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

Hi all, first time post here.

I updated to Windows 8.1 and my graphics fell off a cliff. I performed a full system restore yesterday (needed to do it anyway), but I'm still not happy with the graphics performance (3dMark crashes immediately its so bad). I tried to follow the instructions on the front page for getting the AMD 13.10 beta, but couldn't get the file to download and when I used the same file from an alternative source it removed the switchable settings. I've used SWUpdate to update all my drivers, but I haven't upgraded to Windows 8.1 yet.

My system: NP770Z5E-S02 (i5, AMD Radeon 8750, Intel 4000, 8gb RAM)
AMD Driver: 13.152.0.0
Intel Driver: 9.17.10.2875

Can anyone recommend what I should be installing (along with links to the exact files) along with some step by step guidelines. I'm really at a loss now.

Thanks for any and all help.

J

 

have you tried any games with that, and have you compared them with the "stock" drivers? (v9)

 

Yah, i play different games. Metro (LL), Tomb Raider, FORCED, Hard Reset, each title works fine. As I said I didn't compare framerates, just impressions.

I had some issues with 13.10, Framerates !seemed! to be lower and switchable graphics was not perfectly working.

 

Then I really don't know what was wrong with my machine. It all seems working now, but I still have some doubts that the overall performance might have somehow dropped (not necessarily becauese of this driver update). I'm really confused right now.. And I don't know how to find out if performance has dropped since I made changes.

 

Update: After reading my way through about 30 pages I tried the 13.10 Mobility Beta drivers, which seemed to install ok - the switchable setting option appears when I right click, but unfortunately I get an error message which states:

"AMD Catalyst Control Centre cannot be started. There are currently no settings that can be configured using AMD Catalyst Control Centre"

Device manager says AMD Radeon HD 8800M Series is running fine with driver 13.200.11.0.

MSI Afterburner still recognises the AMD card, but HWInfo does show it at all.

What am I doing wrong?

 

HI,

A small post to tell other users that I was able to install this driver modded by LeeKM and the driver seems to work ok in my limited testing.

I downgraded my OS to Win7 x64 and was using was using the amd / intel divers from samsung (AMD Solar WIN8,7 32_64bit Graphics Driver 9.003.5.0000-WHQL / 108. Intel IvyBridge Windows8 GFX driver - 64bit 9.17.10.2963 (WHQL_ALS)).

Recently I installed 13.10 Beta (AMD_Catalyst_13.10_Mobility_Beta.zip) and found some issues... some driver crashing in windows, and a BOSD from one of the ATI driver components. I got the feeling that the driver was not switching between intel / amd correctly and the driver didn't feel very stable. To install this driver I used DDU and uninstalled / installed the AMD drivers from safe mode.

The other day I was feeling impulsive and I installed LeeKM's modded driver here

https://mega.co.nz/#!XUpD1bgJ!Jk23UG3Rt3k00idqkHNN7VLvjqJpqFjRVPck-OVpowY

AMD Catalyst 13.12 Mobility WHQL SG Fix Driver (intel & APU) - Guru3D.com Forums


For this driver I was lazy and just installed over top of 13.10 in windows and reboot.

As far as I can tell all special samsung features are working and my benchmark scores on 13.12 WHQL are improved 10 - 20 % compared to 13.10. I have no benchmarks for the originally shipped AMD v 9.xx driver.

Cheers

 

Hi All, I have an NP780Z5E, with the 8770m switchable graphics. I have Intel dirvers 9.17..... and AMD drivers 9.3.5.0 installed. I don't do any heavy gaming....mainly just play games like League Of Legends and Dota 2; and I would like to get the highest FPS possible. But I can't get the AMD card to work with the games (even when i set it to use high performance in the catalyst program)....and if I update the drivers I lose the ability to control my screen brightness.

I've been reading this thread and am confused by the many different driver versions out there.

Can anyone recommend a driver combination that will let me keep control of screen brightness and use the AMD card in games?

 

Okay, after lurking this threat for a really really long time now and reading every single post from all the hundreds of posts here I wonder if I am doing something "wrong".
Maybe I'm the odd dude out but what I did was essentially buying a 8 GiB RAM upgrade and a SSD drive for the NP870Z5E-X04DE.

