Core 2 Duo Merom Preview - VM L80 @ [H] Consumer

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Jason_Wall

[H] Consumer Managing Editor
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
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We've got a lot of Merom content coming down the pipe and we wanted to wet your appetite with some fresh benchmarks. Velocity Micro was kind enough to provide us with a preview unit which is now available for purchase - the L80.

We very much enjoyed getting this sneak peek at what we can look forward to with Merom. It showed that it’s a very potent tool in media creation and processing, and it more than competes with non-Core 2 Duo desktops. It races past the Pentium D’s and edges out the AMD X2’s. We wouldn’t call the Go 7600 in this system a powerful gaming GPU, but it will definitely get the job done if you know what to expect. It was able to play our testing library without issue and we were able to get smooth gameplay on nearly every title.
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Thanks for reading!
 
Damn looks like UPS beat the hell out of the shipping box. Anyway pretty good review.
 
That is a bummer about those heat issues. Is there anything that Velocity Micro can do about
that before they start shipping these systems en masse?
 
I'm curious to see if the Sims 2 runs on whatever VM laptop you do a full review on. The fact that it woulnd't run on either of the preview machines you recieved could point to a build issue . As always, great (p)review
 
I have almost this exact same build for the whitebook note book I put together this summer. The only differences are the chip I'm using is a Core Duo 2500 and the DVD drive I have is Matshita.

I can agree with sluggish startup. The thing that drives me nuts is it's not windows starting slow, but the stupid bios. I've tried getting any updates but that seems to be impossible. Maybe now that Velocity Micro carries this type Compal will do an update.

Once it starts up it's pretty good. I have to do video for speeches on the run sometimes and the core duo I have rips through vegas and photoshop.

Oh and nvidia does not do a great job of supporting the 7600 in this system I finally got fed up and grabbed some hacked drivers.

Looking back on it I wish I had grabbed an E1705, but I had a free chip and wanted the fingerprint scanner, which doesn't work on my fingers very well at all.
 
mentok1982 said:
That is a bummer about those heat issues. Is there anything that Velocity Micro can do about
that before they start shipping these systems en masse?
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We've talked to VM a couple of times about this. They're aware of the problem. I don't have any information on if they're addressing it.
 
I'm looking into getting one of these, glad I saw this. I'll be interested in seeing how the heat and video driver issues pan out, as these will likely be deciding factors I guess. I'll be bummed if it doesn't end up looking like a good E1505 alternative.
 
That is very poor battery life in my opinion. This is a notebook that should pull much better numbers then a full on desktop replacement. I wonder how long it would last on battery with Prime95 running . Ah yeah and one day in future maybe we get the option of a highend vidcard on a midrange system , thanks to Oblivion you might as well be running a celeron(I am not blaming VM here) . Good review btw all the important stuff without the fluff.
 
If it's a Compal HEL-80, I get about 4.5 hours out of the 9-cell with everything full blast and the GPU overclocked. Seems OK, not great, but OK. Maybe a dud battery?


Edit:

Now, since this is the [H], I want to know if a 7800 or 7900 class card can be shoehorned in there, and what mods would be needed to cool it. I may try it myself if I cannot convince someone to do my dirty work for me.

Also, I have complained about the slower-than-molasses BIOS on mine also. It seems you stare at the Phoenix Tech screen for ages, then it boots.
 
Kil4Thril said:
If it's a Compal HEL-80, I get about 4.5 hours out of the 9-cell with everything full blast and the GPU overclocked. Seems OK, not great, but OK. Maybe a dud battery?


Edit:

Now, since this is the [H], I want to know if a 7800 or 7900 class card can be shoehorned in there, and what mods would be needed to cool it. I may try it myself if I cannot convince someone to do my dirty work for me.

Also, I have complained about the slower-than-molasses BIOS on mine also. It seems you stare at the Phoenix Tech screen for ages, then it boots.
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Did you say in another thread you went with xoticpc.com? Are you happy overall? Recommend the platform to others? How's heat looking in your rig under heavy load? (sorry for the 20 questions there..lol)
 
enlightenedby42 said:
Did you say in another thread you went with xoticpc.com? Are you happy overall? Recommend the platform to others? How's heat looking in your rig under heavy load? (sorry for the 20 questions there..lol)
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Everything is great so far. I would wholeheartedly recommend the platform, and I have no problems with Xotic whatsoever. One of the better online vendors I have dealt with.

