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

Wondering if I should return this laptop and get the Alienware M17x equipped exactly as my Samsung Gamer 7, but with the 7970m for $250 more. The only other real addition would the Alien FX lighting. And the Alienware warranty would cost twice as much as well (just over $150 more if I added the warranty). So $250 more without advanced warranty or $400 more with it. Or keep the Sammy? Hmm...

 

The last I heard... August or September. Any further it becomes vaporware.

 

If you do that this is what you will lose.

The alienware m17x has a bad key rollover keyboard. No known option to fix or upgrade it.
The m17x cannot be configured with a 120hz display if you go the AMD path, get ready to shell out for the gtx680M plus extra for the 120hz display.
If you have no problem with those 2 issues and the money and time loss then the alienware is good, but if you are sticking with a 60hz display why not just go all the way to the m18x

This is why people are fustrated because the samsung is just 1 component away from putting all the goods together in one laptop. It just needs a 7970M or 680M

 

Where id you hear this?

 

I would also love to see where you saw that information.

 

Yeah, think I'll stick with the Samsung. I've read a lot about the AW screen being highly reflective, so that's another factor with my desk being right next to a huge window. I'm happy with the 675m. It runs great. I just hope it stays relevant for a good while.

 

One thing I forgot to ask - Is anyone's left click button below the trackpad looser than the right? Mine makes a noticeable tapping noise before I fully press it in. A minor annoyance more than anything. The only other thing that bugs me is that my spacebar came out of the box with a little nick on the bottom side. Sorta like a little cut. I guess I'm just fully overlooking this thing considering the fact I've never spent even half this much on a computer before, lol.

 

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..

BUMP for help! Thanks in Advance!

 

Sorry I didn't see the first time you asked. I don't believe the WIDI works on the Samsung. I read a customer review on Amazon concerning this. They bought a Belkin receiver with their Samsung thinking it would work. It didn't as Samsung didn't put support for it. As WIDI uses the CPU's integrated gpu not the dedicated GPU so we are SOL on WIDI. Unless they release Optimus for our laptop. (Personally I don't like Optimus, had too much bad luck with it not wanting to switch gpus to the dedicated one. That and our laptop is really a dedicated gaming laptop. Yeah it would be nice to get good battery life, by being able to switch to the IGPU but most of us knew we'd be trading that for performance.) This laptop does better all around than my old I5-2500K desktop did. (The I5-2500K outbeat my Older laptops I7-2630QM by a decent margin, though I couldn't give you the scores now as I don't have that desktop or laptop anymore.) So yeah with no IGPU support we lost our WIDI capability. While WIDI may be a nice feature. I think it isn't mainstream enough yet to be of importance. Once TV"s have a WIDI receiver built in then I may consider a laptop with WIDI. That's a IMO, but to buy any laptop that has WIDI then have to buy a receiver for around $100 more is just silly IMO. When You can get a 15 foot or longer HDMI cable for far less. And the cable can be used with anything HDMI, far more devices than WIDI. WIDI would/ and will be a great feature once it's built into any device (Imagine how it would feel to bring home that new 2160p internet streamer and only have to plug the power cord in. Turn your TV on and tell it to find new WIDI devices, maybe type in a short code kind of like Bluetooth and away you go! Set up your wireless-z internet and you have a completely hidden entertainment center save the standard 120" 3-d holoprojector which is projecting from the celing) Mostly/Pretty much all theoretical tech right but hopefully you get what I'm saying. But for now WIDI is young. For now though you may need to either return your WIDI receiver or, keep it for if you get a different laptop with WIDI or Nvidia and Samsung releases a driver for optimus or maybe someone creates a hack. (Honestly keep it, never know when you could use it down the road and your already have it. Return it only if you really need the cash and it's within your return period of course.) Sorry my post was so long I tend to get sidetracked and such. Hope it helped though.

 

Hi all,

Think i wrote on another older thread which...may not get much replies..

Sorry for the odd/noob question, i've been searching around in Singapore site for the Samsung Series 7 Gamer Laptop, but can't seem to find it online!
Any idea where i can get it?


Recently (in May 2012 actually) ordered an Alienware x51 from Dell and after struggling (and having the wireless card replaced twice), it still failed me. Connectivity is unstable and disconnects often. The HDD and keyboard (Tact X) is problematic as well (BSOD frequents too). Dell has finally agreed to refund me(some struggles in it as i need to pay $60 for shipping and handling despite them giving me a "non-working machine".
And since i had the Alienware since May, i threw all the boxes away. Now i need to pack it either in its original boxing or equivalent, for the return. ugh.

