Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

Unboxing of the Samsung New Series 7 Chronos Multi-Touch 730U3E - YouTube
unboxing video

 

Yep I've already seen this haha.

 

Any info about ram accelerator?

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

is the bottom of this laptop full metal or plastic? if it's plastic i'll go for the Asus U500VZ touch

 

Personally I'd be happier if it was plastic. Recently people have become obsessed with metal (thanks Apple). Suddenly people now think plastic is a dirty word, though there are still very resilient and well built devices which utilize it. It allows for better heat dissipation (keeping it away from your lap, which the 8870M will likely need) and makes it easier to remove/detach the bottom casing for upgrades. On top of that the added flex helps absorb impacts and the plastic also reduces weight.

Sadly today everyone just wants to carry around solid metallic bricks coated in glass...

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Why is this such an issue? There's many different qualities of plastic and Samsung will have made their choice for good reason (one possible reason I can think of is better WiFi performance, another is reduced heat transfer when in laptop mode).

John

 

Exactly. Hopefully its a composite backing similar to that of my galaxy nexus and most Samsung phones. Durable, flexible and, most importantly, no snapping clips when you attempt to remove it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Thank you. Can you confirm there are 2 fans? Besides, can you tell us what is the estimated battery life you can see at full charge?

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Still none got 8870m version?

 

maybe it's personal preference, i've been using unibody MBP for 5 years now and i honestly cannot bear the sight of large amount of plastic used in the chasis. i don't think the added flex to the bottom is a benefit, actually i see it as a sign of cheap quality. i also think if i accidentally dropped my notebook from a table i would wish it's made out of metal instead of plastic.

i dont think removing and upgrading components inside a laptop has anything to do with the material used, instead it's up to the manufacture to decide how easy they want to user to upgrade stuff, they can either choose to use tons of screws and adhesive to hold everything in place, or a few of them for easy removal.

i have no issue with my Wifi performance on my current laptop (i get around 1Gbps downspeed on campus wifi)so i don't see how that affects me.

heat is not a issue since i only use CPU intensive program when my laptop is on the table eg altium, cadence etc although i do admit the palm area around the keyboard gets hot after a long usage but i don't see how this series 7 can avoid this issue since the keyboard surface is metal also.

to me metal means quality, confidence of usage and good aesthetics, i think this is the part that apple got right with their laptop lineup, now more and more brands are following this trend. i don't think samsung could've added a lot more cost just by replacing the bottom plate with metal. a $100 increase in the price? i can definitely live with that

 

According to some reviewers, the high-end model, that's fully specced out with everything has a full metal body, whereas the lowest models have plastic bottom that some of them complained about.

However, I have no idea if that changed or what, people with the actual devices can tell us more.

 

that's good news. what do you mean by full speced? touch, i7, 8870, SSD combo?if the price is below $1850(u500vz price without touch) i'll get it in a heartbeat. it would be even better if it came with the 1TB drive with full metal body so i can pay $200 and swap it out with 256 SSD which should be much cheaper compared to buying the laptop with SSD installed by samsung, they charge you ridiculous premium...

 

Just curious, but why are you considering a Series 7 or Asus laptop instead of a MBP? If Apple has the build quality you want, and you've been using a MBP for a while now, why don't you just stick with Apple. (Genuinely curious here, as I've used both).

 

overpriced

 

Well, that's my sentiments as well, was just wondering what he/she would say.

 

When Trojanec wouldn't mind paying $100 extra for a bottom panel out of metal I don't think he'd mind the too high price of the mbp. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

yeah i should've put this in the beginning of my last post, i'm a senior in college studying Electrical Engineering, a lot of the softwares i use, altium, cadence, xilinx etc don't have mac versions and as far as i'm concerned if you want to do serious PCB design you don't want to be using a mac(non of my professors use mac and 99% of the graduate students i see use PC)so i have to ditch the current MBP.

bootcamp is not an option simply because i don't want to switch systems everytime i need some work done. and i don't think mac is optimized to run windows(or the other way round), i get very poor battery when running windows on my MBP using bootcamp.

yeah and this as well, the retina screen is nice but OSX i don't need so it's overpriced. if any PC came with retina display i'll certainly buy it, correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think windows 8 is optimized for very high resolutions right? instead of making icons appear sharper and crisper by adding more pixels to them, it simply downsize everything?

