Samsung Series 7 Gamer NP700G7C with AMD Radeon HD 7970M/Geforce GTX 675M

People often argue about this but I will take 90hz over 60hz with vsync anyday. Smoothness is worth more than screen tearing. You want the most information feeding to your eye at any split second. Of course it matters what your point is, some people just want the best looking game and for them an IPS panel with ultra high resolution and everything maxed might be better. But if your goal is to get the smoothest experience and the best aim then 120hz is where it is at. With this laptop you can switch to whatever though and try it out for yourself.

 

Ahh, yeah different use cases and points of view. I don't play online competitive fps, I tend towards story driven single-player experiences and 60fps (or lower if that's what it takes to have a stable image) is fine for that.

I could see wanting fps at all costs for competition. At that rate crank down the details, those don't matter much either.

 

Does anyone know how to disable the screensaver. Everytime I use the modeshift switch it messes up my screensavers. I don't want a screensaver on either the Balanced or the Gaming mode. I have tried through the Easy Settings and Windows screensaver setting to disable them. And everytime I switch back and forth it gives me the screensaver again. Set for 1 min as well. I can't seem to change any settings. (If it was like 10 mins or something it wouldn't bother me so much.) It won't even save the time limit properly. Sorry if this was asked before but there is close to 100 pages and the first like 15 of them are talking nothing but about the 7980m or whatever gpu so i lost my patience in looking and decided to just ask. If no one has asked and someone knows how to fix this please share. Thanks.

 

how do you guys set it to 120hz?

whenever i set it to 120hz, the screen goes black..
need to "escape" then it turns back to 60hz..

 

It's your brightness settings. Once they go below a certain level at 120hz the screen goes black. Saying that though, I'm running 304.75 or something and it no longer happens for me.

 

wow it worked!
304.75 = nvidia driver? any idea how to update that?
as i cant update from nvidia site..

edit: 120hz make all my games run at low fps(10-20fps)

 

Sorry it took so long to respond, I just wanted to make sure the drivers would work. You need to look for Beta Drivers. Verde 304.79 is out and works on our laptop. I've been testing it for almost a week and not had any bad side effects.

Link: NVIDIA DRIVERS 304.79BETA

Hope that link will take you right to the download page.

Yes running at 120hz will kill your fps as the gpu has to pretty much redraw your screen 2x as fast. For gaming 60hz is actually good enough. Just use vsync as much as you can. That will help stabilize the display.

Hope that helps.

 

Vsync at 120 does not kill your GPU. The app will only draw as fast as it can. VSync only causes it to draw on display refresh to stop tearing when the app attempts to draw outside of this. It might reduce your frame rate if its deferring to draw on refresh.

 

I was talking about 120HZ, if the game supports it if you used both vsync and 120HZ it will make your gpu run harder. It is vertical syncing everything then having to redraw everything at 120hz, which is 2x faster than 60hz. That all requires greater gpu power. Not to say the 675M isn't powerful, just simply saying that you may need to lower the details if you want both. Ok, I've realized how good vsync is and have switched to using it in any game that requires it. But I have yet to tell the difference between 60hz and 120hz, so I run ALL games at 60hz. If you can tell the difference good for you. Vsync is good, 120hz, is really not necessary unless your using 3D. 120hz is how fast the display can redraw a picture. 60hz is just fine for gaming, the biggest reason for 120hz is for 3D since the display has to do 2 images, one for each eye. To create the 3D image. Since the Samsung doesn't have a 3D emitter or 3D glasses there really isn't any reason to run 120hz. Not to say you can't if you want to. You just don't NEED to run it at 120hz unless your doing 3D movie watching or such.

 

It seems hd 7970m isnt coming :S

Quick question. Is there a raid on this laptop? If not, can be done?

 

Ok, I will concur that with VSync on the video card has a chance to work harder if it can maintain much higher than 60FPS when the monitor is set to 120Hz, it will drop back to 60 your game can't keep 120FPS, since it is in fact itself a multiple of 120Hz. If your game is running something like 100-140FPS without VSYNC, it might be jarring to see jumps between 120FPS and 60FPS with VSYNC on.

Tearing only happens if your frame rate exceeds the monitor refresh rate. In this case the display can't render the frame fully before the video card sends another one down the pipe and you end up seeing half rendered frames. I personally hate this artifacting, I tend to be sensitive to it and it bothers the hell out of me. Since I don't play highly competitive shooters I tend to crank details as far as I can on games. Usually these newer games struggle to reach 60FPS under these conditions even on good graphics hardware, but it can happen in certain low-stress areas.

I would imagine 120Hz refresh rate, or 120FPS, would be too high for many modern games cranked to ultra detail to achieve. For some games, VSync isn't necessary at 120Hz monitor refresh. In this case the GPU would in fact work harder, since you're allowing it to render more frames without being locked to a multiple of the refresh rate. In the case that the GPU hasn't sent a new frame yet I would imagine the current frame buffer memory contents would just be refreshed without and outright re-render of the scene and all the math that is involved in that.

So at the end of the day, if your GPU CANNOT render the game higher than your monitor's refresh rate, you are actually detrimentally affecting your frame rate with vsync since it will always lock down to the next multiple and cause large jump gaps in FPS at the locked refresh rate mutiples. In the case of 120Hz=120->60->40->30->20->15.. lower is useless info or 60Hz=60->30->20->15. Since tearing only happens when the game exceeds the refresh (in most cases) 120Hz should negate the need for vsync for modern games set at high resolutions and high detail levels, but your GPU will in fact work a little harder as it renders new frames as fast as it can instead of being locked to the max refresh or a multiple of it.

I suppose in the end, if you see tearing and don't like it, turn it on. If you don't, don't.


EDIT!!: I just found this AWESOME HardOCP article on nVidia's Adaptive VSync in the 3XX drivers. I wish I would have found this before I wrote all that crap..

HARDOCP - NVIDIA Adaptive VSync - NVIDIA Adaptive VSync Technology Review

 

Has anyone got the display/videocard working in 3D mode? Anyone know of a link to anywhere else where they talk about this? I'd like to try and get the display working in 3D (even if I have to buy the glasses and whatever else is required), or at least be able to plug it into a 3D display. Movies and games in 3D is something I'd like to get working. Thanks..

 

I am not really sure what you are getting at here. 120hz is twice as much work for the GPU, so what 60 hz is twice as much as 30 hz, most gamers arent going to say oh darn I dont want to run past 30 hz because I might make my GPU sweat.

I and thousands of other gamers consider 120 hz without any 3d to be the biggest draw to gaming laptops. In fact this laptop by default does not even support 3d so why does it have a 120hz screen if not to draw 120 fps?

Being able to tell or feel the difference between 120hz and 60hz is a skill, just like you might not be able to tell the difference between 30hz and 60hz, or you might not be able to detect small movements or color differences on players in games till you build the skill. The only way to learn the skill is to do it. But trust me a decade ago we had the same arguements about 30fps to 60 fps and pretty sure now no one thinks 30fps is acceptable unless we are talking about console gamers.

 

Does anyone know what the hidden partition "System" is on this Notebook? I'm trying to get the original Samsung Windows 7 install on an SSD but without this hidden partition it doesnt seem to work and with it I don't know if I have the right alignment for my SSD. Thanks in advance.

 

Just bought this beast guys! will be posting here from now on in case of any issues.

 

guys,

may you clear my mind about RAID and optimus please??

 

Hardware raid not possible, HM76. Optimus not an issue ad its not used that I can tell.

 

anybody know their average CPU/GPU temperature on idle on this laptop? and is it me or does the left fan seem more like it's blowing out heat than the right fan?

 

Is the port on the left side where the power adapter connects sturdy?

 

Finally got mine, and what I'm seeing from RealTemp is 41 CPU / 39 GPU in gaming mode, 120hz, browsing and using VLC.

 

Has anyone installed the Verde R304, or the 304.79 modded drivers from Laptopvideotogo? Just wondering if anyone has had issues, or seen any benefits from upgrading.

 

I use mine on my lap on the couch with a cushioned lapdesk all the time. When I put it on the coffee table for "storage" I always disconnect it, it seems like it's only a few too many rough pulls and "caught my foot on the cable" away from a bad scene. It doesn't seem exceptionally rugged.

Maybe someone has, I'm not going to bother until another official nvidia driver drops that supports the 675M.

 

It is possible that custom drivers will get picked up by anticheat so I stay away from them.

 

mine is at 47 cpu/ 43 gpu on gaming.. just internet browsing and watching itunes. Anyone else?

 

I was at 40gpu and 47 cpu

 

Hello,i ask this question a week ago, can anybody help me?
How do you remove the SD card adapter? i have tryed to push it but with no results, sorry for bad English, i wrote from Sweden.
Also wath calibration do you have on the screen? do you use the Nvidia coulor or the other one?
Lights..contrast..gamma...digital vibrance..and nyans...