I did a torture test today on the rig, since I read this review this morning. I ran Prime95 and 3dmark05 looped. It ran for 7.5 hours with no shutdown, but it was very warm to the touch (my GPU is OC'd to 428/382 from 350/350). On the left side where discussed in the article, it was quite warm. I have no monitoring software installed, so I don't know exact temps. I would guess that kind of strain would be uncomfortable if using it as a true "laptop"- it could roast a weenie.
 
Kil4Thril said:
I did a torture test today on the rig, since I read this review this morning. I ran Prime95 and 3dmark05 looped. It ran for 7.5 hours with no shutdown, but it was very warm to the touch (my GPU is OC'd to 428/382 from 350/350).
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Did you run multiple iterations of P95, or just one?

Also, what CPU do you have?
 
Kil4Thril said:
Everything is great so far. I would wholeheartedly recommend the platform, and I have no problems with Xotic whatsoever. One of the better online vendors I have dealt with.

I did a torture test today on the rig, since I read this review this morning. I ran Prime95 and 3dmark05 looped. It ran for 7.5 hours with no shutdown, but it was very warm to the touch (my GPU is OC'd to 428/382 from 350/350). On the left side where discussed in the article, it was quite warm. I have no monitoring software installed, so I don't know exact temps. I would guess that kind of strain would be uncomfortable if using it as a true "laptop"- it could roast a weenie.
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We have also done a lot of real word usage and overclocking (for internal use) of this chassis and have had absolutely no heat-related failures in the field.
 
Jason_Wall said:
Did you run multiple iterations of P95, or just one?

Also, what CPU do you have?
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I ran multiple iterations for P95. I do leave it plugged in during the test, and it sits on a hardwood TV tray in a room kept at roughly 66*F (cooler than most people- probably helps a lot).

On a significant note, I ran the tests this afternoon on battery power, and I croaked after about 2.5 hours. So, maybe the article's results aren't misleading. You basically dog the hell out of a machine. I honestly never have any intention of doing this sort of thing to my lappy again.

Edit: It's a T7400, 2 GB A-Data PC 5300, 60GB 7200rpm Hitachi. XPPro.

If there's anything else you want me to run or something for comparison's sakes, just say so. I got it mostly for playing anyway- so I don't kill any of my main gear.
 
Thanks for the reply - your battery life sounds a bit more like what we got.
 
Nice preview.

And, while I hate to nitpick, I've gotta wonder if maybe you shouldn't be using such spoilerific screenshots from Oblivion. The middle and far-right screenshots (on the bottom row, of course,) both show scenes from the very end of the main quest and, to my spoiler-free sensibilities, that ain't cool.

Anyway, honestly, in all other respects, it was a well-written and informative preview. Nice to see what we can look forward to with regard to the near-future of mobile computing, and nice to see Intel back in the game. Even nicer will be to see AMD's response to the Core 2 Duo / Quad chips, but that's another comment for another preview.
 
buroja said:
And, while I hate to nitpick, I've gotta wonder if maybe you shouldn't be using such spoilerific screenshots from Oblivion. The middle and far-right screenshots (on the bottom row, of course,) both show scenes from the very end of the main quest and, to my spoiler-free sensibilities, that ain't cool.
Click to expand...

People who haven't played through the game wouldn't know that those shots are from the end of the quest - they would just think, "wow, that looks cool." So who's the Spoilmeister now? ;)
 
i've had this system for a couple weeks now. i was having trouble with a game and VM suggested that i install the 83.64 nvidia driver. i'm new to most of this tweaking stuff and was wonderin if ya'll istalled that version or just left the 83.90 version inplace. since the 7600 isn't listed as being supposted on nvidia's site i'm a little hesitant when it comes to removing my old driver if the newer version won't install.
 
As stated in the article, we used the 83.90's.

We did see a newer revision, the 84.63's, that are for the Go chipsets, but NVIDIA hasn't been very good about listing the 7600's as supported GPUs. The naming and designation scheme is actually rather confusing.
 
Oh and nvidia does not do a great job of supporting the 7600 in this system I finally got fed up and grabbed some hacked drivers.[/QUOTE]

what version are you running? did you test a few? i've got 84.63 installed. but i don't really do benchmarking stuff. i upgraded bc i was havin trouble running a game. the new driver didn't help though :(
 
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