Vega GL now up on Spectre x360

I am have overheating issues while charging to the point that games stutter. It stutters less when I unplug and run it. It also physically feels cooler when not charging by quite a bit.

After heating up for a while Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark runs 25 fps compared to 40fps average starting cold. (1920 x 1080 high).

How large of a USB drive do you need to setup the backup for this computer?

 

For most backup's it will tell you when you run the tool, but most I've seen recently need a 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive to contain the restore and image, actually it might only need 17GB-20+GB of actual space, but USB flash drives come in 16GB - too small - and 32GB a bit too large but needed.

Just got a 1 off Kingston 32GB from Central Computers for someone for $15, so they aren't too expensive. I think I last paid $27 for the ones I have, Patriot Stellar - tiny little dual connector gems that connect up to phones too.

It's good to back up the out of the box image quickly, before Windows update breaks restore, and I think you got lucky Microsoft delayed rolling out Redstone 4 which was due out on the 10th, but it could happen any time so I wouldn't delay doing the create of the USB 3.0 32GB flashdrive bootable restore.

The combination of powering gaming CPU and GPU under load + charging heats up most laptops to the highest normal temps.

You could charge your laptop first, let it get that over with, and then game, it might discharge a bit while gaming and the charging will kick in briefly, but so close to a full charge it should be brief.

When you take it off AC and run / game on battery, you are getting a fraction of the GPU performance, and if the battery or power saving plan is switched to when you unplug - most setups do - even the CPU will reduce performance significantly.

Most gaming laptops wont' game on battery as expected, you won't get stuttering because it's not reaching the heights of performance and it isn't generating heat that can cause the CPU / GPU to briefly reduce load to reduce heat.

The best thing to do on a thin laptop, even a large one, is to limit the Frame rate to that of the refresh, so 60hz = 60 FPS - 120hz = 120 FPS - at the higher frame rates like the new 120hz/120fps and 144hz / 144fps that is a huge jump in load on the CPU / GPU over 60hz/60fps and the power demand and heat load generated will be far greater.

Actually I think it's a mistake to put such high FPS / hz displays in thin laptops, even the beefy ones will be pushed to the edge of powering and cooling.

Limiting FPS with G-sync / V-sync or better yet RTSS - Rivatuner, bundled with MSI Afterburner - works on most Nvidia / AMD GPU's, and set up RTSS to limit FPS to "Refresh - 1" is a good first start to see if runaway FPS is causing undue load on your CPU / GPU, and see if that reduces heat.

If that help's but not enough, reduce the FPS further, below refresh rate, and if your refresh rate is 120hz+ that is likely in a thin laptop.

Did you undervolt to reduce temps, sorry I didn't read back in your posts, but if you haven't then try that to reduce load temps too - reducing load temps will reduce stuttering - or should help. Intel XTU and ThrottleStop can be downloaded and used to set an undervolt of -100mV for a start, the range of stable operation is -15mV to -220mV, so that's a pretty wide range - but typically on average most report at least -100mV works, and that amount of undervolt reduces all core 100% load temps by 10c.

There can be in game settings for frame limiting, and if you check the games support forums on their support site you should see a much more focused coverage of how to get the game to stop stuttering - if in game settings are the contributing factor.

Good luck, and Have fun

 

You will need a 16gb usb to make a restore using either HP's program or Windows. Using HP's backup for the restore partition, you can only do it once. I think they will charge you $20 to get a usb from them if you need another so take care of that usb.

Look into using Throttlestop for undervolting and cooler temps. It is very easy to use. I used this guide, just the undervolting , and it was very easy to follow. I have mine undervolted -0.125 and temps are 10c+ cooler.

 

Surface Book / Surface Book 2 with dGPU engaged are less thermally challenged because (brilliantly) the GPU is isolated in the base and doesn't create the additive heat issue that one usually sees in a laptop where the CPU and GPU are physically close and often sharing some common heat pipes.