 

The Metro interface, to the best of my knowledge, should work fine even with ludicrous-resolutions. Honestly though, at a normal viewing distance, the human eye should be barely able to differentiate between 1080p and 1440p, much less the rMBP screen, without leaning into the device quite ridiculously.

The thing is, the more you up the resolution, unless the applications have been designed for said nonsensically high resolutions, you're going to end up with messy scaling effects, so stuff in desktop mode is likely to look...terrible. Even on OSX, applications that weren't built for the resolution end up being scaled, so...yeah. Kind of a gimmick, IMO. Then again, so might be touch screens, so to each their own.

Also, by "fully specced" I meant the "H" version, the one that supposedly retails at $1699 with 1TB of HDD, an 8770M, i7, and the 3635QM. So yeah, what you wanted.

 

Just a reminder for all the 8870M hold outs: the 8770M throttles, what do you think will happen to the 8870M?

 

I'll wait til I see the numbers on how much it throttles. Plus, as you said, it seems Samsung got a bit trigger happy on the throttling -- throttling on 60 degrees is slightly silly.

 

Still no word on the 770Z5E? Would have expected this to be out at the same time.

Sent from my HTC Sensation using Tapatalk 2

 

I agree I'd also have to see WHEN its throttling. Just because its not pinned at 100% load or the clocks aren't at full speed doesn't mean necessarily mean throttling. These mobile cards are aggressive in power management and those down clocks might just be a time when less power is needed. Also those AMD cards have boost tech like nVidia so while 875 is the max, its base may be 650 and its boosting to 850 when needed. There just isn't enough information out there on these new cards.

From what I have seen on the 3DMarks test run on the 8770 its right about where I'd expect the score to be so I really don't see evidence of throttling.

 

i think the NP780Z5E-S01UB is a touch screen. but do u think its better to keep win8 or install win7 instead?

whats better for gaming and performance? this NP780Z5E-S01UB or the lenovo Y580?

 

As far as gaming goes:

8770M(S01UB) < 660M(Y580) < 8870M(S02UB?)

 

It throttles at stock clocks and quite frequently. I'm not some newbie that doesn't know what throttling is about, I've got tons of experience dealing with it. The stock score would be higher than what it is if it weren't for the throttling and the OC numbers would hit 8870M stock territory.

Anyway, finally cloned the crap 5.4k drive over to the SSD successfully using Acronis, what a huge difference! Feels like a completely different notebook.

 

Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP780Z5E-S01UB score: P2216 3DMarks

2216 it shows intel 4000hd even though he catalyst control center is set to use the dedicated card for 3dmark...not a fan of the amd switching solution

 

Dude you can overclock an 8770M as hard as you want and it will not even go anywhere near the 8870M.

 

Actually if it didn't throttle it could get close to stock of an 8870m in some benchmarks. The 8870m is less than half the power of a 680m. Its not exactly a powerhouse card. At stock (provided it doesn't throttle like crazy which it probably will) the 8870M in the Series 7 should get about 3-3.2k in 3DMark 11. An 8770M with a vbios fix @ 1000/1200 should reach 2700-2800.

Sent from my GT-N7000

I wouldn't be surprised if enduro was keeping performance down. Too bad there's no hardware MUX so we could switch it off. Anyway my play time with this thing is done since the gf wants it back. Back to Alienware, have fun with your new toy.

Sent from my GT-N7000

 

Disappointed about the throttling. Hopefully it eventually can be worked around, given the low temperatures. Have you played any games on it to see if there is lag/pausing/stuttering from the throttling?

How easy is the HD/SSD swap? Do you know what height of drive the machine fits? I have a 9.3mm SSD (not 9.5mm) that i'm hoping will fit if I get a Chronos.

 

Throttle isn't only the new versions problem:
Review Samsung Series 7 Chronos 700Z7C Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

Anything thinner than the original will fit. The mounting holes for the screws are the same distance from the bottom and a gap at the top doesn't matter.

