"If you want a true “maximum gaming performance” configuration with an i7-3930K, dual GTX 680M, PK-3 thermal compound, 4x8GB DDR3-1600 RAM (with Windows 7 Pro, naturally), 512GB Crucial M4 SSD with 1TB Hitachi 5400 RPM HDD for storage, and Killer 1103 3x3:3 WiFi, you’re looking at $4374. Or why not go for broke and nearly max out every component, with the i7-3960X, 4x512GB Samsung 840 Pro in RAID 5, and a Quadro K5000M GPU (and the other options as with the gaming configuration); that will get you a final price of $7384, not counting the $350 you can put into a custom paint job."
So it CAN run Crysis?
Would be nice to have gotten Ivy Bridge CPUs. An i5-3570K would perform pretty much the same if not better, and consume waaaaaaaaaaaaay less power. That would have solved their power problems right there. And hyperthreading is essentially useless for gaming, as is > 4 cores (and even 4 is usually unnecessary). Either way, expensive piece of plastic.
Maybe for games. But most of us gamers do other things with our systems. I have at least 4 programs that use more than two core AND Cuda.
And seriously with the 4x512GB SSD's? 2 SSD's will max out just about any bus, so put a couple of 1TB drives there instead. The best balance between speed and capacity.
Even with a single GTX 670mx it'll run Crysis without breaking a sweat, so a 680m would have zero problems.
The reason to do Sandy-E is to better support the SLI graphics... Other than that, you're right, but for "extreme gaming" I think the bus hit would hurt the graphics quite a bit.
Didn't most tests show that with PCI-E 3.0 8x isn't holding any normal SLI setup back? Especially since these graphics cards aren't even as fast as the top of t he line desktop ones. :)
Socket 2011 chips are generally power hungry. The consumer line is either 130W or 150W but there are lower power options on the Xeon side of things. Not only that but that would also allow things like ECC for memory or SAS for external storage from the corresponding chipset.
Initially at least, Clevo isn't listing any Xeon CPUs as being supported. I'm not sure if there are specific reasons for the omission, or if they're first working to get the product shipping and then worry about adding support for other CPUs. Long-term, I'd expect Eurocom at least to push for the support of Xeons and ECC RAM. SAS is a bit less likely in my book.
I'm pretty sure that Eurocom have had X79 desktops for over a month now. Here we go, the EUROCOM Panther 5D:
17.3-inch 3D 120MHz; Wide Viewing Angle; FHD 1920-by-1080 Matte (Non-Glare); LED Backlit Processor: up to Intel i7-3970X Extreme (6-cores) or up to XEON E5-2687W (8 cores) VGA TECHNOLOGY: Dual (SLI) VGA support: NVIDIA: GTX 680M(4GB DDR5) or QUADRO K5000M (4GB ECC DDR5) MEMORY: up to 64GB; DDR3-1333/1600/1866; four physical SODIMM sockets STORAGE: up to 4TB of storage with four physical SSD, Hybrid or HDD, RAID 0/1/5/10 support; SATA 6Gb/s OPTICAL DRIVE BAY: DVD-RW or Blu Ray Burner or 4th Hard Drive COMMUNICATION: built-in 10/100/1000Mb Base-TX Ethernet LAN (Intel 82579V); WLAN (optional); Bluetooth v2.1+EDR (optional); 2M Video Webcam (built-in) WEIGHT/DIMENSIONS: 5.5kg (12.1lbs); 419(W)x286(D)x57.9-62.1(H)mm (16.76x11.44x2.31-2.48inch)
Base model comes in at $3669 for a Xeon E5-2620 (2.0 GHz, 6C/12T) :)
Yeah, no doubt all the usual suspects will have the same sort of notebooks available. The real question is who will ship them to customers first, but unless someone wants to place a couple orders with the various vendors I'm not able to reasonable answer that question. :-)
Gotta admire the spirit of the product. :D It's a shame 2011 is behind the curve (and that the enthusiast class CPUs from Intel will remain so). I don't think starting with a quad core here is a good idea, as an IVB i7 K processor should do that job better. But getting a full hexa core in a laptop is a cool thing. Pity about that sub par power brick. Are there >300W options after market? Looking forward to a review. :D
Over the years I've had a bunch of dtr machines and I loved them, except for the noise...fans whirring are starting to annoy me now that a real laptop CPU is "good enough".
My current Clevo is a 2920xm and while starting to be long in the tooth, it still kicks! It too can get noisy though, my daily is a Lenovo x230 (Clevos have such crap keyboards too!)
Haswell's graphics performance might be good enough to make discrete gpus a thing of the past on all but true workstations.
One thing that always bugs me is the additional space for lots of drives. Its a laptop, why I can't have a 6 core CPU with 4 slots for memory and a 680M and one SSD. Reducing the weight is important even for a powerful laptop. Gamers don't need raid at all. The drives are for workstations not gamers and then only certain types of workstation users.
The desktop replacement form factor is ideal for me. It can support the processors and graphics I need, and I can survive with limited battery lifetime because most places have power (offices, the train, starbucks coffee shop, or an inverter in my car).
