Ethrem Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 Okay guys, I promised you all a review and I'm finally getting to it. This is my first time doing something like this so bare with me haha. I ordered my machine from XOTIC on May 7th and received it May 21st. I will do a separate thread for XOTIC. My specs: 4940MX, 32GB DDR3L-1600, 2x240GB Crucial M500 SSD in RAID0, 2x1TB Hitachi Travelstar 7200 RPM HDD (no RAID), 72% gamut matte 120hz LCD, and GTX 880M in SLI. So let's get down to it then. I did a small unboxing: The box arrived in perfect shape I chose XOTIC's premium packaging service: Here's the shirt: And then we get to the Sager box tucked safely inside: In my excitement, I opened the Sager box upside down: The packaging far exceeded my expectations. Now on to the rest. Some of these are a bit blurry, I just had gotten the camera that day as well so I wasn't accustomed to using it Sorry that I don't have one off the other side, I blurred it and deleted it but didn't take another one, I can post one if someone wants it. I ordered two power bricks. So basically, out of the box impressions are great. Sager packed it decently but XOTIC's extra packaging really made sure it arrived with no damage, definitely worth the extra money for the peace of mind if you ask me. Now to fire it up... My stomach sank on that. It was first boot. When I rebooted it though, it came up fine and I haven't gotten a single issue since unless it was my fault (tweaking the CPU). Here you can see the keyboard and touchpad The keyboard takes some getting used to being a 15" model, I found myself hitting the up arrow instead of the shift key on the right a lot (and still do it every now and then) but otherwise, its a well made, nice and responsive keyboard. Definitely a far cry from the chiclet keyboard that my 17R had (although to be fair, that machine had a full 17" keyboard). The lighting looks cool but I mostly leave it off. The touchpad is a completely different story. It being centered in the middle of the palm rest means that it gets hit a lot more than it should. Most manufacturers place it off center, aligned with the space bar, to avoid this issue. I have to turn off tap to click otherwise I have had some really unpleasant things happen like erasing an entire block of text, hitting the back arrow when on a web page, etc. Next complaint is the buttons. The left button has a dead spot. Hit it anywhere but the middle and you won't get a response. XOTIC has said this is not normal behavior and offered to replace it but I can't see RMAing my machine for the touchpad so I am putting up with it. Next up, system noise. The fans aren't as bad as my old M17x when under load but they do have some sizable noise to them. Honestly the built in speakers are more than sufficient for covering up the noise of the fans unless you're looking for it. Basically, its loud like a gaming laptop would be expected to be but not to the extent that it sounds like a jet engine is taking off out of the back of your machine. My impressions of the sound system are also quite good. The speakers and the little subwoofer do actually have pretty decent audio quality. It doesn't beat the Harmon Kardon system my old Toshiba Qosmio had back in 2008 but it does beat my 2009 Alienware M17x and it leaves my Inspiron 17R in the dust. Basically, if you care about audio quality, the internal speakers in any laptop won't do it for you. The X-Fi MB3 actually is useful for audio quality tweaks but some of them add clipping to the sound. Pretty much what you would expect from software audio processing. On the networking front, I opted for the Intel 7260ac + Bluetooth combo. Out of the box, the wifi was dropping constantly and when it would connect, it would display 3 or 4 bars with the router literally 5 feet away. In my process of system updates, I updated the 7260 drivers and the problem resolved and hasn't returned. On the bluetooth front, I'm very impressed. I paired my DS4 controller to my laptop using DS4 Tool and it has no problem maintaining the connection whatsoever. It also pairs with my Sony HT-CT260H sound bar without issue for some higher quality sound when I want it. Now for the hardware. I've been really putting this thing through its paces so I have a lot here. CPU performance out of the box is stellar. The 4940MX absolutely blows through anything that you throw at it and it asks for seconds and even thirds. This machine does not lag. Even when doing a benchmark that pushing the cores and threads to the max, the system still remains responsive, something I've never seen before when it comes to PassMark CPU tests which have frozen many a computer over the years. Out of the box, my CPU was set a bit wrong. It was set at 67W TDP instead of 57W TDP with a minimum multiplier of 33x as opposed to the stock 31x. As a result of the TDP increase, I was seeing temps as high as low 90s under load! Upon realizing that this was set incorrectly, I tweaked it down. These are the stock XTU settings the machine came with As you can see, the TDP and the base multiplier are incorrect. I don't have an explanation for the multiplier but I found out that 67W is the TDP HIGH setting in the BIOS. Even with the BIOS set at TDP NOMINAL, which is 57W, XTU reads the default as the higher 67W TDP. Be careful with this. When the system crashes or fails to POST and watchdog kicks in, it will knock the settings back to their stock 57W TDP and 71.25W Turbo Boost Short Power Max. The best I was able to get stable was what my system is now running 24/7 - a -51mV undervolt with 40x multiplier per core. It runs between 3.69 and 3.79GHz when all cores are loaded. I had a -110mV undervolt but Watch Dogs killed that big time. I ran a bunch of benchmarks and I'm just going to post them here, I was pretty impressed by the out of the box performance but the GPUs need work. Keep in mind that I'm running 32GB of RAM in a dual channel system so that can impact benchmark results. I don't have the images for the 3DMark runs, I thought I did. 3DMark 11: P13041 3DMark Firestrike: 9252 3DMark 11 Extreme: X5387 PCMark 8 Home: 4344 Overall, not bad. The PCMark test takes so damn long that I didn't do another one after driver updates so the performance likely increased. Most of those were with the nVidia drivers that came with the machine other than the 3DMark tests. If anyone wants me to run them again, I can certainly do that. Now for the rest. The display is amazing. I have never seen such a nice