The New Samsung Series 7 Chronos Thread #2

Nice, thanks a lot. I will try to find that other thread later on.

I already have a decent SSD, so it would be nice to save money by swapping it over, and if I'm going to buy a machine as powerful as this I think it should also have a decent amount of ram, considering how cheap it is.

 

I posted a list of all the videos in the other thread. If you happen to find any of the links useful you can put it in the OP.

 

Called Samsung UK earlier today. They (or at least who I spoke too) have no idea about availability dates; I'm not convinced they were even aware of the new machines.

Maybe trying the buyer at John Lewis will be better - they must have some idea as they would have an agreement with Samsung UK and obviously details of the new Series 7 machines are on their website...

 

Did some further research into diagnosing sleep issues. Use "powercfg /requests" which shows what's keeping the machine awake. My machine reports that the driver \FileSystem\srvnet is keeping the machine awake. This driver has something to do with media sharing. It must be something I let it enable by default when I initialized my machine. The workaround is to type:

powercfg /REQUESTSOVERRIDE DRIVER \FileSystem\srvnet Awaymode

I didn't do any more research to see if there is more fine grained settings on media sharing that would allow the machine to go to sleep when nothing is being shared/streamed from the box. I believe this is a general windows issue and not related to the Samsung box in any specific way.


Not sure if its related but when I was running low on power due to not going to sleep. I lost some of the graphics on the Windows 8 metro interface. Many tiles were blank. I didn't get the graphics back even when I plugged in the machine. Not sure why this would be as I was running out of power, not out of memory.

 

GRRR! Spoke too soon. Not staying asleep. Having other issues with wireless. I also realized that the backlit keyboard should be turning off after a minute and wasn't. I contacted Samsung support using their built-in application. Enumerated the few problems I was having and was told that I should return it to the retailer for a new machine. I'm skeptical that a new machine will be better, but I'll be heading to Best Buy this evening to replace the machine.

 

Any idea when the new version with the SSD will be released?

 

It's doubtful that any North American SKUs will have SSDs, but the general consensus is that the higher end SKU will come out early April/late march

 

Why is it doubtful about the North American ones?

 

Because we know that there are 2 SKUs,
S01 and s02
S01 has a 1tb hd, 8gb of ram, etc
And at ces they said the maxed out was with a 1tb hd, 16gb of ram, etc.
And as well in Canada the s02 is on a reputable store's site with a 1tb hd

 

Okay. So if s01 is coming to the USA and s02 to Canada? Which SKU is going to Europe then?

 

OK, I tried John Lewis, they still don't know when they will have them, Samsung haven't told them yet.

 

Quick graphics poll:
1. Anyone with the 8770 from Best Buy successfully notice their AMD card being used? Steam, Windows Experience Index, right-clicking on the Catalyst task bar symbol (before the below issue) all don't see the AMD. The only way I know it's in there is Device Manager and GPU-Z.

2. I kept SW Update because they push drivers through it, I've deleted almost all other bloatware. Anyone download the labeled "new", generically-titled graphics driver? It is a new tile that has updates. SW notified me of it last night. After the update Catalyst won't work.

I ask these things because I am in contact with some email support person who is puzzled by my issues and is speaking with the product specialist. If it is more than just me experiencing this, I'd like to pass on that information.
Thanks! And any suggestions or education that can provided about my issues would be gladly accepted. I love the laptop, but would like to occasionally play a game and use my 3D work software.
p.s. posted in Introducing The New Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M! as well

 

Anyone in the UK - looks like it's available...

Buy SAMSUNG Series 7 Chronos 15.6" Touchscreen Laptop - Silver | Free Delivery | Currys

Appears to be order to store only, so maybe not available quite yet, but available to order and only £1099.99

 

Ordered and due to collect from store on Thursday, with Samsung 840 pro SSD - here's hoping they don't e-mail me to cancel or change order. Word of warning, this caused a security alert on my credit card on verified by visa, had to phone up and get my cards unlocked!

Expected to pay a lot more than £1100 for this laptop when it got to the UK, so this has made me really happy - roll on Thursday!

 

I have a new machine. The new machine is better or at least I've been more methodical when setting it up, but it still has sleeping issues. It will sleep when I actively choose sleep, however when left idle, it usually doesn't enter the sleep state. I used powercfg as I mentioned in a previous post. I checked the power management on the wifi card to make sure the wifi shouldn't prevent sleep and set it so that it will not be awakened via the network.

