Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

So far I can say this thing has the highest contrast ratio i've ever seen.
Steam background is perfect, from pure black to grey...

WLAN speed is great. I'm sitting behind 100 mbit and steam reports 11 mb/sec, close to maximum.
My router is behind a thick wall, so no wlan trouble like someone reported.

 

If it's true what we have read in the first review contrast ratio is over 1000:1 one of highest that I have seen on a notebook.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

there is a pretty complete review about the chronos here just for who have to way the delivery XD

 

Just got my 17.3" series 7 chronos with 8gb ram, 8870m and surprised to see it has a Bluray drive. No touch though and the screen has no grain, but def not glossy i like it.

Im suprised by the bluray drive.

Coming from a series 9 and a Vaio Z both with SsD i can feel this has a looott of muscle, but that 5400rpm really criples it to the ppint one would think this thing is slow. Its really at the point you might as well take a slower machine if you plan on using the drive...constantly at 100% and lacks thr fast reaction i got from the fast but slower Z and series 9. This show how much difference an Ssd can make.
Let me put this in a better way, you need to upgrade the drive.

Impressed with the screen and especially the speaker, it sounds amazing.

Any questions?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

I hate to say it... but i'm considering returning my best buy edition and waiting on the 16gb version to see the light of day... whenever that might be. I upgraded to 12gb last night and loaded up one of my more involved 3d projects with lots of highres textures and rendered it. Sure enough, I was maxed at 12gb, of course everything still works, just as it would with 4gb or 8gb but the more memory you have the less swapping you will do while rendering, thus its faster. I had planned on getting 16gb but this machine is so great I hoped I could make do with 12gb but reality is hitting that waiting for more memory might be a better plan. Any updates on when the 8870 16gb edition might be available in the US?

 

Btw anyonce notice the orange box on the 840 pro..same as the orange box where jbl is written on the laptop.

Cant wait to install the 840 pro. Should i press the reset button before I open the laptop?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

has anyone seen a gaming demo vid for the 15inch with the 8870? im having troublefinding anything, the same guy that created the vid a few posts above mine was on a 8770

 

I think with intel memory thing it will use as memory as possible as you can throw at it. Add a fast ssd and that 12 gb shouldnt be a prob.

Even if you have the 16gb it will use close to all of it.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

there should be a small button under the notebook to cut off the battery if you want to open it... you can see it in this video... it is the 780z5e but i think it will be very similar...



min 3:10

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFp5HpJ51rA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Should be helpful in opening thisnthing up.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

Sorry I don't get the point of this post?

 

Any videos out on this thing?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

All true, and I have an SSD in it (840) so its fast... just wanting as much memory as possible and with the regular price of the best buy model now $1199 i may just wait until the 16gb 8870m model comes out so i can compare cost and decide then. Haven't decided yet, still have a week on my return, but leaning that way.

 

I believe the point was... if your going to crack open the chronos you first need to use the little reset style button hole on the back of the case to disable power... if you don't do this to disconnect power before opening it up your essentially working on a powered device and will likely short something out.

 

Can anyone comment on the maximum headphone output on the Best Buy laptop? I have a HP Envy with the 5830M GPU from the US and the volume just gets too loud around the 50% mark. I had a quick look in PC World and the i5 version I felt got to the same level when it was around the 90% mark. Just wondering as I'd like to be able to use high impedance headphones with the laptop without the need for an amp.

Also, spybenj, can you check how long the battery on this thing will last on silent mode??

 

sorry the point was what alchemist said but i wanted to quote the post #3206, not your post ... i always think that the "reply with quote" button is for the post under it... sorry:thumbsup:

 

See post #2328 on this thread.

 

So many versions omg

 

How do you it worked and is disabled?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

Like an actual full fledged test? Or just put it on power saver and turn on silent mode and see how much battery it says?

 

Oh you don't have to do a full fledged test if you don't want to, but I just mean that other users have already tried doing regular battery tests so it'd be interesting to know if this laptop can get 11 hours (or more) when everything is downclocked like it is in silent mode. For me personally I'd just be happy to know how much battery it will say after like 10-15 minutes of regular use in silent mode. 11 hours is a long time

Any opinions on its maximum volume??

 

first make sure the chronos is unplugged and shutdown (not sleeping).

Then use a paperclip or similar tool to push the button in the little hole on the back of the unit.

Then tried to turn on the unit... if it turns on then it didnt work... shutdown and repeat procedure. It works better if you hold the button in for a little longer than a press.


