I love this laptop btw, it really does plow through games! 
I ordered the shell with the video cards and put in the processor, memory, hard drive and OS myself. I really liked putting it together too, I got a good looksie inside and took note of all the messing around I'll do when my warranty runs out hehe ~8D.
Ok, the specs are:
Turion MT-40 (2.2ghz 1meg cache 25watt processor) / (I could not find the MT-44(2.4ghz 1meg cache 25watt) as being released yet, I could get the ML-44(2.4ghz 1meg cache 35watt processor) but I think I would prefer to get the lowest wattage I could for the same performance. There are other ML/MT versions but they are lower clock speed/lower cache models that a gamer is just not interested in. Lets face it, no truely mobile person is going to plunk down moolah on this laptop.
One more thing, in case your wondering what the difference between the ML and MT processors are, just the wattage 25watts versus 35watts. At least thats all I could find.
2 gigs of OCZ DDR1 400 / There are only 2 mem slots for DDR1 400 mem sticks, No gamer would grab this beatie and settle for only 1 gig of mem, so I grabbed some OCZ 1 gig sticks that were supposed to be rated at cas 2.5, but they are cas 2.5 at 166mhz not 200mhz fsb. I tried to chance that and was met with a reboot hehe, so no biggie. I suppose you could search the web high and far for some cas2.5 sticks, but I'm betting they don't exist.
80gig Hitachi 7200rpm 8meg cache HD / I own a 9860 with a 60gig drive of this speed and the 80gig seems to be much faster for some reason, dunno if its chipset/cpu or HD, but it feels/boots and scoots along at a much quicker pace. I coulda got a 100gig or 60 gig, but hey the price over a 60 gig was pretty much just 1$ and by the time I fill up just 40 gigs I'm dumping old stuff already, so eh, I'll save a little bit and just get the 80.
OS used is XP pro sp2 / Already have piles of older OS's from old and retired machines, I just installed one of them on this and went to MS to activate and it took it hehe, so all the roomers that Microsoft eased up and lets you re-use old OS's without a phone call to support are true I guess. Saves me some 70$ or so on an OS purchase.
Twin 7800GTX 256 meggers / I coulda purchased without any video cards or just one, but come on, why on earth would a gamer settle for one when his machine would take two!?!
I had to work 12hrs today and I'm too tired and lazy to break out the Digi cam, so I will post pics later of the machine with my 9860 next to it for scale. Seems peoples LOVE pics for some reason, and uhh cause most other reviews show two or more laptops near each other so why should I be any different?hehe
Anyhoo, here are some fast and dirty benchies most of them with CPU and video overclocking..
3dmark01 just over 27k (not bad at all for notebook!)
3dmark05 11,100 (this is roughly the same score as my desktop which is a vapochilled opty 180 @ 3.1ghz with an overclocked X1900!, in crossfire I get around 16,500 though) (this score seems to be the highest of any laptop I could find anywhere!)
3dmark06 5900 ish ( I don't think I had the processor overclocked for this, I'll do it again with some serious tweaking on memory and processor)
Source video stress test with default settings was something like 158fps and with HDR set at full (if available) and resolution set at native was 130fps. Dunno if this included overclocking on the processor either.
These are rough quickies, I was so excited when I got it up running that I just hammered the installs and hit the gamming scene. I have steam/oblivion and EQ2 on it, so I'll scope out the fps as I get going in games.
------
tweaking stuff :
Video is the standard stuff, just run the utility in coolbits to get like 485/1.5ghz mem. This utility seems to pick different overclocks everytime I run it, it's sorta flaky Imho. Drivers are a whole bag of doodoo.. Too many drivers to chose from, and Laptopvideo2go inf's don't have SLI options, so I cannot use them. I did find a newer 5950 driver on Eurocom's site though, it's like version 84.XX where the Sager one is 83.xx. Seems every driver gets different scores in all the different games/benches. Sheesh, and they love to had ATI catalysts...
Processor tweaking can be done using rightmark and clockgen for Nforce4. Rightmark lets you lower or raise voltage and multiplier to the processors minimum or maximum, so you really cannot hurt or burn out your laptop. Even under max voltage, you are totally inside the processor (and laptop's) power supply hardware. I could hit 2.4ghz out of my 2.2 processor which easily falls under the rated capacity for cpu specs and wattage for this machine, so I feel totally comfortable. I did try something cool, lowered the multiplier down from 11 to 10 and raised the fsb to match 2.4ghz and it ran and worked fine! The PCIE bus and pci bus were both locked, but the memory ran up to near 240fsb which was a push, but the OCZ held up nicely and game me a boost in one of the benches I posted up there. I figured even overclocked the processor was still around or under the 35watt rating for the ML-44 35 watt 2.4ghz processor, so no worries. I do wish I had the unreleased MT-44 (2.4ghz) to see if it would run at 2.6ghz... I may break down and return this processor and grab an ML-44 in the end though.
