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

Remember my freezing issue? I realized issd was the issue. Uninstalled the EC driver cleaned disk partition of the issd and now everything is working fine. So if you are using windows 8 NEVER download EC driver.

 

That's good to know. I'll keep that in mind When i decide to re-install windows 8 to my laptop. It's also good you figured it out. I personally wouldn't have guessed it was the issd.

 

Nice thing about having a SSD, you do not use the iSSD other than for a scratch drive or some other purpose. I know the default drivers from Windows 7 are originally on the Np700G7C-US02 but since it is orginally a windows 8 machine maybe there are updated drivers for that version?

 

What Uses has everyone found for the iSSD when putting an ssd in? I have a 120GB SSD in mine now and was wondering.

 

SW update couldnt find the EC driver so i manually downloaded it so it may not be an official W8 driver (even though i still downloaded using sw update) Everything was ok on W7 but on W8 EC driver is unstable. I hope they will fix this i miss issd

 

It is strange. If you go to the support pages for the NP700G7C all three incarnations of the S01US, S02US and T01US all have Windows 7 only drivers listed. The later two variations were launched after the Win8 release with that OS, not Win7...................

 

Hmm how should i configure my dolby home theater?

 

It seems to me like its time for samsung to do an update on this machine. Right now alot of players like ASUS and Sager/Clevo have finally put 120hz machines on their offerings and most are also offering GTX680M options. The only thing this laptop now has going for it is the keyboard which is the only one that does not key jam bad on common game combos.

 

See what appears at CES. In the past year Samsung broke with the old practice of tying notebook refreshes to the Intel platform refreshes so notebook updates may appear before the Haswell platform. However, this approach only works where the design power envelopes are unchanged.

John

 

Well lucky for us the it is unlikely that anything new will have a higher TDP than the 675M

 

With that GPU power consumption in the 100W range there should be scope for improvement by the next generation of GPUs.

John

 

The Asus G75 is GTX 660/670 not 680. Samsung, like Asus, does not really have replacable GPU options like the Sager/Clevo or AlienWare so really they are somewhat different class machines. Although yes, the power and TDP SHOULD alow for a refresh with a GTX 680m. It then becomes a point of economics, at what price point and how much of a market? It would be very easy for Samsung to get bcaught with excess stock of these machines as without MXM capability alot of high end consumers want to at least hope they can plug in the next great card...............

 

Hi !

I bought a Samsung 700G7C-T01PT and after going through this thread I am a little concerned regarding the quality and longevity of this machine. Can someone confirm I did a good buy ?

Also regarding cooling pads. From what I read it is very necessary to have one for this machine. Which ones do you advise ?

Thanks all !!!

 

With that machine you have the AMD card not the nVidia. Not too sure about thiose cards so it is hard to say. I can tell you other than the video card on the S01US it is a pretty solid machine................

 

I've been playing Diablo III at high settings while Afterburner is on. Without overclocking the GPU, the GPU temp is in the 80-85C range. Is this normal?

 

Counts alot on the ambient temp, whether on a flat furface and/or on top of an active cooler etc. 80-85c though is a safe range...........

 

Off topic but to continue with my Samsung devices I am now using a Nexus 10. While not quite a PC all I can say is wow. I got to play with some other tablets and for casual usage this blows the away.

 

Hey I have a friend who wanted me to ask this question: What is everyone's idle and load temps? I told him ambient temps will matter too, he knows. But wanted to see an average or a what to expect. He is looking at getting the same laptop. I told him my idle temps seem to be anywhere from 36C to 43C and gpu is idling at 37C. He wanted to see if other's where getting about the same. Under load I can get into the 80's (C) depending on what game I am playing. Thanks for the help, he is on the fence on an Asus which is cheaper but he has also seen how I've gone through so many and had to upgrade them to get a decent performance. (He is also partial to Samsung as he likes their TV's and such. I told him he would be happy with this laptop. But since he is sitting here we figured it would be easier for me to just ask instead of him going through the sign up process when I am here, lol. I told him he was lazy, but he has a point, he doesn't want to sign up for someplace if he won't be on it anymore. Also since I'm always signed in it seems it's easier. (The $10 bucks he gave me to ask this also helps. lol.) Anyhow, thanks for posting your temps. Oh, he just asked me if anyone else could also post their experiences with this laptop as well. So again, thanks for bearing with me and his questions.

 

Amazon.com: Samsung Series 7 Gamer NP700G7C-T01US 17.3-Inch Laptop (Yellow): Computers & Accessories

I am so ready to buy this at 1299$. Is it worth it at this price range for a 7870m compared to 675?

 

I don't think that's bad really. I paid that much for my old Asus G53SW and it had the 460M GTX, the 7870M is above that: AMD Radeon HD 7870M - Notebookcheck.net Tech in terms of the tier. Looks to be a strong performer. Though it depends on what all else the laptop comes with. $1300 doesn't seem that bad. Considering the GTX 675M Models seems to run about $500 more. Though there is nothing on that website that shows actual game testing. I will have to look into it more later when I have the time. Unless someone else beats me to the punch.

