Maxwell overclocking to depend on manufacturer

So we've all been following Nvidia's clockblocking shenanigans. The last update on the situation was that Nvidia had reportedly begun to ship cards with overclocking blocked at the vBios level. They're now saying that the implementation of the lock will be entirely up to the manufacturers, according to this Notebook Check article. A lot of you have commented there already, but I figured we should have a thread here as well.

I feel like many companies will want to implement the lock, but won't due to the backlash that would ensue *ahemAlienwareahem*. Then again if any OEM did do it, the others may follow suite.

UPDATE: The article has been edited. We will be getting the driver which will re-enable overclocking on March 16th. However, this will not re-enable overclocking on the laptops which have it blocked at the vBios level.

 

It is beyond me why Clevo would want to implement overclock-blocking.

Alienware I can understand being tied to good old Dell, but why Clevo, one of the most enthusiast manufacturers out there? Can anyone explain this to me please?

It seems that MSI and maybe Asus will be the ones to stick to for gaming laptops then. I am happy with my current MSI GT60 with a GTX 780m and I may stick with them if I want a gaming laptop in the future.

 

All brands are going down the drain. If Clevo cuts out overclocking with a locked down vbios thats the end of mobile gaming ad I see it.

Dell - soldered CPUs and GPUs. Overclocking block through BIOS.

Asus - Soldered CPUs, weird non upgradable GPUs.

MSI - Soldered CPUs, mix of MXM and soldered GPUs

Clevo - Mix of soldered and socket mobile CPUs and socket hot desktop CPUs, MXM modules with vbios blocking overclocking on the newest models.

With socketed mobile CPUs no longer produced and inventory running out eventually, there goes the need for mobile socket notebooks. Desktop socket CPUs will still run hotter and draw more power than socket mobile CPUs. So soldered CPUs will undoubtly be the future.

MXM GPUs seem to lose its grip on the industry and I think its only a matter of time til they are gone. Nvidias next architecture with stacked vram may need a new revised type of interface which may be OEMs golden opportunity to ditch MXM alltogether.

Not long now and the only change a guy can do is changing RAM and SSD.

 

I don't think replacable GPUs and CPUs are done for yet. MSI promised 2 generations of GPU upgrades for the GT80 and we now have laptops with desktop CPUs in them, courtesy of Clevo. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we got laptops with compatibility for desktop GPUs in the next 2-3 years. If laptop gaming truly dies though, I'm pretty sure we'll get more solutions like the ViDock.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong here, I LOVE laptop gaming and I'm absolutely appalled that this kind of stuff is happening. I was just suggesting what might occur if these OEMs really decide to screw us over.

 

Desktop CPUs isnt optimal. You got high TDP and high power consumption, leading to lower batterylife and a noisy cooling system. Plus OEMs will need to deal with those guys that upgraded to a 8 core 150W CPU and killed his PSU or some other component in his notebook because of it making warranty claims more difficult for Clevo. Its a brave move by Clevo but I highly doubt it will catch on for other OEMs.

Broadwell mobile processors are confirmed BGA only, which means from now on its soldered only. I bet Intel have already shut down production of socket haswell and MQ/XM processors will dissappear completely eventually.

MSI may have promised 2 generations of upgrade support, but ultimately they have no control over Nvidia anyway. 1 generation, sure, thats GTX 980MX and a full Maxwell GM204 core. But 1 step above that again, we have come to Volta with stacked VRAM and a different PCI communication between two GPUs in SLI to remove overhead and get close to 100% scaling, not the bad SLI scaling we have today. And that my friend, could mean the end of MXM.

 

The MSI GT60 series still has MXM GPUs and socketed CPUs. I hope they keep it as long as possible.

Its a shame that MSI went from socketed CPUs in the GT70 to soldered in the GT72 replacement.

So I fear the rumored GT62 will also go the socketed route.

 

Did you make this thread before or after NotebookCheck added update 2 to the article?

 

They probably didn't even test the vBIOS for that feature.

Alienware... I don't even want to imagine what's going through their minds. It's obvious they moved toward a more locked-down platform when clevo moved toward a more open one, but as to why? That's anyone's guess.

