Samsung Series 7 700G7A - The Future Choice of Pro-Gaming

The Future Choice of Pro-Gaming

It only makes sense that Samsung would enter the gaming notebook market at some point. The Korean manufacturer is situated in the world’s most competitive pro-gaming scene and has been the main sponsor of the World Cyber Games (WCG) since its formation in 2000. And while Samsung hardware at the WCG is currently limited to monitors, could we possibly see future WCGs held on their Series 7 700G7As? In our opinion, you can pretty much bet on it.

Equipped with a Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7-2670QM (2.2GHz quad-core) processor, 8GB of DDR3 SDRAM, an AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics module, and 1.5TB storage space (comprising of dual 750GB, 7200RPM hard drives), the Samsung Series 7 700G7A has more than enough power to play any current game. To boost its appeal as an entertainment powerhouse, Samsung has also equipped it with a 17.3-inch 1920 x 1080 pixels full HD 3D display and a Blu-ray combo drive. To top it off, the unit has an 8GB SSD express cache that Samsung claims speeds up boot times and commonly used programs. Windows 7 Home Premium loaded for us in about 30 seconds, which seems about average. The 700G7A weighs a moderate 3.5kg, heavy but not above average for a 17.3-inch desktop replacement (DTR) machine.

Now consider all of what we've said for a mere S$2899 – one of the lowest starting prices we’ve seen for a serious gaming notebook. We detail you more in this review to ensure we cover all that you need to know of this model's capabilities.

A Gaming Notebook With A Simple, Clean Design? Impossible!

We’ve always admired the aesthetics on Samsung products and the new Series 7 700G7A is no different. Moving away from the usual ‘gamer’ design of flashing lights and angular vents (ahem Alienware), the 700G7A sports a more a high-end business notebook design, with a black chassis, complimented with sleek, smoke-brushed aluminum-looking accents. The lid features a glossy panel with the same smoke-brushed aluminum pattern underneath. A simple Samsung logo lights up when the machine is on.

The 700G7A sports plastic hinges, which is a bit disappointing - if there's just one metal component on a notebook, we feel it should be the hinges. On the plus side, they do feel sturdy, and the unit opens very smoothly.

Opening it up, the smoke-brushed aluminum look continues inside, with the palm rest and keyboard area topped with a thin sheet of the aluminum-esque metal alloy. Above that, a dark mirror-finish plastic panel houses the speaker vents, power button and notification lights for some tasteful, low-key bling. The lights on this panel will pulse and flash according to context - for example, when a grenade explodes during your game, they will flash brightly, then pulse and stutter off as the rumble subsides. It's a nice touch that adds to the experience.

Even though the entire unit is constructed from plastic, it feels solid and well built. The use of thin sheets of aluminum-looking metal used on most of the areas you actually see and touch give the notebook a high-end look and feel. 

The 700G7A boasts a generous number of ports. Most can be found on the left side: (from front to back) headphone jack, microphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports, a 7-in-1 card reader, DisplayPort, HDMI port, VGA port, RJ-45 Gigabit LAN port and the power jack.

On the right side, two USB2.0 ports flank the Blu-ray combo drive. We appreciate Samsung putting most of the ports on the left, freeing the right side up for just your mouse and avoiding potentially disastrous cable tangle.

Designed With You In Mind (Yes, You)

It’s clear that Samsung did their homework before they designed the 700G7A; the unit is replete with well thought out features, clearly designed with gamers in mind (maybe they got input from their Samsung KHAN pro-gaming team?).

The full-sized keyboard features adjustable backlighting: white in most modes, or blue with WASD highlighted in red when the Mode Dial is set to Gaming (more on that below). While we liked the inclusion of WASD lighting, the red back light does seem to only be under the S key with the others being lit by proximity rather than their own light. Fortunately, the WASD keys also feature an outline around their borders, which makes them easy to see with the backlighting off.

The keys themselves are a pleasure to hit, offering a very firm and smooth response, with a surprisingly generous amount of travel – perfect for repeated key pressing. It’s no mechanical keyboard, but it’s probably the closest you’ll find (at least in terms of feel) in a notebook.

The 700G7A’s multi-touch trackpad is well sized and generously wide, with buttons featuring the same smoke-brushed aluminum-looking finish. The trackpad itself is smooth and glassy with hardly any traction, allowing you to move the cursor with blinding speed. The buttons also offer a firm response, with a solid click. Tracking is impressively accurate; we actually played a few rounds of Starcraft II using it, and were pleasantly surprised by how little we missed our mouse. Sounds unreal, but we were pleasantly surprised from our experience too.

Anyone with a gaming notebook would have encountered the problem of switching between integrated and discrete graphics. While most notebooks have automatic recognition, the software can be far from perfect, requiring you to go into the program software to manually configure the correct GPU setting.

The 700G7A features a Mode Dial that takes the pain out of the entire process. Four settings are available: Power Saving, Library mode, Balanced, and Gaming. Now all you have to do is flick the dial to Gaming, and it will automatically select the Radeon HD 6970M GPU, turn CPU fans to 100%, optimize CPU performance, disable the Windows key, and switch the keyboard to WASD backlighting. How's that for convenience?

Balanced mode can be used for general use where hardware requirements aren’t as high, while Library mode will instantly reduce fan noise, mute the speakers and turn off all unnecessary lights. Power Saving will help conserve battery life.

Eardrum Popping Audio

The 700G7A features a 2.1-channel sound system and utilizes Dolby’s Surround Sound Home Theater technology. Audio was crisp, clear and extremely loud – 50% volume on the 700G7A feels like 80% on most other notebooks. We were also impressed by the 700G7A’s subwoofer, which produced a deep, rumbling bass - perfect for games with lots of explosions (or any Michael Bay movie).

