NP900X3G - Successor to the ATIV Book 9 (not Lite or Plus) with Haswell

Thanks for a quick reply

I'm wondering if there were any problems with the previous model you mentioned (900X3B-F)? I have limited understanding of the components, but I'm learning as I go. Still I'm anxious to make a purchase, but I rather not be disappointed.

I'm also looking at this model from Dell. Could someone explain how this laptop does against the Samsung model?
Dell XPS 13 9333-1890 W8.1 (Article no. 90541033) - Laptops / Notebooks - computeruniverse

I've understood that the new Haswell processor is more powerful and faster than the 3rd gen. processors, but could you explain the latter part about the mSata? I don't follow.

Thanks for all the help in advance

 

We don't yet know if Samsung are using M.2 or mSATA SSD in the X3G. They kept with mSATA for the Book 9 Lite and are currently busy making the EVO mSATA SSD. mSATA is currently an more available format to upgrade for more capacity.

The X3B to X3E is a well engineered chassis. One strength is having two fans so it is quieter than if there was only one fan that had to spin faster when under load.

Two key differences with the XPS 13 are (i) the Dell has a glossy touchscreen whereas all evidence at the moment indicates that the X3G is matte non-touch; and (ii) the Dell is a lot heavier.

John

 

Thanks John,

I noticed the 2,5kg weight in Dell model. Also "miniDisplayPort" doesn't sound like miniHDMI, so I'm not sure about that. Not too crazy about the touch feature either or the glossy screen.

Very nice to hear the chassis is good. I'd hate that Samsung laptop have similar fan problems than Sony Vaio 13. Youtube is full of those noisy fan videos. I'd like that the new Samsung was small, powerful and silent.

I guess I just have to wait for the reviews before I can place an order. Not sure about the return policy yet, but I've sent an email to the website.

 

Sry to bother you. Does anyone know anything? Or is any statement only speculation? I'm really getting paranoid :/

 

There is a good chance that the 900X3G will be just that. The cooling hardware is way better in the 900X3x series than in the Vaio Pro. It has 2 heatpipes and 2 fans, while the Sony only has 1 fan that has to do all the work. It's just that Samsung's software controlling the fans could use a little bit more finetuning, but that's nitpicking.

I would say that it is very very likely that the 900X3G has the same panel as the 900X3E&F, which is one of the best matte 13" laptop panels that are out there in the market.

 

for USA customers:

CDW is now taking orders on both the NP900X3G-S01US ($1,699 - i7/8/256) and NP900X3G-S02US ($1,399 - i5/8/128). rep told me they're expected in by Feb 24th.

 

oled's advice to make sure you can restore the original SSD to factory state, is a great one, both in case you want to sell the laptop some day, or if you encounter a problem and need to prove to Samsung Support (or yourself) that it is a hardware issue, not just a messed up installation. Samsung may ask you to do that before issuing an RMA.

But do note that those lovely partition and drive image backups that we're all used to making of new factory drives (using Acronis, Paragon, Clonezilla etc) generally will NOT properly restore Recovery on Samsung laptops. You can make the backup all right, but once you restore it, you will usually find that you cannot F4 Boot Recovery or access it using the Samsung Recovery Windows app. It's just a quirky thing with Samsung Recovery Solution (SRS): It relies on a link hidden in the partition table, which most partition editing and backup tools lose when they restore partitions or update the table. There is a thousand posts here in the Samsung forum on that subject alone.

The only sure way to backup your Recovery on a Samsung laptop is as John described: Create a Bootable Factory Image Backup on a USB stick (32GB required for most models). Use this Samsung guide and make sure to enable the Create Boot Disk option. This post has more detail, including which USB stick to choose. (Actually there is one other way to backup Recovery, but it is much more work).

Of course we don't know if Samsung has changed this on the very latest models, so as to make SRS more resilient. That would be awesome, save a lot of time and headaches.

 

Mini DisplayPort is better (more versatile) than the micro HDMI which has a specification limit of 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Samsung have played around with the fan rules with this chassis but, provided the X3G has two fans, there's no reason why they will need to work hard. The power rating of the Haswell CPU is also slightly lower than Ivy Bridge.

John

 

I'm a bit worried about the battery life atm. I've understood the battery life hasn't been so good in the past models. I saw a review of 900x3B where the battery life was quite short (5h, websurfing).
I was hoping to get to 4-6h on medium usage (surfing, videos etc).

I might buy it now and return it, if I don't feel it's good enough. I think there's a 14 day return policy. Too anxious, I guess. Better wait for more information and customer reviews.

 

The X3B had a lower capacity (40Whr) battery. The Ivy Bridge X3C with bigger battery and slightly more efficient hardware would add about an hour and Haswell should add another hour.