I don't care if MSI and ASUS are the *ONLY* brands making gaming laptops. I'm not getting an ASUS if my life depended on it. Their support is so bad they don't even know the screen they're selling in the G751JL notebook without a serial number. The notebook sells with ONE PANEL ONLY and they claim that it uses various panels even though the model number is the same.

As for MSI? Oh god, don't get me started. I detest the "our warranty is global... for 1 year only. Then you have to ship it back to where you bought it from, if it's not sold where you are" followed by the fact that even with their MQ chips they limit board power limits and their MQ chips are apparently the only ones in the world that act just like the HQ ones. Their GT72 limits 4710HQ chips to 47W flat out; it can't even go above 47W for even an instant. At least the GT80 gives it 2.5 minutes of unlocked slider time. They even set the power limits to "200W" in their BIOS by default. For any CPU. What the hell is that? Their GT70 sells with a 180W piece of crap power brick with 780Ms and 880Ms (back in the day at least) and your CPU is set to have a max draw of 200W? Are you absolutely kidding me? I'm not gonna lie their GT72 and GT80 are pretty bloody well made machines as far as cooling and storage slots go, but good lord, they suck at most everything else. By the time they got cooling truly in order we were on socketed chips with everybody grabbing a turd of a 4710HQ, which is further nerfed SPECIFICALLY by their motherboards.

I'm not going with either of them.

I've already talked to Eurocom and asked them to give some grunt where they can about returning to socketed chips, and they told me that the way Intel's mapped things out, it does not appear to have anything socketed for the next two cycles. Which means broadwell and skylake are probably going to have to run their courses first. And good lord, if broadwell is skipped, we'd have to wait for cannonlake's successor to come out for sockets, whenever the hell that could be.

The ViDock is a terrible solution that the wrong kinds of users are praising for its applications in THEIR life.

"I love the GS30, it's thin and light and I can plug it into an external monitor with a 980 in it when I get home! Yay!" defeats the purpose of a gaming laptop. Gaming laptops aren't for everyone. It's what it is. Some people like them. Some people have genuine uses for them. I would move my laptop around a whole lot more than I currently do in my own house if I didn't need to plug it into this bloody voltage regulator all the time, because haswell is the most finnicky thing on the planet and apparently the slightest of voltage fluctuations is enough to freak my PC the hell out and cause random shutdowns, even managing to leave "bad current" in my battery, so that EVEN ON BATTERY it will happen if I charge it from another socket here (another reason why I hate haswell; this didn't happen on my D900F and doesn't happen on any other PC or electrical device in the house). But it's useful when I go out to friends' houses. Or when I had university (which I should still be having, but I'm not going to get into that right now).

The Vidock doesn't help me or anyone else who wants to put their laptop in their bag and have power wherever they take it out. Which is the point of gaming laptops. Either CPU power on the go, or GPU power on the go, or both.

And finally, I agree with cloudfire here:

This is the trend. It's not going away anytime soon. Clevo fought the socketed, neutered chips with desktop ones. They likely didn't realize the vBIOS was clock blocked, though that's their fault for not testing it. But if they won't change their stance and clout nVidia around some... gaming on laptops will be dead. Look at the way screens are going! People are happy with 25ms response time IPS panels with 60% NTSC gamut for a 60Hz machine? That's BEGGING for input lag and ghosting! But "It's IPS I want!". So it'll sell for so many people. But the old 95% gamut, fantastic TN panels that were discontinued due to lack of sales a few years ago would never have gotten that treatment. While being a superior panel, it's not "IPS" that the consumers want.

And a whole lot of other crap. Laptop gaming went down the drain a year and a half ago, and we're just getting about 1/3 of the way down right now is all. It's going to get MUCH worse before (IF) it gets better.

I wrote a book. Read it.

 

The vBIOS-locked cards will likely stop shipping once the GPU driver update Nvidia has previously promised is released. Nvidia has also confirmed this on our request. It remains to be seen, however, whether this also applies to non-GTX graphics cards.

If they reverse everything, ...wow is there still going to be a lot of confusion.

Also, for MSI upgrade on GT72, it is supposed to be one new generation. I don't think that should mean anything less than Pascal. A Maxwell refresh isn't a new generation.