At this point its safe to take the unit apart and perform your upgrades.

One your have completed everything and reassembled the computer... plug in the power supply and this will reenable power to the unit.

 

Just a question to the owners.
Am I the only one, who would need more brightness? Even at max its too low for me.
Guess i got too much used to my desktop pcs lcd´s brightness. ^^

 

Swapped the drive. I changed the fast bios to off, secure boot disabled. Should i set it to uefi os?

I made an image backup and choose the option for the thing to be bootable. Keep coming to this screen even after i press enter.

Any help? What am i doing wrong.




Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

Have you turned off adaptive brightness in the power settings?

 

Yes! Have set brightness on max

 

Anyone?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

I never got that screen, but I did about the same thing, except I chose to make the recovery drive the default boot drive from within the settings(after pressing F2).

Just now, though, I used the OCZ bootable tool to update the SSD firmware, and the bootdisk from OCZ wouldn't boot before I selected UEFI/CSM, maybe that could help?

 

Yes...pressed F2 went into bios and chose to set the external drive i had backed up the factory and bootable option to first.

Dont know what im doing wrong.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

Did you try the UEFI/CSM thing?

Otherwise I would suggest trying to boot another PC from the recovery drive to see if it actually is bootable.

 

I did. Nothing.

Did you do anything to the ssd before the swap?

And how did you create the system image backup and make it bootable? I used the samsung recovery app.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

My SSD was taken straight out of my old laptop, and still had a working windows 7 installation installed. I doubt the SSD is the issue here.

I also used the samsung tool to create the USB drive, the only difference is I used the tool to create a factory restore disk, not a system image.

I should add that once the recovery drive showed up in the list of boot devices it booted on first attempt.

 

Thats what I did a factory image plus the option to make it bootable.
Anyone know what i could be doing wrong.

New pc sitting there and cant use it. This is frustrating.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

Ok I'll do it now
Power saver with silent mode on and like 20% brightness, with and without wifi.
Give me like 10 mins
And it gets loud, like really loud.
What sound setting have all of you been using? I'm liking the 3d faux surround one a lot

 

Turn off progressive brightness in energy profiles from windows and auto brightness in easy settings (fn + f1)

 

Kind of frustrating, out of the blue it started being really slow, etc. Multi touch stopped working in the mouse. I tried rebooting and it took like 10 minutes to sign in, and I had to make a skype call which took a further 10 minutes to launch. I tried to do a system restore and it got stuck on fixing registry. It then would not turn on, and finally went into automatic recovery. Recovery didn't work, but it then booted back into windows, however it took well over 5 minutes to turn on and sign in. I'm now trying a new system restore, but once again it is stuck on fixing registry.
I'm going to go to sleep, if it's stuck on restore in the morning I'll try to do a windows refresh, and if that doesn't work I guess I'll use the recovery partition.
I didn't install anything to make this happen, it just suddenly started to slow down.

 

Are you trying to boot into Windows 7 which is already on the SSD. Or have you recovered your drive to Win 8?

Remove all external drives and discs, an then try re-enabling secure boot and fast boot. If you're trying to boot into win7 from your old machine, then secure boot needs to be off.

 

The Ssd is brand new nothing on. All i did was create a factory image to a usb thumbdrive drive in win 8. Swapped to the new ssd and now hoping to restore windows by using the bootable usb thumb drive that has the factory image. This is reall frustrating. Unless im missing something...

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

I have this too, Windows lags somehow. Starting easy settings with hotkeys takes around 15 minutes Oo
Will return it anyway because of that dead pixel

 

Well this is concerning... keep us updated!

On a slightly more positive note.. went into the nearest Fortress electrical store here in HK, and whilst they didn't have any series 7 on display I asked a member of staff if they'd be getting any in. She plugged in a USB stick that contains jpegs of all current/future stock and et voila.... they do indeed on planning to stock this baby!

PLUS, it gets better. For just under $13000 HKD (Same price as the UK model), you get 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB and if I pay in cash, I'll be eligible for a whopping 3% discount, so save myself an extra £30ish.

Only issue is she couldn't be precise with an arrival date. Said maybe at the end of this month... I leave on the 6th April so fingers crossed!

 

Can someone do other gaming tests please? I would also be curious to see some gaming with cpu at 99%: maybe disabling turbo boost will save some power and let the 8870 express all its capacities without power-related throttling

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Well I bought some games to do that. But fnac says it will take 4-12 days to prepare my order and shipping will take another 3-5 days. The waiting is killing me.