It's great to see they have a numeric keypad too, a must for financial applications and coding.
The deal breaker for me is that the numeric pad is only 3 columns wide rather than 4 (missing the large enter and plus buttons on the right which allow number data entry without moving your hand from the home location). There is for sure enough width in this laptop to fit an extra column of keys. The price of a few extra keys would be at most a couple of extra dollars, instead they crippled the machine. Can anyone else understand this? Did they use the same focus group that shaped Windows 8 UI functionality? I feel similarly for laptops where they have the very narrow numerics which are uncomfortable hand positioning and can lead to data entry mistakes. I use my keyboard a lot because I do not just passively watch DVDs on my computer. Until it has a proper numerics pad it CANNOT replace my desktop.
I find it interesting that this does not have the 680mx as an option. You'd think if any laptop had it as an option, this would. I would much rather have a laptop CPU with a 680mx, than a desktop CPU with a 680m. Why is the strongest laptop graphics card only in imac's?
The 680MX isn't that much faster than the 680M, as it's really just 14% more CUDA cores. Yes, the RAM is clocked much higher, but that's primarily because the only place using 680MX is the 27" iMac with a 2560x1440 resolution -- higher resolutions will benefit far more from the increased bandwidth than a 1080p laptop. Moreover, I suspect the TDP of the 680MX is a higher TDP. TechPowerUp lists the reference board as 122W, which sounds about right. (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1725/NVIDIA_GeFor... 100W with two GPUs is already pushing the capabilities of a 300W power brick, so bumping that to 244W combined would be a terrible idea.
The rumor is that the 680m really doesn't pull 100W, since the 580m was also listed as 100W, but people who upgraded from the 580m to the 680m saw significant temperature reductions. People have no idea where that 122W number came from and doubt that it's true. It first popped up on notebookcheck, and people have been copy-pasting that number ever since.
Even if the power draw did increase tremendously, there are people who would prefer the faster 680mx over 2 680ms to avoid the complications that SLI brings.
Powering that notebook with only a 300W PSU is ridiculous BTW. Same PSU spec used for the notebook CPU SLI laptops, which are rated 75W lower.
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karasaj - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
"If you want a true “maximum gaming performance” configuration with an i7-3930K, dual GTX 680M, PK-3 thermal compound, 4x8GB DDR3-1600 RAM (with Windows 7 Pro, naturally), 512GB Crucial M4 SSD with 1TB Hitachi 5400 RPM HDD for storage, and Killer 1103 3x3:3 WiFi, you’re looking at $4374. Or why not go for broke and nearly max out every component, with the i7-3960X, 4x512GB Samsung 840 Pro in RAID 5, and a Quadro K5000M GPU (and the other options as with the gaming configuration); that will get you a final price of $7384, not counting the $350 you can put into a custom paint job."So it CAN run Crysis?
Would be nice to have gotten Ivy Bridge CPUs. An i5-3570K would perform pretty much the same if not better, and consume waaaaaaaaaaaaay less power. That would have solved their power problems right there. And hyperthreading is essentially useless for gaming, as is > 4 cores (and even 4 is usually unnecessary). Either way, expensive piece of plastic.
lexluthermiester - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Quote; "(and even 4 is usually unnecessary)"Maybe for games. But most of us gamers do other things with our systems. I have at least 4 programs that use more than two core AND Cuda.
And seriously with the 4x512GB SSD's? 2 SSD's will max out just about any bus, so put a couple of 1TB drives there instead. The best balance between speed and capacity.
Even with a single GTX 670mx it'll run Crysis without breaking a sweat, so a 680m would have zero problems.
Totally with ya on the Ivy Bridge though.
