Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC / G702ZC / S7ZC with Ryzen 7 1700 8-core CPU and a Radeon RX580 GPU

Follow up to Freesync option express installation upon my current setup disabled my Freesync and Vray not recognizing my GPU.
However uninstalling with AMD driver clean uninstall tool and running in windows commander the following commands:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
And
SFC /SCANNOW (which fixed some corrupted files)
Afterwards installing ASUS drivers 17.6 back I could regain Freesync function back and installing 18.1.1 drivers using AMD chipset driver with express installation kept my Freesync and Vray GPU rendering.......... Major win
Interesting enough is that this method I have already tried last week with no success, however the only difference is that now I had installed and used the Ryzen master utility. Maybe this had something to do with the successful installation of drivers.

P.S. I still haven't installed Windows 1709 update and running the CPU at 3.3 GHz at 1.0 V dropped the temperatures to 74 degrees while rendering, previously temps kept in 84 degrees range. Another major win all of this without touching the fan slider, running on stock RPM.

Thx allot Deks!!

 

Glad to be of help.
Btw, I have an update response from Asus on repasting and RAM upgrade:

"Thank you for contacting Asus support

Removing the heatpipes will void the warranty

Also, if there are not issues found in the repair centre with certain parts - thermal paste for example - it is not replaced.

As the heatsink hangs partially over the DIMM slots, we would not advise replacing this

As any damage whilst removing the heatsink or dissasembly will not be covered by the warranty"


So, first they say it's ok to upgrade the RAM without losing the warranty, but now they say that if you remove the heatpipes at all, it voids the warranty.
Btw, it's basically impossible to insert the RAM into the slot underneath the cooling pipe. There's little to no room for proper maneuvering, positioning, etc. (if anything, doing something like that could damage the RAM stick you bought or worse, the RAM slot iself, or even the motherboard - the very thing they want to avoid).

This is extremely bad of Asus. They are contradicting themselves and misleading people... and correct me if I'm wrong, but its also ground for a lawsuit because of the contradictions and restrictions they put in place?

I'm done talking to their technical support over this.
If someone else wants to give it a go, please do that. and post their replies please.

 

Well in my case there is no customer support , I bought this laptop from a retailer and they don't have a service center, if something cracks in this baby they will sent it for repairs to another third party service and supply me with a new one, if they have one, if not I will be refunded at the exact price I paid for it as long as the warranty is in term

 

Lol....if mine breaks again, I'll ask for a replacement or a refund.

 

Didn't see it till now, but thanks for that information! While I don't plan on using max GPU in public, I prefer speakers to headphones at home as a matter of comfort. If the environment is kinda noisy, or I'm at work where playing music over the headphones would bother others, headphones are great... but in my own dwelling, I prefer to either connect to speakers or use the laptop ones.

Sad to hear that the battery is not removeable, or at least not conveniently. So many laptops lack replaceable batteries these days. If I were buying a $400 burner laptop I wouldn't care much, but at over a grand I do want to be able to replace the battery without replacing the entire computer.

The local store does have a 15-day return policy, but I try to be conscious of the fact that every return-to-open-box is affecting their bottom line, and not abuse that with products I don't expect to keep. When I do plan to keep it but it doesn't work out, like with my aircraft engine R9 290X, it's great to have that option, but my desire for them to stay in business outweighs the convenience of a laptop trial. Largely because having a really great local store is rare in the U.S. these days.

I'll hope for an updated Ryzen+ model that addresses some of the shortcomings. The good thing is that they have a pretty good foundation, it's really some tweaks around the edges, and perhaps a cooling redesign, that are needed to make it great.

 

I found a work around for the issue with Freesync not working with a clean install, here is my summary overall.


I received this laptop last month and its performance is amazing, the only thing that I didn;t like is that it only has a single audio jack so you can't connect headphones with mic jacks unless if the splitter actually works, also mine came with a single 16GB memory stick which hampers the CPU performance by a noticeable margin instead of having it dual channel. Ordered a pair of 8GB X 2 Crucial sticks and replaced the single 16GB with them and the bandwidth sensitive scores are up by a decent margin.

