Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

Why? Is there really a better option? From what I can tell, it's not like there is any competing laptop available that offers everything the Chronos does at even close to the same price point. If there was, I would have snapped it up without hesitation.

 

Would you mind sharing those tests?

 

Hello, I managed to pick up the 8870m non-touchscreen version of this laptop in the UK and was wanting to share my experiences and also ask some questions.

I had a terrible experience ordering with PC World, I placed my order when they said it was in stock and it infact wasn't, I was waiting for ages before I got sick of it and cancelled my order. When someone on these forums mentioned that the Kingston branch of John Lewis had a few of the non-touch version instock I rang up, and apparently they had over 150 of them in stock at the distribution centre even though the laptop is not listed online, so I got them to order it into my local John Lewis from there where I picked it up. I would not be surprised if they still have these if people are looking for it.

I have installed a 128gb 840 pro SSD following a couple of the guides people posted on these forums and using the samsung recovery tool. As someone who has not done this before I found taking the cover off very stressful and difficult, getting the first click open took me about half an hour, and what people described in the guides as gentle clicking felt to me like violent popping sounds and my credit cards barely strong enough to do the job of opening the clips all around it. Anyway I managed to do it in the end but I certainly did not enjoy it.

So I have a couple of questions, the first one is related to the backlight, which I have noticed seemingly only when gaming the brightness fairly frequently changes brightness to being very dim, its pretty annoying and I have tried fiddling with power settings in the AMD switchable graphics software but haven't been able to stop it, I'm pretty sure its not a hardware fault and is some software thing doing it. Any suggestions?

Second question is relating to my 128gb SSD, which feels pretty small right now. First of all the samsung recovery tool has given me a windows partition of 34gb which is currently sitting at only 4gb free which is a bit tight, I'm guessing there is no way to expand it? Secondly I have about 20gb worth of recovery partitions, is it worth keeping these or should I just format them?

Thanks

 

Is this the 8850 version or the 8870 version? Also can you share the price if you don't mind, it will be helpful for the community here.

 

Ignore that you already mentioned its type 8870

 

I know which device you're talking about. From my perspective, as a college student, all I can say is that that would be an embarrassment carrying around ans using everywhere on campus hahaha.

 

Already regretting my BB return :-(. I dunno...maybe I should have kept it. At $1199, I think the cost-to-value factor (even for the 8770) was definitely worth it. I've looked around other offerings and played with several laptops/ultrabooks at Bestbuy and cannot find anything comparable by a large margin (the 15" retina Macbooks are REALLY nice and if I didn't have a limited budget, I'd have probably simply bought that and called it a day (or night)). I wonder if I should sell my house and buy a Mac ???

Really like the new T series Vaio but the GFX card is too limiting, considering the price is almost the same as the Chronos.

Don't wanna sound like a criminal but I'll start checking my BB store again and see if my prev return turns up on the 'open-box sale' section. If I see it at a discounted price (and I'll know it as I have the pic of the Win 8 serial key), I'll get it with zero hesitation.

 

The proper tool for getting inside is a spudger. Anyway, it will be easier next time.

Search through the relevant threads starting here.

You don't need the recovery partition assuming that you don't reformat the original HDD (keep it as a bootable drive so you can always put it back). There are free partition management utilities (Paragon comes to mind) which should enable you to shuffle your partitions.

John

 

Has anyone heard/read of any mention of the (possible) 16GB RAM Chronos?

Going by Samsung's page, the difference between the 8 and 16GB RAM laptops is the soldered on RAM for the smaller is 4 and the larger is 8, therefore adding an 8GB stick would increase the smaller spec'd laptop to 12GB and the larger to 16GB (the one I'm aiming for).

 

Me three. As to alternative, I'm thinking of just getting an even smaller and lighter ultrabook. There are a few out now that seem to have most of what the new chronos will have except the graphics performance. I could spend the difference on upgrading a desktop. The result would be greater portability than the chronos for non-graphical stuff and better graphics than the chronos when at home. I just lose the graphics portability. Just an option.

 

Assuming I do not abandon the idea of getting one of these, can anyone who has upgraded the ram recommend a decent compatible module?

 

Assuming I do not abandon the idea of getting one of these, can anyone who has upgraded the ram recommend a decent compatible module?

 

I'm looking forward for buying one of these in the next 2 weeks. Actually I live in Europe ( France and Italy for school/home ) and I'd like to know if there are any promotions/sales from online stores before buying it.

