Comments Locked

33 Comments

Back to Article

  • ibudic1 - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    I wonder how many seconds of battery life we are to expect?

    So if someone comes and kicks the power plug out of the socket, do I have enough time to pause the game, get up and plug the computer back in?

    :D
  • ender11122 - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    I doubt it.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    If it's like other Clevo units, you'll have plenty of time. 78Wh battery I think, so I think it will come close to one hour in light usage. The problem is, as soon as power disconnects the GPUs will both drop down into low-power mode where the core clocks are like 100MHz and RAM clocks are 400MHz, so you will see a HUGE drop in gaming performance while on battery.

    It would be interesting to see the system stay at max performance on battery power, though... in that case the "UPS" would last about 15 minutes at best.
  • DJ-Destiny - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    Okay , it should be around a 6 cell battery , do the maths .
    My Laptop which has a 65W Adapter , uses up a 6 cell in 4 hours .
  • Roland00 - Monday, September 27, 2010 - link

    Your laptop is not running at 100% load during that 4 hours. It is going to throttle down and run at an idle clock speed which runs at a different ghz and a different voltage than your active 100% load. Same thing with this clevo laptop. (this technology goes by many names Intel Speedstep, AMD Cool'N'Quiet, AMD PowerNow!, Optimized Power Management, etc )

    Furthermore the amount of cells a battery has doesn't really matter, the amount of WHr that battery can produce does.
  • DJ-Destiny - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link

    My thing is that , i disabled Powernow! and CNQ .
  • nitrousoxide - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    That's not all the problem. The PSU can only support up to 300W at heavy load. The power consumption of i7 980X+2 SLI GTX480M has already exceed its capability. So it's not the problem whether the battery can hold for more than 10 minutes. This notebook can't even successfully start up. Another question is: which non-LCS(LCS, apparently cannot fit in a notebook) can drive away the horrifying heat of an i7 980X and 2 GTX480Ms?

    If USD 5500 is what I have to pay for a gaming notebook with a roughly higher 3D Performance, given GTX480M's poor performance compared to PC Graphics and the low performance boost provided by the SLI solution(roughly 20% in normal gaming), I would customize a Nano Game Cube on AVADirect instead. It is, for sure, heavier than the notebook, but it is much more compact than most of the LAN-Party PCs. The most important thing is, a Nano Game Cube with a i7 870 and a GTX460, which can provide a little lower performance than this monster-notebook, costs me no more than USD 1600. And that machine, for sure, can run smoothly because the PSU(by adding a 400W PSU upgrade) is strong enough to support the not-so-power-hungry system.
  • bennyg - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    Fail to this man.

    Maximum power consumption isn't reached during startup, am *pretty* sure the win7 logo isn't GPU accelerated.

    That 99.9% of us would rather buy almost $7k worth of anything else on this earth doesn't matter. We're not the target market.

    And just to let you know you're not the first ever to think a DTR is bad value compared with a desktop.
  • StormyParis - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    Yep, 'coz the damn thing actually requires TWO power bricks
  • Wayne321 - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    You can go 4x GTX480 and 2x Xenon 5650 on an SR-2 for that price.
  • ggathagan - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    Yeah, but it wouldn't be as easy to carry onto the plane.
  • Perisphetic - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    Remaining cash for the same specs with a desktop will allow you to rent a plane.
  • stephenbrooks - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    Must hurt to take this $5k machine on the plane and watch other people using their $500 machines for 6 hours plus during the flight. Or does this have an internal dock for a netbook, like those super yachts that have a smaller yacht inside?
  • AssBall - Monday, September 27, 2010 - link

    That would be awesome. A button on it that switches it to internal Pinetrail hardware and turns the power to everything else to "sleep" mode, and your monitor screen estate down to 12xx/7xx size.
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - link

    Unless it were some form of OLED screen reducing the resolution in-use wouldn't help battery life much.
  • taltamir - Sunday, September 26, 2010 - link

    you might be able to carry it unto the plane, but you aren't going to play off the battery on the plane. So this is fail in that regard as well.
  • nbjknk - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link


    Dear customers, thank you for your support of our company.
    Here, there's good news to tell you: The company recently
    launched a number of new fashion items! ! Fashionable
    and welcome everyone to come buy. If necessary, please$$$$$$$$$$__$$$_$$$$$$$$$$$
    http://www.vipshops.org
    $$_____$$$_$$$_________$$$
    $$$_____$$$_$$$______ $$$
    $$$ ____$$$_ $$$_____ $$$
    $$$$$$$$$$__$$$____$$$
    $$$_____$$$_$$$___$$$
    $$$_____$$$_$$$__$$$
    $$$$$$$$$$$_$$$_$$$
    $$$$$$$$$$__$$$_$$$$$$$$$$$$ !::!
    http://www.vipshops.org
    Thursday, 21 October 2010 at 9:48 PM
  • StrangerGuy - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    I would be worried about that catching fire from sheer heat generated.
  • nitrousoxide - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    perhaps they've installed a PSU cooler :)
  • Perisphetic - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    a grill rack would be also a nice accessory...
  • EliteRetard - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    Honest question, why not use a slightly modified desktop card? Have the PCI-E port sticking out the side of the MOBO so the card lays flat next to it. With a blower motor sucking air in from the front/side (or heck just put a fan intake in the palm rest) and blowing out the back just like the regular cards do. In your tests you show an overclocked system with a 5850 using under 300watts at load. Even the GTX460 1GB slides under...

    Id be willing to guess either of those card will stomp a mobile GTX480m SLI setup. Even if they were underclocked. Id also be willing to wager that even after modification one of these cards would cost less than the huge premium Nvidia charges for these mobile cards.

