Sager NP9750

Introduction:

Well, I was one of the lucky few who managed to get my laptop earlier than what should have been (although it makes little difference now, since Sager just started shipping all the preordered 9750s, so now all of us can enjoy). Anyways, I’ve spent the past couple of days seeing how the notebook has been performing, and I have to say that I am quite satisfied from what I’ve gotten out of the notebook. Just to preface, I hope that I do not get anyone upset about what I have to say about this notebook (especially any 9860/80 owners). I have only been on Notebookforums.com for 5 months now, and this is my first review.

System Specs:

Sager 9750-V
•17” WUXGA LCD (Glossy 1920 x 1200)
•0 Dead Pixel Policy
•AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ (2x 2.4GHz)
•nVidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX w/ DDR3
•2048 MB DDR RAM (2x 1.0GB)
•2x 100GB Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM SATA Drives in RAID-0
•8x DVD+/- RW Combo Drive w/ 4X DL
•TV Tuner (Coming Later)
•WinXP Professional
•Internal 802.11g Wireless + Bluetooth
•3 Year Extended Warranty w/ Onsite

Total price came to a little over $4300


Pictures:

http://img358.imageshack.us/my.php?i...thlonx29yt.jpg
***Just a preview posting showing what the guts have (more to prove I really got it )

http://img361.imageshack.us/my.php?i...and645a7kt.jpg
http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?i...and645b3fu.jpg
***My two new toys this Christmas. Did you know each 9750 comes with one of these?

http://img361.imageshack.us/my.php?i...insides2xq.jpg
***The guts of the computer.


Order History:

I ordered the notebook on December 14th, 2005, the day after preorders officially began from PCTorque. Overall, the process was very smooth. I actually ordered back in Washington, D.C. and had it shipped to my home in Arizona, which worked out smoothly. The next day I called and had the 0 Dead Pixels warranty added to the notebook. No problems there.

The big surprise came at 1am on December 17th, when I received my confirmation e-mail that my laptop had been shipped out. Needless to say, I was pretty psyched out, but wondered if I was getting the right notebook after all (since I thought that they weren’t even distributing them until after Christmas). All was reassured by Wiley at PCTorque, and my laptop came home Tuesday the 20th at 5pm. The box was in good condition with no damage, and the laptop was (and still is) beautiful right out of the box.


First Impressions:

One thing that I should make clear at the start is that I originally ordered the 9880 back in June, but RMA’d that quickly thereafter once news set in that a dual-core notebook was coming out early August. Well, we all know how that turned out. So I basically went with my little AW Sentia for gaming (not exactly what it is designed for), and man it was tough . So basically, I view this new 9750 in light of the 9880. That said, I am much more satisfied with this than I ever was with the 9880. Boot-up time seems much quicker, and gaming along with overall performance seems more stable and better now that the 7800 GTX is used instead of the 6800 Ultra. The 9750 is just as heavy as the 9880, coming in at a little over 13 pounds with the battery.


Screen:

I went with the WUXGA; I was happy with it on my 9880, although the old laptop didn’t have the glossy screen. Man, that really makes a difference. Colors are much more vivid with the glossy, and it doesn’t appear to reflect like a “mirror” nearly as much as other glossy laptops that I’ve had (I can see everything behind me with my Alienware; not the case with the 9750). The matte screen on the 9880 seemed just “dead” in comparison. Another big thing to note for me is that I ordered the 0 Dead Pixel Policy. Now, I know some of you are probably wondering why I would throw away $200 just to avoid having a little black dot on my monitor. The reason why is that my 9880 had one dead just a fraction of a centimeter outside of the center (thus avoiding the standard policy), one stuck pixel in the upper-left part of the screen, and one partially-lit pixel dead in the center. From my point of view, I am already putting down more than $4 grand on a laptop; another 5% is worth the trouble and peace of mind. Overall, I have to say I am very pleased with the WUXGA glossy.


Noise and Heat:

The noise churned out by this thing is just as loud as the 9880; but I guess that makes sense as they are almost the same chassis. The option to do the heavy-duty cooling (by pressing FUNC+F2) is handy, as it cools the notebook down quite a bit when you are doing intense programming (at the cost of sounding like a jet engine), but the regular cooling setup is fine. I don’t have GetThermal or any other program on this laptop, as it quite frankly doesn’t seem necessary; the notebook appears to cool itself just fine. As is the case with all of the Clevo D900x notebooks, the worst part of the laptop heatwise is the left palm area above the GPU. While it is still very warm on the 9750, it feels like it is cooler than the 9880 was with the 6800 Ultra; you can thank the 7800 GTX for that.


Battery:

On the 9750, I timed it at almost an hour doing low-intensity work (like a virus scan). I tried it again while running 3DMark05, and battery time shrank to a little over 40 minutes. Of course, we don’t buy this thing for its battery life; if that’s what you need, get a T&L notebook, as even the 5720 doesn’t seem to last for more than 1.5 hours when gaming. At 13 pounds, the 9750 is merely meant to be a “portable desktop” as the saying goes, and it’s not like I am going to be gaming while on the Metro…


Keyboard and Touchpad:

The keyboard is by far the highest quality I have ever seen in a notebook. I have had a Dell Latitude, a Sony VAIO, and a Toshiba, and the Sager beats them all hands down. The keys are firm and stable, and do not make too much noise. Even the Sentia that I use on the go doesn’t come close to the quality of the Sager.