ANYWAY, after much digressing, was hoping to get another "gaming machine" after i get my refund from Dell!

Was looking at either this (Samsung Series 7 Gamer) or the new Macbook Pro!
imac kinda catches my eye too...

But, till i get some hands-on on this Gamer laptop before i decide!

Any advice?

 

^what were you looking for anyways? as far as hands-on?

i personally like my laptop alot. i mean the laptop before was a vaio ns-xx which was PURELY for browsing web, music, daily stuff. sometimes i would play LoL on it, and wow did it SUCK. lowest of settings still managed to get me 17fps during gaming LOLL. this laptop rocks in all areas. boot time is seriously under 15 secs. screen is gorgeous (120hz). keyboard is comfortable as hell. and theres the much needed eye-candy. love the "glass" feature for the speakers/touch functions. i wish i could have the option to have the keyboard light to be all white at ALL times but thats just not possible "i think". so during all my gaming i just turn off the keyboard lighting. feel like it should help with running just a TADD bit cooler if any.

 

haha dont overthink it. its normal. mines are a little unsatisfying too. nothing that concerns me though. still a solid click. if the click was a little "soft-edged" THEN i would not being a little iffy. but your problem doesnt seem concerning. lets just worry about new drivers coming out for the 675's and WHEN itll be coming out.

 

Is there a way to shut off the red strobing lights for sound in gamer mode?

 

No.. I've tuned it out at this point, but I still wish I could control it on principle.

 

So far this laptop is a mix between good and bad. Looks like I can get the about the same amount of performance on balanced mode as gamer mode. I can't get good results turning the screen to 120hz and watch movies,tv etc. The picture is slightly pixulated and can see fine black lines.

 

thx for the info..

disappointing, but this is not one of the feature i really need..
but if it is there, i could use it since i got the netgear for free when i purchased asus 1 year ago..

i think the laptop do have WiDi support..
but not the Intel WiDi, but is the Samsung SmartTV feature..

 

None of this sounds like typical behavior of this unit. Possibly some type of defect, hard to say.

 

I heard that ivy bridge has a function to where you are able to watch movies at 60Hz and not just 24hz. Make sure you go to windows update and manually check for updates. Also check for updates using the easy software manager or on their website.

 

i cant say i have had the SAME experience as you, but i have had grid like effects pop-up during d3 running it at 120hz, i thought it was due to my gpu drivers not being cleaned thoroughly before another driver install, but since youre getting it too, im guessing it could be the 120hz..cant say the same about the pixelation and fine black lines. call samsung, im getting my unit fixed as we speak because of some problematic issue (screen would not turn on without power source). i suggest you do the same. protect your 1800 investment.

about the 120hz and grid-like effects, mines not as harsh as yours it seems. im going to wait and see what the results of my laptop is when it gets back. going to do record every minute of it with me so i can try to catch ANY issues that are not normal. They have an option where you can upload a video of the problem and thats exactly what im going to do.

 

What is it you're getting fixed? Just curious

I keep my display on 60hz, because the display is just too dang bright for me when I switch to 120hz and if I lower the brightness, it automatically switches to 60hz. And to be honest, I didn't really notice much of a difference between the two in the short time I played some World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3. Then again, I didn't spend a ton of time trying to look for a difference either.

 

Good to hear, thanks for the reassurance, lol

 

whenever i have my power source UNPLUGGED the screen shuts off. esc button, enter, spacebar etc. nothing works. so i called samsung that day because i was very frustrated with the laptop being very new and all..within 30 minutes of talking to a samsung rep. they took care of everything for me as far as shipping labels and everything was sent out without a penny charged on my side. i should be getting the laptop sometime next week. overall im very happy with samsungs customer service. they make you feel like they actually care about YOU and not just themselves.

no problem.

 

Glad to hear how well they handled your situation at no cost. Certainly reassuring as I've never had to deal with them before and Dell and Sager horror stories I'd read during my research for my laptop was also an influential factor in my decision.

I know if my screen is on 120hz and I turn the brightness down about 3 or 4 clicks from full, the screen turns black and nothing turns it back besides raising the brightness. Maybe when you unplugged it, the brightness turned down automatically for power saving, resulting in the screen turning off? That is, if you had the display set at 120hz when unplugging it... Just a thought, I haven't actually tried this.

 

Can someone give me a link to where I can buy the Samsung laptop with a 7970m? I can only find the GTX 675m (UK). Are they 3D compatible too?

