Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

Good question, I'll try after this battery test im running gets done.

 

Seeing all those websites update about the 15" with hd8870m i think we can buy it at least for the end of march... or at least i hope it

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There definitely was something holding back the 8870m, whether it was throttling, drivers or both remains unclear. A 3Dmark11 score of 3300 and in-game 650m performance just isn't right

 

Battery Test Update - 25% remaining, 5:10 elapsed so far.

 

This is good. Meaning longer if you aren't streaming movies for 5 straight hours.

 

Does any of you owners have a 120W compatible adapter to see if that is the cause of throttling? Because 60 Celsius sound a bit too low to justify thermal throttling

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It is possible that the GT650m performs equal or better than the 8870m, at least than the one present in their test machine which is the Samsung. Drivers as a reason is unlikely because drivers for mobile are custom made for every maker so, no. The most likely reason as already discussed is temperatures causing throttling of the GPU.

 

then its pretty severe that it temp throttles at 60c.

 

Battery Test: Hit 10% at 5:56. Continuing to 2nd low power warning.

 

I think someone with the Samsung 8770m model said he saw throttling at about 60c as well though. At that time I said that if that is the case then a very similar or worse situation would happen for the 8870m model.

If you look at the 3DMark11 score which is about 40% above the GT650m, as it was expected to be, then the problem isn't likely drivers but rather throttling of the GPU because synthetic benchmarks are short sessions compare to games so the GPU can handle it and perform as expected.

 

Really disappointed by those bench games of notebookchecks..
It's clearly power as 670m,but fails cause bad alpha driver? Or throttling? Or what?

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Battery Test - Results

50% Screen Brightness, All power offs disabled, Streaming movie Serenity over Netflix while BatteryMon ran.

Total Run Time (Until it hit 5% battery life and shutdown): 6hr, 18min.

The battery capacity is 92476 mWh, and during the test it would pull between 15000 and 17000 mw. When not playing video it would idle draing atout 11000 mw.

 

Thanks for this! Sounds like battery life is pretty decent for such a powerful machine. Probably close to 7 with SSD and 9 with just browsing.

 

I just did some load testing on the 8770M version in TF2 + 3DMark 11. Results are up on another site though (not allowed to post a link myself due to NBR rules), I won't post any of the data here since NBR has a new policy that claims ownership of any original content. Bottomline is that the 8870M system is going to be throttling like crazy if it has the same PSU as the 8770M system.

 

So I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 2. What cool features can I use with it and the Chronos? It's blue tooth enabled. Just not sure on features.

 

Isn't that a bit irrelevant to this forum? Android and windows 8 are a separate topic.

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Well it does pertain to this computer? That's the point of this thread right?

 

Id like to see those number, googled but couldn't find whatever site they are posted on. So it sounds like its throttling based on the power supply (it is a little brick)?

 

Thinking more and more of keeping this 8770gpu samsung chronos but still have a couple gotchas. The biggest is memory... it comes with 4gb soldered on the board and a slot with a 4gb simm in it. The manual has a detailed section on ram upgrades and it says you should replace the sim with another of like size and specs. First, why would anyone replace a 4gb stick with another 4gb stick? kinda pointless unless the memory is bad. Using CPUID its showing that the memory is currently running in dual channel... this suggests that the 4gb soldered on and the other 4gb stick are on the same channel / controller... although most software ive tried just recognizes the single 4gb simm and says the total ram is 8gb.

So, if I upgrade the 4gb sim to an 8gb are I going to lose dual channel? I know its only a 3-5% performance tick but id like to keep it if i can.

I would be 100% happier with this thing if they just would have made 2 slots accessible and had a separate door for the hard drive so you don't have to take the back off.

 

Yes it does have bluetooth. I'm not sure what profiles you would have between it and the Galaxy Note though. They are both samsung, it would be cool if you could pass snotes and such using the pen on the tablet for finer drawing control than available on the notebook touchscreen.

 

What you're talking about is the interaction between Windows 8 and Android, not Chronos and Android. Anything the Chronos can do, another Windows 8 machine can do.

 

Oh gotcha. Wasn't sure if some of that bloatware had anything to do with their mobile. Would be cool like the one said before. About the notes. Anyways, ordering tomorrow with express shipping. In store was March 5th. No way I'm waiting that long.

 

You could still have dual channel even with 4GB + 8GB with Intel Flex Memory Technology but I'm not sure if HM76 support that.

 

Good news, the Lenovo y480 uses the HM76 chipset and it lists Intel Flex Memory Access, Intel Fast Memory Access as functionality supported. Still not sure why their doc says to replace it with another memory card of the same capacity.

 

I think you were the one stating you had Wifi problems? How did you fix it?

This guy is having problems with wifi and sleep when closing lid. He has to hit power button or it restarts.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHxxwf2bT8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

I didn't actually 'fix' it... just after I did all the windows updates the problem disappeared.

The action performed when you control the lid is set in the power profile settings for whatever profile you are using on battery or plugged in.

 

New problem... ive switched back to High Performance profile but the processor won't budge faster than 1.18ghz. Its running at 1/2 throttle with no turbo at all. I've checked the settings in the profile and even reset it to its default... but no luck, its stuck on low power mode which makes it slow as hell. Any ideas?

Edit: I've gone through all four power profiles (balanced, performance, power saver and samsung optimized) tried restoring all of them to their defaults, tried setting all of them so the max CPU usage is 100%, and tried running wPrime and the passmark cpu performance test and in all cases the CPU maxes out at 1.15ghz 1/2 of its normal clock and never turbos.