I guess there is some process keeping the thing from sleeping. At times, the machine has gone to sleep on its own, but mostly after I've just restarted the machine. But for the most part, the display turns off, but the machine doesn't sleep. At times the backlight on the keyboard turns on and doesn't turn off. This is particularly crazy since this should be a function of the hardware and using the keyboard. Maybe the ambient light sensor is turning on the backlight.

I'm a bit confused by the power light. I've seen It flash when the machine sleeps on its own due to inactivity.the user guide says it flashes when the machine is sleeping. But for the most part, the blue light is off completely when the machine is sleeping. And this is basically the machine as delivered by Samsung with all of the updates. At some point, I'll contact Samsung support again. But if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Thanks.

 

As a matter of interest (as I'm expecting mine to arrive on Thursday), did it work out of the box? Has it only gone wrong since running the updates? Someone on one of the youtube reviews managed to track this down to the ATI (sorry, AMD) graphics card driver update - maybe worth seeing if another update is available from either Samsung or AMD yet.

 

Dammit. I'm still waiting for the SSD version to come out.

 

Didn't work better out of the box. I thought it was better after updating, but in the end, I was wrong. For laptops, I think new display drivers need to come from the pc manufacturers rather than the video card maker.

 

been following this thread as i am coming to the USA tomorrow for 3 weeks and am keen to buy the 8770 model at Best Buy but one thing worries me - they have this 30 day return policy and lots of people on this thread say they have bought one and have returned or are returning after giving it a real working over etc

well what happens to this stock ? is there any chance i will end up with a recycled unit that somebody previously purchased and returned etc?
thanks in advance

 

Later today I am going to visit one of the Curry's stores that's offering 1 hour order and collect in the hope that they have it on display.

£1199 is considerably more expensive than the BestBuy price, albeit for a better GPU. If I like it in the flesh, I may still buy it from the US, the savings would pay for an SSD upgrade.

I'd really like to see the 13.3" Series 7 too, but no one seems to have it.

 

They send them back to Samsung, where they get factory refurbished.
Pretty sure it would be cheaper if you got one that was returned, and that it would say "open box"

 

Answer to #1:

Goto the Advanced Settings of your Power Options (Control Panel -> Power Options -> Advanced Settings). This is the same place where you can toggle your Adaptive Brightness off. There's a dropdown for your AMD Radeon. Choose High/Max Performance (I forget what it's called).

Then go to Catalyst, and pick the games you want to be played with 8770.

Before I changed these settings, I had no idea if my 8770 was working or not. After, you can really tell because the fan in the 8770 is louder and faster than any other fan in the system. It really gets going... this is only way I can tell. If someone has a more exact way, please let me know!

Also, the graphics for my games improved a great deal. For SimCity (when I could actually login to the servers), I can play smoothly on High settings when medium settings were a problem before. Steam still says it doesn't detect the 8770, but it definitely turns on during gameplay.

Answer to #2:

There is one grapics update called: Version 9.17.10.2963. DO NOT download this. AJ Williams posted a video about this ( New Samsung Series 7 Chronos WiFi and Sleep, Follow-up video - YouTube). It will f sh! up.

This is my first Samsung laptop and the customer support is horrendous. Granted, this is an exclusive product with an exclusive graphics card, so I'll cut a little slack. Hope graphics drivers and more support is given in the future.

 

Any luck? As I understand it, it's not available to see in any stores yet, and is only available online to order for delivery/store pick up. But I could be wrong - how did you get on?

 

Questions for owners of Chronos machines:

1. Does your machine reliably go to sleep if its been left idle for the amount of time specified in the power plan? Sleep means it really sleeping; blue power light either goes off or blinks. Mine usually doesn't go to sleep on its own. I haven't been able to isolate the conditions under which it will sleep.

2. Does your keyboard backlight go off reliably? Either mine doesn't go off after 30 seconds as I set it or it goes off and then turns back on. The keyboard seems to go on based on the ambient light sensor even if the keys haven't been touched. And then it does not turn off.

Thanks. I've been sweating with these little things while everyone else is concerned with the power of the video card.