lmcd - Saturday, January 26, 2013 - link
The reason to do Sandy-E is to better support the SLI graphics... Other than that, you're right, but for "extreme gaming" I think the bus hit would hurt the graphics quite a bit.Death666Angel - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - link
Didn't most tests show that with PCI-E 3.0 8x isn't holding any normal SLI setup back? Especially since these graphics cards aren't even as fast as the top of t he line desktop ones. :)rscoot - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
I actually need something like this to run Catia and Verisurf on for mobile inspection of large assemblies.Kevin G - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Socket 2011 chips are generally power hungry. The consumer line is either 130W or 150W but there are lower power options on the Xeon side of things. Not only that but that would also allow things like ECC for memory or SAS for external storage from the corresponding chipset.JarredWalton - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Initially at least, Clevo isn't listing any Xeon CPUs as being supported. I'm not sure if there are specific reasons for the omission, or if they're first working to get the product shipping and then worry about adding support for other CPUs. Long-term, I'd expect Eurocom at least to push for the support of Xeons and ECC RAM. SAS is a bit less likely in my book.madmilk - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
Idle power should be the same, so that doesn't really matter. An E5-2687W laptop would be interesting though...IanCutress - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
I'm pretty sure that Eurocom have had X79 desktops for over a month now. Here we go, the EUROCOM Panther 5D:17.3-inch 3D 120MHz; Wide Viewing Angle; FHD 1920-by-1080 Matte (Non-Glare); LED Backlit
Processor: up to Intel i7-3970X Extreme (6-cores) or up to XEON E5-2687W (8 cores)
VGA TECHNOLOGY: Dual (SLI) VGA support: NVIDIA: GTX 680M(4GB DDR5) or QUADRO K5000M (4GB ECC DDR5)
MEMORY: up to 64GB; DDR3-1333/1600/1866; four physical SODIMM sockets
STORAGE: up to 4TB of storage with four physical SSD, Hybrid or HDD, RAID 0/1/5/10 support; SATA 6Gb/s
OPTICAL DRIVE BAY: DVD-RW or Blu Ray Burner or 4th Hard Drive
COMMUNICATION: built-in 10/100/1000Mb Base-TX Ethernet LAN (Intel 82579V); WLAN (optional); Bluetooth v2.1+EDR (optional); 2M Video Webcam (built-in)
WEIGHT/DIMENSIONS: 5.5kg (12.1lbs); 419(W)x286(D)x57.9-62.1(H)mm (16.76x11.44x2.31-2.48inch)
Base model comes in at $3669 for a Xeon E5-2620 (2.0 GHz, 6C/12T) :)
IanCutress - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
*X79 desktop replacementsJarredWalton - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Yeah, no doubt all the usual suspects will have the same sort of notebooks available. The real question is who will ship them to customers first, but unless someone wants to place a couple orders with the various vendors I'm not able to reasonable answer that question. :-)Death666Angel - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Gotta admire the spirit of the product. :D It's a shame 2011 is behind the curve (and that the enthusiast class CPUs from Intel will remain so). I don't think starting with a quad core here is a good idea, as an IVB i7 K processor should do that job better. But getting a full hexa core in a laptop is a cool thing. Pity about that sub par power brick. Are there >300W options after market? Looking forward to a review. :Dlmcd - Saturday, January 26, 2013 - link
Again, X79 for SLI.noeldillabough - Saturday, January 26, 2013 - link
Over the years I've had a bunch of dtr machines and I loved them, except for the noise...fans whirring are starting to annoy me now that a real laptop CPU is "good enough".My current Clevo is a 2920xm and while starting to be long in the tooth, it still kicks! It too can get noisy though, my daily is a Lenovo x230 (Clevos have such crap keyboards too!)
Haswell's graphics performance might be good enough to make discrete gpus a thing of the past on all but true workstations.
BrightCandle - Saturday, January 26, 2013 - link
One thing that always bugs me is the additional space for lots of drives. Its a laptop, why I can't have a 6 core CPU with 4 slots for memory and a 680M and one SSD. Reducing the weight is important even for a powerful laptop. Gamers don't need raid at all. The drives are for workstations not gamers and then only certain types of workstation users.peternelson - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - link
The desktop replacement form factor is ideal for me. It can support the processors and graphics I need, and I can survive with limited battery lifetime because most places have power (offices, the train, starbucks coffee shop, or an inverter in my car).It's great to see they have a numeric keypad too, a must for financial applications and coding.
The deal breaker for me is that the numeric pad is only 3 columns wide rather than 4 (missing the large enter and plus buttons on the right which allow number data entry without moving your hand from the home location). There is for sure enough width in this laptop to fit an extra column of keys. The price of a few extra keys would be at most a couple of extra dollars, instead they crippled the machine. Can anyone else understand this? Did they use the same focus group that shaped Windows 8 UI functionality? I feel similarly for laptops where they have the very narrow numerics which are uncomfortable hand positioning and can lead to data entry mistakes. I use my keyboard a lot because I do not just passively watch DVDs on my computer. Until it has a proper numerics pad it CANNOT replace my desktop.
Khenglish - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - link
I find it interesting that this does not have the 680mx as an option. You'd think if any laptop had it as an option, this would. I would much rather have a laptop CPU with a 680mx, than a desktop CPU with a 680m. Why is the strongest laptop graphics card only in imac's?JarredWalton - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
The 680MX isn't that much faster than the 680M, as it's really just 14% more CUDA cores. Yes, the RAM is clocked much higher, but that's primarily because the only place using 680MX is the 27" iMac with a 2560x1440 resolution -- higher resolutions will benefit far more from the increased bandwidth than a 1080p laptop. Moreover, I suspect the TDP of the 680MX is a higher TDP. TechPowerUp lists the reference board as 122W, which sounds about right. (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1725/NVIDIA_GeFor... 100W with two GPUs is already pushing the capabilities of a 300W power brick, so bumping that to 244W combined would be a terrible idea.Khenglish - Thursday, January 31, 2013 - link
The rumor is that the 680m really doesn't pull 100W, since the 580m was also listed as 100W, but people who upgraded from the 580m to the 680m saw significant temperature reductions. People have no idea where that 122W number came from and doubt that it's true. It first popped up on notebookcheck, and people have been copy-pasting that number ever since.Even if the power draw did increase tremendously, there are people who would prefer the faster 680mx over 2 680ms to avoid the complications that SLI brings.
Powering that notebook with only a 300W PSU is ridiculous BTW. Same PSU spec used for the notebook CPU SLI laptops, which are rated 75W lower.