New samsung series 7 with 8870m review / test

Hi everyone

I'll request this thread to be closed so that questions get asked where the most answers are. A lot more members read and post a lot more in the owner's thread of this laptop. It also has a lot of tips and FAQ that might answer your questions in the first post, be sure to read that one.

Here's the link:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...e-np780z5e-np870z5e-np880z5e.html#post9135887



Hello, after a long wait I finally recieved my 15" series 7 chronos.

It is the np770Z5E-S01FR
specs are as follows:
- Intel core i7 3635qm
- AMD Radeon HD 8870m with 2gb of GDDR5
- 8gb of DDR3 ram at 1600mhz
- 1TB 5400 rpm HDD (SSD will come soon)
- 1920x1080 matte display
- 91Whr battery
- HD webcam
- Backlit AZERTY-keyboard

1. Chassis
The chassis is the first thing you'll see on any laptop. The series 7 chronos does not dissapoint.
The lid and inside are made out of brushed aluminium. The aluminium that is used is darker and smoother than that found on a macbook pro, which I found a good thing. It will attract fingerprints, but they are only seen under a certain angle and are easy to wipe off. I really like the aluminium bezel, it looks much better than on the computer generated pictures. The whole laptop actually looks darker than on the pictures. I liked that, but some others may not. Do not expect it to look like macbook-aluminium.
The bottom is plastic, but I could only know that by touching it. It looks just like aluminium, all be it a tad lighter than the aluminium of the rest of the laptop. The laptop does not flex anywhere. It is very sturdy.
The heat dissapation is good in my opinion. After paying far cry 3 or an hour however, I could feel the keys of the keyboard get warm, but not hot. Other parts of the laptop got warm too, but not uncomfortably hot for me.

If this isn't sexy...




2. Keyboard
The keyboard is silver-colored too. Other users found this to be a problem for readability of the keys, but I did not. I could easily read the keys in any situation. In a lot of light the baklight turns off and the contrast between the letters and the keys themselves is big enough. In the dark, the baklight is turned on, illuminating the keys for good visibility. he baklight ond this keyboard is not bright. It is functional. If you want to show off your cool backlit keyboard during the day, this is not the laptop you are looking for. If you want a backlit keyboard that let's you type in any light situation it is.
This keyboard does not have a lot of travel. I did not find that a problem and got used to it pretty much instantly which makes typing this review a joy. The numeric keyboard is a big plus for me for my studies. I also like the arrow keys that are of a decent size. As said above, nothing on the laptop flexes, the keyboard doesn't either.
The following actions can be done by a combination of the fn key and another key:
- Go to settings
- Screen brightnes +/-
- External monitor mode switching
- Turn off trackpad
- mute, vol+/vol-
- Backlight brightness +/-
- Silent mode on/off
- screenshot
- right mouse click




3. Touchpad
Tha touchpad on this laptop is very good. Gestures work flawlessly and make windows 8 easier to use without having a touchscreen. It is very big too, and the absence of dedicated right and left mouse buttons and a shiny edge around it make it beautiful too. It has a nice texture to it and it does not flex. For me the placement is perfect. Since I've been using the series 7 chronos I've never found myself typing somewhere else than I wanted to.
see post #3 for pictures


4. Screen
Keep in mind that I have a matte, non-touchscreen. Samsung advertised this screen as very bright with its 300 nits. The screen is not that bright in my opinion. It's not too dim but my sister's iMac for example is much brighter. This may be because of the matte coating. Thanks to the matte coating the visibility is always great though, even with turned down brightness. The viewing angles are great. Colours distort much, much less than any TN panel viewed under an angle
A lot of users were worrying about 'grainyness'. Something I had never even heard about. I'll add a close up of the screen later. I must say I do rarely see some kind of texture when a big plane of the same color is shown. I think this is because of the matte coating I have to get used to. I looked at an acer with a matte screen afterwards and that one had it far, far worse. Coming from a glossy 1280x800 screen, this full hd screen is awesome. Please do not forget to turn the size of items to 100%! Everything will look much sharper and the screen real estate will be immense.
If I tap the bezel of the screen it wobbles for a second. For me this isn't a problem but for people who want a touchscreen it might be unpractical.
Some user reported a burn-in effect. This not present at all on my screen.
Edit: After playing far cry 3 for an hour and a half I realised how beautiful this screen is. When you're playng games or watching movies this screen shows it's true qualities. Colours were vibrant and beautiful. The "grainyness" dissapears completely. It's only there if you look real close to the screen while displaying something white or of bright colour. if you're not buying this laptop because of that then you'll be missing out on a lot.