Edit - right, looked at some pages and I guess i'll have to wait

 

well the thing is, it started happening out of nowhere. the first couple days i had the laptop, everything was smooth. everything worked how they should. but one day after waking up and hoping onto the laptop, i realized the laptop wasnt "turning on" even though i pressed the power button AND i can hear the computer working. i forgot i unplug the power source whenever i shut off my laptop. so i plugged it back in, and the monitor came on again. didnt seem right with me, so i restarted the computer with the power source on and it worked just as it should..after turning it on, i took the power source out (thinking that was the problem) and it was..everytime i unplug the power source, my monitor would shut off. mind you that the minute i got the laptop i started running it at 120hz and this had NEVER happened. so yeah i dont think it was on my part, more on the laptop.

but yes as far as samsungs customer service, it was no-hassle, "get 'er done" type of business. very satisfied with the outcome.

 

UPDATE: alright so its been about a week and after talking to samsung about my repair status, it seems that they KEEP updating the status from "proceed with repair" to "proof of bill of sales". Its a little frustrating since my laptop is fairly new STILL, and CLEARLY samsung reps. understand that my unit is under warranty. they have updated mt status several times now and hopefully after todays update (the 5th time) they will go forth with the repair by tomorrow. *sigh, i really wanted my laptop back by this week..doesnt seem like thats going to happen.

 

mac book pros are not gaming machines in the same class as this laptop. Also if you are open to desktops just stick with desktops they are way better for gaming in every way. The only thing they lack is portability. imac is also an odd choice, your choices seem to be all over the place. An imac takes all the disadvantages of a laptop and crams them into a desktop, unless you are obsessed with all in one functionality it makes absolutely no sense to buy an all in one.

 

That sucks, but keep us updated. I'm interested in seeing what the entire turnaround time ends up being.

 

Hmm…I wonder if Samsung ever released this laptop in other colors besides black.


Also, has anyone performed a clean install? If so, what order did you install the drivers and software?

 

I forget the order but now if I try to install "Easy Settings" or " Mode shift" the laptop will lock right up and forced to shut it down hard. Then I have to restart in safe mode to uninstall so I can't even use these programs now.

 

UPDATE: Just a heads up to those still considering this laptop. Amazon.com has it for $1,772.51 right now. And I'd highly recommend getting the SquareTrade warranty. Just for comparison, I went with the 2 year accidental coverage for $150.00. If I would've gotten an Alienware m17x and went with Dell's equivalent coverage, it would've cost $318. Can't say I've had experience with either, but the better value with SquareTrade and the simplicity factor as they show on their Amazon page sold me. So overall, I saved around $450 to 500 dollars for the same specs and equivalent warranty. Pretty happy about that

 

as far as i know, Samsung Korea sells the yellow one in either 6970m/gtx675m version. no idea on the red though.

i think as far as clean install, something to do with the windows authentication key underneath the laptop. i havent done this yet so i will have to wait and see.

 

So just spoke with samsung repair rep. (intelisol) and was told that my unit is now with a technician and is being evaluated. if a problem is due to hardware, they said they will have to order parts etc. Im really hoping that nothing "hardware" is a problem..that would be a huge disappointment since this was a new laptop. i am going to call back in a couple days to get a better idea of how long this will take. so far, theyre saying they received it on 8/2.

 

Hi everybody,

I'm giving this laptop some serious consideration. I'm checking out different places to purchase. One criteria I have to have is a good 3 yr warranty (stipulation set by work). I was considering Amazon but SquareTrade seems to be the only option and I don't think that will meet work criteria.

CDW has a warranty that works but I noticed this on the spec sheet: Hard drives are (2) 1TB HDD. Now I don't think 1TB drives come faster than 5400 RPM. Per Samsung's specs it should be (2) 750GB 7200 RPM drives. And I didn't think there were multiple US models of this machine. Best Buy also has the 1TB drives listed. That's a showstopper for me.

Anybody have any knowledge about the 1TB drives? Hopefully it's a misprint in the specs. I've asked my CDW rep to check into it.

UPDATE: just heard back from my CDW rep - he confirmed it's (2) 750GB drives.

And there was much rejoicing.

Thanks!

 

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't the SquareTrade warranties meet the criteria? There's a variety of warranties you can get from SquareTrade on Amazon, including the typical 3 year warranty with standard coverage. Or you can go with the advanced 3 year warranty plus accidental coverage for anything from spills to dropping the laptop. You just have to make sure you select the one for $1500 - 2000 for the product price.

 

From what I've read (and I'm still looking into it some more) the SquareTrade warranties cover repairs up to the purchase price. After that they consider the warranty fulfilled.

