Series 7 Chronos NP780Z5E - S01UB - Windows 8, i7 quad touch screen iwth ht 8770 video. Info / Thoughts?

I saw this notebook pop up at the local best buy but there is next to no info about it anywhere. It has a 1080p touch display, hd8770m 1gb / hd4000 gpu, i7-3635qm cpu, a bright display and seems to have great battery life. All wrapped up in a thin aluminum shell with backlit keyboard. Ive found videos on youtube of this general model but it had a higher end GPU in it.

I spent about 30 minutes on it, typing into notepad (i do alot of typing so wanted to see how it would do over a long session) with it on battery power. At the end the battery read 96% and it was estimating 8hrs, 55min of battery remaining. Id really like to know how big the battery is in this thing, as it seems to have great life.

I asked if I could see the box at best buy but although they showed having 2 in stock they couldn't find them. I've been looking for an i7 quad with dedicated graphics and touch for a while now and this seems to fit the bill nicely, the battery life is a big bonus. I just would like more info on it, and if its worth waiting for the undoubtedly more expensive model with the higher GPU.

Oh, it has a 1tb 5400rpm drive. There isn't any ssd or cache listed in the specs but it kind of behaved like one. The first reboot I did took 42 seconds, the second reboot to 30 and the third only to 21. That sure sounds like its building up a cache in an ssd somewhere.

What do folks think of this machine? Anyone seen any info on it anywhere?

Thanks

 

Most of the action is on the thread for the high end model. A couple members have picked it up already. One has already replaced the hard drive with an ssd.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=9014965
Introducing The New Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

Sent from my SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

 

Have they actually found the high end model for sale somewhere? I can't find either of them online anywhere except a quick youtube or two at CES a couple weeks ago. The model at best buy isn't even showing up in their online site yet. Id really like to see the specs and prices of both to see if its worth waiting for the 8870m or trying to find a best buy with them in stock. Right now best buy has the 8770 model for $1199.

 

I went to a larger Best Buy today in my area and they had it on display. I picked one up to play around w/ it and see if I like it enough to keep. Here's the Best Buy online link for it... This screen on this computer is so glossy it might make me decide to go with matte screen (but less resolution) on the NP700. I'd save $300, too.

Does anyone know if an owner's thread for this computer has been started yet?

 

One has not, and very few of us own it. I just picked up one yesterday too. I am not satisfied with it either. If I wasn't looking to do any gaming, it would be great, but the 8770m is performing below my expectation

 

Yeah, I'm curious how the nvidia chip in the 'lower-end' model compares to the 8770m. I haven't had time to install any games on it, and probably won't until sometime next week. I play mostly strategy/simulation games and those can be more CPU intensive. I do have a transport mgmt sim (Cities in Motion) that uses openGL that I'm curious to test. (In my exp, AMDs have poor openGL support compared to nvidia.)

I'm baffled by how many times the GPU switches back and forth on the default settings. Do you know where the light sensor is for the auto screen brightness and backlit keys? It seems to work really poorly, or else it's all the GPU switching which is causing the screen to dim and flicker.

And what do you think about the placement of the vents? It seems crazy to blow the hot air up onto the bottom of the screen instead of just trying to direct it away from the computer.

 