 

I know I've asked this before but what the heck:
Can I put a GTX680M into this laptop?
I know the Vbios are specific and create issues. Could they be hacked?
Any details on this is appreciated. Thanks.
Also, does this laptop's HDMI output support HDMI 1.4, which can carry 1080P @ 120hz (right?) ?

 

Also what are the differences between the
NP700G7C-S01US

vs

NP700G7C-S02US

?

 

I've been watching this as well for the past few days and pulled the trigger earlier today. From everything I've read, the 7870m is in the same general realm of performance as the 675m and is much more efficient which should lead to less heat and better battery management. Looking at the spec sheet on Samsung.com, I think this has a 16gb cache rather than the 8gb listed. Also, if you google that specific sku, it seems like every other site has this for right around list price ($1599) so the amazon price seemed very good to me. I know that WiDi does not work with the 675m config - it would be great if it works with the 7870m/Enduro config but I'm not holding out much hope.

 

Notebookcheck puts the 7870m about 20% under the 675m for 3Dmark. For gaming without any over clocks expect a 15%-25% reduction in FPS. The 675, to me at least, is way too much. So while you may have to turn some of the features down a bit it should do fine.....

 

Thanks, I figured these temps may be ok. Also, for the person who asked about idle temps, my laptop idles in the high 30s and low 40s as well.

 

Hey guys, this might not be a problem specific to the samsung gamer but does anyone else have the same annoying thing happen to them? I have the version with Geforce GTX 675M card inside and whenever i put my laptop to sleep and then wake it up for work, the colors on all movies/videos (in VLC, windows media player classic etc) are inverted or blueish, tinted. So i have to reboot and then it's normal again. Today i tried to connect it to my HDTV with HDMI, same thing, everything turns blue after a couple of seconds of playing the movie. Found something about a Nvidia bug when i googled, but i've tried different drivers and just now installed the newest ones 310.70 ( NVIDIA DRIVERS 310.70WHQL). Any ideas??

 

I don't have VLC but does the same thing happen in media player or Cybetlink? Another thing is I hadn't tried a movie after sleep but would like to try recreating this.......

 

Yes. The same thing happen in all of my 3 mediaplayers (VLC, windows media player and windows media player classic home cinema). Colors are inverted, no change with new drivers either. Tried to reset all settings in all mediaplayers with no success. So i have no clue about what is causing this, however, when you go to "Nvidia control panel", under "change video color settings", change from "videoplayer settings" to "NVIDIA-settings", it's some kind of universal override for the computer that makes colors normal again.

p.s you have to put the computer to sleep for a long while for it to happen -> a couple of hours/over night.

 

Mine never got to sleep that long......

 

I've never had mine sleep that long, actually it rarely goes to sleep. It's always downloading something, either games bought on Steam or Windows updates. Though it has been plugged into a 24" LED monitor for the past few days and not using the laptop display. (I keep it closed.) I just opened the screen and left it open for about 15 mins playing a video. No issues, though it may have to do with the fact that I was mirroring the screen to the external display. I may try to do a sleep to test out if mine does it. I will say I am very paranoid about leaving my laptop in sleep when packing it into a bag for travel. (I've had my fair share of laptops that decided to wake up for some odd reasons. Some Windows thing or such, despite having any and all stuff disabled that would allow a wake up.) Fortunately, it seems to have happened just before I would pull it out of it's case, so it didn't overheat. And now with the cost of the Sammy I shut it down before packing everytime. So yeah. But I may try an extended sleep just to test. Oh, I am running Nvidia 310.70 for my graphics drivers.

 

Is there a way to turn off the animations when shifting modes?

 

If you select it in the Samsung software to use your own background the animation and sound do not play....................

 

Is anyone having the issue with windows update issue turning itself off ? I don't run any norton/Symantec products . Running security essentials from MS. Has anyone ever found a resolution to this problem?

 

is it normal for expresscache to reset itself everytime i turn on my machine?

 

What is your primary hdd score? Does it increase with expresscache?

 

If you mean the Windows Experience Index, I have a 5.9. I think that's a pretty standard score for a regular HDD.

 

Does enabling EC increase the score?

 

ExpressCache is designed to accelerate the boot process and make some other frequently used files accessible more quickly. HDD benchmarks will not be able to measure this effect but overall system performance should be improved.

John

 

That's what i was thinking but some guy on another forum said that ec boosted his primary hdd score from 5.9 to 6.9

 

That is a huge jump, but if that were true the need for ssd's would drop. I honestly would take that with grain of salt. Even if he has screenshots or pictures, they can be photo-shopped. This is one of those things where I'd have to see his computer itself to believe it. He may be running 3rd party or self made software, all kinds of things could be going into it. The most likely scenarios (photoshop aside) would be he installed an ssd and is attempting to use EC with it. (which is a waste as it's been shown that the EC is slower than most if not all SSD's. The ssd would boost the speed, not the EC or iSSD as it's also known as.) or he managed to install windows to the iSSD (which i've heard you could do, but would be extremely limited as it's only 8GB, barely enough to contain the OS let alone ANYTHING else. While it would be nice as it would help put off buying an SSD, I just don't really believe it until I actually see it. Nothing against you, if you believe it, so if you took anything offensively I am sorry. But while we can hope, it seems very improbable to me.

