Sager 5792, impressions? - Page 2

Cool. Cool. I'm still reading this thread.

You're making me want to drive down there and swap mine for yours

Good pick bro... it'll be interesting to see how it stands up over time.

Man those temps are freezing . My 3yr old Inspiron 5160 ( i am on atm ) idles at like 55-72c* and not only fan is on all the time but its running on mid-high rpms . Granted its a P4 HT 2.8Ghz .

*thinks if he should get UT3 ...*

Btw lazie did u reformat your lap ? Also did you/or are you even going to try and tweak your OS ?

I got your "word of mouth"

I got mine on Thursday . Beutifull thing . Its made very sturdy . I think its even sturdier than dells laps .
WSXGA+ screen is 100x better than the WXGA+ i had on my E1705 ( both r matte ) . It is bright as sh*t , colors r vivid . I got 1 dead/stuck pixel in the very left , middle partof the screen , but its hardly noticable .
Keyboard and touchpad are nice , i only wish keys would b slightly softer . Fingerprint reader works good .
Notebook runs very cool , even when gaming ( Crysis , WoW , BF2142 ) . Fans are not loud , its mostly the moving air that you hear .
I got Vista HP x64 , freshly installed , slightly tweaked . Runs just about as Win XP . Drivers are stock , except for video ( LV2G 169.28 ) .
3dmark06 gives me 4700 , thats due to driver , i have yet to find the one that will work with 3dmark06 .
Speakers and Mic work very well . Audio driver has a lot of settings so you can adjust sound to your liking . I also like these speakers more than my E1705s .
Wireless had no problems finding nearby Hotspots and no problems connecting to routers .
Overall lap runs fast , very cool , no crashes . I am very satisfied with it . Cant post pics cause camera decided to die on me the day when i got my 5792 :/ .

Also RivaTuner / AtiTool / GPU-z dont work with the 8800M GTX right now . If u want to check your current clocks/temp use nTune , and to overcloak too .

I just ordered a 5792 as well, looks like a great laptop, and you guys seem to be impressed by it. So I hope mine turns out just as well

After reading CTLVR's reply, I do have one question, how common are dead pixels? I have had five laptops in the last 6 years, Compaqs, Dells and Toshibas and never have I encountered a dead pixel, is this a common problem in Sager notebooks?

I too am ordering one of these (I think, so far) when my tax refund comes in. Hopefully the price will still be as good in about a month.

I too have to ask about the dead pixels though. I see they offer dead pixel insurance at $200 and it only covers the first 30 days for dead pixels or parially lit pixels. This doesn't instill a lot of confidence in whatever lcd's they're using. Is this really such a problem that they had to offer insurance against it? Or is it just something to get $200 more out of you since they have such great prices on the system as a whole?

Thanks for any input/advice.

Mine had one middle 1/3 of the screen on the top. Doesn't bug me yet.

Performance with the 8800m and the T9300 is good. Not super.

Noise is crazy. It seems like it's 2x the XPS Gen 2/ Dell 9300 sound. Right Palm rest is fairly warm.

Thanks for the reply. So far I've never found dead pixels on any lcd display I've seen. That is, of course, not to say they weren't there. I've had my Inspiron 8200 for 6 years now and the display is still as sharp and bright as ever with no dead pixels.

Anywho... I found a thread that talks about dead pixels... http://www.notebookforums.com/thread210860.html

Hey Medic, what to do you mean when you say performance is OK and not super.

I guess with and 8800M, a 2.5 GHz processor and 4MBs of RAM I would expect performance to be pretty good if not great.

What performance issues have you seen or been having? What games have you not been able to max out?

That was PJK... I'm still waiting on my taxes so I can pick one of these up.

One thing you have to remember concerning the fan noise. If you are using Vista with the Aero interface your fans are going to on more compared to XP. That is because Aero utilizes your 3D card for the Aero Interface while XP does not.

Sorry Medic... misread the posts there.

So PJK I ask you the same questions:

what to do you mean when you say performance is OK and not super?

I guess with and 8800M, a 2.5 GHz processor and 4MBs of RAM I would expect performance to be pretty good if not great.

What performance issues have you seen or been having? What games have you not been able to max out?

The fan noise is really just the db level of the fan. The fact that it comes on is good, it just is exceptionally loud when it does come on.

As far as performance, I always run 1680x1050 native. In COD4 I see stuttering about once per 15 minute round. I've seen this running at home (AT&T DSL), my girlfriend's place (Comcast Cable), and at a local gaming cafe. I don't play with AA so this was very odd to me. It isn't too bad but sometimes I'm running from behind wall X to wall Y and it gets annoying. Doesn't seem to be a packet loss thing and does happen when there is a lot of stuff popping on screen.
Supreme Commander I was playing against a guy from work sitting on the other side of the table from me (he was on my desktop) and was getting about 27fps per fraps, not recording just showing the counter overlay. That is pretty disappointing but still playable.
World of Warcraft is generally good. I arena on 2x 2k+ rating teams and one 1900 rating team so fairly competitive, and the frame rates are fine. On this week's Illidan kill, I did notice some slowdown when the two flames came out that forced me to abruptly camera angle to the floor in order to preserve framerate by excluding the flames and most of the other character models. WoW was released what? 3 years ago? Given this is the end boss fight in TBC until patch 2.4, but it is pretty disappointing to say the least.
I haven't loaded Crysis or Bioshock yet, but I'm wondering if it is even worth it.

