The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
I was running out of memory with 16GB because of tabs, especially while researching or working. That's when I stepped up to 32GB and haven't had issues since (and they said 16GB is more than enough for web surfing! HA!!!)!
this is true... i had a blade pro and my brother has a blade. the blade is much better than the pro. However, i do believe neither has a shutdown temp and both suffer from heat stress. the blade pro having failed me too many times was replaced with a gt80. The razer support kept sending me doa replacements too (they even sent me 3 dead ones in a row once) which was a problem. My brother's blade 2014 suffers from battery issues due to heat, and has a touch screen glitch that causes it to randomly start infinitely tapping in one of the corners (bottom right i believe) until it is rebooted. Both the blade and blade pro seem to suffer from extreme driver issues among other things.
All this talk of 13-14" machines and you left me out of it...
InB4 nVidia makes everything with the 1050 Ti re-branded Maxwell because Pascal is just too damn hot. It's possible. Small machine lovers, brace yourselves.
I never said its fact. But he wouldn't just say it unless he works for aorus...but I don't think so. But I do find it bizarre that he did say 6 months. But ever manufacturer has their bad notebooks. And even if there's not many of you here that don't have this problem on here doesn't mean it's not talked about outside of here.
I have no facts. But I'm not the messenger you need to shoot down...
If they seriously rebrand Maxwell for the 1050/1050Ti, they can go f**k themselves. I pray to God that it will not be the case, at least for the 1050Ti. That seems to be the card I'm waiting on.
It's entirely possible.
@ZeneticX mentioned the 980M, but I think that's not so likely. nVidia might rather take the GM206 chip, overclock, bin, do some marketing BS and give us a glorified desktop GTX 960 chip in the 1050 Ti, while the 1060 jumps to within ~10% of the desktop GTX 980. nVidia
has screwed with its customers before, especially in the
proper mid-range.
No, no, no, NO. Please let it not be so. For the love of God, that could be the worst marketing decision in living memory. Imagine trying to stuff a 120W part into, say, an XPS 15. Or any good 14". It would be an instant meltdown.
Lenovo needs to make a gaming ThinkPad. With a Pascal 1050, 14" OLED and the superb input devices and (sometimes) thermals of the ThinkPad line, if they keep it light they'll have a winner on their hands.
See that's the thing. It very well may not be. But this is the entire point: Do not do it if you cannot do it. For example, controversial as it might be, axing the SATA port might have been an excellent idea. M.2 only, offer heatsinks, save space, relocate the wifi. Possibly put the PCH and wifi cards on the opposite side of the motherboard, under the keyboard. It would be far less in danger there. Maybe relocate the HDMI port to the back instead of being next to that vent. There are things they could have done, but what you're witnessing here is pure physics. The smaller form factor a laptop goes, the more you have to sacrifice. There simply is not enough SPACE. They opted for a HUGE battery and a SATA slot, and other components suffered heavily as a result. A 6-cell battery and/or axing the SATA slot would have done wonders for breathing room, but then it would have been less desirable in other manners. This is the battle of the thin laptops, and why thin laptops are not meant to be higher end gaming machines. I've been saying it since the day Maxwell came out: its unnatural coolness has allowed ODMs to get away with bad cooling that would not have worked on any past laptop mobile GPUs. I did not expect Pascal to be THIS hot, however its excess heat proves that ODMs went entirely in the wrong direction, and now they're paying for it. They are physically incapable of offering pascal variants of what they had with maxwell cards... it simply does not work, because too much space is needed for cooling. And unknowing customers are hyping it up and wishing to buy them and nobody reviewing the machines is actually doing enough of a bang-up job. Nobody is talking about throttling, though they're quick to point out that temps "aren't hitting 90c+" on these models, and spinning it as a good thing.
