Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

How do you claim the VAT back? What is the VAT? 20%?

 

I didn't lose BLE with the BIOS update, my model is the Best Buy Chronos (not ATIV). Right now I keep the laptop plugged in almost all the time, but I unplug it every now and then and so far BLE seems to be helping, HWiNFO reports 0% wear so far although I really don't know how accurate that is.

 

Oh, great, thanks for pointing that out (about NOT losing BLE after BIOS update). Maybe whoever posted that just didn't check properly. Or maybe I misunderstood

It would be great if others can confirm, one way or the other.

My Battery Wear also remained at 0% for several months (with approx two charge cycles per week) before suddenly rising to 7%, then later to 10%. Do note that you need to perform a calibration cycle (full charge before and after) in order to get an accurate measure of Wear.

But John's X4C, which is about the same age as mine, is still at 0%. So it is very possible that I simply have a poor battery.

My point was merely that I have not seen evidence that BLE protected my battery capacity, beyond what I experienced with other laptops where I always charged fully. So if Samsung has replaced it with something they claim is better (Smart Charge something) it will not negatively affect my purchase decision.

 

I guess it's too early for me to tell, I don't miss the extra 20% right now so I might as well give a try anyway, we'll see how it goes in a few months. By the way what do you mean exactly with calibration cycle? Use the battery until the computer shuts itself off (I don't really like that idea) and then charge it all the way to 100%? Or do you use a specific program?

 

Your BIOS should have a Battery Calibration feature, which completely discharges the battery in order to reset the capacity gauges. First charge the battery fully to 100%, disconnect power, then run the calibration, then fully charge again. Now your Wear% should be accurate.

It is generally agreed that instead of letting the calibration function discharge all the way from 100%, you can use the computer until the battery gets low, then boot BIOS and run the calibration at that point. I have personally always let the calibration function run it down all the way (maximizing screen brightness after booting BIOS) just in case it takes measurements along the way. There may be nothing to that, it's just how I do it. And hey, how has that worked for my battery

Anyways, you don't want to run the calibration too often, since completely discharging the battery definitely hurts it.

 

The potential for damage due to the full discharge is offset by the need for the battery's chip to know where empty actually is when Windows will always shut the computer down before the battery reaches empty.

My rule of thumb is about every 6 months but do one after 11 months in case calibration shows there is serious wear that might justify replacement under warranty. The other reason for running the calibration is when unusual discharge behaviour is observed such as the computer going from 20% charge remaining to shut down in somewhat less time than expected.

Several times during calibration I've watched the displayed capacity sit on 0% for more minutes than expected.

John

 

Just went to bestbuy to check out the Series 7 Chronos again and was told that it is now discontinued. As other people have mentioned earlier, they were selling the laptop last week at around $950! I'm really kicking myself right now because I would have jumped on that price in an instant but they're all sold out of the model now. I offered to buy the display model, but they flat out refused to sell it saying, "it's against store policy." I'm believing more and more that $1199 is a little too overpriced for this computer considering that it's ivy bridge and no SSD. Also, I don't think it's been mentioned here, but I saw the mineral ash black version of the ativ book 8 at fry's, so if anyone wants to see that model in person, fry's has got it in stock.

 

Which Chronos model are you referring to?

 

lucky you. my fry's didn't have the ash black version. i assume it's still handicapped with the 8770 though?

i was told the same thing today too at BB. i bought the 880z5e just because i'm going out of town and badly need a laptop immediately. i'll probably return it if the ash black and 8870 arrives...

 

Oh, yeah, it's handicapped with the 8770. One thing to note about the ash black, though, is that the plastic area around the keyboard is EXTREMELY glossy. This has two drawbacks from what I've seen. One, it's super reflective, obviously, and you might not think about it, but I found it really really distracting. Two, the glossiness makes it seem like it's very prone to getting scratched up. I've seen two ash black models so far and the glossy area around the keyboard on both were very scratched.

Yeah, we were a week unlucky. It's looking more and more that the ASUS n550 is it, or at least whenever it comes in stock at xoticpc.

 

Don't know the specific model number, but it was the US silver chronos series 7 with an 8770.

 

Yes i really wish i would have gotten that now. Also the mineral ash version has a lot of glossy parts, wouldn't recommend it, stick with the silver.

 

I was under impression that mobile quad core haswell chips had not even been announced yet, and may take a long time to arrive. Only gain would be battery life, but that should be already very good for the ativ book 8.

I can't quite confirm that, as I just pulled trigger on my amazon order which arrives tomorrow! Going to be awesome, I am sure. Better than my 4 year old samsung netbook in any case (which was also awesome, if you matched expectations to price).

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Although, not sure why i thought that, cos the asus seems to have one! It's also very cheap for similar components which is weird.

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the Series 8 doesn't have a plastic bezel around the keyboard, it is all aluminium. The virtually identical looking Series 6 DOES have a black plastic keyboard bezel, it also has everything at lower spec (and a lower price), so it may have been that one you've seen.

I suspect either the shop was wrong, the label was wrong or the picture was wrong.

