Aorus - Some interesting files

Hey everyone,
So I recently used the "Driver Update" program that came with my Aorus X7 Pro (X7v3) I noticed it downloaded a file that contained a list of links for all the drivers and programs for their laptop models. There are downloads for the X7, X7v2, X7v3, X3 and X3v3.

Now I said these files were interesting didn't I... There are also download links for all the software and drivers for the new unreleased X5, a model called the X7v4 (probably the new X7 Pro-Sync with G-Sync) and one that's pretty strange the X7v3g (no idea what this one is, G-Sync version of normal X7v3?)

So I tried installing the different Nvidia drivers on my X7 Pro (X7v3) and they didn't do much (was hoping one would enable G-Sync for my X7v3 but none of the ones I tested did). I also installed the new versions of the Command & Control and MacroEngine. The Command & Control v1.8.8 is looks like the one on the X5 homepage and so does MacroEngine 2.0.4 ( http://www.aorus.com/x5.aspx). I didn't try out MacroEngine for long, but the new Command & Control doesn't work very well, switching between the fan profiles (Quiet, Normal, Gaming) did nothing and the Color Gerent also didn't work.

There are even bios file downloads for all the models! (I would really like it if someone with some technical knowledge can examine the X7v3g and X7v4 bios files, maybe we can get G-Sync on the X7v3?) Hopefully one of these files enables G-Sync for the X7 Pro (v3), I haven't flashed any of these bios files so I really don't know what's new/different. I also don't even know if you can flash the X7v3g bios on the X7v3? So if someone can analyse them and report back it would be very interesting. I'm not responsible for anyone breaking their laptop because of this haha, I really don't recommend anyone try flash any of these bios files. DON'T TOUCH THESE BIOS FILES IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING! (I myself have not touched them)

All the files seem to be organised my OS, this is what I think they are: x64wt (Windows 10), x64wb (Windows 8/8.1) and x64w7 (Windows 7).

So here are the links:
http://driverupdate.gigabytenb.com/record/X7.xml
http://driverupdate.gigabytenb.com/record/X5.xml
http://driverupdate.gigabytenb.com/record/X34.xml

Password for BIOS archive: gigabyte@gigabyte

Please report back if you find anything interesting

 

What exactly is your objective? Did you find these then want to let us rip into them and see if something good comes from it?

 

OP I'm sorry but we're not taking the risk for you if that's what you're getting at.

 

Just wanted to share with you guys, because some of the software isn't released yet so some of the Aorus owners might find that interesting. Was just hoping someone could check out the bios files to see if there's anything interesting (not flash, just decompile or whatever people do with bios files)

 

Fair enough... but don't expect TOO much out of it; Aorus doesn't make good laptops and I think most of the super technical people here wouldn't be using one (to have the interest to check)

 

I understand, but it's there now if anyone wants to check it out I noticed there are communities dedicated to modding bios and vbios files for their laptops, I couldn't find any for the Aorus laptops. If I had the knowledge to be able to mod bios and vbios files for the Aorus I would, but unfortunately I'm doing biochemistry haha.
What's wrong with Aorus?

 

They are an outcome of the hectic chase of thin & light gaming notebooks.
From my experience testing the Aorus X7 Pro there´s nothing directly wrong with it. The temps are borderline but below 90C. There are rare throttling but it´s not noticed in-game.

Spoiler: Jasper disapproves

 

Aorus are good quality builds. They just push the limits too much, like Razer. They run hot and loud all just so they can be under this holy grail of sub 1 inch thick for some reason.

 

Most what everyone else said already. They cram too much power in there and then can't cool it or run it well. In my eyes, that's garbage. Don't put parts in a car that lets it go 120 miles per hour but have it overheat and shutdown at 95 miles per hour. That's terrible, TERRIBLE design for me, and I'll never call it good. And Aorus have no way to counter my statement.

 

But, but but... it's 22mm thin!

Heck the Clevo P650SE with 970m and SG with 980m are about an inch thick, but they cool very well. Granted they're not trying to cool two 965m's

 

And they have two HDD + 2 M.2 slots, unlike Mister Razer Blade 1 x mSATA.

Anyway, I have (and I kid you not) seen people on other forums full-on adamant that the P650SE is too thick for them, and they want Razer Blade/GS70/Aorus type thickness.

I miss Luna and her I can lift >2lbs club.

 

Sigh.. Reasons some care about...