Yes, measuring the components during load tests would make sense, but it would be difficult. You would need to set up the laptop in an unreasonable format, as long gaming sessions are what count. Most people do not sit down for a gaming session, spend half an hour, then go and do something else. You'd need to be checking those components over 2 hours to 4 hours of extended gaming sessions in things like Overwatch or rpg-type games like Deus Ex or Fallout 4 or Skyrim or Dragon Age Inquisition. Temperatures generally continue climbing over a 20-30 minute period in those kinds of games where they kind of sit and plateau where the area around the laptop has hit a certain temperature level. There is no getting around that point, and the effect is MUCH reduced if you say... game with the backplate off, especially in such a position where the underside of the laptop has more direct access to air and not a near contact point (like a table) where heat can gather. The only way I can think of doing it, would be to un-screw but say... tape the back cover on... game normally for about 3 hours, then in the middle of the game, have one person grab the thermal radar gun thing, have a second person lift the laptop into a position where the underside can be visible, and then have said person remove the back cover quickly, while a third person continues playing the game (a controller would help immensely for this) and as soon as the back cover is removed, the thermal gun can read the wifi card temperature, and the PCH can be read in windows. The HDMI port can be read too. But that's really the only method I could conceive of that would make any sort of sense to get an actual proper reading.
Pascal GPUs actually from what I know draw less than their maxwell counterparts on mobile. The 1080 and 980 are a bit of different stories though. However, they DO run much hotter; it's not even a contest. It is indeed a confusing mix for some. Too many people believe Pascal is not hot at all, and are in for rude awakenings. NBR in general understands, but say on LTT almost every day in 5-6 threads there's people wanting GS43VRs and Razer Blade 2016s and thin ASUS models and being shot down constantly. The public ignorance is actually astounding, and as I keep saying, these "large tech websites" "reviewing" the machines are NOT helping one bit. But you know that's what we're here for, to clear the air.
YES. This is a huge problem. Benchmarks are short and often have breaks inbetween and are NOT indicative of long gameplay time as I said above in longer detail.
I'm all for waiting, but we need somebody worth their salt giving proper reviews. That's the real issue. I mean, you give me the equipment and maybe 1.5 helpers and I'll scrutinize that thing until the cows come home, but then no company would ever send me another laptop to review after my first one xD. As far as the first waves of laptops go, however, Clevo is the only one who has been noted to hold their performance properly under load. And since Sager pulled the N155RF1 models from sale, I no longer have an entry-level gaming laptop in the $900 to $1200 range to give people either. It's sad.
As for waiting for long-term tests to happen, this is too late. This happens by the time thousands have purchased the machines, and likely don't even know what has happened. This is why thorough testing should be done. People don't generally do these tests on desktops because desktops simply aren't designed like such garbage with their parts. The minute a video card is somewhat hot, the minute a fan profile doesn't work, etc? People jump on it instantly. Laptops need similar scrutiny.
Depends on the "slight". If the 1070 is throttling to 1300MHz (down from its ~1415MHz base clock) and the 1060 is boosting to around 1750MHz, the performance might be rather similar. If there is OC headroom on the 1060 too, then the 1060 could beat it.
As for the Blade and Aorus, the Aorus in benchmarks works better. The Aorus under longer gaming sessions does NOT work that much better. I've seen more than a few Aorus users tell me their machine performs fine, and when I ask for performance metrics, they're being heavily throttled and don't even realize it. Especially in the SLI Aorus models. BUT I will give Aorus one thing. The Aorus X5S V5 is the only hyperthin laptop I've seen with relatively good cooling. I've seen more than one review of it and the 980M does not overheat at stock with the stock vBIOS, and neither does the CPU. Granted, it's well over $2000 for it, and a P650RG could be decked out better for less, but it still is a "functioning" machine. Overclocking, obviously, is nonexistent on it, but stock is fine and since overclocking is not a guarantee (despite how much we all love it) I can't give a machine a fail for performing properly at stock. It remains to be seen if they could get a 1060 into a similar chassis and keep it cool and non-throttling, though. *IF* they do, then it will likely be the only superthin notebook on the market that houses Pascal without issue. But I'm skeptical, considering that 1060s are much hotter than 980Ms.
See the thing about me is that I only really care about how a laptop games when I consider recommending it to someone. If someone wants a laptop to overclock, or to benchmark, you shove them at the desktop-CPU-using Clevo models and point them to either a Prema Partner shop or to Prema's donate box for a Prema mod. There's no contest, the 6820HKs can't compete, and the cooling cannot compete in the mobile models. But when people are looking to spend around $1300 to $2000, only care about gaming, and possibly will never overclock anything (at least not much), then choice becomes much harder. I've given people the go-ahead over Clevos in the past because they found say a $1500 MSI GT72 with a 970M, and there is no way the P650RE3/P670RE3 models could have competed. But now, everybody's got problems it seems.
Also, I don't know what notebookcheck is doing. Every. Single. Clevo. I have ever seen them review. They've had problems with the temperatures. Then users here get them and suddenly no temperature issues. I don't get it. I will never get it. It's like they somehow lock the fans to 60% and game and throttle and then report throttling. Or maybe they get supremely awful paste jobs. I've even seen them review the SAME machine, one from XMG and one from another reseller where it was a K-ON3 or something, and the K-ON3 had better temperatures and battery life than the XMG variant, or something. Nobody I've ever seen review a Clevo outside of this and T|I forums and one anandtech review of the P750ZM ever touched max fans. So I really don't know. I know a user over at LTT that works in a PC repair shop said he's seen ASUS, MSI and Clevo models and the only one that handles their temperatures are the Clevos. So I rather take that over NBC with their amazingly bad track record of Clevo reviews.
Erm, the 965M is already a GM206 cut down GTX 960. They could simply clock it up a bit and hit it with a rebrand. They use crap parts for mobile but if they're not making the desktop cards anymore there's no excuse to not give us some good cores. It would be a good way to save on the "expensive" pascal chips though, while giving low end something decently strong compared to a 960M to play around with. However of course the power draw will never hit 960M levels, so... that'll be interesting. Maybe they'll shove a 950 mobile version as the 1040 too, and have that replace the 960M, and have the 1050's 960-ish-card replace the 965M. It'd be a large gap in power if they bump clocks by a solid 200MHz and set memory clocks to 7000MHz instead of 5000MHz since the 965M is currently very downclocked.
Thanks
@D2 Ultima for the detailed thermal explanation. Very useful. And if nVidia handle the mid-range correctly, they could extend their dominance even further.
I swear, the more I look at these things is the more I understand it. It's all logic, really, but I think most people don't realize the logic exists, and just gloss over it with "I don't know". It's actually quite fascinating what I realize I know just by thinking back on everything I've seen and experienced. Man, life is such an interesting thing. I'm so bloody sleepy.
I hope that Gigabyte offers the Aero 14 v2 with two graphics options (1060/1050Ti), like they offered the 970M/965M in the Maxwell model. That way smart people can get the version that does not overheat.
Here's another question - will Volta be to Pascal what Maxwell was to Kepler?
And to think I took you wrongly when you said the 1060 wouldn't overheat. :/ Sorry 'bout that - was just too salty that Clevo didn't update their P640.
Sighs. I hope nVidia reps don't read this thread and get ideas - 'hey, remember that GP107 that performs like a GTX 980M but has the TDP of a 960M? Let's save that for next year, 'cause there's a really good idea here on this forum: let's just use the GM206 and re-brand it!'
If I down scale to 1080p on a 4k screen with a gtx 1060, will I still cause the gpu to cook and the fans to scream when it's in a 13 or 14 inch form factor? Or will I still get thermal throttling?
The Aero 14 will never cool a 1060 with its size profile. A 1050Ti... may stretch it, depends on how much it's cut down. And it'd still need beefy cooling. I don't think that "smart people" should need to get the "version that doesn't overheat". I think that an overheating laptop should not be created or sold in the first place. I don't give a flying skedaddle how much $$ the OEMs lose in R&D when it was their fault in the first place that they made such badly-designed laptops with regard to cooling, only to capitalize on a single GPU generation that "happened" to be ridiculously cool and sip power for the grunt it could do. Why offer a 1060 at all? Clevo isn't pushing a 1060 in the P640Rx anytime soon. Why does Gigabyte have to? Why does MSI have to? Why don't they just pony up and say "hey we can't get this cooled in such a small form factor, so we're keeping slightly upgraded designs and 970Ms" (assuming they can)? Or simply say it's not possible to run such thin machines anymore. It's only in late Kepler generation that such hyperthin machines even had the thought of happening, and Maxwell just fueled it. And every Kepler model overheated like a bastard, except HFM's Razer Blade with the 870M apparently. I'm certain he has the holy grail of Razer notebooks.
I expect Volta will be to Pascal what Kepler was to Fermi. Maybe not as sharp a power increase, but since Pascal is simply Maxwell on a smaller die clocked higher with more cores crammed in, and obtains absolutely NO BENEFIT from a "new architecture" whatsoever (in fact it's worse than Maxwell is, clock for clock & core for core... if you locked a 1060 and a 970M to the same frequency, the 970M will perform slightly better as they have the same basic specs of 1280 cores & 192-bit memory bus) and only really benefits from power consumption saved in the die shrink alone, and extra tech crammed in for VR? Volta, which should be an entirely new architecture, and on then-mature 16nm process too, I fully expect to eviscerate Pascal and run significantly cooler while it's at it. I expect around Kepler's level of heat, which is honestly manage-able. But we won't know until some leaks come about about the performance. It's easy to extrapolate things once you get a basic block of information.
Yeah. I understand how you felt, but I was warning people that Maxwell ultrathin high performance notebooks were an abnormality for ages. We'll see what Clevo does with their P640. If they shove a 1060 in it and it doesn't work, I'll be extremely disappointed in them.
LOL.
Considering that the Blade video I posted was at 1080p and thermally throttling like if a Charizard was using constant flamethrower on the thing, I'm pretty sure that other 13" and 14" machines are either going to heavily thermal throttle just as bad or worse for 13" models. Unless they're extremely thick and have proper fan-sitting-on-beefy-heatsink designs, and such.
I really enjoyed reading your post, thanks! I too don't know why the Clevos do so badly on notebookcheck, maybe XMG does something non-standard on them?
It will be very interesting indeed to see how the Alienware 13 with its supposed overclocking fares against equivalent weight machines with 1070s. I think it would be a minor miracle if it caught up to the 1070s, but I wish them the best
I am actually considering the new Aorus X5 v6 so I got really excited about it reading your post, since if even you think it does the best job of the hyperthins then that's probably a good bet for me. Until, of course, I saw you say 1060 - the new X5 v6 has the 1070. Is that what you meant by any chance? You said the 1060 is much hotter than the 980M, but from everything I have seen so far the talk of the Pascals being hotter than the Maxwells was in terms of the direct replacements, i.e. 1060 hotter than 970M, 1070 hotter than 980M, not that the 1060 is even hotter than the 980M, the latter seems like a stretch.
I too only care about gaming performance. I don't really care if that is achieved by an overclocked something, throttling something, or whatever else, what's important to me is gaming performance per weight (and dollar, but less so). For me, I don't like the idea of throttling not because of throttling itself, but because that generally comes with crazy noise levels and/or reliability/longevity concerns.
Clevos temp issues are result of silence optimized fan curves... Cpu fan for me barely ever spins nor do gpu until gaming sessions strike but they still remain well within reason even so. XMG review should be ignored when it comes to temps because they didnt use the proper ec.
Clevos gone to interesting lengths to improve cooling over last year and i wonder.. Anyone with P65/7XX with 970m or 980m know if their fan shrouds were also copper? Curiosity killed the cat but...have to know
Well people compare them because they're direct relations.
But let's put it this way. The 980M in the P650RG and P670RG used the same cooling system that the 1060 does, and the 1060 runs hotter than it did... yes? Okay. The 1070 in the P650RS and P670RS have an extra heatpipe on the GPU heatsink offloading cooling to the CPU heatsink.
Here:
See it?
If the 1070 needs that extra cooling to stay ok, and the 980M easily ran overclocked in the 70c range without that extra heatpipe, then... what does that say about it?
As I said, it's all about looking at what's here. You don't need to "get" a system per-se... look at the data relating to it too, and you'll find it tells things about the card.
Dell has a countdown timer that ends on 7th September. New XPS 15 with 1050/1050Ti, maybe? One can only hope that if they do it, they get the cooling right.
However, maybe no new XPS 15 and no new GPUs. More likely an XPS 13 refresh.
