[Official] Questions for the MSI Rep!

Great, this is from Nvidia:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/pascal-mxm-gpu-upgrades.795169/page-3#post-10321655

My guess is that Nvidia polled too wide a group, when the only group that should have been polled were 970m/980m MXM laptop owners.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/pascal-mxm-gpu-upgrades.795169/page-4#post-10321739

That 1% should have been easily greater than 10%, more likely 50% given the huge performance improvement that could be gained from upgrading to Pascal from Maxwell.

Why spend all that money for an upgradeable GPU laptop and not take advantage of the biggest leap in GPU performance from generation to generation in many years??

MSI, check yourself, you've been punked by Nvidia.

MSI what can be done to correct this situation? Will MSI follow through on their promise to provide 2 generations of GPU upgrades for GT72/GT80 owners?

 

Well I did something and sent a message in the "contact us" section of this site. Now we can wait and see. like I said before "maybe something happens maybe nothing" it only took 5 minutes. Can we all spare 5 min and do the same? A flood of comments on the "contact us" in the first week of the MSI launch may get a response.

 

It's good that you did this, shake down as many trees as you can. If you can find the right person in the chain a well written letter to them can make a difference too. Someone that's higher up the chain that wouldn't get a normal complaint email.

 

I've had to do quite the clean-up in here. Stay on-topic. This thread is for questions for MSI. If you're not posting questions and keeping within the spirit of the thread, it's unreasonable to expect MSI to reply ...

If you want to debate MSI's business practices and otherwise, start a new thread or comment in an existing one.

Charles

 

I was the one that asked the Question to the MSI Rep originally when I was directed here by someone in the GT80 Desktop forum. the Rep hasn't answered then the discussions started. I apologize if I did something wrong. I usually don't participate in forums much except when I need technical answers and don't know the etiquette. What should I do now?

 

Umm I will wait patiently for Geno to answer my original question. I have just read the rules of this forum and see that I am playing in the "grey" area and do not wish to be banned.

 

MSI - in response to that 1% Poll number from Nvidia, a poll was started to see the high end MXM community upgrade choice percentages:

PASCAL MXM GPU UPGRADES
https://polldaddy.com/poll/9501858/

It's only been up for a short time, here are the results so far:

• If only given a choice, I would purchase a Pascal MXM GPU upgrade in an instant! 68% 75 votes
  
  
• If Notebook GPUs stop being upgrade-able I'll probably switch to Desktops instead! 30% 33 votes
  
  
• I prefer to purchase a complete new Notebook over GPU upgrades! 1% 1 vote <== There's the one percent
  
  
• Other 1% 1 vote

110 Total Votes

Spoiler

How could Nvidia have possibly gotten a result of only 1% of qualified 970m/980m MXM laptop owners wanting to upgrade their GPU's??

Nvidia must have asked the wrong pool of people.

 

voted, although I think it may not be helpful...1, 5, 10 or 15% .... for a multinational company would still be nothing.

goodbye guys, and good luck.

 

for the record, or for those who plan to buy even Msi...they just responded:

---------------
Ticket:
980 MXM upgrade to 1080

Content:

Hello Dan,
Welcome to MSI Online Notebook Customer Service Center, and we are very glad to serve you.
We are going to release Nvidia N17 generation products, but for our current Notebook products with GTX 8XX, GTX 9XX graphic cards, a direct MXM card upgrade to the next generation (N17) graphics is not recommended.
The next generation (N17) graphics has huge improvement in terms of performance, thus it also requires different motherboard design/power/thermal configurations.
For the best N17 generation graphic experience, N17 generation thermal module and power solution is not compatible with old generation.
Please buy the whole new N17 system instead of MXM upgrade if you want to experience new graphic performance.
Thank you and have a good day.


Best Regards,
MSI Notebook Technical Application Department

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

I leave the questions to you all:
- If a 1070 (maybe even the 1080) absorbs less than 980...of what solutions are he talking about?
- Different design? From the photos it is clear that the design of the motherboard is the same as the predecessor.
- "Please buy the whole new N17 system"...of course, lol ... sure. Wait! I've it right back here in my pocket...5k euro in coins...I did not know what to do with these, you know...

However, here is what I meant when I spoke of "multinational companies" ... "old" generation, 6 months of life. Meh.
When the consumer...is consumed.

 

Thanks for coming back and posting that, it's much appreciated.

The response doesn't say MSI aren't going to provide MXM upgrades as promised, they say they recommend buying a whole new laptop.

They aren't saying no, they are saying for right now to get a new laptop to get the full N17 experience.

