AVADirect Clevo P170EM: Has AMD’s HD 7970M Got Game?

Conclusion Part 2 – AVADirect’s Clevo P170EM: Win Some, Lose Some

The second part of our review is the Clevo P170EM notebook, specifically AVADirect’s Clevo P170EM Gaming Notebook, and there are lots of elements to discuss. As noted earlier, the primary competition at the high end right now is the Alienware M17x R4, or if you don’t care about the HD 7970M you can also look at MSI’s GT70 aka the iBUYPOWER Valkyrie CZ-17. Beyond those, there are a few other notebooks like Samsung’s Series 7 and the ASUS G75 that are worth a look as they can still offer “fast enough” performance for most gamers at much lower prices. Let’s take those notebooks in turns.

Dustin railed on Dell/Alienware a bit in the M17x R4 review for not updating the design and resting on their laurels; that’s a legitimate concern, but I have to say that even without any noteworthy external updates, I prefer the look and overall feel of the M17x. I won’t go so far as to say Alienware’s M17x keyboard is perfect, but the layout is definitely more to my liking than the P170EM/GT70 layouts, and the zoned backlighting is simply more elegant. I also prefer the Alienware design and aesthetic, though I wish they offered a non-glossy display. Another plus is that Alienware offers the option to disable the switchable graphics within their BIOS (via software controlled muxes), so if you don’t want to bother with AMD’s Enduro or NVIDIA’s Optimus you have that choice—all of my griping about drivers for the HD 7970M basically goes away if you’re running the M17x R4 in discrete-only GPU mode. The one major problem with the M17x R4 is pricing, as similar components will generally cost around 20% more than on the P170EM (and Alienware generally charges a lot more for upgrades to RAM and storage), but if you’ve got enough money to buy a Clevo P170EM it shouldn’t be too hard to make up the difference.

MSI’s GT70 is a different story, as the overall design is in many ways similar to Clevo’s P170EM—which is a nice way of saying that both notebooks use a lot of plastic and can look a bit chintzy. The keyboard action is better on the GT70, and I definitely prefer their chiclet keys to whatever you want to call Clevo’s new key style, but the layout has the same issues as the P170EM (no dedicated Home/End keys, missing context key, misplaced Windows key, and two backslash keys). Pricing from iBUYPOWER is good; you can get a 240GB SSD, 16GB RAM, Ultimate-N 6300 WiFi, a 1080p matte LCD (similar to the matte panel we tested with the P170EM, if not identical), and an i7-3720QM all for about $100 less than the AVADirect configuration. About the only item you clearly lose is the DVI port.

As for less expensive but slower gaming notebooks, the lower end Samsung Series 7 looks great and has the best keyboard of the bunch (by far in my opinion), but the storage configuration from Samsung is lacking and the GT 650M GPU is about half as fast as the HD 7970M. There are also issues with CPU/GPU throttling under sustained heavy workloads. That Series 7 can be had for around $1400 and it looks nice, and if you don’t really need a GTX 680M or HD 7970M it’s certainly worth considering; however, it's not really fit for 1080p gaming at max details. Samsung also offers a higher spec Series 7 that's completely different from the above; it goes for a wedge-shaped chassis similar to the ASUS G75 and includes two 750GB HDDs, 16GB RAM, and a GTX 675M, now for a reasonably low price of $1680.

And last we have the ASUS G75VW, which you can get with a GTX 670M, 12GB RAM, and a 500GB HDD (then add your own 256GB SSD for under $200—and the Samsung 830 is likely to drop further with the introduction of the Samsung 840 SSDs). Like Samsung, ASUS is sporting a last-gen Fermi GPU that can still handle 1080p gaming fairly well, and it's definitely faster than the GT 650M or GTX 660M GPUs in other "almost gaming" notebooks, but it also draws more power than Kepler based parts that offer similar performance.

What I'd like to see is ASUS and Samsung update the GPU to the GTX 670MX/675MX (GK106), as that’s probably the best bang for the buck you’re likely to see from a gaming notebook (though we haven’t been able to test that GPU yet, so we can only give a partial recommendation). And yes, you can get the new GK106 GPUs in the Clevo P170EM now; they're priced similarly to the HD 7970M.