 

Averages is 42C on CPU and 37GPU Idle. The left fan does spin more and is hotter especially when gaming and overall as that is the fan that cools the gpu. Dual fan outputs such as this setup isn't totally new to me personally as I've owned the Asus G Series, Specically the G73jh, and G53SW and they used this setup. (Though it was reversed. GPU fan on the right and cpu fan on the left.) This cooling system is really good and samsung did a better job on cooling than any of my Asus G's had on them. I could never overclock the Asus GPU's at all. But the Samsung one I have overclocked 100MHZ on each the core and memory. (I could safely max overclock the core and memory to 810 and 1950 but It would artifact. Max temps on that clock w/ default voltage was around 85C fully loaded.) Again it artifacted thus telling me most likely it needed a voltage mod, which I am not going to do. I'll be happy with my slight overclock. Heck the gpu is far batter than I had before. (Read sig), and better than the 460M gtx I had in my G53sw. Samsung seems to have done a better job on cooling than Asus did. I can't speak on the newer G series, but the older one's like the g73jh and g53sw this Samsung one bypasses and has surprised me to no end.

Edit: I would like to add I just overclock the gpu core to 750 and the memory to 1700 and ran Furmark at 1920x1080w/ 8xMSAA for a little over 5 minutes max temp hit 80C. I could really feel the air blowing out the left fan vent (facing the laptop screen) and a little more air going out the right fan vent.) So the cooling is awesome! MY old Gseries I would be scared to go past a minute test for fear of overheating. I personally felt 5 minutes was good enough for me as I probably won't ever fully load my gpu for that long consecutively.

 

So far my experience has been that I hit 82-84 under load at stock clocks. Maybe reapplying thermal compound would help, but I am loathe to take it apart when stock clocks seem to run games fine. Maybe later this year after a new volley of games come out I'll reconsider.

 

i have tried the 304.79 and in my opinion, it sucked. reverted back to stock drivers it came with. i didnt do a driver flush though..could have been another reason why it didnt perform as well, but even then i dont think its better than the stock.

also i tried BOTH betas that are out right now. .79 and i think its .69 or something.

 

also, when upgrading to a FULL ssd, which one would you guys recommend?

and after the ssd install, should i do a fresh install of windows? how would i do this? my samsung didnt come with a windows cd or anything.

also, does anyone else have a small green circular sticker on their box? i was watching some youtube unboxing, and couldnt really tell if others had it..becoming a little worried since i sent it to samsung already, dont want it coming back to me saying "we cannot fix this laptop due to unrecognized blablalblal"

 

I was considering between:
480GB SanDisk Extreme
512GB Crucial m4

 

Notebookcheck.net review here Review Samsung Series 7 Gamer 700G7C Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

I did a custom install and told it to uninstall previous drivers. What issues where you having as so far I have had no issues. The gpu even runs a little cooler. (by only about 5C at most, but hey it's cooler.) Your issues may have had to do with what you said. Didn't un-install the old drivers.

 

Personally Id go crucial M4, proven solid and reliable. Sandisk is Sandforce based, too many issues, too much waiting for sandforce to fix it. Hell they even have been lying about AES-256, it doesn't work.

I am seriously considering a Crucial M4 512GB for my new laptop, just cannot beat the reliability/price of those M4s right now.

 

Just bought this laptop.. stock GPU drivers, i'm hitting 90C running Kombuster from MSI which stresses the GPU and it's throttling me constantly after 2 minutes of run time.. Going from 620mhz down to 310mhz over and over to keep the temps stable.. Do I have a lemon? UGH, just my luck.. too bad because the LCD is perfect and I always stress over a bad LCD panel if I have to get an exchange. This kind of laptop doesn't strike me to have poor cooling to cause the gpu to hit 90C under load and start flaking out and throttle.

 

Does it ever go that high during gameplay? Mine was up to about 84 after a couple-few minutes. Never had a problem gaming though.

How hot is the room its in? That can make a difference.

 

Just got this laptop late last week and also new to the forums. Excellent laptop, but a bit quirky when in Game Mode in terms of altering the screen saver, mouse pointer, etc. Every time I wake it from sleep, the mouse pointer reverts back to the one that comes with the corresponding wallpaper and won't stay on the traditional Windows Aero pointer I set it to. Also, the screensaver time will always revert back to 1 minute after also waking it from sleep. If anyone knows a solution to those things, help would be greatly appreciated.

Also one question to all you owners - When you open up the little gaming orb at the top right for making quick changes in Game Mode, do you always get a script error? I get it everytime and it's very annoying, because it also pops in the transition effect when turning the knob to Game Mode. Anyone know how to eliminate this? Thanks in advance.

 

No, thats the strange part.. temps stay under 80c while gaming. I logged gpu speed and temps during a 20 minute gaming session and it never throttled or got nearly as hot as the Kombuster app got it. I also overclocked to 700mhz/1650mhz with no ill-effects.

Something weird going on.

 

It seems the whole roller-switch just talks to an app that changes your power plans on the laptop.. A really simple "trick" to make you think you're somehow making your laptop more powerful and more greener but it's just changing your backlighting, etc. and I doubt it's really making any significant internal changes. Seems like the 675m is always running no matter what you do - there's no Optimus on board as this machine is all about pure performance.