The last 15.6" Chronos had the same air venting system, and it is the same in the 17.3" Chronos as well. As for how this system (cooling) works...well not spectacularly if you read any of the older threads for the 17.3". They tend to run hot (the 17,3" has a Gt 650m) and under load it does throttle a bit. Also the keyboard and the bottom gets pretty hot as I recall. The Hd 8770m is supposed to compare to the Gt 650m, AMD Radeon HD 8770M - NotebookCheck.net Tech and after doing some internet searching I found that someone did a 3Dmark11 test on it, Intel HD Graphics 4000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3635QM,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP780Z5E-S01UB score: P2216 3DMarks and according to what I see there Notebook Check appears to be correct...well according to the 3Dmark11 scores anyways. I know that It says Hd4000 as the GPU but consider, there is no possible way to get those numbers from a Hd4000. Look near the bottom of the info screen at the mother board and the model number, this is the Chronos in question. The Gt 650m scores NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - NotebookCheck.net Tech very similarly in 3Dmark11 maybe a little better but close.
What I would like to know from the people that picked it up already is as follows: Previous Chronos models (last years) had some problems with connectivity, mainly WiFi, getting low number of bars compared to other laptops. My question is; Has this problem been fixed? Or does this model have a problem as well. Has any one done any gaming on it ? If so what are your temperatures like? You can use GPUZ to get the GPU temp's and Core temp or something like it for you CPU temps, also any comments would be appreciated about how hot the keyboard and the bottom of the laptop feel.
I personally looked at this laptop last night at BB and was largely impressed with it's look and feel. I did some of the same general testing that others did, with battery life and the keyboard. I played some of the Xbox games on the laptop (not very demanding games) and I was still impressed. I have a question for " Iprobradp". What did not impress you about the GPU in this new Chronos? Any coments would be appreciated. Thanks
Seanno

 

Have a look in the User Guide. On my X4C the sensor is behind the keyboard just to the right of the power on LED.

Put a small piece of black tape over the sensor. If you still get the display brightness varying then the culprit is probably adaptive brightness which is in the graphics driver and designed to vary the brightness according to what is displayed.

John

 

WiFi signal is not great compared to my old laptop (HP Envy 14t-1000). I didn't think the Envy got a great signal, but this computer is worse. I'm not sure if it's as bad as the old Samsung models, though.

I ran Far Cry 3 for about 5 minutes, but I didn't have my controller with me so I got bored and closed it down. The laptop barely got warm, but that's not a very long time to be running a game. With the game on high settings with full HD resolution it was getting about 10fps which is a little too slow. When I reduced the resolution, it didn't scale to fill the entire screen, just a small part in the middle of the screen with giant black borders. Maybe I had to reload the game to have it scale properly, but I didn't feel like waiting the 5+ minutes for it to load.

Which brings me to the next point: The stock hard drive is SLOW, but I'm coming from a Seagate hybrid drive and I guess that was really fast. Still, I've never had the whole computer come to a stop when installing a program and surfing the internet, but that's what's been happening. Maybe the driver or interface is faulty? I may stick in the hybrid drive and see if it still happens.

First thing I tried to do when I got the computer was try to run GPU-Z, but I I can't get it to work for some reason. Maybe this CPU/GPU isn't supported yet. Tried a couple of older versions, and no luck--it just hangs at the splash/start-up screen.

To be honest, it almost fees like a downgrade coming from my two-year-old Envy. The screen is better, the overall build quality is better, but somehow it runs much slower, and seems to hang up on small tasks even though it has a newer and faster CPU and GPU. If the hard drive is really to blame, I don't understand why they would they put such a bad drive in a computer which is otherwise so good. I've tried to disable as many of the power settings as I could, but maybe I'm unknowingly throttling the system somehow.

Another quirk: the back-light on the keyboard will not go off if the ambient lighting around you is too dim. Even after going into the Samsung-branded settings menu--they will go off for a few seconds and then come back on. It's annoying because I can actually read the letters better without the light on because the screen reflects on the keyboard and there's a nice contrast. If anyone knows how to turn off the light sensor, please let me know.

OK, I just ran 3DMark 11, and here are my results. It also says Intel 4000 as the GPU, but my scores were so much lower, maybe that's what it was testing for some reason. It was plugged in, but I'm not 100% sure which GPU it used.

I'm having a hard time forcing the computer to do anything. Is there a shortcut/button I can configure to switch GPUs only when I want. (Or a simple scheme of plugged-in=AMD and battery=Intel 4000?) I've gone deep into advanced power and graphics settings, but now this test makes me wonder. Thank goodness I finally got the auto-screen dimmer disabled.

Same goes for the backlit keyboard with a mind of its own--turning on and off willy nilly.

Starting to feel like I've lost control of my machine!

