Samsung Series 7 Gamer NP700G7C-S01US 17.3-Inch Laptop

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Product Feature

• Intel core_i7 Processor 2.3GHz
• 16 GB RAM
• 1.5TB Hard Drive
• 17.3-Inch Screen, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M
• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• 1.5TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
• 16 GB SO-DIMM RAM
• 17.3-Inch Screen; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M Graphics
• Intel Core i7 Processor 3610QM 2.3GHz
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Product Description

Samsung Series 7 PC

Samsung Series 7 Gamer NP700G7C-S01US 17.3-Inch Laptop Review

I've had my Samsung Series 7 Gamer laptop for over a week now, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the machine since I haven't found much out there about it. Overall, it's a very fancy, very powerful piece of hardware. And the price certainly reflects that. While you could spend thousands more on even fancier, gobbed-out custom notebooks - or even a completely tricked out Alienware - the S7G was more than adequate for my purposes (and for the price of a top-end Alienware, you really should buy a desktop system, anyway). I bought the laptop for two primary reasons: 1) To run Guitar Rig 5, which is a very CPU-intensive virtual guitar amp/effects program used for performing and recording, and 2) to play games from the past several years at high levels. Gaming-wise, I'm primarily a console gamer, but since it's looking less and less like the next Xbox and PlayStation will be backward compatible with current-gen games (probably with the exception of platform-defining first-party titles like Halo and Uncharted), I wanted to start collecting my current favorites on the PC so I don't have to shelve and maintain extra consoles when the next-gen rolls around. I wanted titles like Batman: Arkham Asylum/City, Skyrim, the Mass Effect trilogy, GTA4, Fallout 3/NV, Dead Island, BioShock, and Metro 2033 to all be available when the mood strikes me. Not to mention the upcoming final round (for the Xbox 360 and PS3) of highly anticipated current-gen titles: Max Payne 3, Metro: Last Light, Far Cry 3, BioShock: Infinite, GTA5, etc.

While the S7G is definitely a brute of a laptop (in a good way), let me get its bad points out of the way first. The most negative aspect of this laptop is Samsung's proprietary Mode Dial. Basically you can turn a knob on the front of the laptop, and there are instructions built into the system to enable/disable certain features depending if you want quiet (no fan), battery savings (backlit keyboard off), or all-out gaming performance (everything on and maxed out, battery be damned). It's pointless, and what's worse, the interface that overlays on your desktop is annoying. It comes preloaded with desktop themes that will engage a screen saver after 60 seconds no matter what. The good news is from the desktop you can disable the themes and revert to a traditional Win7 desktop, which also kills the screen saver. However, there's still a clickable node in the upper-right corner of the desktop that allows you to tweak the Mode Dial settings; this will not go away. I personally have the dial set to "game" mode all the time; the likelihood that I'll used this laptop unplugged for more than a half-hour is close to zero.

The second biggest disappointment with the S7G is its plastic case. While it looks like a TRON wet dream when the lid's open, the laptop's housing is light-weight plastic. For almost 20 bills, this really needs to have a higher quality metal case. Perhaps it was an effort on Samsung's part to reduce weight, but it's probably an effort on Samsung's part to reduce its cost.

Other negatives: I have the laptop connected to an external monitor via HDMI, and I use an external USB keyboard and USB mouse (running through a USB hub). The laptop sets under a shelf, on which the monitor sits. I put the computer into sleep mode overnight and during the day when I'm at work. The problem is, the factory default settings kill the power to the USB ports when in sleep mode, and I could not get the external keyboard to "wake" the computer. The only way I could wake it is to unplug everything, move the keyboard out of the way, pull it out from under the shelf, open the lid, make sure it wakes, close the lid, slide it back under the shelf, reposition the keyboard, and plug everything back in. I wasted an hour on-line chatting with Samsung tech support, and never once did the support rep understand the problem, even though I explained it to him about 873 times. I went to Google and found the solution: you have to get into the BIOS and enable the USB devices to retain power while in sleep mode, which allows them to wake the computer. Shouldn't tech support know this? If you need to contact Samsung tech support, do yourself a favor and exhaust all other searches before you call because my on-line tech support chat session with Guptarjeeshaputa in Bombay was akin to slamming my face into a brick wall repeatedly for 60 straight minutes.