 

I went to the Oxford Street branch, and they had a new series 7 on display. Not the model you've ordered; i5 and lower spec graphics, £899. Same screen, RAM, and HD. I was really impressed by the build quality, and the screen. The graininess was there if you looked at it, but at what I would consider normal viewing distance, not a problem, and overall the screen was much better than the vast majority of laptops on display, which seemed very washed out in comparison. However, Currys don't have a very good returns policy and the Best Buy machine is a better spec for less money if I get someone in the US to buy it for me. Now that I've seen that HD4000 actually does quite a good job with the ancient games I play, I'm not so sure I really need the discrete GPU, and I think I would really prefer something a bit more portable - so I've got a lot of thinking to do. But if you are sold on needing a desktop replacement, if 8 to 12GB RAM is going to be enough for you, and you don't think you are going to need to run a ultra hd monitor (needs DisplayPort 1.2) then this is a great machine, Overall, I think its only serious competitor for now is going to be the 13" series 7. My only concern beyond that is whether Samsung will sort out the driver/bios type issues.

 

My computer does not have problems going to sleep, the backlight does seem to function oddly.

I also second the motion: DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE GRAPHICS DRIVER UPDATE. Lost control of screen brightness. Had to do system restore.

 

Is the only way to get rid of the driver update to do a full system restore? I tried restoring to a point prior to the driver update and it was still there. Also, it didn't affect my screen brightness, it just renders Catalyst unusable.

Also, I've been in email contact with Samsung help for a while now. I also asked about controlling the keyboard backlight. Not having a manual setting is incredibly frustrating. This was the last email I received: "I’m waiting to hear back from the product specialist on the graphics card issue still. So hopefully, he’ll have a solution soon. In regards to the keyboards backlight, the only options I know of are in the Settings app."

 

You don't have to do a full system restore, or even a refresh. Just go to the PC Settings and then go to "General", shut OFF the auto screen brightness and turn it back on. I noticed the glitch after I uploaded the driver update and simply reset the on/off switch and it's been working fine ever since. I don't know if it'll work for everyone, but it worked fine for me.

On another note, I thought this computer was supposed to come with JBL speakers, they seem to be Realtec. I could be wrong, but I don't see anything in this computer stating the premium sound that it's been reported to be have in it.

One last thing, early on in getting used to the computer, I was having sticky glitches. I noticed them after I installed the SW Updater and it gave me the quick starter. Once I shut off the quick starter, things worked flawlessly again. Don't really need the old desktop start menu, with a little time, I've gotten used to where things are. If I can't find something, I just turn on the voice recognition and it finds it for me. The only issue with voice recognition, is it slows start up. So I keep it off unless I'm feeling lazy about typing or manually deleting emails. I can just sit there and say "delete" until the cows come home.

* Alot of people seem to have an issue with the WiFi, but I haven't noticed any issue with mine. It always shows all it's bar, the only time they weaken is when I go to the other end of the house and then go downstairs. Someoone told me getting a wi-fi booster will help with the signal. I'm on the lower level 40 ft from it distance wise.

 

I've had issues with Wifi, but only on 5g. On 2.4g wifi is fine. I uninstalled the Pro-Set Wifi software and let Windows take control, and 5g works perfectly again now. I think some of the technology in this laptop is newer than the drivers. Driver updates over the next few months should fix that!

 

Does your Catalyst work with the drivers update?? Or do you not need it?

 

Yes, it does work! The driver update was for the intel video card. It doesn't appear to have negatively affected the AMD catalyst. The only thing I can say that has me wondering anything, is when having gone to the AMD website to download their AMD driver downloader for any upates, it does not recognise I have the AMD driver. That may be something I have to look into. Otherwise, everything is showing as current and active and working.

 

Pretty sure the speakers are JBL but the soundcard is realtek. The computer software need not know anything at all about the speakers themselves, only the soundcard.

Good to hear about the wifi being usable, bad wifi range is really a big nuisance in a laptop as I use it almost all the time.

 

snosamie6, have you tried looking in the laptop's BIOS for "Fixed" or "Dynamic" GPU setting? Your issue sounds very similar to the issue I had when I first purchased/used my Envy 15 (2012 model) with AMD 7690m. It turns out that AMD's auto switchable graphics drivers really blows (see Anandtech's assessment of AMD vs. NVidia's switchable graphics), even now after Enduro (AMD's newer iteration of switchable graphics).

In a nutshell, when the GPU is set to "dynamic" in BIOS, Windows is supposed to control which programs should use/not use the discrete GPU--a good idea in theory, one which AMD still hasn't pulled off successfully! In reality, the dGPU isn't necessarily being utilized for the respective programs that are supposed to be calling for it.

