Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

Also confirmed from the leaked ATIV Book 8 website, these specs were listed there as well.

 

I actually currently live in Amsterdam, so I am looking for a QWERTY keyboard version. I guess Fnac france is AZERTY, which I can use as well since I come from Belgium originally but for programming QWERTY just feels better.

I checked amazon uk but there is still says 1 to 3 months for shipping. Amazon germany will have the QWERTZ keyboard. So if you know any way on how to order a QWERTY then it would be great!

 

Oh sweet. I just looked up their fb page, I see the post from Monday. Thanks.

https://www.facebook.com/Samsungnotebook

 

After spending a day with the notebook, you were totally right It would be fine if I actually had control over the backlight, etc. but the drivers have been a nightmare! I really wish Samsung would pay attention to this forum. I'm considering taking it back and looking at other options for now, but overall I'm kinda disappointed :/

 

The current Chronos Series 7 definitely has its pitfalls (i.e. select trackpad and backlight issues, AMD driver availability, and a plastic base that is difficult to remove to name a few). And no question, these are deal breakers for some individuals. Having said that, I've needed a new laptop since December 2012 and kept waiting for the "perfect" machine for my needs. That never happened, but for me, the Chronos S7 is the best thing currently available - and I needed a new machine badly. For a time, I was really hoping to get my hands on a Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch, but that thing has had its own issues (only 1600x900 resolution, reports of "screen door" effect, poor batter life and >4 week estimated shipping time).

For me, the bonuses of the Chronos are: 16 GB RAM, full HDMI and Ethernet ports, 1080p touch screen (and yes, I find the touch feature useful), with a battery that can last >8 hours.
The trackpad doesn't bug me that much, same with the keyboard backlight... no one should have to look at the keyboard to type anyways (don't be a Tommy Two-Finger Typist in a dark corner ). I'm not a huge gamer anymore, so the current lack of driver support doesn't bug me. I'd blame this one on AMD though - they don't even have any support for the 8000 series on their own website.

 

The main reason I was looking for a new laptop is that I was running Windows on a mac, and the lack of drivers resulted in random right-clicks and drags. Well that's happening to me on a brand new Windows laptop! And the wifi is so slow, even after enabling maximum performance in the power settings. I can put up with the graphics drivers for now, but the fact that I download official Windows updates, which in turn break my brightness control, is unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, this laptop has great specs, but getting everything to run smoothly together is another story.

 

ATIV Book 6 is now available and ships throught Amazon.com

 

John Lewis has stock of the UK version.

John

 

I apologize for my recent rants, everything seems to be working for the most part. I was wondering if anyone could help me with a couple things though. Is there a way to switch the fn and f4 keys, so that I don't have to press fn to adjust brightness and volume? And on the touchpad, can I disable the lower half of the touch pad from being buttons, so that the only way to right click is by two finger clicks?

 

I posted this in the Owners Thread, but did not get any responses. With the hope that someone did not see it you might respond I am reposting it here. Hope theres no offense.

Hoping someone has a cure for what ails me. After installing my SSD (thanks again for all the help I recvieved on these boards), and running SW update, everything has been runnign fast and smooth except Civ V. Every so often I will tap the next turn button and it will crash to the desktop. If I repeat the moves that led up to the crash exactly it will crash again. If I change a previous move I seem to be able to go forward till it happens again. I have changed the auto save feature to be every turn rather than every 10 and now do not worry about having to replay a significant number of turns. But it is a pain to get back into the game as much as every 15 or 20 minutes (sometimes can go hours till a crash) and there have been a couple of times when I have had to make less then ideal changes to strategy to avaid the crash.

I have completely unistalled Civ V and Stream (twice) from the computer and reistalled it, which has not helped. This has led me to believe that it is not a software issue, but rather something going on with the way my computer is running the software (could be wrong)

I also late last night after reading some of this board, set the Civ V in catalyst to high performance, but have not played enough since to determine if this helped.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Phil

 

You can use Fn Lock (the key to the right of the F-keys) to avoid having to press Fn every time.

 

My apologies... Thanks!

How do I figure out what graphics card is running, and if they're switching correctly or not?