Kinda stuck on this one. It ran fine at max speed and gave an 8400 passmark before I switched to power saver for my battery test. Now it gives a 3000 passmark score.

 

Joker, saw your info. That's pretty disturbing if at idle on the 8770 it's drawing that much already. I would agree, where would it get the extra juice to power the 8870 amongst other things? So not only would we have GPU throttling, we'd get the PSU scrambling to make things work.

Alchemist - are you charged back up? Maybe the computer is forcing you into low power while it's at a low battery %?

 

Hm doesn't look good. PSU + heat throttle prevents it to utilize it's hardware for max performance.
There are reasons why I never will buy anything from AMD.

Guess now we know what those delays are about and why only few are in stock.

 

hope you're wrong.... we have now to wait only max. 1 more day to see the official review of notebookcheck... and know what's wrong with this laptop :-(
The benchmarks of 8870 that's the same as an 650m and sometimes worse, give me a bad day...

 

I don't understand why people keep talking about thermal throttling: at 60 Celsius it's totally safe for the GPU to run at full power, there is really no need of throttling. The only possibility for the temperature to be the cause of throttling is that Samsung made a crappy over cautious bios, which can certainly be improved. I believe that the problem is PSU: CPU has a max TDP of 45W, and the GPU too, if I remember correct. And there is a FullHD 300nits display to power, a mechanical HDD, fans and other minor things, so how can a 90W PSU provide enough power during heavy load (where max TDP can be reached)? Many laptops with similar power consumption use a 120W adapter. My guess is that when it comes to this kind of powerful ultrabooks (like this and Asus UX51VZ) manufacturers try to keep weight and dimensions as low as possible, even for PSUs, at the cost of sacrifying performance during heavy load scenarios. This is a bad choice IMHO, especially with this laptop: with a 10-11 hours capable battery you won't need to have always the power brick with you, so it wouldn't be a problem if it was a little bigger.

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Can you hook up an aftermarket 120W PSU with the right connector or would the motherboard be incompatible?

Edit: I just emailed bestsellers.eu, the only site that claims to have the np770Z5E in stock and ready for order. As expected, it is not really available. It would take at least one week to get the laptop from samsung they said.

 

60+°C in notebooks IS a problem, expecially in slim ones.
There are to much components affected and damaged by heat, first of all solder points.
For example first version of Xbox360 was killed by that because the board bent (x-clamp) and killed the machine / solder points. Heavy gaming notebooks are fat for reason.

This ain't desktop GPUs where 80-90°C are pretty much standard.
PC GPUs have heatsinks in size of a half laptop...

 

Uh... My experience is exactly the opposite. My desktop GPUs idle around 30C and get to 50 or 60 at load but my laptop idles around 50 or 60C when the discrete GPU is enabled. 60C is perfectly fine.

Weak solder might melt around 100C but even that's a bad case, generally it shouldn't melt at such low temperatures. Though I don't know exact numbers off the too of my head.

 

60 °C is not a problem. Mobile gpu's can handle temps up to 95 °C or even more without being damaged.

Notebookcheck posted the benches: http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8870M.86798.0.html

On benchmarks the 8870m performs like a 670m but in most games it performs like a 650m. How the hell is that possible?

 

The answer is throttling.
I wonder if Samsung has used a 90W power supply even on 17".

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I can't guarantee, but I believe yes. Many people accidentally damage their power adapter and buy a compatible one. I think that when voltage output is the same there shouldn't be any problem. Maybe someone else might confirm/deny?

CPU junction temperature is 105 Celsius, and I doubt that GPU's one will be far from that value. As others have written, 60 Celsius is perfectly safe

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But doesn't 3Dmark11 draw around the same power as games? So why isn't the gpu throttling during benchmarks like that?

 

3dmark11 is a short life test compared to game session.
So temps while it's performing 3dmark11 have no time to rise up enough to start the throttling.

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Yes I understand that but you just said it's not temps but power consumption that's causing the throttling?

 

It seems that there are both cases in this notebook.

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Alchemist - dumb question, but are you in silent mode? I did the same thing when I first got my M860TU and couldn't for the life of me figure out why I wasn't getting the performance I was expecting...

 

Maybe 3Dmark11 doesn't USD much CPU, since it is for testing GPU (just wondering here, I don't have a clue about how it works)

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There is some indication that the gpu takes up enough space that one dim slot is lost and some Ram gets soldered. If so the gpu flavors might top out at 10GB. On the 8770 version are there two slots or one?

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There is a new video on YouTube, seems there were a couple of (minor?) issues after the SSD replacement and clean install.

New Samsung Series 7 Chronos WiFi and Sleep Issues (with gameplay!) - YouTube

Also NotebookCheck now have a lot more games benchmarked on the 8870, lets hope the review is imminent.

AMD Radeon HD 8870M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

 

This is the link to Samsung store in London. You can call them and ask about release date.

Samsung Flagship Store - Westfield Stratford, London

 

In Skyrim it beats 670m by 2%
Throttling can't be the issue then for 17 inch.

AMDs driver support failure, like for desktops.

 

Anyways be it Nvidia or AMD, whenever it comes to mobile gaming you get driver updates only for the first 6 months through the manufacturer and 2 years later you can enjoy your two year old drivers ad libitum.

 

Yep and add the usual non existent Samsung support to it
They release new models before they update.

 

Guy in this shop said that it will be a TN display(total crap) it cost 4500 zl so about 1080 euro. If there's TN display model so maybe there is somewhere a PLS one
Vobis.pl - Notebook Samsung NP770Z5E-S01PL 15.6" i5-3230M 8GB 1TB 8850M 2048MB W8