Series 7 Chronos All Models: Push for SAMSUNG to implement "FIXED MODE" in BIOS

Well thats great!


AMD internal GPU card does not work at all, and works partially for some people and yet Samsung are just going to ignore this issue, are they insane?

When I took my Smasung back to the shop I demonstrated that 2 of the display models (14 and 15) had AMD GPU's that did not work at all in several applications that I tested them with.

Has the world gone mad?

Well if Samsung do not want my money then I will take it to a rival. What a way to do business.

 

We're not sure if they ignoring the issue. The communication with customers and within the company is just shambolic. It may be the case the engineers in Korea are aware of it and are working on a solution. We really don't know what is going until Sammy communicate with someone, anybody.

 

Hmm, apperently it´s not only Samsung and HP that have problems with controling the switchable graphic cards. Mac-computeres also have this issue when runnning in Windows mode. Refering to the this thread on apple.com :

https://discussions.apple.com/message/13204372#13204372

So who actually has the responsebility to this? Intel, Windows, AMD, Samsung ...?

 

I'm pointing at AMD since Nvidia doesn't have this problem.

 

I Agree 100%

 

Dang.. This is unfortunate news.

I'm contacting Samsung (USA) today asking for a refund. I'll let you guys know how it goes. The retailer wants a 15% restocking fee even though it's within 30 days which is ridiculous so I better get an answer from Samsung.

I needed this fix since the primary use of this machine was going to Premiere and After Effects.. And when both programs can't see the card even when they're manually set to see it in the Catalyst Center.

 

Actually I felt that way - very weird too. If you look at the below post, Samsung Singapore actually posted that they were asking HQ to 'reconsider' their decision. Then when I asked them about it, they kept mum.
Understanding the... | Facebook

Then of course Samsung already knew about this long ago - back then when Strelzy came in Dec.
It is a pity... | Facebook

For those of you who want to keep their notebooks, there is still hope for your S7. Pester Samsung to release drivers based on 11.12, or 12.1 when it comes out. Leshcat's drivers were based on these two.

You don't lose the warranty, but make sure that you return the system to Samsung OEM AMD driver before sending for service.

 

AMD Dynamic Graphics switching is faulty. That is why HP actually self-served its customers the fixed mode BIOS.

 

Since already many have PM me to forward the email to them, I shall post a screenshot of the email, with my email address censored.

 

@flowbyte

can you see if adobe after effects recognizes the card with you "fixed" machine? Or do you not have after effects?

 

Well this kind of sucks. I don't plan on returning it but I guess I could live without it.

 

With leshcat 12a drivers both photoshop and premiere are using the Radeon card as long as they are set to High Performance in the Catalyst Center.. However After Effects is still a no go with open GL support even when it is manually set to High Performance.

Also, the updated leshcat driver got rid of youtube and vimeo problems I was experiencing before in Chrome..

 

Right well mines going back, aside from the graphics now just not working at all the laptop has the following issues;

1. Screen isnt aligned to the body correctly
2. Two weird lines on the track pad
3. Laptop no longer boot from sleep in 2secs (more like 10) with no settings changed.


What do I get instead then?

Dell xps 15z - with 1080p screen and 2gb graphics
Dell xps 14z - bit smaller? more portable?
HP Envy 14 beats - same spec as samsung but i've heard bad things

Any help?

 

Don't get the ENVY 14 beats, which by now is an outdated model with mediocre screen (worse than the S7 IMO). The number of DOAs for the ENVY14 is amazing, over at the HP forum we had people with 9 DOAs.

 

I love how hard it is to find a company to give your money to these days. Any thoughts on the Dell's? My first laptop was a dell 1557 and was brilliant. Replacing it with the series 7 was meant to be a step forward!!

 

The fact that Samsung has not been re-stocking suppliers for several weeks now leads me to believe that they are aware of the problem and are re-tooling all new laptops coming off the assembly line. I would expect that this problem be resolved the next time inventory becomes available on newegg and other retailers

 

There is still a harddrive shortage in the world...

