***The Official MSI GT80 Titan Owner's Lounge***

I didn't think about one thing. The system is installed on RAID0. I don't think I can just put it in a new computer, turn the RAID on and voila. That RAID will be lost. Correct?

 

I have done it, but I don't think you can count on it. I'd do a full backup, and then try it.

If it picks up on the RAID relationship in the BIOS, go into BIOS first, then it might work, don't change the BIOS settings to build a new RAID0 or it will redo the relationship and wipe the data.

It's worked between different units of the same model, but not sure across models / versions. It's worth a try

 

Thanks. I'll definitely try it. I hope this new chipset has a little better support for NVMe. It was quite a PITA on the old one. (I mean setting up RAID on boot drive)

 

I use Macrium reflect to clone the primary ssd. so if there is an issue, I can always boot off the clone ssd

 

I have a GT80 2QE of the signature, it is possible to install a 1070 or 1080, someone already managed to make this exchange?

 

@grinna

A 1080 is completely absolutely impossible. Even if you molded your own customized heatsink and VRM sink and the mainboard actually managed to POST with the 1080, I doubt that system would allow 200W directly through the MXM port and I don't think there is an auxiliary power connector either. Even if the magic smoke didn't come out, you got the system to POST and got a modded driver on, the EC would horribly throttle you as there is no allowance for 330W of AC power on that system (the MSI 1080 is a 200W card). Without a pre-programmed 330W power ID in the EC RAM (Embedded controller RAM space that is visible to windows), there would be no way to bypass it like you can for a TDP modded GTX 1070 on a GT73VR or GT75VR.

A 1070 "might" work, but you would have problems with the strange MXM card build of the 1070 and those tab protrusions, even if the VRM and RAM layout is compatible with a 980M's existing heatsink. A A MSI 1060 absolutely would work, as this seems to be the only fully standardized card.

 

Exiting SLI from 980M to a 1060 only, would it be worth the investment or will I lose a lot in performance? is there 1060 SLI in notebooks?

 

No 1060 SLI, Nvidia made sure that wasn't an option on the desktop or laptop.

Going from the 980M SLI to the 1080, here are Fire Strike scores for the GT73 7820HK + 1080 and GT80 SLI-263 5950HQ + 980m SLI:

GT73 7820HK + 1080
Total Score: 18,706
Graphics Score: 24,574
Physics Score: 13,908
Combined Score: 8,229
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/13826005

GT80 SLI-263 5950HQ + 980m SLI
Total Score: 15,911
Graphics Score: 21,345
Physics Score: 13,681
Combined Score: 5,972
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/5708173

Of course, when SLI isn't enabled for an app or game, the GPU scores will drop by almost 1/2 (few things scale in SLI 100%).

So a 1080 is only a little faster (about 15%) than the 980m SLI for situations where SLI is supported and scales well.

I'd go for at least a 1070 or a 1080 in a laptop to get the same experience, leaning toward the 1080 from my experience.

Or, build a nice AMD Ryzen 2.0 desktop, and wait for AMD / Nvidia to release their new mobile GPU's.

 

Do you live in the US or UK? MSI has an upgrade program to let you trade-in your 980m SLI for a selection of GT model laptops with Pascal GPU's. And, you can then upgrade again to whatever Nvidia puts out next.

That's the best deal, I wouldn't waste time trying to hack a nice GT80 to get Pascal MXM card upgrades to work.

If you can't get the MSI Trade-in deal in your country, then sell it and get something new, with new CPU's and new GPU's.

If you can't wait for Nvidia to put out another round of GPU's for mobile, then at least you can get the new Coffee-Lake 6c/12t CPU's in your new Pascal GPU laptop.

 

In my case, it's not worth upgrading. I find the 980m very fast, it flies.

Maybe later down the road, when 1080 becomes cheaper. Right now it's just not cost-effective. What is wrong with 980m - nothing.