Memory tweaking can be done using A64 tweaker.60 beta, I was able to lower some stuff and get some boostage, but I had not downloaded a utility to test the settings, so that stuff was hard to see in benches. I just did not have time at work to play with them too much, but I can see the SODIMM memory is NOT up to par with desktop stuff. A pitty really, I bet if OCZ came out with "gamers" memroy for high performance laptops, they would run away with a huge pile of money. I bet you would see a lot of performance increase from the 3-13-4-4 settings if you could get some 2-8-2-2 DDR400 stuff. Ah well..
Heat, weight, fan noise, battery life and screen? This thing at it's worse gets just warm, probly not even as much as my 9860 (3.8ghz, 2 gigs, X800). Fan noise? Damn near silent! I was blow away at how quiet this laptop is!!! When I put it together I was carefull and used all AS5 on every surface that would allow it (videocards, processor). I NEVER remove thermal pads on stuff that have a clearance issue, use AS5 only on stuff that will not conduct electricity and have a surface to surface contact. Just slap a dot or AS5 dead center and push the heatsink down, the goo will smear outwards pretty evenly. Don't believe me? Try it, you will be suprised. I usually do this twice to see how contact is, I am also a pretty good judge of how much is needed. (Note: there seems to be no FN-Fx key that turns the fans on full speed, I will email Sager about this, I rather found that a handy feature of the 9860) I could not tell if the fans ran up or down, I could litterally not hear them that well while messing around. I had a radio in the background and that was it. Very quiet system. Weight, hey, it's heavy, just like the 9860 is, I don't care how much, but they are near the same. With the supplied backpack, it is comfortable to pack around. The backpack is actually cool and not huge or anything, I was VERY happy about getting it!
Screen? Beautifull and a little brighter than the 9860. What else is there to say? I have no dead/stuck pixels so it is perfect! Battery life? Dunno don't care hehe... Never use them, I hope someday they do away with a portable gaming system batteries, just adds power requirement, charging electronics weight and ACPI crap in windows. All the crap gamers DONT want!
Any questions?
Here are some pics, mind you they are with my cell phone so detail is average.
Here are all 5 fans on the bottom
video cards with heatsinks on them, my fingers are touching the chips with the pull-tabs above them, the heatsinks are like clamshells with the heatpipes extending out to the back of the machine. Were one to upgrade them, you pull the tabs carefully and the whole shebang pops out, the heatsinks then come apart into two pieces, one bottom and the visible part on top that you see here.
My fingers span the actual squarish video card itself, you can actually see the video card through parts of the heatsink.
Fingers spanning the length of the while topside video card heatsink. Not too long at all..
Moving on over to the left of the video cards under the same one single large panel, you will see the CPU heatsink. Two fans here, one small one that actually vents downwards towards both the memory and the bottom towards the two expansion card slots. Heat is probably pulled out via the bottom fan on the 1st picture in this post. The main fan pushes the heat out the side of the machine, it does a good job too, I don't hear it running, but I feel the heat. My finger and thumb are on the fan exits.
Screwdriver points to the socket 754 under the heatsink. Turions have no heatspreader, so the heatsink mounts directly on the die. AS5 does well here, no caps on the surface of the chip are near the actual die, so it's pretty safe to use it here without worry of shorting out anything. Again, only if you are SURE you know what you are doing. Memory is also visible at the bottom of the picture. Sorry for blurry, E815 does not take close ups well.
Here I removed the memory to show the slots. Motherboard version number is on one of these, I have Version 3.4A. My luck, version 3.4b will support the new 7900GTX's ~8)
pushing mem back into place. Don't skimp here, 2gigs is the minimum nowadays.
Two expansion slots, probly for wireless etc. Just below the memslots.
cover back on and measured with a tape comes in just under 23inches diag.
Hard drive cover with a small fan under it. Single hard drive is under there in one of them mounting adaptors. Standard with no need to picture it.
Buying this laptop from Sager got me a free backpack, I don't recollect ever reading or hearing that you get one, so maybe this is standard, but it's just what I freakin needed! I always go out and find a new backpack to fit my laptops, those UGLY black cases are stupid and beg to get your laptop stolen.
Not a bad looking one either, I rather like the colors, I swear it was made for this laptop, it fits perfectly. Not too big and padded decently.
Thick and comfortable straps! For lugging around, it does not dig into your shoulder (my 9860 one did).
Seems sturdy too, my Wal-Mart bag for my 9860 is starting to pull apart, this one seems up to the job no poroblem.
Back together and ready to boot, one last thing for fine tuning....
Up and running smoothly after that brief fine tuning, boots and shuts down fast, note the added footprint size gives really good wrist comfort and none of that HOT surface the old Clevo's gave.
