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

That's definitely a great price for a fantastic machine. It's easily the best laptop I have ever owned. I'd get it before they run out/discontinue it.

And yes, the power mode dial on the top right allows you to switch the GPU off in Library and Eco modes (not sure about Balanced). Don't expect the battery life to be that great even in Eco mode, though. Web-surfing and word-processing still only gets me 1-2 hrs, though I have screen refresh at 120Hz and brightness up high.

 

Thanks. I have to stick with 120Hz for my eyes, so I'll be ratcheting up the brightness

 

It does not "turn the GPU OFF" it may turn it's speed down. The Intel IGP is hidden to the system so it can not use it. On mine, and you can confirm with yours, when you are in any mode it will only show in the device manager the GTX 675m not the Intel HD4000...............

Ditto here as well, I do though occasionally use battery so I keep that little app to have a keystroke combo to change refresh rates..........

 

Thanks for correcting me; I thought it was a switch graphics thing.

 

Yeah, 120Hz is like a completely different experience vs 60Hz. I didn't know this laptop had 120Hz, and when I found out about it, I thought "Best 1.9k€ I've ever spent" (although I only spent 700€ on it because my retailer lost my old laptop, so they gave me my money back )

 

Nice price but sorry t ohear you lost the old machine....................

 

It was a mid-range ASUS N61Jq that got outdated months after release. I'm GLAD they lost it!

 

Sounds like you made out on the deal..................................

 

Below is the pic proof of why I wouldn't want a HD 7870m...........

 

Why does this thread still have 7970m in the title. I have no confidence now that Samsung will be releasing the 7970m for this laptop...

 

Probably not. If the Yellow were released at the 1,600 price point even stripped down as it is the machine would sell like hot cakes. With the 7870m sales will only be lack luster at best.....................

Edit; Added 3DMark Vantage PPX enabled

 

I upgraded from an Asus N61jq as well. It was a great little machine but was getting long in the tooth. The 1366x768 native rez really kept it relevant gaming-wise for longer than the 5730 should have gone.

I let a friend borrow it that only had a mac mini to play DayZ, still going strong.

 

From that GPU, the GTX 675m is quite an upgrade. These screens must be quite an upgrade as well. I was at 1920x1200 but the 120Hz of these screens convinced me to finally give up my 16:10......................

 

Going over to Samsung support it seems they now list the NP700G7C-T01US. Drivers, except VGA, seem to be about the same as the S01US. Thing is for the S02US and T01US the drivers as listed there for Windows 7 not the Windows 8 that they seem to be released with..................

 

What drivers are you using to get those scores? Did you overclock?

Yeah, I have an external ASUS monitor because of its low res. Now with this Samsung, I gave it to my dad which is using it with my old desktop, a C2D 1.6GHz and a ATI HD 2400

 

I have a mild OC 700/1700. The drivers are the latest WHQL from nVidia 306.97

Drivers | GeForce

 

And the boost is quite nice! Can you compare the framerates between OC and non-OC on BF3? I would like to see if it's worth doing it

What software are you using? What temps are you getting?

 

Sorry no real games here...................

 

What games do you have then?

 

I only play, on rare occasions, Dirt 2. My other SIM is Real Flight 6 but it is not installed here yet. I purchase gaming systems as they tend to be quite a bit beefier and usually more powerful with better cooling than other systems........................

 

I have been searching but to no avail. In the trouble shooting section, 4.7, of our laptop service manual there is an app shown. This is Samsung Advanced Fan Control, SAFC v1.1a. Anyone have this on their system etc or know where to obtain it?

 

I was wondering if anyone has had an issue with the lights that flash around the speakers not working. I know, I know, a lot of people don't really like them, but I've gotten used to them. Only when I switched to gamer mode tonight to mess around I noticed they weren't working. I made sure everything was set right. I know the lights won't work if I am not using the onboard sound. It was an I even tried turning the volume way up to no avail. I just used the recovery partition to restore the laptop to factory state and uninstalled a few things, but nothing Samsung related. So I don't know what happened. Was wondering if anyone else had this issue. I figure maybe a wire came loose, but I don't wish to take apart the laptop since it's still under warranty. It's a small thing to send it away so I won't, but just didn't know if it was me or if other users have had this issue and never cared to report it. Everything else seems to be running fine.

 

Mine are fine so far...............

Edit; if memory serves me when I did a fresh install, before any samsung drivers, the speaker lights worked..................

