AVADirect Clevo P170EM Part 2: GTX 680M Grudge Match
by Jarred Walton on October 15, 2012 6:50 PM ESTClevo P170EM Battery Life Revisited
I noted in the first P170EM review that battery life was rather poor, even for a high-end notebook. I felt at the time that the BIOS/firmware was to blame, but without an official download location from Clevo I was hesitant to update either notebook. I still feel Clevo is really making a mistake by not providing official BIOS updates—they would rather you contact your notebook vendor and ask for a BIOS—but I decided to go ahead and snag the latest BIOS for the P170EM from the Notebook Review forums’ Clevo BIOS thread. (That you’re able to get better BIOS support via NBR forums than from Clevo is beyond ludicrous.)
Updating the EC/KBC firmware to version 1.00.09 and the BIOS to version 1.00.10 wasn’t quite as simple and painless as I’d like. Specifically, the EC updates (I tried all of them before taking the next step) are for ROM ID P170EMx whereas the AVADirect notebooks both have ROM IDs of P170EM (no “x” suffix), so I had to use the “ignore ROM ID” option. I don’t if that’s something related to the notebook vendor or just par for the course, but by default I couldn’t just run the flash utilities. The BIOS on the other hand updated without any issues. When all was said and done, I then retested battery life, and sure enough things have improved quite a bit—though oddly, where the GTX 680M and HD 7970M were quite close before, the GTX 680M now does quite a bit better. Both dGPUs should be off during our battery life testing, so I’m not sure what’s going on here; perhaps the BIOS/firmware still isn’t fully optimized for the AMD GPU.
We’re including the before/after results for both the HD 7970M and GTX 680M after applying the BIOS/firmware updates. The original BIOS was 1.00.05 while the updated BIOS is 1.00.10.
Oh what a difference a BIOS makes. We’re still nowhere near matching the prowess of designs like the Samsung Series 7 or Razer Blade, but we’re dealing with a substantially larger chassis that has the ability to support three spindles plus an mSATA drive—not to mention FireWire and several other seldom-seen features. I still feel like both the Alienware M17x and the P170EM could do better with further optimizations, but at least with the updated BIOS/firmware Clevo is able to surpass the normalized battery life of Alienware in most cases.
While the battery life improves on both laptops with the updated BIOS, it’s perplexing that the HD 7970M version is using substantially more power—idle power draw is ~15.1W for the GTX 680M compared to ~17.3W for the HD 7970M. We’re not using the same physical notebook of course (so there’s a different LCD, motherboard, battery, etc.), but even so that particular result is more than a minor deviation. Power draw during our Internet test is ~16.7W for the 680M vs. ~18.3W for the 7970M, so it’s a bit closer, and for H.264 playback the 7970M draws ~21.7W vs. ~20.6W for the 680M. Basically, the higher the loads on the system as a whole, the closer the two notebooks are in battery life and power use.
But despite the above concerns regarding AMD vs. NVIDIA, the fact is the P170EM is a large gaming notebook and battery life is only a secondary (or tertiary) concern. It’s good to see close that we’re able to hit around 4.5 hours of moderate use on battery power, and that should be enough for most people. Sure, if you fire up a game (or happen to come unplugged), your battery isn’t going to last that long, but if you’re trying to bulk up by carrying around a 10+ pound notebook + accessories at school you could conceivably get through four hour long classes before you need to plug in. I should also note that charging times are quite reasonable for the battery, taking under two hours to reach 100% even when you’re putting a significant load on the system; that’s where having a large enough power adapter is beneficial: under full load, the P170EM still doesn’t come near the 220W rating of the power brick.
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Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Yeah, I agree with everything there. It's...just disgusting to be insulting the author like that, and on top of that it's the commentor's "logic" that's iffy, not the authors.krumme - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
"If this article compared two smartphones with the same numbers, would you make your same trollish complaint?"Yes. If a gamers phone was sold for 1150 usd compared to 1000 usd for exactly the same phone except gpu power.
The total cost should be compared to the total benefit for the consumer. Even for a gamer, not everything is fps. There is a lot more to it when buying a machine. Therefore the argument is stupid.
