Q310 - Impressions, Review and Pictures!

The settings posted in the video description were the settings used.. the benchmark was frap's own built in utility and the map was 'Langres'.

My card was overclocked to 750/750 you should know.

I guess the easiest way to make sure your card is running properly is to try out 3dmark 06 and compare your score.

 

how's the return process going pillowshot, do you think you fried the latop as you overclocked everything lol

 

I only overclocked the GPU and made sure the temperatures we're within reasonable amounts of the original temperatures + checked for artifacts at all times.. I think it'd be a little strange if I had fried it.

Other than that, pretty smooth. It got collected yesterday and is being taken back to Dabs, who will send it on to Samsung. Apparently it will take up to 6 weeks, hopefully it'll be ready much sooner.

 

Im your review you say that you where getting an average of 60 fps, which chuffing settings did you use as you have 2 seperate videos.

 

The benchmark was run on the 'higher' settings. See the high video for more details on that.. the FPS you're referring to is the fraps thing, right? The min, max and avg?

 

:O I only get like 25fps with the high-low combo, but my 3d mark score is the same and is OCed.. no comprende
Also, alot of the settings become unavailiable when changing other settings, ie, I need medium shaders to allow me to apply shadows.

 

I turned shadows off.. it says everything else is low or off (the lowest setting allowed) which in the case of shadows means off. Shadows are a big performance killer and when you're playing you don't really notice them.

 

John Lewis are doing the a-s-s-1 model (320Gb, P8600) for 699 instore with their 2 year warranty.
I've got mine there last week.
Anyone still thinking to buy it in the UK, hurry up!

 

Could any more users comment on the fan-noise on this laptop? I'll be using it in very quiet libraries at work, so can't really have an obtrusive fan. I'm not keen on the idea of it being on ALL the time, as someone mentions above.

Chris

 

VERY VERY VERY quiet fan in my computer, I don't really think I have heard it at all!

To you guys who have updated your graphics using LaptopVideo2Go, does your HDMI port still work afterwards?

Stu

 

@ tlk
How did you get John Lewis to do it for £699? Their site says £799 and I know first hand that when it comes to price matching they're evil

 

I saw it at that price in their Brent Cross branch last Thursday. (bad luck I already ordered through ebuyer by then for special delivery, now waiting for refund)

Anyway, I rang a few stores to confirm it was that price later that day, one store told me they were doing it as a special offer from last Wednesday but said it could go back to original price anytime.
If your local store shows it as £799 you can tell them other stores have lowered the price and they would sell it for £699. (thats what I did)

 

Thanks for your help!
Rang JLP, sounds like Brent Cross still has this laptop for £699!
A word of warning to others considering buying it this way:
As expected, Bluewater will not price match over the phone (I said they were evil!).
They said they will only discuss price matching with other JLP stores if I physically go into the store! Just hoping that the price is still low on the weekend :-/

 

Who is bluewater? Im hoping they have it for 699 as well i will definatly get it, how do you buy from john lewis, is it likea atologue shop or is it a normal shop like tesco or pcworld etc.

Ps. what are john lewis like if you want to return anything?

 

Bluewater is a shopping centre (shopping mall) in Dartford just outside London.
John Lewis is a department store. They are usually very good with price matching and customer service is usually pretty good.

 

The fan stays on all the time but it is very quiet and constant. It doesn't speed up and slow down all the time. There are no high pitch whining noises, just the gentle whoosh of warm air.

 

Mines quite quiet, but the air coming out of the vents is usually quite warm

 

Thanks for the info about fan noise. On the Samsung site, it mentions that the Q310 has a "Speed Up Manager"; "by pressing the Fn button with the F8 button, three options for multitasking -- speed mode, normal mode and silent mode -- will be provided, allowing users to work anywhere."

Anyone tried this feature? Is the silent mode really that silent?

 

Yes, it is good if you need it to be quite when just typing or surfing. It increases the thresh-hold at which the fan will kick in, in normal mode I think it turns on at around 40C, but in silent I think it gets raised to about 50C.