That is indeed what I said. The 1070 has the extra heatpipe. The 1060 (P65x/P67x RP6) model does not; it's basically the same model as the RG. Using this as an extrapolation, it's deduced that singe the 1060 is hotter than the 980M (as the cooling system is identical) and the 1070 requires moar cooling, we can see where the heat profiles are.
I can't tell. It has a 128-bit memory bus and 4GB of vRAM which means it's going to be an entry-level gaming card (since GP106 doesn't automatically use the unbalanced 128-bit memory bus anymore that GM206 did), but the number of cores aren't there. If it's only aiming for a 970M, I.E. a 960, then it might be a pascal variant of a GTX 950 clocked up. If this is the case, a 768 core card drawing very little power, then it might only be a bit hotter than a 970M. Now, granted, this means it CANNOT replace 960Ms... the machines housing 960Ms cannot be expected to house 970M levels of heat.
What it DOES mean is that 14"ers like the P640RF would be able to house it without much difficulty. But anything that had a 970M near the thermal throttle point (like the P34x, and maybe the Aero 14; I have not been able to find a review or even a shot of the internals of that elusive thing) will not do very well.
This is, however, PURELY on speculation about basically no information. I need to see actual specs or something first.
I have roughly 0 knowledge about Clevos, so I don't know what chips or what cooling the P650RG/P670RG had, what temps they ran at, and how the 1060 fares in them now - do you have links to reviews or similar to back up your assertions? An admittedly brief stab at Google did not give me anything concrete.
I wouldn't doubt you if there was no reason to, but all I know so far suggests that what you say is very unlikely:
- If you look at wccftech for example, they say the 980M had a TDP of 125W, while the TDP of 1060 is "~80W". I could understand arguments from the Pascal is hot crowd that the same TDP runs hotter because of the nature of the chip and because there is a smaller surface area, but even if they are wrong and the 1060 is 100W, the 980M had a 25% higher TDP...
- If the 1060 really is hotter than the 980M, then we would see manufacturers replacing the 980M with 1060s (and perhaps adding cooling if being prudent). Instead, every single model that I know of (barring Clevos - don't know em, won't say anything) has the 1060 replacing a 970M and the 1070 replacing a 980M:
- MSI GS40/43, 60/63 (cooling improved though)
- ASUS GL502VT to VM 970M to 1060, VY to VS 980M to 1070
- Gigabyte P552 v5 to v6 970M to 1060, P35X v5 to v6 980M to 1070
- Aorus X3 v5 to v6 970M to 1060, X5 v5 to v6 980M to 1070
- Blade 970M to 1060
I selected specific models to illustrate my point, but this 970M -> 1060 and 980M -> 1070 is true throughout their product lines. Are you really telling me that the thousands of people working at all of these firms are complete idiots? I have a hard time with that.
I could have absolutely sworn that was for the RS only. Unless they use it on the 6820HK RP6 machines? This is very weird.
@Meaker@Sager can you confirm? Is this the RP6 model's basic heatsink, even with the 6700HQ?
Well I get you want more power but since thin/light is what you're after, you might just have to grab what you get. Pascal is very bad for notebooks in general.
Gotta join this convo now, can't stalk any longer. What is everyone saying, Pascal is a pass? I need a gaming notebook, don't tell me I'm waiting another year?
I have the 6700HQ RP6 (Thats my chassis pic) so should be case unless I somehow got wrong heatsink which is doubtful~ Im guessing thats what caused the confusion it is probably because P650 and P670 cooling setup differs in that one part
15.6 rp6 - no change from RG 15.6/17.3 RS + RP6 - New heatsink we are seeing.
I was actually surprised though, the Acer Predator 17 seemed to handle cooling well for the 980m. But the first review of the new model does not look promising. That was one of the chunkier laptops out there so it's making me think twice. I thought I could let the Predator or similar sit out on the market for a few months until price drops, or maybe get refurb. Because money is money don't judge.
Now I'm thinking they all (MSI, Clevo, Asus, etc.) might have heating issues in the long run based on some of what I'm reading in this convoluted thread. I usually buy and then keep for 3-4 years so I can't have a 15 or 17 incher going through the fire and the flames and dying in 2 years.