 

Yeah... before a fresh install they were working. I didn't try them once i did a fresh install until last night when I tried them out. Oh well. Not much I can/ am welling to do. I'm not gonna send it away just because of the lights not working. It's not a required function for me. My OCD is screaming because it isn't working and I like everything to work. But I also don't want to go without my laptop for x amount of time. Specially if it's just because 2 lights that aren't really worth much aren't working. So yeah, I'll live with it. But if something else were to fail that I need I'll be contacting Samsung.

 

A heads up, bios updated to P07AAB from P06AAB..................

 

Any changelog? Worthy fixes of a flash?

 

Wish there were changelogs. So far haven't seen any changes....................

 

Many times its just to support new hardware, ram incompatibility fixes, CPUs (that would be odd its not upgradable).. it would be nice to see a changelog.

Also the video BIOS is merged with the system BIOS, that might have gotten updated. Shrug.

EDIT: Where is it? I do not see reference to it on the official support page downloads for the Gamer 7?

 

Hi guys,
I've read almost every post in this thread and i'm about to order this laptop.
One thing that i'm very curious about and makes me doubt it a little are are heat and noise. I understand it's noticable when gaming but could someone please tell me how the laptop operates when doing normal stuff like surfing the web, listen to music and watching a hd-movie. I assume that "balanced" mode is suitable for those kind of activities?
Are the fans getting loud aswell and what about the heat?
I like to play games now and then but will mostly use the samsung gamer for everyday stuff and watch alot of movies on that fanastic screen.
Cheers

 

pretty quiet when just using normally. To cool the hardware when pushed it has to make some noise to move the air. It is quieter overall than my old P79......

Samsung does not put the bios on the support page. You have to use their bios update executable....................

 

Actually the bios is on the support page under "firmware" its just old.

 

Actually the file under firmware is a software updater that gets the new firmware off the net...............

Support - Notebooks NP700G7C | Samsung Laptops

 

Ahhh nice. Its been so long since I downloaded it I must have forgot! Thx!

 

Anyone put win 8 final on this thing yet? I'm guessing maybe some of the custom software may have issues.

 

Cool. So, does anyone know what happens when doing a "complete system restore" in samsung recovery solution (pressing f4 during boot)? It says it restores the computer to it's factory state, deleting all files in the process. Even if no "complete backup" has been made, you have the option to restore to "computer initial status" by default. Is that the exact state as the computer was delivered in when booting for the very first time?
I really want to have that option and planning to make a disk image with i.e CloneZilla aswell just to be on the safe side.

2. For you guys who replaced one HDD with a SSD drive, did you transfer/rebuild the recovery partition on the new SSD? A clean windows install on the new drive seems better than migrating/cloning but i'm not sure.

 

I just cloned, things seem to be running fast. Benchmarks have the drive doing 500MB/s like it should. Experience score for the drive is 7.9

 

I tried windows 7 restore to no avail. So a new install was done. Fast as all heck now too...................

 

Thinking of getting w8 for $18..
But running the check shows many samsung driver to be incompatible..

 

I went ahead and took the risk since I have a full backup with acronis. Seems to be working fine except for easy settings overlay, the muting and volume still seems to work fine though. I'll continue to fart around and see if I can find anything broken I care about.

Edit: I have to say I'm digging win 8. Used the sw update zip provided by Samsung and got some ancillary things working by installing some updated software packages. (red mute led on touch control finally). The overlay that comes with win8 for mute and vol up/dn works. At least it looks like it's stock it is styled very much like the rest of the ui elements and is very understated in the top right area if the display. I'm already sold on it. It's fast. You only have to spend as much time in metro as you feel like. Have seen nothing broken yet. I was skeptical but after tinkering with it for a bit now I have no interest in going back to 7.

 

I find that interesting as I've read that Windows 8 had compatibility issues with a lot of software and games. I was thinking of Installing Windows 8 to my desktop first, since it has less in the way of "specialty" drivers. But I do a lot of gaming and use a lot of software, some that took some tweaking to get running on Windows 7, now I fear Windows 8 may not run it at all. How has your experience been?

 

So far no games have had issues. I couldn't get 3dmark11 to run, but I don't care about that much. I'll test a bunch of them tonight and report back. So far metro 2033, thief deadly shadows, scratches, Kotor (the old one) have worked.

