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New owner of a 4750V :)

post #1 of 13
7/12/05 at 4:29pm
Thread Starter 
Anyhow, I've been looking for a 64bit capable notebook that could serve as a good desktop replacement. After some searching I had my options narrowed to a Sager 4750. I ended up purchasing it through PC Torque.

Let me just say something about these lads at PC Torque. They are great!

I received my unit last week equipped as follows:

Athlon 64 (DTR) 3700+
2GB of RAM
60 GB 7200 rpm
17" gorgeous display...
etc, etc

Anyhow, On Sunday I had it going after having had installed XP32 bit and XP 64 bit (dual boot), and suddenly it totally powered down on me. That is it!
No life after this point. In fact, even with the AC adapter plugged in the AC LED's on the notebook were no longer lit. Well, after making a few quick checks - I concluded that this was indeed a severe failure.

ON this same day (Sunday!)... I decided to call PC Torque and leave a message. To my surprise I did not leave a message. NO SIR. I got a tech support person on the other end of the phone. Wow.
It is not that PC torque was helpfull in my case because they can do nothing about a unit that will have to be RMA'd to Sager. What impressed me is that they were there on a Sunday!!!! Now folks, THIS is tech support.

So, I just shipped the unit back to Sager. I had placed a call to sager on Monday morning and an hour later I was called back and given an RMA number.

Folks, I've had notebooks, laptops, luggables, etc for roughly 20 years. I've dealth with several companies (which I will not mention by name) and rarely if ever, was I impressed with vendors and manufacturers like I am with PC Torque and Sager.

So far, I have great expectations that my unit will be returned as good as new and working as good as I expect of it. I will keep you all posted. I may even produce a short review upon its arrival. Hummmm...

In the meantime (while I wait), let me thank all the folks who over the last year or so have invested and contributed much of their time to resolving issues with the 4750 as well as all the good tips I've been privileged to read. keep up the good work. Yes, there are quite a few of you, and you know who you are.

Also let me thank the good folks who deployed and maintain this forum. Good work folks. This is good stuff indeed,


Regards;


MS
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post #2 of 13
7/13/05 at 6:09am
Nice notebook choice .
But the thermal design of the Sager 4750 is not very good. You should better put a Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ or 3400+ with 62W into it. In my opinion the 3700+ DTR (89W) will cause heat problems in that notebook case.
I would call Sager to change the processor to a 62W Mobile. If they can not give you that option, downgrade to a 3000+ DTR and exchange it by your own with a 62W Mobile A64.

The Mobile A64 3400+ with 62W costs around 235$:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103477
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post #3 of 13
7/13/05 at 10:49am
For the record it will not cause heat problems !!!!!! holly these notebooks where design for these processors, If you mean by heat problems warm on the left palm rest then ya, I have had my 4750 ( 3400+ dtr) for almost a year now and the only problems I had where the camera (cable unplugged ) and my dvd writeable drive ( to slow for my liking upgraded to 8X) . I game on averager 6 - 8 hours a day my cpu is usually running at 80 degrees C and hd at 49 C. I have never had heat issues, maybe alittle discomfort (which I dont notice at all anymore), btw these processor can reach upto 125 degree C before they die. And my laptop has never shutdown becasue it was to hot and I have seen it hit 90C during 3dmark05 looped for 50times. Anyway, I just wanted to clear up this heat issue, because its not a heat issue - I would say it is a discomfort issue.

well enjoy the 4750 , cause I sure do
cheers
chunkd
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post #4 of 13
7/13/05 at 10:50am
Thread Starter 
Hi Shinzon;

I agree. The DTR version is a little hot compared to the other choices.

I've had a Centrino based Thinkpad T42 for the last year and It was very quiet when idling. However as soon as I did some serious work with it the fan would spin up and heat up the desk surrounding the exaust port (left side of the unit).

This unit (4750V) that I had for two days did not appear to produce as much heat under stress although the fan noise was consistently higher than what I like. I am willing to accept the trade-off if I get the processing power I require.

Do you think we'll have some .09 micron mobile chips that are pluggable into the 4750 soon. This 3700+ is a .13 Micron. Perhaps the newer process will run a little cooler. Maybe cooler enough to mitigate the heat management issues you mention without giving up on the raw MIPS.

Best regards;


MS
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post #5 of 13
7/13/05 at 11:10am
No DTR or Mainstream A64 are planed with 90nm structure.
That Fab51 table gives a overview of the current socket 754 processors:
http://fab51.com/cpu/guide/opn-64-e.html#s754

Only the 25W and 35W Turion 64 (MT and ML) and the 35W Low Voltage Athlon 64 processors are produced with 90nm structure.
They provide a much better thermal behavior than the 130nm built processors but nobody in that forum managed to get them working in the D470K (only GamePC offers that notebook with Turion 64 - but they do not say how they get it working).

IMHO the 3400+ with 62W TDP is the best choice (best trade-off between heat dissipation and speed) for the D470K (Sager 4750) barebone.

Bye
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post #6 of 13
7/13/05 at 11:33am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunkd
For the record it will not cause heat problems !!!!!! holly these notebooks where design for these processors, If you mean by heat problems warm on the left palm rest then ya, I have had my 4750 ( 3400+ dtr) for almost a year now and the only problems I had where the camera (cable unplugged ) and my dvd writeable drive ( to slow for my liking upgraded to 8X) . I game on averager 6 - 8 hours a day my cpu is usually running at 80 degrees C and hd at 49 C. I have never had heat issues, maybe alittle discomfort (which I dont notice at all anymore), btw these processor can reach upto 125 degree C before they die. And my laptop has never shutdown becasue it was to hot and I have seen it hit 90C during 3dmark05 looped for 50times. Anyway, I just wanted to clear up this heat issue, because its not a heat issue - I would say it is a discomfort issue.

well enjoy the 4750 , cause I sure do
cheers
chunkd

Yes, I also noticed that the notebook gets a little warm under the left palm. I assume that corresponds to the loacation of the HD or the M11. My centrino T42 thinkpad got just as warm on the keyboard so no big problems there 4 me.

