The hopeful of keeping MXM 3.0b alive thread!

Hell yes - too bad there's strict limits on throwing around reputation points, otherwise I'd have gone all out by now.
Here's to hope that prema can pull it off once more!

Too bad he doesn't make firmware and vbiosses for MSI notebooks :'( - but I guess that's Svet's territory.

 

Have you tried to contact him already ? A week ago he said he's not doing Pascal cards yet. Not sure about the system BIOS. I'm still waiting for the card to arrive but I doubt it's gonna be PnP.

 

svet or prema? wait what I'm out of the loop here

 

Svet. I sincerely doubt Prema will help us with MSI BIOS. Not even sure if it's necessary, no idea what was wrong with stock Clevo BIOS, just know it didnt POST with the card installed.

 

But P157sm/P750zm was able to use 8970m, or is it because RX480 is using a newer gen of chip?

 

I read past many of this topics pages and I'm a bit confused can I get a rundown on exactly where we stand in terms of options for upgrading past the 980m?

 

2 Options for hassle free Installation given that you have an eDP machine or an Ivy Bridge computer ( these machines have some code to circumvent the eDP only restriction through it's Panther Point PCH)

1060 MSI card (by our NBR forum member you can grab one) or the AMD RX480 or upgraded cards (purported to release and replace the RX480 or In the Embedded market MXM cards, E series - check mobile polaris thread for more info on these, 95W only while the former being 150W).

Modding the hell out of your machine - MSI 1070 N also available at NBR same thread.

There's also a third option - Waiting for the Zotac Magnus Box - 1070 version flip a few pages back, this one seems the best choice of all because it's a 1070N that beats all the above options, AND it's fully compatible, at-least physically with minimal changes like thermal pads with the 980M equipped old machines.

AND ofc the Great Prema's vBIOS to help us out

Spoiler

It's just plain simple, the MSI failed on the Upgrade promise due to LVDS being cut off from Pascal officially from Nvidia, Why would MSI be dedicated to support LVDS creating a huge R&D pain also for the eDP, who bought the 80 SLI series, MSI wouldn't care even for that beast laptop or the other edp consumers. Now providing a Guide and Logistics, Upgrading the old HW to 1/2 or 1/3 of the new product won't cut it too much of a hassle while they can reap profits of the Ngreedia dominated Notebook market & Sheep users, Considering the loss of the biggest enthusiast brand going 180 degree retarded - the death of Alienware, 2013 Privatization of Dell corp.

Clevo just dropped the ball off with this fiasco too, MSI manufactures the cards for them, same issues as above more over the eDP laptop P7xxZM has 2 revisions one without the eDP, other with it and their software /BIOS is a hell, w.o Prema Clevo is nothing but a paperweight. Period..


The BODs don't care for that, they need margins no margins nothing will go over their walled gardens. As Usual from any corporation to push changes unless they are a startup to gather consumer base.

Now Zotac's Magnum must have been in development and MSI might have pushed those cards into them (All those 3.0b 1070 cards, I presume they must have been made prior to this trio of BODs unanimous decision of cutting the upgrade path the leftovers or that design must have been wasted, so they had supplied this to the Mini PCs and VR-Backpacks or <insert any>) And who knows this stuff, that weibo page got taken down, We didn't knew it and NBR's enthusiast club is maybe 5% of the entire market. They don't want people to know about this plain simple.

The Tab and the SLI port being there but not soldered on the 1070N makes me think that's a Beta PCB design rather than a final finished product granted that card doesn't get deployed into the GT8x series only the barebones with reduced HDMI / DP / TB HW to not affect the MSI tagged products. Also the numerous TDP options weren't new the MSI / Clevo cards with the Maxwell debut of Desktop class 980s paved way for this proprietary drama, Gimping products or old hardware etc. this is not new lul (Ngreedia's Kepler where it stands now ?, Windows 7/8.1 cummulative trash ? Intel's BGA silicon, False marketing with the games ports and E3 showcasing etc..) Corporate drama B$.

The trio - M$I / Clevo / Ngreedia's collective opinion on dumping the enthusiast users, no surprise. Hypocrisy at it's finest.

I won't believe until I see Clevo will follow the same PCB design. Volta making the upgrades possible with this existing design being deployed with HBM too...

Seems like a full negative post But that's what I see from the current state of affairs with the technological advancements used against the people and affecting the Liberty. I made a similar post in the past when I saw the 1070MXM3.0b card but again consider this as reiterating the same..

 

For now we have RX480, 1060 and 1070 in MXM 3.0b flavor. But it seems that all cards have to be vBios modded to get them properly working.
Though @Prema stuffed a 1060 into a P150EM and it worked out of the box with Prema Bios. vBios I'm not so sure.

 

Thank you very much for taking the time out to answer me. I can't help but feel a bit relieved now which is great but I guess we're all waiting to see what happens. I'm still confused didn't nvidia say they were not releasing mxm 3b cards anymore ? and if so why is it available in that zotac MagnusBox ? did nvidia lie or did they make one only for zotac?

 

Nvidia didn't come up with those design, Nvidia merely provided the chip, the big gpu makers like clevo, msi, zotac made their own design.

msi probably wanted to honour their promise of upgrade-ability, clevo (mainly produces notebooks and not gpu) probably want people to buy their new notebooks.

mxm 3.0b standard probably takes extra money to design, so clevo cant be bothered.

In the end, is all about $$$

 

I like my new dtr but this will be the last time I support clevo after reading all these posts on the subject. So if I'm getting this right then essentially if it wasn't for companies like zotac, msi, or any other brands making 3.0b mxm's then clevo owners would have no other options essentially. I am also currently investigating egpu solutions as a desperate last resort measure for years down the road and even that seems very shady. Even though I have a tb3 port it appears that its not compatible for egpu's since some early dm models don't have the firmware to do so which is just another shaft in my book minus of course the cool trench coat. I'm glad to see others here voicing concern with the lack of promise being delivered on Clevo and I will be following threads like this one.

While I am no big gamer since I mostly video edit I cant believe spending all this money on a dtr only to be outdone with something like ps4 pro or project scorpio without having a means to upgrade which is why many of us bought DTR's in the first place. And Prema deserves every bit of recognition and donations as possible, I have to add that in even though I have not personally used any mods I see so many internet articles with mentions of that persons bios modding and all the help it brings.

 

Exactly, just scratch msi, as these are non-standard MXMs. We are yet to see what the clevo RX 480 would look like, but my hope is fading away (for a standard Clevo MXM-B RX 480).

 

Regarding your spoiler: don't all IPS equipped GT72 and GT80 models have eDP? I looked up my display panel on panellook a few days ago and it stated it uses the eDP connector, but I might've messed up.

 

clevo going to release their own version of rx480?

 

I will then scratch msi off then since they had no role in what was mentioned before but I do respect their efforts for at least for trying to keep their customers happy with whatever means they are choosing to do. As far as the rx480 and AMD in general is concerned at this point I have no problem buying anything higher spec than what I have currently later on down the line so lets hope polaris works out and that future mxm 3b support will be continued.

 

It's not wise to "scratch off MSI", as they are the only Pascal GPU's available to be used for upgrading previous generation laptops, Clevo's for instance - Eurocom is using an MSI 1070 and soon an MSI 1080 to ship upgrades for laptops based on the Clevo P870DM(1):

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Pascal upgrade in EUROCOM Sky X9 Desktop Laptop


Eurocom Clevo P870DM upgrades:
http://www.eurocom.com/ec/upgrade(2,348,0)ec

And, MSI provides the GPU for the Tornado F5 and it's predecessor (duh, it's an MSI 16L13 )

GPU Replacement on a Notebook... Is it Possible?

 

I'll just quote myself:

To add a few more words:
1. The entire notebook 10 series lineup uses non-binned chips. I haven't seen evidence for the opposite. Companies just slap castrated BIOS and set them the way they need the GPU to perform (or rather under-perform) and call it a day.
2. (More like addition to 1.) Ridiculous TDP, since again, there was no binning involved.
3. Odd shapes, which suit only a few machines straight away.

Tell me, when you sum the quote (optional, since it's more of a moral stance) + 1. + 2. + 3., why on earth I'm supposed to shell $1300?!!??? Where all these money go? For proprietary $h!t? For non-binned chips? WHERE? Even if it was standard-shaped-most-notebooks-suitable-TDP GPU, such price would still be borderline ridiculous, but FAR more justifiable. So no, msi are NOT an option. For added salt to the wound, they are not even an option for quite a few of their own machines... Ridiculous!

 

Probably the biggest problem / cost would be the re-working of all the laptops to upgrade, taking them in removing all the parts to replace, and then installing the new parts - leaving all those removed parts without a place to live.

Upgraded GPU, upgraded cooling components, upgraded internal power - maybe a replacement motherboard or dongle for the upgraded ECM interface - rather than disabling it.

All those components come with redesigned and new production laptops. Built on an established production line.

And, all those old laptops remain intact - all the parts in the places they originally came in, ready to be cleaned up and sold via the channels MSI already established for handling and selling refurbished laptops.

In effect MSI took the high road, maintained an intelligent application of thought to the process, and optimized it for all our benefit.

We get 2 generations of GPU upgrades, and new laptops as part of that upgrade, and pay a fixed understandable amount for an upgrade or downgrade in model - we can pick any model in the lineup.

Just because our understanding of the upgrade was based on MSI's 970m/980m first foray into GPU upgrades doesn't mean they had to stick to that method of upgrades, and they didn't.

MSI picked a better way of providing the upgrade.

The only complaint I have is that MSI didn't explain this from the start of the Pascal release, and instead made us run through this in painful slow motion.

Now that we are here, and I understand the reasoning, I agree with it.

 

Wait, weren't there Zotac or some other MXM 3.0b GPUs? Not just MSI?

 

That's not been mentioned anywhere I have seen... links?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-0b-alive-thread.795048/page-40#post-10384109

 

Does Zotac sell the 1070 card standalone?

At $1500 the 1070 box isn't of interest, but you could pull that card if you were desperate for the 1070.
https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-Skylake-i5-6400T-Graphics-ZBOX-EN1070-U/dp/B01M3062Z5

 

edit: ninja'd

I wonder if that card would be compatible with Clevo laptops, though?

 

only one way to find out

 

I do understand where your coming from and while I scratched Msi off the list, I did so in a respectful way and only because while it helps some newer Clevo's the older mxm3b laptops and zm/dm models like mine is not compatible with Msi's most recent offerings unfortunately since the shape and design has been altered away from the standard format. It was a painful time for Nvidia to declare the end of producing mxm3b cards especially since it could have been left alone and is working great as seen in the Zotac Zbox with both polaris and pascal mxm3b cards working faithfully in standard format. Seeing that makes me wish they could have at least given us one more last generation of 3.0b and a bit of warning before making such a change. If Msi or clevo offered a 3.0bmxm card like this then it would be a happy time for enthusiasts:

 

Sorry about this folks this was a duplicate mistake. A delete option on this forum would be helpful for cases like this just to mention it.

 

would love to have Prema's opinion on that Zotac 1070 card

 

Are you talking about the trade-in program ?
You cannot pick any model in the lineup. They provided a list of models and corresponding replacements.

For example:
GT80 w/980 ----> GT73VR Titan Pro w/GTX 1080 == $1000

This is hardly an upgrade. You are loosing 18" screen and mechanical keyboard. Plus it costs 1000 bucks.
With only MXM upgrade, you could sell your old GPU which would reduce the total cost. This way, you are basically paying for new GPU but you have to give them your old one for free.

Same deal is the upgrade from 970M to 1060. They ask 600USD. While you could get 1060 for 600 and still sell your 970M for at least 300.

 

well, funny thing is that at 1200€ the zbox isnt THAT much over standalone 1070 card once u swap out the 1070 with your current gpu and sell off the zbox your net cost will naturally be way lower, potentially below that of a standalone 1070 and nope, im not aware of any offers from zotac for the standalone card. we have asked @woodzstack to check into sourcing them though. maybe hes got better luck.

thats basically what were waiting (and hoping for) here, either a guinea pig to try this card in his mxm 3.0b machine or some insight from master @Prema

i would get the zbox in a heartbeat (even check out the 1080 model to see what format the gpu is in there), if i wasnt financially "a little tight" at the moment

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10

 

IF you can sell the zbox standalone ^^ IF ^^

 

I could do with a new htpc... A cheap Kepler MXM would do htpc duties since the iGPU is probably disabled like it's predecessors en980 etc

 

sure thing, ebay with worldwide shipping, maximum auction length, 1€ starting price and ending on a sunday afternoon always gets me enough buyers and a good price

besides, u can just install your current gpu into the zbox and thus make it more attractive

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10

 

MSI has updated the offer, allowing us to trade-in for any model, using the MSRP difference as the trade-in cost. You can compute it yourself, or ask MSI for a quote.

So you can upgrade, downgrade, to any MSI laptop.

The cost of the upgrade is fair given what you are getting, and avoiding - selling the parts left over.

Plus we can upgrade 2 times, once now with the Pascal GPU upgrade, and again with the next generation "Volta" GPU. Or we can wait and only upgrade when "Volta" comes out.

It's much more flexible than originally stated, MSI has responded to owner feedback.

We each negotiate the final deal ourselves one on one, and I have heard of others getting reduced cost based on whatever criteria their personal position takes.

MSI came through, a bit slow on the uptake, but it's far better than Clevo or any other make has offered their customers.

 

wow this is great news indeed, i wasnt aware of that good to hear that msi came through in the end

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10

 

Oh ok, I take it back then. I had old info, didn't know they changed the conditions.
But it's still for US custmers only right ? Europeans are scum as always :-(

Not that it really concerns me anyway. I didn't want a BGA trashbook so I bought GT70 with socketed CPU and GTX 9xx GPU.

 

Post #1 has updates, and the thread has all the in between info

GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S Owners GPU Upgrade Discussion
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...0-gt80s-owners-gpu-upgrade-discussion.795236/

 

Never had this news from MSI France.. all i had is pay twice the difference (1800euro for a single 1070 GT73). It's like my lappy was worth 500euros !


edit : used this : http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-0b-alive-thread.795048/page-59#post-10392570

 

Clevo's policy never stated to get users upgrades, They just didn't and naturally one can expect a backlash for this kind of move against the old flagship consumers because of their design choice of the machines / cards / specs. MSI had a class action coming (Openly stating a promise and failure to meet that will cause a havoc & a huge dent in the image of the position they are now, Alienware lost the crown to them) that's the reason they did that Trade-In program. I don't see any corporation at a stature as MSI be willing to dish out some of their resources or re think their plans / margins etc.. It's them trying to remove the blemish, I see only that way & Yes they function like that but the corporate idea of notebook enthusiast market fails to set the bar at the same desktop counterparts, eg - MXM prices / as Triturbo said, stupidly gimped vBIOSes despite the proprietary B$. Sheeple are to be blamed more here for showcasing themselves as dumb flock..

Volta and it's GPU, I sense a strong urge of changing everything against Pascal & no chances taken this time since they (The ultimate fallacy trio - M$I, Clevo, Ngreedia) already knew this whole mess that's on their plate, Nobody with significant power to change the demographics recognizes that (We have Prema, Hope he has some tricks up his sleeve), the reason they will still be anti-consumers in the NB market. Hope Clevo stand on it's point about the MXM form factors for the future flagship.

I don't care/trust any OEM after the feat Alienware pulled, A 180degree flip to retarded realm. If they are cool & strive atleast not anti-consumers all good else we have alternatives, Yes with some sacrifices. All in all, I see the old legacy machines get a new life if those RX480 95W and 1070 Zotac 3.0b makes it to masses here at NBR.

 

The other regions of MSI have taken a bit more time to come on board, with the USA Region plan forming just in front. Now more are coming out as available:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...rade-discussion.795236/page-316#post-10392759

UK Trade-in Contact email [email protected]

Others will hopefully soon release information on their regional plans for the trade-in program

 

The trade-in program has been evolving, and the new information for the USA regional program applies only to the USA, but hopefully if you bring up these new features of the USA program to the MSI France region they will take them on and change their program as well.

 

thanks hmscott, any post which summerize the new offer so I can Email it directely to the MSI Fr support ?

edit : found one

 

Gecube has officially gave up on Rx480 for laptops due to unknown problems from testing. Probably heat problem.

There is hope for RX485(95W) but not confirmed. Eitherway earliest gecube 1060/1070 will not be in production till early 2017.

 

Bummer. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall that there wouldn't be many sales of a 150-ish Watt 1060 equivalent at a price to make it worthwhile...

Hopefully at least they managed to get around the EC signal thing and that wasn't the terminal problem.

 

No idea if they gave up on ec signal thing, they just said they stopped testing on laptops. The voluntary test laptops were all sent back to their original users. It means RX480 is dead.
I think I would probably just use my 970M till the very end and just change to a mini itx box.
Thank you clevo.

 

What a sad news, Most of us already knew that 150W TDP is hard to handle for the old sub 75-100W heatsinks. And the perf that card gives is not at all appealing for the cash and effort might be the reason they backed out...

Hope the Zotac 1070M gets to us and really wish that AMD 95W card comes too, AMD should really do this and offer a Vega variant too, Surrendering the market to nGreedia will only makes things worse since 7970M they just kept quiet, Damn wish we had a significant power or atleast add weight to the situation, Only once we had that power - "the pre 347.88 clockblock fiasco".

Clevo re-sellers might have a chance at this. We lost everything from this Pascal/Polaris with the dropping of everything legacy, People are even rooting for those restricted Surface B$ machines with UEFI feces, the day when the computers become zombies is when Micro$lop Mafia does that UEFI Class III final blow to the wound. If anyone with weight & contacts in the industry is seeing this please try to make our voice /opinions heard. It's just a whisper in the dark at this point but a ray of hope..

Amen to Liberty.

 

@thegh0sts this is the 1070 card inside the mini pc, thus why we are thinking of getting the box and take the card out for experimenting. as yo u can see its the correct dimension unlike the MSI or clevo card.

 

This concerns msi and msi machines only. I already posted my opinion in the appropriate thread. The question was if msi GPUs are an option (not why they are designed like that), so for the third time - No they are NOT.

Stating only one side of the story is not very helpful. There's quite the discussion in the msi sub-forum, but I'll just state a few, that I consider most important, you've missed:
- What happens with software that's tied-up with the system?
- What happens with these poor souls that have imported msi machines based purely on this "promise"?
- If it wasn't for you and your topic, would we have heard from msi?

I don't want to derail the topic any further. As I said, there's quite the thread dedicated to msi and their $h!t. Let's leave this one for these of us that care about MXM-B.

 

What other side of the story would you expect me to post, I only have my perspective to offer, after taking input from hundreds of posts in the discussion thread for what has become the trade-in topic.

MSI needed prodding, as did Alienware for the CPU temperature differential problem, as I have done for many many years, in prodding companies to fix problems.

All of the companies are about the same, they need to hear about the problems from the field from actual installations, then they take that feedback to improve the product.

If nothing else, I hope people have learned that their opinion matters, and working together to interact with a company to get problems resolved is not only possible, but also works in the end.

Companies want to have happy customers, sometimes it takes a little communication to let them know exactly how unhappy we are, and what we need to be happy with them again.

Any software tied to a laptop is rare, and all the ones I have dealt with have programs for transferring licenses. That's gonna be a real small number of people on a gaming laptop anyway.

Importers are always at risk when bringing a laptop bought in the US to their home country. Support is difficult, MSI offers the first year warranty as Global service, so that helps.

What is usually recommended is to use that same service you used for import to handle shipping back and forth for service, same for trade-in's. People are doing it, so it can be done.

If you read my detailed response, and understand it, I don't see how you couldn't agree with what MSI has ended up with for 2 generations of GPU upgrades, they host them in new hardware that is designed for the new GPU's.

I think MSI has done a great job. It took MSI a while longer to get there than I would have liked, but they stuck with it and came through for us, keeping their promise of 2 generations of GPU upgrades.

Now if only Clevo would follow up and do the same for their laptops.

 

I really don't want to derail any further. I'll just say this:

I don't.

 

Your opinion is noted, but irrelevant, MSI is doing the trade-in, and people are getting Pascal GPU's in new laptops for a fraction of their cost, about the cost of the GPU's themselves.

I can't seem to convey the facts well enough to you. Unless you are just being obstinate and refusing to understand.