Series 7 Ultra NP730U3E / NP740U3E with AMD HD 8570M and optional 4G LTE

How is the screen uniformity for this laptop? Does it exhibit light leakage or IPS glow?

 

A bit of light leakage on mine, nothing to worry about.

 

Hey there,

got the 730U3E with I5, dGPU und a 256GB SSD.

Since earlier today 3dMark recognizes the dGPU and here are my results:

3dMark 06: 5610 Points AMD Radeon HD 8570M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-3337U Processor,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP730U3E-S04DE score: 5610 3DMarks
3dMark 11: 1363 Points AMD Radeon HD 8570M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-3337U Processor,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP730U3E-S04DE score: P1363 3DMarks

I have no idea why the 06 Score is that low, especially if you compare it to the quite good 11 result.

 

that's really weird that the 3dmark06 results seem like a score you'd find with integrated video cards. maybe you gotta switch the settings for it so it runs on high performance?

the 3dMark11 score places it where the GeForce GT 640M LE would be, and higher than the Asus UX32vd I believe.

 

Thanks for the insight... I am looking to replace my Vaio Z2 so I'd hate to take a step back to having a non-integrated graphics card (although in a seperate housing it's not exactly "integrated" like my old Z1).

Remains to be seen I guess if Haswell can deliver on it's onboard graphics promises but I doubt it based on past history with Intel.

It'll be cool if they start offering Thunderbolt peripherals with eGPU... not sure if anyone is doing that currently besides Sony's proprietary one (though that is supposedly bottle necked by Thunderbolt... not certain if that is true, however.)

 

Results for 3dmark11: AMD Radeon HD 8570M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3537U,SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. NP730U3E-S01PT score: P1219 3DMarks

 

I guess you can compare the GPU with a 630M. Just did the Dirt 3 Benchmark, got 39,81 fps with high presets on 1360x768 - which is exactly the same score a Intel Core i7 2670QM 2.2GHz GeForce GT 630M (672MHz), 2048MB (800MHz) got.

See: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M - Notebookcheck.com Technik/FAQ

 

Here is a photo of my screen on my Best Buy S7U. The bottom has a lot of light leakage and the corners have this orange glow. Is this normal?

 

What image did you put on the screen to take the picture? Maybe we could all use a reference image to do the test...

 

the 8570 seems to be in the territory of the Nvidia 640M series.
In the Sony Vaio S thread, users often overclock their 640M to achieve performance of the higher 650M.

I wonder if the 8570 can be safely overclocked to similar performance levels?

 

I just used the black solid color wallpaper.

 

Took 2 pictures of mine in completely dark environment - yours seems to be not as good as it should be..




As for the 8570 - it's not quite as fast as a 640m LE, 630M seems to be the equivalent.
Used the Dirt 3 Benchmark for comparison where it gets 39,81 fps with high presets ans 1360x768. See http://www.notebookcheck.com/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-630M.63760.0.html for comparison.

 

The uniformity of mine is much better than the one of jefe - a little light leakage at the bottom of the screen, but that isn't noticeable in normal use.

View attachment 94695 View attachment 94696

As for the GPU, it's more on par with the 630M then the 640M LE. I get 39,81fps in dirt3 with high presets and 1360x768, which is pretty much the same as you would get with the 630M and a non ULV CPU.

 

Yeah, yours looks way better than mine. I'll probably have to go in for an exchange.

 

Thanks for the heads up!!!!

The 3dmark11 score is rather promising and I'm curious to see by how much it will change on the i7 model. The Dirt 3 frame rate is even better than what the synthetic benchmark suggests. Very nice! Another friend here said will later install Bioshock, so I'll also be looking forward to his feedback (if he can actually stop playing for the next 7 days ). Thanks to everyone for sharing their scores!

 

any of you guys play World of Tanks? Curious to what fps it can get at max settings.

 

Out of luck here. I've never tried WoT, but since it's free to play if I get to try it, I will let you know!

 

Hello there,

I bought the 730U3E-S04DE (Germany, i5, 6GB RAM, dGPU, 256 GB SSD) and also have some minor bleeding at the bottom but also a rather strong bleeding in top right corner, which is more prominent and annoying. I already ordered a second unit to see what it will look like with that one.

On a side note: What really bothers me at the moment is the adaptive brightness. I disabled it in the Windows 8 Energy settings and also disabled the Sensor monitoring service.

What happens is, that with a fresh start of the system the screen is really bright at the maximum setting and lowering it to about half is sufficient for indoor work. But after I put the ultrabook into Energy saving mode (standby) either by closing the lid or pressing the power button, the screen is much dimmer (although the maximum brightness setting was not touched). I can force the display to be brighter by pointing a light source at the brightness sensor. As soon as the light is switched off, the screen darkens again (but remember, adaptive brightness is OFF). After a reboot the screen is as bright as before and the light sensor does not respond to changing ambient light.

I want to ask if somebody with a 730U3E (Booma?) has experienced something similar or can check this on his/her unit. It is driving me crazy. The only option would be to disable standby mode, but honestly that is not an option.

 

Can't reproduce that. Turned off the ambient light sensor, went into sleep and woke the system up - brightness of the screen didn't change in the process.

@ Goren, at 1360x768 with maximum preset I got 23-24fps in the tutorial.

 

thanks! Although I warn you..it's a very addicting game

 

I just happened to find a/the solution by chance. I was browsing the UEFI/BIOS when I noticed another adaptive brightness option that was enabled. After disabling it, adaptive brightness stays off even after wake-up from standby in Windows 8.

Just out of curiosity, can you check, if your UEFI/BIOS option (under Boot) is also disabled?

 

How does the 8570 affect battery life compared to the HD4000 do you guys think? I got the HD4000 one, which has great battery, but I have the ability to trade it in for a 8570 one, and I'm on the fence...

 

Don't know if this will work for you, but what I did was go into the power options, change power plan settings, then clicked change advanced power settings. Find the Display, expand the options, click display brightness and the change the value for on battery and plugged in. I realized after playing with it that whatever percentage you put in will be the max for that setting. So if I switch it to 60% on battery, then the max brightness I can get even with manually pressing the +- screen brightness button, is 60%. You can choose to put both plugged in and battery to 100% and then you can just manually adjust it as needed. Hope this works for you

 

A did RAM upgrade today on my 730U, so you can check https://plus.google.com/photos/106411197660355170946/albums/5866263369487200209

 

HI all, i'm a new owner of a 730U3E-S02 with dGPU and i'm very satisfied with the laptop.
Now i have to install Linux (probabilly Mint) and i was wondering if any of you could answer some questions:
1) I have (via Samung Recovery) created and USB boot disk to reset the laptop to factory settings, is it safe to delete the recovery partition, shrink Windows 8 partition and create a new one to install Linux on?
2) the real thing that's holding me is the UEFI brick problem that seems to curse some Samsung laptop: does anyone know if this ultrabook is affected by this problem? is it safe to install Linux in UEFI mode or should i just reinstall windows in CMS mode and go on from there?

 

Is there anyone from Baltics? I'm curious when it's gonna show up here in Estonia? Official page says for Chronos it should have been March and regarding Ultra it will be mid April. Arrrrgh, Samsung always announce their products too early to be shifting the dates then and making buyers angry.

 

1) I think the Help of the Samsung Recovery is not clear about deleting the recovery partition. I do not know if you you can exactly restore all partitions they were before changing the layout. But feel free to try it out and tell us

I backed up the Factory image and that is about 15 GB, which is mainly one large *.wim file. When I booted this image the restore process copied around 33 GB, so it looks like its copying the image back to its partition and also restores the Windows "C:" partition. However, I am not sure about this, as I did not change the layout.

2) I booted the latest Ubuntu (12.10) from USB using UEFI after turning off "Fast Boot" (and "Secure Boot" I think). There were no problems, but this was not an installation.

 

Tried to restore from the Factory image on a bootable USB and yes it restores the partition layout, recovery partition included, even if 15 GB instead of 20.

 

Anyone tried to play World of Tanks? The game wont start. Not sure, if there is problem with dGPU (Radeon 8500m), so tried to switch to HD 4000, but with no different.

 

World of Tanks works fine for me - do you use the latest drivers?

 

Yes, i do have latest drivers. 9.3.5.0 for AMD and 9.17.10.2875 for Intel. Do you have dGPU?

EDIT: hm, okay. System think, drivers are the newest, but ias i googled, they are not... any idea how to download newer drivers?

 

I think there should be some way to know what energy scheme is selected (Fn + F11), at least what you select... Also, I miss the hard disk access light...

 

It would be great if you did ram speed test with 4 GB (dual channel) and 10 GB...

 

Too late. Spare 2 gb is already sold. But maybe someone else can test 4gb and can test my 10gb

 

I can do that. With what benchmark?

 

I'm getting resume problems with the wireless connection. The laptop wakes up fine but doesn't connect to my router. The icon shows it as connected but when local wireless networks are listed mine is 'limited'.
Click disconnect and then connect again and the connection is back and working.

I have the latest samsung swupdate thing drivers.

I've seen wireless problems mentioned somewhere else in this thread so just wondering if anyone had a better solution like a different driver from somewhere?

 

Intel 6235 is big problem ... Sporadic but recurring connection dropouts on an Intel 6235 wireless adapter
we are not alone...

 

Half the resellers have changed their listing from i7-3635QM to i7-3537U!? Unfortunately this model doesn't show up on the official Samsung page at all.

Could you please clarify which CPU it has?

 

I really can't imagine the quad core mobile CPU was correct, there's simply not enough space and cooling for that CPU plus a dGPU. The i7-3537U makes much more sense in an Ultrabook.

 

Thanks for the insights. As a non-gamer myself, I've tended to read general statements that I now realize failed to highlight critical differences: IGP = no "real" gaming"; low end d-gpu = meaningful modern gaming, if limited. I've also been stuck in the 3dmark 06 world and there the benchmarks between HD4000 w/i7 dual core and dual channel RAM are -15% - 25% low end d-gpus, while apparently more meaningful 3dMar 11 differences are near -50%!