 

I am wondering if it would be legit to put an anti-glare screen protector on the glossy touchscreen?

 

Most matte or anti glare screen protectors will make your screen look cheap and cause fuzziness.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Just curious... Once the black ATIV books come out, Samsung will most likely have black replacement keys... Would it be possible to replace the silver keys with black keys on the silver model?

 

Run any benchmark. If they're switching correctly, you'll get a good score. If not, you'll get a bad score - the difference between the cards is very large.

 

The keyboard is an integral part of the keyboard / palmrest unit so your black keys will come with a black palmrest / keyboard surround. Samsung won't sell the individual key caps and I don't know how easy it would be to remove silver key caps and replace with black ones without breaking anything. It's something I would want to first try out on a broken keyboard.

John

 

Is it possible to remove the keys from the keybaord and put them into a different layout, for example change an AZERTY keyboard into a QWERTY one. And perhaps I can then later on just buy all QUERTY keys for this laptop and fully replace the keys with the 'correct' QWERTY layout (anyone know if it's possible to already buy this somewhere perhaps?). I can type blind but it just feels kind of stupid to spend 1300 euros on a laptop which has a keyboard mine field for anyone who would use it and can't type blindly (eg my girlfriend ).

 

any chance the US version of the ATIV book 8 gets Haswell? if weve waited this long, it seems like we should wait a bit longer since these haswell chips seem to be bringing qute significant improvements across the board

 

Thats currently the million dollar question... I shared my similar thoughts a couple of pages back.

Similarly Gizmodo just posted an article on this, Titled: Now Is a Horrible Time To Buy a Laptop that I can totally co-sign.

 

Thank you. Yeah it was just a hopeful iea, but I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt to ask if I could send the laptop in to have just the keys replaced with black ones. Obviously they have the tools and such to do this because broken keys are a fairly common issue. I'd be willing to throw 50 bucks at Samsung so I can actually see my keys

 

wow, thanks for sharing that article. thats exactly my thinking there. i really dont care about the integrated graphic improvements, those still arent good enough for me, but everything else is just screaming 'WAIT'' to me.

 

Me too. I would love to get the ATIV Book 8, with 16GB RAM and SSD if they come out with that configuration, which means it will cost me ~$1700.

So yea I AM NOT spending $1700+ for a high-end laptop, only weeks before the significantly improved Haswell hit the streets.

Its better for both Samsung and its customers to just delay it a bit farther and finally release it with the new 4th Generation Intel Processors.

 

OMG. The quad-core Haswell are not higher than the current quad-core processor generation!

Search on Google: there are numerous tests that show how the Haswell are not so powerful than the current generation.

Do not forget the problems of USB 3.0, the fact that they are not much tested, etc..

However recently I have read reports about some rumors that speak of the introduction of displays "retina" in the next Samsung high end pc.

 

What are you talking about? Haswell is a significant upgrade across the platform. Its been a while now that i5 and i7 processors are far beyond of "just processors". Yes the raw processing power comparing with the Ivy Bridge is nothing special, as you said it offers only 10-20% improvements but the new platform is introducing a new architecture at 22 nm and significant improvements across the board. Greater support and faster responses for almost every hardware category, SSDs, RAM, the graphics are twice as powerful since the latest generation, even if you do not care about the integrated graphics for games, you should know that almost everything else, your rest of your activities are running on it, so simple stuff, like web browsing, watching youtube videos, HD videos, editing pictures, videos etc. will now run on a far more powerful integrated GPU.
Then is the power management, if Chronos/ATIV Book can perform 8 hours of continuous operation with the current Ivy Bridge, imaging the results with a Haswell.
I am not even discussing the support for all the new technologies neither the fact that the upcoming Windows 8.1 will take super advantage of some Haswell elements.

Finally on USB 3.0 bug, you are right, its unacceptable and unprofessional, especially after the Sandy Bridge similar situation/bug Intel has no excuses. But is not general and only applicable with some specific USB 3.0 sticks. Thats it. I currently have no USB 3.0 stick and when I buy one I make sure its compatible with Haswell.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with the ATIV Book 8/Chronos 7 with Ivy Bridge as it is. Its a great product. I am speaking for myself thought, sharing my feelings based on my personal needs and standards, this is why, I used multiple times the word personal in my previous posts. If Ivy Bridge meets your needs and you are OK with it then GO for it. For me it just doesn't make any sense to spend that amount of money for a super-premium computer weeks before the 4th Generation Intel processors are available.