Pretty good viewing angles:

Beatiful bezel:
see post #3

5. Battery
The batterry life is great, but this is hard to test. If you want me test battery life in a specific way, let me know.
On my laptop, battery life extender was disabled by default. If you want your battery to wear less, don't forget to enable it!

6. Noise
Noise can be reduced to almost nothing when enabling silent mode so no issues there. Even if silent mode is disabled I could only hear the HDD spinning while browsing the web and doing word processing. If you need the power this laptop has, you can't expect it to not use the fans. If the fans are running you can obviously hear them, but it does not get louder than most laptops at full load. I do not have a decibel meter so this is very subjective.

7. Performance

3Dmark11:
90W + Stock drivers: 3295 Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP770Z5E-S01FR score: P3259 3DMarks

90W + 13.5: 3416 Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP770Z5E-S01FR score: P3416 3DMarks

120W + 13.5: 3447 http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6549824

90W + 13.5 + overclock (850/1250) : 3353 Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP770Z5E-S01FR score: P3353 3DMarks a lot of throttling here

90W +13.5 + heavy overclock (900/1300): Crash

120W +13.5 + heavy overclock (920/1350): 3897 Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP770Z5E-S01FR score: P3897 3DMarks

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6655887

3Dmark 2013: fire strike
120W + 13.5: 2648

3Dmark 06
Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP770Z5E-S01FR score: 16343 3DMarks
Yes this 800 points more than notebookcheck.

Far cry 3:
For this I did the race next to amanaki village by night in directx 11 mode. I got the "black boxes glitch" which proves how bad the default drivers are.
I also get higher framerates in high than medium in the exact same test
- preset high, AA disabled, HDAO, 1920x1080: min: 21 max: 29 avg: 25,2
- preset high, AA disabled, SSAO, 1920x1080: min: 21 max: 31 avg: 28
- preset medium, AA disabled, SSAO, 1920x1080: min: 25 max: 31 avg: 27,8
- DX9 preset high, 1920x1080, min: 26, max: 33, avg: 31 -> very playable

Saint's row the third
For this I did a gang battle in DX11-mode so plenty of shooting and explosions
- Preset high, 4x MSAA, 1920x1080: min: 17, max: 54, avg: 32

Crysis 2
For this I played through the whole first level
- preset advanced, 1920x1080: min: 21, max: 63, avg: 39,1
(This game looked awesome on this laptop. very smooth, nice colours, no grainyness whatsoever and very sharp)

Crysis 2 with MaldoHD v4.0
Preset high, 1920x1080: Avg: 31.421 - Min: 14 - Max: 50
Preset Very high, 1920x1080: Avg: 28.284 - Min: 16 - Max: 33 (not so smooth, needs some tweaking)

Minecraft
Everything maxed, render distance: far, 1920x1080 min: 57, max: 112, avg: 83

Battlefield 3
For this I played a bit of the second mission, which is very demanding. 1080p test coming as soon as I can.
- Every setting on high (NOT the same as preset high), no AA, SSAO, antisotropic filltering 1x, 1600x900: Avg 48
- I could play the very first mission at ultra, 1600x900 at around 30-35 fps.
- Every setting on high (NOT the same as preset high), no AA, SSAO, antisotropic filltering 1x, 1920x1080: Avg 41
- Preset high 1920x1080: Avg: 30.353
- Every setting on ultra (NOT the same as preset ultra), no AA, SSAO, antisotropic filltering 1x, 1920x1080: Avg 38
- Preset ultra 1920x1080: Avg 19,7

Need for speed the run
For this I did a race in stage 2
- Everything on ultra, 1920x1080: min: 30, max: 30, avg: 30
(the game has a limit of 30fps you can't go above, cars and paintjobs loaded at least 20x fastered than a bootcamped iMac.)