Also, when you change it, it will change your power plan accordingly, for me, when I put it to Performance mode it sets the power plan to High performance the other 2 will be Power saver

 

Just ordered the Q310 with P8600 from John Lewis, for £699. As someone mentions above, this is a bargain if you can afford it, as the extra processor speed and significantly larger hard-drive is worth at least £100 more than the P8400 model that retails for £670 elsewhere. And the free extra year warranty is easily worth £100. That's a saving of more than £200!

I've spoken to two John Lewis sales reps, and there seems to be two prices for this laptop. The 'Local' price and the 'National' price. Of the stores i've queried, Kingston and Brent Cross have the low 'Local' price, whilst Oxford Street and Reading have the higher 'National' price of £799. Reading sale rep on the phone was happy to PRICE MATCH the lower price and have the laptop delivered to the store, but said i'd have to wait for Brent Cross to contact me. I couldnt be bothered waiting, so i called Kingston, which already has the lower price, so no price-matching needed. Sorry if this gets confusing.

The Q310 is in quite high demand, and you'll be lucky to find one instore. Brent Cross has alot though, as does Oxford Street. Reading and Kingston, meanwhile, have sold out so will order yours in from the big John Lewis in the sky.

Amazon sold out (£660ish) for the lower spec yesterday, and don't sell the higher spec.

But Demand-It, on Amazon.co.uk marketplace, sell the P8400 spec laptop, brand new and factory sealed, for £599. This is also a BARGAIN. But as i type they have only ONE left. Hurry fast!

 

tlk your the best!!!!

I just went into the store and told them about brent cross having it for £699, they spent 2 minutes on the phone and reduced their price. waaaahoooooo They had a couple in stock so if you live in the south of england goto southampton, or southsea has 1 in stock.

Its just on charge now, havn't started it up yet, going to wait until its full.

its now time to undervolt and modify

has anyone tried undervoltin the p8600 yet? will rmclock work?


edit:
Just turned on and it looks really good, it is quiet but in my room with nothing else making a sound you can hear the fans and the hard drive makes a sound like something electric is shorting but if i wasn't in complete silence then i wouldn't be able to hear a thing.

 

I was lucky to jump straight in and be one of the first lot to buy it then.
It is without question an awesome price for such a laptop.

fred, same here, I can still here mine but if anything else is making a noise then I cant here the laptop at all. The sould the hardrive makes is the only thing that bugs me though, when it goes cloop. But it turns out that the Futjitzu harddrive are very good for 5400s.

 

It works, but not perfectly. IDA is not supported (no great loss) and there's some debate about the voltages being reported since RMclock gives lower voltages than CPU-z. However, you can reduce the voltages whatever they may be so give it a try. On the P8600 in my Dell E6400 I managed to drop the 9x voltage down to 1.05V from 1.1375V (RMclock voltages) which didn't make a big difference to the heat. The SLFM voltage is reported as 0.925V.

John

 

will give undervolting a go a bit later. Cant get more than 3 1/2 hours according to the battery monitor, that's in power saving so the bigger processor and hard drive obviosly make a large impact to the battery

 

It's probably things like Vista's SuperFetch indexing at work which will increase both the CPU and HDD power consumption.

See this thread for some suggestions on improving battery time.

John

 

just thought i would upload results when i ran orthos for 10 with the p8600 and 320 hard drive



it looks ok.

 

No clooping on the Hitachi HTS543232L9A300, I cannot even hear it!

I just have to get one up on "Manic Penguins"

Regards

John.

EDIT : previous post : what is the "ACPI temp" which one is the processor temp is it the "CORE TEMP!!"

 

not sure what acpi is, ive been going by the 2 different cores as its under the heaing intel mobile core 2 duo must be the fujitsu hard drives thatmake the eletric shorting sound.

if the acpi is the processor temp then it will be going back.


edit:

rmclock is going well, i have reduced the voltage 100 and some and its already reduced the max temp

 

I think those temperatures look OK. When they get into the 80s and 90s then start to worry. There may be issues of calibration.

You may also notice that RMclock reports lower (5C?) core temperatures than HWmonitor. This may be because RMclock has never been updated to properly support Penryn CPUs.

