Got my Samsung 550P5C today

MOOGLEYS · 15 Oct 2012 at 14:35

Liking the look of this just trying to decide between this or the MSI GX60.

iv-tecman · 15 Oct 2012 at 15:15

MOOGLEYS said:
Liking the look of this just trying to decide between this or the MSI GX60.

Depending on your budget, I'd really recommend you look VERY closely at any laptop purchase to play games on...

You'll need a GPU powerful enough to play games at the laptops native res at decent settings, so head on over to notebookcheck and start looking at various GPU's and see which one suits your needs..

Problem is, like I found out with a Dell 1749 - lovely laptop and had at the time a decent 5650 GPU, but the screen was a 1080p and most of the games I tried, the 5650M couldn't handle 1920 x 1080 meaning if I wanted to play a game at decent fps at a decent texture setting, it was 1280 x 720 for most of them, or 1600 x 900 sadly though, never looked very crisp..

And the steam overlay at the screens none native res looked jaggy and horrid..

Since got a Samsung 700G and whilst it was very expensive, paid off.. the GPU can handle any game at the laptops native res = result is all games look crisp and just not as washed out..

Problem with laptops, you can't update the GPU easily.. So look closely at what you intend to buy.

Muel · 15 Oct 2012 at 18:10

Does anyone have 16gb of RAM running in one of these?

chris_87 · 16 Oct 2012 at 18:32

Muel said:
I prefer this resolution on a 15.6" screen personally.

My one from those of the purple shirt persuasion doesn't have the nVidia card. I chose it for work purposes, and seeing as the HD4000 that comes with the Ivy Bridge CPUs gets pretty good reviews, I decided that it would do. It's brilliant! I can play Minecraft (kind of), and probably some less demanding games, and it returns over 4 hours of battery life.

Interestingly, it did have the nVidia drivers installed though.

I had emailed their support regarding the nVidia card before finding this thread and have just received a reply saying it has the GT630M, which is odd not only because their site only lists the HD4000 but also because I've been unable to find the laptop elsewhere with anything other than the GT650M. That's the purple shirt people for you!

Muel · 16 Oct 2012 at 20:04

I've researched this, and I can confirm that the cheap ones, the NP550P5C-A02UK does not have a discreet graphics card, it uses the on-board HD4000, whereas the newer NP550P5C-A03UK comes with a GT630M.

Personally, I'd rather have it without as I don't game on mine, so I'd rather have the battery life improved!

Annoying fact, 2 weeks ago I paid £630 for my NP550P5C-A02UK, and now it's £550 from the purple shirts. Oh dear oh dear.

MOOGLEYS · 16 Oct 2012 at 20:11

The NP550P5C-A03UK has a 2GB GT650M, If your not gaming the battery life should be the same as the model with out the GPU as the laptop will use the onboard HD40xx graphics.

The NP550P5C-A03UK is £659 at the moment although the prices fluctuates all over the place on the Rain forest site.

Muel · 18 Oct 2012 at 23:21

My new SSD arrived today, so I have the SSD running in the native slot and the 1tb HDD moved to the optical bay in an adapter. Very pleased with the whole setup. It's rediculously fast to boot/shut down. This chipset is a lot better than the one in my desktop, same SSD, slower CPU and less RAM, yet it posts in about half the time of my desktop.

siege2 · 20 Oct 2012 at 16:35

update my SSD is in the native slot and 1tb in the optical bay and everything is the same as Muel, omg the main 1tb is so slow compared to the ssd.

HD Tune Pro gives me maximum 378.7 MB/s
minimum 310.7 MB/s
average 372.2 MB/s
Access time 0.079 ms
Burst rate 280.3 MB/s
CPU usage 6.9%

think I may need better drivers for the chipset.

Kenneth.

Muel · 20 Oct 2012 at 17:03

Kenneth, I downloaded all the latest drivers from the Samsung site as part of a fresh W7 install. I get 181MB/s write speed, 473MB/s read speed, which seems about right for a Crucial M4.

I'd suggest a fresh install to get past all the bloatware, optimise it for SSDs and install the latest drivers.