I plan on just disabling this feature when I do a fresh install of Win7 soon. I only see this taking up ram and cpu cycles more than helping.

 

Yeah, it doesn't really adjust much other than adjusting the screen's color. I've noticed when I roll the switch the color of the screen changes a little and is actually nicer for gaming. So I personally like using the "gaming mode" and use it all the time. I just went into settings and disabled the wallpaper changing and everything. Now the only changes that happens is the keyboard changes color and the speakers light up to sound (which I like, though the speaker lights won't work if you use a usb sound device like my logitech g36 headset) The only other thing that happens is some small little widget appears on the screen that you can move around. Other than that. I managed to solve my screensaver problem by moving the time to like 30 minutes. (It is an lcd screen after all, you only need screensavers for crts and plasmas to prevent burn in). My screen goes off before the screensaver kicks on. Oh, I did that setting from within the Easy Settings. I can't seem to turn the screensaver off so help me. (Unless I don't use the toggle switch thingy, which I do.) But I did manage a small workaround so I don't see a screensaver. I may have a few small gripes about the Samsung and some if not most of those gripes a few others would agree but it's not a deal breaker for me. I used to have an Asus G53SW that cost $1,300 and came with only a dvd burner and 6GB ram and a crappy Atheros Wifi card. After Upgrading the ram to 14GB, adding a blu-ray drive and putting in an Intel 6230-n bluetooth card plus all the work it took to get into it. I spent as much on that as I did on this samsung. I feel I got a better deal on this samsung than that laptop. I don't know how Asus's new one's are, I priced an Asus at similar specs to the Samsung one and it cost more, with a little less. (Slightly lower gpu, had an Atheros wifi card which I am staying away from.) So despite any and all gripes I have for this laptop. They are in no way a dealbreaker for me and I am very happy to have one. No it may not have the Ati card and it would have been cool to have that. But I am happy with what I have. The 675M GTX is still a powerhouse card and blows past my 5870M in my older Asus (G73jh) and that card was better than the 460M GTX on the Newer G53SW. Size wise on this laptop isn't too bad. I just bought a Everki Bag for it. I can link that if you want. Holds everything and anything. Will sorry I got a little off topic of the posting. I just got started on talking about my experience with things and just start rambling. I'll stop now. Later.

 

just realise that one of the feature is intel wireless display.. (got the adapter to tv)
but i cant find it.. is there any download needed to use that?

cant find the sticker though..

 

I solve the problem by my self, thx for all help : (

 

anyone want to do a DIY for upgrading to a SSD? getting my laptop (hopefully) next week so thinking of a SSD+ 1 750GB hdd. probably end up selling the other 750gb.

 

Nothing weird. Kombuster and furmark are abnormally heavy loads on the GPU. Its an extreme case at the moment.

 

Well i'm taking the Gamer 7 back to the store - I absolutely love the laptop, there's nothing wrong but for a little extra cash, I can just get a Sager P9170 with everything I could ever want, the 680m, has a BIOS with raid support, has user replaceable CPUs and GPUs, blu ray writer, etc. etc. lots of other cool things.. The trade off is a probably uglier, less flashy notebook with much crappier quality screen and bad sound system. Otherwise it's pure performance. .I hate ordering laptops because you have to wait and send it back and wait more if there's any problems with it.. But when it's only a few hundred more bucks for night and day GPU performance (675m vs 680m) I might as well just do the smart thing here with my money.

Aside from my decision, I think the Samsung Gamer 7 is a great piece of hardware inside and out and would easily recommended it to anybody who's not quite the type of person who "has to have the best" like myself

Good luck in the future with your current Gamer 7s.. they are fantastic machines! I'll switch back to the future Samsung Gamers if they can keep up with newer cards in the future for sure!

 

If you switch to a clevo / sager you will also be losing 120hz on the screen which is a big reason why the clevos really aren't for people who must have the best.
On top of that you will get a horrible keyboard so make sure you upgrade to the steel series keyboard. I am not really sure how good the steel series is but it has to be better than the one that comes on sagers, because I have tried that one in person and it fails in a ton of ways.

 

I don't think 120hz is a must have either way, i'll be hooked up to an external 120hz screen anyways when i'm at home.. on the go, the built in display will be more than sufficient. And definitely going for the Steelseries keyboard..

 

I don't even know why the title has 7970m in it anymore. It seems like this laptop won't even have the 7970m released for it.

Does anyone have good news? Or are we still stuck in the dark?

 

Good luck with the Sager. I considered them for my first laptop, but seeing that they had a 30 day dead pixel warranty option threw up a red flag for me and I'm a sucker for good screens, so I went with the Samsung.

And FYI to everyone considering this laptop, Amazon has dropped the price to $1745.

 

Yep it sucks, I keep clicking on this thread every day hoping for a miracle but it never happens.