Next steps:
- open case
- remove HDD as-is
- plug in SSD (no recovery partition needed, also it's still on the HDD for warranty)
- install SODIMM RAM
- close case again
- connect external DVD-drive via one of the left USB 3.0 ports
- enter BIOS
- disable safe mode, enable legacy BIOS (also some other changes I prefer like charging over USB when powered off)
- boot a live Linux with GParted (like Linux Mint) (F10, non-UEFI DVD boot)
- partition the SSD to MBR with a 32 GiB NTFS partition and an extra partition covering all the rest of the drive in non-NTFS like ext4 so the later Windows install has no chance to create any additional partition and everything lands on the single NTFS partition
- boot Windows 7 x64 install disc I had from a dismantled old PC
- make it install Windows on that NTFS partition
- some boot cycles later and basic configuration (like disable system restore points which I prefer not to have but YMMV, disable Aero, install Classic Shell, etc...)
- install some device-dependent drivers which are provided by Samsung or the vendors (see OP)
-- AMD, ACPI, WLAN, Ethernet, etc.
- install as the only Samsung tool:
-- (Easy) Settings Windows 7 x64 for the nice fn-key-functionality and their OSD and the device-specific settings
- do NOT install the SW-Update program. FMPOV It is more harm- than useful, tries to interfere with my drivers like for the GPU or the bloated Intel LAN-driver, nagging me with other bloatware and does not provide anything I want or need
- later repartition the SSD to the 32 GiB Windows and a data partition, maybe even leaving additional space for e.g. future Linux partitions or whatever you like

Result:
- quick boot
- good performance
- NEVER had a single wireless problem, even with the standard Intel card
- suspend to RAM and hibernate works, also waking up from these states
- GPU switching and re-disabling the AMD card works
- brightness control for keyboard and screen both work reliably
- huge amount of memory free for e.g. a nice RAM-disk to store the browser temp files, scratch files or extracting temporary stuff w/o writing to the SSD
- can copy the small OS-partition to a different drive (like the spare HDD) for full-OS-backups in case something goes wrong (that's the main reason I don't need any recovery partition or system restore points)

Really guys. I never encountered any of the problems you all have described all along this thread.
I don't say this to make myself look better but I just can't retrace any of the issues, they just happen to not apply.
Why is that so? I'm wondering myself what I do so differently that It Just Works...

 

Did anyone get Premiere Pro with openCL working with the 8870M? It always crashes when I start Premiere Pro.

I dont care if 8.0 or 8.1. I have installed both on my machine. I just want the hd4000 and 8870M to work.

Someone else has the same problem here:
Adobe Premiere Pro CC crashes (locked in power ... | AMD Developer Forums

 

Just got my new computer today. It is a refurb and something doesn't seem to be working properly. When I try to install the recovery app I keep getting an error and the program will not load. Message comes up saying "No partition exists, installation aborted." I have an 840 EVO ready to go, but can't get a USB backup made.

...I have only installed recommended programs in SW Update. Is there something else that needs to be installed or perhaps, did the first person who had their hands on this do something to the HDD?

Any help in resolving would be greatly appreciated.

 

Does Recovery work fine at the moment? (Press F4 at boot)

 

Unless the refurb was done by a Samsung service center it is quite likely that someone who doesn't know about the recovery partition wiped the drive. Or, even if they didn't wipe it, they upset the pointer to the recovery partition.

Install Minitool Partition Wizard and see if the partition is there. If so, you can look inside it (I forget if it is necessary to change a setting). And if you can get at the contents then there's a way to use them to create a windows installer. The details are in a thread somewhere in this forum.

John

 

No, nothing happens when I press F4 on bootup. I am able to get into the bios, and it looks like default settings were changed.

I will try Minitool and see if a recovery partition still exists.


Other than touchscreen functionality, are there any things specificly that make a windows 7 install less "advantageous" on this laptop?

Thanks

 

I bet the Recovery partitions were deleted by the previous owner, and the refurbishing was done by the dealer (not Samsung), who didn't know how to recreate them nor had the tools for it.

Check in Disk Management if you see those partitions. If not, you can simply use any other tool to clone the drive (such as Samsung Data Migration). That normally breaks Recovery on the cloned disk (which is why we recommend using Recovery's Copy Disk or Factory Image features), but if you don't have a Recovery in the first place, there is nothing to lose

Edit: Oops, I'm in Tapatalk and didn't see you already had several answers.

 

Hello! I have owned the Chronos since april 2013 and had alot of fun with it. An impressive Laptop - The best i ever owned. I've been Reading this forum since pranktank and other members started "researching" amd drivers for the 8870m.

Thanks alot for your research, you've helped me getting alot more out of my computer!

I registered today because I've stumbled over a weird issue with the 13.12 whql driver that seems to run very well except my little problem.

BF4 runs well after I've installed the drivers, BUT after pc has been hibernating or I close the lid (I'm not quite sure when it happens) I get a popup mesage in the task bar telling me: "The AMD Graphics driver has stopped working, and have been restored" (like a "flag messag")

When I start Battlefield4 after this message the performance is poor. BUT It still runs on the AMD card for sure. I normally play at around 40-50 fps. But after the message bf4 runs on a stable 30. I reinstalled the 13.12 whql and BF4 was running smooth again. But suddenly at low battery when browsing internet the popup came again. for test purposes i started bf4 and same problem occured.

So my question is, have someone experienced the same with the 13.12? And does someone have any idea why the driver stop working? This has never happened while playing, but in Windows after hibernating and or low battery - Not quite sure. Running win 8.1.

I started afterburner to monitor the 8870m when playing bf4 after the popup message. It seemed like the card ran at like 70% of its potential.
I also plugged in and out the Power cord and it was exact same performance. (I'm sure the Laptop was NOT in "silentmode" in settings)

Any ideas?

 

How long does your battery last on web browsing?

 

I'm not quite sure - But approx 3-4-5 hours. I've never just "browsed" a whole battery load. The use varies.
I use the Battery life extender so it's never above 80%

 

Whats Batter Life Extender? How does it work, do you have downlink ?

 

It is option in bios and also in OS (with Samsung software) if you enable it it will charge battery only to 80%.

 

Press FN+f1 if you have the settings app from SW update. From there you can enable Battery life extender.

 

Those damn 13.12 drivers have messed up my laptop. :\ Since I installed them I started experiencing FPS drops in the games I'm playing. After rolling back to v9, everything seemed to be ok, but today The framerate dropped again. I really don't know what to try to fix that... (used to get an average of 150 to 200 FPS in CS:S, I'm now seeing 70-80 FPS as an average)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I just installed the 13.12 WHQL drivers on mine and its working far better than it has done to date. To install them I downloaded Driver Fusion and installed, uninstalled AMD Catalyst, then ran RevoUninstall to delete all remnants of AMD. Uninstalled the Intel drivers via Device Manager. Booted into safe mode (hold down shift at the login page and restart). Then ran Driver Fusion and eliminated any further trace of Intel or AMD drivers. Rebooted. Ran SWUpdate and installed Intel Drivers. Rebooted. Installed 13.12 WQHL, rebooted and then ran 3dMark:

Cloud Gate = 3623
Fire Strike = 1393
Ice Storm = 18357

Not sure if those are particularly good scores, but they were better than the ones I got before.

 

In my case, games acted weird: sometimes i ran them to see a terrible performance (about 50 fps), and had to re-run them a few times in order to get back to 100% performance (about 160 fps). I don't think I will take the risk and try again..

 

Working on fine tuning my new Book 8 NP880Z5E...what are the recommended setting (display, performance, etc) to maximize performance??? Read in one of these treads that the screen display should be changed from 120% to 100% but i have yet to find where i can make that change.

Is there a list of startup programs to disable for faster boot times?

FYI - As is this laptop is a BEAST!!! No color issues...no speed issues...or the other things others have complained about. Upgraded to 8.1 without a hitch and this thing has just been a pleasure to work on...just want to tweak it a lil for optimum performance.

 

Here's what I have disabled.