There were some early versions of the Chronos 7 2013 which had a plastic bezel, (see the video in the first posts of this thread), but I think those became the ATIV 6 anyway, I've never heard of any Series 7 or 8's sold with the platic like that!

 

You're right, it is aluminum, but only for the silver version. The ash black version does have that glossy plastic around the keyboard for the ATIV 8, that I can confirm.

One last note, I tried out the last best buy in my area for the Chronos 7 and to my surprise, they had a floor model with a tag indicating that it was a clearance. I was pretty happy and asked for one to purchase at the price of $965, but alas! they were out of stock! Some people just have all the luck (the s that bought out all the models last week).

 

That's incorrect. There are multiple laptops out (some of them for over a month or two) with quad core Haswell parts. Not sure what you are thinking of.

 

A good quide to what is available is the notebookcheck mobile CPU benchmark list. If there are multiple results against a CPU then it must be available. That list is also an excellent reference for seeing the performance difference between GPUs both in single-threaded and multi-threaded tests. Quad core CPUs only give a big boost relative to dual core when running multi-threaded programs.

John

 

I'm looking at the 17" NP770z7e which seems to match my needs perfectly. Over here in Switzerland the only configuration comes with a 256Gb SSD. Does anyone know which type of SSD it is (eg 830, 840, 840 Pro, other...) or how it well it stacks up performance wise?

 

Most likely a SSD by Lite On as for 17" model, but this only a speculation.

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Thanks, searching on LiteOn I've located a couple of posts from Avior who benchmarked his German spec NP770z7e. He says the SSD is a "LMT-256M3M by LITEON, seems to be msata."

Avior also benchmarked the drive: though the sequential read/write performance matches a Samsung 830, the random read/write performance is closer (and sometimes worse) than my old Intel X25M G2 Sata 1 SSD). Perhaps cost savings explain why Samsung included this rather than one of their own decent performance SSDs...

I'm quite happy to upgrade the HD myself, but it's pretty annoying to be forced to pay ~300$ extra for an option you don't want.

 

I don't believe the 8770 is all that bad. I have been able to run everything with 30+ fps on some settings. TF2, civ 5, coh2, and including the heavy games like Skyrim (don't have crysis/farcry). No issue at all. Of course the 8870 would be nice probably bump some of those low-medium settings to high, but I don't see it launching anytime soon in the US. I spoke with my business rep for best-buy and they recieved 12,000 ATIV book 8's and none of them have an 8870. I also gathered that best buy has an exclusive on the ATIV book 8. So don't count on the 8870 version anytime soon.

 

And no problem getting the 8770m to switch on and detect?

 

Straight out of the box, vanilla np780 just ran SW update, and started playing stuff, I don't think the intel integrated card was giving me 50 fps in Skyrim, so no problem yet, all in 1920 as well. My SSD arrives today so that is cool too, although I am not looking forward to getting this thing open without breaking it. All in all, $886 for this laptop was a steal, and it has one of the best touch pads i've ever used, as well as a fantastic touch screen, my only frustration was getting that damn auto dimming turned off, but that was me being new to Windows 8 as opposed to a laptop issue (one settings in something called "charms"), and the frustration with opening this as well, many swear words will be thrown around today.

 

Damn, I hope we might see these prices in Europe soon. 1399 euro is just to much for me atm =(

 

Where did you get yours for that price? Best Buy?

 

Floor model at best buy, they end of lifed it last week, so i called all the bestbuys for 100 miles asking for a floor model, found one. You get full warranty, you get the laptop and the power cord and that is all (I don't care)

 

Liteon's mSATA SSD performs at least as well as Samsung's mSATA. However, we don't have anyone wanting to tell us what happens in the 2.5" format.

Personally, if the rest of the computer's specs tick the right boxes I would get it on the assumption that I would want to slot in a higher capacity SSD of my own choice once I could afford to do so.

John

 

Hmmm SSD got here, and i just realized I have no idea how to get this back off, this isn't the same as the video I saw. Anyone have a 780 guide?

 

I'm starting to think that Samsung will wait Windows 8.1 release (August 2013) to update Ativ Book 8 with Haswell and so they will launch it at IFA 2013 (Berlin 6-11 September 2013).
Any update in August is highly improbable, but even if they update in August it's enough sure that availability will be only in September.

 

i think they just care very little about their laptop line at this point in the grand scheme of things

 

Why? Even a competitor like Gigabyte P35K will be available only at the end of August.
For example Dell XPS usually one of the first lines that receive Intel update are still on Ivy Bridge and there are no rumors about on future update.
Lenovo has recently launched some Thinkpad still with Ivy Bridge, Sony is still on Ivy Bridge.

It seems that this time Notebook industry has no intention of update rapidly their products for some reason.

 

see the last 598 pages of posts. not just talking about the haswell refresh, talking about the vid card confusion, the unavailabilty of the 8870, and clarity of specs, the random renaming of the product line since its announcement, etc....

 

Sorry, but 8770m is a problem only for USA and is caused by a trade agreement with Best Buy.
(I'm here from the beginning of this thread).
We knew the specs many months before the release on the market.