When you install AMD's official drivers for the GPU, it would automatically recognize it as AMD RX 580 series and Freesync will stop working. It would detect the videocard with no problems. After several troubleshooting steps, the fix was to install the drivers like any other GPU, and once you are done, go into the Device Manager, Display Adapters, double click on the Radeon and select update drivers, then select the driver manually, remove the Show Compatible Hardware checkmark so you can have more options, then look for the Radeon (TM) RX 580 and select it, don't choose AMD Radeon RX 580, Radeon RX 580 series or AMD Radeon RX 580 series, otherwise Freesync will never work, does not make any sense lol.

Ah and the Power Efficiency option on AMD's Radeon settings does work amazingly well, no performance drop and when you are watching videos or surfing the web, the GPU will stay downclocked longer. If you don't enable that option, the GPU would be ramping up so often that the fans would be constantly on for no reason. Ah last note, with the latest BIOS update 303, the fans totally turn off when the temps are below 35C on the GPU and CPU. Right now my CPU is idling at 23C and my GPU is idling at 25C and no fan is spinning (My Room is at 18C). But for some reason, when you disconnect the laptop from the power source and reconnect it, the Power Efficiency option toggles off lol.

Make sure that the very first thing to do once you get this laptop, is to update the BIOS to 303.

 

Word of advice on doing a fresh Windows install for making bass fully functional on this machine with latest audio drivers:
First install Asus provided Audio Drivers... after that download the latest Realtek High Definition Audio drivers from their webpage.
Unpack those drivers using 7Zip or another tool like Winrar to a separate location.
Following that, go to Control Panel > Device Manager > Sound, Video and game controllers.
Right click on Realtek High Definition Audio and select 'update driver', followed by 'Browse my Computer for driver software' and direct it to the extracted directory of newest drivers.

There you go.
You now have latest drivers with bass/subwoofer fully functional.
This technique worked on my old Acer 5930G too, since the drivers alone from Realtek website wouldn't activate the subwoofer it would seem. It would be interesting to note what is it that Asus and Acer put into the drivers to activate the bas/subwoofer.

 

I've been updating some older software on my external HDD and I ran latest HWinfo out of curiosity.
Guess what peaked my interest:

Hint: Look at the highlighted section.

AMD AGESA Version: 1.0.0.7

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this Agesa version supposed to enable future Ryzen CPU compatibility such as Ryzen+, Ryzen 2 and Ryzen 3?

And if it is... WHOOHOO!!!

But, still, Asus never mentioned anything to me when I asked them about updated AGESA version - they kept silent.

If this is indeed the 1.0.0.7 Agesa version that AMD released for future CPU compatibility... then, I guess we should be able to upgrade our CPU's.


One thing I don't know if we had a previous agesa version on an older BIOS (I don't remember checking).
Could anyone with original BIOS version 208 check what their HWinfo says about their AGESA?

 

Test Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC (Ryzen 5 1600, Radeon RX 580, FHD) Laptop
https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-...5-1600-Radeon-RX-580-FHD-Laptop.280270.0.html

 

I don't know if the Ryzen 1600 is removable in this unit (I think it is since the laptop is the same with only two differences being CPU and RAM quantity)... but, if it is, then it would certainly be a cheaper option to get instead of the 8c/16th version and then just upgrade the CPU to a better one (say Zen 2 on 7nm) along with the RAM (higher speed dual channel).

 

that R5 1600 is removable too

 

Yeah... then the machine would be great for most people as it's certainly more affordable, and getting another 8GB RAM to double it and activate dual channel would be a smaller increase in price, and then waiting for better Ryzen CPU.

 

Still describes the RX 580 as 'consistently losing to 1060', even though it draws LESS power and is either comparable to 1060 (giving same or is within a few FPS) in DX11 or beats it readily in DX12 (and if it loses in DX11 on average FPS, it has higher minimums than 1060) while being within 1% of 1060 in benchmarks?
That seems a bit biased to me... wouldn't a more accurate description be that taking all things into account, GPU performances are basically equal with RX 580 drawing less power?

He is right on the mark on the cooling and battery though.
The machine needs a good repaste and proper thermal pads on VRM's and GPU VRAM's along with CPU and GPU undervolting.
Since we can't undervolt the GPU as of yet under Windows, we can only undervolt the CPU.

 

Its ashame that its not mxm.

 

So you're saying every reviewer of this laptop is wrong?

 

In the premise they ignore dx12 performance and that dx11 performance is largely within margin of error or better (in average and minimum) when it comes to fps and that they don't know the RX 580 is limited to 68w?
Yes.
Pretty hard to ignore those aspects, but then again, they don't go into that much detail sadly.

Linus for example showed a few games, all of which gave RX 580 a comparable performance, with deus ex performing better on RX, and only 1 title (shadow of war I think) where it had lower average fps and much higher minimum fps.

On balance... I'd say he was pretty wrong.

 

How did Linus ignore DX12 performance? 2 out of the 3 DX12 tests (Time Spy and RotTR) showed the 1060 ahead, while DX:MD DX12 is slower than DX11 on Nvidia. The 1060 notebook is also limited to 65W TDP/75W-80W TGP like this RX 580. If every reviewer says it's slower than the 1060 notebook by a small but consistent margin, there must be some truth to that, wouldn't you say?

 

Actually, "consistantly losing to the 1060" is by a few FPS, it's silly to say losing when it's that close, close enough - and certainly an amazing CPU + GPU package that anyone would be happy with instead of an Intel 4c/8t or 6c/12t CPU.

It's an amazing first AMD+AMD laptop, and working with what was available it does the job.

And, saying it's not exciting is silly for Linus especially. He could issue those for video editing to his staff, for far less than the Razer + customer desktop video stations.

It's noisy though...too noisy for me.

I'd think the LGA'er's would be rooting for it anyway, check out the video, it's got a socketed CPU!!

The next generation with higher end CPU + GPU will be higher performance, but even noisier most likely.

Hopefully the next next generation, Ryzen 2.0 + Vega 2.0/Navi 1.0 will meet the need with lower power requirements, and less noise.

 

UPDATE:

I was seemingly able to undervolt the GPU using latest MSI Afterburner.
I used Furmark for quick testing... I know I know... it stresses the GPU beyond measure, but regardless (t's a quick and dirty way of doing things).
The temperatures seemed to have hovered in the 78 degrees C area.
The dips that occur seem to be a result of the GPU dropping its core and memory clocks temporarily for some reason during the burn-in test (it's as if the GPU cannot sustain 100% load after it reaches about 77 degrees C - at least in FurMark it can't).
I have been playing Mass Effect Andromeda though, and performance in game is fine without such 'dips'.

I'll have to use different benchmarks to test the GPU and make sure the voltages are being applied properly and the temps are better (aka, controlled conditions).
We'll see.

Could anyone test FurMark themselves with the Afterburner settings I used and see how it works for them and post the results?

 

Run Unigine Heaven/Valley/Superposition maxed out in a window with GPU-Z open on the Sensors tab. Pause the benchmark using space bar at some point where it reaches 99% GPU load and let the notebook heat up until temps stabilize. Then repeat same test with the undervolt applied, and you can observe the temp, power, and voltage differences.

 

I've been testing the MSI Afterburner to undervolt -100 the GPU and after an hour of 3ds max GPU rendering and Lumion 8 testing I found that in the somewhat real world test there is no difference in temperature 2 degree's at most.
Everything run stable with no hickups.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

There does appear to be a 2 degree difference.
Remember that in Firestrike on -100mV my temps were at 73 degrees C and the GPU was able to work without crashing majority of times (except once or twice), but when I used the GPU on those settings in Minergate, it crashed the OS after a bit... so I had to use -93mV for stability, which bumped up my temperatures to 75 degrees C... but that happened simultanously with CPU maxed out (reaching 84.14 deg C) in Minergate too.