...although the GT80 is supposed to be supported for upgrade over two generations, so maybe that's an opening to a modded BIOS to support Pascal on the GT72.

...but seriously, the next generation is Pascal.

 

Thank you for the very well written post D2 Ultima. I feel sad because I'm just finally getting into laptop gaming with my very recent gaming laptop purchase. I've always been a desktop gamer my entire life and still have a desktop at home. But I've seen just now how convenient it is to occasionally play games at work (LOL!) and at my brother's new apartment on a laptop.

Just as I am newly getting interested in gaming laptops, they are getting more and more locked down and telling me to just go back to desktop gaming and stick to that. ;(
But the way its going, desktop gaming will be more locked down in the future as well.

Don't get me wrong, I love PC gaming period, whether it is on a laptop or a desktop. I get disheartened when I see desktop and notebook gamers fighting with each other. I feel the extreme frustration and anger from the gaming notebook enthusiast community and sympathize all the way. Fight the good fight!

 

New generation means new leading number, not necessarily new architecture. 880M was two generations newer than 680M. There were Maxwell cards in 800M.

 

Ive had it D2. Im moving to desktops, getting myself unlocked socketed Skylake most likely in July/August paired with GM200. And DDR4. And PCIe SSD. And a proper sound card. And to top it all a 1ms 144Hz G-sync 1440p IPS display. And it should cost me about $3000 maybe.

I cant find any notebook that cuts it for me anymore. From loud cooling, to soldered CPUs, to Alienware discontinued AW18, to nvflash without Mobile Maxwell support, to mobile overclocking disabled through vbios or drivers, to soldered GPUs, to expensive hardware, to DSR and G-sync not available on notebooks yet dedpite desktops had it for a long long while, to 120Hz displays gone, to no 3K/4K displays available on the real 17 and 18inch power horses capable of running on that resolution, to DDR4 not available, to CPUs becomibg hotter and hotter while notebook designs becoming thinner and thinner and many other things.

Mobile have gone down the drain and Im getting out

 

Keep your 18 as remembrance of a time gone by.

 

I understand this. Being someone who treasures battery life (and as a result low TDP), I was actually not all that excited for the P7x1ZM. I merely mentioned it as innovation in upgradability (for laptops).

I understand this as well (though I wouldn't call it *terrible*, implementation was quite poor). I also thought that the AW and MSI docks kind of defeated the purpose of owning a gaming laptop, especially since they're so overpriced. I merely said that we might get more solutions like the ViDock, I did not say that this would be good or bad. HOWEVER, if somehow some manufacturer can manage to emulate PCIe x16 or even x8 with something like this, I feel like it would appeal to many. A (relatively) small rectangular box I can carry in a small bag and a laptop to go with it? If laptop gaming does truly disappear down the drain, that would seem like a viable option for portable gaming.

 

I have most likely sold it already.
RIP Alienware and RIP Gaming notebooks.

I know many NBR members have or plan to go the same route as me, to Desktops

 

Meh. It's still not practical. Desktop chips draw a lot more power. The board can't supply enough, and even if they managed to use it as an Optimus/Enduro-type device on-the-go, an extra plug and a small MXM type slot is precious space on the already-superthin machines etc. Far less the fact that it's still more clunky to carry around.

 

Just send me the time and date of the sale.

The recipient may or may not find a lack of CPU and GPUs.

*VIBRATIONS*

 

COME. ON. AMD.

We literally need them to save CPUs and GPUs at the same time right now. But I fear that what we demand from them is too much.

 

And on the other side of the coin, mobile gaming is the best it's ever been from a different perspective... we've got ~4lbs machines less than 3/4" thick that play all the latest games at high or ultra. They don't overheat, have great build quality, and can be carried around very easily from place to place.

Laptop gaming is anything but dead, I argue it's thriving! I understand where you guys are coming from and the niche you enjoy in the laptop world, but it's not a one size fits all thing. Not trying to troll or ruffle feathers, simply stating a different opinion for those reading that don't know the whole picture.

Having said that, Maxwell cards overclock great even in slimmer machines, so absolutely I'm 100% against being arbitrarily locked out simply so Nvidia can sell the next rebadge card.