TriDef 3D Gaming

The 700G7A uses TriDef 3D, AMD’s preferred third-party software for 3D applications. Most 3D gaming notebooks use NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology so it was a surprise to see Samsung choose AMD.

One major difference between the two technologies is ease of use. For TriDef, to enable 3D, the game must be launched through the TriDef Ignition panel. After that, settings can be adjusted by bringing up the On Screen Display, via the num pad 0 key. To compare, NVIDIA will automatically detect your 3D Vision glasses, and turn 3D on appropriately.

In game, the two technologies are visually identical. Running Call of Duty: Black Ops on the 700G7A side by side the Alienware M17X R3 (which uses NVIDIA 3D Vision), both displayed excellent depth of field with no ghosting issues.

As for the glasses themselves, we felt that Samsung’s pair was more comfortable, weighing a bit less than the standard NVIDIA pair, and constructed from a lightweight, flexible plastic that helps it adjust to the size of your head. The nosebridge on the Samsung pair is also adjustable, compared to NVIDIA’s rigid plastic nosepiece. On a final note, we also felt that the Samsung pair was more comfortable for wearing over a conventional pair of glasses

Benchmarking and Performance

For our benchmark comparisons, we put the 700G7A up against two other 17.3-inch 3D gaming notebooks, Dell’s ultra powerful Alienware M17X R3, which has pretty much the best performance scores possible on current gaming notebooks, and another gaming notebook of similar weight, Toshiba’s Qosmio X770.

PCMark Vantage

The 700G7A scored well in PCMark Vantage, actually outperforming the more powerful M17X R3 on the Gaming and Productivity Suites. Both the 700G7A and M17X R3 use similar 1.5TB (2 x 750GB SATA) 7200 RPM hard drives as evidenced by almost identical HDD Test Suite scores, but the 700G7A carries only half the RAM capacity at 8GB compared to the M17X R3’s 16GB, which may explain the 700G7A’s underperforming scores in the Memories and TV & Movies Suites.

3DMark06

The Samsung Series 7 700G7A’s AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics module is one of AMD's best mobile GPUs, with only the almighty Radeon HD 6990M (found only in 18-inch notebooks) sitting higher than it in AMD's lineup. In our 3DMark06 test, the Radeon HD 6970M lived up to its positioning, easily outperforming the Toshiba Qosmio X770’s NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M and holding its own against the M17X R3’s top of the range, GTX 580M.

Far Cry 2

Benchmarks are a useful tool, but how a machine fares during actual gameplay is what really counts. We used Far Cry 2 to test all three machines, running at Very High settings at 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. While the M17X R3 posted a better score (expectedly), the 700G7A was more than adequate, hitting the targeted 60FPS average with a score of 61.57. In terms of the actual gaming experience, despite the M17X R3’s better score, comparing the two side by side showed virtually identical gameplay.

Far Cry 2 in 3D

How much impact will 3D gaming have on your system? We ran the Far Cry 2 Benchmark with 3D turned on (unfortunately our M17X R3 was not available for this test) to see how each 3D technology affected the system's score. With TriDef 3D turned on, the 700G7A struggled at very high settings, averaging 30.87 FPS - still playable, but just half of its previous score. The X770, which uses NVIDIA's 3D Vision, did even worse (only because of its mid-range GPU), managing only 40% of its previous score.

Turning the settings down to medium on both machines showed bigger performance gains on the TriDef enabled 7007GA, which was definitely more than playable at 53.91 average FPS. The X770 only improved a small amount, just barely attaining 50% of its non-3D enabled score. Obviously, the X770 is limited by its choice of graphics engine though.

Battery Performance

Gaming notebooks seem to be doing better these days in terms of battery life. The era of the 40-minute power outage appears to be over, with most notebooks managing to hit at least the 1-hour mark. Samsung, who make their own batteries, have fitted the 700G7A with an 8-cell unit rated at 15.1V with an 89Wh capacity. In testing, the 700G7A performed better than the X770, but not as well as the M17X R3, lasting just over 1 ½ hours.

Power consumption for the 700G7A is quite high, even in terms of gaming notebooks, with the 700G7A performing much worse than both of its competitors.

Portability Index

Our Portability Index measures how portable a machine is based on a simple formula of battery uptime divided by the product of the unit's weight and volume (the lower the score, the less portable the unit is). Gaming notebooks, with their big size, heavy hardware and low battery life generally fare badly in this test, and they’re not really designed with portability in mind anyway. Having said that, the 700G7A did score better than its peers, beating every 17-inch notebook except for HP’s Pavilion dv7 (which isn’t a gaming notebook).

We Want it All

Gaming notebooks are generally not cheap, with most models starting well above S$3000. For top of the line units, with similar specs and entertainment capabilities, expect to pay up to S$5000+. Bearing that in mind, we were pleasantly surprised to see Samsung price the 700G7A at a very modest S$2899. Best of all, you’re not sacrificing performance at that price. The 700G7A more than held its own against our Dell Alienware M17X R3, which has specs that will set you back a mean S$4887 (and that's without a Blu-ray drive), and easily outperformed the Toshiba X770 which is $400 more at S$3299.

We enjoyed seeing gamer designed features (and no, we don't mean flashing lights) such as the Mode Dial, WASD lighting, firm keyboard, and lightning fast trackpad, making it one of the first gaming notebooks that may actually improve your gameplay. When you also take into account its price, performance and looks, it's hard to think of a better buy if you're currently in the market for a gaming notebook. In fact, we expect to see other manufacturers scrambling to adjust their retail prices to compete.

A wise man once said, you can have power, looks or value, but not all three at the same time. Wise man? Meet the Samsung Series 7 700G7A.

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