Sager NP8662: From the US to my room, a review!

Yesterday to my delight I received my Sager NP8662 which I ordered from the US 2 weeks ago! The whole process was an experience in itself as ordering something so big and costly from overseas was a first for me and a risky move at that. I ordered the laptop from PC Torque and they were exceedingly helpful in my queries, apart from having to deal with the different timezones and a small misstep where the customer service mistakenly added US$10 to the final sum for transfer. You can check out the specs from the PC Torque website but I added a few upgrades including an additional 2GB DDR3 RAM and a 320GB 7200RPM HDD. In a bid to save some money I opted not to have an OS and the carrying bag. The total? US$1460. As I was doing a wire transfer payment there was a 3% discount which brought it down to US$1416. The UPS Expedited shipping charge with insurance was US$219, so the total to wire was US$1635. To my surprise after I ordered PC Torque decided to throw in a carrying bag anyway, thanks!

At the bank (DBS), the standing exchange rate was S$1.456 and I had to cover not only the telex fee (S$20, sending bank) but the agent fee at the US side (US$9, receiving bank). Total damage, S$2,423.66.

Shipping and Receiving

The wait from purchase to shipping was an exciting week as I tracked the UPS shipping info on a daily basis, watching the package fly around the world, to some interesting places:

SINGAPORE, SG	06/09/2009	3:50 P.M.	DELIVERY
	06/09/2009	3:26 A.M.	OUT FOR DELIVERY
CHANGI, SG	06/09/2009	1:33 A.M.	IMPORT SCAN
CHANGI, SG	06/08/2009	11:28 P.M.	REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY / SHIPMENT SUBMITTED TO CLEARING AGENCY
	06/08/2009	11:28 P.M.	REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY / RELEASED BY CLR AGENCY. NOW IN-TRANSIT
CHANGI, SG	06/07/2009	4:55 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
DON MUANG, TH	06/07/2009	1:41 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	06/07/2009	12:06 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
MUMBAI, IN	06/06/2009	6:48 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	06/06/2009	4:22 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
KOELN (COLOGNE), DE	06/06/2009	4:20 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
KOELN (COLOGNE), DE	06/05/2009	6:54 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY,  US	06/05/2009	4:56 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY,  US	06/04/2009	2:31 P.M.	EXPORT SCAN
	06/04/2009	1:38 P.M.	EXPORT SCAN
	06/04/2009	12:46 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
ONTARIO, CA,  US	06/04/2009	5:51 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	06/04/2009	12:45 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
BALDWIN PARK, CA,  US	06/04/2009	12:10 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
BALDWIN PARK, CA,  US	06/03/2009	7:05 P.M.	ORIGIN SCAN
US	06/03/2009	8:20 P.M.	BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

Wow, US, Germany, India, Thailand then finally Singapore. Upon arrival, there was a GST charge of S$153.93 based on a declared value of US$1,517.64 which at the printed exchange rate of S$1.449, came to a declared value of S$2,199. There was also a S$10 “disbursement fee”. The total of S$163.93 was paid in cash.

Unpacking

The box was a large white cardboard box with a bright red SAGER printed on the side. I noticed there was some water damage on the corner of the box which was heavily taped over. Upon opening it I noticed no actual damage to the interior which was additionally packed with white styrofoam chips. The free carrying case was in together with a small box containing the power brick and CDs and another larger box containing the laptop. The first thing I checked was the power cord provided, which was indeed the US plug (2 flat left and right, 1 round top), but more importantly the power to brick cable head was the triangle configuration one:

You’ll need to get universal plug converter or look around electronics shops for the right cable to replace. I got the head changed from the US to the SG 3-pin one.

Installing

I had already set up a Vista x64 SP1 install on a 4GB USB stick and booting up the USB stick was a breeze; the BIOS already set the USB as first in the boot order. Upon boot-up I noticed something: the CPU installed was a P8700 (2.53Ghz), not the P8600 (2.4Ghz) I ordered. PC Torque did mention that my order was delayed due to P8600 stock issues. Did they upgrade me for free? Woooo thanks PC Torque!

