5720 Review by doc_simpleHello boys and girls, here we go again! Here come the pics!!
As this is a follow up to my 5320 review I will be abbreviating anything that’s a repeat.
Packaging, same. Stuff with it, same but slightly nicer (while still not great) carrying case.
External casing: One of a couple points where I feel the 5320 comes out ahead. The 5320 had a real nice feel to the casing that this one does not. Its still pretty nice, except for the screen. Not all machines have the separation anxiety at the bottom of the screen, but it still does not have the tight feel of the 5320. Also the keyboard wrist wrest area looked more eye pleasing and sturdier. It might not be but these are my visual data.
Some pics of the outside:
Keyboard: Different feel than the 5320, not as much click noise. Like them both but different. This one also has the number pad. Nice but it takes some getting used to. Slight edge to the 5320.
check out the number pad, its a little funky to use:
Touchpad: Awesome material, incredibly sensitive, is driving me nuts. Every time I brush the damn thing I end up typing in the middle of a paragraph. Love it when using it, hate it when using external. Need updated controls from the manufacturer to adjust sensitivity or temporarily disable. But its definitely a step up from the 5320.
check out the touchpad and the power brick, cd is in there for size reference, and to make those who dont have the game feel bad :"))
Screen: Ahh, the screen. So amazingly beautiful, it really blows me away. I was somewhat unhappy with the 5320 screen. It is matte finish multi-angle viewable but not bright enough. And I did not like the matte finish. Now I am happy :’))
The best screen I have seen. Well, except maybe for the ridiculous huge mac screen I saw at Best Buy but that really does not count…..or does it?
Hakigo had some problems with his screen separating. While I dont have that issue they seem a bit cheaply connected:
But the screen looks great:
NOW WITHOUT THE SCREEN GUARD:
and of course:
Sound: Same crappy sound, same crappy speakers.
Some users rave about theirs, that’s cool. I just don’t like it, will prolly get an external sound card. However, some wonderful, splendid individual did discover that by disabling IrDA in the device mangler the crickets disappear. Happy friggen day!! Apparently this works for both the 5720 and the 5320. We should all worship the ground he/she walks upon!
Wireless: Had some issues with this. Found some settings that allow you to divert more power to it and now it works real good. In Network connections right click “Wireless Network Connection” click the configure button and select the property you wish to change. I recommend “Transmit Power” and “Power Management”. These may be set by Sager, I installed my own OS and had to adjust them. Also found a great firmware for my Linksys but that’s another story…..
check out the insides:
the memory:
Heat: Not been an issue. Stays cooler than the 5320, seems to me anyway. Might be the bigger form factor because the 7800 sure as hell uses more….
maybe this is why it stays cool:
supporting evidence for the big heat sink being on your video GPU:
Power: well, batteries anyway. They don’t last long. I could probably eke more out if I turned some settings down, but I don’t want to. With the wireless and the screen cranked up, not even playing games, I got down to 30% in about an hour. Not great, but that’s not why I bought it. Once again, I don’t like screwing with battery times, so if you want more than my 1.5 hour approximation, someone else may have to pony up. Although, on second thought if someone sends me a link to a good battery life tester program I might try it out.
Addendum: the power brick even stays moderately warm after hours of Warhammer and benchtesting. Matter of fact the whole machine feels a little warmer but not uncomfortable. Almost as if this is a US Northwest model, designed to add a little heat for under the covers :0
The plug at the back does not seem as stable as the 5320, although my memory could be playing tricks on me. It works fine now but I sense the potential for a need to replace at some point.
Nitty Gritty Benchmark Dept.:
Fan Ran on high the whole time, not overly noisy. Something that could easily be remedied with a decent sound card and some bose noise-cancellation headphones, in a dark room with a comfortable chair, oh how creepy would FEAR be then ? Eh? Well not much at all. What I played, well more on that further down.
