[Flashorn]

waldojim, on 28 October 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

The answer to the crossfire question is simple. All contents of your 3d games must be duplicated across the cards. In effect, while they both have 2GB of VRAM, they have an identical data set between them. As such, the drivers must report back only 2GB of vram.

The 3d content would look a whole lot better on a 3dtv - come on down to Texas, and I will treat you to a 65" 3d monster!

EDIT: 1000MB/sec.... sounds too slow for me.

Hey Jim !

I was surprised to see that the desktop 7970s do have 3Gigs of memory compared to the notebook 7970Ms. That's what confused me. Now I see what you mean and those specs on Unigine make more sense.

I hear that everything is Bigger in Texas. I guess that goes for LCD panels also. That thing would look good in my garage LOL!

I would love to travel to the South again but, as it is, I have to take care of Mom & Dad. My only travels lately have been to my daughters and the cottage.

On a different note, I ran CrystalDisk Benchmarks and came up with these numbers :



Not quite 1000MB/s


Just to compare, I also ran that app. on my Asus G73 with Seagates 500Gig HDDs :



a little different but not by much


For Brian, I ran another Boot Racer and it is still consistent with the others :



As far as loading apps and games, there is no time between clicking on the shortcut and opening
the app. The games like CoD take roughly one third to one quarter the time it takes on the G73.



FLASHORN.

[waldojim]

Flashorn, on 28 October 2012 - 07:16 PM, said:

Hey Jim !

I was surprised to see that the desktop 7970s do have 3Gigs of memory compared to the notebook 7970Ms. That's what confused me. Now I see what you mean and those specs on Unigine make more sense.

I hear that everything is Bigger in Texas. I guess that goes for LCD panels also. That thing would look good in my garage LOL!

I would love to travel to the South again but, as it is, I have to take care of Mom & Dad. My only travels lately have been to my daughters and the cottage.

On a different note, I ran CrystalDisk Benchmarks and came up with these numbers :
Not quite 1000MB/s

FLASHORN.

Well, to be fair, this isn't LCD. I rock Mitsubishi DLP TV's. That allows me to have massive TV's with 3d capability at a price that is affordable. The picture is actually quite impressive, and I would gladly pit it against ANY LCD TV. Movies like Avatar look nicer on here than it did in theater.

Considering as my lone Plextor tops out at 480MB/sec, I will simply say: GOOD GRIEF



...not quite 1000MB/sec...

[Flashorn]

Hey Jim !

Well, I have always considered Plextor to be amongst the best of the best.

I'm sure that you are very satisfied with what it brings as far as performance goes.

I just wanted to experience what it was like to have the latest in technology at least
once in my lifetime. I have been saving for quite some time and holding out for a
product that might be able to hold it's own with the rest. I think this one is what I
have been waiting for. And , like you said, only time will tell. I'm pretty sure next year
will bring something new to the fray but, this is what I wanted and am very satisfied
with my acquisition. But,couldn't of done it without your help though


FLASHORN.

[waldojim]

Flashorn, on 30 October 2012 - 03:11 PM, said:

Hey Jim !

Well, I have always considered Plextor to be amongst the best of the best.

I'm sure that you are very satisfied with what it brings as far as performance goes.

I just wanted to experience what it was like to have the latest in technology at least
once in my lifetime. I have been saving for quite some time and holding out for a
product that might be able to hold it's own with the rest. I think this one is what I
have been waiting for. And , like you said, only time will tell. I'm pretty sure next year
will bring something new to the fray but, this is what I wanted and am very satisfied
with my acquisition. But,couldn't of done it without your help though


FLASHORN.

Oh, I am quite satisfied. But I didn't buy it just for the performance. Plextor is one of those companies I can trust - like Eurocom for you - to help out if something happens. For a small company with meager sales, they hold on quite well. And Building customer relations is partly how they do it.

I understand what you mean about wanting to have the best for a while. That was the driving force behind my brothers PC and my own a few years back. Both Intel Core 2 Quads, both rocking Nvidia SLI boards (him a tad fancier, though I liked mine more) And both rocking the "best" video cards we could get our hands on. 3 way 8800GTX for him, dual 8800GT for me. I accidentally killed mine about 2 years ago... But my brother still games on his to this day. And that sucker is about 5 years old now.

Truth be told, a high end, high quality machine is very much like a owning a high end car. Sure, it may cost a bit more up front. But you end up with many more years of service, and a much more enjoyable experience during that time.

I can only hope that in 5 years, that laptop is still going strong. I suspect it will - those numbers are impressive. Easily beyond normal desktops today.

[Flashorn]

Hey All !

OK, it's been a few months and have had a few difficulties with my new acquisition.

It's always been the same thing ,The SSDs in RAID 0.

We just couldn't make it work. No matter what was tried, I was kicked out all the time.
Eurocom's tech even had Crucial write new firmware but, still no joy.

The last time I brought it in, the SSDs had died. Even tried them in other notebooks
and the same results. The SSDs were returned to Crucial for analysis I think.

So, I opted for one SSD and one mechanical HDD. They are :

Intel 520 series - 480GB
Seagates Momentus - 750GB.

It's been almost two weeks now and no problems have been encountered.