 

^ what he said

 

What new 22nm architecture are you talking about?

Ivy Bridge is 22nm and Haswell is just update. Broadwell will be new architecture with 14nm.

This forum is going down, just kids left writing bollocks. :hi2:

 

Is architecture the same as a manufacturing process? I am not good at this stuff. I thought you could have 2 different architectures on 22nm.

 

I said new architecture on 22 nm, I didn't said Ivy Bridge is not 22 nm.
Read before you post.

Hello there as well :hi2:

Regards
the kid

 

Two words: battery life.

Haswell will offer significant improvements in battery life, and that alone might make it worth waiting.

If you're into the integrated graphics, they say that they will be considerably improved. If your laptop is switchable between the integrated and discrete GPUs then you probably won't care about better IGP performance. But the more you can run on the IGP, the better the battery life will be. So there might be some use cases where switching to the discreet GPU is no longer necessary, leading to better power saving.

The Gizmodo article is a little bit breathless in its hyperbole, but nonetheless it is correct that waiting just a couple of months could yield a much better laptop than is available today, even if the ATIV 8 launched today. Of course the real question is "how long will it be until someone takes Haswell, pairs it with a powerful discrete GPU like the AMD 8870 or nVidia GT750M, puts it in a form factor that is at least as thin and light as the Chronos/ATIV 8, and offers it for a reasonable price? How many notebooks are out there today that come close to the Chronos/ATIV 8? Just a MacBook Pro (if you like that sort of thing and don't mind paying $300-$600 more for it) and the Asus UX51vz (at $600-$800 USD higher cost).

That's the thing about the Chronos that was so attractive. It wasn't the super-duper high end monster that the UX51vz is, but it's better than everything else in its price range.

 

You are confusing architecture with manufacturing process.

 

Oh you must be the same troll from the beginning of this thread

Whoever said performance was everything?

 

This thread is not a bad place to discuss current and future CPU architectures for our Samsung toys.

BUT -- as has been pointed out before -- name calling and ridiculing other members has no place in this forum, as clearly stated in the first paragraph of our forum rules (that was a link, please consider clicking it):

I am glad to see that other participants seem to agree, and are continuing to have a civilized discussion on the actual subject, unfazed by the snarky remarks of some posters

 

Hey guys, I wonder if anyone else has this problem...
I want to play certain games at a lower resolution to make it faster but when i do that, black borders come around the screen. I know this has something to do with how amd gpus have overscanning and underscanning but there are no settings for that catalyst control center! Does anyone else have this problem when running a game on a lower resolution than native? I have catalyst 13.5 beta 3 drivers

 

the Acer Aspire V7 is looking like it might offer comparable specs for cheaper.

with this next wave of Haswells coming so soon, the chronos will have a short time on the top of the mountain with these higher end pc laptops. Also, considering the ATIV 8 is probably going to come in around $1700, its kind of pricing itself out of the mid to mid-upper market that it was originally in when it debuted at CES

 

I've read that Haswell article, and it is waaaay overly optimistic. How are processor and graphics improvements going to make up for the biggest gas guzzler: the screen? And, really, twice better integrated processor just means you can run stuff at super low settings. Twice the crap is just more of a mess on your hands.

 

The Chronos and UX51vz both have mostly similar specs. The only thing unique (and unnecessary) about the UX51vz is the 2xSSD's in RAID 0 that's responsible for the extreme cost.

 

doesnt the "I" in RAID stand for inexpensive?

 

Depends on what you're looking for, I guess. For me the most outstanding feature of the Chronos is that the combination of all the right specs comes with an incredible battery life. The rest of the specs are also relevant to me but excellent battery life is a deal breaker for me.