Mostly I'm interested in phd/student offers with monthly payments

Any advices? Thanks for reading


Sent from my iPhone 4S with tapatalk

 

You have to start fresh and do another recovery. In Samsung recovery you can adjust the partition size using a slider. Choose one partition only.

 

Check out amazon.fr they have/had a discount of 5% making it €1234. Fnac.fr has/had a promotion where you get a beautiful external dvd drive for free. I bought mine from fnac and got far cry 3 for free with it. But that's probably a samsung action.

 

Mostly id like to have it with qwerty keyboard, uk us or it are fine.
Azerty is simply a pain

Mostly I knew that fnac had a promotion that gave you 10e every 100 spent. Is this still available? If yes I'd buy an ssd, adding the difference also I didn't find the Samsung 840pro in their catalogue, which alternatives?

Do you know if fnac ships outside of the country? For instance fnacit to France


Sent from my iPhone 4S with tapatalk

 

hello, user,
i am from Germany and followed this thread a lot ...
and i was also interested in the new Samsung chronos series 7.
here in Germany you can buy the NP770Z5E and i did it also.
but the 1TB hdd is realy slow and it doesn´t make fun to work with it.
so i changed this hdd to a Samsung 840 250gb, it was not easy but at least it works very fine .
and this Notebook is like it has to be ;-)
now i thought to sell you this Notebook ...
i paied 1300€ + 160€ ( Samsung ssd ), together 1460€
if someone is interested please write to me and we can make the Details ...
greetings from Germany !

 

Does it have the German keyboard or is it possible to order it also with the uk/us/it layout??


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it is a qwertz Keyboard ..
sorry no uk/us layout ...

 

I don't know about that promotion but it seems like a very good one. I personally work with azerty and I'm very happy I waited until the right keyboard layout for me was available. Hacking the registry and swapping keys is just too much of a hassle and not worth the few euros you save with imo.

Yes fnac ships internationally. I ordered mine from fnac France and had it delivered to my home in Belgium.

For the SSD: I'm currently looking for the samsung 840 (non-pro) 512gb since it's the cheapest 500+gb SSD out there. If you're on a budget and want a balance between speed, storage and price like me that might be the one for you.

 

I'd really like to have it from the beginning and it may be nice to have it installed from the technicians of fnac ( I'm a little bit scared of damaging the plastic part, lot of people did. I already built a pc btw )

Azerty is not really comfortable for me. If they were like the German one I'd get it anyway and change by windows the input.. The fact is that azerty is physically different

Unlucky fnac.it hasn't the np770 yet, and i need a new pc before starting the new project ( 2 weeks during those I'll be travelling all over the world as last holiday before the long working time )

I saw on fnac the m4 crucial 256gb for 180 is that convenient?


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Where did you read that re: the DDR5/DDR3 specs? i did not realise the different models would have different system RAM, but perhaps it's referring to the 8870 vs 8850, which possibly has different ram types. In theory it would make the game faster. it depends on what the bottleneck is in regard to this game though so ram transfer speed may make no noticeable difference whatsoever.

 

That's right, it's the video ram that's gddr3 on the 8850 and gddr5 on the 8870. It's listed on the PC world website.

 

To those of you who replaced the HDD with a SSD, I'm assuming you kept the HDD in an external closure? In which case, which enclosure did you use? Would something like this be suitable:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002UZO07C/ ?

 

Yes, sorry I didn't explain myself very well. I am referring to the 8870 vs the 8850. It's annoying that there are no real benchmark comparisons as the cards are so new. The difference in price is enough to make me wonder about the 8850.

 

There graphics on this thing must be a beast....

 

I would consider biting the bullet and going for a 256 SSD and get a neat little USB 3.0 enclosure for your 1TB drive. That's what i did. i have a 128 in my desktop and i'm constantly freeing up space on it, once you install a few steam games on there, the sace really starts to get eaten up .

As for the backlight: do this:
1. Click on the battery icon in the notification bar
2. More power options
3. change plan settings
4. change advanced power settings
5. display-> enable adaptive brightness
6. set them to off.

 

You want a USB 3.0 enclosure for sure.

Get this, it's really fast and it's tiny.

Coltech CE233U3 USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

 

Hey guys!

picked up my np770z5e with hd8870 today and will write my review on it as soon as I figure out how to use Windows 8 (lol).

