Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C Review
by Jarred Walton on August 16, 2012 2:05 AM ESTSamsung Series 7 Gaming Performance
There’s no craziness this time with CPU/GPU throttling under typical gaming workloads, but we did run into some driver anomalies. Samsung ships the Series 7 with a rather old 296.87 driver version, and while performance in most games is fine, Civilization V in particular has very poor performance. Unfortunately, the only other drivers that will properly install right now are the 304.79 beta drivers, and those don’t bring Civ5 performance back to the level that we saw with the Clevo W110ER. Other than that one title, performance in the other games was pretty close between the two drivers, so we’ve used the 296.87 scores for the remaining titles.
Value Gaming Performance
As we’ve seen with quite a few laptops, the launch of Kepler GPUs has made our Value settings less of a struggle. Outside of the Civ5 issue, Samsung’s Series 7 is able to pass 60FPS in all of the titles, though it’s interesting that the Clevo W110ER still takes a few wins—again, most likely thanks to using different drivers. As a higher end “mainstream” notebook, we’d be more surprised if there were problems with our Value settings, so let’s just move along and bump up the difficulty a notch.
Mainstream Gaming Performance
Again with the exception of Civ5 (look at the W110ER to get a rough idea of where the Samsung should be performing), Samsung takes down all of our mainstream gaming tests without any difficulties to speak of. Battlefield 3 is the only game where you might see occasional sub-30 frame rates in multiplayer matches, but that’s no surprise as it’s the most demanding title in our current test suite—and at least you can drop to Medium detail to get a substantial improvement.
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Samsung Series 7 Gaming Recommended Settings for 1920x1080 |
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| Game | Detail | FPS | Notes |
| Batman: Arkham City | Very High + PhysX | 31 | As one of the few titles where PhysX makes a noticeable difference, we recommend using it rather than enabling DX11. |
| Battlefield 3 | Medium | 37.9 | Multiplayer might be pushing it at these settings, in which case you may need to drop the resolution. |
| Civilization V | Low | 31.9 |
Civ5 needs a better driver, and we’ve seen higher scores in the past. Until then, setting everything to “Low” is your best bet for 1080p. |
| DiRT 3 | High + 4xAA | 52.9 |
Very fluid at the High defaults with 4xAA. If you try Ultra without AA, you’ll be around 32FPS. |
| Portal 2 | Max + 4xAA | 66.5 |
You can pretty much max out the settings in Portal 2 and still maintain fluid frame rates; even 8xAA or 16xCSAA will run fine. |
| Skyrim | Ultra + 4xAA | 39.4 | There are no issues with maxing out the settings in Skyrim—you can even use 8xAA if you feel the need at the cost of a few FPS. |
| Total War: Shogun 2 | Very High + 4xAA | 35.0 | The Very High defaults with 4xAA are again very playable; if you run into performance issues, turn off AA to get another 5-10 FPS. |
With the GT 650M, we’re almost at the point where we can just recommend using our Enthusiast settings across all the tested games—almost, but not quite. Batman, Battlefield, Civilization, and DiRT all fall below 30 FPS at our Enthusiast (max detail + 4xAA) settings and require backing off just a bit. As noted in the table, we prefer enabling PhysX in Batman over running with DX11—you’ll need some form of GTX GPU at the very least to enable both without dropping into the 20s. Battlefield remains a GPU killer and needs a lot more than a GT 650M to handle 1080p at higher quality settings. Civilization still needs a better driver, and DiRT need to step back from the Ultra settings to High (which basically doubles the frame rates).
Obviously, we’re not testing a huge number of games, but the above results should hold for most other titles as well. More demanding titles will need to run at Medium to High detail settings at 1080p, while older and/or less demanding games (like Diablo III) can easily be run at maximum detail with 4xAA. Short of games taking another jump forward in requirements—something we really haven’t seen since DX11 titles started shipping—the GT 650M ought to remain adequate for gaming for a couple years at least (but don’t quote me one that).