So is it too early to tell who is doing the best job of making solid cooling for these hot hot hot cards? Where is Lenovo? I have not heard a peep from them, they seemed to have some decent mid-range offerings for Maxwell cards. Not that I want another Lenovo, but sales and discounts seem generally to apply most to the non-Clevo brands.
Aslong as you are not buying an ultra-slim you will be fine. Clevos cooling is totally fine... I havent broken 70c nearly ever, with repaste its been even lower. Then again this is on a 1060 so a 1070 on same heatsink will be warmer to a degree. Clevo will be the easiest to open and clean fully throughout the years along with parts too. Havent touched on other brands this gen so cant really comment on them.
It may seem hot but it is far from Razer blades 140f lap-burner of a unit and has been comfy so far.
The clevo p650rp6 has normal heatsink setup, the p650rs has extra heat pipe, the p670rp6 and p670rs both have the extra heat pipe. Cooling on all of the above models has shown to be about 72c under full load for the 1060 and about 77c under full load on the 1070. I7-6700hq seems to sit around 80c at max load. Though keep in mind that obsidianpc noted that on the models with the extra heat pipe it took longer to hit that temp. The 6700hq can also be undervolted about 150-200mv to help a good deal with temps. Chassis temps are reportedly very good too. There's no way I'd buy a laptop without Pascal atm.
P6xxRG used 980Ms. The G was for 980M, the E was for 970M, and the A was for 965M (which quickly got discontinued because they were not much cheaper but performed much worse and nobody bought them).
The 1060 is a replacement for the 970M. Both have similar TGP (the power the card is meant to draw, it's similar to what we use the term TDP for).
The 1070 is a replacement for the 980M. Both again have similar TGP.
The 1080 is a replacement for the mobile 980. Just like the 980, it has many variants with many TDP targets, but in general, its TGP is less than the 980.
There is no replacement for the 965M, 960M, 950M, 940MX, 940M, etc as of yet. This is from nVidia themselves, though I can't currently find the source... too much muck when I google.
Ignore ANYTHING that wccftech says. Anything. They know so little about laptops they once posted a picture of a 180W mobile GTX 980 and a 200W mobile GTX 980 and said "980M vs 980". They just grab anything they see on the net, toss it in articles as fast as possible, and make $$ from the ads. They're bottom barrel for reputation unless they have an actual direct source link.
As for what you're thinking about with the "why not use 1060 to replace 980M"? It's price and power draw. The 1060 is priced like a 970M. It's replacing the 970M. There is nothing to replace the current 970M, and OEMs/ODMs are still fighting down their ability to make thin and light gaming machines. They're hoping consumers don't notice the throttling and other issues, and they're saying it's fine for notebooks to operate at thermal throttle threshold too. I've had multiple GS series MSI owners contact support and ask about it to be told it's fine/normal. The only time they'll say something's wrong with a CPU as well is if you throttle below base clocks. Notice how mobile CPUs have an extremely high turbo? Yup. My 4800MQ is 2.7GHz at base and sits at 3.5GHz under 4-core load. If I had a thermal throttle issue, I would need to throttle all the way down to 2.6GHz or less before it'd be considered a "problem". Generally, laptop users get screwed over pretty bad. I can understand your skepticism as to what I'm saying because to you, this probably sounds like absolute lunacy... but it's the truth.
It's not that "thousands of people working at all of these firms are complete idiots". It's that "thousands of people are willing to screw us out of our dollars". OEMs, especially Razer, are extremely happy cutting out as much as possible while keeping the prices high. They make things that barely work, and they are defended by a literal cult of followers. ASUS is another OEM/ODM that is extremely anti-consumer. They want things their way, and their way alone, and if you don't like it, well that's your problem. Now, I praise Clevo here quite often, but this is because they take care of their bloody cooling on their gaming models. They have many shortcomings in other areas, but those are luckily mostly fixed by Prema with system BIOS mods. If you want to get into the gaming laptop scene, whether you want one or not, you need to swallow a rather tough pill: it's basically a fight to find good things these days, and these companies aren't our friends.