 

All I'm saying is it could be done better, much better. They sacrifice cooling and overall performance just to save a few mm thickness and/or a few oz weight, which really nobody would know the difference. If I gave you a Razer to look at and hold that is current spec 18mm and 4.2 lbs (FHD) and then came back a day later and handed you one that was 22mm and 4.5 lbs and told you it was the same laptop you probably wouldn't even notice. Most people wouldn't notice. Ultrabooks I get it. I have a Samsung ultrabook that's only 14mm thick and weighs under 3lbs. But it only has to cool a measly 15W CPU.

I used to be fascinated by these things. Until Razer would price gouge you for their 512GB SSD version and laughingly sell 128GB as the base version with no user storage upgrade options without sending it in to them to swap out the SSD. But whatever, I digress...

 

The Aorus laptops aren't too bad though. Sure they're loud, but I play games with headphones anyways. I haven't had any problems with throttling, the most likely thing to throttle is the CPU when it and the GPUs are under heavy load (which might happen but I haven't noticed anything).

Could've been solved by making it a bit thicker, but hey, it had the best specs for the price than any other gaming laptop in my country so I'm happy with it

 

Razer doesn't sell upgrades for the Blade's storage though. It's in their policy on their website, or it was earlier this year.

 

So when will your new laptop with more power than Aorus but still colder and quieter despite a portable formfactor and weight be available?

 

Any laptop with a 980m can easily compete with 965m SLI. Clevo P650SG comes to mind. Similar dimensions, 5mm thicker, 0.1lbs heavier, about $500 cheaper configured similarly.

 

Downloaded, but need password for the bios files though.

 

While that might be true, a more reasonable comparison would be with an Aorux X7 Pro which has 970M SLI which AFAIK beats the 980M in performance (providing the game has support for SLI that is).

 

Until they throttle, which as far as I know, they do. That kind of hardware, no matter how cool maxwell is, is not fit for that thin of a machine. It just isn't.
I rather something that works properly even if it's a little weaker. It's why I rarely recommend the 900M series as upgrades to alienware users because we can't get them to work properly.

 

Well, that is a problem shared by many other gaming laptops also, like the Clevo P650SG mentioned above if I remember correctly. Not sure how we ended up here though in a thread about GPU drivers

 

The P650SG does not throttle

 

The P650SA, P650SE and P650SG do *NOT* throttle like the Aorus/MSI GS series/Gigabyte/Razer/etc.

 

It's a matter of physics... not PhysX, but physics... thermodynamics...

 

Crap, they're password protected? I have no idea what the password is Maybe you can use the "Drivers Update" app to extract it, other than that I do not know, sorry

I've never had my GPUs throttle, under heavy load they get to 80-85 Celsius but never throttle. My CPU however, ehhh, most probably throttled at some point.

 

Each game uses things differently. Maybe you haven't run into it yet. There were quite a few people running into problems with GTA V the other day, even with 860Ms and 960Ms

 

Maybe it's hotter where they live? But I can honestly say that I've never seen my GPUs throttle.

 

What do you even have?

And yes, each living scenario is very different. In fact, it sometimes gets so hot in the daytime where I live that I see legit differences of 10-15 degrees celcius on my CPU/GPU in the same game at the same place if daytime is really hot and nighttime is pretty cool

 

X7 Pro (GTX 970m SLI). It's winter here, really cold where I am now dont know the exact temp, but I'm going home in the holidays where the temperature is usually in the -5 to 2 deg Celsius range in the morning and reaches a peak of about 12-15 deg Celsius. So really nice cold air for really really hot laptops haha

But I only tested if it throttled when I got the laptop in March, which isn't really mid-summer, but the GPUs didn't throttle then. I'll check if it throttles when it's summer

 

I've seen X7s throttling in BF4 and such games before. There was a user a couple months ago here who bought one and had it act terribly then returned it.

Also, of you're hitting 85c on 970Ms... most people can't make those cards crack 75... with a huge OC.

 

I never applied new thermal paste though, apparently the stock thermal paste is crappy.

 

I was also talking about stock paste for the most part on other people

 

Hmmm.. I can run GTA V benchmark at max setting quickly and we can get some results? What Temp mon utility must I use?

 

You can run GTA V for a while and check. The benchmark won't be on long enough to heat it up. Try ~10-15 minutes of gaming and see. You can use HWiNFO64 and use it in sensors-only, or you can set up Rivatuner statistics and MSI Afterburner's overlay.

 

Here are the results:

 

That's a pretty interesting core clock... But seems ok. Looks like you've got a cool enough machine, for whatever your settings were, or maybe your location. Good I guess. Your CPU however is another story. At least you didn't hit 90, but you throttled nearly down to base clock. Might be WHY you didn't hit 90. Since your CPU speed is high now and you don't appear to be in a game, I'm assuming you keep it max clocks all the time.