 

Any plans for an x360 vega review? I have seen none anywhere.

 

Agreed, @pdagal I would love to see a review on the x360 vega and the dell xps 15 2-in-1... You're the best btw.

 

I'll be reviewing the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 first (because it arrived first). I should have the x360 Vega review up next week.

 

Hi!

Does it throttle while charging at -0.125 V as OskieBear says? Also, is it uncomfortable to use on the lap when at max temps?
Overall, would you recommend buying it? I was thinking going with 12GB RAM and the 360GB SSD. Also, is the tilt pen worth the extra cost?

Thanks again

 

If you look at the images in this post, I had no throttling at -0.058 undervolt. At -0.100 undervolt, the temps dropped 10c. All this was done while sitting on a laptop cooler to give some room underneath for ventilation but with the cooler turned off. I don't think you should sit it on your lap by itself because the laptop draws in air from the vents on the bottom. I do use it on my lap in stand mode with no cooler when I am watching movies or tv shows. It gets a little warm near the hinges but nothing uncomfortable for me.

It was worth buying for me. The display looks great and is plenty bright for me. It is sharp and colorful. The fans don't get loud enough to bother me even when I was playing Civ 6 at 4k. The more I use it the more I like it and am happy with the purchase. Your mileage may vary so it is really your personal choice. I can't say about the tilt pen. I didn't see myself using it much and wasn't worth the extra $$ to me.

I have only two (slight) negatives with it. Due to the size it is a little unwieldy as a tablet. Not really using it but just folding it over. The other is the audio doesn't seem to have a lot of bass. The Bang & Olufsen audio control I haven't figured out how to use yet. The options I would like to try are unselectable for some reason.

 

and just to show you no throttling at -0.125 I did a Firestrike test.

laptop cooler off

Spoiler

laptop cooler on

Spoiler

 

I think I will leave it at -0.135. Firestrike 6226 https://www.3dmark.com/fs/15357657

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

How is your battery life? Still super interested in picking one up, but I need at least 8 hours of battery life.

 

I never use it much on battery. I tried it for 2 hours last night just as a test while watching a movie from my ssd. Left it on 100% brightness and I think I would have gotten about 7-8 hours at the rate it was going, which I was surprised it may go that long at 100%. If you ran it on 1080p at a lower brightness you may get 8 hours. I'll try it tomorrow at 4k during my normal daily routine, working and a lot of online wifi and browsing, and see what I get.

 

What is the downside to undervoltage?

 

I tried -0.150 a couple of days ago. When I was stress testing it crashed and rebooted. I changed it to -0.140 and tried 3DMark Firestrike. The GPU graphics clock would never go above 225 MHz when normally it would be at 1011 MHz. My Firestrike score was like 864. I restored the system from the HP partition and it was working fine again. I can only hazard a guess that it corrupted something on the drive when it crashed. I don't think it can break hardware but on rare occasions it can cause fear and irritation. I saw someone on Reddit say they had a crash at -0.150 but all they had to do was set it at -0.140.

 

Time spent tuning, and as @Atma said occasional corruption.

That's why I recommend doing a full disk check after a BSOD / crash from tuning - OC'ing / undervolting - by right clicking on the C drive and Properties => Tools Tab => Error Checking => Check Now => Check automatically fix file system errors, and it will "fail" and ask to schedule at next boot, set that up.

Now, you can immediately reboot - and I do that if I intend on doing work / writing to disk by editing, or installing, or uninstalling, before I do any writes to the disk I want to verify the integrity of the file system.

If I am going to continue tuning, like I crashed and want to reduce undervolt or multiplier or whatever, then I don't reboot immediately as there's a good chance I will crash it again - so why waste the boot / check when you are gonna put it in the same mode again - you have a chance to fix it / tune it before rebooting.

If the new setting is stable, then I will reboot and allow the disk check to run to completion - it'll reboot again if it finds something to fix, or come up clean finishing it's boot.

It sounds like more than it is, it only usually happens to me a few times per machine, I have the process down pretty well to the optimal least tries and reboots.

If you don't care about disk integrity, like you plan on restoring after tuning - which I do sometimes - then you don't need to worry about corruption as you'll be done with it soon enough and a restore will wipe clean any problems induced.

It's very rare I'll lose anything important, especially since I'll have another drive in the system, or a flash drive, to keep bookmarks and notes, screen shots, etc I come up with while doing the set up.

 

Can someone post the stock voltages under load (preferably using prime95) and the voltages when undervolted?

 

I used Intel XTU CPU stress test for 5 minutes.

default voltage

Spoiler

-0.135 voltage

Spoiler

 

The stock voltage is way too high. 1.2V for 3.7GHz on all 4 cores? I'm guessing that the 4 core max turbo is 3.7GHz, because the i7 8705G is basically a i7 7700HQ overclocked by +300 MHz.Is this correct, or does Intel set the 4 core multiplier higher? They tend to do this on the new 8th gen u CPUs - the i7 8550U can turbo up 3.9 GHz on all four cores, but it can't sustain it given it's 15W PL1 setting. Instead, they tend to set PL2 to something crazy high (44W usually), so the chip hits ~3.5GHz on all 4 cores for all of 15 seconds, before hitting 90C and throttling back down to 2.3GHz.

 

Hi,
I am considering buying this laptop, and haven't seen any reviews like the rest of you, but Windows Central finally posted this, so expect a legitimate review coming shortly: https://www.windowscentral.com/dell-xps-15-2-1-vs-hp-spectre-x360-15

Also, I was looking at configs at HP's website and noticed that when you have Vega selected, Bluetooth is 4.2, but when you have the MX150, Bluetooth is 5. Not a deal breaker, but just something I was wondering about if people could look at if they have the Vega.

One last thing, has anyone tried using VR with this? Something like a Vive or an Oculus, because this should be plenty capable, but I'm not sure about thermals. I know that the Vive Pro has a minimum of a 1060, but wasn't sure if anyone has tried pushing those limits with this or similar GPU.

Thanks

 

If you need Bluetooth 5 so badly, just purchase a dongle off eBay or Amazon.

The Vega M GL performs similarly to a 1050 TI I believe. VR requires a gtx 1060 as a bare minimum, so I doubt if this laptop could handle it.

 

Okay thanks, I actually didn't know those dongles existed. Was mostly interested if this was just a mistake on HP's website or not.

But for VR I have read that the recommended gpu for the Vive and Occulus are a 1060, but a minimum is a 1050 ti, so i figured this might be just good enough, but was just wondering if anyone had tried it

 

Here is some more for you at stock voltage.
From XTU

Spoiler

Spoiler

It also hit Power limit throttling a few times.

Firestrike

Spoiler

 

HP Spectre x360 15.6" Vega Unboxing and Initial Review

 

Battery life at 4k is pretty bad, at least for the type of work I do. I put it on 50% brightness and it lasted 4 1/2 hours before I got to 10% and it told me I might want to plug in my power.

My work involves being on the internet the whole time. A lot of page refreshes and running two scripts that are constantly checking every two seconds for new work. Also, browsing Twitter and watched 2 or 3 short youtube videos. If you aren't online constantly and run at maybe 1080p you can probably get better. I get a lot better just watching movies at 4k from my ssd at 100% brightness. It says it will take 1 hour to fully charge so that's pretty good. The fan also picks up a lot when it's charging.

 

Unboxing and benchmarks

 

I don't think anyone addressed this question, but the turbo is hitting 4.1 GHz on the i7-8705G. But you are right that thermal throttling is kicking in a lot, but with a max default set to 100 C or so it seems.

 

Look at the multiplier for 4 active cores:

 

Sorry, I am newer to this stuff. It is 37x by default and you appear correct that the 4 core tops out at 3.7 Ghz.

