Leaning Heavily towards sager, have a few last questions

[jacket321]

So I'm pretty fixed on a Sager 8150, but I have some questions. First, I honestly haven't seen one bad review for Sager, and at times this feels unrealistic. At most I have read about battery life and mousepad issues, but in very old threads. So in a completely objective way, are there any cons to this system. I feel like I can't make a decision from a list of just pros. In a way, I feel that if they are really perfect notebooks, they should be a better known brand.

And are there other brands apart from Asus that I should look at? In my research I have come to feel like these are the only two brands worth talking about for gaming, are there some that I'm overlooking?

Finally, when is the best time to buy? I don't want to buy a new laptop only to have a new line of video cards available a month later or even a whole new series of laptops. I just want to know if there would be any difference in me buying a laptop now or in August. I tried looking through Nvidia and Sager/clevo sites but found nothing.

I really appreciate any help, and I filled out the standard form below in case any one has other suggestions. I may be leaning towards Sager, but I haven't bought anything yet!


1. What is your budget? >2000

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 15'', 6-7 lbs

3. What screen resolution do you want? FHD quality

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? in between I guess. I consider what I listed above as pretty portable.

5. How much battery life do you need? not much.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? Yes, Id like to play games like Mass Effect 3 and TES Skyrim on pretty high quality.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.) Music, movies and school are pretty much it.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 500gb, but not a huge issue with external HD.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. powernotebooks is my top choice as of now.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 4-5 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? Bluray

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. Not a fan of dell or alienware, consider then rip offs.

13. What country do you live in? USA

 

[Maziar]

Welcome to the forums
Sager NP8150 is a great machine.In terms of quality,if you ask Sager users,they'll tell you that these laptops are built like a tank;furthermore,you don't need much battery life,so no issues here.(It should give you around 2-3hrs)

 

[jacket321]

I see that your confirming my beliefs. So then, is there a best time to buy? Should I do it this spring or wait until the end of summer?

And thanks for the welcome.

 

[Maziar]

Well,this notebook should be available in late April,and I don't think we're going to see the next generation CPUs come so fast,so if you need it,buy in Spring.
Becuase if you wait,then you can't every buy anything because there is always something new around the corner.

 

[lostandwandering]

I see that your confirming my beliefs. So then, is there a best time to buy? Should I do it this spring or wait until the end of summer?

And thanks for the welcome.

Owner of an older Sager model. I love it. But I digress.

You will typically see some sales around the time that High School and College graduations take place (May-June). You will also see some decent deals around the holiday season in December.

 

[jacket321]

I have heard that 2nd gen intel chips are coming in soon, would it be worthwhile to wait for those?

 

[Maziar]

They're definitely worth the wait because they're notably faster than current core i CPUs, have a much more powerful IGP along with better battery life and lower power consumption

 

[jacket321]

So I looked into the chips more, it seems as if the 8150s are going to come standard with 2nd gen core i7, am I correct?

So if I order it, it will be up to date with the market? I know it seems pretty clear, but I don't want to make a dumb mistake.

http/www.powernotebooks.com/Sager-NP8150-gaming-laptops-notebooks-sys-3740.html

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Sager is made by Clevo

http/forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/91510-clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-reseller-info.html

CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. They are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.

You can also find them at WidowPC.com, Pro-star.com, xoticpc.com and other outlets. I generally find Prostar a bit cheaper most of the time. I'd suggest a 150HM or 170HM

http/www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=product&filter=7

 

[jacket321]

K, thanks for the link, will check it out.

Incidentally, how much of an upgrade is the nvidia 485 from the 460? I want to play games like ME3 and Skyrim on decent quality when they come out, but I'm not sure if I will be a heavy gamer, may not play very often at all. Is it worth the extra $500?

 

[Maziar]

485M is significantly faster than 460M.$500 extra is a little hard to swallow but it's definitely worth it.