 

In my case the upgrade from 2x 980m to 1x 1080 is really only a minor reason. The roughly 15% performance gain wouldn't be worth the price. However, if you look at it from a wider angle, there are advantages beyond the graphics performance. The whole new chipset with better support of fast(er) ram, the whole new six core 8950HK unlocked processor which should be roughly 50% faster than Kaby Lake one (and probably 75%, if not more, faster than the Skylake 6820HK that I have) and also extended warranty which was running out on my old laptop. I think that's worth the $1500 they gonna charge me for a brand new computer (after trade-in).
Also, the whole SLI solution as not ideal and in order to use the advantages of SLI, there has to be a software support for it, which is by far not general. Henceforth, if I can get a similar performance with one card, I'll jump on it.
But of course... YMMV.

 

I wish MSI would introduce a 4K laptop with a mechanical keyboard.

 

GT75VR has mechanical keyboard and 4k monitor.

 

Please also consider non-4K GT75VR models and compare their reviews, mainly there are many differences between the screens.

 

If you mean an 18" with a mechanical KB, you'll be waiting a while. The 17" Titan has a nice clicky keyboard that IMO feels nearly as good as the GT80's , and 4K versions are already available.

 

I believe the reason why MSI doesn't give 4K option is because Samsung (monitor supplier for GT80 series) doesn't make 4K 18.4" LCD.
And as far as I know, other monitor supplier (Chimei, AUO, LG) doesn't even make 18.4" monitor anymore.
Cmiiw....

 

I run Dell UP3216Q monitor. I am now connecting via HDMI. I would like to connect via DisplayPort to Mini DP that GT80 SLI has.

GT80 SLI has one mini-Display Port while UP3216Q has miniDP and a full size DP.

What's the best brand of Mini-DP to DP cable? To get the full 60 Hz refresh rate.

 

Any of the premium ones that you can buy from Amazon is sufficient to drive a single monitor at 60Hz.

 

Link? Belkin maybe.

 

Interesting. That's too bad. I like 18.4" screens. The 17" they offer is a better screen but smaller - however it comes in 4K.

Not sure 4K is the right choice for it, I wish they had come out with an intermediate resolution like 2560x1440. That would be just perfect for either 17" or 18" screens.

There is no model on the market that is worth upgrading to from the GT80. Not if you want the real keyboard build-in. GT83 is a bit faster including the video cards but not sure it's a quantum leap.

 

Interesting.. the keyboard is different from the full size keyboard in GT80 SLI, less travel. Is it closer to the 'normal' laptop keyboard? Exactly how is it mechanical?

Not sure if the keyboard is worth giving up in GT80 to gain the 4K screen.

The Cherry Mx Brown keyboard of the GT80 has 4mm of travel vs 3mm in this newer SteelSeries keyboard in GT75VR.

https://www.cherrymx.de/en/products/mx-brown.html

 

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...&field-keywords=DisplayPort+to+Mini+DP++cable
Pick your choice.

 

Yeah, I saw that. There is only one million plus 1 of them.

1-16 of over 2,000 results

 

Agree completely. I would love to have seen a big GTX 1080 system with a 1440p 120-144Hz panel instead of having to pick between 1080p and the (IMO) overkill of 4K.

Edit: Or I guess more, I think there's actually one or two this gen that fit that.

 

Pick the one that you are comfortable with, and has lots of good reviews. Can't go wrong.

 

Makes sense

 

I am not having any performance issues. I have the SkyLake edition with 6820HK I believe and 24GB of RAM, dual 980m of course and it flies with everything I throw at it. It's the fastest machine I have ever had.
The one I had before that was a 10 year old Sun workstation with several HDD that took 5 minutes to boot. It was also pretty fast with dual 3Ghz processors. I upgrade when the technology makes a quantum leap, which it did.

Some day it will be obsolete and some day the newer configs such as the one you listed will make a lot more sense. When its prices come down to where GT80 is right now.
Technically what I have was obsolete a year or two ago. But it just runs so nice. Price-wise you can buy a fantastic system from 1000-1400. Or spend $3500 for a very incremental speed increase. Right now GT80 systems are a great value.