So, yes, I think 7 mV = about 2 degrees C difference.

Meh... if I repaste the CPU and GPU and apply thermal pads to VRMS and GPU memory chips... I'm hoping I can slash the temps further down.

That said, you might also have a higher quality silicon (ASIC %) than allows you to use -100mV... or it could be that different software stresses the GPU differently (which it does)... so maintaining -100mV under different conditions is more practical than in others.

This MSI afterburner is a bit finicky though... instead of dropping the mV by say 5, it went from -100 to -97 (or 7 mv difference - it doesn't allow a smaller differential for some reason).

 

Hi to everyone guys! First of all I would like to thanks Deks for his continuous and precious reportage of this laptop that I’m really interested in, then I would like to ask you a thing.

Do you think is possible to have this variations on the temp / noise between the version R7 1700 vs R5 1600?
https://www.notebookcheck.net/index.php?id=127065&specs[]=282866&specs[]=288254

I found it very strange, maybe could be that the review with the 1600 has been released with a more mature bios that have a fan curve more efficient?

Thanks to all of you for your replies!

 

Well... not sure... though if you examine the noteboocheck article, it says that power consumption is higher on Ryzen 5 version... but it still has lower noise levels in general.
It might be that it came with a better refined silicon which doesn't produce as much in terms of temperatures as mine does (which seems to be the case on various parts of the laptop - lower temperature)... however, at the same time, it could also be that Asus improved the cooling on that one... so even though its more power hungry (which is odd) Asus might have modified it a bit... perhaps they used thermal pads for VRM's and GPU VRAM and have a better thermal paste quality and application?

As for the fan curve... meh, its likely the laptop is using same BIOS revision as mine (303 - or 300 - depending on when it was released).

 

Uhmmm.. sincerely I haven't seen that the R5 model is more power hungry...

Did you actually notice that the new bios has improved the temp and noise compared to the first bios you try?

I really want to take this laptop to replace my desktop build (and it will be my first laptop at all, so if I do some dumb question please be patient ) and I’m evaluating the budget for the R7 model with the SSD included or the R5 model and then buy an M2 SSD. Sure that if the model with the R5 has improved cooling system I think I will go for this one.

 

Don't go for the SSD one, buy the regular R7 with a 1 tb HDD and an additional SSD M2 like Samsung 960 and install it yourself, bouth the SSD and HDD that come from the preconfigured builds have reported to be kinda slow, and you pay more, if you get the HDD one and upgrade yourself to SSD M2 Samsung you will achieve a better value for the price.
Also first boot on HDD takes allot of time if you let windows upgrade itself, but if you opt out of the automatic upgrades and install the SSD and use Samsung migration software witch is extremely simple to migrate everything to the SSD licence and everything. (Make sure you upgrade bios to 303 before).
That's my 2 cents on the matter. Also don't worry about the thermals inside the laptop, the cooling is decent by default keeping the fan noise pretty low, but if you would like lower temps just give the fan's some boost from within the preinstaled Asus software and your fans will show their muscle, nothing will prepare you for the raw power the fans have on full power.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

Hi all!

Was wondering if anyone has tried any different OS' on this machine yet?

A few of the guys in my business are looking at getting some of these laptops as a replacement for their desktop machines but insist on running Windows 7 (which I've advised against for obvious reasons but there we go...)

Has anyone tried this yet and have any idea on what the driver support is like?

 

As far as I can see the only driver that's fully supported is the CPU, on the OEM's site there is no option for choosing driver's download for anything other then windows 10, even if you get them working backwards it's a lottery getting all of them to support all the features

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

Well that certainly makes it a lot easier to persuade the team its a bad idea!

Thanks for your response

 

Honestly, I hadn't seen my temperatures improve with the latest BIOS at all... but that could also mean Asus gave me a low silicon quality hardware and did a poor thermal paste application.
What helped me most was undervolting.

In regards to power consumption of the R5 model... I'm only looking at the notebookcheck article, and unless I'm mistaken, the power consumption numbers of that unit are that its taking on average more power for some reason than the 8c/16th version.. which I said was odd.
You'd think the 6c/12th CPU would have lower power consumption... so it's possible I misread, or that Notebookcheck made an error.

I have only used Windows 10 on this machine... others have used Linux.
As for Windows 7... I wouldn't go there for security reasons (obviously)... and various features the Ryzen series has isn't supported by Windows 7 or 8.1 for that matter.

You CAN technically install Windows 7 on this machine and get functionality for all the hardware by using the control panel to update the drivers, or just go to websites for specific hardware manufacturers (other than CPU/GPU) and download Windows 7 version drivers if they put them up.

If a few of your guys want to use something other than Windows 10, I recommend they use Linux.

 

It's worth trying to get Windows 7 running, but afaik noone has reported doing so.

If they want / need Windows 7, then I'd suggest running it in a VM guest, using Linux, Windows 10 or a dedicated VM host OS with pass-through to the hardware in case they want direct access to the hardware.

Level1Tech's on Youtube have put out a number of video's for this on their Linux channel, using passthrough to get access to specific hardware with Ryzen / ThreadRipper CPU's.

With the latest BIOS, VM support is there for the GL702ZC, so it's a viable alternative.

Windows 10 would only be used to boot into a Windows 7 VM, and from there nothing done in Windows 7 would be seen by Windows 10, and you can neuter Windows 10 to reduce it's resource usage since Windows 10 services would be invisible (useless) to the Windows 7 VM.

If they do this, please write up a how to - either or both getting Windows 7 to run on the native hardware, or getting Windows 10 on top of a host OS, and post it here.

Good luck.

 

Let's not forget that if you're co-workers are somewhat of a gamer directx 12 is a no go on windows 7, witch is not fully utilized yet in Windows 10 as far as I can see online in a DX 11 Vs 12 comparison, but eventually there will be an advantage of owning a DX 12 GPU.
I'm not a gamer by any chance so I can't vouch for that so take it with a grain of salt.
I've been using windows 10 from the first beta testing program was announced and I haven't had any screen burning or any myths that are out there, but I have seen an increase FPS in cad software. Regarding windows 10 privacy debate's, if you have and android or iOS phone or a Facebook account, you can leave you're privacy concerns at the door, everyone already knows everything about you, and they share info among others.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for your input everyone!

Personally I do think this laptop looks like a great bit of kit, although in terms of meeting the requirements of what the guys need against what they want, I think I'm just going to have to put my foot down and have them look at other alternatives. Funnily enough the machines they've been using thus far with no issues are all of a sudden "too slow" following one of the team members getting a £2k desktop a few weeks back... funny that!

Basically the software that they need to run is old and poorly written and seems to process everything very much in a brute force sense - which is what makes having 8 cores/16 threads so appealing, and of course this laptop is an absolute monster when it comes to its multi-core capabilities. Unfortunately said software is compatible with Win7 ONLY (with the developers confirming there is no support planned for any other OS), which provides a bit of a headache.

I've also been informed they require the use of peripheral devices connecting via USB 2.0 only, as apparently when connected via more recent iterations these devices don't work at all (which doesn't entirely make sense to me...). This of course is another point against this laptop in my very specific instance.

I think the request for a fleet of these machines has very much been a case of, "that looks cool, lets get it!", rather than a realistic assessment of whether or not its fit for purpose.

I do love this suggestion and the thought of attempting to get this working does sound like a lot of fun! Bundled in with the other considerations I think this would be a case of trying to force a square in round hole as it were. Additionally, the potential users aren't particularly... tech savvy (?), in an attempt to phrase that in the nicest way possible, thus supporting them with the use of these machines in such a way suddenly becomes a lot more difficult.

I'm going to push back for desktop alternatives and suggest connecting remotely when out of the office. Should be able to save a lot of hassle (both in initial implementation and subsequent support) and money this way.

Thanks again for all your input everyone! The most annoying thing to come of all this is having done a lot of looking in to the GL702ZC I want one for my own personal use now...

 

How does this laptop go for I/O speed?

The only faster interface it has is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 type C port.

Given this and the fact it only has 1 x M2 SSD slot + the Sata III 2.5" bay it would seem to get the fastest I/O possible on this laptop that it would make sense to put the OS on a 2.5" SSD (Samsung 860?) in the 2.5" bay and put in a Samsung 960 PCIe or similar into that M2 SSD slot. That way the Samsung 960 is bottle necked by the 3.1 Gen 2 port ( so wringing every drop of I/O performance possible from that 3.1 Gen 2 - nothing left on the table there at all)

Since there is only 1 x M2 slot there is of course no way to do a Raid 0 to get speed from slower SATA III SSD's so it would seem the only way to get up the to max speed of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 port is to use a very fast NVMe PCIe SSD in that single M2 slot.

Does this analysis sound about right ?

 

What is the fastest RAM out there for this laptop ? How much difference will it make over the 2400MHz RAM that comes with it (maxed out to 32GB)

Edit - from what I can tell it looks like these RIPJAWS are about it.....is there anything faster then this that this laptop will take ?


G.Skill
G.SKILL 32GB (2 x 16G) Ripjaws Series DDR4 PC4-21300 2666MHz 260-Pin Laptop Memory Model F4-2666C18D-32GRS

 

Except that unless you have a specific use that can benefit from the NVME speed spending extra is a waste of $. Your benchmarks will bring you warm fuzzies, but in day to day use you won't see any benefit.

Now, if you have a task that is IO bound, and you run it for hours a time, and the delta in job run is enough time in wall time to save you time in your work flow, or allows you to run more jobs per day, you'll never payback to yourself the delta in cost(s).

The NVME's controllers at their higher speed run much hotter, and throttle sooner, so unless you have a good airflow / cooling around the M.2 drive, you are better off with the cooler running M.2 SATA drive, which also draws less power at idle and under load.

There are now 2TB M.2 SATA SSD's, which were only available in NVME previously, so your storage density options are the same now.

Here are some sample prices for 2TB and 1TB M.2 SATA and NVME SSD's, you pay 2x for the NVME!

SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series M.2 2280 2 TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-N6E2T0BW - $649
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147681

Samsung 2TB 860 EVO SATA III M.2 Internal SSD - $649
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1382505-REG/samsung_mz_n6e2t0bw_860_evo_2tb_internal.html

Samsung 960 PRO Series - 2TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P2T0BW)
Price: $1,249.00
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-PRO-Internal-MZ-V6P2T0BW/dp/B01LY3Y9PH

Crucial MX300 1TB 3D NAND SATA M.2 (2280) Internal SSD - CT1050MX300SSD4 - $289
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX300-NAND-SATA-Internal/dp/B01L80DH1Y

Samsung 860 EVO 1TB M.2 SATA Internal SSD (MZ-N6E1T0BW) - $329
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-860-SATA-Internal-MZ-N6E1T0BW/dp/B07822Z77M/

Samsung 960 PRO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P1T0BW) - $615
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-PRO-Internal-MZ-V6P1T0BW/dp/B01LYRCIPG/

So even with just 1 M.2 slot, you can save $100's by going with SATA vs NVME.

Here a few videos showing the end user perceptive difference between SATA and NVME, Optane, and what is found is that for most users doing everyday operations, running games, applications, booting up, etc, the difference in real use shows little perceptable benefit.

HDD Vs. SSD Vs. NVMe M.2 - Does a NVMe Drive Help Boot Times?


Funny how the NVMe actually boots 1 second slower than the SATA SSD

NVME PCIe SSD vs. SATA SSD for Gaming, Tested!
Testing results start about 4:00

Here are new reviews of Intel Optane SSD, showing again that for normal usage you won't notice the difference in user perceptible performance.
Intel Optane 900p : Our Initial thoughts and Testing


The fastest SSD for gaming, and one big problem..
Results start around 3:50


Only specialized long running jobs will show benefit's that a user can benefit from.