Pi Modded: run to 2 million places in 1 minute 37.922 seconds
3dMark 03: 14837
3dMark05: 6740….not as high as some I have read for this machine, but
run with some oc'd 81.85 Forceware drivers and now you get
2888 marks
did this 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak'
now you must add a DWORD Value, do this by Clicking 'Edit > New > DWORD Value'
now you must call it Coolbits, finally just right-click on the new DWORD Value and set it's 'Hexadecimal' value to 3.
on this link:
http://overclock.net/graphics-cards-...-your-gpu.html
and set the core to 47.5
mem core to 119 and it seems hotter yet we also get closer to 7000 #DMarks and maybe some AA in FEAR.
Ran HDTune: min: 1.5 MB/sec, max: 32.6, ave: 25.3 (some odd, quick spikes lowered the average some, got abot 47 ave on my home box, also SATA)
Access time: 21.7 ms, Burst Rate 67.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage: 4.5%
And, eh, oh yeah. Played some games, heh.
Warhammer 40k + Winter Assualt: Have not run fps on this yet but can state that all settings available are maxed and I get not a hiccup. No Pause, no noticeable game lag, barely any lag at all playing with 2 buds, one ten miles away on my subnet and the server being 20 miles away. Now that server sounds close but the signal has to worm through Comcast and onto the blessed, glorious Verizon optical fibre where it hits my friends beast of a server. The packets switch from cable to optical and back for each round trip. Long story short, sweet pings. The only occasional hiccup is from the wireless. Have to work on that some more. Great Game in all its blood splattered glory.
Escape From Butcher’s Bay: Some good news, some bad news. I could not play this with god-like settings on. I should say I could but I don’t want to. I gave up having to watch poor frame rates a few video cards ago and I isn’t starting again. I tool AA off and made some other real minor tweaks leaving everything else maxed and it ran smooth as a baby behind. Riddick is so the man. Again fps to come.
F.E.A.R.- also a little disappointing. Auto Detect set computer to "minimal" and graphics to a custom setting that looked mostly medium with no anti-aliasing and still not running smooth. Set computer to medium and graphics to all medium and it runs mostly good some chop. Firts setting reported 18 fps average and the second 40. Even though that avergae was 40 75% was under 25 fps, must have had some spikes when staring at the all white wall. I had hoped to see this card kick a little more booty. Admittedly, the game still looked sweet and it is a pig. I also just started playing with the OC settings on the card and for the first time I really noticed some heat being generated.
Heres all my FEAR settings:
and what do we get with those settings:
WITH 81.87 DRIVERS AND NO !$!#* SCREEN GUARD:
very nice results indeed:
thanks to Super KW for letting me know the updated drivers were out....
not to bad!
Probably some more tests to come, as I feel the need. Please send me any particular tests you might want run, where to get them from. I will only execute the ones I feel safe with, so use your own judgement.
I will have more to add as time goes by, other comments, evidence of improvements, problems not seen, ect.
Any decent requests that provide good info on what you want to know, how I might find it out for you and maybe some software to get it done will certainly be attempted.
Any recommendations for better drivers will be taken into consideration and probably be tested if I feel they are compatible and safe.
My Setup:
55720 V
Pentium M 760
Sata 80
GeForce 7800 go GTX 256 meg DDR3
17.0" Wide Viewing Angles WUXGA Active Matrix LCD Display with Super Clear Glossy Surface
1 gig Dual Channel DDR2 Infineon
the rest is pretty standard hardware for the v-series
MS XP Pro, moderately tweaked for performance. I Leave a lot of stuff others might remove because I do use the services. For testing purposes tonight I left a light load of programs in resident memory to give a more realistic score.
Forceware 81.85 with built in “Go” hardware support built-in stock from NVidia.
Nothing OC’ed. I want to keep this hardware around a bit. May feel I need OC later and will cross that bridge when I get to it.
The rest of the drivers are the stock ones from Sager. This will change soon as I finish the quest for the ultimate driver collection of the minute.
On second thought, I will probably add some pics soon too.
Hope this helps, be merciful in your condemnation if it doesn’t.
Yours In Silicon Carbon full on Addiction,
doc_simple
OK Im scared now. The settings for the mem clock speed were set to "2D" and were running at 600 MHz, when switch it to "3D' it jumps to 1.2 GHz!!!!!!! I ran detect optimal and it set to 447 core clock and 1.19 GHz mem clock. Whats the deal here? Was my vid card defaulted to half speed or did I just jack it up to overheat/burn out land?