 

Same problem...i tried all possible drivers and without success

EDIT: I saw it first time in Battlefield 4. I played one map on same server, game over, map reloading again and big fps drop, game over, game reloading and sometimes FPS are back, sometimes game need more restarts

 

Hi,

same problem here more or less. I can only tell for War Thunder and World of Tanks, but depending on the AMD driver version, I also experience low fps or sudden in-game fps drops from time to time. Things seem to be worse with drivers beyond v9, but the problem exists in v9 too. FPS drops mainly occur when switching dialogs in WoT, and most of the time (but not always), battles start with low fps. No true solution found yet, and I suspect some energy-related issue here, but that may be only part of the issue. Something you may try in such a case:

- ALT-TAB to desktop and switch energy profiles to Samsung and back to High Performance or vice versa.
- pull the power cord and put it back again
- some say pressing FN+F11 twice also works, but not for me. This switches the silent mode option in Settings and somehow also switches the energy profile.
- sometimes, it also helps to ALT-TAB to desktop and start some app, eg. Notepad and go back to the game. Generally, switching to some other application in-between may help.

None of all these works reliably 100% of the time. Sometimes, games run for hours without problems, sometimes, I have to apply one or more of these methods every few minutes. IMHO the Samsung stock drivers work best (as in "annoying, but still kind of workable"), and I'll stick to them for the time being. Really tried every alternative I can think of, including AMD drivers 13.12 and 13.1 beta and also the latest Intel drivers, but to no avail. In particular, the nasty in-game fps drops that suddenly occur after some time (during battles) are worse with 13.12 and seem to be more or less gone since I switched back to Samsung stock. However, the basic problem still persists and the general situation is far from perfect.

HTH,
-- Chris.

 

Well, at least I'm not the only one in this situation..
Do you think wiping all the graphic drivers with a 3rd party tool and then reinstalling would help? Are we 100% sure that this is a software-related issue and there's nothing wrong with the hardware? I once tried to do a light overclock (+ 100 MHz) and I'm afraid that could have affected my GPU's performance

 

I recently bought a Samsung NP870Z5E from a german store. However, there was a rather big gap on the front of the display unit while having the lid closed:


Another NP870Z5E from the same store had a very similar gap:


Two NP880Z5E that I have looked at didn't have that issue at all:



Is that gap really the build quality I should expect? It is totally uneven and the maximum is not even in the middle which one would expect if that is supposed to be like that.
I'd really like to hear what you guys think of that. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any other 870Z5E in the "wild" here. Pictures of the 700Z series didn't show a similar issue on the front either.

 

So the partitions still exist, but Recovery program doesn't recognize the file on the FAT32 partition. Any suggestions on how to proceed at getting the Win 8 OS onto the SSD? I have no Win 8 media, but do have 32GB USB and 1TB external hard drive to work with.
Thanks again for any help.

 

Someone went through this process within the last month or two. However, I can't remember which thread.

You can't use SRS but once you've got the contents of the recovery partition then you can create something bootable. Sorry I can't be of more help.

John

 

You should have two Samsung Recovery partitions (at the end of the drive) and one Windows RE Tools partition (at the beginning of the drive). See this post for details.

The large Samsung Recovery partition (at the end) contains the factory image, while the small (just before) contains the software needed to F4 boot Recovery.

If all partitions seem to be present (and non-empty) but neither F4 nor the Samsung Recovery Windows App work, then most likely the prior owner (or dealer) backed up and restored the disk using a 3rd party partition imaging tool - which destroys the F4 link that tells Recovery where to look for it's stuff. And unfortunately it is very hard to repair.

The process requires tricking Recovery to boot, then use that to create a Bootable Factory Image USB backup (which it sounds like you were all ready to create), then use that USB to re-image the entire drive. This post contains suggestions to try, but not all succeed in booting Recovery once the F4 link is gone.

As I wrote in my previous response, you could just clone the disk using Samsung Data Migration, then delete the Recovery partitions from the SSD (because they won't work anyway) and use the Windows installation.

I would also contact Samsung and request a Recovery DVD. They may give you that or insist that you send it in for re-imaging.

 

- pull the power cord and put it back again

This helped me, BF4 running OK with this "hack". Every time map reload i need to do this. I hate AMD graphic cards for long time because of lot of bugs.

 

Hi,

I cannot recall how many times I wiped and reinstalled the drivers, following the instructions from leshcatlabs ( UnifL Manual), using DriverFusion on both Intel and AMD drivers and cumulatively in Windows Standard and then in Safe Mode...but after all, nothing really changed for the better.

As the problem did not occur in Windows 8, I suspect it's a software or BIOS problem. In the WoT hangar, for example, sometimes the performance suddenly drops when opening a dialog window that just displays some simple text info (the hangar itself is a 3D display). In this case, the click or the switching to the dialog seems to be the trigger. In battles, there are also boxes with team infos and the like, and sometimes, everything runs fine until invoking one of them. Checking with HWInfo64, the AMD GPU still seems runs at full speed with fans running, too. I very much suspect that the AMD Enduro mechanism gets confused somehow and stops delegating the rendering to the AMD GPU, but I can't tell for sure. Apart from HWInfo64, I didn't find a tool to check the AMD GPU at all, and all info I know of is provided by the ATI sensors there.

In any case, I don't think it's a hardware problem, and I never ever overclocked the GPU, so that cannot be the cause

HTH,
-- Chris.

 

Is this problem also in Windows 8? Because i saw this problem first time in Windows 8.1. Or maybe there is a problem with new BIOS because i made update in Win 8.1.

 

I'm on Win 8 and I have this issue, so it's not Win 8.1 related.

 

That makes sense. Thanks so much! I will try Samsung Data Migration.

 

Originally Posted by forbidden73
Working on fine tuning my new Book 8 NP880Z5E...what are the recommended setting (display, performance, etc) to maximize performance??? Read in one of these treads that the screen display should be changed from 120% to 100% but i have yet to find where i can make that change.

Is there a list of startup programs to disable for faster boot times?

FYI - As is this laptop is a BEAST!!! No color issues...no speed issues...or the other things others have complained about. Upgraded to 8.1 without a hitch and this thing has just been a pleasure to work on...just want to tweak it a lil for optimum performance.

Anyone else has any suggestions?

 

So i have a question for those that have replaced the wirless card. I have orderd the 7260 AC 2x2 and its reaching tomorrow morning. So i was wondering if any of you have some tipps for me or something that i need to watch out for when replacing the card. Also which drivers do i need to predownload before exchanging the cards. Thanks guys

 

I also changed my wireless card to a 7260 AC 2x2 two days ago. Its a little better than the 6235 but its still not as good as the 5100 I had in my last notebook. I still get drops in download speed every few minutes. But its totally usable for day to day surfing the web. From what I can tell, I get better results when I connect to 5GHz networks rather than to 2.4GHz.(I am connecting to an 802.11n network)

I also noticed that my bluetooth mouse lost connection every few minutes. Luckiely I could fix that by telling my computer that its not allowed to turn bluetooth of to save power.

Please tell my about your experience.

 

And BIOS version?

 

The latest one, P05ABU (P05ABU.142.130905)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I am on P03ADH.010.130905.SK.

How can I update to a newer version? SW Update doesn't show me that there is a newer version ready for download.

 

Hi,

just for info: I am on P03ADH too, which seems to be the latest version for the Ativ 8 (dated 5 Sept 2013, apparently). The P05ABU version must be for another model, but seems to have the same date. If the problem also occurs in that BIOS release, it must be a general issue IMHO.

If the problem also exists in Windows 8 now - I don't recall any problems with that, but then I don't know when exactly I updated the BIOS -, reverting to Windows 8 is not an option. Well, that saves me a lot of trouble, I guess

In SWUpdate, they claim the BIOS update improves the system stability. LOL.

HTH,
-- Chris.

 

I don`t have problem with unpluging power cord and plug it back every time map reloading but it`s not good for my battery i think. Also in BF4 campaign everything is fine until i die and game is loaded again or new level is loaded. In game without loading i don`t have problem with fps drop never, also with overclocking +20% power, 850 core, 1300 memory.

 

I usually don't like to bump stuff but can anyone tell me if that is normal or has anyone seen this before?

 

Ah right, well im hoping for not more disconnects at all. Its really annoying. Thats why i got that card. Since theres no better alternative.

 

As my signature states, I own a NP770Z5E-S01 IT, and the P05ABU is the latest BIOS version for that model

 

Followed these instructions but my FPS in games dropped significantly after the 8.1 update (and subsequently the HD4000 and AMD driver installs)

 

I have the 8770M Model, But Afterburner wont let me change the power limit setting, How did you get it to work?