OcUK Hardcore Gamer P177SM 17.3"

Stellamonster · 9 Aug 2013 at 20:17

Hi Lads,

Thinking of getting this laptop for mainly playing CoH's, Anno 2070, X3 Albion Prelude, StarCraft WoL and a few others. I will be doing a little photo and video editing but that is not the priority.
I will be upgrading the memory to 16GB's and I would like some advice on what SSD and HD to put in it, I very new to this thing as the last computer I bought was over 7 years ago...lol.
I would like to know if anyone has one of these laptops and what there views are on them, I'm missing out on some great gaming....Plz Help.
Thanks Guys

roughavoc · 10 Aug 2013 at 11:53

I can't really give you up to date information about SSD's, I'm still stuck in the Crucial M4 and OCZ Agility 3 SSD. But for a SATA drive, I would probably go for the Samsung 840 (pro or non pro, the real life average consumer won't really notice the difference)
For a M-SATA SSD, the Plextor M5M seems a good one, but then again, I haven't done any research about SSD's in a few years.
As for laptop hard drive, there is only one to get, the Western Digital Black, excellent write and read speeds and isn't too loud.

Just some other information. The i7-4700MQ is fine for you, although, if you want longevity, get the i7-4800MQ. The difference will be noticeable.
As for GPU, 780M > 8970M/7970M > 770M > 765M

Stellamonster · 10 Aug 2013 at 12:42

Thanks for the reply,
I too am not very clued up on SSD, but I have been looking at other laptops including the MX17 to do a comparison to the P177SM....any thoughts.
MX17.....
i7-4700MQ Processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
English Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M with 3GB GDDR5
16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz edit
750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s17.3 inch (439.42 mm) WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare Display Slot-Loading 8x SuperMulti Drive (DVDR/RW)
Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0
Price £1.648.99

The P177SM.
ATI Radeon HD 8970M 4GB GDDR5 Graphics Card -
Intel Core i7-4700MQ 2.40GHz (Haswell) Mobile Processor - OEM
Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00403)
Killer 1202 Qualcomm Atheros uPCI-e Wireless-N 2x2 MIMO 300Mbps + Bluetooth
Corsair Vengeance SODIMM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz SODIMM Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10)
Samsung SN-208DB/BEBE Slimline 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - OEM
Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW)
Seagate 1TB SSHD Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" 5400RPM 64MB - ST1000LM014...
Price £ 1.553.84

oweneades · 10 Aug 2013 at 20:53

Stellamonster said:
Thanks for the reply,
I too am not very clued up on SSD, but I have been looking at other laptops including the MX17 to do a comparison to the P177SM....any thoughts.
MX17.....
i7-4700MQ Processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
English Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M with 3GB GDDR5
16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz edit
750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s17.3 inch (439.42 mm) WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare Display Slot-Loading 8x SuperMulti Drive (DVDR/RW)
Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0
Price £1.648.99

The P177SM.
ATI Radeon HD 8970M 4GB GDDR5 Graphics Card -
Intel Core i7-4700MQ 2.40GHz (Haswell) Mobile Processor - OEM
Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00403)
Killer 1202 Qualcomm Atheros uPCI-e Wireless-N 2x2 MIMO 300Mbps + Bluetooth
Corsair Vengeance SODIMM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz SODIMM Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10)
Samsung SN-208DB/BEBE Slimline 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - OEM
Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW)
Seagate 1TB SSHD Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" 5400RPM 64MB - ST1000LM014...
Price £ 1.553.84

Out of those two the second one is a better buy. However you should be able to squeeze a 780m into that price bracket (up to £1600) without much sacrifice. The 780m is noticeably faster than any of the other laptop GPU's, especially the 770m.

For Reference:

780m - 1536sp @771Mhz (+ boost ~900Mhz) / 256bit 5000Mhz memory (160GB/s)
770m - 960sp @ ~800Mhz (+boost ~900Mhz) / 192bit 4000Mhz memory (96GB/s)

In effect the 780m is a mildly downclocked GTX680 whilst the 770m is a downclocked GTX660.

The 8970 is nothing more than a 7970m with a 50mhz core clock bump. It is in effect a desktop HD7870 running at 900Mhz.

roughavoc · 11 Aug 2013 at 12:15

Stellamonster said:
MX17.....
i7-4700MQ Processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
English Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M with 3GB GDDR5
16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz edit
750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s17.3 inch (439.42 mm) WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare Display Slot-Loading 8x SuperMulti Drive (DVDR/RW)
Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0
Price £1.648.99

Why did Alienware think it'll be a good idea to go back to stupid pricing...

Anyway, as oweneades said, you should be able to get a 780M which would be ideal.

Stellamonster · 12 Aug 2013 at 15:13

roughavoc said:
Why did Alienware think it'll be a good idea to go back to stupid pricing...

Anyway, as oweneades said, you should be able to get a 780M which would be ideal.

Thanks for the advice lads,

Is it possible for overclockers to put a 780m in the machine instead of the 8970m?

Cheers

tereu5 · 12 Aug 2013 at 16:15

To do this probably you will have to select other option available

JamesM · 13 Aug 2013 at 17:07

I have the P170SM with a 4700MQ and 780m

Handles all of my games at 1080 with easy on high+ settings. Wasn't sure how well it would cope (I've come from 670 SLI and a 4770k at 4.8GHz) but it's been brilliant so far.

3dmark - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1073380?

Overclocking the 780m gives good results too - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1074763?

They supplied my system without a hard drive as I didn't need one, it's worth asking the question. The 780m is the fastest mobile GPU at the moment and the price reflects that although the AMD is very close as can be seen here - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1053962 (same CPU, just a 8970m instead)

Looking into a custom 780m bios to unlock voltage adjustment and extra core clocking - https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=148273.0

Overall very happy

With a custom system BIOS other owners of Clevo laptops have been able to overclock their system, including memory tweaks, etc. Currently waiting to see what they do for the 170/150 as even with the 4700MQ youi should be able to get a nice boost, heat depending of course.

JamesM · 14 Aug 2013 at 10:30

Can only mess with the memory at the moment but currently on +550 as core is limited to +135

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1077904?

JamesM · 14 Aug 2013 at 10:45

+600

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1077959?

+650 gives me driver errors. Not bad for a mobile card!

tereu5 · 14 Aug 2013 at 10:46

6k in sight !

)

JamesM · 14 Aug 2013 at 10:48

Yeah getting close, just need better core clocking which I should have soon once i'm able to edit the bios.

According to GPUz it gives me better results compared to my old 670 GTX!

tereu5 · 16 Aug 2013 at 15:51

I have a question with regards to the lappy. What kind of keyboard they use? is it a steelseries one? I saw few ppl mention that steel is a great one but usually the clevo has a, lets say ..not the best of keyboards

Also previous chassis suffered from bad sound/wired mic placement (just above the mouse pad so while typing all was going through the mic) it's that still the case?

scoobyrichuk · 20 Aug 2013 at 21:36

tereu5 said:
I have a question with regards to the lappy. What kind of keyboard they use? is it a steelseries one? I saw few ppl mention that steel is a great one but usually the clevo has a, lets say ..not the best of keyboards
Also previous chassis suffered from bad sound/wired mic placement (just above the mouse pad so while typing all was going through the mic) it's that still the case?

I've had a P177SM for a couple of weeks now, the keyboard is fine and the mic/headphone connections are on the side. I went for an i7-4700MQ, 8GB RAM, 256GB Sandisk SSD and an 8970M, I ran a few benchmarks: