AVADirect's Clevo P170HM with GeForce GTX 485M: High-End You've Been Waiting For
by Dustin Sklavos on February 28, 2011 7:15 PM ESTBattery Life
It stands to reason that even with a 77Wh battery, the P170HM's running time off the mains is not long for this world. That has been true of most of the high-end gaming notebooks we've reviewed: when your GPU alone draws north of 50 watts under load, it's hard for the battery to be anything more than a glorified UPS system. With that said, Sandy Bridge has brought big gains in terms of power efficiency and Clevo has outfitted the P170HM with a beefier battery than we're used to seeing.
Sandy Bridge helps the P170HM beat two hours in two of our tests. Compared to the other gaming notebooks, it's actually a reasonably efficient machine (although it doesn't benefit from NVIDIA's Optimus technology), but one look at Compal's NBLB2 can tell you what a different less of a GPU can make. The P170HM is also nearly nine pounds, making it less than ideal for anything other than being moved from table to table.
Noise and Heat
In keeping with Sandy Bridge being a healthy step up over Clarksfield and the GeForce GTX 485M being a healthy step up over the 480M, it's reasonable to expect heat (and consequently noise) will be less of an issue for the P170HM than it was for the W880CU that had to contend with cooling those older parts.
Indeed, the P170HM produces excellent thermals at both idle and load, doing a fine job of keeping both the processor and GPU cool. In a desktop those core temperatures would be more alarming, but in a mobile chassis it's not uncommon to see a CPU hit nearly 80C. Meanwhile 83C on the GPU is impressively low given the TDP of the chip.
Surface temperatures for the P170HM are also very reasonable even under load, with no major hot spots forming during gaming.
Unfortunately the great thermal performance does come at a cost: fan noise is constant and the P170HM does spin up noticeably under sustained load. It isn't jet engine loud and you're not going to call your friends over to tell them how stupidly loud your new gaming notebook is, but the fans definitely make themselves known during gaming.
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Hrel - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
There a few notebooks I'd REALLY love to see reviewed.Clevo: P151HM1, W150HN. Both with 1080p screen. The first has the GTX460M and the second has the GT540M. I already have a solid idea of performance with the given parts, but I'm very interested in speaker quality, chassis quality, keyboard quality. Things Jarred, you tend to hit on well. Unfortunately these still aren't available in actual stores so the only way I can find this stuff out is a really good review; or buy it and take that risk.
Compal: I don't know the model number cause I can't find it anywhere anymore but a 15.6" 1080p Compal with the GT540M and Sandy Bridge.
What are the chances of getting these in house for a review? And what kind of time frame would we be looking at? Thanks!
Hrel - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link
Jarred! Why have you ignored my comment?SimKill - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
"Begging the question" in your first paragraph isn't what you think it means.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Otherwise, a great article!
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
Interesting. I've never heard this before, and honestly it strikes me as one of those areas where the language has changed and the "modernized" usage has become accepted. The thing is, to beg (ask earnestly; entreat) for a question hardly seems to be a clear translation of "petitio principii" (petitioning for a principle point). Honestly, I'm not going to change my usage on this one, simply because I have never heard it used before as "assuming the initial point" -- certainly not by anyone I know! I suppose maybe if I were a lawyer it would have come up before.jcompagner - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
I am waiting and waiting for the real high end, ok there is one already there the 17" of apple but i rather have a "normal" windows laptop but then as apple does in a high end 16:10 configuration (1920x1200)alephxero - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
It seems kind of disingenuous to list the starting price but not the configured price. Looking at AVADirect's site the price for the reviewed model is in the $2600 range, a far cry from the 1600 base price.JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
You're correct, and we usually list the configured pricing. I'll update the table.bennyg - Thursday, March 3, 2011 - link
Powafulest GPU feasible for multimedia performance... check.CPU good enough to run it with room to spare... check.
Enough of a thermal solution to keep them both from burning up... check.
Great quality LCD panel...
Even if all Clevo focus on is incremental improvement in their products, like remedying the tiny battery of the w8x0cu designs, why would they settle for a mid-range screen on a top-of-the-range laptop...
-1 buyer of this laptop as a result.
Also, just give me manual graphics switching already! I don't care about Optimus and it's performance tradeoffs - to have the same hardware present and capable that cheaper/smaller laptops use to run >5hrs on battery - but no interface to use it - is just silly. I would get great benefit out of this feature, I don't use my laptop just for multimedia.