 

Thats EXACTLY what i thought

but you cant just say "hey, it is photoshopped"

 

WEI doesn't tell the whole story. The EC module is much slower than a decent SSD. You also have cache eviction depending on the size of it and what your usage pattern is. It's better than nothing, no question there. I disabled it though when I installed my SSD.

 

lol, no I can't just automatically say it's photoshopped, but it's more than likely. I mean, if he could pull it off, share it with all of us the exact way he did it. That way it'll help extend the life of the laptop or prevent us from buying an SSD so early on. Unless of course he coded his own software. But that's a whole different topic and I don't wish to de-rail this forum.

EC is a nice thing nothing wrong there. I CAN tell the difference between a standard 7200rpm HDD and one with EC added. (My old Asus has one of the 750GB HDD from the samsung in it, as I upgraded to a 120GB SSD.) I could tell a difference between the 2. (Besides the cpu and stuff.) EC is a nice thing, no doubt about that. Specially when you don't have the cash for a SSD. But EC isn't as fast as an SSD (except for the first consumer one's out, which EC might beat.) But newer SSD's will pretty much always outbeat EC, Specially where capacity is. EC is just that. Express Cache, it's extra cache for the HDD's to help speed up random read/writes. It does this really good and without any user intervention or input which is nice. My biggest concern about EC is the lifespan, an SSD you can replace. What happens when the EC wears out. I have SSD life pro and it claims that the ISSD which is used for the EC won't report it's wear or anything. My assumption would be the life of the laptop, but that's relatively low. (Yeah I know we spent a lot of money, but by today's standard this laptop was out of date probably 2 months from release. (Though I plan on using it until it's out of date for me. Not by tech standards.) Which means it'll probably last me 4-5 years. Will the EC chips last that long? Unknown, and I may never find out as I'll probably end up replacing the laptop before that. (Specially since I'm using an SSD, it'll reduce the wear on the EC chips.) It's hard to tell. That's probably the only "con" going for EC. It's nice though that Samsung does include it in this laptop, but it would be nicer to just give us a 120GB SSD and a 750GB HDD. That would probably not reflect the price very much if any. (Using a larger SSD would.)

 

Hopefully you removed the EC software as it's about half the speed or less of a current SSD. Assuming you got 500mb/s unit. It's killing your performance if you left it in play.

I'm only assuming since you said "reducing wear" I hope you meant "there is no wear since it's not being used". Either that or you're using it for storage for some reason.

 

Oh yeah, sorry, I did disable that. Yeah, there is no wear since EC isn't being used. Not even for storage. I don't know what I would store on it anyhow. 8GB isn't much anymore, and I usually accidently erase partition on the EC whenever I re-install windows so yeah. But yeah, the EC isn't in use at all. I made sure of that. Though I don't think it would affect my SSD that much as it's not a 500mb/s unit. It's an OCZ Agility 3 w/ Firmware 2.22. (No issues thus far.) Thanks for mentioning that as it allowed for a clarification.

 

I have the EC formated to NTFS. I use it for installs, like the new nvidia drivers. I let them unzip etc to that drive......

 

I am having issues reading my Manual for the laptop. Everytime I launch it, it says it need adobe flash, and asks me if I want to install, I tell it yeah, and it doesn't do anything. I installed any and all the adobe flashes I could find off of adobe's website. Flash for other browsers, tried updating flash, all that stuff. The reason I am trying to look at the manual is because one of the Function keys shows a fan. "F11" is the key on mine. What does this key do? Does it put the fan into "Turbo Mode" or turn the fans off. I was just wondering because I almost hit it instead of the "F10" Keyboard Brightness Up. So I thought i'd try to look it up, but can't. If anyone else can tell me that would be great.

 

Pressing Fn+F11 will toggle the Silent mode. It reduces the fan activity by slowing down the CPU.

Regarding the User Guide, I can never understand why Samsung prefer animated turning pages instead of a simple PDF file. If you have high security settings in your web browser then the manual won't run.

John

 

Ah ok, thanks. So it pretty much throttles the cpu down.

As for the manual, yeah, it's kind of stupid on Samsung's part. Just give me a downloadable pdf, not a stupid exe file that requires flash and all this stuff. BTW I was trying to run the downloadable exe manual from samsung's website and it was giving flash issues. ugh? Might be time for a Windows re-install.

Which I may actually drop the ball and install Win8 since I know my laptop is fine now. (In case anyone forgot I had to send it in for repair. My cpu fan died about the same time I tried installing Win8. Tried installing W7, and it still had overheat issues, turned out it was the fan dying about the same time I installed W8. Go figure.)

Anyhow, yeah. I'll have to post how things go if that's the case.

 

He says Windows recognizes it as a hybrid hdd thus increasing it's score. I have a screenshot but it is not in English