 

I just picked up the new Chronos today and I'm considering returning it. For the given specs, I expected a much faster laptop. I seem to be having a few connectivity issues as well as it drops its connection to the internet. I like the touch screen to integrate with Windows 8 (would not have considered buying it with Windows 8 if it weren't for the touch screen). The gripe I have with the screen though is that it doesn't seem very bright. It looks good, but when you wake the computer up from a sleep state, it's super bright. After a few seconds and I log back in, it dims back down, even though the brightness settings are at max. Any thoughts?
I have been picking through bloatware that was installed to help speed it up a bit, but its still far off from what I expected. Intellimemory is garbage and sucks ram through the of the machine. Im new to this thread but I think I'll try to keep up with it since others seem to be having issues as well. I think I am just trying to find some ways to justify this computer before I decide to return it.

 

There's more discussion of these issues in this thread, starting here and also in this thread.

John

 

I have had one for three days and it can't play Bio shock infinite, or any of the demanding games. It would even play need for speed wanted at all just kept hanging. WAIT FOR THE 8870!!!!!!
Key board light is annoying. It does have a mind of its own. I want it to work when I tell it to. Also not bright enough in the Car when I take it to work. Returning and waiting for next version. Disappointed. I have the HP Envy 17 3d with the 7850 and it just crushes the 8770. Note that it only has 1gb memory.

 

See this thread for discussion of the gaming performance.

John

 

All that would do is force the brightness level to the minimum. How do you disable the automatic variation so you can force the brightness to max?

 

If you go into settings > change PC settings there should be an option to disable adaptive brightness. Works for me.

By the way I have the 8770M model, so if any of you guys have any questions about it, feel free to ask. This laptop is amazing, but not really right out of the box. You need to do some tweaking first and an SSD hardware upgrade. After that, everything is PERFECT. Sure some people think the 8770M isn't as great as some other cards, but keep in mind that you're purchasing a high-end laptop for $1200, which is a fantastic deal. Plus, the 8770 is still a super powerful card in my opinion.

 

Thank you for allowing us to ask
Are you sure the 8770 card drivers are working?, i've read a lot, and searched also, and It appears that the graphics card isn't working properly? I installed Dead Island, which is getting some time since it came out, and it doesnt play that well, and it should right?

Thank you, I would like to know if is this the final capacity or can we expect for better performance in the future

 

Graphics cards will perform better with software updates. Samsung apparently hasn't updated the card yet (but there is a beta going around, which I don't recommend just yet), but when they do, it will perform better. However, that being said, Dead Island should run fine. Have you checked if it is running in High Performance mode? Right click your desktop and select Switchable Graphics. This machine has two graphics cards (Intel HD 4000 and the 8770M). Obviously the 8770M is better, but the machine defaults to the HD4000 to conserve battery. Sometimes it doesn't detect correctly, and you may be playing Dead Island on the slower HD4000.

 

You mentioned that you knew someone that has swapped the drive for an ssd. Can you confirm that? As I was told by support that it can't be upgraded with one.

Thanks!

 

What Samsung support mean is that they don't recommend user upgrades.

Read through this thread, perhaps starting at the end. The most challenging part of the transplant process is removing the base of the computer.

John

 

Can anyone here report gaming performance after using the graphics controls to make sure the dedicated card was being used? I think that the 8770m should be able to get decent results even at 1080p.

 

so I have had this laptop for about 6 months(8770m) model. I have swapped the hard drive to a Seagate hybrid hard drive and swapped the one 4 gig slot to 8 gig and now have a total of 12 gigs. This laptop is super fast and everything was working great and still is but when I upgraded to Windows 8.1. it's hard to tell if my dedicated is working properly even though league of legends plays full graphics with 80 fps. It just shows the total amount of graphics under the Intel graphics and if I disable either it disables both. Also is the 8770 1 gig or 2 dedicated? Different sites say different things . The gpu z program said 2 when I ran it on Windows 8. Anyone still in this thread?

 

The main discussion about this model is in http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...unge-np770z5e-np780z5e-np870z5e-np880z5e.html.

Read through (perhaps starting at the end) and I'm sure you will find more discussion about the graphics switching. There is also a thread about the Win 8.1 upgrade issues.

John