Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

First impressions are everything, and a bad one may give you a bad taste. But don't let that be something to push you away, it seems like a lemon. Get it exchanged.

 

This was interesting, regarding the Best Buy 8770. From the Samsung rep.

Also note that Samsung will provide a copy of OS if requested within 30 days of purchase.

 

Can someone post a question asking when the 16gb version with an 8870m is coming out?

 

Probably a month or so. That one won't be Best Buy exclusive.

 

I emailed them and chatted with customer support. No email back yet but the chat told me what we've all been told...an incredibly vague "When the information is available on the product support page, it will be in stores"

Where are you pulling that from?

 

Probably, as in meaning a guess, and Best Buy can't afford to make both models exclusives.

 

Another guess..but I agree.

Does anyone know how long the exclusivity will last? Does this mean no other Chronos model will come to the US until the exclusive ends, or no?

 

JR.com has the chronos also, but still with a 8770m

 

Link? I searched the site and did not find it.

 

Nope, thinking about it but haven't decided if its worth it yet.

Are you running on battery or AC? you may be in silent mode... click the setup F1 button and make sure your not in silent mode, that would be my best guess. Silent mode locks it at 1.15ghz and goes super low power.

 

^ speaking from experience?

Interesting about the OS, I might do that. Where do I get the link for that, or just contact Samsung support?

Note - haven't charged in three days, and I'm still at 60% battery with light use and studying. I love this laptop.

I MIIIIIIIGHT exchange for the SSD one if it comes out soon though.

 

Definitely wasn't. I heard the fans get loud when testing it. I put it back to the factory image and its going back. Not impressed. Will look elsewhere for now.


Sent from my New iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Best Buy is doing more and more exclusives and special models, their volume and presence is enough to get the hardware venders to do it and exclusive and unique models help keep them from becoming a showroom for online sellers. More and more people were shopping at best buy and buying at amazon or online store of choice.

Since the model is exclusive to best buy (ie: I doubt the general model will have the 8870 gpu) it could be any length of time before the 8870 version comes out.

It's likely the entire first production run was made up of best buy editions though... they probably had to be delivered first as part of the deal. So, the next run needs to be made, shipped to the states and make its way through customs and into retail.

Wow, don't know whats up with it. Mine flies. Only slow noticed was the new 3dmark benchmark and it turns out i ran that against the hd4000 so i'm rerunning that now.

 

Don't let this steer you away. Get a new one and if you don't like it then return. Best buy does unlimited exchanges for 30 days.

 

Samsung tech guy mentions the OS here
Samsung samsung : questions, answers, how to, FAQs, tips, advice, answers, buying guide

 

I can vouch for that one. I went through 4 asus ux31a ultrabooks before calling it quits on that model. Have you looked in task manager to see how fast the CPU is performing? I thought mine was crawling and was ready to take it back a few days ago until someone here pointed out I may be in silent mode and sure enough that was it. Too bad that wasn't the case with yours.

 

From Germany to the USA. I would send it to a friend in Germany, since Amazon won't ship direct to 'murica.

 

Mine felt super slow for the first couple of days, and I think of that had to do with poor disk usage by Samsung bloatware and all the Windows Updates. (My computer took over an hour to install some Windows updates when I was restarting the computer.) I'm still on the fence about keeping the computer, but first I will install a much faster hard drive and hopefully the new AMD drivers will be released before my 30 days are up.

It seems to be running faster now, but maybe I've just gotten used it.

 

at long last, i finally got a CLEAN INSTALL of windows 8 pro on this damn thing.

this took about 8 hours.. and i will leave a final tip with you guys who are looking to purchase this machine.

1. If you are looking to install Windows 7, don't bother - there are practically no drivers available for our video card 8770m.

You can manually install the LAN/WiFi drivers and get them to work. Chipset drivers/USB were all missing and most i got updated were windows generic.

2. If you ran a backup image file (*.wim) with Samsung Recovery program, you cannot USE THIS in Windows 7. Let me stress this again, you run this in windows 8. It requires the OEM hidden partition that you probably deleted as I did. There was so much BLOATware, INCLUDING tons of additional samsung metro garbage that is already preloaded on memory when you startup. No these do not show up in program files.

