Sager 8880 vs. Inspiron 8200

fleon · September 20th, 2002, 03:00 PM

I had a Toshiba 5005 with the Nvidia Geforce4 440Go 32MB and was very unhappy with the performance. I got around 3800 3Dmarks 2001SE, but Warcraft 3 ran choppy, and Jedi Knight II was abysmal. And yes, I turned all the settings to low and 640x480 on WC3

. And yes, I know how to tweak drivers... just wasn't impressed.

Now, on a Sager 5620 w/ the Radeon 7500, I run WC3 with all the settings on high- and get this- at 1600x1200 with no problems at all. The only time I had to turn down the rez was at a lan party w/ 12 players. Oh, and my 3dmark scores are 5399 now!

Tell your friend the Radeon 7500 is quite nice. I play with friends who own the Dell Inspiron 8200 and they are all quite envious.

Just noticed you mentioned rtcw: running quite well at 1600x1200....

aviax · September 29th, 2002, 08:21 AM

Sager systems such as the 56x0 and 888x are manufactured by a company named Clevo. I've found an area of their site where one can download the respective owner's manual. It can be helpful in resolving certain questions. For example, I was told the processor in the Sager 8880 can't be upgraded, but upon looking at the manual, it appears to be possible after all.

Anyway here is the link.

I'm looking at a 8882 right now, but I can't buy until December. The good news about that is that by then the ATI 9000 will be in it, or so I was told.

I wonder if there are any plans to take advantage of the potential utility of the slot currently used by the integrated MP3 player. A basic PDA or simple digital camera would be nice (if perhaps expensive) options to add.

EDIT: The original link didn't seem to work, so I changed the target to the home page. The link to the user manuals is under the download button, which is near the middle at the top of the page.

Tazman · September 29th, 2002, 09:17 AM

aviax -

Thanks for the info and link!

I'm using the 8880 right now and it rocks

.

One drawback I have found is that the only operating systems based on Windoze that is compataible with this is 2000 / XP. I can't find a driver for the ATI 7500 that will work under 9x

. That gets me because I wanted to multi-boot this thing.

Mike

superart · October 4th, 2002, 09:33 PM

I am comparing the Dell Insperon8200 and Sager8880 also. In my opinion, the Sager has the Dell beat in absolutely every catagory, except one. The Dell has the option of a Radeon9000 video chip. The sager8880 comes with only a Radeon7500 chip. Other than that, the sager is perfect, but sager should have a model with Radeon9000 soon. Maybee another advantage the Dell has is the "UltraBrite" LCD pannel. I dont kow if this is a real advantage, since i dont know what the UltraBright is.

I like how you can have 2 hard drives in the sager. Also i like the MP3 port, thats really nice. Whoever said there are only 4200RPM drives in the sager is wrong. Sager offers 5200RPM drives in 40GB capacity, and up untill yesterday, they offered 60GB drives too(i dont know why they stopped offering 60GB drives, since i was gunna get 2 of them for a total of 120GB)

One thing I would like, is to see them put in that biometric finger scanner thing. I would pay for that. Also i wish there was the option of putting in a second battery into the modular bay.

I plan to buy a notebook arround december. By then there should be a sager available with a Radeon9000 chip. I say this because I saw a pre-production model on anandtech.com(the ATI radeon9000 mobile review) of a Clevo system(clevo makes the alienware, sager, and FIC notebooks) with the ATI 9000 chip.

SO, to sum up, I cant wait till december, so that I can Get my Über cool sager notebook, maybee it will be the 8880 model, or maybee it will be the new model yet to be announced with a ATI Radeon9000 chip.

Thanks,
--Art

Avicus · October 4th, 2002, 11:53 PM

I traded some emails with powernotebooks.com about the ati9000, and they told me to check back in mid/late october. So hopefully they'll have them sometime soon. Just thought you might like to know.

superart · October 5th, 2002, 12:10 AM

yea, i emailed them yesterday, but am still waiting for a reply.

thanks for the info though. Im really looking forward to getting it. This would be my first notebook.

Also, i plan to try and run linux on it. I know the Insperon is fairly linux complient, do u know if the sager is linux friendly? Ive checked arround, but noone seems to know anything about the sager8880, although other sagers seem to bee fairly good under linux.

Thanks, --Art

superart · October 5th, 2002, 12:24 AM

I just saw the new notebook on powernotebooks.com w/ the ATI9000 chip. Its nice and all, i just wish it had the option of a second or third. Other than that, its great. It even looks nicer than the 8880.

CrazyCase · October 7th, 2002, 03:58 PM

Yeah i just saw that sager with radeon 9000 too, it looks nice and the price isn't a killer either, then again option are nice.

superart · October 8th, 2002, 11:06 PM

they will also offer the Sager NP888x with a ATI9000 chip by the end of october. By that time, it will also have USB 2.0

Pablo Gizirian · October 11th, 2002, 03:13 PM

I just wanted to know how it does perform, I might be buying a Sager 8882 with an ATi Radeon 9000 but I'm suspecting Sager cut costs using just desktop processors instead of mobile ones... placing them out of specs , cause they aren't designed to fit in a mobile scheme releasing much heat with wattage released on intensive tasks.
Anyone got a Sager with a northwood CPU ? or the new ones with 533 FSBS?

- Does it become noisy with it's fans?
- How much battery life you get ?

Any disadvantages or any issues at all?

I don't know really if to go with Dell inspiron 8200 (ATi radeon 9000) or Sager 8882 which will be shipping at the end of october, my main worries and concerns is about the desktop P4m instead of a mobile one.
hey! we'll get in touch