 

[Fadekyn]

I personally could not afford a Sager. However, I did consider their lower end NP build and a few other builds. Fortunately, I was able to find an obscene deal on an Asus G73JH. The only other gaming rig systems I looked at were by MSI. Of the three Sager does seem to have the best reputation from gamers, mostly due to the customer service being much better at sites like Xoticpc.

My biggest gripe with Sager, as you've already stated, was the seemingly large cost if you wanted to upgrade the graphics card. $500 seems a bit steep, considering that the 485 vs the 460 has no where near a $500 differential when buying the cards as stand alone products. So I find it hard to understand how any company from HP to Sager resellers can justify the cost. It's not like components have to be moved for the upgrade.

As for best time to buy. ATI, Nvidia, Intel and AMD(soon) have all released new cards and chips in the last 2-3 weeks. So, I would expect that in six months you'll see some new cards, at least from Nvidia. If you were to wait for the school deals at the end of the summer I'd expect to see a few new card releases right around that time. Tom's had an article recently where the author was of the opinion that ATI and Nvidia may have returned to their every "new card every six month" cycle. So I'll go with the expert and stick with his opinion.

As for the performance difference between 485 and 460, I'm not versed well in Nvidia. However, I did just get an ATI 5870 and it is running games with new shades and brighter colors than I am used to. Making me wish I had the cash for the even newer 6xxx ATI series.

Lastly, be careful right now when purchasing a new SB chipset laptop. Some laptops will still be getting the old broken SB chips if the build meets certain criteria that "should" avoid the SB problem. My problem with this use of defective backstock chips is my belief that if something is broken in some way it could be broken in another way yet to be discovered. Read my thread in the link below, which has another link to a more official article.

http/www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=35&post=66017&page=1&p=4&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

 

[lostandwandering]

My biggest gripe with Sager, as you've already stated, was the seemingly large cost if you wanted to upgrade the graphics card. $500 seems a bit steep, considering that the 485 vs the 460 has no where near a $500 differential when buying the cards as stand alone products. So I find it hard to understand how any company from HP to Sager resellers can justify the cost. It's not like components have to be moved for the upgrade

Blame the costs on NVidia and ATI (AMD). They charge a massive premium for their mobile cards.

From the recent Malibal review:

According to the price sheets of various Clevo partners, this bare module costs approximately four times as much as a theoretical 2 GB desktop GeForce GTX 460 with all of its insides turned on. We blame neither Clevo nor MALIBAL, as this appears to be specifically related to Nvidia’s mobile GPU pricing structure. To be fair, AMD employs a similar practice, marking up its own mobile parts to cost significantly more than their desktop equivalents.

http/www.tomshardware.com/reviews/malibal-lotus-p150hm-geforce-gtx-485m-core-i7-2920xm,2855-4.html

 

[jacket321]

You made some good points Fadekyn, I was actually kind of worried about the SB chips too, and that's why I was going to wait until the release date at least before ordering one. I definitely want to be able to gauge some more hands on reviews.

However, I just wasn't sure whether I wanted to wait all the way till next August or so before buying, because I'm afraid they wouldn't make it to me in time for college. Does anyone know how the demand for these will be handled? Will they run out of stock frequently and force me to wait longer then I want to?

Also, if Nvidia has already released the new cards, why would it take like 6 months before they become available? And will they be obscenely more expansive? My fear here is that they stop using the 460 and 485s replacing them with the more expansive new lines, and then the 8150 would no longer be in my budget.

 

[Fadekyn]

It doesn't take six months for new cards to be available. What I was saying is that since Nvidia and AMD released their new cards about 3 weeks ago in 6 months we can expect a new release of newer cards. Thus making the release 3 weeks ago the new old cards.

So for example, right now the best card for Nvidia is the 5xx while AMD is the 6xxx. In six months Nvidia would release something titled, say, the 6xx and AMD the 7xxx. As part of their "new card every six months" cycle.

 

[jacket321]

K now I get it. I definitely have a better picture now, all you guys have been very helpful.

Fadekyn, could you possible drop where you found that deal though?

 

[jacket321]

Best answer selected by jacket321.