3. Any attempt to go back to Windows 8 is probably going to be a failure unless you use your *wim image with Acronis, or some other good program. If you used ximage, you'd probably have to mount SATA drivers into boot, which is nonexistant (trust me i looked for about 2 hours)..

which leads to

4. You having no choice but to do a clean install of Windows 8. I have a legit copy of windows 8 and it failed it install 3x. Our BIOS is embedded with the OEM serial key. You need to find a Windows 8 *Core* ISO image in order to use this key. Again i failed to find a copy. I booted a windows 8 pro copy, and during initial installation, it reads BIOS's embedded serial key and "automatically fails installation". You do not get to change the serial even if you have a legitimate one. It simply doesnt match up with one in bios and it cancels by itself.

5. After much haggling with Microsoft Techsupport (buncha idiots in India) who said, i can either return the laptop to bestbuy, or 2, buy their 150$ tech support and they will send me a SUPER DUPER windows 8 ultimate which will bypass any activation issues. I said thanks but no thanks, 1200$ spent, you figure you could use your own OEM key w/ a regular Windows 8 ISO. Nope. OEM Core + Serial keys have their own set of serials that only works with their installation.

6. Finally after a clean format, i drove 15 miles to my buddies place, who acutally had a factory OEM Windows 8 on DVD. Ripped the ISO into flash, booted and installed fine on the 840.

Think twice before you attempted to migrate over to windows 7.

Updated WEI Scores:
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3635QM CPU @ 2.40GHz 7.8 6.7
Determined by lowest subscore

Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB 7.9
Graphics Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 6.7
Gaming graphics 4806 MB Total available graphics memory 6.7
Primary hard disk 201GB Free (233GB Total) 8.1

I don't even know if this test uses our 8770m

Atto Benchmarks show consistant 550 write / 250 read. Boot up time about 4-5 seconds. It actually boots a little faster than windows 7 pro, when i had it. Only about 1-2 seconds.

Btw, the old 1tb harddrive is garbage. It was so slow loading the metro interface and anyone can tell you once you load a SSD. You cant go back. night and day difference

Metro is growing on me.. slowly but surely

 

This is odd....I definitely don't think everyone who has done an SSD swap has had this issue. The guy on YouTube who did it spoke of no issues...I find this so hard to believe that a manufacturer would bake a serial key into a BIOS.

I can attain a legit Windows 8 copy through either my University (they provide it for free) or through a buddy, who has a legit Win 8 Pro disc. Are you telling me none of these install methods will work on a brand new, clean, empty SSD??

 

yeah im not sure, i dont think ive ever had an issue until today. i've done plenty of swaps even on my old y550. Believe me that embedded BIOS serial key is there

 

Mixed thinking on this one... I dont see a windows serial key anywhere on the unit or power brick... but it seems like it would be a mass production nightmare to put a different serial key on each one unless its a model wide code and only works with the OEM install. Somebody needs to find out who to contact at samsung to get those... if nothing else so you don't get hung up 6 months from now when you try to reinstall or upgrade.

 

That sounds reasonable. On the US site, Series 7 Laptops & Notebooks: Gaming Laptops |Samsung still shows the old 700 models. I expect they'll update that page when they start shipping the 770s.

 

Someone else needs to confirm this to see if it's actually a widespread issue. That is absolutely ridiculous if true. I plan on doing a clean Win 8 install from day 1 on a new SSD and I really don't want to run into any problems like this. We need a confirmation from another user ASAP.

Anyone planning on doing an SSD swap? Or even just a clean install of Windows 8 with their own media?

 

That Link Showed That Samsung Will Give You The OS Within 30 Days Of Purchase. You Just Lose All The Samsung Features.

 

It depends what 'samsung features' are to if thats a good or bad thing. If you lose silent mode and similar things thats bad... if you lose bloatware not so much. I'm wondering how viable it is to use the migration tools that come with some ssds to just copy the hd image onto the ssd and go from there.

 

Yes, but that isn't the issue. What is is if we can't install our own copy of Windows 8. I honestly feel like if that issue described above actually is legit across all models, it's only specific to the Best Buy edition.

 

Now thats more like it. I edited all the 3dmark apps to use High Performance and reran the new 3dmark benchmarks (06 & 11 were already running in high performance mode) and the numbers are better...

