Sager NP5790 Review – Photos, Benchmarks & Impressions Inside!

[Joga]

I ordered my Sager NP5790 from XoticPC.com. It's a 17” desktop replacement – it's meant to sit plugged in on your desk and stay there; it would probably do some damage if you tried to use it on your lap for any length of time. This is my first ever laptop, so I don't really have much to compare it to, but I am a enthusiast PC gamer, so the majority of this review will consist of testing my shiny new Go 7950 GTX in real-world gaming benchmarks.

The Specs
-17” Glossy WUXGA (1920x1200)
-Core 2 Duo T7300 – 2.0 Ghz (Santa Rosa)
-Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512MB
-2GB DDR2 667
-160 GB, 7200 RPM hard drive
-CD/DVD Burner
-1.3 Megapixel integrated webcam
-Intel Wireless A/G/N
-Windows Vista Business 32-bit (ordered without an OS – got Vista free from my University)


Reason for purchasing
Some may wonder why someone would buy a gaming notebook. Why not buy a low-end laptop and a meaty gaming desktop? The answer (for me, at least): college. I go to college out of state, and it would be a pain (and a risk) to ship my big 'ol desktop tower and widescreen monitor back and forth all the time. Just taking my laptop on the plane is a much easier way to transport a computer. It's also great for LAN parties on campus, so I can just walk to wherever it is, instead of having to hitch a ride and spend time setting up. It's the convenience factor mostly.


Where and How Purcahsed
I bought it from XoticPC for $2202 (including $100 off for the pre-order special). I think it's a terrific value, especially considering how absurdly overpriced similar gaming laptops from Alienware or Dell are.


Photos and Build Quality
The Box:


Opening the box:


With the lid shut:


The accessories:


On the desk with Vista:


Left side with Zalman ZM-NC1000 cooler:


Front:


Right side (without the cooler):


Bottom:


Back:


Playing some Oblivion:



The notebook feels quite sturdy. There's a tiny bit of flex to the screen, but considering how large it is I suppose that's to be expected; it's nothing to worry about. No keyboard flex that I could detect. The screen hinges feel extremely sturdy: you have to use one hand to hold the base down when you open the lid. I expect to have many years of faithful opening and closing. I was actually a little surprised by the orange trim. When I first saw pictures of the notebook online I thought it actually looked kind of ugly, mostly because of the orange trim. I thought it was a bright, neon orange. But seeing it in real life, it's actually a pleasant light coppery color. It looks very nice on the black body of the notebok. The lid is covered with a lightly brushed metal, and it too looks amazing.


Screen
I was a little worried about the WUXGA screen. I had originally planned to go with a WSXGA (1680x1050), but changed my mind when I found out there would be a delay for those. I was a little reluctant though, since I didn't know how readable 1920x1200 would be on a 17” screen. I am happy to report that my fears were unfounded. The screen is absolutely stunning, and it's perfectly readable. However it is nice to know that I can increase the DPI to make the text more readable if I need to. While viewing color gradient test images, there is no noticeable banding or "steps" in the color, and while playing fast-paced shooters there is no ghosting. I'm also pleased to have no dead pixels.


Speakers
The speakers are a bit tinny sounding. However, compared to other peoples' laptops that I've heard, they sound quite good. They're certainly no match for even some cheap 2.1 speakers or a pair of headphones, but they get the job done. Thanks to Gophn for pointing this out: in the Realtek Audio settings, if you set the Environment to “Carpeted Hallway” and the Equalizer to “Soft” it improves the audio quality greatly.


Processor and Performance
I'm pleased with the desktop performance of the notebook. I had 2GB of RAM and a fast dual-core proc in my old desktop, so it's not much of an upgrade, but I have no complaints. Vista feels much snappier and more responsive than XP does, most likely because of Super Fetch caching all of my most commonly used programs, and because of Vista's more efficient use of RAM (un-used RAM is wasted RAM) One note: 2GB is the minimum I would consider putting in this notebook. Sitting idle at the desktop uses nearly 600MB of RAM. While gaming, depending on the game your RAM usage can shoot up to over 1.7GB (say, in a 64-man game of Battlefield 2142 at max settings)


The Benchmarks
Now for the meat and potatoes. I'm not a fan of synthetic benchmarks, so this will mainly be focused on what kind of framerates you'll actually see while you're playing games. Each game will be tested at the “best playable” settings – basically, the settings that I'll actually play at, that will give me very smooth gameplay without compromising image quality. I am extremely demanding of my hardware, and I'm extremely picky about my graphics. We'll see if the Go 7950 GTX can meet my expectations...

One note: Under normal circumstances (i.e., a desktop monitor), AA is practically a requirement. However, I've found that 1920x1200 on a 17” screen practically eliminates jaggies, so enabling anti-aliasing provides very little image quality improvement for a huge performance cost. All games were tested without AA and with Vertical Sync (Vsync) turned off, and using the stock 32-bit Vista drivers from the Sager driver CD.