What kind of disturbed me is that the idle temps never really got low enough for the fans to become inaudible. In fact the internal Fans maintained a very noticeable rpm. Would there be a way of managing the fans with some firmware update that re-adjusts the rpm table so that is a little quieter when idling at lower temps??
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post #7 of 13
7/13/05 at 12:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by msantos
Yes, I also noticed that the notebook gets a little warm under the left palm. I assume that corresponds to the loacation of the HD or the M11. My centrino T42 thinkpad got just as warm on the keyboard so no big problems there 4 me.

What kind of disturbed me is that the idle temps never really got low enough for the fans to become inaudible. In fact the internal Fans maintained a very noticeable rpm. Would there be a way of managing the fans with some firmware update that re-adjusts the rpm table so that is a little quieter when idling at lower temps??
You can use Rightmark CPU Clock Utility. With that tool you can set your processor corevoltage and multiplier at your own (by setting the values in Management -> P-State Transition in the tool). There exists a thread about using crystal cpuid with the 4750. But RM CPU Clock Utility is much more comfortable than Crystal CPUID. But you can read the thread to find stable voltage settings for the min (multiplier: 4x and for example 0.925V) and max (multiplier: 12x and for example 1.4V) steps of your 3700+ DTR processor.
If it freezes, try to rise the corevoltage slightly. Notice, that the power sheme of Windows has to be set to "Desktop" while using RMCCU or CCPUID.

Here is the link to the Crystal Thread:
http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...6&page=1&pp=15
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post #8 of 13
7/13/05 at 12:47pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinzon
You can use Rightmark CPU Clock Utility. With that tool you can set your processor corevoltage and multiplier at your own (by setting the values in Management -> P-State Transition in the tool). There exists a thread about using crystal cpuid with the 4750. But RM CPU Clock Utility is much more comfortable than Crystal CPUID. But you can read the thread to find stable voltage settings for the min (multiplier: 4x and for example 0.925V) and max (multiplier: 12x and for example 1.4V) steps of your 3700+ DTR processor.
If it freezes, try to rise the corevoltage slightly. Notice, that the power sheme of Windows has to be set to "Desktop" while using RMCCU or CCPUID.

Here is the link to the Crystal Thread:
http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...6&page=1&pp=15

Thanx Shinzon;

Yes, I was using Crystal CPUID. The lowest reliable vcore I could attain was 1.0V @ 800Mhz (200x4).

I'll give the Rightmark CPU Clock Utility a try once I get the 4750 returned 2 me.

Regards;

MS
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post #9 of 13
7/13/05 at 8:57pm
msantos, the 3700 plus isn't nearly as voltage tolerant as the 3200 in the undervolting thread. In 32 bit XP, I just let power management control things. In x64, I use CrystalCPUID. Although I achieved lower temps at lower votages, even 1.475 was unstable and would give random screen freezes with both OS's. Unacceptable!

I settled on Low- Multiplier 4. Voltage 1.1. Medium-Multiplier 9. Voltage 1.2 and High- Multiplier 12. Voltage 1.5. Based on watching the PowerNow dashboard in XP, this is not much different then what AMD uses. I think there medium multiplier was 8.

When I monitor things on hot days while running hard, the cpu will hit 65C and drop back down. I'm not a gamer so it could indeed go higher. At home I'm always on a laptop cooler as a preventative measure.
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post #10 of 13
7/19/05 at 5:42am

Heat and fans

Msantos
first of all if you do not want the fans to be at the max. all the time you should update the bios (the latest is 1.05 S2). The S2 bios will adjust the speed of the fan automatically.
Then you can download the latest AMD utilities and drivers for your processor.
I replaced CrystalCPUID with the AMD monitor utility that was released recently, it works fine for me and you do not have to worry about voltage settings.(My 3700+ was unstable at 0.8V - 800 MhZ, 1.1V at 800 MhZ is best).

Cheers

xylella
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post #11 of 13
7/19/05 at 10:52pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by xylella
Msantos
first of all if you do not want the fans to be at the max. all the time you should update the bios (the latest is 1.05 S2). The S2 bios will adjust the speed of the fan automatically.
Then you can download the latest AMD utilities and drivers for your processor.
I replaced CrystalCPUID with the AMD monitor utility that was released recently, it works fine for me and you do not have to worry about voltage settings.(My 3700+ was unstable at 0.8V - 800 MhZ, 1.1V at 800 MhZ is best).

Cheers

xylella
Thanx for the reply xylella;

Just a quick question though. My 4750 was purchased a few weeks ago and it came with the 1.04 bios. I managed to download the 1.05 and I also secured a boot disk with 1.03 + the fan firmware. I managed to extract the fan firmware into its own CD boot disk so it can be installed without flashing with the older BIOS (1.03). I did not install 1.05 and neither did I install the fan firmware but I did notice that the nobook did control the speed fans depending on the CPU temperature. My beef is that when idling the fans did only lower their RPM's to a certain point which remained a little too aggressive IMO.
The fan throttling was hapening with the 1.04 bios.

Does this make any sense to you? Comments?
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post #12 of 13
7/20/05 at 5:43am
msantos

with the S2 firmware on my laptop the fan starts at 40° but I do not have comparison terms to tell if there's too much throttling or noise at idle. It seems fair to me.

ciao

xylella
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post #13 of 13
7/20/05 at 5:39pm
Enjoy your new laptop.
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