As I understand it this is how a (hypothetical, bad) scenario could play out: Laptop costs $2K. Something bad happens and they need to repair/replace $1,100 worth of parts. Same bad thing happens and same parts need replaced. SquareTrade won't repair/replace. At that point they send you the difference in $ based on your purchase price and what they've covered.

I might be wrong about that but that's my impression so far. For our corporate criteria that doesn't cut it. We need full 3 yr support. If the unit is a lemon, or it gets crunched in an airline overhead bin, or whatever I need it to be able to be replaced. This is it. It's the machine I'll be using for the next few years.

I'm planning on using other devices for most travel (I really don't want to carry this thing around). But I can foresee times when I'll need to travel with it. One of it's primary uses will be to run virtualized server products. If I have to run a training session or do demos I can carry this and effectively bring at least 4-6 virtual servers along with me.

Previous times I've done these trips I've just brought 2 laptops. Which is a pain, especially in these days of travel security headaches. In that scenario lugging around 15lbs of laptop & power brick looks attractive!

But with that possibility I need more of a service oriented warranty. And that's where I don't think SquareTrade will work. Which is a shame because I'd love to hit Amazon right now, order it with $4 overnight shipping and be playing with it tomorrow. Instead it'll take a week or two and tax will be involved.

 

Be aware that hardware raid is not possible. It's using hm76 chipset not hm77 which does support it.

 

would it be possible to remove one of the 750 drives from the laptop and put in a solid state drive? since u cant raid the beatches and i dont need more than 300gb really this would suit me

 

Of course.

 

Thanks for the tip. Not a concern though. Hardware raid would be interesting but I'm fine without it. Any data I care about I keep on my fileserver and in various cloud storage services. And external drives. Would be nice for function in the face of drive failure though. But I've made it this far... (famous last words).

 

Most gamers use raid 0 (striping across drives) for speed. I just wanted you to know it would be gimped. A single Sata III SSD cures that anyway.

 

Just got this laptop in the morning! Loving it...The only thing that's annoying me is the screen saver in game mode...Can't turn it off. Does anybody know how to shut it off??

 

I did it, click the blue eye thing that pops up in that mode or run mode software directly. You can set it to nothing. I might be mistaken which software controls it not in front of mine right now.

 

Doh! /facepalm

I didn't even pay attention to the RAID level. LOL I just saw RAID and defaulted to redundancy.

Great point though. But yeah, I see moving the primary to SSD eventually. And the upgrade from my current gear will likely be so overwhelming that I doubt I'll notice.

 

After the whole fiasco with AMD and enduro, I am starting to think that samsung has not put the 7970M in because they cant get enduro working and need to redesign the motherboard, or arent going to do it at all / are waiting for AMD to fix something.

 

Yeah, just click the little orb in the upper right hand corner while in Game Mode, click on Visual Effects and uncheck the screensaver box. What is weird though, is that if you decide to use the screensaver and set the time to anything other than 1 minute - if the laptop goes to sleep and you turn it back on, the timer will always reset to 1 minute. This is not an issue in the other modes, just Game Mode, so I leave the screensaver off.

 

I haven't upgraded mine yet. The 8GB ExpressCache helps, definitely better than the spinner alone. Doesn't hold a candle to a real SSD though. I have a 160GB in my old n61jq but its just not big enough to justify moving it over. Going to go 512GB when I pull the trigger. I want my OS and all my game installs on it.

 

Thanx guys!! I can't believe I missed that when I was playing around with the software yesterday lol.

 

I second you on that. I think it can get quite annoying to install software and games to a secondary drive when they always default to the c drive. Right now with all the software, music, and games I have I would need 309GB that's if I just went with what I have now. I want a little future in it so a 512GB would be great. I'm just waiting for the prices to drop to pull the trigger. Call me picky, tell me I could just move my music and stuff to the secondary drive. But it's not the same. I personally can tell the difference between games and software loading on an ssd and a spindle drive. For now though the 7200 rpm drives with the 8GB cache system works and does do better than just straight spindle drives. I'm just gonna wait for a little while longer to get a 512+GB SSD. And yes, I have owned SSD's I had a 64GB and a 128GB Samsung SSD, and have a 64GB Microcenter SSD right now, though they never got much use because I got annoyed at the low capacity.They were very nice, I just want to have a high capacity ssd.

 

A question: does anyone know what buttons to push at startup for:

BIOS:
Boot Menu:

Part of the reason I ask is I plan on cloning my main drive to the secondary drive in case of hard drive failure. (No raid, just using backup software, Acronis TrueImage)

I wanted to do the clone than Boot menu to the secondary drive to make sure it boots ok.

Thanks for the help.