Eurocom X5 (Clevo P177SM)
by Vivek Gowri on September 2, 2013 12:00 AM ESTThe GTX 780M is the top dog in the mobile GPU space right now, but our last experience with it in the MSI GT70 was a bit touch and go. It seemed like the combination of the 47W Haswell quad and the 100W 780M was really pushing the GT70 chassis to the limits of its thermal headroom, or perhaps the CPU just wasn't quite as fast as the 780M wanted. This resulted in poorer performance than the Ivy Bridge/GTX 680M combination we saw in the Alienware M17x R4 in some of the more CPU-intensive games.
At stock clocks, the 780M has 22% more shader power than the 680M and 39% more memory bandwidth, so the expectation would be to get substantially better performance; couple that with an i7 Extreme CPU and we have a recipe for maximum performance. The P177SM chassis seems to have much higher thermal limits, so performance increases across the board relative to the GT70, but there is still a question about the M17x R4. Performance in the CPU intensive games is pretty even with the M17x, even with a definite increase in both CPU and GPU horsepower, indicating that there’s still some interesting CPU-related behavior happening under load.
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JarredWalton - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
BIOS/firmware might affect performance in CPU, and also I don't know for sure if Vivek remembered to test under the High Performance profile, which can also cause a drop (i.e. if you use Balanced).VivekGowri - Tuesday, September 3, 2013 - link
Dustin did the gaming benchmarks, so I'm pretty sure they were done correctly. He was also the one who tested the GT70. The older drivers are a definite possibility though, as is testing variation.Gadgety - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
I saw the Eurocom Neptune 3.0 with the Quadro 5100M with 8GB of VRam. Very impressive.titan13131 - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
I like this reviewer. He has some panache. Lol at the randomness of the super bright LED's that react to system sound and can't be turned off :DGc - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
Are the LEDs really a separate circuit, or is there a driver? I suspect some people would like to use them for load status on their processors, gpu(s), disk(s), network(s), mailboxes, feeds, etc.nostriluu - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
«an absolute must-have»Well, no, and I wish somewhere in the universe I could find decent reviews that didn't push the reviewers thoughts on people. Not everyone wants a decent computer to play the latest gamez.
VivekGowri - Tuesday, September 3, 2013 - link
No, but when one reviews a gaming notebook, one would do well to consider gaming a relatively important function of said notebook.toastoj - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Interesting review of interesting machine but personally I miss a paragraph about heat and noise. Pretty crucial bit specially since in last few gaming laptops reviews ventilation and noise emission seemd like a deal breakers. Could you please share how did x5 did in that department?