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I'm willing to wait until sometime in September only because Gigabyte has said that their U-series and the P35K will be available in the US sometime in September. My question is this - if Samsung still doesn't have the right model here, does anyone know about Gigabyte as a brand? I'm nervous about going with a brand that isn't a "name brand" that I don't know much of anything about. How would support work? How are they in terms of longevity? Anyone know?

 

I recently bought the 17.3 with the HD8870m. I'm really pleased so far with this laptop so far but I have a couple of questions since this is the first laptop I've ever owned. I played battlefield 3 and while it looked amazing and all, it got a little hot. After I was done playing I could see two dark streaks on my monitor due to the heat. Now, is this normal? The streaks were gone after i was done playing only a few mins. I going to be traveling a handful so that's why i decided to change to a laptop instead of a desktop and i like to play video games every now and then so that's why i decided to come to these forums and ask the experts on this. I don't want to damage this fine piece of hardware since i will be using it for a long time. Help me my friends!

 

apparantly we didnt even know the name of the product, much less the specs

 

Actually the last time I checked the following had Haswell laptops:

- Dell Inspiron, XPS 12, & many Alienware
- Sony has many models.
- ASUS has the G750JX & others.
- MSI has various models

 

why update when you can milk stuff, slowly releasing stuff market them as the best and newest and make big buck , much like me finding a cure of a disease , but rather release 6 prototypes to milk money instead of the finished product

 

If you consider these notebooks as alternative for Ativ Book 8, why you are still here?
Even Samsung has available Ativ Book 9 with Haswell, but it's a different segment.
The competitors of Ativ Book 8 (Sony Vaio S15, Asus Zenbook UX51VZ/U500VZ, Dell XPS 15) are still on Ivy Bridge, and future competitor like Gigabyte P35K will be available at the end of September, so Samsung has no reason to update soon, maybe there is some unknown reason because no one has still updated this segment.

 

What about the Asus N550JV? Im seeing that available now on a lot of sites

 

Was researching between the n550jv and acer v7 14" but happened across this thread. Found an open box in excellent condition at local bestbuy for $839 (chronos version)

Judging by the comments about battery life, there doesnt seem to be much benefit from the haswell alternatives, is this price savings worth missing out on haswell for this particular model?

 

That's a fantastic price. Haswell is only a little bit faster and the battery life is brilliant already. Who knows how long it will take for the haswell version to be that cheap, if it even comes out?

 

I never said that I considered any notebooks as an alternative to the Ativ 8. Please don't be defensive. I was only trying to provide information. Like many others that have followed this thread, I was hoping Samsung would release the Chronos in the U.S. with the HD8870M and 16 GB of RAM. This was before Haswell was an issue. Samsung not only decided to release their top of the line laptop to almost every other area in the world but the U.S. but provided little to no information on release dates. Compared to other's, Samsung is dropping the ball in the U.S. Despite this, I will wait another couple of months before I jump ship.

 

How do I enable the AMD High Definition Audio via HDMI? I have the Best Buy Chronos (NP8705Ze-S01) and the most recent version of AMD Catalyst. AMD High Definition Audio doesn't show up as an available Sound Device, only Intel Audio.

 

I picked one up as well, but so many dents/dings and scratches made me annoyed and returned it immediately. I went and talked to the manager, he was nice about it and about to offer me some discount, but not really much. They said this price is the absolute minimum for this model. He told me to just go buy a cover instead, since it is "bound" to happen on every laptop. What in the world.... And the fact that the condition says "Excellent". I wonder what exactly is Best Buy's standard, when they say "no scratches, no dents."

 

Hi everybody! I am thinking of buying Ativ Book 8 with radeon hd 8870m but I am curious about amd´s gpu and wi-fi problems too. I have found out that after installing newer gpu drivers that haven´t been approved by samsung, many of you experience problems with screen brightness,fans on in sleep profile and other problems, but I hope it can be somehow solved. However, I wonder about performance of hd 8870m because I don´t know whether it´s still suffering from outdated drivers, although new catalyst 13.8 is already out. So my question is if anyone of you have installed new catalyst driver and you are not having any serious problems and if problems with games have improved (I mean Far cry 3 glitches in dx11 mode and low fps in many games especially in assassin´s creed 3). Would any of you who owns samsung 7 chronos or ativ book 8 mind doing some gaming tests with new catalyst driver. Games like metro last light, Company of heroes 2 and some older demanding games like witcher 2. Thank you very much in advance.

 

I don't have exact numbers, but i can run everything with ease on low-medium settings with the 8770 US version. COH2 can get a little sluggy in huge matches on low everything, but i avg 30 fps still. From the release drivers to the beta drivers i saw about a 4 to 5 FPS increase.

TF2, Skyrim, Civ 5 are great. I do wish that i could of gotten the 8870 version, but it wont be coming to the US... ever, probably.

 

As i know,, if driver is not the one which is provided by manufacturer, it could not maximize the hardware performance, so drivers given by Samsung is recommended. I hope my comment would be helpful in this regard.

 

Thanks for reply. It´s good to know that hd 8770m is capable of running most recent titles at least on low to medium settings. I hope that resolution you use in games is full hd. Then, it would be great.

 

Yes all native resolution.