 

Here's a graph showing the results of some tests on the backlight power consumption on my NP900X4C (15" panel -the bigger 15.6" panel is likely to use more power)



But the cumulative consumption of all the other non-CPU components is probably more. Run HWiNFO and enable sensors then pull out the mains power plug. Compare the CPU package power consumption with the battery drain: It's probably about 1/3rd. How much that 1/3rd gets shrunk remains to be seen but the other 2/3rds won't be changed.

John

 

so we seem to be in disagreement just how large the step up will be with haswell, but we all agree thats its going to be a step up regardless.... the gizmodo article's point stands then i guess

 

So the Best Buy Chronos model is selling for $1199.99. The Ativ Book 6, which has a worse battery and worse speakers, is selling for the same price on Amazon. Does this mean when the Ativ Book 8 with the same specs as the Chronos comes out, it will be more than the Chronos?

 

The Ativ Book 8 will apparently have 16GB RAM and the Radeon 8870, and will cost $1700. Most likely not worth it.

 

there is no, and has never been a full blown US chronos series 7, so we have no price to compare it to

 

It depends on how old you are. We used to call it "inexpensive", but since then they've started calling it "independent" because enterprise-class hard drives are not inexpensive.

 

Can you provide a source for this ?

 

Is this laptop better than ASUS G75? with 3630 processor and gt660?

I am interested in 17 inch model to replace my hp envy series 1.

Is the hard drive 7200 or 5400? why is everybody swapping it for ssd? you need space, I need at least 1.5 gb of space....

Are there problems with overheating? Is there a complete good review for this laptop somewhere?

In my country Slovenia it cots 1330 EUR, so that is pretty good price.

is 3635 processor better than 3630?

 

Hello There


Been following this thread for quite sometime now. I'm really starting to like the chronos 7 as it fulfils all my requirements..But I've a few questions about it

1. I know its battery life is good but how well does it stand out while watching movies or playing games?

2. AMD launched the beta drivers which is great but I've heard AMD are really slow when it comes to launch gpu drivers as compared to Nvidia..Can anyone confirm like whats there usual release cycle, after how much time they update the drivers? and is there any news when will the tested/proper drivers come from AMD for the 8870m?

3. Lastly I need to buy a laptop in july/August period and I know Haswell will be lauched by that time is there any possibility that Samsung will refresh the Ativ Book 8 or the chronos by that time? and also what was the laptop update cycle for the Ivy Bridge last year, did laptops start coming in quite quickly after the release of the processor?

 

You can't compare this newly-released premium notebook to that year-old monster of a gaming laptop, it's not a fair comparison. But if you insist...

- IT depends on which Chronos you are talking about. Both Core i7's are about the same as the Asus. The one with the HD 8770 is not as good as the GTX 660 but the one with the HD 8870 is better.

- Hard Drive is 5400. People put in SSD's for better overall system performance and putting most of their data on external hard drive. And laptop hard drives only go up to 1 TB so you're gonna have to learn to put stuff on an external.

- Overheating is an issue with the 17.3" but not for the 15.6" one. Here are the reviews:
Review Samsung Series 7 Chronos 770Z7E Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
Review Samsung Series 7 Chronos 770Z5E-S01DE Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

Core i7-3635 is the same as Core i7-3630.

The Chronos/ATIV Book 8 is also LESS THAN HALF the width, 60-75% of the weight, 2-3X BATTERY LIFE, better speakers, 2-3X screen contrast, 1/2-1/3 black levels, and HALF the power adaptor wattage and weight. The only advatanges for the Asus are better cooling and can have a more powerful GPU configuration.

1. They both do quite nicely. Check the reviews I linked.

2. I think you're supposed to get the modified drivers from Samsung, but they don't seem to have any that support the HD 8000 GPUs, so people have to get the drivers straight from AMD just to get the GPU working.

3. That's what some of us are trying to figure out. Last year The Ivy Bridge mobile processors launch in late April/early May and the Chronos with the Ivy Bridge processor was reviewed in June. So assuming if Samsung follows this cycle like last year, they might update the ATIV Book 8 with Haswell a month or 2 after the new CPUs are released

 

Is it possible for someone to post a video review on youtube showing the gaming performance and the exterior and the weight..I'm yet to find a good review on youtube..Also the issues it has and how to fix them