Oh, and, thanks for holding the snobbery

Not sure if your post came after the one I received from photonion, above, but most of your questions are indeed answered by that very informative response. (Bottom line: you will lose virtually all the gaming chops of your admittedly inconvenient d-gpu from the PmD of your Z2 unless you get a model with the AMD 8570)

As for Thunderbolt e-GPU, I am fairly certain that Haswell will make standard (not like Sony proprietary) Thunderbolt ports fairly common, and that would open up a market for thunderbolt-based e-gpus - both pre-fab and diy. This, to me, is the future of gaming on ultraportable/Ultrabook laptops.

I find the screen uniformity to be excellent and have seen no "baclight bleed" as a few posters have. Both problems are somewhat unavoidable at full brightness of 350+ nit IPS screens. It's hard to observe uniformity issues over 80% in general apps anyway, and likewise the lightbleed, which is usually only observed on a black splashscreen that is not actually colored black, but lacks color such as the Windows 7 splash screen. Best to test yours out on "real" apps and decide if you notice it and return the unit if you do. Chances are the replacement unit, if needed, will be finel

see next quote, below...

Ditto. Maybe we should start a dedicated thread to this? Is it only with the S7 Ultra or other recent Samsung's with 6235, i.e., Series 9? Can't imagine Intel/Samsung won't engineer a fix. For now, it is simple to reconnect so i don't see it as a deal breaker. Just an annoying kluge...

 

Hi.

From the picture of internals it looks like network card is possible to replace? Is this standard PCI Express Mini? Can I change it to for example one of these: 3G Embedded Modules ?

Best regards.

 

According to the Intel 6235 datasheet it complies with the PCI-SIG PCI Express Half Size Mini Card standard. So you would need that form factor of a card. It looks like the space above the SSD could even hold a full size card, which you could maybe place there using an extension cord.

Keep in mind that you very likely have to change the antennas as standard WiFi antennas use a different frequency than GSM / CDMA ones. Antennas seem to be built into the display bezel, but none has yet reported if you can easily open it. I'm not sure if placing the antennas in the chassis would be a good idea since it might be well shielded due to the metal parts.

In case you want to swap the SIM card without opening the laptop all the time you would need a SIM holder with extension cord and cut an opening in the laptops body.

I myself am very interested in such a mod, although I'm looking at a Wifi / 3G combo module. Here is a thread about that card where I put all information I could find including antennas and SIM holders: http://forum.notebookreview.com/networking-wireless/593607-wifi-3g-pcie-half-mini-card.html

I am leaning towards the Samsung Series 9 though. Beside of being much smaller and lighter, it has the advantage that the WiFi card sits closer to the chassis frame and the antennas have a dedicated space between the hinges of the display rather than in the bezel, which makes them easier to replace. Although some people reported an inferior signal than if placed in the bezel


OR:
Sit back and pray that Samsung will keep the promise to include LTE as announced prior to the release.

 

Don't know the answer, but would like to. Mostly, I wanted to tell you you picked an awesome screen id, siteOwner! People will endow you with strong credibility as long as they don't notice the "Newbie" label, lol.

 

Hi all ,

My name is Santi and i'm from Israel. I'm new at this forum.

I've bought a month ago a NP7403U from best buy at USA.

The DRAM came default 4GB and now i want to upgrade ( 16 GB limit ).

I'm thinking about 4GB more and A-DATA is the current 4GB at slot #1. Someone can recommend me about the next please :

-Should I upgrade to 4 or 12 DRAM ?
-Should I buy the same manufacturer? ( A-DATA ) or maybe try a bit cheaper one ( Corsair, Kingston ).

- About the HDD, it's 128GB SSD. But before i've installed any application, the free memory is about 57 GB which is not enough.
Is there any way to reduce a little bit the recovery partition ?

Thanks in advance.

-

 

Well you can run other brand ram. I posted here the ram I bought from newegg. The ram the laptop came with has a latency of 11. I personally would get a lower latency card like a 10. They usually cost around $120 online.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

It would be nice if someone posted their results before and after ram upgrade. I have 2 GB onboard + 2 GB sodimm.

Passmark Performance test 8.0 for 730u3e 4GB Ram Memory Mark - 1739 (another pass showed 1838)

Angleika Schlächter with 730u3e but 6 GB ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tE9m_tqlVmk) got 1336

Here are my full results list.

 

Does anyone have any issues with the enter key on the laptop ? Quite a few times I have pressed it now and it hasn't worked or registered the press. It seems like you have to press it right in the middle of the key.

Anyone else notice this problem?

 

no problem with Enter key here.

 

Thanks, it wasn't clipped in right. I pressed it down and it clipped in place and now works good.

 

So about accessories and cases.

Would a macbook air 13" case or sleeve fit it good? Or is a macbook pro 13" case or sleeve a better bet?
Looking at the dimensions the Air is closer, so any air case should fit good. The hunt begins..
Anyone that has found/looked at a nice case that might fit? I've been thinking about this one which seems quite nice

Ultra:
Width 324 mm
Height 17,5 mm
Depth 224 mm

Pro:
314 mm
19 mm
219 mm

Air:
325 mm
17 mm
227 mm