Sager 9750NP Review
Background
I travel a lot but unfortunately a regular laptop really does not cut it for me anymore. They're perfect for business applications, but I need to run Visual Studio, Virtual PC, I need plenty of storage, etc.So I decided to let someone at my company inherit my old Vaio VGN-A290 (a really fine computer, by the way) and bought myself a Sager 9750NP.
The 9750NP is a mean gaming laptop. Nobody sells "workstation laptops", at least nobody I know of. I needed a portable workstation so I got a gaming machine.
Looks desirable
The reason I decided to go with the Sager (as opposed to an Alienware rig, or the Dell XPS) was because this was the only laptop with an AMD 64 x2 Dual Core CPU. I wanted to be able to run a 64-bit version of WinXP, and wanted the dual-core goodness I got so used to on my SMP desktop computer.
I called Sager to clarify a few minor points, placed the order over the Interwebs, and waited patiently. The laptop was in my hands after a week.
What did I get?
| CPU | 2.20 GHz (AMD 64 x2 Dual Core 4200+) 2GHz FSB | |
| Memory | 2 Gigabytes | |
| HDD | 2x100GB 7200 RPM 2.5" disks in RAID-0 | |
| Video | NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX (PCIe x16) | |
| Display | 1920x1200 17" WUXGA | |
| Optical Drive | 8X DVD ± R/RW/ 4X +DL |
Additional goodies include a built-in 7-in-1 memory card reader, a 4-port USB 2.0 HUB, DVI out, S/PDIF out, S-Video in/out, built-in webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11g, USB floppy drive.
All for slightly under $4000. That's a perfectly decent pre-owned Civic, mind you.
First Contact
The initial impressions were somewhat of a letdown. The laptop came with an extremely cheap, thin plastic carrying case that ended up in the trash. It also came with the biggest power suply ever inflicted upon an unsuspecting laptop customer. That thing is big. Brick-big.
That's one hefty PSU
You can see the power supply on the photo above, resting on top of the laptop. I've put an Apple iBook power supply next to it so you can get a sense of scale.
I expected a large computer, and I knew the weight in advance, but it still came as a shock. 5.7 kilograms (12.5 pounds for you non-metric people). This, of course, excluding the brick.
The beauty (12" iBook) and the beast
After turning it on and waiting for Windows to boot up I was in for a couple more disappointments. First, the fans are numerous and loud. Server-room loud.
Ample cooling....
...with cheap fans.
Second, the screen is crap. It reminded me of the abhorrent display on the Creative Zen Vision. (That thing got returned after an hour and exchanged for an Archos. But that's another story.) Okay, this is not that bad, but is definitely a huge letdown after the gorgeus LCD on the Sony. It just does not have the clarity and the viewing angle, and is coated in a very reflective material which means you have to crank the backlight up all the way, draining the battery in the process.
The Good Part
It's a fast latop. Incredibly, unbelievably fast.
Far Cry in 1600x1200.
I've run a few benchmarks. It would be unfair to compare this beast to my old Sony (and there's the fact that I don't have it anymore) so I did a more even match-up.
In the blue corner then, we have the Sager NP9750. In the red corner is the defending champion, my aging, but still hard-hitting desktop computer.
I've already given the stats on the Sager, so here's the lowdown on the desktop:
| CPU | Two 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon processors, 533 MHz FSB | |
| Memory | 3 Gigabytes | |
| HDD | 2x74GB 10,000 RPM (WD Raptor) disks in RAID-1 | |
| Video | ATI Radeon X800 Platinum, AGP |
Here are the results - winning numbers in bold.