Bioshock Infinite
In-Game performance:
- Preset ultra, 1920x1080: Avg: 28.267 - Min: 24 - Max: 34
- Preset very high, 1920x1080: Avg: 36.980 - Min: 23 - Max: 52
- Preset high, 1920x1080: Avg: 38.775 - Min: 14 - Max: 49
- Everything maxed (including AA), only dynamic shadow on normal, 1920x1080: Avg: 30.490 - Min: 19 - Max: 40

Black Ops 2
Playthrough of first level:
- Everything maxed out, including 8x MSAA and maxed shadows, 1920x1080: Avg: 39.441 - Min: 24 - Max: 63

Medal of honor: Warfighter
Playing a part of the second level with plenty of shooting
- Preset High, 1920x1080: Avg: 32.657 - Min: 29 - Max: 41
- Preset Ultra, 1920x1080: Avg: 20.531 - Min: 18 - Max: 24
- Everything maxed only AA is off, 1920x1080: Avg: 31.366 - Min: 25 - Max: 37
- Everything maxed only AA is off and shadows on medium, 1920x1080: Avg: 36.988 - Min: 29 - Max: 45
- Everything maxed only MSAA is on 2x and shadows on medium: Avg: 31.874 - Min: 28 - Max: 36

Skyrim
Running around in and around Riverwood:
- Preset ultra (includes 4x AA), 1920x1080: Avg: 55.568 - Min: 35 - Max: 64
- Everything maxed (also everything in advanced settings), no AA, FXAA, 1920x1080: Avg: 42.480 - Min: 29 - Max: 64
Very impressed with these results. I'll probaly install high res textures and such.


8. Speakers
The JBL speakers on this laptop are much better than I expected. Believe it or not but the speakers actually produce a little bass! They are not annoyingly high pitched to listen to like most laptop and cellphone speakers. Although I prefer headphones these speakers are definitely good enough to listen to some music or watch a movie. And they are LOUD, but at full volume sound quality decreases a lot.

9. Additional pictures

Right side: SD-card slot, 2x USB 2.0, kensington lock



Left side: psu, ethernet, VGA, HDMI, 2x USB 3.0, headphone/microphone combo jack.


Please tell me what other pictures you want me to take.

 

Sounds good man. Thanks for all this.


If you can try the games at 1080p all high with no AA and at medium res no AA and report the framerates in each then that would be awesome. If framerates are not good in a particular game at these settings then if you could lower the resolution a notch that would be good to hear the performance then

Also would be good to hear your opinion on the heat and how comfortable it is to play. Let us know if you feel it gets so hot that it might actually damage the laptop. Definitely don't want this!


Cheers man. Wish I had my machine to test this all on!! 5 more days...

 

More pictures here.


Hit the 6 attachments limit.

Beautiful bezel:


Touchpad:


Another shot of the backlit keyboard:


Failed shot of the backlit keyboard in the dark:


Vertical viewing angles:



original picture

 

is the cpu/gpu throttling really limiting this laptop's power? according to notebookcheck's review 8870m isnt effectively much better than gt650 or 660 due to throttling....also, some gaming videos of this beauty on youtube would be sweet if you dont mind...thanks
*jealous*

PS:btw i'm waiting for haswell version of this laptop as i'll be getting one later this year....hope that solves the throttling problem...

 

DX9 Please!

I'm not sure exactly how dx11 works but all I seem to gather is that is works the system harder, dx9 gameplay would be good to hear!

Maybe try both drivers to see if the black boxes go? I will be playing FC3 so I hope this can be resolved!

 

Plastic bottom? Damn, well I guess they don't want it to be better than the 9 series in every way. Yea I could live with it I guess.

 

I'm trying to test for gpu throttling but I can't get HWinfo64 to recognize the dedicated gpu . Any help?

edit: added dx9 fc3 perfrmance

 

I think that Samsung have designed the thermal system with Haswell in mind so there has to be some compromises with the current hardware. People quickly worked out that the maximum power demand of the components exceeds the 90W PSU rating while I consider that fitting a cooling system that can dissipate 90W into such a thin profile is an impressive achievement.

If sufficient structural strength can be achieved without a metal bottom then two advantages of plastic are:
1. Less heat transfer through the material - the computer could potentially cook knees if used in laptop mode; and
2. Less shielding of the WiFi antennae (can Z7E users comment on the WiFi signal strength and performance - my apologies if already discussed somewhere).

John

 

So I just played far cry 3 for an hour and I really enjoyed the screen, see the edit.
About heat, I did not change my mind. The laptop gets warm during intensive gaming but not really that hot. Not the bottom, not the keyboard, not the bezel, not the hinge,.. just a little warm. I'm actually quite impressed.

I did that one hour gameplay to test for throttling but I kinda failed trying to make a log . Sorry.

I maybe thought about this too late but is it annoying that I'm adding stuff gradually while testing? Would you rather want me to complete all the tests first and then post them?

edit: added saint's row performance

 

pranktank I say keep going as you are. Everyone wants what little info they can get. Maybe organize the original post later with the gathered info. But don't stop now.

@John thanks for the info. I wish we could just call it carbon fiber then all would be good. Ha ha.