The final negative is one gamers want to pay attention to: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M is a very, very nice GPU. However, it is essentially a rebadged GTX 580M from the previous generation. NVIDIA will soon release the new GTX 680M, which uses a whole new chipset, will be faster, and run cooler. If I did not need a new laptop immediately, I would have waited for the 680M. If you are concerned about such things, hold on a little longer until laptops are available with the new GPU.

This is not really a complaint, but more of a warning to those who might be unaware: this laptop is huge ("It sure is, Tiny Elvis!"). It's big and it's heavy, and it's not something you'll want to just pop out of your bag on the metro or an airplane. The power brick is also enormous. When I was unpacking the laptop, I saw the edge of the power supply and thought it was another box of parts. Not until I pulled it out did I realize it was the power brick! It's also worth noting that to order a second power supply, expect to spend some serious money. I ordered a travel/backup supply through Samsung parts (it's not available anywhere else), and it was about $150 for the brick and power cord (note: they are sold separately from each other, so make sure you buy both pieces). The battery also doesn't last long; expect maybe a couple of hours if you're lucky. Again, I knew this when I bought it, but if you've never owned a 17"+ high-power laptop, be aware of this stuff.

Okay, on to the positives. This laptop is very powerful. It has not choked at anything I have thrown at it (with one exception, see below). It also has a very eye-pleasing, modern design. While I normally use it with the lid closed, when I do open the lid it feels like you're at the helm of a spaceship. It's wickedly fast booting up Windows. I go from entering my Windows password to a fully ready desktop in about 10 seconds or less. This is thanks to the 8GB ExpressCache SSD. For everything going on under the hood, the heat output remains nicely under control, even under the duress of Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. While the built-in cooling system is nice, I still HIGHLY recommend a laptop cooling pad; they're inexpensive, easy to use, and keep your big investment running at a safe temp. It also has tons of storage (note that the system has two 750GB HDDs that are NOT in RAID 0, so it has a total of 1.5TB of storage, but not in a single C: drive). Also not listed in any spec sheets is the laptop uses DDR3-1600 RAM, so expect 1600 MHz speeds (verified with CPU-ID).

So far I have had a wonderful gaming experience with the S7G. I use 1920x1080 resolution for all games, and I'm generally able to get high performance numbers even at that high of a resolution. However, DirectX 11 is just a bit too much for the system to handle with some games at that resolution, and I sometimes back games down to DX10. Here are some of my performance numbers (collected using reports generated by FRAPS, or the game's internal benchmarking tool):

Batman: Arkham Asylum - 54 FPS (Ultra settings, PhysX on HIGH, 4x AA)
Batman: Arkham City - 47 FPS (Ultra settings, PhysX on HIGH, DX10, 4x AA)
Battlefield 3 - 30 FPS (Ultra settings, 2x AA)
Crysis 2 - 30 FPS (High Quality Texture Pack, Ultra settings, DX10)
Diablo III - 60+ FPS (Highest settings, 8x AA)
Grand Theft Auto IV - 62 FPS (Ultra settings, View Distance = 50, Detail Distance = 50, 8x AA, sometimes dips to < 30 FPS during top speeds in heavy traffic)
Max Payne 3 - 30+ FPS (with HDAO and minimum AA)
RAGE - 40 FPS (Ultra settings, 16x AA)
Serious Sam 3 BFE - 30 FPS (Ultra settings, 4x AA)
Skyrim - 54 FPS (Hi Res Texture Pack, Ultra settings, 8x AA, 13 additional user mods running)

The only game giving me problems is The Witcher 2. To get a playable frame rate of over 30 FPS, I have to switch everything to low. With medium settings I get less than 20 FPS, and it chugs and stutters. After doing some research, I'm finding a lot of people unable to get this game running well, even on machines exceeding the recommended specs from the publisher. I am still investigating this, but I believe this is a situation where the game has incredible graphics, but is very poorly optimized. I can play Battlefield 3, Max Payne 3, and Batman: Arkham City at very high quality and not run into the frame rate problems The Witcher 2 has.

In conclusion, if you're looking for a fast gaming laptop right now, the Samsung Series 7 Gamer should be at the top of your shopping list. I looked at several other brands (Alienware, HP, Sager), and the Samsung, more than any other brand/model, met my needs at a price I was willing to pay. You can spend thousands more if you can afford it, but you get a lot of bang for your buck with the S7G. It isn't perfect, but it sure will get the job done.

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