I ordered the shell with the video cards and put in the processor, memory, hard drive and OS myself. I really liked putting it together too, I got a good looksie inside and took note of all the messing around I'll do when my warranty runs out hehe ~8D.
Ok, the specs are:
Turion MT-40 (2.2ghz 1meg cache 25watt processor) / (I could not find the MT-44(2.4ghz 1meg cache 25watt) as being released yet, I could get the ML-44(2.4ghz 1meg cache 35watt processor) but I think I would prefer to get the lowest wattage I could for the same performance. There are other ML/MT versions but they are lower clock speed/lower cache models that a gamer is just not interested in. Lets face it, no truely mobile person is going to plunk down moolah on this laptop.
One more thing, in case your wondering what the difference between the ML and MT processors are, just the wattage 25watts versus 35watts. At least thats all I could find.2 gigs of OCZ DDR1 400 / There are only 2 mem slots for DDR1 400 mem sticks, No gamer would grab this beatie and settle for only 1 gig of mem, so I grabbed some OCZ 1 gig sticks that were supposed to be rated at cas 2.5, but they are cas 2.5 at 166mhz not 200mhz fsb. I tried to chance that and was met with a reboot hehe, so no biggie. I suppose you could search the web high and far for some cas2.5 sticks, but I'm betting they don't exist.
80gig Hitachi 7200rpm 8meg cache HD / I own a 9860 with a 60gig drive of this speed and the 80gig seems to be much faster for some reason, dunno if its chipset/cpu or HD, but it feels/boots and scoots along at a much quicker pace. I coulda got a 100gig or 60 gig, but hey the price over a 60 gig was pretty much just 1$ and by the time I fill up just 40 gigs I'm dumping old stuff already, so eh, I'll save a little bit and just get the 80.
OS used is XP pro sp2 / Already have piles of older OS's from old and retired machines, I just installed one of them on this and went to MS to activate and it took it hehe, so all the roomers that Microsoft eased up and lets you re-use old OS's without a phone call to support are true I guess. Saves me some 70$ or so on an OS purchase.
Twin 7800GTX 256 meggers / I coulda purchased without any video cards or just one, but come on, why on earth would a gamer settle for one when his machine would take two!?!
I had to work 12hrs today and I'm too tired and lazy to break out the Digi cam, so I will post pics later of the machine with my 9860 next to it for scale. Seems peoples LOVE pics for some reason, and uhh cause most other reviews show two or more laptops near each other so why should I be any different?hehe
Anyhoo, here are some fast and dirty benchies most of them with CPU and video overclocking..
3dmark01 just over 27k (not bad at all for notebook!)
3dmark05 11,100 (this is roughly the same score as my desktop which is a vapochilled opty 180 @ 3.1ghz with an overclocked X1900!, in crossfire I get around 16,500 though) (this score seems to be the highest of any laptop I could find anywhere!)
3dmark06 5900 ish ( I don't think I had the processor overclocked for this, I'll do it again with some serious tweaking on memory and processor)
Source video stress test with default settings was something like 158fps and with HDR set at full (if available) and resolution set at native was 130fps. Dunno if this included overclocking on the processor either.
These are rough quickies, I was so excited when I got it up running that I just hammered the installs and hit the gamming scene. I have steam/oblivion and EQ2 on it, so I'll scope out the fps as I get going in games.
------
tweaking stuff :
Video is the standard stuff, just run the utility in coolbits to get like 485/1.5ghz mem. This utility seems to pick different overclocks everytime I run it, it's sorta flaky Imho. Drivers are a whole bag of doodoo.. Too many drivers to chose from, and Laptopvideo2go inf's don't have SLI options, so I cannot use them. I did find a newer 5950 driver on Eurocom's site though, it's like version 84.XX where the Sager one is 83.xx. Seems every driver gets different scores in all the different games/benches. Sheesh, and they love to had ATI catalysts...
Processor tweaking can be done using rightmark and clockgen for Nforce4. Rightmark lets you lower or raise voltage and multiplier to the processors minimum or maximum, so you really cannot hurt or burn out your laptop. Even under max voltage, you are totally inside the processor (and laptop's) power supply hardware. I could hit 2.4ghz out of my 2.2 processor which easily falls under the rated capacity for cpu specs and wattage for this machine, so I feel totally comfortable. I did try something cool, lowered the multiplier down from 11 to 10 and raised the fsb to match 2.4ghz and it ran and worked fine! The PCIE bus and pci bus were both locked, but the memory ran up to near 240fsb which was a push, but the OCZ held up nicely and game me a boost in one of the benches I posted up there. I figured even overclocked the processor was still around or under the 35watt rating for the ML-44 35 watt 2.4ghz processor, so no worries. I do wish I had the unreleased MT-44 (2.4ghz) to see if it would run at 2.6ghz... I may break down and return this processor and grab an ML-44 in the end though.