John

 

yeh ive heard that before, but both hwmonitor and rmclock both report the same temp.

current the max temps have dropped to
acpi tz00 63
core 0 54

so nearly 10c drop in the temps.

 

Dam* you Tinder, I will seek my revenge >


EDIT: It hasnt actually made that sound all day, honestly.

Fred, those are the identical results to what I got when I first go the Q210 but I have managed to get mine down to 48C max after undervolt, but me thinks it has been +48C every now and again.

 

Your braver than me taking your Q210 to bits already, is it all working ok?

John.

 

Yes, in fact it even better now

Planning on buying the vx nano for it

 

I have a tiny little microsoft notebook optical mouse on mine, and it great!, I hate touchpads!

 

48c thats an amazing temp.

on the samsung software install cd there are a couple of patches for vista, do you need to install them?

 

I havn't, in fact I havn't placed either of the CD in the tray becase icba.

48C running Orthos, ~38C surfing, 35C right now lol.
I laugh at my friend who has baiscally the same processor but in a desktop and it gets a lot hotter But the he runs CoD4 maxed and I cry haha j/k

 

heres the results after undervolting



better than before but no big jump


ps; according to rmclock and vista i should get 5 hours and 39 mins i wonder how true that is

 

Nice temps. What are your original and current 6x and 9x voltages as reported by RMclock?

I would estimate a real run time of around 4.5 hours of light usage. There are invariably bursts of higher power usage which reduce the overall run time.

Also, go into the power options and change the low power warning to 5% and the critical power warning to 1% (if it will go that low).

John

 

I'm pleased to say that Samsung found a fault and promptly replaced the laptop, it arrived today so it only took a week or so to replace!

It seems that Samsung have a speedy RMA service.

Unfortunately there was no log as to what the fault was, or what caused it. Anyone know if I can find out?

 

Did you get any RMA nr ??
Call Samsung support and ask what they have done.
I bet they can help you if you give them your RMA nr or serial nr on your laptop.

 

I will try with the RMA number, it seems that they haven't just fixed the laptop, but sent a brand new one out.

 

Sweet
I hope it all goes well

 

I think they normally make a replacement if there's a fault within the first month. You must have just got in that time slot.

Perhaps they don't know what is wrong, but agree that it doesn't work, so send out the replacement and then figure out what is wrong at their leisure.

Anyway, it's good to read of an RMA process that has gone smoothly, since there have been reports of difficulties (particularly where SoS is involved).

John

 

Well Dabs do say that manufacturer returns can take 4-6 weeks to complete, so I was prepared to wait that long for any replies.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to return home after college and find a standard Dabs packed box in the front. It was definately alot quicker than I expected.

 

If anyone is still looking for a case which will fit:
Targus case from eBuyer

I'm not entirely sold on the black and bright orange look, but it fits perfectly.

 

even that has smaller dimensions than the laptop. but if it fits do you think most of the other 13.3 sleeves will fit the q310

 

The neoprene sleeves can stretch a little.

I'm waiting for one of these[URL="http://morgancomputers.co.uk/Shop/detail.asp?ProductID=4986&CategoryID=&SubCategoryid='] 14.1' Belkin sleeves[/URL] to arrive from Morgan. It's for my Dell E6400 but I will report the dimensions. It should hold the Q310 with room to spare.

John

 

For those wondering;

Thank youfor contacting Samsung regarding your Q310 and 64 bit drivers.

Samsung only supply and support 32 bit versions of Windows with our notebooks. Samsung do not supply or support 64 bit operating systems and as a result do not produce 64 bit drivers and currently have no concrete plans to do so in the future although this may change.

 

Aw, thats a shame, I hope they do at some point.
I do want to try out 64-bit Windows somewhen on my lappy.

 

Hi
I finally got my Q310. John Lewis, Bluewater finally reduced the price to match Kingston and Brent Cross (£699 down from £799) after much kerfuffle.
I have been using it for just a few hours and I think that it is absolutely fantastic. Everything feels fast and responsive and the keyboard is a joy to use (I am using it right now).
It certainly does attract fingerprints though - but nothing too serious.