Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

I just realized, the dimensions of the samsung are within .25" in all dimensions of the 15" macbook pro. So most macbook pro cases would work with the samsung.

 

Well shouldn't all the drivers for the Chronos be available Samsung's site? I plan on doing a completely clean Win 8 install and I am banking on all the drivers being available on Samsung, like most computer manufacturers are.

 

Yea but they aren't yet.

Samsung also has an automatic driver thing, but I guess it's not set up for the 780 yet

 

Ouch. That's a problem. No driver disc in the box?

Well where is that link with the Samsung support page for this comp? I believe there were some drivers on there.

 

Oh rlly...

 

No disks, hardly anyone does that anymore. I'm sure all the drivers are on the recovery partition or one of the other partitions on the HD. The guy on youtube just removed the drive and installed a virgin copy of windows 8 and went driver hunting. He got everything working but his wifi is dropping out on him for some reason... which obviously isn't happening with the factory installs so he missed something somewhere.

 

Found it:

Support - Notebooks NP780Z5E | Samsung Laptops

 

Yep. the chronos is 9 7/8 x 14 3/4 x 1 or there bouts. pretty close to the macbook pro 15" and most macbook cases will be a lil thicker to support the older pre-retna display version. And there are alot of good macbook pro cases out there.

 

Yup, sadly the better quality ones are usually made for Apple products only.

 

Well its a good thing i'll go into an apple store or microcenter with my chronos and try out all the apple bags til i find one that fits good. lol.

 

Read this thread before embarking on any drive swaps. Secure Boot and UEFI on the Windows 8 machines can cause undesirable side-effects.

Use Samsung's SW Update software. That's the only software download they now provide. You can either use SW Update to download all software and drivers in advance of reinstallation and back them up somewhere or run SW Update on the new Windows installation. I would recommend the former since it removes the potential obstacle of a server problem delaying your new Windows setup.

John

 

Thanks so much for this. What do you mean about the Secure Boot and UEFI? A user on YouTube swapped his HDD for an SSD and was fine except for missing a few drivers.

Is there really a problem with swapping the HDD with an SSD, plugging in a USB DVD Drive to install Windows 8 (or a USB Flash drive with the Win 8 install on it)?

 

Hah. I'll bet you someone will come up to you and ask you, "Hey! Where can I get that Macbook you have?"

 

UEFI & Secure boot just prevent you from booting from an unsigned disk as long as its enabled. A Windows 8 disk would be signed so you shouldn't have any problems (although i haven't read the linked article and I would before i attempted a swap). At worst case you could probably turn off secure boot in bios if you ran into problems... although win8 may not run without secure boot, i'm not sure. I ran into all kinds of problems with secure boot / UEFI when configuring a little acer w510 so I know it can throw a wrench into things for no good reason on installations.

 

Lol. that would be great.

 

Good to know. Thanks! I think what you said is true. Windows 8 is signed, therefore I should run into no problems.

 

Notebookcheck posted details in a reply why 8870 is slowed down:
Testvorschläge
They say it's like a 660m because:

1) In low settings the Enduro graphic switch takes away performance (AMD typical problem)
2) Preinstalled driver used (old)
3) CPU doesn't clock much higher in 3D mode (2,4ghz average) and it throttles CPU cores for short periods (down to 1,2ghz).

I told them about the weak PSU so they can check. Maybe that's the bottleneck.

/edit

he replied: max 92W used. also he says we can expect a review on friday.

 

Sorry guys, I know this has been detailed before but I've lost the model number of the new 17" Chronos. Can someone provide it? I know it ends is S03/4, but not the first part. Thanks!

 

My 17 inch Chronos 770Z7E-S03DE arrived today.

SSD: LMT-256M3M by LITEON, seems to be msata.
RAM: 4 GB soldered + 8 GB in slot
Screen: definitely not IPS, i guess it's TN, but a good one

Any questions so far?
I have some ethernet problems to solve, when that's done I can give some details (benchmarks etc.).