I have uninstalled all virus scanning software and have been running it offline (of course since it's too exposed) just to see if performance picks up.

Now, for comparison, my desktop is a Q6600 3.69ghz, 4gb, vista ultimate x64, 8800 GTS 512MB @ 740/1850. On one hand, yea, I expect it to be way faster than the notebook. On the other hand, it plays COD4, at 1920x1200 while transcoding one fraps movie and encoding another at seemingly better or equal performance levels.

Speakers are a significant downgrade to the Dell 9300 which was a 17" from 3 years ago. Not really sure why this is the case but it was noticeable.

Also, the webcam I don't think is capturing video at 30fps, or anywhere near that.

I think the CPU performance is fine, as the 6mb of cache seems to be pretty nice, and the notebook does run fairly cool.

My big complaint is that for $2600+, I'd want simple things, like integrated speakers/ webcam to just work decently. I use headphones normally, and I have a standalone webcam, but it's a bummer that the standard ones are close to unusable. When that one noisy fan spins up, it really kills any chance of using onboard speakers.

Another issue here is the keyboard. I use a lenovo Z61 at work, have used a Dell 9300 for years, and also a logitech G15 on my main desktop and a MSFT wireless keyboard for my media center PC. The 5792/3 keyboard has really nice keys. The tactile feel is great and feels like heavy duty plastic. On the other hand, you need to use a lot of pressure to depress the key and have it register, and it feels like the "click" point where the key gives the physical feedback of being depressed, and the registration point where the depression is sent electronically to the system is different. This has been VERY noticeable as it means characters that I think I'm typing are not being registered in the application. I've seen it consistently in both games and typing text and it's annoying. On one hand I could understand a durability argument as I did break an "e" key on my last dell 9300. On the other hand, it was a $15 or so replacement part that was taken care of by warranty. I'd rather spend $15 and 5 minutes replacing a keyboard every 18 months and have a keyboard that registers electronically and tactilely at the same time, rather than have a primary interface tool be bad. I use 4 different keyboards, at minimum, on any given day, and this is something I don't like, and I'm having trouble adjusting to.

The second complaint is that the 8800M GTX is just not that fast. $500 "upgrade" in a notebook and it is slower to today's $249 desktop 8800GT. As the 8800GT moves to the 9600 GT soon that performance point is $200 or so. That doesn't make too much sense and its a bad trend since newer games are going to be harder not easier on today's hardware. If the 8800M GTX had no stutters in games like COD4, that would be one thing. If I saw stuttering due to antivirus, network packet loss, or other open applications, that wouldn't bother me. When I see stuttering in a DX9 title with no AA, I get at minimum worried.

Overall, I'm not overly happy. Some things are great (T9300/trackpad), some are medium (8800M GTX / 667mhz ram), and some are, well disappointing (webacam/speakers/keyboard). I'll probably do a full review Sunday/Monday, because I think a lot of reviews are focused on the fact that the 8800M GTX is better than any 8600/8700/ or 7xxx solution available. It is amazing on one hand, on the other, I really think someone needs to highlight the pros and cons of the notebook so there is a counterpoint to glowing reviews about the relative notebook performance.

If the Dell 17" xps had 45nm chips, and SLI drivers that worked well in Vista 64, there's a good chance I'd have one of those on order right now.

Wow, PJK, that actually does not sound good at all, more than classifying it like "good" performance, sounds more like "not good at all" or downright "mediocre".

This is very contrary to other reviews and what other posters are saying... I'll have my own opinion when I get the laptop here. Anybody who has the laptop want to chime in?

Don't get me wrong, it's leaps and bounds beyond the 9300 w/ 7800 GTX. At the same time, you just have to realize, that getting what should be the best notebook performance possible, is WAY behind a $1000 desktop. If you never used a decent desktop (quad core Intel + 128 stream processor 8800), then the performance would probably be great. If you use a high end desktop regularly, the mobile performance/quality really not in the ballpark. It may be a matter of perspective though and maybe I'm just used to something different.

Then again, I totally expected this. My Vista Ultimate 64 bit 3dmark06 is over 15k, with a single G92 GTS. Most people bench the 8800M GTX notebooks at around 9.5k or so. I was expecting the desktop to feel 50% faster pushing 30% more pixels. I was surprised to see the notebook stutter on COD4 & WoW though, at such a low resolution. When I get back on Sunday I'll investigate this a bit more.

Just ran first 3dmark06 on the notebook and was at 9116.