 

Thanks for the positive response . I'm going to test crysis 2 now.
I wanted to try and install newer amd drivers but it won't work since my gpu is 'incompatible'

 

@pranktank: Excellent review. Thank you for posting it!

 

Thank you, you're welcome .

I just finished crysis 2 test. I'll add the results.

 

Pranktank, can you tell me what the volume is like when you plug in your headphones? Ive tried this on a chronos in london and the volume is gets JUST too loud at 100. By comparison my hp envy gets to around the same volume at 50%. Im contemplating waiting for the proper chronos to come out in the US if it can output significantly more volume.

 

prank take a picture? How does it still feel. Does it feel "thin", how much do you still like it. It reads like the highest performance non pure gamer. What do you think. I even hear it called an Ultrabook. Do you agree.

Touch it and report back. I gotta know.

 

Could You please also test, on which settings BF 3 is playable with about 45fps min.?

 

I'm not sure what you want me to test but I went to the first song I saw on youtube ( Schoolboy & James Egbert - Stardust (Ft. Taylr Renee) - YouTube), put the youtube volume to max, plugged my headphones in and put the computer's volume to 50. It was almost uncomfortably loud. 100 hurt my ears, but I have very sensitive ears.

I still like the laptop very much. It is really thin imo. It looks and feels thinner than a macbook pro (non-retina). It's light too and I love the smooth aluminium.
Right now I only have my crappy 5 megapixel camera on my phone. If you really want to, I can take pictures with that but I think it would be a shame to take pictures from this beautiful thing with that bad camera. When I see my sister I'll borrow her professional camera to take decent pictures.

I'm having some issues getting bf3 to work, windows 8 is harder than I expected. You'll see it in post #1 when I got it to work

 

Great review Pranktank, does all 8870 comes without the touch screen or is it just the matte ones? Whats the highest temp you went when playing farcry 3?
THanks

 

Thank you . The np780Z5E comes with both an 8870m and touchscreen (not the bestbuy version, that one comes with an 8770m).

I don't know, I'm a noob at hwinfo64 to be honest. First I need to know how to properly monitor both cpu and dedicated gpu while playing far cry 3.

 

Thanks for the reply. I am waiting for the 8870 versions to hit US. Went to best buy to get a hands on experience and its really amazing. I was planning to get the y500 by lenovo but now have my mind set on these . Did you get yours from UK?

 

I was going to buy the y500 too until I saw this laptop. 650m sli may be a little faster than the 8870m but everything else on the chronos is superior in my opinion. Screen, looks, build quality, battery life,..

I bought mine from france

 

Do you see a difference when you put 1920x1080 wallpapers vs 2560x1440 wallpapers?

 

also will the low power supply will it throttle?

 

Great review and thread "pranktank" rep +1. That 3dmark11 score you posted is great, it beats the Gtx 660m by allot. Those tests you did on Far Cry 3, were you in direct x 11 mode or 9? I don't want to work you too hard but if you could try a 3dmark06 (you can get the demo on Steam) test if you get a chance I'd be curious as to how the Chronos does on that.
Keep up the great work
Seanno

 

Ihave to read a little more about HWINfo 64 to fully test thermal and powr-related throttling.

In every test of far cry3 I was in directx 11 except for the the test that says "dx9" in front of it.
I'll download 3Dmark 06 right now. I'll try to run the test too but I just got home from a party. Maybe it'll be for tomorrow if I fall asleep.

I only tried standard full hd wallpapers. Send me a link to a wallpaper you want me to try. Right now I'm using this one: it looks beautiful on this screen.


Btw guys, i finally got Battlefield 3 to work. Somehow it only works when I install it to my external hdd I'll test it tomorrow (Windows 8 is crazy).
Please keep adding suggestions for tests. After the weekend I'll have a lot less time.

 

Finished 3Dmark06 and added to post #1

 

why is the difference between your far cry 3/crysis 2 ultra settings fps and that of notebookcheck so huge?? i mean the diff is 25fps vs 9fps its that huge...noob here....

 

Thanks for the 3dmark06 test it looks pretty strong. This card seems to be much stronger with direct x 11 than with the older Dx 9. On 3dmark11 it is a good amount over the GTX 670m, On 3dmark06 a good deal under. But 16343 is still a very solid score, so much better than the Gt 650m and 660m for that matter. That's a weird situation you've got with Bf3. Origin is still ..like a beta in many ways. Many notebook users were unable run Bf3 last year after an update they did (me included). The Bf3 won't start thread was always one of the most popular threads for like 3 months. They got right onto fixing the problem though...for me it took about 3 months. They refused to allow reverting back to the old version that worked because with Origin updates are automatic and the tech support people they have are amazingly bad. Hopefully they'll get it together one day. Let everyone know about your fix if you come up with one, I for one would be interested in knowing. I plan on getting the 15.6 hd8870m, when it ever appears in the US.