If you do decide to try switching to "Fixed" graphics, remember this is in the BIOS (not sure how to access it on a Samsung notebook but it's usually pressing F1, ESC, or F10 on other notebooks immediately after powering it on--if you already know this, sorry; don't mean to insult your intelligence ). NOTE: If this does fix your wonky dGPU performance, here's something to keep in mind: I've been reading elsewhere that the Series 7 notebooks have had CPU/GPU throttling issues (supposedly, this is because Chronos 7 comes w/ a 90W power adapter when its hardware clearly calls for at least a 120W adapter), so my guess is that it's possible you may run into throttling if the GPU "functions properly" and therefore creates more heat.

Also keep in mind that switching to "fixed" does not mean that you can't switch graphics in Windows! It simply means that you have to manually switch to either integrated or discrete, usually by right clicking anywhere on desktop and/or doing so in Catalyst Control Center.

I hope that this info is relevant to the Chronos 7. I realize that as I do not have one in front of me, the settings/options/features may be a little different from those on my HP, but I thought I'd chime in because again, your issue sounds very familiar to what I used to have, and because I haven't seen any suggestions for the BIOS method yet.

 

Catalyst, as I said, is working fine. I had it run my windows browser and I had no issues. The thing that was confusing me though, was the fact that even with all the updates to drivers and such that Samsung has you download after purchase, none have come through for the AMD HD8700 series driver. When I ran a manual update, it was not recognized, which made me scratch my head. So I went to the AMD Radeon site and downloaded their auto detect driver and that also didn't recognize my driver. If the driver wasn't working, then when I set my browser to it, it should have malfunctioned and it didn't. The intel 4000 driver would not have functioned for it in its place by default.

So after talking to Best Buy on the phone, they were useless and talking to Samsung, who for the most part seems unaware the product has been released, I went to the local Best Buy and talked to the Microsoft guy they have on staff. He played with the computer and verified that the AMD driver is working, he also verified that the computer can't update the driver, or that the AMD site, or it's downloader recognize it either. AMD, at this time is not supporting the driver, what we have in the computer currently is the BETA! Samsung, Best Buy and AMD have left it to you and I to figure that out. Once updates are available, we will get them they will update and things'll be as they should. However, I think I am annoyed that I had to spend that much time figuring that out. If you spend a little time on the AMD website, you'll notice that while they have information about their 8800 and 8700 graphic drivers, they aren't available.

So, if you go to your device manager, click on display drivers and the AMD 8700 series, the first tab will tell you it's working properly, if it doesn't, you do have an issue. In the events tab, the word [null] simply means no updates have been made, not that the driver is defective. Once we start getting updates, the events log will change. You can see that simply by looking at the events log for the intel 4000 driver.

So, if your thinking the driver isn't working, just assign a program to run it, if it doesn't work, yes you have a problem. If the issue is with attempts at updating the driver, you can't do so currently.

 

Quick question for all the owners who have swapped the HDD for the SSD and restored the system in it using the Samsung Recovery software:
Can you please download AS SSD (it's a 280 KB executable benchmark, no need for installation, supports German and English) to check if the SSD is aligned? Because I' know that with a clean install the SSD is always aligned, but I'm not sure what happens with a recovery image.
It should be enough to post a screenshot of the result.
I would appreciate it very much! Thank you!

 

Since it seems you got your answer in the other thread, and I thought it was kind of interesting, I figured I should post a link to the answer from here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...es-7-chronos-amd-hd8870m-294.html#post9117128

 

This two thread thing is getting ridiculous.
Not your fault, but it doesn't make sense for people to have to ask the same question in two different threads, when both threads are about the same thing.

 

This is absolutely true, I can understand a owner's thread, but these 2 threads are the same thing...

 

Well done It resulted to be aligned :thumbsup:

Agree

 

This one doesn't have endless discussion about grainyness, though. That helps a lot.

 

Hahaha must admit it!

 

It's just a question of time...

 

From the impression I got, the value of the first thread was diluted by what seems to happen with all pre-announcement threads: A million speculative and wishful posts before anyone actually gets their hands on a unit. And then another million posts asking highly intricate and particular questions to the first guy who actually DOES get his hands on a unit.

Only after that does it develop into a real owners thread, with real owners exchanging real information, and real questions and real answers.

I know, I am exaggerating. My intent is not to insult anybody. Speculation and chat is harmless fun while waiting for product release. But most of you probably recognize what I am referring to.

 

I have a question about the throttling that many people seem to be worried about:
I saw some people suggest that the device is throttled because of a lack of power rather than excessive heat, does this mean that if one could get a larger power adaptor, the throttling would go away?

 

Possibly
No one knows yet

 

I'm assuming the 8870M version doesn't come with an SSD here in the USA. If that is the case, is it worth it waiting for the 8870 version or just getting the 8770 version now?