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

mason2smart, there are no 1TB SSD's available yet, so maybe have this conversation with them when the 1TB M.2 drives are actually shipping

MSI put in the smallest SSD's to be able to RAID0 them for high speed, but at cheapest cost - they need to keep the price point down.

The first GT80's came with 4 x 128GB M.2 SATA, a more realistic amount of space, but MSI needed to keep the price low while adding better CPU's, so all the GT80's started shipping with 2 x 128GB SSD space.

Remember the 2.5" bay only runs at 1/2 the speed of the M.2 SATA III SSD's because MSI ran out of SATA III connections and used them up on the 4 M.2 interfaces; the 2.5" port is SATA II, max speed 270MB/sec - still nice for a 2TB SSD.

If you are configuring the GT80S with 2 x M.2 SATA PCIe x4 + 2 x M.2 SATA, for now it would be wise to leave the PCIe M.2's as they are, and wait for the 1TB drives next year.

You could put in M.2 SATA 512GB's in the 2 x M.2 SATA slots, but waiting for the 1TB drives would be good there too.

Maybe get a 2TB SSD for the 2.5" bay, and hope for SATA III in the GT80S

 

unityole, what are you running @ 4.7ghz? Maybe watch for power/thermal throttling as you ramp up multipliers, sometimes you can pass the point of best balance of performance - and actually get little benefit at higher clocks, even though you are stable.

The 6820HK so far isn't impressing. It's best effort I have seen is 42x, but thermal/power throttling. As I have said, its going to depend on the cooling / platform for the 6820HK to show it's stuff.

The GT80 might surprise and do a better job than the others reporting thus far, but even so, I doubt 4.7ghz will be met

The problem is, when you start generating that much heat, you are going to need to get it out of the laptop, and the only way is faster and higher capacity fans - larger heat pipes and plates are fine, but the heat exchanger / exhaust fan also need to be beefed up, and until someone develops a "silencer" for that exhaust, it is going to be more and more unpleasant to be around at higher and higher clocks / temps.

I really think the GT80 CPU limit's are already explored with the Haswell / Broadwell and even a TPD unlocked CPU is going to meet it's limit via thermal throttling and at not that much higher in performance than what we already have seen.

That is unless MSI expands the CPU cooling along with the GPU cooling for the 980's.

It will be fun to find out.

Maybe if the stars align and the GT80S kicks ass, I would be interested in moving up, but by the time I figure that out, the GT80s's will be sold out

 

I was going to leave the 1 tb hdd in the 2.5 in bay and add 2 512 gb nvme ssd's. Is the hdd any good? Or should I forgo it and put something else in? Does anyone have any recommendations? My parents saw the 1 tb hdd and were like "you need 2 tb in ur laptop?"

I was thinking of using it to back up the raid partitions.

 

mason2smart, HDD's are really slow... about 120MB/sec Read 105MB/sec Write. Seems a waste to get that high end laptop and hold back on the storage you need, at the fastest performance it can attain.

Making you load all your software on a spinning rock is cruel

You're recovery partition is on it too, so be careful not to reformat that drive and lose the recovery partition.

If you get 2 Samsung 950 M.2 PCIe SSD's, that is a good way to go. They will well outperform the stock SSD's and give you enough space to load everything on the SSD's, and backup to the HDD, slowly

It would be cheaper to get 2 x 512GB M.2 SATA SSD's now, leaving the 2 x 128GB SSD's for C partition, and wait for the prices to drop on the 950 512GB's when the 1TB's come out, but realistically the prices won't be dropping for quite a while, the demand should greatly increase with all the hardware using these M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD's.

I would go for the 1TB 950's when they come out, then you will only be sparing out the 2 x 128GB M.2 PCIe's, and not 2 expensive 950 PCIe x4's.

You would end up with 2 x 1TB PCIe M.2's and 2 x 512GB M.2 SATA drives + 2TB SSD in 2.5", and the 1TB HDD on the shelf preserving the recovery partition, or in an external 2.5" USB 3.0 enclosure to use the extra space for backups.

Games are growing all the time in size, photo's are growing larger, internet speeds and downloads are also growing rapidly. That storage won't go to waste

I think you wouldn't do wrong to get as much storage as you can get - it opens up lots of options, and doesn't restrict actions - and doesn't waste time - uninstalling / re-installing / copying things around trying to get them to fit, which you would be doing with only 2 x 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD.

 

How u clan mod the heatsink?

 

cause right now there are software that is simply too slow for me so i needed high clock. gotta find out how good this 6820HK is, I can prevent it with heat throttling somewhat but if its TDP limited, theres not much I can do unless an unlock bios would help, like it did with m18x r1 and r2. we have option to stop thermal throttling as well as power throttling in our unlocked bios lol, it was amazing.

if you're getting HDD, get the seagate 2TB, or simply go for samsung 850 pro next year for 4TB of storage lol.

there are a few ways, I gotta see how the new heatsink looks like before I make that attempt. probably by ridding off the black stuff expose the copper, solder additional heatpipes for as long as space allows it, we'll c.

 

Hi hmscott
Thank you for your feedback.

I've a Haswell version and it is compatible with this BIOS.
I will try it ASAP

Do you have any news options in Bios Menus ?

 

Hey, im one of the guys with the intel management engine problem. I'm about to RMA it and was wondering, does anybody know how long something like that would take? I know it isn't a fair question, but figured it was still worth asking just in case.

 

I'd say you should assume it will take at least 2 weeks at the bare minimum. In my experience, shipping takes longer than the service itself. Good luck man!

 

hey guys

chances of 980 with 180w type work in this machine? the 200w version pcb is way too wide but 180w seems to be even smaller than older type of MXM 3.0.

according to photo up at techinferno, this is NOT 980m but 980 right?
http://forum.techinferno.com/attach...ounges/16300d1445274347-n16e-gxx_v2_front.jpg
http://forum.techinferno.com/attach...lounges/16301d1445274239-n16e-gxx_v2_back.jpg

 

Can't see the photos...

 

here u go.

 

SizeDrip, it varies, I have heard it taking a week, some 2 or more weeks, some 2 months. Usually a part shortage. Hopefully your problem can be fixed with software and only take a short time.

It's a fair question to ask MSI before you send it, I would ask

 

gloops, yes, good point, all the GT80's share the same BIOS/EC, thus far, so if you have a Haswell CPU you can use the newest BIOS/EC too.

No additional Menu options from what I had with .10F

The flashing is easy. Put the BIOS on a flash USB 3.0 drive, and flash it from the BIOS. That EC flashes from Windows Run As Administrator cmd window. Both went smoothly.

Please come back and let us know how it goes

 

It would be fun if it would fit, we would need some measurements to see if it is possible, If you can get those I will pull out my calipers and see what we have to work with.

 

Hi hmscott,

I've flashed the Bios and all works fine.

But I don't flash the EC.
I see in description : for Broadwell CPUs.

 

gloops, depending on how out of date your EC is, the newest one might have fixes / changes you do want - not just the lastest change for Broadwell only. Previous to BIOS 118, there was a BIOS update for Broadwell only too, which is also included in the current newest BIOS - MSI stack the changes.

I wish MSI would have all the BIO/EC versions from release to current available, and the reason for each release - more details help.

 

115x83mm

 

Testing all of these combinations of cards/heatsinks is going to take a while to sort out :/

 

Majster Got back to me on the Haptics Device! Here are the specs for it if anyone is interested!

 

Is Pascal Coming Out Early?
http://techfrag.com/2015/10/26/mysterious-jm601-gpu-from-nvidia-spotted-on-zauba/

 

anybody know how much the 980 version costs? (aprox is fine) and i was wondering if it will mean that i could upgrade my 980M to 980s in the future or would there be other constraints to making such a switch?

 

I don't see a connector evident, but I do see a number of fastening holes, to me it looks like a daughter card to attach to another host board.

Could be an in place GPU upgrade for a new form factor delivery system - IDK what connector is on the bottom of that card.

Maybe a daughter card for a new high density compute platform; add a bunch of those to a host board that would be used for a compute cluster.

 

darkshade, no one knows, it hasn't been released for pre-order / order yet, so there is no pricing, and no guess is going to be close enough to count on right now.

I would plan for $1000 higher than the SLI-002 - the new Skylake 980m SLI model, so that would be $4399 ($3399+$1000) to be on the safe side.

 

mason2smart, be careful when trying to set up that pre-order for the GT80 SLI 980 - there is no model number for it yet, and the sites that are listing the new GT80 SLI 980m aren't making it clear to prospective buyers that it isn't the one with the 980 cards.

If you aren't careful, you might accidentally order a SLI-002, which is the new GT80 Skylake SLI 980m model that replaces the SLI-263.

Be A God of War - The new MSI GT80S 6QF Titan SLI!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...80s-6qf-titan-sli.783205/page-3#post-10121653

 

Xotic pc said they hope it isn't over $4,000... I hope so too!
Should I go w/ 2x 500 gb msata, 980SLI?
Should I go w/ 2x 256 gb pcie 980SLI?
Should I go w/ 2x 500gb pcie 980M SLI?

 

** FTFY, msata => m.2 sata **

mason2smart, we don't know yet if the GT80S with 980 SLI will allow future GPU upgrades.

If MSI needed to move things around physically to get the 980 cards / power from the normal GT80, MSI would need to make a different GPU upgrade for the GT80S and the GT80, as there would be physical differences.

For now, I would say that for the cost you aren't going to gain enough with the 980 120w cards, but that's without seeing the numbers.

If MSI is going to make it and sell it, it will be faster, but just how much is that worth?

If the real world improvement is ~30%, it would be worth it, but if the real world gap between an OC 980m and a 980 is lower - like 10%-20%, I would just go with the 980m and save the $.

There likely isn't much headroom to OC the 980 SLI with only 1 330w power brick, and it is unknown if dual 330w power supplies will actually work - it depends on if the GT80S will allow more power through from the bricks.

Lots of if's.

I would select a few nice books, or games, and settle in for a couple of weeks and enjoy the waiting time till we know more.

If the $ are burning a hole in your parents pockets, have them make out a Cashiers Check for $5-6000 to you for your "new laptop", and hold on to it until you are ready to order.

 

I think you summed up what I am thinking as well too. I'm optimistic for this to be a really nice model, but don't want to get too hyped on it until we get closer to a release date and more info is out.

 

Are any Nvidia drivers after 353.62 stable now? I've sat on this one for a while as anything else has really not worked well. (constant driver crashes in windows etc).

 

What did you mean by that?

 

My parents don't really want to spend over $4.2k on the laptop - this is why I am hoping the 980SLI will be affordable if I cut back on ssd/ram upgrades

 

Fixed That For You => you wrote mSATA which is not correct, it's an M.2 physical socket, not an mSATA.

 

mason2smart, including tax I think the SLI 980 will be over $4200...

The 980m SLI is $3399 + tax + shipping = ~$3700

That only leaves you $500, including tax, additional for add-on's.

The GT72S with 980 is $500 more than the 980m Skylake GT72 similarly configured. So the 2x 980 GT80 will likely be 2 x $500 = $1000 more than the 980m model.

Add on another $200 for the higher end CPU 6920HQ, and that is $1200 more.

MSI might drop the price a bit due to the poor performance delta between 980m SLI and 980 SLI. The 980 SLI scaling numbers don't look good vs single 980 => 14k vs 20k... should be more like 24k.

Taking that into account I would expect $500-750 more for the 980 SLI - which makes it $3900-$4150 + tax + shipping => $4300-4550 with no additional options.

Once we get the pricing, and better / more performance numbers, the choice will hopefully become more clear

 

Not sure if resellers have tax...
Is the 6920Q really better than the unlocked hk cpu?

 

mason2smart, stock speed of the 6920HQ is 200mhz higher Base/Turbo, so without OC'ing it will perform better out of the box. With OC'ing the 6820HK will shine, but if XTU unlocks the multipliers for the 6920HQ it will OC as well, that might not happen right away - it might take a BIOS update and/or an XTU update.

So far we haven't seen the 6820HK disable/unlock TDP in other laptops, but that might be a matter of BIOS updates along the way. If TDP can be exceeded, then the 6820HK might outperform the 6920HQ - but then the thermal limit's might get in the way.

We don't know much yet, it's too early to tell for sure.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/88972,88969

 

I would love to know the answer to that one too?

$4200-4550 is really steep but I hope it's released soon so we can compare. It still makes me wonder why they are waiting. The holiday season is upon us, you would think it would be more advantageous for them to have the numbers out already.

I also wonder why xotic keeps pulling the GT80 with the i7 5950HQ from their site.

 

probably very few of them are left - MSI discontinued the motherboard in it....

 

Xotic has been having web site issues, moving and losing it over the last week, it might not be a purposeful removal.

MSI is still listing the Broadwell models, and maybe Xotic removes it when it is out of stock and puts it back when they have a shipment... IDK, you could ask them

If MSI doesn't have stock of the new versions to ship, they can't offer them, it might be that they just aren't ready yet... there are all sorts of last minute tweaks / changes / production issues that could be entering in to the delay.

Consider it a relief - giving you enough time to save up that extra $$$ for the 980 SLI version

 

i heard they were still finalizing the specs on them so they may be changing the power supplies?

 

mason2smart, given the less than stellar performance of the SLI 980 numbers shown on the product page, I would imagine MSI could hold it back until they can get a larger power supply made... but those kind of things don't get made and delivered on short notice - it takes weeks / months.

If MSI releases early - before the new power supplies - they could offer to ship one to each GT80 owner later - so we can get them now and bump the performance with a better power supply when it ships. MSI can set up the laptop to accept more power on the laptop side before shipping.

Or, maybe everything is running on schedule and it isn't meant to ship until it ships

 

they could be waiting until Nvidia sorts out all their GPU Driver issues...

Launching a product when drivers don't work right is probably not a good idea...

 

mason2smart, what's wrong with the drivers?, they are working great for me.

Latest 358.50 SLI 980m, no problems, all games are working awesome... on Windows 8.1

 

No driver crash / recovery under windows either? That's been the problem for me with every set after the 353.62's, which is why I'm still on these ones.

 

Quokka, there are lots of people running the latest drivers without problems on Windows 8.1, I don't know why you guys with crashes on newer drivers are seeing those, it sucks. Sorry.

 

Anyone know the brand of the thermal pads that MSI uses on the Titans?

 

should i add ic diamond or stay with stock compound?

 

I cant speak for IC diamond on this particular machine . But I have been usin Gelid Extreme and it has been phenomenal .

 

What were the before / after temps?

 

They are posted somewhere further back in this thread.
let me look.

 

here ya go

and around page 123