That's very nice of them, but I want to hear when the GT80 980m SLI => 1070 SLI MXM upgrades are shipping. I'll wait till then.

You might give them a follow up email, thanking them for their advice, but if it's all the same to them you'll wait for the promised Pascal GPU MXM upgrade kit to be available before enjoying the N17 experience

And then point blank ask them what the release date will be for that kit, how much it's going to cost, and how to be alerted as to when it's available to order.

Thanks again

 

Agreed and might want to add that pic where they advertise it. just to remind them in case they forgot they took it down and replaced it with that crap about a week ago. I'll send you the copy if you don't have it.

 

Ticket:
980 MXM upgrade to 1080

Content:

Hello Dan,
Welcome to MSI Online Notebook Customer Service Center, and we are very glad to serve you.
Please kindly be informed that the graphics do not support upgrading.
Thank you and have a good day.


Best Regards,
MSI Notebook Technical Application Department

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

 

Escalate to a manager, start the path up the management chain.

The front line first answer persons can't change policy

Did you include the link to the video where an MSI rep voices the details about GPU upgrade support for the GT80, that video is still there in the MSI Youtube Channel, and then there are the print snapshots, send those along too.

 

Download the video too just in case it gets taken down.

 

Just a thought here.....regarding the quote above, it's probably a good idea to take Charles seriously.

 

@MSIGeno
@MSI Myco

We are, it's on topic, this is data gathering for the questions we asked. We are gathering information from questions asked of HQ, so the MSI guys here know what we are hearing from HQ.

We are doing this so that the MSI guys here can field our questions and these puzzling responses back to HQ - like why does it seem everyone in support at HQ has forgotten about the 2 generations of Nvidia MXM upgrades promised for the GT80 and GT72 series?

They can jump in at any point to when they are ready to answer the questions asked, and let us know how to get plugged in to the GT72/GT80 MXM upgrades.

I guess it is the weekend, maybe they will come through for us all on Monday.

(Your post and mine can be deleted, they aren't part of the questions or data gathering)

 

But when MSI answer!? Here the stack is full...and many people feel frouded...

Inviato dal mio ALE-L21 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

It has been the weekend, MSI support is answering our questions, and we are posting them here for the MSI reps to field back to HQ, why indeed does every support person at HQ forget the 2 generations of Nvidia MXM upgrades promised for the GT80 and GT72 series?

Hopefully come the business week the great guys here can work this wrinkle out for us.

Right MSI guys?, you are going to help us resolve this with HQ?
@MSIGeno @MSI Myco

 

I can understand the angst here for having shelled out a lot of money based on a promise of future upgrades. I think there are a few things to consider too.

1. MSI's big problem is that Geno posted here that they guaranteed two generations of upgrades. Now two generations of what? GPUs a la 780m-880m-980m? or just what a current model is capable of? Like the GT60-70 being upgraded? Regardless of the ambiguity, an official MSI spokesperson on here made the claim. MSI has Geno and the other new guy (can't remember his name ATM) to assist the community, answer questions, and tease products. This isn't like a mod saying this. I'm willing to be that NBR would have canned any name that had a well-known manufacturer's name as a part of it (like AsusDave, for example) lest anyone misconstrue their posts as official word from the vendor.

2. For those of us that have been reading about Pascal for months now, we knew that there were going to be different energy requirements as this was an entirely different beast. There has been discussion whether it would even use MXM or go to a new form factor because of it. While it's good that MXM remains, it's important to remember that there have been multiple iterations of it. Clearly, these chips are more power hungry than the 100W the slot can provide - which is why we have the external power connectors on the new cards and the 980. If a laptop doesn't have this, there's really no feasible way to provide the extra power it needs. So I think MSI is right in saying that it would take a motherboard revision. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that nails those that ride the bleeding edge - things can go very wrong.

3. I don't think MSI necessarily set out to deceive people into buying laptops based on upgradability. In fact, they offered the upgrades for the GT72 series, and I think they had intention of capitalizing on that because it adds another way of getting money out of people who wouldn't otherwise drop another ton of cash on a laptop. They may not drop another $2000-3000 on a new laptop, but they may spend $500-750 to increase the lifespan of a current product. Hell, I did that with my GT60. Then reality set in and Nvidia decided not to do a mobile Pascal version. I think had Nvidia kept the mobile and desktop lines separate, there would be an easy upgrade path. Instead, Nvidia went for desktop performance parity, and unfortunately that requires more power. So for at least some models, an upgrade may not be feasible due to the extra power requirements.