So... that machine, to me, would be a waste of money, just because the CPU did that.

 

GPU max core clock 540 MHz...?

 

What's interesting about the core clock? Doesn't it only start throttling at 90 deg celcius?

Here are the settings:

Is that normal?

 

You can't go by min value, that starts to measure before the game starts (unless he alt-tabbed and reset the numbers).
Best I find is to logg the numbers and disregard the first minute.

Edit: Double-ninjad... My remark above was about judging cpu-behavior based on min value in hwinfo, which starts to logg before the game starts.

GPU core for 970M is stock 924 MHz and boost 1038 MHz iirc. Your gpus aren't running full speed for some reason.

 

Think HWMonitor bugged out... I ran the benchmark and used GPU-Z:

Reached core clock of 1037.8MHz
Also uploaded the log file (results only for 1 GPU)

 

" Throttling
The throttling part is an interesting part. The P650SG starts throttling pretty quickly if you load the CPU and the GTX 980M GPU all together. It seems some automatic and not very smart algorithm as the CPU does not get hot or over the TDP limits, so I see really no reason to jump between the highest clocks at around 3.2GHZ and a much lower clocks of 1.0-1.1GHZ. It creates a jittery gameplay and that’s all. A smarter move would be to throttle the CPU according to TDP and temperatures as needed, in small steps."

http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/eurocom-m5-pro-clevo-p650sg-review-gtx-980m/

(I don't have one myself so I have to rely on external reviews)

 

eh, that is one unique experience that I have not heard before. As the dozens of users here at NBR who have a P650SE (970m) or P650SG (980m) and there are ZERO throttle issues. The CPU and GPU have independent heatsinks and fans, so one should not affect the other. Sounds like a faulty unit to me, or either the power profile was not set to high performance.

edit: oh, haha, I see Prime95 + Furmark = throttle. That's not fair. That will happen on any system. Furmark is a power virus and most systems will throttle at the sight of it.

 

Fair or not, a statement that the P650SG never throttles is obviously untrue. Probably as untrue as claiming the Aorus X7 Pro doesn't throttle.

 

Something like Prime95 + Heaven would be more fair / relatable to real-world usage?

 

Try using something that you'd actually DO! Like run a game benchmark, or video encoding... I doubt you'd be encoding a video, or doing intensive compute stuff at the same time you'd be playing a game. That's just suicide especially for the CPU's in these systems, heck even on a desktop system.

That's like trying to run a marathon while doing 100lbs curls.

It shouldn't need to be said under realistic usage conditions. Furmark will throttle ANY laptop, so it's not like it won't throttle if you run an app whose sole job is to throttle. I can game all day long and never throttle. I can encode a two hour 1080p blu-ray and it will never throttle. I can run a TS server, run MSI afterburner, and play games at the same time and not throttle. I can't run furmark alone and not throttle, let alone run furmark and use an intensive CPU app at the same time.

Run the in-game demo from Grid 2 at 720p for an hour, that will surely exercise your machine to the extreme. Those codemasters driving games are the best optimized games I have ever seen and they will max out your CPU and GPU if you don't limit the FPS.

 

Well, I can tell you for a fact that P95 will throttle all HQ CPUs on the planet because they become TDP locked to 47W and P95 can draw far more than that. So that's a moot point.
Next, there's only 8 relevant general models of notebook that can handle P95 + Furmark at the same time, and most of them are SLI models that can handle two 330W bricks, and the rest are single CPU, single GPU models that can handle 330W bricks.

As for real world usage, it doesn't happen for the P6xxSx models. Of course, all HQ chips will TDP throttle at 47W and if your game uses more than 47W you're pretty much screwed, but there's no HQ chip on the planet that can beat that 47W barrier wherever it shows up; we can only undervolt to try and get it to sit within its TDP limits, and then raising the current limit is something that needs to happen, and if that's blocked by your BIOS then you're in some problems haha.

Man, you have one hell of a GPU bottleneck going on there; that's basically max settings. I can't remember if lowering settings for high FPS helps though.

His CPU speed seems to be locked to 100%, and was so for his HWMonitor pic after closing the game. Due to that fact, I believe he was in fact throttling in-game, as if his CPU is not reducing itself from its max turbo normally, then it should not reduce itself in-game. But it was, all the way down to 2.8GHz. That's a hell of a throttle if I've ever seen one.

 

Why GPU bottleneck?

 

Your AA is turned up as are grass and most every other setting. GTA is pretty demanding (for reasons unknown) especially with its AA and grass.

 

I just turned the settings up for the benchmark haha, I play with the settings set a bit lower. Still got frame rates between 30-40fps with those settings.