Intel Core i7-8750H/ i7-8850H/ i9-8950H Coffee Lake

Well now its at least a little bit faster than the model it replaces, and it's no worse in terms of thermals than every other macbook, so great work guys job done! it's acceptable to the cultists according to their pitiful standards.

You'd think Apple was doing poorly and in cost cutting mode from the way they regularly release broken, flawed products instead of being the richest tech company on the planet.

That update was pushed out suspiciously quickly wasn't it, and I'll lay odds that the real "fix" had nothing to do with a missing key whatsit and was more like bugs in the firmware throttle code.

 

Now wait for these RMAs to start rolling in.

 

I think the digital key signature crap was Intel MEI patches and pushing off the thermal limit that throttle at 100C. They might have it switched off.

 

What honestly angers me and makes me laugh at the same time is thay after the fix, people are telling themselves and others that its fine now because its now within actual spec instead of being below it, and that somehow anything above 85c is an acceptable temp. Man, Apple users go above and beyond, and its not even them, its also the people fine with a 25w cpu in a laptop as thin as my phone with terrible cooling.

 

Roughly speaking, only one benchmark, the 8950HK in the Macbook gets 1020 or so in multithreaded Cinebench r15 and in the "best" 8950HK Acer Helios 500 gets 1450 of the box and 1550 OC'd, quoting others benchmarks quoted elsewhere.

So now that the Macbook 8950HK model has been "fixed" and is working "properly", it is 50% short of full performance. Far less performance than if it were designed with performance in mind.

Hardly a bargain at $4000, even at $2000 it's probably still overpriced for what you get.

 

The Helios 500 seems to be the honest to god only machine on the market capable of cooling that CPU. Which is extremely disturbing and disappointing.

 

Acer's been working hard over the last few years to have a serious gaming laptop contender, and now that they have it, I think I am ok with it.

 

They should be happy holding the title as the only reasonable laptop able to cool the 8950hk, actually delivering the promised performance and then some

 

This new Macbook is becoming a meme.
Louis Rossmann
...
New MacBook Pro with 8th Gen Intel CPUs
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...th-gen-intel-cpus.821041/page-7#post-10770017

 

And the amazing part is that its the cheapest laptop with an i9 and an 1080 at just 2400€, Alienwares cost 4k € here LOL....

Also, all over r/apple, its all full of zealots calling names that its totally fixed and that the rest are just dumb people.

All happy that their 4c/8t U CPU's are scoring 720 on CB R15 like its the second coming of $DEITY, enjoy your Haswell performance..

 

Do you have some links to any if those benches?

Last time I checked the helios 500 reviews, it had very good temperatures because the firmware was aggressively limiting the clocks/performance.

If Acer fixed the firmware and it still has good temperatures, then it might be the laptop with the best price/performance ratio from list of gtx 1070 equipped BGA laptops.

I only said "it might be" because it depends on how it behaves under high sustained loads (a single high CBr15 score is good news, but things aren't so good if it can't maintain high scores/clocks in consecutive runs).

I might be wrong, but I don't think that helios 500 has a gtx 1080 config.

It should still be cheaper than most laptops with gtx 1070 and and OC-able coffee lake CPU.

 

Sorry, I heard / read the quote of the benchmark results of the Helios 500 in comparison to the Macbook Pro 8950HK in one of the videos or written reviews over the last 24 hours, which is a lot of stuff. If I run across it again I'll post it here.

At the time I heard it I thought that it would be a good follow up video for Dave Lee to make - comparing the Acer Helios 500 8950HK against the Macbook Pro 8950HK, since he has / had both reviewed and in his hands recently.

It looks like the Acer Helios 500 models are all 1070 configurations as shown on Acer:
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/predator-models/laptops/predatorhelios500

Acer hasn't come out with an 8th gen laptop model with a GTX 1080, they still list the Acer Predator 17x Gen 7 Intel CPU with GTX 1080:
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/predator-models/laptops/predator17x/predator17x

 

Thank you for the info!

Unfortunately, Dave only provides basic info for the models (I don't have anything against his reviews or against him, he's a cool guy) and there aren't many reviewers that do more in depth testing, so we can see the how the units perform under sustained loads or in productivity based apps).

I don't have high expectations for helios 500, I just expect it to perform like other similarly or higher priced models, but it would be nice if Acer pleasantly surprised us by going against the current tendencies, with an efficient cooling design and a proper firmware behavior for this model (still BGA, but a decent performing BGA is a lesser evil), since most of the OEMs are too focused on higher profits and the buyers end up with underperforming overpriced laptops.

 

GT75 has better cooling and also much higher power limits.

 

I forgot this one... Posted 07.24.2018

From my own statements in my post above...

"Intel wont Stop sell their chips to the OEM's or claim that they create better cooling... It's a reason Intel put 45w TDP for the unlocked $600 usd i9-8950Hk... What the OEM's will do with the i9 BGA chips... Doesn't really matter for Intel. Higher sales beats the Throttling mess or bad reputation!!"

Intel Decided It Was Alright If Notebook Manufacturers Throttled CPU clocks, Even If It Meant Drastic Performance Differences 07.24.2018 | Wccftech.com
According to ExtremeTech, Intel, as long as 2015 has said that it is alright for manufacturers to throttle their machines.

“Intel explained that it had given OEMs more freedom to set certain specifications for their own systems. One example the company gave was skin temperature: If OEMs wanted to specify a low skin temperature that had the side effect of keeping the CPU clock speed from turboing as high as a competitive system from a different OEM that traded a higher skin temperature for better thermal performance, that was fine by Intel — even if it also meant two systems with the same CPU might perform very differently.”
​

And this below is from the Extreme Tech article posted in my link above... It’s time to call out laptop manufacturers for their ******** CPU throttling

" Intel is perfectly capable of putting a halt to this. Ideally, the company would tell its customers they have to sell Intel CPUs in chassis that can support them at full clock in standard operation. Again, this isn’t some impossible ask — define “standard operation” according to a suite of representative software that your customers run, whether that means gamers or workstation users, test accordingly, update the suite every few years and ship the damn hardware. But under the circumstances, we’d settle for Intel telling OEMs like HP, Dell, and Apple that its minimum clock speeds are non-negotiable. If you aren’t willing to build a chassis that can hold a CPU at its minimum clock speed, then you don’t get to sell Intel processors. AMD should follow suit."

As you all can see... Intel ain't interested in losing money. Exactly as I have said now in many months, even before the Junk was released. The blogger from Extreme Tech don't seems to understand it!! Thats it.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Thinner and Lighter Laptops Have Screwed Us All-motherboard.vice.com

The pursuit of thinner, lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple, means we have screwed ourselves out of performance—and it's not going to get better anytime soon

That maximum is restricted by both power and thermal limits, which is where we run into issues: laptops tend to get hot because they’re thinner, with limited space to dissipate that heat through the use of fans and heatsinks.

The temperature limits and when throttling kicks in vary between chipsets, but Intel refers to this threshold as the “TCC Activation Temperature.” These settings cannot be changed and are hidden from the user for a reason: they’re confusing, and the big numbers provided by Turbo Boost sound better if you leave this out. Intel’s detailed specifications in ARK, which cover everything from the size of the CPU to the maximum temperature it can reach, intentionally exclude this metric.

 

Acer Predator Helios 500 (i9-8950Hk - Gtx 1070)Review: Tomshardware.com

Yeah, Core i9 Done Right!



Bottom Line
The Acer Predator Helios 500 is a desktop replacement-style gaming notebook with easy overclocking that keeps its cool while gaming. It also benefits from a clicky, tactile keyboard. But the display should be a bit brighter, and some competing notebooks with Intel’s Core i9-8950HK CPU did better on productivity benchmarks.

If you want similarly easy overclocking, the Alienware 17 R5 is likely your best alternative. But if you want that Core i9 CPU, you need to pay a minimum $3,549.99 (as of this writing), which also nets you 32GB of RAM and a GTX 1080, but less storage than the Predator. If you don’t need that much power (or don’t have that much to spend), the Predator is a better deal.

What in hell is "desktop replacement-style gaming notebook?" At least not a Desktop replacement. And what a good advice... Recommend the well known overheating TRIPOD mess from Alienware, Oh'well

Edit... Of course, with PredatorSense’s one-click overclocking, we tried the test again with both the CPU and GPU set to “turbo” speeds. The CPU ran at an average of 4.17GHz and 87.6 degrees Celsius. The graphics card actually ran cooler than the initial session, at 57.5 degrees Celsius, possibly due to increased fan activity.

Isn't Core i9-8950HK default clocks 4.3GHz on all 6 cores? Acer's one-click overclocking mean in reality downclocking or rather say overclocking up to below stock default clock speed. What default clock speed have Acer put for i9-8950Hk in this AcerBook? Below 4.0Ghz or equal as locked down i7-8750H ?

 

Review of Dell Latitude 5491 (8850H - MX130)Notbookcheck.com. Dell massively cripple the performance for the partial unlocked 6 core i7-8850H. Yeah, nothing new here from Dell. They follow only their own recipe… How Dell cripple performance explained by...

Why not use a cheaper 4 core Intel® Core™ i5-8400H Processor ? Or a ULV model?

Processor
Our review unit is equipped with a Coffee Lake-H hexa-core processor i7-8850H. The 45 W CPU has 9 MB of cache, operates at a nominal frequency of 2.6 GHz and is also compatible with vPro. It is interesting that Dell decided to use the Core i7-8850H processor (2.6 - 4.3 GHz) instead of the more common i7-8750H (2.2 - 4.1 GHz) processor. However, the performance is not top-notch, as our Latitude follows the gaming equipment - which undoubtedly has much better cooling systems - with the low-end i7-8750H by 10 percent when It's about multi-core performance. Laptops with the Intel Core i7-8560U quad-core 15W (ULV) processor, such as the Latitude 5490 , are 30 to 50 percent slower than the review candidate.

To determine the sustained performance and the use of the Turbo, we executed our Cinebench R15 Multi loop test. The following graph shows a very steep drop of more than 15 percent during the first three loops, with a more gradual reduction during the following loops. The lowest score of 810 points during the test is equivalent to a 25 percent reduction in performance.



The culprit. Crippled cooling


Dell used a better binned i7 BGA maybe to increase the possibility to be able to sell this Junk?
Price for this... $2100 USD

 

Then it is confirmed. Dell have now changed the rules how to deal with overheating due ****y upgraded cooling system for their Coffee Lake Alienware gaming models. This is of course needed to avoid huge amount of RMA and lower the possibility to offer Next day home tech support. Tech support cost money as you all know. Not only have the quality on later Alienware GamingBook models decreased... See the list!

"180w psu for high end i7 BGA + Gtx980 + battery boost, Down to 2 ram slots, No raid functionality for their first BGA models, Same MB for 15,6 and the bigger 17,3 models, Crippled smaller 3rd M.2 sata slot, TRIPOD heatsink who is trash (they even said it will be fixed - Now upgraded with wimpy vapor Chamber heatspreader who cant do the job), The famous 799MHz Throttle Gate, Overheating ssd's, Overheating PCH chips, No G-synk for the first 2 BGA models (all other OEM's offer early but not Azor and his dear AW). The list go long, brothers. A master piece of useless engineering and useless leadership from Azor."​

And now... The aftermarket support follow same steps. When will they reach the bottom?



And of course their Customers is damn happy for the last move. Pretty?

 

This is just a complete utter train wreck.
I mean I thought it was bad before.....but now?
HEY LETS JUST INCREASE THE THERMAL LIMIT IN THE BIOS UNTIL THE
1) laptop turns off
2) motherboard burns up
3) your apartment catches on fire then you sue dell for 5 million dollars then take over the company and get rich !

 

Yeah, more like this. Screw the buyers without extended expencive Premium warranty and hope they come back for an upgrade before time.


A new one from Dell Hell and latest Coffee lake mobile processors... As this is the Intel Core i7-8750H/ i7-8850H/ i9-8950H Coffee Lake thread.
When Dell support can't help you... Best advice from other screwed Coffee lake owner

 

Truly, the hallmark of Dell's dumpster fire engineering.

 

Dell XPS 15 + Razer 15, both with i7-8750 wins most comparisons in performance against the "fixed" Macbook Pro 15 8950HK 2018...

Dell / Razer i7-8750's vs i8-8950HK MacPro 2018
PCWorld
Published on Aug 3, 2018
Gordon has spent the past week testing these 6-core laptops: Apple's 2018 MacBook Pro 15 (Core i9), Dell's XPS 15 9570, and Razer's Blade 15. Along with Adam, he pours over all the in-depth charts from his benchmarks to see which one is best.

 

So even thermal throttling i7's beat it.

This has to be "Peak Thin". It just has to.

 

To the surprise of exactly no one: These rigs need better cooling. And btw, Dell's ideal to raise the power limit in that thermal envelope is stupid.

I just re-pasted the Q6 with Liquid Metal (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut) and it's the only way I can get 3.9GHz under full load.

Uploading gaming videos and benchmarks soon.

For power limits on the i7 8750H, leave PL1 set to 45W, PL2 set to 68W @ 28 seconds, and undervolt the core, uncore, GT slice and unslice domains by -100mV.

Edit: You could also raise the PL1 to about 55W but leave PL2 to 68W @ 28 seconds. Testing this change offers somewhat better performance on the Q6 without the dips Dell is observing above, but then again, I'm on liquid metal.
I also swapped the 150W PSU for a 200W brick, sold by Eurocom.

 

How do you undervolt the GT Sliced and GT unsliced?
Uncore is called "Analog I/O" in the current version of Throttlestop.

 

Update: Playlist for all videos on Acer Predator Helios 300 - i7-8750H

Assassin's Creed Origins - Acer Predator Helios 300 - i7-8750H - GTX 1060 6GB
Tech Deals
Published on Aug 4, 2018
Review of Laptop --- (coming soon!)

Spoiler

Specs of this PC:
Intel i7-8750HQ CPU - 6 Core / 12 Thread
16GB DDR4-2666 RAM (2x8GB)
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
256GB NVMe Solid State Drive
Open 2.5" Bay for a Hard Drive
15.6" 1080p 144hz IPS Display
Built-in Web Cam
Red Backlit Gaming Keyboard + Trackpad
Gigabite AC WiFi + Bluetooth 4.1
2x USB 2 + 2x USB 3.1 Ports
HDMI + RJ-45 Ethernet Ports
Windows 10 Home

 

The unlocked BIOS on the Q6 has the option to undervolt these sections. I don't use throttlestop.

For BIOS settings: https://gist.github.com/Brainiarc7/f7da590bee1ed35ac5ed258ff9335fd6#file-eurocom-q6-undervolting-md

 

I'm looking for the thread here where I had posted these BIOS screenshots.

 

See this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/p955er-throttling.817966/page-13#post-10751159

 

Interesting that you mention RAID.

I used Pop! in my testing on the x7200, but after configuring a mirror on a couple of mechanical drives in the Intel (fake) RAID bios, the Pop! installationmust load/use dmraid in the partition step because it found the "mapper" based drives right out of the chute, and I was able to mount /home there. Although I had to be careful because the mechanical based comptising the RAID were listed too.

 

On your x7200, the chipset's IMSM RAID is supported.
That is the case with all Intel fakeRAIDs up to Haswell (HSW).
However, beyond Haswell+ (and into SKL, KBL, CNL+), this IMSM fakeRAID is not supported on Linux.

Infact, way back in ~2016, I was able to set up fakeRAID on Linux with my older Asus G750JM-DS71, and that's a Haswell-based notebook: https://gist.github.com/Brainiarc7/dfff8321b94fd666eb64eda0382f6813

 

Gaze upon a future that cannot be changed.

With knowledge, comes torment.

This, right here, is our hell.

 

And that is by design.

One of the major advantages of UEFI boot is the disambiguation of the boot loader device: Whatever choice you make in the Ubuntu-based installers will be invalid because UEFI's standard mandates that the boot loader reside in the ESP, saving the user a lot of headaches.

Intel's IMSM RAID is a right proper headache to deal with even where its' supported for several reasons:

(a). dmraid merely treats IMSM metadata as exactly that: metadata. When unassembled, an installer that's unaware of the underlying metadata will merely overwrite it when zeroing out the block storage, permanently destroying the underlying RAID topology.

(b). RAID, as they teach syadmins, is never backup. Woe unto them running RAID0s and a member therein fails.

 

That's too bad regarding fake RAID support on later models.

With that said, you are correct it is a headache. I've lost the volume once or twice during use, but once you learn the "ins and outs" it does work as advertised.

Also note, for any readers, a disclaimer. These posts have never once said to use RAID (at any level) in replacement of a backup strategy. Backups are still essential.

 

Yees.
Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 puts a Core i9 or Xeon in a thin-and-light laptop Only
0.7 inch thin and 3.76 pounds.

It will only be worse as you all can see. The madness continue faster than ever. Yeah, Intel was genius when they specked the unlocked +$600 usd mobile i9 with the 45W moniker.

But it’s still the notebook manufacturers who design the chassis and the cooling. They know how hot it will run in thicker laptops. They know also very well what power limits is needed to let the Cpu run without running into a throttling mess.

Intel has adviced/recommended the 100W PL1 + 125w for power Limit PL2 for this mobile chips. Yeees, put the blame on Intel.

Edit. As long people accept throttling and less performance the laptop manufacturers won’t do anything to stop it... http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-15-9570-owners-thread.817008/page-99#post-10780193

 

And that is why educating ourselves on how these products work is so important. We take the time to do our homework before buying a new car or HVAC. No difference regarding a $5k performance machine. You get what you pay for. I expect lesser performance from a $300 netbook. I know that going into that purchase. I expect much more from a high performance machine. The challenge is learning to recognize what I am seeing, rather than sheepishly being told what is good enough for me.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

He said Azor’s smallest Gaming baby is worse than MacBook Pro before Apple “so called fixed” it’s overheating PancakeBook


This is nothing new from the Alienware’s. The upgraded and refreshed TRIPOD with the small Vapor chamber Cpu heatspreader doesn’t make a new spring.

 

Damn, I had hoped its' thicker chassis would help.

 

“Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”

“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by its fruit.”

Thick chassis won't help when the engineering talent is thin. Stupid begets stupid.

Put another way, skunks never loser their stripes.

 

Wait, let me guess: Do they still have that Tripod heatsink for the CPU?

 

Oops, I spoke too soon.

And as expected: Non stop throttle.

 

Here is the newest Alienware TRIPOD baby. For the 2018 models.... Now upgraded with "Vapor Chamber heatspreader" for the cpu part instead of the usual copper cold plate.


This is the one for the 2017 models...

 

Why, dear god, Why?
Why such a wimpy tiny CPU plate?
While the GPU has a plate as big as the MSI version (even though its VRM + GPU so hotter temps....

I feel disgusted.

 

Probably no need for a bigger one. The mobile i7-8750H and i9-8950Hk is a 45w chips

 

Hey guys, I have an issue with the Q6, and to be particular, with the PCH temperatures.

Take a look.



That was after a short Battlefield 4 game. What made me pay attention to that was the USB devices on the system failing temporarily, and resuming function later as if they had been "unplugged".

What could cause the PCH to overheat?

I have opened the Q6 multiple times to make sure that no thermal pads are out of place, and my temps (CPU+GPU) are quite normal.

 

Intel is lying through its' gold-plated teeth.

These chips are NOT 45W parts. Heck, the 8750H will easily sit on ~75+W if so allowed (assuming there's a laptop out there that can keep it cool).

 

Faulty temp sensor or failed soon aka fried PCH chips. Return to sender...

It's what it is. They can manage 56w long term Power in Dell XPS and Macbook Pro (at least 2.5 min). Remember Intel have always used power limit PL2 for their chips. + it's up to the notebook OEM also to put higher power limits if the cooling fits and is good enough.

 

Manufacturers are free to build a thermal solution that can handle more than 45W, as they always have been. And the CPUs - even the locked multi quads - are capable of more than those limits when unshackled with an unlocked BIOS. CPU TDP as it says in the fine print is just a 'cooling solution recommendation' and the manufacturer is responsible for both the base and turbo power limits and the cooling, not Intel
(except for apple fanbois trying to blame Intel for the i9 throttlebook Pro debacle)

Intel's biggest bit of spec BS is in the turbo specs, they have left reality behind for the all core turbo on these CPUs

 

This is probably the main reason why Intel decided to advertise only the base clocks and the single core turbo. Since there isn't an advertised target, any all core turbo value above base is within specs (this is somewhat understandable, because things are more complicated when you have to take into consideration different stock voltages and the differences in silicon quality, which can lead to a large range of all core turbo values, for the 4 core 6/7th gens this wasn't a significant problem, because the all core max TB was included in 45w, even though by Intel's guidelines, the TDP is specified at the CPU's base frequency).

The higher all core boost clocks are still useful in scenarios where there isn't a sustained 100% CPU load (gaming is one ex.) or for demanding tasks with a short duration.

Since the manufacturers have the freedom to set what limits they want, some notebooks (mostly workstation models) have higher PL1 limits that would result in higher all core TB clocks in sustained 100% CPU loads (IF the cooling solution is efficient enough).

I don't think I've seen a pic where they actually sustain the amount that is showed at PL1 in hwinfo (like 60w for ex. for the dell 7530/7730), so this needs further investigation, especially since we already have an example of a gaming laptop (RB15 2018) that has 60w for PL1 showing in hwinfo, but it is limited to 45w/35w in high sustained loads).

Actually, they did good by allowing higher all core turbo clocks than what would be achievable with default voltages (or with an undervolt) under 45w sustained loads: if the manufacturer chooses to design a cooling solution (for a model that has a locked CPU) that has a considerable thermal headroom above 45w (this isn't profitable and is less likely to happen, but luckily, things can be improved with repastes/repad + other cooling mods) and if the PL1/PL2 limits are set higher or the user has the ability to unlock the BIOS or finds out what registers are used to control the IMON slope/offset/prefix, then we have a rare situation where the locked 8750H can be used near/at it's max potential (some MSI BGA laptops can do that).

What Intel should have done (for the benefit of the notebook consumers, but not beneficial for the manufacturer's profits), is to raise the bar for the cooling solution design specification, by using a higher TDP for all 6 core models, but that would mean that those CPUs couldn't be used in slim and light notebooks that can't handle that amount of heat or in "normally" thick and heavy budget gaming models where the prices might go up considerably if they had to redesign a cooling solution for a higher CPU TDP.