Sager NP8170 (Clevo P170HM) Review by HTWingNut (resident goldfish - blub)

[HTWingNut]

Prologue:

Please excuse as this will most likely be a work in progress review. It's been a hard time cranking this stuff out the last few days consdering I've got a cold and my 2 & 3 year old kids are constantly in need of attention, so better to release in semi decent condition than not at all, well, at least since I'm not getting paid.

Sager laptops are one of the few companies that offer new technology quick to market, and typically with full featured and powerful components. The latest line of laptops are based on the new Intel Sandy Bridge platform. Despite the setback of the SATA controller fiasco, I was fortunate (or unfortunate as you may see it) to get a Sandy Bridge laptop before they put a halt on sales to fix the issue. Of their new offerings, there are three laptops that I'd put in the "gaming" category and share similar specs between their 15" and 17" laptops: NP8130, NP8150, NP8170.

For those of you not familiar with Sager, their machines are based on the laptops designed and built by a company called Clevo. Since there seemed to be some confusion in the threads here at NBR with this I thought I'd take a paragraph to clarify what this means. Clevo manufactures and builds the base machines and ships them to Sager. Sager assembles additional components like RAM, hard drives, optical drives, etc and labels them as their own. Even though Sager sells the machines on their own, there are a multitude of Sager resellers that manage the orders, warranties, and repairs before and after the sale. Most of the work is performed by Sager themselves, but some resellers offer their own extended warranties. There are Clevo resellers also which usually brand them as their own, and are boutique type brands like Mythlogic, Malibal (although they're really built by Sager, but that's another story), and Clevo as a barebones machine. Sager is more of the broad brand name for reselling fully assembled Clevo units, and Clevo rebrands are typically warranted and repaired by the one specific store that brands, assembles, and sells them.

Choosing a reseller can be a daunting task in itself. After soliciting quotes from a multitude of vendors, most here at NBR, it came down between XoticPC, LPC-Digital, and Mythlogic (Clevo). I ended up choosing XoticPC mainly because that's where I bought my previous laptop from, even though LPC-Digital was slightly cheaper but their local rep (babyhemi) was outstanding and professional and responsive. Mythlogic is actually local to me, and also were responsive and professional in returning their quotes. Justin@XoticPC is an outstanding rep also, and with whom I've dealt with in configuring and purchasing my machine.

I'll be making comparisons with the existing Sager NP8662 that the NP8170 is replacing. The NP8662 contains a Core 2 Quad Q9200, GTX 260m, 8GB DDR3. Hopefully this is relevant to a number of you updgrading from a Core 2 platform as well.


SpecS and Package:

The model that I purchased and am reviewing is the 17" Sager NP8170 based on the Clevo P170HM. It includes the new Intel Sandybridge platform along with the option for the new and uber powerful nVidia GTX 485m. Specifications for my machine are as follows:

Sager NP8170
17" 1080p Glossy
Intel i7-2720QM CPU
nVidia GTX 485m GPU
80GB Intel X25-M SSD
750GB Seagate Momentus 7200RPM HDD
16GB DDR3 1333MHz (4 x 4GB)
Intel 6300 Wi-Fi card
Blu-Ray Reader / DVDRW combo drive
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

One of the nice things about Sager notebooks is the ability to buy the machine without an operating system. It can save you $90+ if you want to supply your own, which is what I did. Most resellers will also allow you to remove components to save a few bucks even if you can't configure it on their website as such. They are also fairly easy to update components yourself like RAM, hard drive, optical drive, CPU, GPU, and mating heatsinks and fans.

The NP8170 also comes with a basic carrying case. Nothing fancy, but nice addition nevertheless. Considering all my past machines were 15" that was a welcome addition.

You haven't seen a power brick until you've seen this thing. It is literally the size of a brick, but I guess it has to be in order to output 180W. Other than the brick, there is just the drivers DVD, and in my case Intel wireless card driver DVD and PowerDVD 8 for Blu-Ray viewing. All necessary fasteners for installing additional hard drives are also included, plus a microfiber cloth.


Construction:

The build construction of the machine I received is top notch. No noticeable gaps, squeaks, misaligned panels, obnoxious sounds, or wobble (all of which I've experienced in past laptops at some point). Personally, I've never been a fan of all the fancy color trim, flashy lights, or other gimmicks found in other gaming laptops. Thankfully the NP8170 offers an elegant black aluminum brushed finish on the lid and palmrest, and even carries into the touchpad with distinct left and right metal buttons (not a toggle bar) separated by a fingerprint reader in the middle of them. The 17" screen fills the lid nicely without any huge bezel on the top or sides, with the 2.0MP webcam sitting in the center. Nothing fancy there.

Overall the design is simplistic, but professional. One of the only indications of this machine as being a gaming machine are the up, down, left, right orange arrows on the WASD keys. Nice touch, and doesn't stand out as gaudy or overly flashy.

An 8-cell 77WHr battery is housed underneath the machine also, held in place by two slide taps, one spring loaded, the other locking. Piece of cake to remove the battery. More on battery life later.

While the machine is larger than I am used to, the depth and thickness are no more than my current 15" Sager NP8662.

Sorry about the bad photos. It's my point and shoot that my kids got ahold of and destroyed the protective lens cover and has smudges I can't seem to get off, but here it is nevertheless. lol.





Keyboard and Ports:

Keyboards are always a personal preference, and I am quite satisfied with keyboard offered here. There is a little flex in the center of the keyboard, but only with a fairly significant force applied. It does not affect typing so far. The chiclet style is nice and requires a medium travel, but overall very solid and quiet. My only gripe with the keyboard is that they use a common one between the 15" and 17" models. Not a bad idea per se, but the keyboard doesn't fill the width of the machine, where you could have had better spacing of the arrow keys and number pad. For a 15" model I feel the keyboard is a great addition, giving users a full number pad, but in a 17", it's a desktop replacement and considering the size, should be able to accommodate a larger and better spacing of the keys.

Two indicator lights are on the right forward edge of the machine for battery and A/C power status. The remainder of the indicator lights are up on a panel near the LCD display for Bluetooth, wi-fi, hard drive, num lock, caps lock, scroll lock with the power button and indicator switch on the far right. Not sure of the choice of icon for the indicator lights which is a checkered sphere of some sort, but whatever, it works.

Underneath the machine are the multitude of access panels. The one large panel is held in place by four screws, and easily removed to expose the CPU, GPU, and two of the four RAM slots. The other two RAM slots are underneath the keyboard. More on that later. The other two access panels expose the primary hard drive slot, and the other one the optical drive and secondary hard drive slot underneath the optical drive.

The optical drive is housed on the right side of the machine along with headphone, mic, optical/digital out and additional audio out with a USB 2.0 port near the rear edge. The left side has the card reader, IEEE 1394 firewire, USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, ethernet, and CATV input (requires additional card). The back of the machine houses the AC power input, DVI, HDMI, and eSATA ports. CPU and GPU vents are also on the rear. My only comment here is the fact that I like the optical drive is on the right side. As a right handed person, this frees up the area where I use the mouse. Other machines I've used in the past it was annoying when I had headphones or USB dongles on the right side in the way of my mouse.


Display and Sound
This is my first laptop with a 17" display. I have to say the size feels much larger than a 2" upgrade from a 15", but I love it. It is also the glossy screen, but it is not as bad as I expected. Much less glossy than the M11x I own. Granted I believe the M11x actually has glass coverin the entire surface over the monitor which causes the glare. Nevertheless, this is definitely liveable. I don't see my ugly mug nearly as much as I do on my M11x. LED backlit displays are great too. Very even distribution of light and no backlight bleed whatsoever. Side to side viewing angles are good, but up down are a little narrow. I'd say about a 90 degree cone perpendicular to the surface (+/- 45 degrees), and it starts to wash out or darken. Otherwise very pleasing on the eyes.

The NP8170 houses a 5.1 speaker system, and have to say the little audio I've used it for, primarily games, is a huge step up from my NP8662. The sound is a lot more full and no tinny sounds. However maximum volume is really not that loud. I'm not much of an audiophile though, so as long as the speakers are tinny or scratchy, it's good for me.






Internals and Accessing / Installing Components:

As mentioned earlier one of the great features of the Sager machines are the ease of ability to upgrade yourself. Not only is it fairly simple, they don't void your warranty if you do it either. I installed my own RAM and hard drives and it was quite simple. The hardest part was installing two of my four RAM modules. You have to remove the keyboard in order to access two of the RAM slots, but once XoticPC showed me the trick it was cake. It requires removing the top strip panel and removing five screws that hold the keyboard down. Install the RAM, and reverse the process. Hard drives were simple as well. The primary drive is straight forward. It is held in place by the trim panel that you need to remove to access the hard drive bay. Only a plastic shield with a pull tab is attached to the drive for easy removal of the drive. The secondary hard drive requires that you remove the 12.7mm height optical drive by removing one screw, then remove two screws on the hard drive cage. Add your drive to the cage, reverse the process and you're done.

I ended up changing the thermal paste on my CPU and GPU with IC Diamond. This was very simple. Four screws for each the GPU and CPU heatsinks, and just pull it off. The fans are separate, and the GPU memory has its own heatsink so no need to have to worry about removing that just to repaste your GPU. It was actually almost easier than working on a desktop.


Windows, Drivers, and Apps:

Since I opted for no OS, I had to do a fresh install, utilizing an Intel 80GB SSD for Windows 7 and applications and a 750GB 7200RPM hard drive for data and games. Installation was simple, and the drivers DVD worked like a charm. No main components were detected by Windows 7 fresh install which is understandable considering most of this tech was released after Windows 7. In either case I had a fully functional machine to work with. There were no issues installing any drivers, only required a reboot after most all of them.

The only apps available were the fingerprint filesafe app which allows you to protect specific directories only accessible by using the fingerprint reader or password. Nice little feature to have. The fingerprint reader is a lot less picky than the one on my NP8662, which I ended up stopping using because it was more irritating that useful. There is also a THX sound app which requires registering over the internet before it works. I haven't noticed any real difference in using this app versus stock drivers to be honest.

Like past Sager models, a multitude of built in Fn key controls are useable within windows. Fn + Function key (i.e. F1, F2, etc) control most of these functions like toggle touchpad, camera, wi-fi, BT on/off, sound volume and screen brightness controls, as well as a play/pause function. One little known function key that someone here brought to my attention is the "Fn + 1" (that's the number 1 not F1) key combo will initiate a full fan speed. This fan speed will cool your system down quickly, but it is also quite loud. It isn't a high pitched sound, mainly a lower pitched blowing sound like a hair dryer on low speed.

I know many people are interested in touchpad features, but I usually use a mouse 99% of the time, especially on a notebook PC like this where I don't move it much. That being said it is a synaptics touchpad and supports multi-touch. The one thing that I didn't see was the ability to disable the touchpad when a USB mouse is installed, but the Fn+F1 key will disable the touchpad, so no real issues there.


Performance, Noise, and Temperature

Here we are finally, the fun and nitty gritty stuff. The architecture of the new i7 CPU's is supposed to be astounding. So far I'd have to say I agree. Having four cores able to handle up to 8 threads simultaneously, and overclocking on the fly to within TDP limits is simply bewildering.

For the first time in my life I've finally opted for the top of the line GPU, the GTX 485m. So far benchmarks across the web are showing it to be quite a beast. But with high performance comes heat and noise. Sager notebook PC's typically lead the industry in cooling performane though, and so far temperatures have seemed mnageable. Maximum GPU temps I've reached with synthetic benchmarks like furmark was 92C, but in actual gaming it never rose above low 80's. CPU even under Prime95 load for 15 minutes or more never exceeded 68C. I have one core that runs about 4C higher than the others, but that's somewhat typical of multiple core CPU's.

There are independent dedicated fans for the CPU and GPU, so a high temperature in one has little effect on the other. The system managed fan tends to keep the system fairly cool, however there is no user control in the BIOS or otherwise. The only option a user has it turn the fans on full throttle using the key combo "Fn + 1" (note that's the number 1 and not F1). While this drops system temperatures a fair 5-8C at load, the noise is also akin to a hair dryier on a low setting. Not such a big deal if you have headphones on, but using speakers or earbuds the sound is quite noticeable.

Idle Temps:




Now on to the benchmarks.

I am using all stock drivers from Sager. For the GPU it's 265.77.