4. That said, I think MSI is handling the situation badly. When they knew that Pascal wasn't going to show up in mobile form and that upgrades wouldn't be feasible, they should have made some changes. The problem here is how much could they say without violating the NDA with Nvidia? If they say no, upgrades won't be available because of increased power concerns, then that could cause problems for Nvidia's sales as people think they're heaters. And of course, it would roll down hill to MSI who could face further sanctions from penalties, increased costs, or even the inability to sell Pascal laptops.

I don't know that there was a whole lot that they could do until it was announced. What they could have done is gotten out in front of of it and said something like "Look, we know what we said about upgrades in the past. Unfortunately, due to NDAs we couldn't say anything about the increased power requirements that makes this infeasible. We value you as a customer and have come up with a few options to compensate you as a good will gesture." And then offer a few different options such as a discount on a future laptop, a trade up program, an eGPU chassis that would still allow an upgrade, a RAM or SSD upgrade, or a warranty extension. Something that shows "we hear you, and we're doing what we can to make things right."

Instead, they're circling the wagons and not saying anything, which just fosters ill will and loss of faith in the brand.

Intel learned from this back with the Pentium bug. They downplayed it as not a big deal that it would only affect a fraction of the user base. However, the backlash was so bad that Intel was forced to recall them and now they'll pretty much recall anything proactively that is really bad (i.e. see how quick they backtracked on the 820/MTH Caminogate debacle a few years later).

So here's the bottom line from my perspective: Users are pissed they spent hard earned cash on something that was promised but didn't pan out. They have right to be mad. MSI was caught between a rock and hard place with a promise they made vs the reality of the product they were given to implement. MSI should have had a plan prior to this, but unfortunately, they didn't.

Given these have barely been out a week, I'd suggest chilling for a couple weeks and give them a chance. It's not like they were going to have an upgrade kit immediately ready anyway. I Clevo cards for sale at RJTech for the Clevo P750DM2-G, Clevo P775DM3-G, and P870DM2/DM3, but these are ones for new generation Clevos as well. So no guarantee those would work in MSI like the 980s. And for those prices, I think you could get an eGPU chassis and a desktop card for much less than even the 1070 that's selling for $750 there.

I would continue to push them, politely but firmly with a "how are you going to make it right?" attitude vs. "gimme my upgrade now." I think you'll get much farther with the former than the latter.

 

-The GT72 offered with a 980m was still promoting a generation upgrade.

-The GT72 with 980m I bought was regularly priced at $2300 and was going for $300-$400 over non-mxm counterparts.

I don't see what can make this right other than either finding a way to fit the 1070 in or possibly a Volta 1x60 which should easily fit under the 100w limit ...but such a promise would be hard to trust now.

What else can MSI do?

...give back the ~$350 premium they charged for MXM laptops?

...buy back the GT72 at a price that's fair to the consumer that was cheated?

 

Ok guys I'm not as smart as you but... Can't the power issue be corrected in the upgrade card itself and create special software to help compensate? Maybe the chip won't be as fast or powerful but it will be an upgrade.

 

Thanks for taking the time to make this heartfelt comprehensive response.

It's clear that MSI is handling this badly. Not explaining the situation, not apologizing for failing their customers, and stonewalling any discussion or information finding efforts by many clients that are now contacting MSI, and will contact MSI looking for their promised GPU upgrades.

MSI may pretend to forget, but we all remember, every one of us that bought GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S *knowing* we are going to get Pascal GPU upgrade kits to prolong the useful lives of our very expensive MSI laptops.

For a start, MSI can make Pascal work in the GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S. There is no doubt in my mind that given motivation, MSI can develop a drop in kit of parts that will upgrade from the 980m to 1070, or the 980 to 1080, single and SLI. User installable, MSI installable, MSI approved technical partner, whatever it takes to get it done right.

I don't think it's gonna expensive either. The MXM cards in photo's for the MSI side look nothing out of the ordinary. There should be little to no special engineering to map the new hardware into the chassis we already have.

Clevo on the other hand shot themselves in the foot by making subtle physical and control changes to their MXM cards, which would require more than a simple kit to upgrade. That's their downfall. Clevo will also be paying for their mistake at not delivering on their customers expectations.

MSI's downfall isn't technical, it's a failure of resolve and will. That weakness is showing that we as their customers are not important to them. So we are going to leave them and not purchase from them again. If indeed MSI follows through in this failure to deliver.

The thousands of people MSI is disappointing, causing pain and suffering through disappointment to yet another level of people beyond those MSI directly failed is an even larger group. Family, friends, coworkers that were convinced by their friends and family to buy MSI products because they were "future-proofing" their laptop purchases - keeping them current for another 2 generations of GPU's.

And, there was no ambiguity about the 2 generations of GPU's, it was Pascal and whatever followed Pascal. Since no upgrade kits of any kind were offered to GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S owners within the Maxwell generation - people asked and were told the upgrades would start with Pascal, we are still waiting for that first upgrade kit.

MSI had plenty of time - 2 years of time - plenty of advance notice given to themselves in the way of "knowing they promised to deliver Pascal upgrades" to plan a technical solution as part of their new Pascal laptop builds, to leverage a cost effective solution.

I believe MSI did, and does have solutions ready to implement in the form of upgrade kits.

I believe MSI is trying to weasel out of their stated obligation to us to provide upgrade kits for the GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S because that's the cheating criminal way of business today. Instead of being there for clients, play the numbers and see what they can get away with before coughing up what they promised.

And, that's what we are all here saying, angrily for some - and I don't blame them - that we aren't going to put up with nor accept MSI weaseling out of their obligations to us.

If MSI wants to lose customers, first level, referral level, several layers deep in bad feelings spread out across the world about their lying and faile of commitment to customers, this is how you do it MSI, what you have been doing. Keep it up and say goodbye to droves of previously loyal customers.

And, good job picking the most active evangelical customers in your marketplace, the ones buying the best you have to offer, year after year, and turning them against you.

Asus, Gigabyte, Aorus, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, Acer, Microsoft, Samsung, Toshiba, Origin, Falcon Northwest, and all the other custom shops that source others computers making awesome laptops, all thank you for pushing your laptop customers away and to them in 2016, and for many years to come.

Every one you disappointed, everyone they disappointed because of you, and every friend, relative, and co-worker of those affected will leave you now, and likely never come back.

Please reconsider your actions and please follow through with your promise to provide 2 generations of MXM GPU upgrade's for the GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S.

Will you MSI?

@MSI Myco @MSIGeno @msi

 

And again, see my previous comments.

MSI charges a premium period. There are many factors that can factor into where that premium came from.

Understandable, but good luck with that. Considering the Pascals just came out and many are impatient already, would you be willing to wait another year or so at least for a Volta?

As much as MSI may have wanted to offer upgrades, Nvidia could easily have been on the one to change the direction. Up until this point, there were years or precedent that mobile GPUs were different than desktop GPUs. This is the first time that they're pretty much equal, and that comes with both good and bad aspects. So if Nvidia was the one that kiboshed that plan, what's MSI supposed to do?

Again, see above. There was much more to the GT72 than just an MXM card in it. Even my old GT60 has an MXM card in it and it wasn't selling for a premium compared to other laptops. Would that have been the case, my laptop would have cost $300-400 more, and I probably would have bought an Asus instead. It wasn't even advertised as having MXM - I found out when I upgraded it the first time.

And what is "fair"?

I don't think that's reasonable as you still bought a laptop that has otherwise functioned as it was intended to and used it for a significant period of time. That's like eating all but a slice of a pizza and then calling Domino's to complain it wasn't as advertised. I think some sort of refund refund is reasonable - but a buy back? You're dreaming.

The problem with laptops is they're not nearly as standard as desktops are. While they implement standard hardware, how they implement that varies from vendor to vendor with a lot of proprietary functions in them. That's why Asus is different than MSI and is different than Dell that's different than HP, etc. You're cramming in a bunch of tech into a really small space which already drives prices up compared to desktops. Then on top of that, you have new products coming out that are hopefully upgradable (and most of the time not) that you have to try to make work in that same space. It's not like you can just implement a new power supply and a PCI-E external power adapter and have it work. It's either gotta be baked in from the beginning or or upgrades may not work with the old stuff.

I think had there been a 1080M, we wouldn't even be having this discussion because you can rock it now. But things changed.

I'm not letting MSI off the hook here, but I think Nvidia is likely more culpable here. I'm sure more could have been done on their end like better coordination with Nvidia to know what's coming down the pipe. Maybe the thermals and power were expected to be better or an M line was expected. Who knows? What we do know is that something changed somewhere, and we don't really know who knew what when. We know that Nvidia doesn't really care as they see this segment as a niche product that will buy whatever regardless. And to a degree, they're right. What else are you going to run? Intel? AMD Radeon?

What I do know is if the requirements changed, no company can go back and re-engineer old products already to work with the new just to try to keep a promise. You can work around in desktops, but you're screwed in a laptop.

I've dealt with MSI for the better part of 20 years and I think they're one of the more honest companies out there. Not mistake proof, but I've seen much better behavior from them than I have from others (including Nvidia).

If you're feeling particularly adventurous, try one of the Clevo cards from RJTech and see if it'll work. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Maybe it'll need a mod. What I do find interesting though is I don't see anyone else offering upgrades like Clevo that previously have either.