 

My application is moving very large video files onto the laptop for editing and encoding then getting the material back off the laptop and back onto the NAS.

The only fast interface this laptop has is USB 3.1 Gen 2 - and thats not even that fast compared to TB3. I would prefer the TB3 but of course its not available with Ryzen. So seems real world speeds off a fast PCIe SSD out to a fast SSD Raid via 3.1 Gen 2 is about 800MB/s. TB3 would do double that - alas its just not happening in this laptop.

So regardless of my reasons for wanting to do it, it looks to me like the OS on a Sata III SSD in the 2.5" bay and a PCIe SSD in the M2 slot is the way to move the HUGE files (30-40+ GB per file) off and on this laptop as fast as possible.

Does anyone see a reason why this would not *technically* not work the way I have outlined ?


P.S..i might add here, what I am saying is I want to saturate the 3.1 Gen 2 connection which is real world in the 700 - 800 MBps range - how am i going to do that with a sata III SSD when there is only 1 of them? The only device I know of that will give sustained SEQUENTIAL Read/Write at or above that figure is an NMVe PCIe SSD. Luckily this laptop can take **1** of these. So that **1** PCIe SSD had better be fast if its going to saturate that 3.1 Gen 2 connection.

I cant see any other way to fully saturate that Gen 2 connection. If there is another way I am all ears. So I am open to any ideas/suggestions.

 

That would only work if you had another NVME SSD equivalent speed storage internally in the USB 3.1 device you are transferring from.

Usually "NAS"'s aren't that fast, they have internal HDD's, and even summing up the throughput of several 100MB/sec SATA III HDD's, you'd need 8+ of them to get that NVME speed. 5 of them for 500MB/sec to match a SATA III device.

If you populated the NAS with SATA III SSD's, then you would need several of them in the RAID to match the 800MB/sec sustained.

Often in real world tests you'll get less than the theoretical throughput...

Then again, 550MB/sec vs 800MB/sec is a speed up of 45%, so it depends on how many GB you are transferring and how many times a day you do that, to see if the 2x price difference is worth it.

Also, tests show sustained throughput on NVME M.2 SSD's show the slowing down after a short time, to avoid overheating and throttling. So you'd need to find out what that time limit is on the NVME M.2 SSD you are looking at, to see if your transfer would complete before that slow down started.

Then you'd need to figure out how long it needs to cool down to the same starting idle temperature before starting the next transfer.

Or, just find out the thermal slow down throughput, and calculate based on that lower throughput as it's the sustained throughput.

If you put together all of that, to confirm your calculations, we'd love to hear how it all works out.

 

Why does raid speeds count?
Unless you need to transfer high amounts of data daily from one place to another, let's say you are a youtuber, in real world use my Samsung evo 960 never reached 20% of it's full capacity, after I installed it I ran some tests and I can confirm that the SSD M2 drive reached the read write speeds claimed by Samsung. However testing side by side with my old laptop running a Corsair sata II SSD every software that I use opens about as fast. And lumion 8 rendering software has 15 GB installed so it should blaze in opening it, in fact so far developer's don't even take advantage of SATA II SSD speeds of 150 read write

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

2 x 8GB 3000 MhZ:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/G-SKILL-Ri...18315217&sr=8-2&keywords=so-dimm+ddr4+3000Mhz

2x 16GB 3000 MhZ:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-Ve...8315477&sr=8-22&keywords=so-dimm+ddr4+3000Mhz

Prices however are atrocious.
Ebay seems to be selling the 2x16GB version for £400 (which is lowest thus far in UK).

 

Yup, that's the key to why the NVME although 2x-5x+ faster than SATA III, the rest of the operations in the software take time too.

The first time I ran into this was when optimizing SATA II drivers for a Nubus card that they thought wasn't performing correctly, as the end result - transfering files, was only a few percent faster. They verified the disk IO was indeed 2x-4x faster than before, but it wasn't showing up in real world programs.