First things first, Windows WEI score. You can see the system is well balanced with SSD, CPU, GPU, and Memory.



I also ran a number of synthetic and built-in game benchmarks

3DMark06 (I hate it but because people want it. )

3DMark06 = 19702 3DMarks
SM 2.0 = 7983
SM 3.0 = 8838
CPU = 5808


3DMark 11

3DMark11 Performance (720p): P2933 / GPU 2691 / Physics 6571 / Combined 2541


3DMark11 Extreme (1080p): X973 / GPU 872 / Physics 6560 / Combined 1056



3DMark Vantage

3DMark P14918 / GPU 12218 / CPU 44273



Lost Planet 2
Default settings (1080p, high detail, no AA)

DirectX 9
Test A: 46.8 FPS / Test B: 47.3 FPS


DirectX 11
Test A: 34.5 FPS / Test B: 30.0 FPS



Just Cause 2
1080p, all max detail, 4xAA, 16xAF

Dark Tower 25.07FPS


Desert Sunrise 34.26FPS


Concrete Jungle 27.19FPS



Resident Evil 5
1080p, all max detail, 4xAA

DirectX 9 Variable Benchmark 82.3 FPS


DirectX 9 Fixed Benchmark 85.5 FPS


DirectX 10 Variable Benchmark 79.6 FPS


DirectX 10 Fixed Benchmark 87.8 FPS



Street Fighter 4
1080p, max detail, 4xAA, 16xAF

Score 6283 / 59.77 FPS



Final Fantasy XIV
1080p (no user configuarable settings)

Score 2849



Call of Pripyat Benchmark
1080p, Ultra, HBAO On



Flight Simulator X (see procedure here)

1080p, Medium-High settings
Min: 32, Max: 63, Avg: 59

1080p, Max detail and traffic
Min: 17, Max: 55, Avg: 33


Battlefield Bad Company 2
There is no way to effectively benchmark Battlefield Bad Company 2 consistently, at least not for online play. That being said, I have been able to play consistently 50-70FPS at 1080p, all max detail, 4xAA, 4xAF. There is absolutely no lag or hiccups what soever.


DiRT 2
COMING SOON!

[Larry@LPC-Digital]

^^^^Very Nice!! +1
__

[mythlogic]

Awesome looks great!

[Justin@XoticPC]

Great Review htwingnut, Enjoy the new system! Don't hesitate to ask if we can help you with anything.

[Ryan]

Looks awesome. Just a suggestion,

why don't you move the small dongle to the back where there is the eSATA+USB combo port? The eSATA is affected by the chipset issue anyway, so I was going to place my small dongle in the back where it won't be noticeable, will free up a USB port(beats reaching to the back..) and will be the barrier to protect you from using that affected port..

Just my 2 cents.

BTW, your review looks awesome.. I hope the 6970m comes out soon so that I can run benchmarks to compare... I can't rep you now as I repped you recently, I will when I can.

[NomadicTendency]

Awesome review.. +1

[Quadzilla]

Yep nice job htwingnut

[ejay04]

Nice review thanks

[HTWingNut]

Feel free to make suggestions if you'd like any more info on the unit or additional benches, etc. I am hoping to bring in some comparison data from my NP8662 as well as anyone with a similar unit with 460m, 470m, and eventually 6970.

And Meraki good idea on the port. I just popped it in the first USB 2.0 port that was there. Keeping my USB 3.0 and single USB 2.0 port free on the left.

I do have a USB 3.0 hard drive too. I may do a bench just to see how well it fares vs. the USB 2.0.

I also plan on doing a battery test. I reference it in the review, but never mention it later, lol. It is coming. Another NBR member, mobiusblack, is the proud owner of MALIBAL Lotus P150HM (same thing as the NP8150 more or less) with GTX 485m and i7-2820QM got 3:05 battery with what he considered heavy browsing. But with the larger screen, 16GB RAM (4 RAM modules), two hard drives I'd expect less life from the NP8170. But we'll see.

[Thisisalamp]

Good review! Gave me a really good impression of the new models!

A question:
You mentioned the extra slots for the RAMs being inside of the keyboard. Would this be the same as the NP8150 you reckon? Resellers/Rebranders feel free to answer as well