 

That's true, but I don't think Samsung would let that hold up sales of their full systems

 

They (Samsung) have said that the poor availability of the Chronos series is due to lack of harddrives. HP have also mentioned this when it comes to the delays of the new Envys.

How are they supposed to sell their notebooks if they can't get harddrives for them?

 

Returning mine today. Will be sad to see it go, but I've lined up another laptop already.

HP dv6
15.6" 1080p anti-glare screen
8gb RAM
1Tb hdd
Ati 6770m graphics

It's not the prettiest laptop in the world, but I don't think it looks bad at all... And for $1002, not too shabby I don't think.

 

Hey - is that Blake Ross of Mozilla fame?

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm also in the market for a new i7 laptop in the $1k range and am trying to determine if this openGL issue is a dealbreaker.

What are the chances a viable fix will eventually be produced by a creative programmer or by Samsung itself?

Can't say that I am! Otherwise I would be selling you on how bad Internet Explorer and Safari are

 

Reviewers becoming more aware of the openGL issue, this is from a comparison of the Chronos vs HP Envy:

MobileTechReview Forum and News: HP Envy 15 vs. Samsung Series 7 Chronos Comparison Smackdown

 

Hi, I've been watching this thread for some time now because I was very interested in this laptop. In the UK for £900 (amazon) nothing could match the spec. But because I plan to use it for CS5 After effects and Premiere it isn't suitable. (Thanks for saving me the effort of finding this out and returning it!!)

What other laptops do you suggest? I am looking for screen resolution of at least 1600 x 900. 6-8gb ram, and an I7 processor.

The only rival I've seen so far is the Dell XPS 15z (1080p screen, 8gb RAM) which I can get for £970 with the i7 2640m processor. However this is only Dual core compared to the 2675QM in the Samsung which is a quad core.

My main question here; is the i7 2640m (dual core) a massive downgrade from the i7 2675QM (quad core)? Will I see significant speed differences whilst using After Effects and Premiere? Or is the difference fairly small? If so what other laptops should I look at?

Thanks a lot!

 

The more I read about the Envy the more I like the specs, despite how ugly it is. You can put in 16GB (!!) of RAM, and it has a full 1080 display.

 

You need to find out if those applications spawn enough threads to fully load a quad core CPU. Then you can interpret notebookcheck's benchmark list (something like wPrime or the Cinebench multi result are multi-threaded and show how the quad core CPUs can improve performance. SuperPi is single-threaded). You can also run those benchmarks on your current machine to see how that compares.

John

 

The laptop is back in stock here in the Uk at comet and i think amazon

 

I'm sure it'll be back here too shortly in the US. I guess it's just wishful thinking that they would make a hardware change, still holding out hope that a software fix is possible. Right now I'm very tempted with the HP Envy though just because of the performance difference

 

The laptop is most likely out of stock as Samsung have very limited supply lines atm and the Chronos is in high demand. When they expand their manufacturig in the next two years these shortages should cease. I really doubt it has anything to do with the graphics - it could have if they were fixing the issue but as they aren't doing anything about it is probably just their limited manufacturing atm (google it, there's plenty of news on the topic).

 

I installed 12.1a and the youtube errors didnt go away. I did a fresh install again and then disabled intel noise reduction in the media section of the intel control panel. Now flash seems to work. The scaling mode used is still ugly though.

Photoshop doesnt detect the amd card though. Is there anything other than setting it to high performance that will make it work?

 

I am looking for a sensible suggestion of what to do. I have the Chronos 7 (np700z5a) sitting next to me - not opened. Have the option to return it to Amazon. What to get instead on a budget of 1000 pounds? HP envy 15 - not available. Acer 5755G - kind a poor built and screen. Dell XPS15 or 15z (better screen, Nvidia graphics gt 570m, waiting time 15 days no num pad.)