    I dont even think size will be to much issue, an ITX board plus full 5850 would only be 12x10" or so (laying flat side by side), should be able to fit in a 17" case which is like 16x11". With a little modifing Im sure you could fit that with 2xHDD and an optical.
  • nitrousoxide - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    because the PCI-E slot on a PC is very much different from the MXM PCI-E on the notebook, you have to re-design the whole PCB, as well as the heatsink and turbo-fan that works in coordinate with it. So it's not as easy as you think to modify that desktop card to fit in a notebook.

    GTX480M SLI can do a lit bit more performance than a factory-clocked GTX460(though in theory it should be as fast as a GTX470)...but it consumes much more power(460 has a TDP of 150W, 480M SLI is 200W) similar to that of a GTX465.

    This problem shall be solved when GTX470M is available, it is based on GF104 so it should consume much less power in the cost of only tiny performance lower than GTX480M. And there should be a higher-level GF104M product (GTX485M if possible) featuring more CUDA Cores or higher clock-frequency compared to GTX470M.
  • kallogan - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    Summer's over, too late for releasing a barbecue on market. Bad timing ;)
    Though with the winter approaching, could use that thing as a radiator.
  • lgpOnTheMove - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    "Unfortunately, it looks like the keyboard is the same old (crappy) design and layout, which is unfortunate but not necessarily the end of the world."

    It really amazes me that after more than SIX YEARS of radical notebook designs, the engineers at Clevo still refuse to come forward with a sensible keyboard. My HP zd7000 from 2004 had a proper keyboard layout, and was part of the reason why I stuck with it for five years. For me, a bad keyboard layout is a deal-breaker - one reason why I'm yet to even review any Clevo model.
  • SteelCity1981 - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link

    Man i guess if you want to call having the cord plugged into the laptop that extends out 6 feet portable. lol Because i can't imagine how little of battery life you will get with this thing. You basicly have to use it as a portable desktop.
  • Bennyto - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    Guys, this kind of machine is not really designed to play games or watch movies in a plane... These "compacted desktops" are more like thoroughbred workhorses.

    Also the Eurocom Panther has a quite a few additional standard features over the Clevo X7200 like a built-in HDMI input (in addition to HDMI out), support for a 4th HDD, memory and CPU overclocking and can support up to 24GB of RAM. That might explain the price difference.

    B
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    I agree, but that's also why I state: "If you need a mobile server/workstation, the added cost for more memory and a Xeon CPU might be a good investment, but for a gaming laptop where even 12GB RAM is overkill, we think saving money even on a ~$5000 notebook is the more sensible route."

    Eurocom is aimed more at the mobile workstation market, and they charge a price premium for what really amounts to a few extras. I'm not sure how much an HDMI input costs, but it can't be worth upwards of $1000 unless you absolutely need it. My point wasn't so much to slam Eurocom, as it is to point out that if you're after 480M SLI, AVADirect looks like they're the cheapest vendor right now (by a fairly large margin).

    And I still wouldn't buy either notebook. ;-)
  • hotsacoman - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    Seriously, I think it is possible for me to win it.
  • DaveLikesHardware - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    My XPS Gen 2 is soooo long in the tooth, but recent designs are either way too gaudy or, like this one - giant and impractical - making me stay with my beloved computer. Back in 2005, it was edgy with it's bling, but practically looks like a business laptop these days - even with its lights on.

    With the X8100, this X7200 and several of Avadirect's current systems, gaming laptops look pretty good again. But, the mobile GPU's just don't compare to the the desktop GPU's anywhere close to how they did back in 2005 with the 6800 Ultra. Will we ever get back to that? Will Nvidia and AMD ever give us what we really want? I'm afraid they won't, due to the crazy demands of many of today's GPU's.

    It brings me back to the naming conventions. If the card isn't a GTX 480, then don't call it one. The GTX 480M in this notebook performs below the desktop GTS 450. I know that GTS 450M doesn't sound glamorous and doesn't have much marketing power of a GTX 480M, but a $1,500 desktop can perform like this baby will.

    I bought the XPS Gen 2 because I found it on sale for $2,500 and it was comparable to the $1,800 to $2,000 desktop that I was planning to build at the time. I figured $500 for portability was worth it. It was. I can pack it up and put it in my closet when I have visitors. I can travel with it and take it places. But, paying a $3,000 to $4,000 premium for "portability" is crazy.

    Anyways, I can't wait for the review. I hope it surprises me. It's hard to deny the appeal of a system like this one.

    Dave
  • DJ-Destiny - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    I swear that thing looks horrible . I would give you my thousand dollar worth of advice , my HP tx2028AU looks much better really .
    I wonder how big is the brick gonna BE :>
    My old psu-converted bench supply from the Pentium 1 Days 200W is still sitting at a corner ,
    not dying off yet , and god , it's BIG .
    Are the capacitors gonna fail ? :D
    Is the plastic casing gonna melt ? :D
    Is the Transformer gonna desolder ? :D
    Is there a freaking fan ? :D

    All these answers will be answered , for sure .
    Anyways , intel and nvidia ? The clash of the worthless ?
    Oh god , i really love my P II 965 and 5870 CrossfireX too much ,
  • nermie - Saturday, September 25, 2010 - link

    I can't wait to see the noise and temp section of the reviews.
  • hansel2099 - Monday, September 27, 2010 - link

    k mardita bayna el demonio
  • sarendt - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link

    Jarred,

    We discussed some Alienware 17" builds a year or so ago for the Navy. Im curious if you have looked at Origin PC? They look like they are also selling a version of Clevo's X7200. What type of changes could they make that would make it different then everyone else selling this same box? Do you think this type of laptop is any more upgradeable down the road then others?

    Shoot me an email if you want to chat offline: "Username"@gmail.com

    Cheers,
    Scott

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now