John

 

Alright, thanks for your replys. Very helpful

I'm going to place and order early next week and hope fully get the laptop in a week. I'll post my comments in this thread when I have more experience with it.

 

Thanks John, I've corrected my post.
Did they keep mSATA on the i3 Lite as well? Anyways my bet is on M.2. Although I'd rather like to see mSATA for the reasons you mentioned.


Edit: Doh, it's mSATA

 

For those of us unfimiliar, could you link or explain to us what the exact difference between those two options are and why one might be more favorable than the other?

 

You can see here what an mSATA SSD looks like while the M.2 SSD is here. However, a confusing factor of the M.2 format is that it includes different lengths so, if you are considering an upgrade, you have to check that the length of the card is compatible with the slot in your computer. Plus there's the matter of how many PCI lanes the slot supports and the card needs. mSATA is just one size with one interface and is now available in capacities of up to 1TB.

John

 

Thanks John, I was confused because German retailer listings showed less mAh for the 9 Plus...

So, after some time for consideration I went ahead last week and now sit here with a brand new NP900X3G-K02DE.
To quickly answer some questions:
- The display is from BOE, non-glare, FullHD
- Intel Wireless 7260 (802.11abgn)
- The SSD is a PM851 MZMTE128HMGR-00000 (mSATA)

I am playing with the idea of buying a EVO 512GB in some months

I am currently testing it under Linux as this will be my work machine for web/programming/writing.
I have not fully tested the battery but it draws around 7 Watt for my usage which would mean around 6 1/2 hours.

PS: No stupid ActiveSync etchings.

 

Thank you for this information. It looks like minimal changes from the Ivybridge version. Does it have any Intel "Ultrabook" sticker?

Is the 8GB RAM single channel or dual channel? HWiNFO or CPU-z should give this information or you can run the SiSoftware Sandra memory bandwidth benchmark.

John

 

No, only a "Intel inside CORE i5" sticker and a "n-tv" advertisement sticker which I removed.

According to CPU-z it's dual channel RAM.

 

yuv, could you post a lspci and lsusb?

 

yuv, thank you so much for sharing your experience.
The RAM running in dual channel sounds promising.
Bummer the wireless is only a N 7260 and not an AC 7260.
What do you think of the cooling system, does the system stay relatively cold and silent at day to day work?

 

Sure.

lspci

lsusb

I guess Silicon Motion is the webcam.

 

Ativ book 9 does have wifi AC.

By the way, a Samsung US sales rep told me it's sold by the business sales department, so it looks like it's not released to consumers yet.
How do I purchase it?? I'm just a student.

Can anyone call the Samsung buz (1-866-BIZ-4-SAM) and ask if they sell to consumers?

I live in Canada and the calls keep being transferred to the department in Canada. And here the department closes at 4 pm.

 

Have you found out whether it's a Mini Card or M.2?

What does 'lspci -v' (or -vv or -vvv)
Can you get Vendor & Product ID from /sys?
If that doesn't do the job 'hwinfo' is a collection of sysinfo tools.

Also can you please run 'cat /proc/cpuinfo'
What BIOS version do you have? 'dmidecode'


If you need some info on power optimization let me know. There are a lot of adjustments you can make.

 

Keep in mind this is the German version 900X3G-K02DE and I am not sure how one can really see which one is inside, N or AC. lspci is not very helpful.

I didn't have much time to test it thoroughly. In day to day work I can only hear a slight hiss.
I just did a small stress test with 3 threads at 100%. The core temperature quickly rises to 70°C and the fans get really loud but the temp stays steady and it never gets really hot on my lap.

 

Be careful posting hwinfo, lshw, or dmidecode output; it will have serial numbers. You can find the bios version using

Code:

dmidecode -s bios-version

To show the PCI IDs you can run:

Code:

lspci -nn

 

Try again with:

Code:

echo silent > /sys/devices/platform/samsung/performance_level

This only has an effect on the fans, not on the CPU. I got temps beyond 80°C but no throttleing occurs. (tested on Ivy Bridge x3e)

 

And another one:

Is the framing of the chassis silver like x3e or black like x3f?

 

Sorry, looks like I was tricked by the output of lshw and it is indeed 7260 AC. :thumbsup:

At least that's what the kernel patch
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/11/18/461
and the kernel report
[ 1.381051] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7260, REV=0x144

Is there a way to find out whether it's a mini card or M2 without opening the case?
Only found the Intel description
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/ww...ual-band-wireless-ac-7260-bluetooth-brief.pdf
and this
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Intel_Dual_Band_Wireless-AC_7260_(7260HMW)
which suggest it could be a mini card.

cpuinfo

BIOS

I am currently running it in UEFI mode and everything except keyboard backlight control seems to run fine.

Yeah, that would be great. I only started to investigate what's possible. Thanks oled.