I am an architect - so using CAD software (2D and 3D) and the Adobe Creative Suite 5 (average heaviness).

It seems like a lot of hustle to send it back and get the Dell XPS15z, but at the same time its a lot of money on the game.

Open to any suggestions. Ohh - and is it the fact that openGL is dying, that's why they are not bothered?

Thanks.

 

About the bad flash video scaling, is this a Samsung-specific problem, or does it affect all laptops with a 1600x900 resolution?

 

Did you use drivesweeper to get rid of the old drivers before you installed the new ones?

 

So...instead of providing support for their newly released line, Samsung decides to flake out. Very classy, Samsung. While I was looking around on Amazon today, I came across a newer model of the series 7: the S0AUS

The specs merrily mention having powerexpress on the ati card - the same feature that was supposed to be the solution to the switchable graphics problem. Isn't that dandy now. The samsung website doesn't even have an s04us or an s03us model anymore. We make a purchase, month later, Samsung decides to take the product off the shelves and introduces another one instead. No support for the older product.

Edit: Anger+Lack of Thoroughness= Bad Information

Okay, so it looks like the older models are still around, but clearly, there is a replacement introduced. The s03us and the s0aus are identical in specs except for the powerexpress feature on the s0aus, which also has a 1tb hdd. Still, it is $50 cheaper than the s03us. W.T.F. Samsung.

 

S03US and S04US are still up there:
Series 7 15.6" Notebook | Samsung NP700Z5AH
Series 7 15.6" Notebook | Samsung NP700Z5AH

 

I was thinking about keeping my unit even after all the support mess, but now, it's redundant to have a semi functioning product when a functional update has been released. This baby's goin' back. Don't know if I'll be getting the updated model, though. Talked to the people at amazon and they have no eta on the s0aus. I really like this laptop, but the way samsung has handled the situation is just atrocious.

 

I thought I read that the 1TB drives are 5400rpm. Also, Win7 Home vs Win7 Pro. And I don't think S0AUS fixes the OpenGL problem.

 

The 1tb drives are 5400rpm. Performance should not be noticeably different from the 7200rpm ones. The 8gb cache is what makes the series 7 fast, not the hdd. The OS is one difference apart from the hdds in the two laptops. Also, according to the manager who yknyong1 talked to, the implementation of "PowerXpress" in their next model should solve the problem. The s0aus is a model with the same feature highlighted in the specs.

Again, I can't speak for samsung, but it does appear that this is intended to be a rectification.

 

re: disk speed - depends on if you're i/o bound or not.

I hadn't seen that about PowerXpress - was that in the samsung forum? I just found mention of it in a 2008 article - is it the same thing (run only dedicated graphics when plugged in, run only intel when on battery)?

 

You should not go all out on just one single word on one place on one page, all based on an email from someone we don't know what his positions is in Samsung who happends to mention this word once.. You should do some more research and see if this "new" one is really updated in any way and if the OpenGL issue is solved.

And depending on what you do, the drive speed matters a lot. ExpressCache with its tiny 8Gb can only speed up so much. When it comes to things with lots of data, like games, ExpressCache is more or less worthless.

 

From what I have read about 1tb hdds, their performance is not much different from the lower capacity-higher speed hdds. Drive density affects the performance as well, so it basically boils down to the drive model itself.

About PowerXpress 5.0, it is the evolution of the thing you mentioned. I don't know if it's manual/auto or both here but (again, I'm quoting the samsung representative here) the new revision should let you have a opengl compatible graphics system. There has to be a reason why the other models say nothing about this feature in the specs, while the s0aus has a parenthetical mention. I wouldn't have to rely on second hand information if Samsung would respond more openly to the customer.

About the ExpressCache, it is evident that it is not meant to be a replacement for an ssd. Also, I couldn't care less about waiting on a loading screen for a second more. The speed difference in 5400rpm drives vs 7200rpm drives is negligible compared to the difference between a hdd and an ssd. We're not talking quantum leaps here.