 

That is one perspective, indeed. But sacrificing modularity for thinness is a choice that should be left up to the user; instead it's all but forced onto us. The thin gaming notebook niche exists mainly for the non-enthusiast people. The only enthusiast I've seen who makes good use of the thinness is HTWingNut, for special circumstances with his kids and such. Most others rather a thicker machine that can be pushed farther. And the mistakes past appeared here too: Maxwell is so cool and power-frugal at stock that they could put much more powerful chips into notebooks (especially the thicker ones) and be fine power- and heat-wise. But 980Ms are the best we've got, and they exhibit a certain undesirable trait that the 680M had: the low voltage memory that cannot clock up so much. Also, it appears to be far easier to get a huge OC on the 970M than it is on the 980M; a full 100+MHz more than its big brother (even though effectively the 980M still kicks it to the curb). I feel as if the card is trying to be both limited and powerful/versatile at the same time.

We haven't seen a chip this cut down from the card it's based off of be called a flagship since the 480M (which was a failure).
280M was just slower in clocks than 9800GTX+, but heat was a concern.
480M was so cut down that the 470M cut down from a GTX 460 was better for it... they QUICKLY fixed that with the 485M, which was full GF104, and cut the 480M to the curb (GF100).
580M followed suit from 485M.
680M was 670 slightly neutered.
780M was purely a downclocked 680; which could be clocked up to meet the 680's power (never possible before on a mobile chip; flagship performance matching in mobile and desktop).
880M was even further along, despite being a failure.
980M is now weaker than even the 970, in every aspect except that all of its memory works at high speed. Then suddenly they block OCing on their coolest, least power hungry, most widely useful chip in history for the mobile market. Nope, no like. Probably did that to hide 980M defects, or to make people want to buy the next chips (which are integrated anyway in all these "new gaming laptops" from Lenovo/Razer/etc, which people are praising for being "so powerful" when the praise has nothing to do with those OEMs, but rather with the fact that Maxwell uses so little to deliver so much that it's a waste NOT to use it in such form factors.

Either way, the enthusiast market is the main thing that's dead. But the downside of iCPUs and terrible LCD panels? That affects everyone, even if people don't care about it. It's the sales that matter. You think if the 120Hz or 95% panels constantly sold out everywhere or people stopped trying to buy the equivalent of a $500 combination of desktop parts + a GTX 970 for about $900 and spent some REAL money on pretty decent, long-lasting machines (like what people expect out of desktops) that we'd be in this state? I doubt it. Or if they stopped overcharging us for stuff. That'd be the day too.

Blah. All I'm saying is, the lack of choice, especially when replacing that choice with lower-end parts (not higher end ones) is terrible. For all users. If you raise the standard of parts in an industry, only good can come from that. 72% gamut screens minimum for 15"? 90 and 95% gamut screens available on 17", with 72% minimum gamut? That's good improvements. Nobody is gonna mourn the loss of the Y50's 45% gamut screen. NOBODY. Same with the HQ chips. What clevo's done here? A thinner, integrated machine for those who want it, and unlocked, socketed machines for those who want that? That's great too. That's CHOICE. Good choice, I might add. HQ stuff has less height, so keep length and breadth and minimize height and integrate the GPU while you're at it and you end up with a powerful, well-built, cool system. MQ need more height, so add thickness and let things run free. But the HQ chips being TDP locked and the MQ chips not being as such are bad if you don't sell MQ. Nobody should be buying a 1" thick notebook to powerhouse-render anyway, you know? But there's no choice now.

Blah. I need sleep. I'm gonna stop before I type more books.

I just feel that we might be following a trend where the flagship models of CPUs and GPUs are designed for thin form factors, and thin form factors don't get scaled down, midrange GPUs and let the "big daddy" notebooks do the proper cooling and power feeding.

 

The P770ZM is by far the best gaming/workstation laptop for me to date. In 2-3 years I hope Clevo will have another 17" with desktop CPU. I don't care about mobile CPU if a laptop can handle a desktop CPU. As for GPU just have to wait and see if MXM remains or evolves. I am not worried as AMD's crud APU will ensure games will be playable on high settings on 980m for many years.