There is also a new BIOS update you could look into I believe.

siege2 · 20 Oct 2012 at 18:54

Hi Muel my laptop came with one DVD which had the full install off windows 7 on it, I then installed all off the drivers from Samsung webby as well.

Great laptop BTW

Muel · 20 Oct 2012 at 19:25

Ahh that's what I did too. Which SSD did you buy?

siege2 · 20 Oct 2012 at 19:44

Hi Muel

Just did a bios update "should have done it days ago"
Samsung 830 Series 256gb laptop version.
Old stats and new

HD Tune Pro gives me

maximum 378.7 MB/s "383.4"
minimum 310.7 MB/s "358"
average 372.2 MB/s "375.3"
Access time 0.079 ms "0.074"
Burst rate 280.3 MB/s "290.6"
CPU usage 6.9% "4.9%"

ok done the TAB File benchmark;

drive c off course;

Sequential Read 474453 KB/s Write 401217 KB/s

The Drive is advertised at getting Read 520MB/s Write 400MB/s. so this is very close to advertised speeds

Kenneth

PS Muel does intel have better drivers for the sata side ?

also the 1tb supplied as drive c:

maximum 109.3 MB/s
minimum 47.4 MB/s
average 82.5 MB/s
Access time 19.1 ms
Burst rate 179.5 MB/s
CPU usage 5.1%

so slow.

Muel · 20 Oct 2012 at 19:56

Ah, speeds seem fine to me. I use AS SSD to check, tis good.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_asssdbenchmark/

No idea about intel drivers tbh.

siege2 · 20 Oct 2012 at 20:07

Muel said:
Ah, speeds seem fine to me. I use AS SSD to check, tis good.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_asssdbenchmark/

No idea about intel drivers tbh.

Ran the AS SSD benchmark 1.5.3784 and get these;

Seq Read 493.90 MB/s Write 390.98 MB/s
missed 2 lines off 4k;
score 362 and 197 READ/WRITE

very happy with this laptop as it is now

Muel · 20 Oct 2012 at 20:08

That seems a bit more like it.

anksta · 21 Oct 2012 at 12:46

I'm weighing up going getting one of these from an in store place in Greenwich today.

It's slightly more at just under 600 but I can't get it tomorrow so not that bothered.

If I get it today, what are the first things I should be in terms of removing all the stuffy bloatware stuff, is there a lot of it? Normally I just uninstall and disable them as I go but I'd quite like a list of steps of say like 5 or 6 things to do to get everything running smoothly and cleanly as soon as I get it out the box.

Anyone have any ideas?

Muel · 21 Oct 2012 at 12:52

I removed every piece of software apart from Easy Settings. This makes the function keys work so it's nice to have IMO.

MOOGLEYS · 21 Oct 2012 at 12:59

I had one of these delivered over the weekend and tbh I'm amazed at how well the 650M plays games even hooked up to my 1080p tv via HDMi.

I have also ordered a Dell 7720 with an I7 and 650M and if it's as good as this I will be selling my desktop.

sjac89 · 21 Oct 2012 at 16:14

Got one of these about a week ago and the build quality is very good, I have the i5 3210m/gt650m model and ive replaced the ram with two 4gb ddr3 1600mhz sticks and the hard drive with a 6gbs 256gb ssd. Ive tried guild wars 2 on it and it runs pretty good at medium settings I get about 40 to 50 fps in most areas drops to mid 30's in areas with lots and lots of people. but overall frame rate stays good. I believe 2011 games should run at high/ultra no problem.

You's should use the latest nvidia driver for the 650m from nvidias site.

Here is the NP550P5C-S03UK samsung support site (was a bit hard to find lol)

http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/NP550P5C-S03UK-downloads

Stephen

anksta · 21 Oct 2012 at 17:11

Just got one of these now, setting my preferences and whatnot up now.

Seems like a pretty tidy laptop, not quite as snappy as I thought it was going to be though.

Also the trackpad doesn't seem to let you scroll at all, am I missing something here or does it not do this? The last laptop I had years and years ago let you do that and it's something I use quite a bit, is there a setting or something I can whack on to allow me to do that?