The problem was the filesystem code, it was optimized for a much slower storage throughput, and when faster throughput was available it didn't know what to do with it.

I ended up optimizing the OS / FS code years later and it really made a big difference.

We don't usually have that opportunity without access to source code, so we are stuck with finding applications that do optimize for higher speed IO, and respond with better wall time reductions than unoptimized code.

That's when I discovered that you need to do optimization from bare IO through OS to application before you can benefit from big gains in benchmarkable IO speed improvements.

SATA III works fine for M.2 vs NVME for most applications, most owners will benefit more from the 2x storage for the same $ if they shop wisely.

 

Yes, but you have to get the files ONTO the laptop for any processing that you are doing with those files...then when finished you need to get those files OFF the laptop and back to some other storage medium.

What you are saying is that programs themselves may not deal with the high speeds. That is not what I am trying to do...... I am trying to move very very large files from outboard NAS storage to onboard laptop storage for further processing by programs on the laptop.

So how to saturate that USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection on this particular laptop is what I am asking and as I have said several times is it looks like the only way to do it with such sparse I/O on this laptop (only 1 x M2 and only 1 x 2.5" bay) is to use a device in the M2 slot that can give huge I/O in its own right. How else would one generate a read or write speed of 700-800MB/s in or out of this laptop?

Anyways, i just wanted to run it past the crowd here to see if my thoughts on this are headed in the right direction on this. Looks like I will just have to give it a go and see.

 

re the RAM

Thanks for the heads up.

How much of a difference would this make to the laptop in general usage ? How about for video editing ?

**Is this laptop capable of using 3000 or 3200 MHz RAM - will the BIOS allow it?**

 

With bios 303, the AMD agesa version is 1.0.0.7.
As a result, it should support higher frequency ram, but, as always, we don't know if Asus artificially limited the ram speeds on the laptop (although I doubt they would go through all that trouble considering the motherboard is desktop based B350 model adapted to laptop form).

What someone could do is try getting 2x16gb 3000mhz ram and test it out.

As for how much of a difference would this make to laptops performance... 10% depending on the usage scenario.
Some games would probably see these benefits going from say 2400 to 3200 ram, but as of yet, there is no 3200mhz laptop ram in the wild I could find.
Software like video editing... not sure if it benefits from higher RAM frequencies... it might... I'll see if I can find some youtube videos to check.

If I'm not mistaken, I think higher ram speeds for laptops are coming as something was said to be released for Intel CPU's in mobile, so make due with what you can afford and if ram prices drop, get the higher speed ram later on.

Right now, I just don't think it's affordable to be splurging 1 quarter of the laptop price on faster ram... Unless you got the cheaper ryzen 1600 version and you can justify the cost (though, a nice ssd would be a better investment).

 

Yep - you are most likely right. Its probably not a big enough of an improvement (3000+MHz RAM) on this *particular* PC to make that much of a difference.

Probably bigger enhancements to be had in other areas and thus better putting the money there instead.

I see on the Hidevolution page that the highest speed RAM they offer is 2600 MHz - I wonder why that is?

 

AMD wattman almost available on Linux , kernel patches from AMD posted to mailing list February 8th.

Initial support is for Polaris (apparently), will compile a patched kernel and try undervolting with wattman.

 

Wow, that would be boon to Linux performance modding and enthusiast interest.

Intel hasn't done this, nor AMD before, and it's been a big complaint from enthusiasts wanting to move from Windows to Linux ( @Mr. Fox @Papusan )

 

after your advice I start searching the models with R7 and only the HDD... well, here in italy it's more difficult to find a model without ssd and the few that i find cost much more that models with ssd... ridiculous. my search continues....

 

Here at the same price you get to choose between one with 16 GB ram and HDD and a 8 GB ram hybrid HDD + 8 SSD.
So it's a no-brainer in my country. Also it is a retailer who sells it not an official representative.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk