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

I sent that up the chain. Hopefully it makes it to the right people.

 

What Nvidia driver versions are you guys using? Im having random freezing for 3-4 seconds and I suspect it has to do with the drivers. The support page for driver downloads on the website lists a driver from almost 3 years ago (ridiculous).

 

Should I use my invisibility to fight crime or for evil?

 

All manufacturers don't post driver updates once products go EOL. Besides, they do encourage users to download drivers directly from their respective manufacturers directly.
Have you tried the one from Nvidia?

 

FWIW, no random freezes with my GT80 SLI.

 

What Nvidia driver versions are you using?

 

Hm, have no idea. I don't remember if I updated it or not. I do regular Windows updates so not sure if it auto updates the driver as well.

 

I de-RAIDed the 2 SSDs that came with the Titan GT80 SLI and for simplicity's sake, have them in a what one might call mirror configuration, the first 2280 SSD is mirrored to the second 2280 SSD, on a weekly basis using Macrium Reflect cloning feature. Thus, if there are issues with the operating system, I boot off the clone and restore data or roll back to where I was a week ago. I find that very convenient.

Now I am replacing the X400 SanDisk SSD with the PM981 Samsung 1TB. The standby drive will be the Samsung PM951 module.

The 2.5" HDD has been replaced by the Samsung 850 1TB although I am thinking about replacing it with the 2TB Samsung 860 Pro.

 

Nice. I distrust raid-0.

 

gotta becareful of that mirror raid 1. if corruption occurs, it'll write to both disk. theres no fail proof and best is always go by manual. manual backup unfortunately also cost time the most

 

You are right. And that is a good point. I do manual mirroring, not instant. I mirror the drives about once per week. thus my data is always out of sync. Which is a good thing, because if there is a virus or a user error and it takes me 3 days to realize it, I still have a good copy.
Technically it's a clone, not a mirror.

 

I scored Samsung PM981 1TB for under $200 yesterday.. Prices on SSDs are crashing through the floor and will only continue to do so.

1.5 years ago I got a 1TB Samsung 850 for $270 and today it's below $200 it seems, in fact you can buy the 2TB model for not much more than 300.

Being this is the GT80 thread, these work very well in Titan GT80.

These days there is no real reason not to upgrade to 100% SSD in your machine.. in fact the 2.5" drive bay is useless since in the 2.5" format SSD, it's mostly empty. So they can shrink the machine a bit by not including the spinning HDD to begin with so you would have not have to replace it with SSD.

 

It still comes down to price, and the 2.5" HDD 1TB is likely $20 in quantities like the makers use, so even a cheap 1TB SSD is going to cost more to build in.

Check on the lowest SATA M.2 prices for the same sized storage, they should be much lower, and in most day to day use the SATA M.2 speeds are not noticeably (to your wall time sensitive sense) different than the M.2 NVME performance.

Also the M.2 SATA SSD's benchmark maximum is slower, but they deliver that maximum speed as a constant for maximum throughput, they don't heat up enough to thermal throttle, while the M.2 NVME will pre-throttle after a timeout before eventual thermal throttling kills the speed completely.

It's not worth the 1.5x-2x price premium at the same storage size for NVME vs SATA M.2.

And, the perceived performance advantage for the NVME M.2 is higher so demand stays higher which causes the price to stay higher, so save a bunch of $ on SATA M.2 or get 2x the size of storage as SATA M.2, and smile.

 

Well said Scott. The extra performance isn't noticeable and most of time a heatsink is recommended to help to dissipate the heat. So unless you are in need of transferring large files all the time, you are not going to benefit much from the entire bandwidth. The other possible practical applications for NVMe SSD is VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) where a large scale of users can utilize performance from the drive, and large database where responsiveness is needed with large chunk of data queries. But these are mainly based in enterprise/commercial environment.
There are several SSD controllers and flash memory now which contribute to many alternatives at lower cost while achieving similar performance.
Let's use 970 Pro vs XPG SX8200 Pro, similar performance, same warranty, different cost, and XPG SX8200 Pro has lower IOPS and half of TBW.

 

It looks like I already discussed this a while back with @etcetera

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...n-owners-lounge.769092/page-916#post-10676722

I'm not seeing "great" prices right now on newegg, maybe it's a lull before Black Friday / Cyber Monday, and the rest of the sales for the Holiday, but it's still much cheaper for the SATA III M.2 vs NVME M.2:

WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s M.2 2280 Solid State Drive - WDS100T2B0B - $134.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250092

Crucial MX500 M.2 2280 1TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT1000MX500SSD4 - $139.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156178

The Samsung 860 EVO SATA III M.2 seems overpriced in comparison...

SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series M.2 2280 1TB SATA III V-NAND 3-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-N6E1T0BW - $180.15
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K6V09510

The Samsung 970 NVME M.2 1TB is even higher, @ ~$100 more than the best priced SATA III M.2's 1TB:

SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 64L V-NAND 3-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7E1T0BW - $227.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147691

Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD - CT1000P1SSD8 - $219.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156199

There are cheaper pseudo-NVME speed drives now that claim NVME but have Write speeds below the budget SATA III drives sustained, and given the weird behavior - not full NVME vs full SATA speeds, I'd stay away from them.

How SSD Technology Keeps Getting WORSE! - Intel 660p Review
Linus Tech Tips
Published on Nov 12, 2018

 

Haha, I clicked it.

 

Server-use SSD.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/del...rrier-s4600/apd/400-atnn/storage-drives-media

https://www.cdw.com/product/micron-9200-pro-solid-state-drive-1.92-tb-u.2-pcie-3.0-nvme/4842978

 

Those are both completely incompatible with the GT80, or any other laptop, and their special carrier / connection specifics makes them completely incomparable in price, performance, and form factor.

You could have instead posted some nice kitty pictures for as much as they were helpful to this discussion.

Spoiler: Nice Kitty...

 

My machine can take one SATA III drive and the other 3 are PCIe NVMe so that is what I install in there.

I don't care about speed as much as I care about TTW rating and the higher the capacity, the higher the ratings. Lately Samsung introduced 2 and 4TB 860 Pro models, SATAIII and also higher capacity with impressive ratings 2280 modules that are PCIe NVME.

It's hard to beat the price of $200 PM981 1TB 2280 module.

 

Yeah, several months ago.. in Internet time that's like 10 years.

 

Actually, you can plug in and use M.2 SATA III drives in the 3 M.2 slots, they are not PCIe NVME only.

 

The 1TB M.2 SATA III SSD's I posted earlier on newegg are $134-$139, that 1TB PM981 is going for $359 on Amazon, and for much more on newegg:

Samsung PM981 Polaris 1TB M.2 NGFF PCIe Gen3 x4, NVME Solid state drive SSD, OEM (2280) MZVLB1T0HALR-00000 - $359
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-PM981-Polaris-Solid-MZVLB1T0HALR-00000

Check the prices of the M.2 SATA drives I listed on that site you found the $200 1TB PM981, lets see how cheap they are there, and please post links.

 

I understand and know I can, just why would you do that? Does not make sense to get such an expensive much and then use drives that are SATA III in PCIe slots.

 

I just explained several posts above that I got a 1TB PCIe Gen3 x4 PM981 for $179 on Ebay's 15% off sale and it wasn't that high to begin with, about $210.

 

Yeah, but you didn't share who you got them from... link to the closed listing, or company store on ebay? And, given the price is 1/2 of what PM981's list currently on newegg, that ebay seller must be selling used or "new pulls", not retail parts with a valid warranty...grey market at best.

 

Because it's a waste of money to pay 1.5x-2x as much for the same sized storage? Because spending 1.5x-2x for PCIE NVME storage for the average / normal use buyer won't show any perceptible benefits in day to day use? Because the high end PCIE NVME drives don't come with cooling or heat sinks, but instead rely on firmware that pre-throttles before they thermal throttle, only sustaining full speed for a short time to win benchmarks?

You can choose M.2 SATA III instead of PCIE NVME and pay the same $ for 2x storage size, or save $100+ / M.2 slot for same sized storage (1TB or larger per M.2 slot).

That's $300+ saved or 2x the storage across all 3 slots, it's a easy choice.

 

Amazon has Black-Friday/CyberMonday sales. Samsung 860 1TB SSD for $128, good deal or not?

I am thinking removing my 850 1TB from my MSI machine and putting it into an aging laptop and then installing this 860 into MSI GT80, in effect replacing the 850 that's currently there.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078DPCY3...a161-63130055b9a5&ie=UTF8&qid=1543123675&sr=1
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM)
by Samsung
4.7 out of 5 stars 1,621 customer reviews | 624 answered questions
Amazon's
Choice
for "1tb ssd"
List Price:$199.99
With Deal:$127.98 Free Shipping for Prime Members
You Save:$72.01 (36%)

 

That SSD has been on sale for $128 for 2 weeks now. It's not new.
I grabbed two of them. One in M.2 format and one in 2.5" format.
They are ok drives. Not NVME speed, because they are SATA drives. The m.2 version still uses the SATA connection. On laptops ,the m.2 version can go in the SATA only slot or the SATA/PCIE combo slot. (NVME drives can only go in the PCIE slot).

 

Then so much the better. I will get one eventually.

There is a night and day difference between using an SSD and HDD based system. Once you upgrade to an SSD, it's hard to quantify speed difference between different brands and variants. I do not copy large amounts of data back and forth so don't really notice.

The thing I care about is the TBW variable, the higher, the better. And it's the only reason I want to get the new Samsung 860 Pro and the PM981, both in 1TB, their TBW ratings are higher than their 512GB variants, or the older Samsung models.

My 850 EVO is rated for 300GB, the 860 Evo is rated for 600TBW, a significant upgrade.

Over the year that I've had my 850, I've written 1.5% of its TBW capacity. Admittedly, it's neither a boot drive nor do I write a lot of data. Most of the time, it's just sitting there and will probably outlive the computer itself. Possibly. Unless I start writing tons of stuff to it daily, which is doubtful.

Still, it's nice to have that large margin of 600TBW and the 860 Pro 2TB model has a stunning TBW rating of 1200 TBW.

 

It's easy to tell between a 30-60 second boot and a 7-10 second boot going to even a modest SSD, same with pretty much any software or file load times, to really see it you have to be doing some major I/O. Not that no one here does it, but I think we overestimate here how much of the performance we expect that we should be projecting onto the average end user's needs when we call something slow.

 

I never got these 30-60 second boots with an HDD, I have no idea what you are talking about.
I always got between 4-5 minutes. I realize I may have had a lot of unneeded junk starting but even when trimmed, it still not even close to 30-60 seconds. HDD time is measured in minutes.
My friends in the "real world" tell me the same thing.

My previous computer was Sun Ultra 40M2 with the fastest HDD you could get, the 15.5K Cheetah Seagate and it booted in 4:30 minutes.

My PM951 got me 30 seconds and I was able to shave off a few by removing a lot of things from the startup but still.

Next, I will install PM981 as the primary boot SSD but don't really expect to see better times than 25 seconds. Again, I don't know where in the 'real world' you see 10 second boots.
By boot I mean to the login prompt.

I have a multiboot configuration and have a 10-second time out to decide which OS to boot from. I don't count these 10 seconds however.

 

My GT73 boots to the boot selector 13 seconds and then the boot to desktop 7 seconds. From my cloned HDD the same OS boots about three minutes...

 

Just to make it perfectly clear, the GT80 SLI edition has 2 PCIe M.2 slots, 1xSATA M.2 slot and also 1 2.5" SATA III slot.
4 SSDs total.

 

I want to get Samsung 860 Evo SATA M.2 2280 for the 3rd, non-PCIe slot. It takes a 2280 but it's not PCIe

 

I experimented with the sleep option for the monitor and it works fine. However, when I freshly booted the GT80 SLI this morning, the two external monitors did not come on at all. Strangely, they were visible in the display section, that is, the computer saw Display 1,2,3 but nothing I did could turn them on. I could not use them. I set the sleep feature to turn off the display after 1 hour. But they were not visible initially upon the boot. I did see just the native screen of the GT80 SLI laptop.

I ended up unplugging them from the computer, HDMI and the Mini DisplayPort cables, removing the power savings monitor sleep feature and all back to normal.

I wonder if anyone has experienced this?

 

I installed Samsung PM981 1TB SSD module - nice.

 

Where is the microphone located?

I was told the sound was coming in weak and I boosted the mike from 60% to 100% but would still like to know where it's located, maybe I need to clean it.
Could it be near the camera?

 

I am unable to boot off the internal DVD drive. The DVD is the first in the BIOS boot device list.
The dvd has a bootable ISO image yet when booting, it skips past it.

The image was made using the very internal DVD drive installed in the GT80 SLI Titan yet it cannot boot off the drive.

I turned off secure boot. What else can do I do? I tried Legacy mode in BIOS instead of UEFI to no avail.

Is there a secret how you boot off the DVD ?

 

Press F11 upon BIOS splash and verify that if you can *see* anything that relates a boot device associated with DVD drive.

 

Already did, the DVD is not there. Just the usual SSDs.

How do I add it?

 

It's not a bootable disc. Can you see what files you have inside of the disc?

 

I did look inside of the disk and there is a CentOS ISO image file.. It's a bluray disk that I burned using the bluray burner in the GT80 so it seems it should work, or is the bluray not supported during the boot process?

 

You have to burn the ISO as disc, but not ISO file in the disc.

 

And how do you do that using native Windows 10 tools? There wasn't an option. ImgBurn worked.
I will try to boot off a flash disk to see if it makes any difference.

 

ImgBurn is fine so you should see a bunch of files when you open up the disc.

 

I created a bootable USB flash drive with Fedora Core and installed Fedora Linux onto the M.2 SATA 2280 SSD I have (not the PCIe one or the 2.5" SATA)

The question is, how do I designated that drive as bootable? I used Bcdedit/bcdboot on the other SSDs but this one has Linux on it, how does the bootloader know how to load it?

 

I like GT80, have had it for a year - no issues thus far.
I run PM981 Samsung, 1TB in the primary boot drive, PM951 1tb and also SanDisk x400 SATA and Samsung 850 Evo 2.5" SATA.
I plan to upgrade 850 to 860 Evo, just because the TBW rating is higher.
X400 plan to upgrade to Samsung 1tb 860 Evo M.2 SATA.

It's so easy to swap SSDs, that's the best thing about this machine.

 

Just in case someone else is interested in this, on my GT80 2QE I just easily and inexpensively replaced my Killer 1525 WiFi card with a Intel 9260.
I now have Wireless AC wave 2 and Bluetooth 5 support.

I got it for $17 from China on ebay. It came in a 'Fenvi' box ( http://en.fenvi.com) so i guess thats the manufacturer using the intel 9260 chipset or reselling them from a bulk order (I would have bought OEM but im not sure Intel even makes a wifi card, they just make the chip?)

Anyways... so the card came and when i first researched this i watched some videos and thought oh man I'm going to have to tear down the entire laptop and take off the heat sinks etc.. to get to this thing. Turns out i just popped off the plastic strip on the back under the monitor and there was the card. Unscrewed it carefully saving the screw, and while pressing down on the edge of the motherboard with moderate pressure i could wiggle out the card and get in the new one. The new one is larger but its quite easy to align with some patience. Just use the screw hole for reference on side to side alignment.

Windows 10 automatically installed the drivers, and the card performs much better and is rock solid. I use to get dropped from wifi from time to time, and my throughput was not as good from a few rooms away. Its been a few months now and still working well.

Finally something on this laptop that actually is up-gradable besides the Ram and HD's. I'm sure it wasnt designed to be, no thanks to MSI keeping their promises about upgradability. This is luck that you can just about wiggle it out : )

 

what is the problem with the default Killer 1525 WiFi card?

It works well. No issues.

 

My GT80 SLI 6QE seems to boot slower now. I have to wait what seems a good 30 seconds before I get to the splash screen. I will time it today. The splash screen comes up eventually but I recall from the time I hit the power button to login was almost 30 seconds.

that's with the Samsung PM981 SSD.