 

No, S0AUS is NOT using powerXpress 5.0, it is the same old powerXpress 4.0 standard that is branded AMD Dynamic Switchable graphics.

 

Of course not - ExpressCache is a feature used to decrease raw boot time. That's it. It is not a general cache for the harddrive. This is why you need multiple reboots for it to be tuned.

Difference between 5400rpm and 7200rpm is easily felt IF you are i/o bound. Clearly you don't have experience with i/o bound apps, so the difference means nothing to you. For some users, 5400rpm is noticeably slower than 7200rpm.

 

Nope, still powerXpress 4.0. They knew I published their email and now they seem to want to confuse their potential customers into buying. Notice how they only mention powerXpress [SIC]?

 

I'd also heard that Samsung are using PowerExpress 4 which is, most likely, one factor in the current problems. It's unclear what share of the underlying problems sits with Samsung and how much with AMD. One of the notes here says:

I don't know what "as the case may be" actually means in the OpenGL context. Samsung should know what works and how.

Anyway, if AMD's dynamic switching doesn't work well, then providing user-selectable switching at the BIOS level is the only work-around. It should then also be possible for Samsung to provide a simple Windows utility to change the BIOS graphics setting to be applied at the next system start (whether a restart or resume from hibernation). This would make the current S7 much more usable and we have to hope that everything will be properly debugged for the Ivy Bridge version. The underlying S7 design is far too good to be binned but the current graphics problems are clearly putting off a lot of potential customers (and resulting in a lot of returns). [I'd buy a refurb 14" S7 at the right price if I knew that I could lock it to use Intel graphics only.]

John

 

I would actually purchase the S7 again if they do the above. However, the response from Samsung HQ seems to indicate they will not do so for the current gen S7 due to prohibitive cost of replacement motherboards and BIOS rework.

 

i still don't get it. if hp managed to add a fixed mode just over bios options, why the hell samsung can't do the same?

 

They are selling plenty of units as it is now so why bother? Obviously, it isn't as cheap and easy as we'd think and if they are selling the Chronos well regardless of the faults, then why bother to redesgin it. They have supply problems and the Chronos is constantly out of stock in European counries for example (and it is not limited to the Chronos, same is with RFs, which are constantly on low quantity in the UK for example). From their point of view, I assume, the situation is - why invest money in fixing something that we can't build enough of to satisfy demand. Obviously, the odd return from people that need OpenGL (I'd guess something like 10% of all sales) might cost them some delivery money, but they will sell the exact same notebook to someone else a few days later. Obviously, they think paying for the refunds expenses is a lower sum than paying for fixing the issue. I am sure if they were in the position to manufacture double the current capacity of laptops, they would have fixed the issue to gain more sales, but right they are not in such a position so why waste the money.

Having said all the above, it hurts their reputation with unsatisfied customers, but I guess they are ready to risk this for saving whatever money they are saving by not fixing the issue.

 

I received my refund yesterday (19.01.2012). Not bad after having returnd it on monday (16.01.2012)

As we have this wonderful thing called "Gewährleistung" <-- German - in EU countries i gave my retailer the chance to fix it. After his chit-chat with Samsung Austria and no solution he had no other option than to give me the refund. Very happy now and moving to this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...s-series-7-owners-who-refunded-their-s7s.html

Try to put your retailer on this track with "Gewährleistung". Even if own the laptop now more than six months you will have no problem to prove that this issue existed from the moment you bought your Chronos.

 

I understand that HP use the newer PowerExpress 5 for which it's easier to do a BIOS fix.

This might be a repurcussion of the floods in Thailand affecting HDD supply. Or perhaps AMD is having some yield problems.

It's a facility that they should have for any updated platform with similar hardware, so they might as well do it now.

Anything that has been opened would have to be sold as "open-box" and if the customer has complained about performance then it may have to go back to Samsung for checking and will then be sold as refurbished, with price reduced accordingly.

John