| Desktop | Sager | |||
| RAM Bandwidth | 2465 MB/s | 4094 MB/s | ||
| Sisoft Sandra Drive Index *** | 47 MB/s | 24 MB/s | ||
| Sisoft Sandra Multimedia (integer) | 37898 it/s | 40446 it/s | ||
| Sisoft Sandra Multimedia (floating point) | 47757 it/s | 44478 it/s | ||
| Dhrystone | 16498 MIPS | 19429 MIPS | ||
| Whetstone | 8270 MFLOPS | 8977 MFLOPS | ||
| Far Cry Benchmark **** | 54.62 FPS | 47.74 FPS | ||
| Call of Duty 2 Benchmark (1920x1200) ***** | 24.2 FPS | 19.0 FPS | ||
| Call of Duty 2 Benchmark (1280x1024) ***** | 32.9 FPS | 26.4 FPS | ||
| Data Compression ****** | 126 s | 91 s | ||
*** I am running DriveCrypt on the laptop that encrypts and decrypts every disk operation with AES. It should not have a major performance impact, but somewhere between a 5 to 10 percent slowdown can be attributed to encryption.
**** The Far Cry benchmark was conducted using Far Cry Bench 1.4.3 from HardwareOC. The resolution was 1600x1200, quality was set to maximum. Demo 1 was timed.
***** The Call of Duty 2 benchmark was done using Call of Duty 1.01 with the D-Day demo from over here. The resolution was 1920x1200 and 1280x1024 respectively, quality settings were at: Bilinear texture filter, 4x Anti-aliasing, Shadows: Yes, Dynamic lights: normal, Soften smoke: World only, Corpses: Small, Texture settings: Manual, Normal, Normal, Low.
****** The Data Compression test was done by executing "rar -m5 test.rar freebsddisk.vmdk". The data file is a 117-megabyte virtual disk file from the Dummynet article on this site.
So what does all this mean?
In terms of raw CPU power the two machines are roughly equal, with the newer, much more modern AMD taking the lead. Harddisk performance is definitely on the desktop's side (those Raptors on an Adaptec 2410SA are still king), and 3D performance is, again, roughly equal. Where the AMD really shines is the incredible memory bandwidth. The 2GHz FSB definitely pays off here, as evidenced by the data compression numbers.
Finally, since this is marketed as a laptop, I should mention the battery life as well. It is actually a nice surprise:
| On idle: | 109 mins | |
| When busy: | 75 mins |
"Idle" means that the CPU and GPU were left alone during this excercise. I basically let the computer idle with the screen constantly on at 50% backlight, the harddisks spinning, but otherwise not doing much.
"Busy" means running the Far Cry benchmark over and over again. I wasn't getting the full performance, of course. In fact, the average FPS dropped from 47.74 to around 10. PowerNow (AMD's version of SpeedStep) was of course enabled and it automatically managed the CPU speed between 1000 and 2200 MHz - and I suspect the GPU was severely underclocked too.
Not bad, not bad at all, especially from a laptop equipped with a full-blown desktop CPU.
The Verdict
Even though I have a portable, very fast computer in the Sager, I am not quite happy with it.Its sheer size prevents it to be used on an airplane, unless you are sitting in first class - and I don't mean those pretend first class seats found on intra-USA flights. You need an intercontinental 1st class seat to be able to whip this baby out.
 No, not here... |
 ...but here instead. |
When you do take it out on a plane and manage to find room for it, you will need to power it - which you won't be able to do. The power supply tries to put out 11 amps at 20 volts - that's 220 watts. On a recent transatlantic flight this was enough to shut off my in-seat power plug. I asked my neighbor for permission to use the connector on his side, hoping that the problem was with my seat and not with the laptop, but, of course, the laptop was the culprit.
It likes juice.
Add to this the cheap build quality evidenced by the noisy fans, the sub-par screen, and things like upside down USB ports (what's up with those???), and I really don't feel I got my money's worth.
Were they drunk?
Don't get me wrong, I will take the laptop with me on the road when I go on a longer trip. I got insurance for it and it goes into my checked suitcase. Having a workstation in my hotel room is definitely worth the hassle. If I get upgraded to a suite where I can sleep with a closed door between me and the laptop, I might even leave it on during the night. My carryon bag will, however, have my crummy old little Vaio TR2A for use while in transit.