceed with 8.1 at your own risk and after making a full backup (it has been known to break the link to the recovery partition). Does it offer anything you need?

For the battery, run the battery calibration utility in the BIOS. First disable Battery Life Extender (if enabled) and charge the battery to 100%. Then it's least time-consuming if you run the computer on battery until nearly empty before going into the calibration to full drain the battery before recharging the battery to 100%. If you still have wear after the calibration then you will need to check at intervals. If you are up to 20% within the warranty period then you should be able to persuade Samsung to replace the battery (check the www for Samsung's claims about the battery longevity for your model).

John

 

Hey haakeik,

Great post indeed and most of it worked for me. There are some problems that bothers me.
At 5th step windows didnt let me install Intel graphic driver and I upgraded it though SWUpdate. it still works better and when I check installed driver version it says 10.18.10.3304.
At 7th step I downloaded Samsung Settings via SWUpdate for NP940X3G. Although everything is functional, little taskbar notifier says "FN buttons doenst work install Settings"
And for the last I cant install sound driver. Either SWupdate or manually it fails. Any idea?

Thanks a lot

 

It would be much simplified if the SWUpdate drivers were installed and then the video drivers upgraded from there.

Just curious - what do your partitions look like? Did you just install over the existing partition structure that Samsung created or did you do a completely clean install with Windows 8.1 partitioning the drive (and kept a USB system image backup)?

 

Just asking a question that I had been thinking about for a while now-- does SW Update provide the latest compatible drivers for each specific model? I'm asking this because the AMD and Intel graphics drivers from SW Update are still v9 and I'm wondering if that's because of compatibility issues or just outdated-ness; I see that OP has v13 as stable. I want to update to the latest stable drivers, but I'm not sure as downloading the latest Intel Graphics drivers from the download center ended up with me having to do a clean install. Thanks!

 

I recently tried both the 13.12 WHQL and 13.10 beta (that were reported to be "stable") but my laptop's gaming performance significantly dropped, compared to the older v9 drivers that SW Update currently offers. I don't know if anything else caused that, but after my experience, I'm not going to install any GPU driver update unless released on SW Update itself.. I'm now back on v9 and everything *LOOKS* fine again (I'm saying "looks" because I need more time to test. FPS already look more stable than 13.10/13.12 though)



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I see, thank you for your response! I'm glad somebody has had similar experiences to mine (but sorry it happened )

If anybody else has info about this, please chime in!

 

For me 13.12 works well. Subjectively better than the drivers offered by SW Update. (770z5e, Win8.1)