One thing though, The SSD that came with this beast was Liteon lmt 256m3m, I've tried to look at specifications but im not sure whats just numbers and what actually makes a difference when using it in real life.
(will be playing games, CAD, photoshop, rendering and screen capturing)

is Liteon lmt 256m3m a high-end ssd or a budget and how does it compare to Samsung 840 pro?

 

I think as a brand, Liteon products are generally at the budget end of the spectrum

 

just checked my WEI

processor: 6,3 (what?!)
Memory(ram): 7,4
Graphics: 7,0
Game-graphics: 7,0
harddrive: 8,4

result: 6,3


why is my cpu that low? im sure silent fan mode (f11 button) isnt on

 

Is this for the 8870?

 

Hi Guys,

sigend up here to view pictures and post problems if necessary.
First of all thanks vor the active discussion here it helped alot to get to know the notebook better!
I´m also from Germany and bought the 8870m version with Win8 last week from amazon.

I really like it so far but one thing annoyis me alot - and that´s so far the only thing.

How can i change the backlight of the keyboard so that it dosen´t automaticly change ?
If i deactivate it in the FN+F1 options it changes to this step where you almost can´t see anything on the keyboard.
The same if i max the brightness option for it - changes back to the lower one ....

Sorry if i missed it the last 400 pages.

If you have any questions about my notebook feel free to ask i hope i can answer them!

greetings so far from Germany

Ben

*Sorry for my bad english*

 

yes it is for HD8870m, i7 3635qm verision with Liteon lmt 256m3m SSD

When I go into properties for the Cpu it says that max speed is 2,4ghz but turbo boost should be higher....

 

Are these the touchscreen models? I have read through the majority of these post's. And am a little stuck, I've been to the local currys / pc world in Reading UK and have seen the new 15 Inch with i5 and 8850m and touchscreen. It's obviously the exact same shell. And I really want to get this machine as I've just sold my old laptop. But I want the higher version, I want the 8870, i7, touchscreen. I've seen youtube videos of this model from CES, and youtube vids of various models with i7, 8870 and no touchscreen. So I am confused to when it could be expected, or if it is at all. Because they are rolling out the lower end model in the UK. It's in Curry's etc. And john lewis supposedly the non touch higher end model. Are we not going to see the model from CES, the same shell, the i7, the 8870 and a touch screen panel. It makes no sense? There's no information, no times, no nothing.

Anyone got any more information? is it going to come at all? Any rumours? Any help would be wicked.

Also sorry long post, I really like the i5 and 8850 obviously it's very the same thing. How much difference between the GPU's? / CPU's.

Cheers guys.

 

Reason I ask is because I checked the WEI of an 8850M in PC World, and the graphics came out at 6.7 (and that is with the DDR3). Would suggest that there isn't that much of a difference between the two chips if they only have 0.3 WEI points between them.

I'm not sure what your issue will be, but the i5 was scoring well into the 7s on the machine I checked, so I would imagine the rating is off.

 

Judging gpu's on their WEI isn't a great idea.

I got 7,9 for my 3635qm btw.

 

The poster above with the 8870 is in Sweden I think. In the UK there are the following models as of right now as I've found:

i7 8870m, touchscreen: PC World/Currys. Completely OOS right now, but a few people on this thread have them from earlier in March. In an email from customer service, I was told they expect a shipment to warehouses on 20th of April, they will be for home delivery only.

i5 8850m touchscreen: PC World Currys. In Stock just about everywhere

i7 8870m no touch screen: John Lewis, sounds like special order only (i've seen another slightly different spec one at the Oxford Street location, can't remember the specific specs though)

i5 8850m touchscreen and win8 pro: Amazon currently OOS ( Samsung NP780Z5E-T02UK 15.6-inch Notebook (Intel core i5 2.6GHz Processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Windows 8 Professional): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories)

 

yeah, Im quite suprised that im getting 6,3 on the cpu.. its like it doesnt activate turbo boost

also S agent app wont start, damn

 

ok, thank you that's very helpful. So I may wait around a week or 2 and see if they get stock for the better models. Maybe they'd order one in? So people have the i7, 8870 touchscreen 15 inch from earlier in March? how odd. Didn't get that from reading previous posts.

I wonder why their is so little information. I also wonder if it's worth waiting, if the i5 8850 is a lot worse in terms of performance that the i7 8870.

thanks for that though. will wait and read more, see what crops up.