 

heres the link
go to the one that says "spectrum of a tree"
buy default i lef it on the 2560x1440, get that one , then use the menu to get the 1080 one, then do the comparison
InterfaceLIFT: 2560x1440 Wallpaper sorted by Downloads - 2560x1440

 

I didn't test those games on ultra yet. Far Cry 3 only on high and crysis 2 on "advanced".

It looks exaclty the same to me except that th 1920x1080 seemed to be lower a little bit.







Btw, some users were reporting a bug where their laptop would crash when you close the lid. Mine is set to "do nothing" when closing the lid. And it does so perfectly.



Edit: some pictures added. Tell me what pictures you want to see. Sorry for the picture quality I suck at this

Edit2: added some more pictures. Check post #3 too

 

Whenever you get round to replacing the HD with an SSD, can you *PLEASE* post a tutorial video? I know theres been ample descriptions in the other thread, but a picture speaks 1000 words etc.

Also, when you do, are you going to perform a clean install of w8, or use the samsung recovery tool? I'm not quite sure what the difference is between them and which would be better.

Thanks man!

 

Nice pictures all are very good except one so you are doing very well.

One more question on the "plastic". Is it just the bottom cover, or is it the entire body? It looks outstanding from your picks. It has the "Ultrabook" look which I like.

What are these going to cost? Have I mentioned I think getting the non touch screen is great.

 

Can we also have a couple of photos illustrating the vertical viewing angles?

John

 

Thanks for putting the review up.

 

It's going to take some time until I can afford an ssd since I want at least 500gb. This latop is great but you can't say it's cheap .

Thanks. Only the botttom is plastic, everything else of the body is made out of aluminium.
In Europe this laptop costs €1299. Yes I'm very happy that I bought the non-touch. It saved me quite some money and I like the matte screen a lot. I also wouldn't like the touchscreen because the screen is too wobbly for that.

 

Check post #3 . I noticed no colour distortion whatsoever.

 

Anything new about BF 3?

 

i'll play thatright now. Just played some minecraft. Added minecraft performance.

 

Thanks. Those are excellent viewing angles.

John

 

Great news. I will hopefully install SEUS (Shader package) then

 

Would be great to see a video of BF3 performance This is the no.1 game I will be playing so I'm very eager to hear these results!

 

+1

with fps-counter in one of the corners then please

 

Anyway you could play some DotA 2 on it. This is the only game I play on PC and it is important that this lappy runs it well.

I have any invite I can give you if you done have the game.

 

If it can play Far Cry 3 and Crysis 2 it can obviously run Dota 2

 

^Same goes for me, DotA2 the only game I play. Can you do some test on it? Thank you.
I know GTX660m under all max 1080p has about 40 fps which is not that ideal.

 

have u experienced any issues regarding graphic card switching? I remember someone who purchased the best buy model with the 8770 was complaining that there are times when applications would use the intel card instead of the amd card, and in general it was a pain to switch between or singularly use a specific card. Is it possible to stay 24/7 in AMD graphics mode and only use the amd card? thanks!

 

You can easily configure which programs need to use which gpu with the "switchable graphics" app. It's a bit annoyig though.

I'm sorry but I don't own dota 2

Finally finished testing BF3, windows 8 support is horrible. I only got the game running properly on 900p for now. I'll try again in a bit. Check first post for results. I need to buy a mouse before I can do a gameplay video. I can't take the mouse that I used during the weekend to my dorm, so I had to play bf3 with the touchad . I'll buy a mouse tomorrow.

Edit: sorry this took so long. I'm really having trouble getting bf3 to work properly. And I was travelling to my dorm before that.

 

Hello from Russia
Thanks for the tip about the laptop
I want to share a link you found on the Internet
NP730U3E, NP740U3E, NP770Z5E, NP780Z5E, NP870Z5E (black Chronos), NP880Z5E (black Chronos), NP770Z7E and more.....
Samsung Notebook Web Contents

 

Finished 1080p bf3 testing with various settings. Tomorrow I'll look for the optimal settings.


Edit: Finished Need for speed the run testing. I can't stress enough how beautiful this was on this screen.