FEAR
Tested using the in-game performance benchmark.

Settings: 1920x1200, 0xAA, 8xAF, all settings maxed except soft shadows off

Minimum: 34
Average: 56
Maximum: 116

FPS Distribution:
0% Below 25 FPS
18% 25 – 40 FPS
82% Above 40 FPS

Image quality sample:



Oblivion – Outdoors - Dense Forest
Benchmarked using FRAPS: my character runs due south from the Weynon Priory for one minute, going through thick forests and putting tremendous stress on the GPU.

Settings: 1920x1200, 0xAA, 8xAF, maximum in-game settings except for Tree Fade at 1/2, Actor/Item/Object Fade at 3/4, Self-shadows, grass shadows, and shadow filtering off; HDR enabled

Average: 20.35 FPS

Image quality sample:



Oblivion – Indoors
Benchmarked using FRAPS: my character runs through some Ayleid ruins for one minute.

Settings: (same as above) 1920x1200, 0xAA, 8xAF, maximum in-game settings except for Tree Fade at 1/2, Actor/Item/Object Fade at 3/4, Self-shadows, grass shadows, and shadow filtering off; HDR enabled

Average: 50.63 FPS

Image quality sample:



Counter-Strike: Source Stress Test
Tested using the in-game performance benchmark.

Settings: 1920x1200, 0xAA, 8xAF, maximum in-game settings.

Average: 158.32 FPS

Image quality sample:



Half Life 2: Lost Coast Stress Test
Tested using the in-game performance benchmark.

Settings: 1920x1200, 0xAA, 8xAF, maximum in-game settings.

Average: 96.97 FPS




Company of Heroes (Demo)
Tested using the in-game performance benchmark.

Settings: 1680x1050, 0xAA, “Automatic” settings (mostly high or max)

Minimum: 16.8 FPS
Average: 34.9 FPS
Maximum: 67.2 FPS

Image quality sample:



Medieval II: Total War (Demo)
Benchmarked with FRAPS, using the introduction for the "Battle of Otumba" mission. It's important to note that Real-time Strategy games are usually limited by the CPU, rather than the GPU. So if you configured your 5790 with a Core 2 Duo greater than my 2.0 GHz, you'll probably see higher framerates.

Settings: 1920x1200, 0xAA, 4xAF, all settings on "High".

Average: 18 FPS (perfectly playable for an RTS)

Image quality sample:



Call of Duty 2
Benchmarked with FRAPS, playing through the “End of the Beginning” level (which is also available in the single-player demo) for 3 minutes.

Settings: 1920x1200, 0xAA, Anisotropic filtering-enabled, maximum in-game settings, Soften Smoke on everything, textures on “Extra” setting.

Average: 32.47 FPS

Image quality sample:



3DMark06
While 3DMark06 is not a very good indicator of real-world gaming performance (particularly with the 8XXX-series, where it tends to score higher than it should), I've included it for comparison's sake.

Tested at default settings: 1280x1024, 0xAA, etc.

Score: 5311


Heat and Noise
The NP5790 is a little bit loud; not annoyingly so, but probably on par with an average desktop. In a quiet study area of the library, or in an average sized college classroom (say, ~50 students), it would be loud enough to distract others. In a library's group study/computer area, or in an auditorium-sized classroom, the noise level would be acceptable. If it's just sitting on the desk in your room, the noise easily blends into the background – it's not distracting at all.

There are two fans: the large one spins constantly and it's pretty quiet, but the louder, higher-pitched GPU fan will frequently spin up and stay on for a little while before calming down again.

I bought a Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler (as recommend on these forums) to keep my notebook cool. It's very quiet (although you can hear a difference between the lowest and highest fan setting, but it's not really noticeable unless you're paying attention to it), and it fits my 17” notebook perfectly. The sides do hang over the edge, but the actual feet of the notebook sit completely inside the Zalman's frame. It also helps to raise up the notebook screen and tilt the keyboard for ergonomic goodness. Zalman claims that its cooler will lower your temperatures and decrease noise (by preventing fans from spinning up as frequently). Let's see how accurate Zalman's claims are...
(note: all temperatures refer to the video card core temp)

IDLE
The idle temperatures were actually the same with and without the cooler: they bounced between 40 C and 45 C. At 45 C the GPU fan spins up until it hits 40 C, then stops. The temp slowly climbs back up to 45 C and the process repeats. But how long does the loud GPU fan spin when you're sitting at idle (or just surfing the web)?

Without Cooler: The fan spins for 2 minutes, 36 seconds, then stops for 35 seconds, then spins up again. Repeat.
With Cooler: The fans spins for 48 seconds, then stops for 40 seconds, then spins up again. Repeat.