John

 

So is it possible to switch to BIOS, make the backup/restore and then to switch back to UEFI?
Was it difficult to open the laptop and change the drive? Did you take some pictures of the insight while doing it?
Besides, what type of SSD did you use? 2,5", 7 mm ?
Thank you in advance for any information!

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

what he said

what version of chronos do you have? as the one i saw at ces has the hd 8870 and a 15.6 screen(i heard a 17.3 inch was to come)

 

isn't that last year's version?

 

Yep. Samsung throttles a lot for battery life.
That's why they list 11 hours. Same is seen on Series 9.

I hope 17inch has less throttling due to +3mm height and more space.
Also they claim it can run for up to 8 hours - maybe it just means less throttling.

 

Throttling since z5a series. Nothing new when vying for the slimmest

 

Also does the throttle happen when its on battery only?

 

So could we work around it withput frying our components/laptop/laps?
Do you think the throttling is an overheating issue or is it just rediculously aggressive to save power?

 

My guess would be power save. Especially if they are squeezing out 8 hours of battery life with those internals. I would also assume that the limits would change depending on whether or not it's plugged in, but that may only be true for higher end gaming systems.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

For the Z5A series I believe it was due to overheating. Frankly Sandy Bridge chips easily hit 90+C to 100+C.

For the Z5C it isn't anything much to do temperatures, yet it still throttled. So I wonder if it's the max current draw limits of the motherboard?

 

Maybe custom vbios could solve throttling?

 

Can't view image.
To owners: is there a USB with Powershare??

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

The Z7C throttled due to power usage at least, it was programmed to throttle at specific power usage - since it only came with 90Watt power supply. And even when throttling it still pulled more than the 90Watt the power supply could deliver.... how you might ask? Well it drained power from battery in addition to power supply to get the required power, I never tested what would happen if battery was empty - either it would shut off or throttle more is my guess.

Same goes for my Z3C - set to throttle at certain power usage. I've not got it to drain the battery at max load though, so I guess the 65Watt PSU can deliver the needed power due to the CPU throttling.

So I guess there is a big chance the Z5E is also programmed to throttle at certain power usage level. If this level is set too low I guess samsung could adjust it in future bios releases. I guess it comes with 90Watt PSU as well? If so the throttle level is porbably set just below this value for combined power usage. Powerful CPU, GPU and components, in general non-TN screens (IPS, *VA etc) draws more power than TN screens, backlit keyboard draws power, HDD or SSD and so on, it all adds up.

 

I wonder how is possible that an owner has already open this machine to swap the hard disk and he didn't tell us if cooling system is dual fan and if it's confirmed that there is a soldered RAM slot.
He has reported a slight GPU throttling and no info about if there is CPU throttling.
825MHZ is the Turbo boost clock of 8770m, standard clock is 775MHz, he has not reported a log about his test that would be very useful, in specific to understand the load on CPU when it's working @650MHz.

In every case 8870m is a completely different GPU (640 shader cores vs 384 shader cores of 8770m), it works @725MHz and @775MHz with Turbo boost.

 

I don't think they will ship a 65W power supply for the 8870 versions.. 90W seems more probable to me

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I used CSM + UEFI mode to clone the SSD using Acronis. Acronis has a UEFI boot mode but when I had it set to UEFI only it failed for some reason. Since then I've left it at UEFI + CSM since it boots in seconds.The drive I used is an Intel 330 series which I believe is 9.5mm so I'm not sure if a 7mm will align with the screw holes or not. Yes I took photos of the inside, I'll upload it to my server later today and pass on the link. If you've seen one Samsung internal shot, you've probably seen them all. This one is similar to others I've seen.

 

Thank you very much for your willingness!

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They are killing me here. This is the machine I want. Where is it?!?!?!

Also, so is there a 15" and a 17" or is not clear that the 8870 is only available in a 17"? While I don't mind 17" laptops, it'd be nice to have a more portable 15" version that I could also do light gaming on.

 

Also interested in the 17" but it may have a crappy TN panel... Anyone got intel on the 17" screen ?
That would be a bummer because maybe only the 17" can cool the 8870m since the 15" already throttles the 8770m.

 

There will be a 15" with 8870. The propaganda is here. The uncertainty is when it reaches the shelves. It's not unknown for new hardware to be delayed.

John