So where does that leave AVADirect with their Clevo P170EM? First, I have to reiterate that I found the typing experience on the new Clevo keyboard to be particularly bad—it’s one of the worst keyboards I’ve used in a while. It’s a very subjective statement I know, so take it for what it’s worth, but typing on the P170EM is worse in my book than the previous generation P170HM (even with the messed up 10-key); in fact, it’s nearly as bad as Acer’s “floating island” keys. For people that type even a moderate amount on their notebook, I can’t imagine most will be pleased with the P170EM keyboard. If all you're looking for is a gaming notebook however, you should be fine, but this shouldn't be that hard to get right.

For all my complaints about the keyboard, touchpad, battery life, and overall aesthetic, the Clevo P170EM excels when it comes to performance and configuration options. Our stress testing is brutal, and to have the P170EM complete over two hours of 100% load testing with no throttling evident is a nice change of pace after what I've experienced with lesser offerings. If you need a notebook/mobile workstation that can handle running computationally intensive workloads for long periods of time, the P170EM is ready for you. The display options from Clevo are also quite nice; AVADirect currently lists three different 1080p displays (glossy, matte, and high gamut glossy), and all three options perform reasonably well; I’d personally go for the matte surface, but some people prefer glossy and that’s fine. The connectivity options are good as well (three USB 3.0, eSATA, FireWire, DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI), though I’m not a big fan of all the ports on the rear as they can be difficult to reach.

Customization options are really one of the highlights of Clevo builds in general, as most vendors let you decide exactly what you want to put in them. Do you want a 256GB mSATA OS/Apps drive with a 1TB HDD for mass storage? Done. Or keep the mSATA drive but go with RAID 0 hard drives, or even RAID 0 SSDs. Or perhaps you'd like to start with just the mSATA SSD and then add additional storage when you need it—and in another six months, SSDs like Samsung's new 840 series with TLC NAND could very well push into the $0.50/GB range. I can say the same for RAM, GPUs, LCDs, and even WiFi adapters and optical drives. You get to build exactly what you want, rather than letter some huge corporation decide what's best.

Ultimately, the Clevo P170EM is a good gaming notebook but it has some a few flaws and quirks that may or may not bother you. I can say the same for the Alienware, MSI, Samsung, and ASUS notebooks mentioned above—they all involve some form of compromise. If speed is your primary concern, Clevo certainly has that, and with the right components  it can be a great choice; just don't expect perfection and if you can, try one out in person before pulling the trigger. If you decide a Clevo P170EM is the right notebook for you, there are quite a few vendors willing to sell you one.

AVADirect has their no-naming-nonsense Clevo P170EM Gaming Notebook, and they offer a ton of other configuration options (perhaps too many, some might say—I wish there were an easy way to restrict certain component choices, e.g. only show 8GB RAM options, or only show 240-256GB SSDs). If you know exactly what type of hardware you want to put in your new notebook, there’s a good chance they can accommodate you. What's nice with boutique vendors like AVADirect is that there’s none of the “component of the day” specials that routinely appear with larger OEMs, where you can find several different panels, HDDs/SSDs, RAM, etc. and what you get basically comes down to whatever is cheapest around the time you place your order. You can get roughly the same build as our review unit with a matte LCD and an update to the new i7-3740QM CPU for $2033 (and that includes $13 for the upgraded thermal compound, which isn’t an option at some of the other resellers).

Looking elsewhere, Sager Notebooks offer the NP9170 with the same components as the AVADirect for $2089, so $56 more, but they’re currently running a $100 discount that makes them a slightly less expensive option. Sager doesn’t overwhelm you with options on most of their parts either, which can be good or bad depending on what you’re after. iBUYPOWER has the Valkyrie P170EM with i7-3720QM (likely to be updated soon to the i7-3740QM) and an ADATA 256GB SSD for $1943, so you can save a bit of money if you’re willing to give up the matte LCD and some of the SSD/RAM choices. XoticPC offers the Sager NP9170 as well, at the same price (AFAICT) but with a cash discount option. They’re also the only place where I can still find a matte 72% gamut LCD option (though it’s a hefty $149 upgrade from the standard matte LCD—note that this is apparently the matte panel we tested, though it was initially supposed to be 90% gamut). Finally—and I know I skipped some other vendors—ProStar sells the P170EM with the same basic configuration for $2119 (with the option for a cash discount) and Origin has their EON17-S going for $2241 (with the option for a custom top panel that other vendors lack)

Most of the vendors (including AVADirect) offer similar configurations, and I’m not sure that any of these companies are clearly better or worse than the others. WIth prices and component options changing on a regular basis, if you have your heart set on a Clevo P170EM notebook it can’t hurt to shop around.