Edit: I had been doing a few things on the notebook, so rebooted clean and did another test, and revised the scores, slightly higher than my previous run which i would expect for a clean booted system.

Test 1: 50055 (57479 graphics, 34472 physics)
Test 2: 9317 (11304 graphics, 5769 physics)
Test 3: 1459 (1496 graphics, 7954 physics)

Looking at the anandtech link from earlier in this thread that puts its test 1 (directx 9) performance between the 630m and 650m with its test 2/3 (directx 10/11) performance slightly above the 650m on the asus everyone seems to clamor over.

So its not better than the 650m in directx9 games, but as it was doing over 200fps in that test its likely it will run most directx9 games well, but it seems on the same playing field as the 650m in directx 10/11 so I'm alot happier with these numbers than the hd4000 alone.

IF that install situation exists, its doubtful to be best buy related, but more likely to do with new installation schemes for windows 8 and the secure boot.

 

From a Canadian Computer Store (canadacomputers.com). So the pricing in Canada for the 8870 version with 2TB Hard drive (no SSD) is priced at $1,699.00 Canadian which equals.$1661.13 US Dollars

Canada Computers | Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets | Samsung Nike II High (NP780Z5E-S02CA) Notebook | Intel Core I7_3635QM 8GB RAM, 1TB_5.4KR/16G EC, DVD-RW | 15.6" FHD PLS Touch AMD HD8870M 2GB; Windows 8

 

see i thought about that myself, but i read in a buncha tech reviews, fresh installs are the way to go

i'm not sure how relevant this info is, but i pulled it from tomshardware.com

"The partitions on the SSD are not correctly aligned for best performance, causing up to 50% less performance.
Windows does not configure itself for the SSD, such as turning off defrag, indexing, ahci.
Most programs require the SSD to have the same or larger capacity than the HD"

 

Editing all the 3dmark apps to use High Performance is forcing 3dmark to evaluate the 8770?

 

Alchemist is correct on this, if you attempted to install Windows 7 or other OS, you need to disable UEFI + Secure boot in bios. Those of you that have this laptop can look in bios.

 

Well I must say this news is an absolute bummer. There are definitely times where I need to perform an emergency clean install of Windows, and if I can't do that on the fly and with any Win8 install media I own and with any serial key I legitimately own, that is a SERIOUS annoyance.

I mean, if my 8870m version of the Chronos doesn't come with an SSD and I end up doing my swap and I have to end up using Samsung's copy of Windows 8 that you can request and all works perfect on THAT Windows 8 install, I won't be able to complain.

Alchemist, you should message Samsung chat support right now and request your copy of the Windows 8 install like they said you can obtain, see if that's legit.

Is this an easy to disable setting clearly labled "ON/OFF" in the BIOS? Does simply switching both of these to "Off" eliminate the problem you described? Windows 8 would install perfectly with any media and any serial key after switching those off?

If so, that is fantastic and I have no more complaints on the matter.

I bet the results would only get exponentially better as better drivers come out!!

 

3dmark still reports the GPU as an HD4000, as that is the primary GPU. When you go into Catalyst and set apps to use High Performance then whenever those apps run the 8770 does the rendering and essentially uses the HD4000 as a frame buffer more or less. If you don't set an app to use High Performance in Catalyst then it automatically tries to determine if it should be used or not... it automatically chose correctly on 3dMark 11 and 3dMark 06 but not on the new one. My guess as to why, is that the new one runs sub programs for the tests while the earlier benchmarks were all in a single executable. To get the new 3dmark to work I had to run it once then go to Catalyst and it shows recently run apps so I could see all the apps I needed to set as High Performance.

 

This issue is not specific to Samsung, a lot of OEMs are doing that. I remember reading something similar in the Asus U500 thread. Quick google search turned this up Will BIOS-embedded Windows 8 product keys cause reinstall troubles? | ZDNet

If I understand that correctly, you can install a Pro version of windows 8 on top of your existing installation, but doing a clean re-install would require you to use a specific Windows 8 version... I think.

 

What bad news...well I wonder what I am to do when I do my SSD swap and need to reinstall Windows 8....