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lbell - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
It seems to be a PERFECT laptop if the user replaces the HDD with a SSD, plugs a gaming mouse and uses it in ACed room.nerd1 - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
I think the biggest drawback of this laptop is the lack of secondary HDD bay. Many laptops now provide mSATA slot where user can easily put 128GB boot drive (and they cost as low as $100 nowadays too) while keeping ~1TB data drive. With a single 2.5" bay such setup is not possible. Small SSD cache is just a gimmick and generally not comparable to true SSDs. And they should provide slower 35W CPU option as well - which should help overheating a bit.Anyway I think this laptop is actually one of the best 17" laptops out there for general public, and one good replacement for 17" MBP which is now discontinued.
.Hg. - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
Hi Jarred,thanks a lot for your review. Since we cannot trust specification sheets anymore when we choose a laptop, the work of good reviewers is essential.
If manufactures decide that performances don't really matter, we will gladly spend more on the monitor and less on the CPU/GPU, or we will buy tablets instead of notebooks.
I hope you'll improve your testing methodology about the impact of the cooling system on the performances, because if when a laptop "falis" the stress test, it "doesn't really matter", then the stress test doesn't really matter itself.
I'd like to suggest testing an heavy CPU load with the GPU turned on but idling. This is the Adobe Premiere Video export scenario or generic cpu load using an external monitor. My XPS15 throttled badly with the A04 bios after 2 min during this test, because the heat from the CPU triggered the GPU temperature threshold. Manufacturers should find a clever way to balance TDP than temperature thresholds.
Also, please keep in mind that a CPU at 1.2GHz has a lot of impact on the gaming experience, much more than average fps shows, and that a GPU continuously throttling between 800 and 200 mhz has higher average fps than a GPU fixed a 400 Mhz, but it gives a lot worse gaming experience.
nerd1 - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
No, CPU power rarely affects gaming experience, as most of the games are now developed multi-platform and ivy bridge@1.2Ghz is still WAY better than any console out there. On the other hand, GPU power directly affects framerate..Hg. - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
It does, I experienced an awful control lag with Assassin Creed II and Prince of Persia.Games that are not properly multi-threaded will suffer the low frequency. Ivy Bridge can't do miracles.
And games that are properly multi-thread will show much greater power absorption even at low frequency because of the higher load, and if the cooling system is not good, the system will try to reduce the GPU frequency.
nerd1 - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
No, I don't think such an ancient game can load CPU to maximum. It ran fine with core 2 duo processor, which has much lower power-per-clock than new ivy bridge processor. The only cpu-consuming task I can imaging for computer game is heavy physics simulation, which is done with GPU now.JarredWalton - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
It's not that the stress test doesn't matter at all, but I would say it's not a make or break situation for most people. Obviously (I would think, but maybe not?), a laptop that runs cooler right now should hold up better over the long term than a laptop that is hitting thermal limits right from the start. The XPS 15 is horrible when it comes to throttling; the Samsung is only throttling under extreme loads -- in a rather warm 80-85F environment, I might add (curse my lack of AC).If you happen to live in a place like AZ and take your laptop outside where it's 105F, and then you put a 100% load on the GPU and CPU, I'm not sure any laptop would cope with that sort of testing without throttling. It's the way things are supposed to work. The real question -- and it's a question that's difficult to answer -- is how much a laptop can handle before it starts to throttle. That's what the stress test is there to help evaluate.
If you need a notebook that can run both CPU and GPU at 100% simultaneously in a 70F AC regulated environment, that's fine. In that case, the Series 7 falls short, but it's still a lot closer than the XPS 15. If you're a typical user that plays games, on the other hand, then that's the metric you should look at, keeping in mind that certain titles will likely stress the CPU/GPU more than others.
nerd1 - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
I think the only laptop that can withstand full load for a long time is thick gaming laptops.seapeople - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
Jared has it right here, the only way to really fail a stress test is for the computer to overheat and brick itself. Everything is a gray area.If the Samsung did so poorly that it throttled instantly to ultra poor performance levels the moment a game was started *cough Dell cough* then it would deserve a thrashing, but it handled high performance gaming with only limited throttling issues, so therefore deserves better than a unilateral no vote.
Besides, if the computer throttles during gaming too much to suit you, then you can reduce the settings/CPU speed to suit. You would lose performance, sure, but we're still talking about something that would destroy ultrabooks or entry level graphics cards.
gandralf - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
My company has bough four samsungs (expensive, supposed high end series 9 ultrabook). Three of them had problems. Terrible built, mega fragile.