Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

You need to do two things... first go into your power settings and TURN OFF ADAPTIVE BRIGHTNESS. Its on by default, and it makes the display dull and lifeless under some lighting conditions. Turn it off, crank up the brightness and let the screen shine. Its actually a VERY good display.

The second thing you may want to do is go into the display settings and set the scaling to 100%. By default its set to 125% (probably for easier touch screen use) but it takes something away form the display IMO.

 

Edit: Ninja'd.

As long as I've made this post, I might as well leave this here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...ies-7-chronos-amd-hd8870m-14.html#post9057843

Hopefully we get a 120w power supply with the 8870 version, and the cooling system can dissipate the heat...

 

At 100% this screen is amazingly crisp, I love it. I did turn adaptive brightness back on during battery mode, though. If anything I hope it helps me keep a little bit of battery.

edit: two things.
1) Update for me - Installed Steam over wireless, ran amok on the Internet for a good hour while I did heavy downloading, and reset a few settings here and there in Windows 8. 1 hour in, still at 90%.

2) I set it so when the lid closes it 'does nothing'. Amusingly enough, I think something residual might have clicked a link because my computer started blasting some ad I never clicked on. Weird, anybody else have that happen?

 

Already did both and the scree is grainy. Still playing with it though.

 

Samsungs default wallpaper is chappy resolution. I downloaded a high resolution wallpaper and looks fantastic now.

 

Yeah actually I am playing with that and noticed it to be the issue. I am trying to find a site with some. Any recommendations/

 

HD Wallpapers (High Definition) | 100% Quality HD Desktop Wallpapers

 

Ah, that explains it I went to one of those high res themes accessible from 'get more themes' in personalize. The stock pic was grainy. Hadn't thought of that.

 

I opened it up and got the memory specs. PC 12800 DDR3 1600 CL 11. There is a kingston sim on amazon for about $50 that looks good.

 

actually go to the store on windows 8 and search “Background Wallpapers HD"

Those are amazing

 

Yeah, it is no doubt a great screen. After getting one of those high resolution backgrounsd...omg it's nice. But I still see on white windows a bit of grainyness that I am not use to seeing on nice screens.

 

And you're speculating that it's the touchscreen?

 

Possibly.


Sent from my New iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

I would suggest updating the first post with these tests... I know they are with the 8770 but still, they should be helpful for a lot of newcomers.

 

Just went to Best Buy to check out the laptop. Initial impressions are its a great device. Fantastic screen, (btw the touchscreen can be turned off in Samsung's quick settings) nice keyboard, and a LOUD and CLEAR set speakers. Was really impressed when I watched a 1080p video recording of Crysis 3 gameplay on ultra settings - the screen and sound is amazing this truly a multimedia laptop.

Touchpad is extremely responsive - one of the best I've seen on a Windows laptop. Switching in between apps is quite speedy as well.

I really hope the 8870M version comes out this week and hopefully for around $1500.

 

I'm hoping that too!

Although i think we might have to wait till April, which isn't that far away really

 

Don't we all...

It would be a changing day in our quest for the Chronos when we see it appear on Amazon in the US. I believe that will be the start of the official release

 

Six months. SIX MONTHS. :/ Same here. I don't need it for portability, and I want a model with integrated optical drive. But Windows 8 without a touchscreen... I will be majorly bummed if this doesn't happen, and soon. Literally the second a 17-inch touchscreen model is out I will order it, from anywhere.

 

What I love most about the touch screen is that it pics up little to no fingerprints and can't see them when using laptop.

 

Huh, thought I posted, but it didn't go through. Anybody else on Samsung Optimized power mode hear the cooling fan(?) kind of go on and off?

I'm not sure what my computer is actually doing right now. It sounds like the fan can't make up its mind!

Or is that just the weird sound the HDD is making as it spins?

 

Mine hasn't made any loud noise. I'll push it a bet and let you know tomorrow.

 

Oh don't get me wrong, it's not loud, but in a quiet environment like the library, it's noticeably pulsing. Not sure what's doing it. Sounds like the right side of the computer, towards the numpad.

 

That's definitely the hard drive then! That's exactly where it's located. SOUNDS like it's time for an SSD!

 

SSDs' are overrated

 

No sir, they are not!