Memory tweaking can be done using A64 tweaker.60 beta, I was able to lower some stuff and get some boostage, but I had not downloaded a utility to test the settings, so that stuff was hard to see in benches. I just did not have time at work to play with them too much, but I can see the SODIMM memory is NOT up to par with desktop stuff. A pitty really, I bet if OCZ came out with "gamers" memroy for high performance laptops, they would run away with a huge pile of money. I bet you would see a lot of performance increase from the 3-13-4-4 settings if you could get some 2-8-2-2 DDR400 stuff. Ah well..
Heat, weight, fan noise, battery life and screen? This thing at it's worse gets just warm, probly not even as much as my 9860 (3.8ghz, 2 gigs, X800). Fan noise? Damn near silent! I was blow away at how quiet this laptop is!!!
When I put it together I was carefull and used all AS5 on every surface that would allow it (videocards, processor). I NEVER remove thermal pads on stuff that have a clearance issue, use AS5 only on stuff that will not conduct electricity and have a surface to surface contact. Just slap a dot or AS5 dead center and push the heatsink down, the goo will smear outwards pretty evenly. Don't believe me? Try it, you will be suprised. I usually do this twice to see how contact is, I am also a pretty good judge of how much is needed. (Note: there seems to be no FN-Fx key that turns the fans on full speed, I will email Sager about this, I rather found that a handy feature of the 9860) I could not tell if the fans ran up or down, I could litterally not hear them that well while messing around. I had a radio in the background and that was it. Very quiet system. Weight, hey, it's heavy, just like the 9860 is, I don't care how much, but they are near the same. With the supplied backpack, it is comfortable to pack around. The backpack is actually cool and not huge or anything, I was VERY happy about getting it!Screen? Beautifull and a little brighter than the 9860. What else is there to say? I have no dead/stuck pixels so it is perfect! Battery life? Dunno don't care hehe... Never use them, I hope someday they do away with a portable gaming system batteries, just adds power requirement, charging electronics weight and ACPI crap in windows. All the crap gamers DONT want!Any questions?
Here are some pics, mind you they are with my cell phone so detail is average.
Here are all 5 fans on the bottom
video cards with heatsinks on them, my fingers are touching the chips with the pull-tabs above them, the heatsinks are like clamshells with the heatpipes extending out to the back of the machine. Were one to upgrade them, you pull the tabs carefully and the whole shebang pops out, the heatsinks then come apart into two pieces, one bottom and the visible part on top that you see here.
My fingers span the actual squarish video card itself, you can actually see the video card through parts of the heatsink.
Fingers spanning the length of the while topside video card heatsink. Not too long at all..
Moving on over to the left of the video cards under the same one single large panel, you will see the CPU heatsink. Two fans here, one small one that actually vents downwards towards both the memory and the bottom towards the two expansion card slots. Heat is probably pulled out via the bottom fan on the 1st picture in this post. The main fan pushes the heat out the side of the machine, it does a good job too, I don't hear it running, but I feel the heat. My finger and thumb are on the fan exits.
Screwdriver points to the socket 754 under the heatsink. Turions have no heatspreader, so the heatsink mounts directly on the die. AS5 does well here, no caps on the surface of the chip are near the actual die, so it's pretty safe to use it here without worry of shorting out anything. Again, only if you are SURE you know what you are doing. Memory is also visible at the bottom of the picture. Sorry for blurry, E815 does not take close ups well.
Here I removed the memory to show the slots. Motherboard version number is on one of these, I have Version 3.4A. My luck, version 3.4b will support the new 7900GTX's ~8)
pushing mem back into place. Don't skimp here, 2gigs is the minimum nowadays.
Two expansion slots, probly for wireless etc. Just below the memslots.
cover back on and measured with a tape comes in just under 23inches diag.
Hard drive cover with a small fan under it. Single hard drive is under there in one of them mounting adaptors. Standard with no need to picture it.
Buying this laptop from Sager got me a free backpack, I don't recollect ever reading or hearing that you get one, so maybe this is standard, but it's just what I freakin needed! I always go out and find a new backpack to fit my laptops, those UGLY black cases are stupid and beg to get your laptop stolen.
Not a bad looking one either, I rather like the colors, I swear it was made for this laptop, it fits perfectly. Not too big and padded decently.
Thick and comfortable straps! For lugging around, it does not dig into your shoulder (my 9860 one did).
Seems sturdy too, my Wal-Mart bag for my 9860 is starting to pull apart, this one seems up to the job no poroblem.
Back together and ready to boot, one last thing for fine tuning....
Up and running smoothly after that brief fine tuning, boots and shuts down fast, note the added footprint size gives really good wrist comfort and none of that HOT surface the old Clevo's gave.
youll help influence my purchase a lil more heh
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