Greetings

 

Bottom is plastic?
S04 costs +150€ but has no different specs at all - wonder what's going on there.

But having a TN Panel + plastic bottom makes me think about a new MAC when it comes out.
Seems like no one can match Apple quality, even if they charge 1600€+

 

1) Does it have a German keyboard, power supply and Windows? The DE version seems to be the only one available in Europe and I don't want to get it if it has a German keyboard
2) Where did you get it?

Thanks

 

The keyboard is black, like here : http://pci34.fishingtree.com/nike2/strategy/770Z7E/ ?
How many Kg ? because here : Ordinateur portable : Samsung Série 7 Chronos NP770Z7E-S01FR Ordinateur portable 17, 3'' (43, 9 cm) Intel Core i7 3635QM 1 To 8192 Mo AMD Radeon 8870M Windows 8 : Amazon.fr : Informatique we can read 4,7kg !

 

Yes, bottom is plastic. But all the other parts you see and touch are metal.

I got it from amazon.de when it was available there. It does have german keyboard and power supply. I'm not sure whether you can change the language of Windows.

The keyboard is black, identical to the old 700Z7C models.
I've weighed it: 3 kg

According to the BIOS there is one sata slot left, but i won't open this thing until i know that everything is ok with this machine.

Greetings

 

What's the tag data of power supply?

I think that you are the only one that have an 8870m,
can you perform some test like 3Dmark11 with HWinfo64 in log mode (in background) and post the results (a CVS file) in this forum?

 

Great to see someone has actually received an 8870m model! But be warned for people asking for benchmarks of the 8870m...

Someone posted on the last page that the reason NotebookCheck's benchmarks were so low is because, like I had predicted, the drivers are preinstalled/placeholders. Basically, performance won't be up to where it should be until AMD released perfected drivers, which I expect won't be too long

 

I'm pretty sure you can change the language with a simple settings tweak. Settings->Language->(Insert language you want here)?

 

I hope that's true. The 8870m is one of the biggest reasons I'm after this laptop. Knowing that someone has some hope for this card makes me feel a little better. This is also one reason I stick with Nvidia cards in my desktop over AMD.

 

Well for those who are chomping at the bit to get the 8870 (in the US) version concider this. Best Buy likes to make deals with companies for temporary exclusivety on certain models. Example: The asus G46. Best Buy only can sell that model in the US for quarter one 2013 (other than a couple of re-sellers). I wonder if it could be the same for the new Chronos. Best Buy always likes to cheap down laptop models in some way. With the Asus G46 they put a crappy monitor in and only ship it with a I5, I assume to lower the price point. So putting a 8770 in that model they sell is not all that suprising. I saw no mention of the Best Buy model at CES.I wonder if they have a similar agreament with Samsung on this model.if they do, then we may have to wait until quarter 2, 2013 to see it in the US.

 

In no way is this a skimped model. 1GB less of a newer graphics model isn't that big of a deal for a lot of people. It's the same model shown at CES just without the graphics card I believe.

 

Samsung has removed from their Italian website the page for the new Chronos serie 7.. Bad sign

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Atleast they had one. Nothing on their site in the US.

 

Same! I need that 8870m. I am confident it will get the proper driver support it needs and will be over to the US soon.

 

This would really suck. Screw Best Buy for doing something like that, if this is true. That's ridiculous that they would stop everyone else in the US from getting one just because they want exclusivity for a while. Hopefully this isn't true and the 8870m model should be on its' way soon.

 

Is this what you're looking for?

Support - Notebooks NP780Z5E | Samsung Laptops

 

HTML:

I wouldn't worry about this being the case. Fry's also has the 8770m lower end Series 7 Chronos.

FRYS.com|SAMSUNG

I almost bought a rMBP and now I'm glad I waited. Just gotta hold out for a little longer.

http://www.samsung.com/ch_fr/consumer/computer-peripherals/computer/notebooks/NP770Z5E-S02CH

Swiss French site still has it. Stop fear mongering! Samsung is just having an unimpressive and slow launch.