 

Try running 3Dmark 11 or hwinfo64 to see if your cpu doesn't turbo boost.

EDIT: check your power settings to and make sure it's properly plugged in

 

It sounds like the slower video ram in the i5 version may make a difference, but for most usage (aside from heavy gaming) I don't think you'd notice too much.

There are probably 2 or 3 people here who were quick enough to get the 8870m touch model from pcworld.

 

that's the issue for me. I guess i'd do some heavy gaming on it. Or at least try too. So I guess the higher model makes sense. But it's weird for it to have already been sold. Then no more models in, and taking so long to get more. I will wait and see, and speak to Curry's PC World see what they say.

Thanks for your help.

 

Bad news for who is waiting Haswell, it seems that Intel will distribute chipset without USB 3.0 bug only in July, so the first wave of Haswell will have this bug...

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Most of the people who decided to wait for the "Haswell" quad-core processors doesn't know that in reality this will not change so much in terms of performance from the "Ivy-Bridge" quad-core processors..

Here some benchmarks:

 

The old series 7 chronos seems to be being phased out in Canada.
At future shop(owned by bestbuy) they only have 3 left in stock, and at best buy they have it in limited availability. It's also on sale at bestbuy until this Thursday.

 

Ok, initial impressions:
Buildquality: I think its great. Feels sturdy and well built. I was suprised how cool the aluminium looked when I took it out of the box.

Keyboard: I liked it from the start, the keys are placed about the same place as my old notebook so no learning curve there, but the buttons do have a lot of friction to them which im not used to. the travel isnt as short as I thought it would be so that was also good.

back-illumination: is totally use-less in daylight because it will make the keys look blank. when its dark it works quite well on max. And I think that its a boring color, its not even tinted its just white...

Touchpad: Dont like the darker grey on it but the chrome chamfer is nice. I think this is smoother than my friends macbook pro but def not as smooth as i recall series 9. Hopefully it will be oiled in the more I use it.

Speakers: Great! tried the samsung clip that was on the computer, what a clear sound, felt like it was real. my old laptop had good and loud sound and this is similar, but more clear and def mor bass.

Screen: At first I wasnt to impressed, it was dim and the viewing angles weren't great, then I remembered that it had been stressed in this thread multiple times. Once I disabled adaptive brightness this screen is like a solarium. And Im glad ive read this thread from the beginning because otherwise I wouldve never known that the option even exists, and I dont think many other people do, they just use it out of the box, so I think they make this more obvious from the start. I do feel like it would be nice to have a touchscreen on this, as it just feels easy and fun to use on the ones that ive tried it on, and I think that the smoothness in scrolling with touchscreen is light years ahead of the trackpad which kinda lags a bit. I have 45 days to return it if I dont want it, but as it is now only non-touch verision is available here in sweden.

Speed: Dont really know what to say about it, had higher expectations but then again, I havent really moved any large files yet so I dont know yet. It got 8,4 on WEI so it should be good.

Random things: one thing that really bugs me is that when Fn lock is on you cant type 0 on the numpad (it becomes insert or something) so you have to either press fn lock or use the other 0...

silent fan mode (f11) and numlock should have a light on it like caps, fn and wi-fi.

Windows 8 is a pain to learn, have used it like 7 hours now and I still dont know what im doing and how to close programs without pressing the windows key (lol)

I will try bf3 and 3dmark11 tomorrow and hopefully I will be impressed by the results.

 

The 256GB Liteon mSATA SSDs included in the Series 9s were as good as the Samsung alternative. Run CrystalDiskMark and post the results.

John

 

FYI, for a point of reference I've run this benchmark on the Samsung 840 Pro, 256gb runningUK on the NP780Z5E-S01:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 512.063 MB/s
Sequential Write : 491.712 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 446.797 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 465.143 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 27.388 MB/s [ 6686.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 49.834 MB/s [ 12166.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 334.065 MB/s [ 81558.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 269.182 MB/s [ 65718.2 IOPS]

Test : 4000 MB [C: 42.7% (94.1/220.2 GB)] (x9) <1Fill>
Date : 2013/04/07 22:13:26
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

 

This is a old comparative made by a Russian site with a CPU sample, there are reviews more accurate:

Core i7-4770K: Haswell's Performance, Previewed : Core i7-4770K Gets Previewed