The HDD was preformated into a single 320GB so I broke it into 1 100GB and 1 220 GB partitions, and immediately encountered a problem, that “This computer does not contain a valid system volume”. Eh? I tried to format the partitions again and retried but same error. Strangely enough, I revisited the BIOS, went thru a few things but essentially did nothing then tried again and the problem disappeared. Note that the manual states that Vista SP1 is required, likely due to SATA drivers; the HDD was detected by my Vista SP1 installer. Installation was quick and I went on to installed the drivers from the provided driver disc. The driver disc neatly arranged the drivers to install via a small autorun program and also noted which drivers I’ve installed and which I haven’t, nice. Meanwhile here’s a few pics of the laptop itself (sorry for the darkish room it was night):

Benchmarks

Now to the fun stuff!

After installing the CD drivers I ran the Vista Index:

For comparison I have a nearly identical desktop on Vista x64, a C2D6600, 4×1GB DDR2-667, Nvidia GTX260 (192), X-Fi XtremeMusic, which had the exact same score except CPU at 5.3. I decided to run a benchmark on both rigs, bearing in mine the Sager was a clean system and the desktop had a few apps running including Spybot, FW, AV, IM, etc. Both also ran a Vista Service Tweak. The benchmark I decided to use was the X3:Terran Conflict Rolling Demo. In some circles it is known that the X3 game taxes the CPU and GPU heavily, sometimes causing cheap PSUs to blow due to the loads involved. First up, the desktop.

Operating System:    Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1
DirectX Version:    DirectX 10
Graphics Card Info:    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 [2671 MB]    Driver: 7.15.0011.8250
CPU Info:        Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU          6600  @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Usable System Memory:    4094 MB

Video Settings During Benchmark:
Screen Resolution:    1680 x 1050 * [32], fullscreen
Using Shader Profile:    3.0
Antialias Mode:        NONE
Anisotropic Mode:    8x

Graphics & Shader Settings:
Texture Quality:    high
Shader Quality:        high
High Quality Bumpmaps:    enabled
Environment Mapping:    enabled
Glow Filter:        enabled
Ship Color Variations:    enabled
More Dynamic Lights:    enabled
Used Vertexsize:    40 bytes

Framerates
——————————————————————————–
Scene “Trade”     31.1 average fps     9.0 minimum fps     68.0 maximum fps
Scene “Fight”     67.5 average fps     24.0 minimum fps     157.0 maximum fps
Scene “Build”     86.9 average fps     51.0 minimum fps     133.0 maximum fps
Scene “Think”     38.9 average fps     14.0 minimum fps     65.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 56.1 fps

The Sager?

Operating System:    Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1
DirectX Version:    DirectX 10
Graphics Card Info:    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M   [2799 MB]    Driver: 7.15.0011.7927
CPU Info:        Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     P8700  @ 2.53GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.5GHz

Usable System Memory:    4090 MB
Video Settings During Benchmark:
Screen Resolution:    1680 x 1050 * [32], fullscreen
Using Shader Profile:    3.0
Antialias Mode:        NONE
Anisotropic Mode:    8x

Graphics & Shader Settings:
Texture Quality:    high
Shader Quality:        high
High Quality Bumpmaps:    enabled
Environment Mapping:    enabled
Glow Filter:        enabled
Ship Color Variations:    enabled
More Dynamic Lights:    enabled
Used Vertexsize:    40 bytes

Framerates
——————————————————————————–
Scene “Trade”     32.7 average fps     1.0 minimum fps     72.0 maximum fps
Scene “Fight”     62.6 average fps     25.0 minimum fps     120.0 maximum fps
Scene “Build”     71.0 average fps     45.0 minimum fps     105.0 maximum fps
Scene “Think”     34.9 average fps     23.0 minimum fps     63.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 50.3 fps

Not bad I think, in fact I was surprised at the nearly equal performance by the 260M chip, possibly let down by the onboard RealTek soundchip, but more likely due to the combined fact that this is a laptop with laptop components.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m very pleased with the look and performance of the Sager NP8662. My total damage to bring this laptop from the US to my room? S$2,587.59. Is it worth that price, considering that the same laptop is available in Singapore? Considering buying local means an actual valid warranty? Well that’s a decision that every potential customer has to make and I made mine, though I hope every other potential customer can use this write-up to decide better!