 

I agree with you that people who wants thin notebooks got what they wanted with the energy efficient Maxwell and the way the mobile industry is heading.
But for those who want SLI notebooks, overclocking and Extreme CPUs, socket CPUs, thick notebooks are the only type that cuts it

 

Look at this build, only $3k and spanks any notebook out there
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/4W2W7P

 

Of course, but it will just never have the portability, flexibility and convenience a laptop will get you, even from the largest 18.4" behemoths. Again, its all about your lifestyle and what fits you the best.

 

Wow, really? 970 SLI? After everything that's happened?

Not to mention only an i5 in a $3K build...

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dpZ9P6

With PCIe SSD, Asus 1440p 144Hz G-sync display, 970 SLI, i7 4790k, 2600 DDR3 RAM, Mechanical keyboard, silent PSU etc

 

Mr. Fox's P570WM is still faster

 

Sadly enough, not if you OC the 970s a lot. Memory bug or no, their core computing is still very fast and unlike the 980Ms (and 970Ms ironically) they can overclock that like crazy.

 

The 970 have 1SMX more than 980M.
You have a 1000x better display than the Clevo

GTX 980SLI would be better but thats another $500 and a bigger PSU
GTX 990 would be awesome too. Wonder if Nvidia will come out with a dual GPU. GTX 690 was released pretty quick I think when Kepler was the thing

 

Spoiler

4930K > Devil's Canyon

Also I missed the part where you couldn't connect a G-Sync monitor to a laptop

 

Yep, one buy a notebook to game on an external display. Im not even gonna list up all the reasons why a desktop would do that much better.

 

Most people have 2nd or 3rd monitors anyway for work. Why not make one of them a G-Sync. That way when you're at home you can game plugged into all that goodness. And then when you're on the go you still have your laptop. Killing two birds with one stone.

 

970-th at SLI? It is 3.5GB of 224 bit memory (yet with zipping algorithms)... My opinion if you need one, I would say it is reasonable for regular 144Hz monitor but for G-sync one you will be fine even with 100 fps (for 100 tick servers) which means that on vRAM demanding games you will either stay on settings which let you be below 3.5GB and have free horse power (spent on additional 30fps above what you need) or choose highest settings and get some stuttering after >3.5GB.
On the other hand it's truly not a big choice - 980 is more expensive.

I would wait to see what AMD gives and you still get Gsync alternative.

Now I'm coming back intopic. Notebook gaming market killed itself. Overpriced notebooks brought overpriced hardware for those (not just notebook vendors to get all creams) which brought us to a bigger price increase for a better notebooks.
Just look at GT72. It's what people asked for! Yet not for that price! We expected to get it for the same price GT70 was and not 500$+ more for new chassis and modifications which evolutionised for all that time (3 years) when MSI didn't provide any of them... Oh yeah, they provided coolerboost 2.0 by a bridge between CPU and GPU which still comes to 1 radiator... Pathetic.

 

I respectfully disagree. It exists for people who want what the term 'laptop' promises-portability. Try as I might, I simply could not whip around a P771ZM as easily as I can my GE40. And true, the 760M is no beast, but now we have notebooks with the 970M and 980M. Does my need for versatility and portability make me any less of an enthusiast? I still overclock, I still mod my games heavily, I'm still well versed in hardware (at least, compared to the average Joe), and I still keep up to date with al things tech and gaming related.

Nice build. But you do know that peopl have managed to overclock 980M SLI setups to stock GTX 970 SLI levels of performance, right? Granted, you'd probably outclass them if you OC, but it wouldn't exactly be a spanking (add that to the fact that 980M SLI users get 8 GB of VRAM). Any reason you didn't go with 290X crossfire?

 

Plus 980M gets 64 instead of 56 ROPs, 2MB instead of 1.75MB L2 cache, and no sudden performance dropoff when more than 3.5GB VRAM is used.

Oh you don't know Cloud. He and AMD simply don't mix. Even if the 290 and 290X are insanely cheap right now (and faster at 2.5K & 4K).

