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Advice please?

post #1 of 2
6/17/08 at 11:03am
Thread Starter 
Any advice, honest opinions from users / techs to back up claims would be much appreicated. I am new to gaming laptops and sager units.

I am currently in the market for a new gaming laptop, converting from desktops and can not decide between which to go with, Sager or Alienware? NP9262 or m17x.

Although I was aware sager works with Clevo, I was unaware of what they do with GPU's as seen from this post, this raises a concern for me? or am i just overly crazy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by S.SubZero
I wasn't aware Sager tinkered with the video card at all.


Response by Starcub

Sager's ODM is Clevo; Clevo makes the GPU's which are based upon Nvidia's MXM standard, but not identical to it. Sager provides the drivers and BIOS which, if I am not mistaken, are based on Clevo's offerings. This is why you can't go out and get any old MXM replacement GPU an use stock Nvidia drivers for it. Instead, you have to go to Sager for both the GPU and driver upgrades. Moreover, with Sager, it is often the case that in order to upgrade your video card, you also have to upgrade your motherboard and BIOS.
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post #2 of 2
6/19/08 at 6:30pm
I'm not really sure what that post is referring to. It's an NVidia chip graphics card. Clevo doesn't make the graphics chip. It uses Nvidia drivers just like any other NVidia graphics card. The difference, which is true of all NVidia laptop graphics solutions is that you have to go to the manufacturer for the video drivers because NVidia doesn't directly support mobile driver updates. This is true of any laptop wether it be a Dell, Sager, Alienware, or any other that uses an NVidia mobile graphics cards.

You can however, easily modify the inf file for a driver update to work on any laptop with an NVidia graphics chip. The following well known site offers full instructions, forums, and downloads to show people how to use NVidia graphics drivers in their laptop that aren't directly supported. You can then read and share experiences with other users to determine which driver you should or should not install in your laptop.

http://laptopvideo2go.com

NVidia is currently addressing the problem that many vendors, including the big name brands, don't bother to offer supported updates to their video drivers after the product has been discontinued. You may soon be able to download supported mobile drivers directly from NVidia for your laptop but because of the proprietary nature of the design of most laptops it's still possible you may have minor compatibility issues such as problems with sleep/resume, external display support, or display orientation but usually you can work around these issues.

It's also often possible to use Supported drivers from the Sager website for a newer model on your older model that has similar components. For example I used supported drivers for a 5760 on my 5720 so I could install and run Vista. The two computers were basically identical except for some upgraded components and the drivers were completely compatible but Sager didn't list the drivers as being available for the 5720 even though they worked just fine.

Keep in mind these issues are typical for all laptop brands, not just Sager.
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