Mythlogic Pollux 1613 / Clevo P157SM Review
by Jarred Walton on August 30, 2013 12:00 AM ESTMythlogic Pollux 1613 / Clevo P157SM Battery Life
If there’s one weak spot in terms of objective measurements with Clevo’s gaming notebooks, it’s almost always battery life. Regardless of what power profile or other settings you might use, it’s simply not as good as what we’ve seen with gaming notebooks from other vendors. Most of this is due to the tuning of the BIOS/firmware with a focus on performance rather than power efficiency.
The scores in the charts below include our initial testing results from the MSI GT70, but as one example of what’s possible with further BIOS tuning, with an updated BIOS I measured 373/286/224 minutes on a GT70 – that’s a 63% improvement in our Light testing, a 38% improvement in our Medium testing, and a 23% improvement in our Heavy testing. Performance (gaming performance in particular) dropped slightly in most titles along the way, but reducing performance by a few percent to get significant increases in battery life is definitely a worthwhile compromise on a notebook. Whether or not Clevo can duplicate that feat with an updated BIOS remains to be seen, but past experience isn’t very encouraging.
The good news is that battery life is still better than what MSI achieved with our initial sample, but it’s a far cry from what we’ve seen with other laptops. MSI’s GE40 in particular delivered some stellar results, with relatively similar hardware all told (other than the smaller and lower quality display). Keep in mind that for all of these tests, the discrete GPU is inactive, so we’re only looking at the power and battery life with the iGPU and other components. Also interesting to note is that the choice of an i7-4700MQ or i7-4900MQ doesn't appear to impact battery life much at all.
I’m always asked for battery life while gaming, so I did run some tests there as well. First, as with most gaming notebooks, the dGPU throttles pretty heavily under load. I looped 3DMark11’s demo at 1366x768 “Performance” settings until the battery went dead, and frame rates were around 30-50% of what you’d get while on AC power. The GPU clocks in a game are 850MHz+ on the core and 5000MHz on the GDDR5; unplug the notebook and the core clocks drop to 405MHz while the RAM drops to 1600MHz – not that you need 5000MHz RAM to feed a 405MHz core, but it’s still a major castration of performance under battery power. What that means is that you can actually get nearly the same gaming performance on battery power from the Acer V7 with its GT 750M (which doesn’t throttle as much), or the MSI GE40 (again, less throttling).
Battery life of course is going to be better than if you were running the GPU full tilt, but even with the reduce clocks the P157SM only manages 75-80 minutes before the battery is drained. Put another way, unplugged and running a game the P157SM draws about 63W. Plugged in, I measured 185W power draw at the outlet, so even if we assume an 80% efficiency power brick (and hopefully it’s better than that), the laptop is using around 150W when plugged in, or more than twice as much power. Would someone be happy to get twice the performance but less than half the battery life with a gaming notebook? I doubt it, so the decision to throttle the GPU clocks on DC power is probably the right thing to do.
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rpgfool1 - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
They do sound like reasonable tradeoffs. I might as well get the P170SM or P177SM then. Now to look at Clevo resellers that has reasonable prices...GTVic - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
I doubt you can connect AC power to the back as listed in the spec on page 1, there must be a power brick, which according to a quick search may weigh as much as 1.8lbs. The size and weight of that should be listed in the specs since you are definitely going to have to cart that around.MDX - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
I'm tired of the hideous and fat clevo cases. If I wanted a fat gaming laptop, the alienwares have way better styling. If I wanted a slim gaming computer, the razers have way better styling. I'm not going buy a somewhat-chunky, black ugly laptop, regardless of hardware...rpgfool1 - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
Don't people experienced problems with Alienware notebooks though? The Razer Blade and the Razer Blade Pro look very nice, almost like a Macbook Pro in design. Macbook Pros look very nice and sleek, but people pay for the Apple brand name. I don't know why premium PC notebooks get stuck with 1920 x 1080p screen when Macbook Pros are able to get 2560 x 1600 or 2880 x 1800 on 15" screens? I know they cost more and the panels are probably IPS.MDX - Monday, September 2, 2013 - link
Not sure about Alienware, but I have an XPS M1730 (dell's gaming line before they bought alienware) that lasted almost 6 years. I'm only now in the market for a new machine because of that, and it seems my only option is still the same size/formfactor as it was 6 years ago: fat and heavy. I was hoping to get something slimmer with some style that was still user-serviceable, but I can't, so I'm building a desktop instead.Razer's compromise on the screen, plus non-user serviceable hardware rules that out, and the alienware laptops just aren't portable. These clevo machines are too ugly and have too low resolution, MSI's new GS70 is also ugly and not innovate (except for the slimness) so that leaves me with nothing that entices me to spend money on it.
If Razer would put a panel that does justice to their blade pro and ditched the chiclet keyboard (I can't stand chiclet keyboards), I'd be all on it!
woofblitzer - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
First off, let me thank you for your review. I have been EXTENSIVELY researching the Clevo P157SM and as Sager puts it with the improved 95% matte display NP-8255-S. It's just that damn tramp stamp...can that be removed and replaced? No reseller really looks to replace it, they all have it on their pages...(funny that they all price out to $2489 too...who is really making these behind the scenes that all sites price the same). I had been wondering about thermal issues and you mention the MSI series. I really really like the MSI 16F4 barebones, not quite cosmetically but comparable to the MSI GT60 2OD....the MSI barebones just looks better to me...but with your testing results of MSI products, are you predicting the MSI barebone will perform like it's parent? I cannot find any real review of the MSI 16F4 anywhere. I would much rather go with the MSI for looks and sound, but it seems the Clevo is cooler and for some reason runs benchmarks and Windows Experience Index faster, even when equipped with the same equipment.JarredWalton - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
The only thing that might help the barebones MSI (or any of them) is if you put on better thermal grease, but that's a stretch to drop temperatures 10C. As for the tramp stamp, Mythlogic says they'll replace the backlit cover with a non-backlit option; you'll have to call and request it, though, as it's not listed in the online configurator. Other vendors might be willing to do something similar; I don't know. Hope that helps.DanNeely - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
Is that different from just disabling the trackpad backlight, which they do have as an option in the configurator.woofblitzer - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
Any theories on while similar equipped Clevo and MSI bare bones, why the Clevo seems to score a little higher? Is it driver or hardware related? Also, would you know, two questions...on the P157SM, if you get an msata, does in only fit in the HDD slots being fitted with the 2 x mstata adaptor or can you go say two msata and two ssd in the HD space? Maybe it is only having a third msata that breaks into HDD space? One last question since you have tested the closest to what I am looking at, but would you assume MSI bare bones do not come with the cooler and turbo boost that the non barebones come with? Ok, promise, one last question...if I am looking towards the future...should I be looking more at the P177SM, because I could add a second GPU someday or is the secondary GPU market pretty non existent outside ebay?rpgfool1 - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
You can't even add a 2nd GPU in the P177SM. The P370SM and P375SM have the option of Crossfire or SLI 2 mobile GPUs.