The touchpad is fine as well. I like having the Synaptics brand and find it better than on some of my friends’ laptops that have other types. It is also much better as well than the little joysticks in the center of those older laptops. The only complaint that I have here is that there is only a scroll-up/down area and not a left-right one (CORRECTION: FIXED AND WORKS FINE). However, I use my Logitech MX1000 Laser mouse most of the time, so I never really need to bother with the touchpad.


Webcam:

I don’t really have a need for it, but the 1.3M camera does pick up better pictures than the previous 300K. The only problem here is that I cannot find a way to change its properties and image capturing. Also, the picture comes out almost in strange sepia/washed out colors. For those of you who would actually use the camera (I won’t ask what for…) hopefully they can release better drivers or some sort of fix to correct this.


Speakers:

The highest caliber available for a laptop, and no different than the 9880. There is a wide-range of sound available to turn them to, and I couldn’t detect even a little bit of sound distortion. Haven’t hooked up any external speakers yet to test output sound.


Overall Performance & Thoughts:

Didn’t think I’d leave out the heart of the review, did you? To put it simply, the 9750 puts the 9880 to shame. I know many of you 9860/80 owners will be upset with my rather blunt statement, but this is just my simple assessment. It is not just the fact that the 9750 has the Athlon X2 in it, but also that it has the GeForce Go 7800 GTX and the 7200 RPM SATA Drives (yes, I was lucky enough to get the 100GB 7200RPM SATA’s before they went out of stock). So for those of you with the 9890, I can’t really compare the 9750 to your laptops just yet, but would still recommend the X2 (especially in light of the new article on AnandTech posted by Ebus5 showing that the new Core Duo by Intel is still not nearly as good game-wise as even the low-end X2's, albeit the Core Duo uses less electricity). The Cool 'N Quiet feature of AMD is nice as well, as it clocks down to only 1GHz whenever I do low-end work, and even while running games, it doesn't even need to clock up to the maximum 2.4GHz/core for the 4800+.

As I stated previously, the computer startup time is lightning-quick; all of about 60 seconds and I’m ready to go. The biggest difference that I can tell between this and the 9880 comes along when you are multitasking; I was easily able to play “HL2 : Lost Coast” on the highest-available settings while also installing “F.E.A.R.” and doing a virus scan. All the while, there was absolutely no drop in FPS. Thanks here go to the dual-core 4800+, the best processor that I have ever owned, and I don’t think I would even want to upgrade the CPU in the future (not that that would even be possible with the new sockets coming out for AMD). One nice thing about this baby as well is that it should be fine when Windows Vista comes out this time next year and still work like a charm. Compared to the 9880’s hyperthreading, the Athlon X2 tears it to shreds (overall, however, I do prefer the P4’s over the Pentium-M’s, like in my Sentia, because at least they have EM64T and can run some programs in the background, but not nearly as well as the Athlon). One thing that I do not like about the 9750 versus the 9880 is that the Athlon notebook has only standard DDR RAM, while the 9880 has DDR2. However, I honestly could not tell a difference in performance at all, so for those of you that are hung up about this aspect of the 9750, it is not nearly as bad as it seems.
Overall gaming performance is magnificent in this notebook. I was able to run “HL2” at the highest available settings and not have any lag. I also hooked up this laptop to my 8ms NEC LCD monitor and wasn’t able to see any “ghosting”.

Other games that I have run on the 9750 thus far include:
•“Need for Speed: Most Wanted” – runs perfectly at highest settings
•“GTA – San Andreas” – runs perfectly at highest settings
•“Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines” – again, perfect
•“F.E.A.R.” – runs perfectly, but had to turn down AA a bit to avoid going under 25fps, but even then it was only under about 30% of the time (and hardly noticeable).

One problem that I have been having however is that "Rome: Total War" is acting strange when I change the settings, but hopefully it's just the stock 7800 drivers.. I’ll be getting “Battlefield 2” in a couple of days, but from what I’ve seen, it should run better or at least just as well as the other Sagers.

I don’t have any benchmark programs, so I just ran the free version of 3DMark05 and came out to the same score as PCTorque (6770 3DMarks). However, I did notice that the score would increase (although only by about a dozen) when the cooling fans were set to maximum during the program. This part we can thank the 7800 GTX. It is certainly better than any integrated graphics…


Final Thoughts:

For the amount of money you’ll be paying for a 9750, you better get a good laptop. Thankfully enough, Sager delivers. I instinctively knew instantly that this notebook was a keeper once it arrived, and that is not something I am able to say about the 9880. While much of the performance gains game-wise are attributable to the new 7800 GTX, I feel that the Athlon X2 is also a superior processor than the Pentium 4, or for that matter than the P-M (although this one is for different uses). For those of you who have put off from buying a notebook for 5+ months hoping that the 9750 would satisfy you, your wait has not been in vain. I am sorry if I have not been too critical in my analysis of this notebook, but to be honest there is little to be critical about. Some minor grunts that I have with it are that the Bluetooth card is only 1.1 (thus slower than the new 2.0) and the wireless card seems to have a bit of a weak range (maybe just my model?). It runs great, has a beautiful screen, and will (hopefully) be able to play the next-generation games on PC in the coming 2-3 years with ease. I also have an Xbox360 on an HDTV, and lined up next to the 9750, I was equally if not more stunned by the graphics on the laptop. Whether your cachet is PC gaming or heavy-duty, graphics-intense work, I do not think you will be disappointed by the 9750. If you buy, you gotta go through PCTorque: these guys know computers. Simply stated, this is by far the best notebook that money can buy.