 

I unfortunately can't test this since I'm running in UEFI mode is where samsung_tools are blacklisted.

The chassis looks more black than silver to me.

BTW, thanks AllurGroceries. I also just noticed this.

 

Post the Hardware IDs of the card, so we can investigate:

---

Can you change it manually? (try values between 0-8)

Code:

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/samsung\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness

If you boot into Windows next time, can you also please post a screenshot of HWInfo64 summary page?

 

can you take some pictures and post them? thanks.

 

That indeed is unfortunate. You mean samsung_laptop, right?
Which kernel version are you running? Imho the bricking bug has been fixed by Samsung last year. But decide for yourself!

Alternatively switch off UEFI.
It's also possible to transfer the Windows 8 installation to a non UEFI / non GPT system. Let me know if you are interested.



Can you also run a lsmod please?

 

Regarding power saving here are some quite generic things you can do. Tip: observe remaining battery time with 'acpi -b' in another terminal as some of those changes have a direct effect

Code:

# PROC
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog				# turn off watchog

# PROC STORAGE
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode					# flush after a I/O operation has been registered (in sec)
echo 4800 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs	# cache x csec until writing
echo 42 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio					# % of memory allowed to have dirty data
echo 24 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio		# % of memory allowed to have dirty (pdflush!?) data

# GPU
echo 1 > /sys/module/i915/parameters/powersave
echo 1 > /sys/module/i915/parameters/i915_enable_fbc
# echo 7 > /sys/module/i915/parameters/i915_enable_rc6	# can't be changed while module loaded
# echo 1 > /sys/module/i915/parameters/lvds_downclock	# can't be changed while module loaded

# SCREEN
xset dpms 0 0 90	# turn screen off after 90s

# WIFI
iw dev wlan0 set power_save on

# AUDIO
echo Y > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller
echo 1 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

# AHCI devices (default=max_performance)
for file in /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy; do echo min_power > $file; done
	
# PCIE  (requires pcie_aspm=force as kernel boot parameter)
echo powersave > /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy

# DEVICE PM
for file in /sys/bus/pci/devices/*/power/control; do echo auto > $file; done
for file in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control; do echo auto > $file; done
for file in /sys/bus/i2c/devices/*/power/control; do echo auto > $file; done

# USB autosuspend
echo 2 > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend
for file in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/autosuspend; do echo 2 > $file ; done

# CPU
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo

You can set up a udev rule to automatically execute a script with all desired settings when changing from AC to battery or vice versa:

Code:

SUBSYSTEM=="power_supply", ATTR{online}=="0", RUN+="/path/to/powersave.sh on"
SUBSYSTEM=="power_supply", ATTR{online}=="1", RUN+="/path/to/powersave.sh off"

Save as /etc/udev/rules.d/60-powersave.rules and run 'udevadm control --reload-rules'



The 'pcie_aspm=force' parameter you have to append as kernel argument in /etc/default/grub (update grub to have the setting applied)

Code:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pcie_aspm=force"

Other module options you can set in /etc/modprobe.d/custom.conf

Code:

# GPU driver arguments
options		i915		i915_enable_rc6=7 i915_enable_fbc=1 lvds_downclock=1

# Blacklist Intel MEI, you probably don't need it
blacklist	mei_me
blacklist	mei

 

yuv, once again thank you for all the information provided, very helpful!

oled, the power optimization you are are talking about refers to Linux, not Windows, right?

I am really happy I found this forum, so much knowledge around and everybody happy to share it with one another, keep it up gentlemen!

 

Hi,

thanks for the information. Uhm, battery life seems not to be increased if compared to Ivybridge versions. I have a 900x3c that lasts 6hrs and half...can you give us more glimpse about endurance of the Battery on windows?
I would like that the Haswell hardware increased battery life at least up to 7-8hrs under normal usage, that is office and occasional Web browsing with wifi on and screen at half of intensity.

Thanks a lot in Advance!

 

You may find the "business" connection is a smokescreen to get round Intel's edict that it should have a glossy touchscreen. I'm sure anyone will be able to buy it.

SW Update's database lists an NP900X3G-K01CA and an NP900X3G-K02CA. The -K02CA is listed by some retailers such as here (shows 8GB + 256GB) but it is not yet in stock but I'm sure it will show up within days or a few weeks. The -K01CA is not yet listed by any retailers. So far, there is no USA version of the X3G in the SW Update database.

John

 

lspci -nn returns

HWInfo64 tells me WiFi should be
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 AC 2x2 HMC WiFi Adapter

Which summary page do you mean, the CPU one?

There is no led/samsung, only phys-led0 where changing the brightness does not work.

 

Just a reminder for anyone considering buying this, the X3E model is currently priced $999 at Best Buy. Probably the better value unless you absolutely have to have 8 gigs of RAM.