 

This point here. Why isn't the "980M" the "965M" and the 970M the "960M". Why isn't something closer to the 980 the "980M"? If Maxwell is so power sipping instead of power drinking and throws almost no heat out, what exactly is the reason that our flagship is something we can put in a 1" thick notebook without overheating issues? Why not shove more power into it?

The WHOLE notebook line would be better as a result, people would be more inclined to get laptops because of the power difference in the ones that are a bit thicker, and most importantly, the prices on the cards would be much more justified.

 

It's because I don't think Maxwell is as power efficient at the high-end as Nvidia would have you believe based on its published TDP. I don't know how many system power consumption measurements I've seen where GM204 was barely any better than GK110. I might've even seen a few where it actually used more power when both were overclocked.

Remember this? (GTX 980 165W TDP, R9 290X 290W TDP)



Yeah

 

Well then. Meow.

 

Next time some idiot comes in screaming 'OMG power needed for amd is like destroying 50 trees a day!', I have this graph. Thanks octiceps.

 

I like "can sustain a village in Africa for a month" more

 

It does drain power a lot. It's just Nvidia used "proper gaming situation" to achieve that TDP. AMD R290X can take over 300W max solely for GPU while Nvidia's 980 Oced may take up to 270W or so. But we are talking about spikes per ms because if you ask for average power consumption it will be way less.

Spoiler

 

Would you say that this should cause one to reconsider their OC when running DX12?

 

I'll happily bench against that desktop rig would be fun.

Star swarm is software limited, so releasing the software bottleneck allows the GPU to churn out more frames, more frames means more power draw is all.

It's a worse case scenario where the initial power draw is artificially low.

 

All my OC's are tested in worst possible case scenario, so it hardly matters to me. I doubt DX12 is as stressful as 24 hours of FurMark/Heaven/Valley + Prime95 or OCCT Power Supply Test.

The point of the graph was just to show that Maxwell doesn't always sip power.

The reason system power consumption is higher under DX12 and Mantle is that the CPU bottleneck is removed, allowing full GPU utilization which naturally results in higher power draw due to the GPU working harder. DX12 in and of itself isn't some abnormal power hog.

Now if it were an actual game, not a tech demo/stress test like Star Swarm, that ran at 99% GPU usage under both DX11 and DX12, then power draw between the two APIs would be similar. Unless CPU usage was lower under DX12, in which case the system would use less power.

 

I have done just that Cloudfire. This last go around with the blocking of overclocking on notebooks was it for me. The end of MXM possibly around the corner, and now BGA for CPU/GPU in most cases has me packing it up and heading back to desktop land. I don't at all desire for laptops to continue to get smaller if it comes at the expense of performance or lack of tweaking options.

Order a new X99 build and put it together a couple nights ago. First desktop in 6 years, and its been awesome to say the least. The options and tweaking availability is overwhelming but fun.

 

yup, once i get a legit job and move to a city with google fiber, im going all out on a desktop and getting a mediocre gaming laptop for traveling

 

Notebook Check has just updated their article. So apparently we're getting that driver Nvidia's promised us on the 16th. Is Clevo still shipping the laptops with the locked vBios?

I'll update the first post with this as well.

 

This is as far as I've gotten with my 970 SLI setup, OC was 1610/8000 IIRC, and both cards under water no less. http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4105849



I'm almost certain if I could send more volts through these cards I'd be able to break 20K Firestrike, but apparently I can't go over 1.275V even with a bios mod, so that's about the end of the road for me. Could also install Win8.1 I guess.

And on that note, I think Mr. Fox's 980M SLI machine posted somewhere around 17500 Firestrike, so yeah 970 SLI really is a sidegrade at best to 980M SLI. One could even argue it's a downgrade in some ways.

 

It's actually more of a sidegrade when you see johnksss' best firestrike: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3512521
Your CPU was clocked higher and so was your memory, but the 980Ms came through.

I wouldn't think of running something so high 24/7, but I think it's funny that they're pretty much competing with some of the best 970 SLI has to offer.

And considering the slightly less GPU clock performance but MUCH higher memory size, I'd take the 980M-esque cards any day.

 

Wait, how is johnksss using a 4930K with GTX 980M SLI?