It's very hard to notice performance improvements unless you take your machine to the edge with some games or math computations or you write terabytes of disk space constantly. I upgraded the stupid and slow HDD GT80 came with to 1TB SSD and it flies. At that price range, it shouldn't even come with a HDD that was obsolete years ago.

I also broke the RAID0, installed larger capacity SSDs which made it a bit slower but more reliable. I mirror the drives.

 

I will check that it's disabled. A good thing to know.

 

The 1TB HDD that came with GT80 is:

HGST Travelstar HTS721010A9E630

Has anyone not replaced it with an SSD? How has that been holding up over the years?

 

You can replace it with SSD if it's within your budget.

 

I replaced it with a Samsung 850 a year ago, the 1TB model. Am thinking about upgrading to the 2TB Samsung 860 Pro model. It's 600 more or less and is coming down slowly.

 

That's fine as it's fully compatible.

 

I replaced the RAID'ed Toshiba SSDs with a 1TB Samsung PM951 but my boot times are less than impressive. I boot in about 35 seconds. I thought the SSD was supposed to be faster than that. I've heard of times as low as 10-15 seconds. So what is preventing faster boot times?

BTW IIRC, the RAID, when I had it, was not any faster.

 

The PM951 isn't that much faster than your Toshiba SSD, but the OS should boot in under 15 seconds. Try not to do the RAID though for verification purposes.

 

Try a single M.2 SATA boot time, the RAID and NVME have post time startup delay's.

Before that, try disabling Hibernation, that will disable Fast Startup - which slows things down caching files initially and whenever new installs happen - and disabling Hibernation also removes the hidden hiberfil.sys file which is in C:\ and the size of RAM.

Start a cmd window As Administrator:

powercfg /h off

Then reboot.

I also disable VM / pagefile which removes the hidden file pagefile.sys on C:\ (and other volumes with a pagefile defined).

Check your boot time again.

 

There is no RAID involved. I un-did the configuration I got it in. The Toshiba SSDs have been replaced also.
The boot drive is mirrored weekly to the secondary boot drive. A bit slower but more reliable.

But before I undid the RAID, I don't think the boot times were any faster than what I have now, with a single PM951 1TB.

 

I do see that the SM961 is 3 times faster than the PM951, in sequential reads:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/10168/samsung-shows-off-sm961-and-pm961-ssds-oem-drives-get-a-boost

 

Disabled hybernation.

Still 30 seconds from the time I push the power on to login prompt. Not bad really but I don't get it how some get 10 seconds.

 

I will try it with the paging disabled.

https://www.howtogeek.com/126430/ht...-windows-page-file-and-should-you-disable-it/


Edit: No change. Still at 30 seconds.

 

.

 

So, earlier this week I was on my computer. (gt80 2qe 033us) I left it on and went in the kitchen to cook. It was just on standby on the desk, not running anything. I came back a few minutes later and the computer was off and it refused to boot. Nothing.

I unhooked the ac adaptor and waited.
Opened the laptop and disconnected the battery, pressed power for a minute to discharge any potential static buildup, left it there for an hour and tried again..
Nothing seems to work.

I noticed that when I plug the ac adaptor to the wall outlet, the green light on it lights up, but as soon as I press the power button it goes dark. It doesn't seem to charge the battery either but I can't really tell since the computer won't boot.

So my theory is that the ac adaptor failed and then the battery discharged which is why the computer closed...
MY extended warranty just expired last month (sh*t) and I sure as hell hope that my 5000$ computer is not fried..

If anybody had his AC adaptor fail, can you tell me if the symptoms are similar? I just feel that it's weird that the green light on it still lights up but then closes when I press power and stays that way until I unplug/plug it back in the outlet.

I unplugged everything yesterday and I'm gonna try again after work, I'll get a voltmeter and try my luck too.. We'll see.

 

MOST of the time I've seen the AC adapter power off when a laptop is turned on, is due to a short in the video card or some video card or motherboard failure, that triggers protection in the PSU Unit.
However this isn't 100%--the AC adapter can also automatically power off when it's overloaded--e.g., drawing more than 280W directly from the wall, with the Delta 230W PSU. A faulty AC can indeed power off if something is broken inside, but this happening when the laptop is turned on can only be a catastrophic failure, since a laptop at POST will only draw about 50W before it even gets to BIOS.

 

That may not help boot times:

HDD Vs. SSD Vs. NVMe M.2 - Does a NVMe Drive Help Boot Times?
Tech YES City
Published on Dec 1, 2016

Spoiler: Details...

Today I perform a heap of real world benchmarks (like booting Windows 10, launching Battlefield 1), where I start testing a hard drive vs a ssd vs a nvme m.2 to see what the differences are between these three choices of disk drives, I have a WD 3TB Blue (5400RPM, and yes a 7200RPM will be faster, but not by whole lot to make these benchmarks different) Vs A SSD Vs. a NVMe M.2. Even though the synthetics showed a massive difference, the boot times of games and also the OS showed virtually no difference, and it was here that I thought that most people are not going to really benefit from going from an SSD to an NVMe drive, unless of course they are trying to save time on productitivty workflow (like Adobe Premiere Pro for example).

**Note - There are different types of m.2 drives, m.2 drives that work via pcie and m.2 drives that function like a standard sata 3, and if they are the latter than they will be capped at 6gb/s and cheaper (roughly 550MB/s real world). Be mindful of this when purchasing an m.2.

Though of course there is a big difference between a sata 3 SSD and the HDD, and although you won't gain FPS in games, you will save a lot of time and you can eliminate some stuttering if your HDD is busy in the background.

Here are some cheap options for SSDs if you want to use them as a boot drive (the 4k reads are much faster, which is very important for speeding up everyday use).

Gaming use...

NVME PCIe SSD vs. SATA SSD for Gaming, Tested!
NCIX Tech Tips
Published on Feb 28, 2017
NVME SSDs are a relatively new, fancy form of storage, but does the technology benefit gamers in any way? Come with us on a journey of discovery.


Both:

NVMe vs SATA SSD vs HDD - Game load and file copy times tested
TechyTalk
Published on Dec 4, 2016
Samsung 960 Evo vs SATA SSD vs HDD: A comparison of benchmark speed, file copying, windows boot and game load times for an NVMe SSD, a slower SATA SSD and a hard drive.


Compared against Intel Optane Storage (not cache)

The fastest SSD for gaming, and one big problem..
Linus Tech Tips
Published on Jan 24, 2018
Intel Optane promises theoretical latencies up to 1,000x lower than NAND. Could it possibly live up to such a lofty claim?

 

Let's put it this way, what boot times are others getting with the GT80? Both with the default RAID and non-RAID'ed setups like mine?

I put a 9 second delay choosing which drive to boot off and subtracting that, I am at still at 29-30 seconds. Which is not bad at all - I am not complaining, my last machine booted in 4.5 minutes. But I don't understand how others are getting 12 second boot times.

 

Not going to watch that without an 'executive summary'

 

Do you have link(s) to those boot time posts?

BIOS load time is in the seconds range, 12 seconds is too long for a normal boot:
https://www.howtogeek.com/265623/what-is-last-bios-time-in-the-windows-task-manager/

Media in the optical drive, recovering from a crash can slow that to around 12 seconds in BIOS post time, but 12 seconds is too long for a regular boot:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/10109641/

That might be what they are seeing / quoting.

 

There are benchmark runs set up to test performance between HDD, SATA, NVME drives in Windows boot, game loading, and file copying. Just like the titles indicate...

 

OK, sounds interesting.
Will engage it shortly.

 

If 12 seconds is too long for a normal boot, what is the not-too-long boot value in terms of seconds?


BIOS load time is in the seconds range, 12 seconds is too long for a normal boot:

 

The answer is right there in my post...this link I gave to a previous post with my GT80 results:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/10109641/