 

Finally I managed to run 3dmark (the newest version) and created a log with hwinfo:

Log - Pastebin.com

Benchmark results:

- Test 1: 52565 (Graphics 61843, Physics 34467)
- Test 2: 11305 (Graphics 15631, Physics 5743)
- Test 3: 2083 (Graphics 2158 , Physics 7941, Combined Score 880)

Besides that i've checked the SSD with AS SSD Benchmark:

SeqTest
Read 489,73 MB/s
Write 401,75 MB/s

Random4K1TTest
Read 18,89 MB/s
Write 33,91 MB/s

Random4K64TTest
Read 186,38 MB/s
Write 103,07 MB/s

AccTimeTest
Read 0,152 ms
Write 0,107 ms

Score:
Read 254
Write 177
Total 564

The fan makes a silent but rattling noise in idle when the chronos is not in silent mode, kind of awkward.

 

Can I ask what exactly is silent mode and how do you activate/deactivate it? I've read it a few times so far, but didn't understand exactly how it works

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

You have a key with a fan icon to turn it on/off (17 inch: fn + F11).
In silent mode the fan switches off and the cpu (+gpu?) is clocked down.
This means that the chronos is completely silent in this mode with an ssd.

Greetings

 

I wonder what the battery life would be like in silent mode.., :O

 

Thank you very much! Great feature for when we need to work in a library or to let it downloading during the night Is there some kind of software that regulates this? Or do you think it's related to bios? I think I'd do a clean Windows 7 install, and I would like to keep the feature

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Just got a reply from Elgiganten:

"Hi Same

Thank you for your mail!

It looks like SANP770Z5E-S02 will arrive at our central storage 27/3 but this is an unconfirmed date and could therefore be changed.

have a nice day!"



Well. I can't wait one more month. Why is samsung doing this? Any suggestions?

and also the date on netonnet is changed to 28/3

I live in Sweden.

 

So these are the scores of your 8870m right?

I'm sorry but I don't know much about such logs. All I could find was that the cpu did not throttle due to heat. Anyone with more experience/knowledge? What does it say?

 

On full brightness, no dimming, etc. Watched a few movies, did a few office stuff and only at %85. Says 7 hours left.

 

I will reiterate my previous hypothesis that Samsung may be waiting on AMD to deliver sufficient GPUs which work to specification. It's not the first time that notebook release has been delayed by new CPUs or GPUs.

John

 

If its otherwise silent and not under a load or hot it might be the HDD rather than the fan. You can check this out by going into task manager, performance tab and watching the hard disk graph... if it gets little peaks when you hear the noise its the hard drive.

 

What exactly are the specs of this machine? Im guessing this isn't the best buy model since it has an SSD. I'm also guessing it may have the 8870 since my 8770 scores were (44722, 5669, 661).

 

This is the 17 inch model 770Z7E-S03DE with SSD, 12GB RAM, HD8870M and Bluray drive.
Unfortunately hwinfo only recognises the Intel GPU but 3dmark clearly used the AMD GPU (configurated in Enduro).

 

Those are some beastly numbers you achieved with that GPU then, I must say. That SSD isn't half bad either. Almost at the 840 Pro's 500+MB/s Read and write.

 

I can't help but think this is a placeholder date or something. They probably all have orders in, but have no idea when AMD or Samsung will get their shipments out. It could be sooner, for all we know.

 

Something similar happened to me when I was looking at the laptop at BB. I closed the screen several times and every time I did something different would be running every time I opened the lid back up. The touchscreen probably makes contact with the keys.

 

It wouldn't matter if the touchscreen made contact with the keys, as it's capacitive and thus isn't activated by things that don't conduct electricity.

 

So what gives? I definitely did not have three tabs of advertisements open when I closed the lid

Alchemist - thanks, it is the HDD (as kmann I think also pointed out). Ah well...nothing's perfect.

 

Those are great numbers! definitely a big step up from the 8770, twice as fast or more in the later benchmarks.

 

It would be with a simple SSD swap!

 

And it's doing it all on crappy drivers, too!

 

What did that 17" 8870m unit cost? Trying to get a feel for how much the similarly equipped 15" might cost once it sees the light of day.

 

These results in the benchmark are so close to a similar system having the GT650m.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3630QM Processor,LENOVO INVALID

In summary:

- Test 1: 74629 (Graphics 122562, Physics 31505)
- Test 2: 10107 (Graphics 15690, Physics 4502)
- Test 3: 1949 (Graphics 2075 , Physics 6357, Combined Score 782)

In the less demanding test the GT650m rolls over the 8870m. The second test again by a narrow margin the GT650m again wins and for the most demanding test the 8870m takes the upper hand by a very narrow difference. Basically, very similar GPUs.

 

I'm not the one with the laptop. Just waiting for it to come to the US like everyone else haha

 

Hahahahahahahaha no.....the 8870m is leaps and bounds more powerful than the 650m, it just doesn't have proper drivers yet.

 

gt650m in that benchmark is heavily overclocked (core clock 1155 and memory clock 2555 vs stock 850/900) so i would not make any conclusion based on that