Honestly, I've not seen anybody but Clevo and MSI's GT73VR handle good pascal temperatures so far. The GS43VR is a disaster waiting to happen, Razer Blade 2016 sits at 93c playing overwatch at 1080p locked to 70fps, Gigabyte... I don't even KNOW what they're planning. I will only recommend a machine I judge to be good. That machine will never be a Razer machine, or an ASUS machine, unless they make complete 180s as companies. Gigabyte has (rarely) had my recommendation in the past. To my knowledge they don't know cooling very well. The P5x series is large, like the P7xxZM and P7xxDM models, yet cools infinitely worse. Repastes helped immensely without touching liquid metal, but they still weren't actually any kind of impressive. If they've cleaned up their act and focused on "cooling" before "thin", then we might have something, albeit most likely overpriced and only from their Aorus line.
MSI's GT72, GT73 and GT83 are the only models really worth considering for them with Pascal. Their GP models were never that bad really, but they weren't performance machines. They didn't have impeccable cooling either. Their GS series was never very good, however they were for quite some time the best I could tell anyone to get if they ABSOLUTELY desired a super thin laptop and the P6 series from Clevo was somehow too large. Aorus' X5S V5 broke that some time ago, though. But I suppose it doesn't help people who have under $2000 and wanted a 970M machine eh?
MSI hasn't even had a 15" performance machine for a good while as well. I don't know what to think of any existing 15" they're bringing in. They are the largest wait-and-see, however since they're generally rather overpriced since their GT72 apparently inflated their egos, I usually recommend the desktop CPU-using models from Clevo for similar prices and much better performance.
Clevo is cooling and ease of access to parts. Contrary to everyone's anger on this forum, Clevo has never been about "upgrade-ability" but rather "modularity". Their gaming lines will keep temperatures in line as long as you look after the laptop. That's basically all. On the downside, their stock firmware is garbage and their software is a pain at times. I recommend Prema mod or bust. Prema partner shops are not all that more expensive than non-partner shops (and can be cheaper than places like OriginPC), so I give those as recommendations all the time now. A prema modded clevo is generally the best of laptops one can buy. It's not that Clevo is "just that good" so to speak, it's just that in my eyes, everyone else isn't trying. Like ASUS having a 75W long power TDP lock across the board for their 6820HK models. I've even seen some models limit the max OC to 3.8GHz on 4 cores. I've seen multiple MSI models not even allow past the 45W long power max for their CPUs, SEVERELY limiting overclockability on even unlocked chips. A Prema modded clevo doesn't really give a crap how much power you draw as long as you keep it cool enough. Granted, I think the shared heatpipe with the CPU heatsink (rather than simply giving it its own fin or something) was a bad decision for the 6820HK chips in terms of potential overclockability (at least without as little voltage as possible AND liquid metal paste at the CPU's contact point to the heatsink), but there's nothing better with all mobile chips in that price range. If the GT72 didn't cost as much as a P7xxDMx model, it would get a lot more sales.
Anyway, I'm almost rambling now. Point is, get yourself a well-cooled, well-designed machine. Take care of it, and it will last you a very very long time. Simple. So far, for pascal, these models are:
GT73VR
GT72VR (potentially; not convinced yet)
P65xRx
P67xRx
P7xxDMx
P870DMx (potentially, not convinced yet).
Sounds promising. I'll be looking to snap up something with a 1070 between November-January, hopefully by then the market will be more crowded too. I know Dell/AW is adding their bling to the mix soon, still curious to see what HP and Lenovo might do.
Maybe prices will come down a bit across the board. Right now NVidia is monopolizing off our lack of supply and no competition. A fact I'm not too pleased with, but you couldn't pay me to play on an AMD card right now. Even if they could match NVidia for performance, their driver support has seen better days...
Anyone have any thoughts on the timing to buy for price/performance ratio nirvana?
The whole driver thing is overblown from long ago. Nvidia mucks up JUST as often and....their mobile GPU in apple systems are on par with mobile maxwells (which is probably why AW is using AMD for refresh too) I would honestly skip alienware though as without Clevo they wouldn't of become anything.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
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