 

Why does it show 4.1 on all 4 cores in HWMonitor? That's from Firestrike and undervolted -0.135.

Spoiler

I think it is showing that in XTU because that's what the default was. You see I can change it to 41 on all 4 cores.

Spoiler

 

If you check HP Support Assistant there are several new drivers including Vega graphics and Intel graphics.

Spoiler

 

Well, I may end up sending this back. I tried some Civ 6 after installing new drivers and got several blue screens. I rolled back to the original driver and still got a blue screen: Whea Uncorrectable Error. I looked it up and it seems to have something to do with cpu voltage. I reset the undervolt to 0 and Civ 6 runs fine but the temps hit 97c and the fans are running hard.

 

Whenever you undervolt you need to run prime95 for at least 1 hour to make sure your system is stable. I believe your undervolt was -135 mV? If this is the case, set the undervolt to -120 mV and your system should be stable.

 

With the new drivers, are battery life and thermals better? Hopefully these issues were just because of the drivers

 

Don't know about the battery but thermals aren't better. This is with a -0.100 underclock which is the most I could get stable with Civ 6. These temps are from Civ 6.

Spoiler

 

Wow thats so weird.

 

Reducing the undervolt until you don't get the error, but get some benefit to undervolting would work, and see if undervolt ends up being enough to reduce temps, rather than give up completely

Do the controls via AMD or MSI Afterburner allow undervolting the Vega GPU? The CPU, iGPU and dGPU are all sharing cooling right next to each other, so if there's something to do for all three to undervolt in combination may be needed.

So goes the cutting edge of technology, new drivers and tuning details will help, maybe someone has posted something to help?

It's a pretty nice kit, so perhaps give it as much time as you can before returning, even call where you got it and explain you'd like to extend the acceptance time to give it a full shot at success, it's worked for me in the past.

Good luck

 

@Atma Are you willing to repaste the laptop? That should reduce temperatures by 10C or so. Along with the undervolt, you should be able to get the CPU temperature into the high 70s. If you're not willing to repaste the laptop, you might want to disable the turbo which will reduce temps drastically. Four cores and eight threads at 3.1GHz should be enough to run any game without problems save perhaps the Amiens maps in Battlefield 1.

 

Thanks for trying to help. I decided to return for refund and already have it boxed up with an RMA. If I had just bought it for media consumption it would be great, but for that I could get one cheaper I think. It is also a little big and heavy using as a tablet. I really do like it but I think I will just wait and see what else is coming down the pike. I think a 14" would be better for me and I'll just stick to games on my MSI 1070 laptop.

 

I have been using a laptop cooling pad today and turned off short turbo boost as well as set the maximum processor power to 99%. I am getting Rise of the Tomb Raider 1080p on high reaching temperatures in the high 80's for package temperature instead of a near constant 97. I am going to undervolt today and I think that should finish reigning this laptop in for gaming. For all other purposes it seems terrific so far.

Does anyone think having tested it for a few hours at very high temperatures warrants processing an exchange or getting it looked at by their repair people? I am worried I might have done some damage.

 

You'll be fine. That's why it throttles at high temps to protect the hardware. I had mine at high 90's and 100c many times.

 

Wow! I just shipped the laptop back this morning and already received the refund.

 

Does anyone use their new HP Spectre x360 15 with i7-8705G for digital audio (for example Cubase 9.5)?

I would dearly like to see the following benchmarks:

(1) LatencyMon ( http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon);
(2) DAWBench DSP 2017 and DAWBench VI 2017 for Cubase ( http://www.dawbench.com/benchmarks.htm; see the left-hand column for downloads).

A free 30-day trial of Cubase Elements can be found here: https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/steinberg_trial_versions.html#c362260 (the trial of Cubase Pro would be better, but it requires that you already have the appropriate Steinberg USB e-Licenser [dongle] and if you don't already have Cubase you will not have the dongle).

If someone is able to do those benchmarks on the new i7-8705G-equipped Spectre and post the results, I would be absolutely thrilled and very grateful.

Thank you.

 

I had my HP Spectre x360 with Radeon Vega graphics for 4 days and had to return it. It kept getting extremely hot (hot enough you can’t hold your hand to the top of the case for very long). When it got that hot (which usually took about 30-45 minutes) programs like DaVinci Resolve would start to lag really bad. Trying to play Civ VI is difficult when it gets hot because of lag. I assume because of thermal throttling. It would also crash constantly giving me error messages. I made a video about it, discussing and showing what it was doing. It’s on my YouTube channel. I can link to it if it’s not against the rules here.

I wanted the computer to work because it was so nice! I loved the look of it. I was concerned it was a design flaw with thermals not being able to be regulated. I ended up just ordering a XPS 15 from Dell.

 

Hey guys, I'm new here but wanted to give my input

I've been reading this thread since it started as I have been considering buying a Spectre X360 for the last 6 months or so. I only held off on buying one as I knew the upgraded graphics were going to be implemented in the next iteration. After having placed my order, I became slightly worried when I read some people's reviews about the machine overheating and having too much fan-noise. However, I held off and have been using my new laptop for the last two days. Having used a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years or so, I am finding it slightly tricky getting used to a Windows OS again. BUT...

I purchased the 15" model with i7 8705G processor 1TB SSD, and Vega M Graphics. I mainly use my laptop for 4K video editing my GoPro videos, running about 20 browser tabs simultaneously, with 4 or 5 of those streaming 1080p video and live chat feeds. At the same time, I always tend to have a live financial trading platform running in a separate app, Skype, email constantly updating, and sometimes even YouTube playing in the background. I don't really use laptops for gaming, I have consoles for that purpose!

OVERHEATING has NOT been an issue thus far, thankfully. The fans are EXTREMELY quiet, and they seem to do an amazing job at keeping the laptop cool. I regularly move my hands around trying to find some heat, I test all areas of the base, the screen, keyboard, but can honestly say I have never found it to be warm!

Performance so far has been really impressive and I am somewhat delighted with how everything runs and feels on this machine. The build quality is second to nothing I have encountered before, and contrary to what other reviews have said elsewhere on the web, the trackpad works flawlessly for me. I have compared the display brightness and colour quality also with my old laptop and the difference is HUGE! White tones are really white and bright and the 4K display makes all the text crisp and pop out from the screen, almost.

The only negatives I have found so far is that it is slightly more heavy than my old 13" MacBook, but that's a given considering the X360 is sporting a 15" screen, quad speakers which sound awesome and the keyboard has an added numpad. The numpad is of no use or interest to me, but I can see how it might be for some people. Still, transforming it into tablet mode... it's not TOO heavy, the 15" is a nice size to use and the weight doesn't cause any discomfort when I'm resting it on my knee.

The Spectre X360 came with a tilt pen which I have found incredibly responsive, easy to set-up and use. I have already found myself tending to scroll pages by touching the screen with my fingers, may sound weird, but having used iPads quite a lot in the past... it's something I always used to wish I could do on Macbook Pro, and on the Spectre it works a real treat!

If you guys have any questions, feel free to let me know!

 

That’s great that yours is working well. I may have just gotten a bad device? Makes me wonder. If I knew for a fact that was the case, I would have ordered another one. But HP Customer support/tech support was no help and didn’t even try to trouble shoot it.

 

I think it is obvious that playing games gets it hot, but for business use with some graphics editing, etc., it works just fine.

The review above said the same thing, really. These are still not gaming machines...

I am going to wait until they have BT 5, and have this available with a simple 1080p so I can get better battery life. For my personally needs, I don’t require a 4K.

R

 

Will they make a 1080p version though?

 

I don’t think so. I don’t think they had a 1080p version in the last model. You could go with an XPS 15 2 in 1 with a 1080p screen.