 

What all works on this laptop with Windows 8? Thinking about redeeming my $14.99 code, but according to the upgrade adviser, USB 3.0 isn't compatible nor my wireless/bluetooth? The easy settings software and such is fine I can wait for Samsung to get all the software to work with windows 8, my biggest thing is that it won't get in the way of usage of the machine. I don't want to upgrade if I can't use my wifi or usb 3.0. I was also thinking of doing a fresh install and if that's the case, what drivers do I use? As it seems Samsung doesn't have the Windows 8 drivers up yet. Despite the fact that apparently you can get the laptop with Windows 7 or 8 on amazon.

 

There are drivers for all of it. I have zero non-working devices after upgrading. Just make sure to download the SW_Update app they provide for windows 8 before upgrading to instalk it and get the proper software after upgrading. The only things I did differently than they suggest is I did not install the Intel storage driver and I am using the latest official nvidia drivers from nvidia directly.

I also suggest doing a full backup before starting just in case. I had no issues though.

 

Ok, so install the SW_Update app BEFORE doing the windows 8 update? What other software do I need to get? Or did you mean, if I had out of date general software? Thanks for clarifying.

 

What's up everyone,

Having buyers remorse after purchasing this laptop. The gaming rig overheats like crazy. 55-60C on idle and 80C on load, this is the GPU by the way, the CPU seems to be fine. I've looked around the forums and internet and mine seems to be isolated. I sent the unit out to samsung repair center and got it back. To my joy they didn't fix it and said that it was the battery that was overheating the laptop. Anyone having issues with overheating? By the way I added corsair vengeance 16GB 1600mhz and a Samsung SSD 830 series 256GB.

 

Will Mine is sitting at 50C Idle and hits 80C under full load with furmark running 1080p fullscreen and 8xMSAA take about 3 or 4 mins to hit that temperature. I have no issues with overheating. (Shut down and such.) So if yours is overheating mine is too. What is your ambient temps around the computer? Mine is 60-75F (16-24C). Ambient temps will have a lot to do with your temps as well. What kind of load your you putting on the gpu? Maybe try furmark with the settings I used and see what it hits. If it goes beyond 90C STOP the test. The gpu can hit 100C from what I read before downclocking, but my rule of thumb is 10C less than max temp. This is my experience and I'm not really concerned. My older Asus laptops would hit higher idles and load temps than this, so this is why I am not concerned.

 

No.. after...if you want to download it prior do that.. but install it afterward. Its for win8 only. If you go to the gamer 7 support page on sammy's site there is a link that takes you to their win 8 support center. You can't miss it its right on top.

 

Ok so download the SW Update but install it AFTER installing Win 8. Got it. So how will does it work with Steam? As I have a crap ton of games from Steam.

 

Steam works fine. Here's the list of steam and some non-steam games I've tried.

From Steam:
Alan Wake
Amnesia
ARMA 2 (DayZ)
Batman:AC
Borderlands
Borderlands 2
Crysis 2
The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav
Dark Messiah Might and Magic
Dark Souls (with the DSFix patch 1.9)
Darksiders
Deus Ex: HR
Doom 3: BFG
ES III: Morrowind (With Morrowind Overhaul 3.0)
ES V: Skyrim
Gemini Rue
Just Cause 2
Mafia II
Max Payne 3
Metro 2033
Microsoft Flight
Midnight Mysteries (hah.. for wife)
Risen 2
Scratches
Serious Sam 3
Star Wars: KotOR (with widescreen patch)
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (with patch)
Wolfenstein (the newest one)
X3: TC

Non-Steam stuff that worked:
D2: LoD with Glide wrapper
Path of Exile
Thief II with patches i think can't recall
Planescape: Torment with WS and other patches
Temple of Elemental Evil with Co8 patch
Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 under DOSBox

So far the only game that DOESN'T WORK is Drakensang: The Dark Eye. That was working under Win7 x64. I tried compat settings, run as admin, etc.. nothing worked. Shrug. My backlog is so long I don't care much, maybe it'll get a patch someday maybe it won't. It's old so I don't hold out much hope.

You should have very little problem getting things running. But like I said, do a full backup first so if you don't like it after a few days or a week you have something to go back to. Me, i'm happy.

 

Yes, thanks for the peace of mind. Ambient temperatures in my room are cold, about 65-75F. The part that worries me is that my idle use to be around yours, which is 45-50C idle. Then all of a sudden it's idling around 56-60C and 80C under load. If the GPU can handle up to 100C, I guess i have nothing to worry about.