The notebook works flawlessly. It's a joy to open this when I can.

All of the benchmarks are the same Except the CrytalDiskMark. As a matter of fact, most
of the benchmarks for the rest of the hardware has had a bump in speed and performance.

Bootimes are in the 14 second range all the time although now am installing updates so, the boot times
will fall off a bit. The crossfires seems to have benefited from the change and am getting a few frames
per second faster in benchmarks and games.

All in all, am happy with this new config.

I did ask Eurocom's tech to notify me when they get the RAID 0 working on other Scorpius notebook. I will
revert back to that config in the future.



FLASHORN.

[Flashorn]

Hey all !

Ok, update on this notebook.

It's been 5 months since I have been playing with this one and have to say (fingers crossed)
that it has been behaving quite nicely.

CrossFire has been as it should be with NO problems with the AMD drivers as some have reported.
The latest being 13.4 is also just as good as the last one 13.1.

No games have failed to play to it's maximum settings.

Since I have a bit of time on my hands, i will now install Crysis 3 and see what this notebook can really do.
Black Ops II plays on maximum settings as does FarCry 3 and this notebook doesn't complain one bit. i will add that
on some occasions, I had to disable the crossfire setup to accommodate less important games.
Some just don't like the dual GPU card setup.

So again, so far so good.

Did not hear from Eurocom's Tech about the SSDs in RAID 0 but, the boot times are as usual between
15 and 16 seconds. IF ever I get call from them for the RAID 0 setup, I will most likely revert to that config.

The only annoyance would be the fans. On most games, they roar to life about 2 or 3 minutes in. and
keep on going until you stop playing. Heat is never an issue and rarely goes higher than 62*C on the
CrossFire setup and never over 58*c on the CPU even after playing for a few hours.

Just surfing or posting or even watching videos will not trigger the fans nor will using converting programs
which takes up so little time to do.

I enjoy using this notebook very much but, I hope that it will do justice to it's price in time. Meaning, it will
keep on going and playing all the recent games for longer than my previous notebooks could do.


FLASHORN.

[Flashorn]

Hey all!

Just to follow upon the boot times that I mentioned,
here is a screen shot of Bootracer from this afternoon:



Will post screen shots of the frame rates I get on Crysis 3 in a little while.
It does play on very high settings with no lag.


FLASHORN.

[Flashorn]

Hey All !

OK, as promised, I will post a few images of Crysis 3 with the frame rates on the
upper left hand corner of the screen shot ;

First up are the settings :



A static screen shot from the game : They were stopped at a console and chatting :



And in game play itself: running up a stair case going to the first challenge ; Not easy to capture a screen shot while in gaming mode



As you can see, the frame rates fluctuate from as high as 85 FPS to a low of around 62 FPS when lots of activity in gaming mode.
The game and motions of the avatar are very fluid with no blur or hesitations.
All in all, am very happy with this notebook and it's performance "so far".


FLASHORN.

[coastie65]

Looks good as long as the temps stay down.

[Flashorn]

coastie65, on 22 May 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

Looks good as long as the temps stay down.

Hey coastie!

Like I said, so far so good.

All the temps are within 62*C for the CrossFires and 58*C for the CPU after a gaming session of about two hours
which doesn't seem to happen often enough.

Graphics are just superb on all the games I have installed.

The only one I was really disappointed with was Medal of Honor:WarFighter. The last MoH was and still is a very good
and thought out game but, with this one, you are all over the place without knowing where to go next. The gaming
experience that I got was not a good one and I'm not that hard to please when it comes to first person shooters.
OTOH, Crysis 3 three is not that long but man, lots of action to keep you busy. Of course, I'm not That good of a gamer
and got killed quite a few times but still, lots of good action.


FLASHORN.

[coastie65]

Ugh. I don't FPS and and getting my clock cleaned in the latest Tomb Raider. I am playing it on the PS3. Maybe I should have gotten the PC version. MY only question is where is the Calvary when you need it? Anyway, the temps look good. I am impressed.

[Flashorn]

coastie65, on 23 May 2013 - 05:50 PM, said:

Ugh. I don't FPS and and getting my clock cleaned in the latest Tomb Raider. I am playing it on the PS3. Maybe I should have gotten the PC version. MY only question is where is the Calvary when you need it? Anyway, the temps look good. I am impressed.

Hey coastie !

You didn't pick the easiest of games to try out your FPS skills LOL!
Don't know what the PC version would have that the PS3 doesn't though.

OK, I ran the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool to see what the stress of that test
does to the temperature of the CPU. You can see the results from the attached
file I uploaded.

After the test , I ran RealTemp from TechPowerUp and this is the results :



Also ran the Intel Processor Identification Utility version 4.60 (this is the newest version from the 22/5/2013) and came away with the same results as the last version:



It's still Turbo Boosted at 3.6 GHz which is advertized to be 3.8GHz but, on a validation from CPUZ i did get a 3.791 GHz reading which is pretty darn close.

So, there you are, after five almost 6 months of up time with no problems, I would have no problems recommending this notebook (with this configuration )
to anyone that asks.


FLASHORN.

Attached File(s)

•  Intel i7 TestResults.txt (4.1K)
  Number of downloads: 1