FULL LOAD
I tested full-load temperatures by torturing my video card with RTHDRIBL running at full screen 1920x1200 and 4xAA for about twenty minutes. The results:

Without Cooler: 60 C
With Cooler: 55 C

--------------

As you can see, the Zalman ZM-NC1000 has a significant impact on noise and heat. Not only did it reduce my load temp by 5 C, but more importantly, it decreased the amount of time that the loud GPU fan was spinning by almost two minutes. I think the purchase was worthwhile.


Keyboard and Touchpad
I'm used to the ergonomic split-style keyboards, so this "normal" keyboard took a little getting used to, but it feels fine. It's a full-size keyboard complete with dedicated number pad, and the keys are very quiet while typing. I LOVE that the CTRL key is in the proper place (bottom left corner), since I know some other laptops have the Fn key there. As for the touchpad, it works fine, although as a desktop replacement you'll almost always be using a regular mouse anyway. The sleep function button (Fn+F3) is a bit misplaced since it's right between the mute and volume down buttons, but thankfully it can be disabled.


Input and Output Ports
The notebook comes with 4 USB 2.0 ports, a mini firewire port, a card reader, an ExpressCard slot, a LAN jack, an old-school telephone jack, an old-school Serial Port, and S-Video or DVI outputs.


Wireless
I tested out the wireless briefly, and it seemed to work fine. Strong connection, and fast speeds. It supports the new Wireless-N standard (but is still backwards compatible with A and G), so it'll be good into the future. I don't have any bluetooth devices, so I couldn't try that out.

Battery life
Although this is a desktop replacement notebook, and it will almost never be off the AC adapter, I did test to see how long the battery would last. I tested in what I thought would be a realistic off-AC situation: just basic office activities and web browsing on the WiFi connection.

Settings: Default "unplugged" settings - LCD brightness at half, WiFi turned on, and using Vista's "Power Saver" setting in the power options. Ran until the laptop turned off.

Battery life: 1 hour, 43 minutes


Operating System and Software
CD's included: Nero 7 Essentials, PowerDVD 7, and device driver CD's: one for Vista and one for XP. Included with the drivers is BisonCam, a program that lets your record video from the Webcam. I installed Vista myself, so I can't comment on how they set it up, but I'm quite pleased Vista. It works well, and it has several new features that I think are worth it for the upgrade from XP - like improved performance monitoring, vastly improved Backup utility, etc.

Customer Service
I've been extremely impressed with XoticPC. Their customer service is so much better than any “big” company I've dealt with. Besides having Justin on the forums to answer questions, you can call them and have a real-life human pick up, or e-mail them and receive a prompt response: usually in just a few hours, in my experience. There was an issue with my credit card not being accepted, but once I got it sorted out with the credit card company, Xotic was quick to update my status. They'll definitely get my business again when the time comes for a new laptop.


Conclusion
Overall I am very impressed with my first notebook. Its gaming performance is excellent and well up to my (admittedly high) standards. The screen is beautiful and the build quality is terrific. I couldn't be happier. If you have any questions or benchmark requests, feel free to ask.

[Andario]

Wooooohoooooo!!

(I haven´t still read it, I just wanted to say Woooooohooooo first)

Thanks man

[Gophn]

Joga, please contact Andrew and get this review become an official one for NotebookReview.

This will be a great help for those that are looking into purchasing this notebook, we just need to see it in the News & Reviews section.

You will get paid for it too.

Great job btw.
_______________________
The sound quality is good, its need some configuration within the RealTek software.

Set the Environment option to Carpeted Hallway.
And if you want even more quality, set the Equalizer to Soft (as in Soft Rock)

Try it, it worked well for several people, using WinAmp especially.

[Agent CoolBlue]

very nice! Many thanks for the review but let me ask you and the other members here...are thos FPS rates good for those types of games?

[Andario]

That´s a pretty good battery for such a beast!

I would appreciate it if you can make some comments about heat, and specially noise (Can you hear the fan all the time? Is it "clearly noticeable" while typing and browsing? Does it come on and off, or is it continuous...) Anything you think can be helpful will do.

Thanks again, and congrats for the machine... ;-)

[Andario]

Originally Posted by lawlz_xD

very nice! Many thanks for the review but let me ask you and the other members here...are thos FPS rates good for those types of games?

Anything above 25-30 is considered "good". Provided that he used the max settings and max resolution for his tests, and that you can always lower it with very little impact (at those resolutions) thus getting higher framerates, it´s absolutely fine to play any of those games.

[Rickyz80]

thanks for the review. I really was looking forward to a real live person that had one of these machines.

[Hackman84]

Nice review! And I like the battery life
I would have reped you for it but couldn't...(You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Joga again.)
So many thx!!!

[Alias]

Hey great review!! And nice benchmarks too!

[poskok]

If you have any questions or benchmark requests, feel free to ask.

At least a couple of us are curious whether you got one with VIA or Texas instruments firewire chipset

Device manager>look up IEEE 1394 bus controller

Thanks