Jarred completely missed the total benefits, and only looked at the fps side. Thats okey, but then dont compare to the total cost. There is no consistency.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
No, his reasoning makes complete sense. It's the same reason you don't buy one of these notebooks and then opt for a GTX 660. The GTX 660 isn't BAD, but if you're already spending that much, and getting this notebook, it makes sense to get the best, particularly since you can't upgrade.This is about as cut and dried a choice as there's ever been-not an ad. The GTX 680 is just plain the fastest, AND it remains a reality that Nvidia is a safer choice even if it was slower, because they have more than a decade trackrecord with solid drivers, while AMD has...well, I'm not sure they're at 1 month yet, they keep screwing up, and then promising it'll be different.
I *am* still very concerned about Optimus/Enduro though, and wish you could get these systems WITHOUT them at least as an option, without having to spend $400 extra on the "3D" screen.
The M17x-R4 would actually be an easy choice for me *if* it didn't have Optimus. When you tack on the extra $400 for hte "3D" screen I'd be getting solely to get rid of Optimus...well, the price gets harder to stomach.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
You can disable Optimus/Enduro on the M17x R4 in the BIOS I believe -- I know at least Enduro can be turned off, so I assume it's both. They have physical muxes on the motherboard so that all the display outputs can be routed to the dGPU, which is the major thing preventing Clevo from supporting non-Enduro/Optimus. But personally, since I only run Windows, I have no problem with Optimus. It works well for all the stuff I've done; at worst I occasionally have to tweak a game with a custom profile.transphasic - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
I agree with your comments and rationale on this Jarred. Since I am an owner of the 7970m, I can speak to this issue with my own experiences and buyer's remorse at foolishly choosing the 7970m in the first place.It's really worth it to pay a little more for better quality, better drivers, and better support in choosing what to do in deciding what GPU to put in a gaming laptop.
Why quibble over an extra $250 dollars or so, when you are already spending $2000 anyways?
This strikes me as penny-wise, pound foolishness to try to scrimp and save $250-$300 dollars on choosing a flawed AMD 7970m product, that almost 4 months later, we STILL have not yet gotten proper driver support from AMD.
(what's worse, is that AMD just laid off about 3,000 of their engineers who were probably working this so-called "hotfix" driver, so we might have to wait for a lot longer time now to get it, if we ever do. AMD is on shaky ground now, and that makes me even more nervous about their present and future).
As for me, and the testing work that you did, Jarred, I am impressed with all the time and energies that you put into it, so thank you very much for your work on this, and after seeing that the "hotfix" still doesn't close the gap by that much, it leads me to the conclusion that I (and others as well) are better off going to Nvidia from now on. In fact, I am now going to take the next step in this, by swapping out my 7970m, and switching to the 680m, and be done with AMD.
bennyg - Monday, October 15, 2012 - link
Conclusion mentions cooling is better in Clevo (vs MSI/AW). Where's the results of that test? AT reviews seem to be getting more focused on overanalysis and pennypinching comparisons compared with taking more measures of the actual notebook. Like idle/load/surface temps!Real enthusiasts also don't really care much about options other than CPU as we know most of the time you end up better off (especially with Dell/AW) buying the parts yourself and installing.
Re the actual review, I don't understand why Clevo take a bad nonstandard keyboard, and find a way to make it even more annoyingly 'custom' and worse...
JarredWalton - Monday, October 15, 2012 - link
The stress testing of the GTX 680M wasn't especially different from the HD 7970M:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6343/avadirect-clevo...
Freakie - Monday, October 15, 2012 - link
If I'm reading those graphs right, GPU utilization is actually higher on the 7970 than the 680 on a number of games that the 680 still beats it at. Seems to me like even if GPU utilization were "fixed" to be even greater on both systems, then the 680 would still beat it out in most games and therefor the Utilization argument is kind of a weak one. The only games that it seems it would help with is a couple of games at Mainstream/Value settings which as you already said in the article, most people wont be bothering with. But of course to test GPU utilization THAT thoroughly would take an incredible about of time xP So it shall remain a mystery I suppose.jigglywiggly - Monday, October 15, 2012 - link
why are you hating on the look? I love the way clevos lookBrojo - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I pretty much have that Clevo system except 16GB of RAM with the 7970. I knew I should of went with the 680 =p and kicking myself in the ass after seeing more and more comparisons. I will be optimistic and hope for better driver release but...if i want to swap cards It shouldnt be too difficult right?