 

I took those with my mobile, so excuse the quality:

 

I am running 3.11.0. Yes, samsung_laptop.
The bricking bug has been "fixed" in Linux by blacklisting samsung_laptop *g*
Do you have any info if Samsung really fixed their UEFI implementation?

I will probably switch to CSM mode, to get everything supported.
I first need to backup the restore partition though.
Is this transfer possible without reinstallation of Windows 8? That would be great if you can provide some info.

Thanks for your tips. I'll test them and report back. BTW, powertop can show the discharge rate directly.

lsmod

 

Why would it be the better choice? Just because of the price?

 

Ican't seem to find any reliable information about the card format. There is also a Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 [8086:08b 2]

Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 AC 2x2 HMC. That should translate to Half Mini Card.

yes

You need to have the samsung_laptop module running

No official, but the thread got silent: http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/706510-samsung-laptops-bricked-using-uefi.html

 

thanks, appreciate it.

looks like Samsung stuck with the X3F body for the German version, which makes more sense than going back to the X3E body if they still had plenty of X3F body types in stock. i assume all countries X3G will have this same version, but we'll see.

maybe the silver edged design will only be on the 9+ models now.

how do you like the keyboard? does it have enough travel and is it quiet? or do the buttons make a loud clicking sound?

and how about the trackpad? is it smooth and responsive? does it make a clicking sound?

thanks again.

 

How did you make space for linux, did you just shrink the Windows partition? I haven' t tested it myself that way (like keeping GPT and just moving/ deleting partitions).


Instead I made a whole new mbr partition table, with just one partition for Windows (no need to waste space for Recovery or UEFI partitions). I then applied the original 'install.wim' image (from recovery partition) offline with imagex.exe from WAIK..

It also works by just copying the files of the Windows system partition offline to a tar or zip archive (WinRAR imho supports ACLs) and then extract it again on the new partition. It's basically the same content than in the install.wim.
I have to add though that that archive was made prior to ever having booted into Windows. Windows sets itself up with the very first boot and I'm not sure if you can still transfer it after it found itself in an GPT/UEFI/Secure Boot environment. It's worth a try though.

In both cases you will need to setup a new boot record and loader. Boot a Win8 installation disk - I took 8.1 preview - go through repair options --> command prompt

Code:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr

Not sure if all of those commands are needed, but it worked.


In any case first make a backup of the drive, so you can revert to factory settings any time.

 

Still no dedicated Home/ End keys

Don't forget to fix ubuntu

 

yeah, that sucks. the 9+ keyboard doesn't have dedicated ones either.

 

This is going to sound like such a troll post as it is my first after a long while lurking, but I spotted this tonight after speaking with the rep at the MIcrosoft Store, they are selling it for 1499+ tax, i7, 8gb ram. He sai bnd they have a ton of them and offered to sell one to me but they dont offically go on sale for two weeks. I thought he was blowing smoke and this was just an oversight by me somehow and that this model was already out. I have never had that sort of thing happen without a connection of some kind. Anyway, after trying to remember the SN on it I came to the forums where I saw this post.

My question is now should i trade my newly purchased Q550lf for this? I dont love the Asus, hence why i was looking around the MS store....What about the other 9 series models?

I hope this gives true hope to anyone wondering when he release date is and from the reps tone they have ALOT of them.

 

The NP900X3G has as much similarity to the Asus Q550lf as chalk and cheese. It's difficult to compare a lightweight 13.3" notebook with a 15.6" model at more than double the weight.

I wonder whether you have remembered the right model number. The X3G isn't touchscreen so I wouldn't expect it to be filling the shelves in the Microsoft store. If the model that was mentioned had 13.3" touchscreen then it would probably be the NP940X3G which has its own thread). And if the rep was referring to a 15.6" model (similar size to your Asus) then it would be the NP930X3J, which we don't expect to see for another month or more.

John

 

No it was 13 and I know the comparison is not a close one but was wanted to hear people's thoughts expectations, experiences. Anyway I am going to return the Asus tonight and pick up the Samsung and I will post pics to see if my memory is worth a dime ;-)

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

The keyboard is OK. The buttons are flat and hard, kind of metallic. Unlike Lenovo keyboards which have more travel and feel softer. When you touch the keys too hard they make a loud clicking sound, especially space.
At first I was disappointed by the trackpad. It felt rather unresponsive before changing the settings, but now I am used to it. I think I was used to Macbook trackpads which I like better.
The lower section for left and right click makes clicking sounds.

 

Thanks. I haven't installed Windows in a while, I'll research how to use the WAIK to install the Install.wim from a USB stick, if that's possible.

Yes, I just shrunk the main windows partition, which left me with 55GB for Linux. Approximately 16 GB ared used by the recovery and UEFI and Windows requested a minimum size with around 25GB free.