 

I Learn Something New Every Day... Swiping From The Left Edge Of Touch Pad Does The Same As Screen. Quickly Switches Between Open And Past Apps. Awesome.

 

ok bad news maybe for some of you guys who are waiting for the 8870m..

Samsung Series 7 Chronos with AMD Radeon 8770M/8870M Owners Thread

this guy looks pretty reputable. some benchmarks on some of the stuff

Power Draw
Power draw was checked at stock CPU/GPU frequencies. What I found is that the PSU included with the 8770M system is 90W (19v x 4.74A) so if the 8870M version is also 90W, there is going to be a LOT of pissed off customers because the system will power throttle like crazy. It seems these PSU's are given only limited overhead (3-4W max).

 

Thanks so much for such a detailed explaination

 

According to this link, it basically says there should be no problems whatsoever. Which I would expect...

But this guy is saying how he got tons of errors

 

well downgrading to win7 wasn't the problem, the problem was trying to get back to windows 8 factory OEM without a recovery partition. this is pretty much ymmv

i might been only person with the issue, but if others have a better way to do a clean install, i'm all for it, i'm sure this would help alot of people

yah its on the fly, in order to boot into windows 7 or others, it clearly states you have to change it from UEFI => CSM

and descriptions lists SECURE BOOT must be disables in order for it to work


after getting the clean install up and running, its smooth as butter similar to my desktop with i5 2500k + hyperx kingston s1003

i can't think of any reason not to invest in a SSD in a now a days, even a cheap mediocre one has such major impact on loads

 

It certainly would! I in no way want to downgrade to Windows 7...ALL I want to do is do an SSD Swap day 1 and reinstall Windows 8 right away on that SSD. I can do that from two legitimate copies I have access to.

I never thought it would be a problem to complete that process until today..

You should do a revolutionary experiment for all of us ....reformat your SSD and try to reinstall Windows 8 right away to see if it gives you any trouble...!

Haha annoying, but it would help us all!

 

Yeah that's the weird thing, it says there should be no problem but it doesn't really say how to bypass the BIOS-embedded key to put your own...

 

I just checked and there is an On/Off toggle for Secure boot in the Bios under the BOOT menu. UEFI Secure Boot is a requirement of Windows 8 for machines to get logo certification. Officially it stops boot sector viruses from installing by making it impossible to install an unsigned application. Unofficially it makes it hard to install just about anything and harder to install things like other non Microsoft Operating Systems. Its also a requirement for logo certification that there be a toggle to turn it off in the bios though so its a simple fix.

 

This is good news, but if I can't just pop in my Windows 8 disc or flash drive when powering up my new SSD for the first time and install without issue, I'll be annoyed with these new security measures.

Alchemist, maybe before you return the laptop (or sooner), you could do a clean install of Windows to confirm or deny this problem.

If anything, you would get rid of all the bloatcrap and it would certainly run faster.

 

Still not sure if I'm keeping this or taking it back. I really like the chronos and am happy with the performance, but it don't like the 12gb limit and am worried the non best buy version will come out at a similar price with better specs.

I don't have an ssd on hand to do a swap, so will likely only consider that if I decide to keep it.

 

I've repeated the test again with the 8870M sensors for you (new3dmarklog.csv).
Besides that I've played GW2 for an hour and created a log (gw2log.csv).
In GW2 I get 30 to 40 fps in Full-HD and high settings, I think thats good for such old drivers.

There are no new drivers available at the AMD download page or the Samsung update tool, I can only use the stock drivers at the moment. :/

Greetings

 

Driver Support is part of it. If AMD can't supply good drivers for brand new products, this machine is lost.
I wish they would have used NVIDIA, mature and well supported.

HD8xxx isn't even listed on their site ! Not even the old drivers - so what if you decide to reinstall Win8?

 

This should be better than values reported by Notebookcheck where they claim 28 fps at 1366x768 and 16 fps in Full-HD and FXAA On

 

Well, keep in mind that the SSD and higher RAM may have an effect on these numbers (maybe I can max the settings and see which framerate I get this evening so that we can compare with the Notebookcheck values).
Besides that I have the impression that since the last patch in GW2 the AMD support has become significantly better (or Enduro has changed back to the Intel GPU the last time without knowing it).