 

They're just being very secretive and hush-hush about it. We're all spoiled by they're Galaxy S phone launches and Apple trying to raise the bar on opening events. Samsung just has no fanfare against the Series 7

Heh, the Fry's website thinks its an NP760Z5E model.

 

still waiting for an official review from a reputable (not an nvidia, intel biased) site

 

Now it's back again

Why do you think that notebookcheck is nvidia biased?

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Why you say italian samsung site have removed the link, it's online right now here: http://m.samsung.com/it/consumer/pc-peripherals-printer/notebook/high-performance/NP770Z5E-S01IT

Inviato dal mio GT-I9300 con Tapatalk 2

 

Well we have people saying the overall laptop is very good. The problem that we're seeing is the performance of the GPU. Until AMD releases and fixes the gpu drivers, we won't have the correct benchmarks or performance that this system is supposed to live up to. We're going to have to wait for that.

 

You'll be glad you waited! I have one right now and I'm selling it for the Chronos!

 

Well the news about Fry's having it, is good. This mean no exclusivity agreament for BB like they have for the Asus G46. As for Notebook check being not reputable, your either dreaming or just plain inexperienced. They just did a follow up review like a month ago called 7970m revisited. They care just as much about ATI as they do Nvidia. One thing that they point out is that the drivers often released with ATI cards sometimes are not as refined as Nvidia, as was the case with the 7970m. The graphics switcher enduro at that point did'nt work well at all, when compared to Nvidia optimus and certain games did'nt play well either. But a year later they are neck in neck with the Gtx 680m benchmark wise. Of course it did take a while for them to get there, but the 7970m has allways cost a greatdeal less than the Gtx 680m.

 

It was off for a little time, now it's back

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

This. This is exactly true.

 

That's good to hear. I've been debating between the rMBP and the best Windows laptop. Some of the reasons I don't want to go the rMPB route are first of all, it's Mac OSX which is getting tedious to use and feels less snappier than Windows, MTP support for Android devices are bad, the inability to change out the SSD/RAM, and the 8870m is potentially better than the 650m. Oh and you have to pay ~$1000 more just cause it has an Apple logo.

 

Oh, trust me, OS X SUCKS... I literally hate it. Windows and Windows 8 is where I belong.

Potentially better? Haha the 8870m will destroy my 650m! The 650m in here isn't all THAT good.

 

Yeah, I've been using OSX for 2 years now. I can attest to that. However, I heard the 650m in the MBPs are slightly overclocked so they perform a bit better than most of their Windows computer counterparts with 650m's. I'm not sure how true that is but, I was under that impression.

 

well ive read many of their articles and people complain about them reviewing cards that are know to be way faster than nvidia , but when they do the benchmark the slow nvidia comes out on top and that would make inexperience people reading the review to think that the radeon card suck but in this case it was a driver issue...i could be wrong
ive even seen a reputable computer site closing an "nvidia sucks" thread but leave the "radeon sucks" thread open.

 

If the 8870 model won't pull more than 92w them I'm betting it will come with a 90w power brick like the 8770 model.

Sounds like its throttling the CPU, is it throttling the GPU as well? What this sounds like is that both the 8770 and 8870 will be dampened a bit by throttling whatever the cause and by drivers until the drivers come out. So in the end the 8770 might approach the 650m and the 8870 should best the 660m... by home much depends on drivers. Sound about right?

 

Unfortunatly I'm not able to run 3D mark 11, it stucks at the "please wait" window and I have to reboot the machine at this point.
I'll try to run other benchmarks and maybe some games tomorrow.

Power supply specs: 90W, output: 19V - 4.74A

The wireless card is very slow (seems to be the same problem with the 700z7c, i'll try to fix it with some changed config values).

As some other members said, the main problem with performance seems to be the old graphics driver (date: 26.11.2012) but I hope that changes soon.