panel on a laptop. It easily rivals the panels of desktop LCDs costing 300-400 and the glare is non-existent. No complaints about it whatsoever, great viewing angles, great color reproduction (don't ask me about professional calibration but to my eyes, it looks exceptional). The lid has a LOT of flex, however, so be very careful with it. I would not trust this thing in a swinging laptop bag, knocking it in the middle would probably shatter the screen. If you have to carry it with you, get a backpack that way there isn't as much pressure on it. I can easily make the screen ripple with a press of a single finger in the back of the screen - the worst points are the bottom left and bottom right. Temperatures are acceptable. The 880Ms idle in the 30s and 40s and hit 87C max under load before the fans knock them down to the 75-80 range. Not ideal but I've seen worse. The CPU temperature completely depends on the TDP. If you don't like the temperature, turn the TDP down and undervolt. I have tweaked it so it runs in the 70s and only hits 80s under extreme stress testing load. I have MX-4 coming in on Tuesday since I have to repaste my GPUs anyway, I might do the CPU while I'm at it. I'll post my updates. I can't speak for power draw but I would say the 330W PSU is supplying adequate power to the machine as I haven't hit a performance wall due to thermals. I was going to do a review with the unlocked vBIOS and that may be added in the future but yesterday was hell for me trying to recover my cards after flashing a test vBIOS. I lucked out that my Alienware M17x R1 was able to reflash one of the cards then I used that one to boot the system and flash the second. No idea what that mistake could have cost me to get it fixed if I didn't succeed in flashing them myself. Overall, I'm extremely happy with the machine. My major complaint is the lid flex. They really should fix that. Other than that, this is an excellent machine and with the vBIOS mod, it should become ever more excellent. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to ask away. Sorry if this is scattered, I'm not used to writing anymore LOL! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich123321 Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 That 880M is a monster! I have a 860M and I only scored 545 on Heaven. Makes me wish I spent the extra 150 and got it from xotic PC. I hope you enjoy it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dacien Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 Waiting on mine to arrive. reading your post makes me even more excited about it, but I do hope the lid flex isn't as bad as you describe. I'm hoping it's more of a subjective thing, besides the fact that pressing on the back causes screen ripple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ninjasdontcry Posted June 11, 2014 Share Posted June 11, 2014 880M SLI *drools* I couldn't afford that upgrade on my new rig but the 870M has been performing well so far in Watch Dogs..Will wait til the new maxwells are released and think about maxing out my little machine..Congrats on your new machine it's a beast! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethrem Posted June 12, 2014 Author Share Posted June 12, 2014 Thanks guys. I'm loving the machine. Getting used to Haswells and Keplers respective heat output has been tough but I'm very happy with it overall. 880M is a bit overkill for what I do but I built a desktop with a 4770k and 780 Ti the other day and the laptop outperforms the desktop in all but CPU intensive things, very impressive indeed. Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Player2 Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 I just ordered my sagar np9377 last night with 4800mq, 16 gigs , 256gb msata , 2 x 1terabyte hdd, and 980m sli. I noticed no one has been on this thread for a while. Is No one buying these laptop or is there a more recent thread somewhere. Those in this thread still enjoying yours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethrem Posted January 30, 2015 Author Share Posted January 30, 2015 People buy them they just don't talk about it here. Personally I'd raid 256.Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchrisream Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 People buy them they just don't talk about it here. Personally I'd raid 256.Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk Buying this on the 16th with 4810mq dual sli 980m's 16gb Kingston HyperX Crucial m550 512x2 + 1tb 7200 hdd intel 7260ac and the 120hz display with the edp cable but I am not sure on how to connect it so that will be touch and go scary for me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchrisream Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Buying this on the 16th with 4810mq dual sli 980m's 16gb Kingston HyperX Crucial m550 512x2 + 1tb 7200 hdd intel 7260ac and the 120hz display with the edp cable but I am not sure on how to connect it so that will be touch and go scary for me Well my np9377sm-s is in the mail should be here Monday or Tuesday I was wondering if it is possible to OC the 16gb 1600 Kingston HyperX memory to 1866? Also does anyone have any experience installing the 120hz display I have the edp cable also but I am not sure if I am going to be able to do this myself or what, 1 last question if I am able to get it installed properly by some how getting down to the motherboard and plugging in the edp cable would I have to do some type of bios update or anything for the computer to recognize the display panel? Thanks guys I look forward to reading your replys (hopefully someone replys lol please someone help heh)...opps sorry I lied I promise this is the last question....at least for now, when I get this I am installing windows 8.1 that i bought with it what do you guys recommend I do first? Is there a certain order that drivers should be installed?....I looked at the drivers on Sagers website and there are alot of them it kind of makes it confusing as to exactly what are all the drivers I need I don't want to install something that I don't need and have it cause a problem....okay I am done and I am really sorry for all the questions but this is my first Sager laptop and I don't want to mess anything up, I am relatively computer savvy but I have never owned a laptop as beastly as this...again thanks everyone for your time...God Bless! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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