 

Hey guys! A quick question! Im going to replace the HDD with an Crucial m4 SSD. But there are 2 versions of the m4. One with 7,5mm height and one with 9mm height. Which one should i get? My guess is the 9mm version, cos the HDD is also 9mm? I dont want the SSD to have space to move around in this beast.
Aaaaaaaand another question.How the hell did u get off the back cover?!
I have already gotten off all screws, but this back sticks on this machine, like my mum in the kitchen. What did u do to get it off, without damaging anything?
And i´ve tested some gaming. Sadly i do not own games like Crysis or anything like that. I have tested Dota2 and i got more than twice as much FPS (~110fps while i get around ~50fps on my desktop) as i get on my normal desktop pc with quad core and nvidia 8800gt! Even when i turned on silent mode i got around ~50-60fps!! Dont ask me why, i thought it would have similar power, cos my nvidia also gets 6.9 in the windows rating like the amd does! But yes, i know the windows rating is not as accurate as it should.
But Can anyone explain this?
Can i easily mirror all data via the Samsung Recovery tool? Or should i better get a data transfer kit which comes with the ssd?

EDIT: I finally got it off! Hahaha I used my plectrum to get this off! So everybody who dont have enough and hard nails, use ur plectrums ^^

EDIT2: The HDD is a 9,5mm one, but due to the fact, that it is screwed on a bay, where its totally irrelevant if the ssd is 7mm or 9,5mm, my question just got needless.

 

And we have lift of. Had to use the included software to clone the drive to the ssd. Now thing simplyyyy flies with 840 pro...amazingly fast. Bootup is about 8 seconds.

Did get bootup priority mixed up.
1. Any know how it should by default?
2.I see 2x windows bootmanager in the bios bootup priority, should the ssd be at the top or the windows boot manager?

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

I swapped my hdd for an ssd on my series 7. I use the software from the ssd to clone the drive the ssd.
But seems on the ssd the factory recovery image was deleted or inactive??

I do have a backup on usb created with samsung recovery. It detects it and everything and even asks to restart. But just does a regular restart and boots back into windows.

Doeknow what i need to do to recover using the USb key?

Fastboot and secureboot disabled. Set the usb key at the boot priority. Tried both option of when secure boot dsiabled Uefi os and the other two options. Btw this is windows 8.

Many thanks

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

It's possible that the cloning software (which?) can't handle the recovery partition.

Instructions for using the USB Admin tool are here. However, there's the question of whether you want to give up space on the SSD for the recovery partition. You don't need to have it functioning if you have other backup arrangements and keep the original HDD intact as he ultimate fall-back option.

John

 

Good news for me, Amazon already sent me an replacment after I said it's slow and laggy sometimes, it's trackable and arrives tomorrow. I still have the old one - lol. Looks like spending 20.000 over time there and never returned things, earned me some trust.

Bad news is, the guy on phone told me he hasn't heard that the first time...

If you ask me, the HDD is bad. It's not the usual HDD slowdown, it completly hangs.
Once it refused to boot and Samsung repair screen appeared.
It could be defective. The notebook box was stuffed into a bigger box without anything around it.
That way it traveled 400km on a snowy day.

Well, everything is prepared, 840 pro, HDD chasis just need that damn thing without flaws.

 

Im starting to think the partion is there but inactive or not seen but samsun recovery. Nornally when samsung recovery sees it i press f4 at startup and it restores

I tried disabling fastboot and secure boot but nothing.

I did check the option to make the key bootable so im not sure whats wrong.

Also dont mind having a restore funcrion on the ssd or the key...i just want a quick way to restore to factory defaults to keep system running fast.

Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note II

 

I think that mine may be defective as well.
I did a full restore with the recover tool, only to have it freeze while running the initial windows 8 setup.

 

So I honestly haven't dug around in the last few pages of this thread, but has anybody with the 8870 model replicated Alchemist's battery test? I'm curious to see if there are any power disadvantages to running the better video hardware.

In my mind, I'd think the net effect to battery performance in a longevity test would be zero, but it'd help with a decision of the BB model vs. waiting for the 8870 model in the US markets.

After seeing some posts about what the 8870 is doing vs. what my computer is running (Guild Wars 2...WHY ARE YOU SO GRAPHICS INTENSIVE), I'm debating tossing it back to Best Buy and waiting a little longer for the good stuff.

I haven't been active around here as before because quite honestly I haven't had to use my laptop, so I think I can afford the wait if the cost-benefit analysis works out for me!