 

The power issues have been resolved. The power and cooling requirements have been tuned to fit the spot where our MXM cards now reside, with mappings of Pascal GPU level requirements to the previous Maxwell GPU requirements.

There are no special requirements unless MSI made them; and they can map those changes into an upgrade kit.

"You can't get there from here" isn't a valid statement.

The mappings that work, power and cooling wise:

980 desktop mobile GPU => 1080, single and SLI.

980m GPU => 1070, single and SLI.

970m GPU => 1070, single and SLI - 2 or 3 variations based on power and cooling requirements.

GT80 SLI 965m GPU => GT80 SLI 1070 - variation based on Power and cooling requirements.

MSI had plenty of time to work this all out ahead of time, and I believe they have.

For some poor decision making reason, instead of telling people to please be patient and wait till MSI can make the upgrade kits ready, the front line service MSI people have been told to tell us it's preferable to buy a complete new MSI Pascal (N17, what is that anyway??) laptop to enjoy the full benefits afforded.

MSI are trying to get impatient people to spend their money. If MSI still plan on shipping the upgrade kits, they are going about telling those of us that planned to upgrade our existing GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S the wrong way

@MSIGeno @MSI Myco what should we do now? Wait for MSI to do the right thing?

 

Talking about MSI customers MacGyvering a solution to upgrade their MSI laptops - the ones MSI isn't doing right by upgrading - must seem a natural response, but it's way to much to expect of MSI customers to consider.

And, we appreciate the thought.

We paid for a laptop with promised upgradeability, and 2 generations of MSI upgrades tailor made for our GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S.

It's not Nvidia's fault. There is no wild unexpected magic involved in upgrading from Maxwell MXM to Pascal MXM.

The usual upgrade, in fact the one already provided by MSI upgrading the GT72 to a new generation, included a new heat sink, new mounting parts, and new fittings to accomodate the new MXM card in the existing GT72.

That's expected, to get a kit of parts along with the MXM card to make upgrading possible.

If the cards in the new GT72VR and GT73VR and GT83VR are a little different than what is in the GT72/GT72s and GT80/GT80S then MSI can provide adaptation parts to make them fit.

Or, if MSI failed to plan ahead, MSI can re-layout the MXM cards to fit the GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S for the upgrades specifically.

There is no way that MSI isn't technically able to make Pascal upgrades to fit our laptops. No way.

I don't let MSI off the hook technically, nor do I put the blame on Nvidia. MSI knew what they promised and knew what customers expected.

Now MSI, you need to deliver.

@MSIGeno @MSI Myco please ask HQ to follow through on their promises to us GT80/GT80S GT72/GT72S owners and deliver upgrade kits in a timely mannor. Thank you. What do you say?

 

For me, I've been eyeing the possibility of trying to wiggle into the GT80's 2nd gen offering and I try to keep hardware as long as it gets the job done anyway, so yeah ...I can wait no problem.

Well when Dominos sells pizza that fills you up, but you find out later that the pepperoni was full of bullcrap, I'd expect some restitution because I paid extra for that pepperoni.

 

@superguy25

That's the problem with splintering the efforts of getting the promised upgrade cards by discussing fractional restitution, it's a waste of time and dulls the focused efforts of getting what was promised in the first place.

There is *NO WAY* that MSI can't deliver Pascal upgrade kits that will work, we need to encourage them to follow through with their commitment, and not side track the talks with other things.

There is no reason to start settling when MSI is fully capable of delivering the upgrades promised.

 

Guys, this is all nice and gentle. I think if they don't reply in a timely manner it's time to put some real pressure on them. We all paid a relatively high amount of money for our hardware and we need to show them we are serious about it. Yes I'm suggesting an organised legal action idea, just a warning.

 

I agree. I think an up front response explaining why the previous claim can't be fulfilled would go a long way. Some of this, I think is a difference in Eastern and Western cultures. Eastern cultures tend to be very rule bound and rigid. Things are great when everything is working as it should. If things come off the rails, you're really in for it. No is often the common answer when trying to correct a situation. Any resolution is going to come down from the top and be implemented to a T with very little deviation.

Western customer service is often much freer to make a solution right and in some cases, bend or break rules to come to a reasonable situation. That just doesn't happen that often in eastern cultures.

I don't know that they can. I think the GT72S with the desktop 980 is the one that COULD work as it already has the external power source. The other ones don't. MXM slots can only deliver 100W of power. We clearly know the Pascals suck more power than the 9xx series. Even comparing the VR series to the previous generation there's often a 30-50W difference in the power bricks that are coming with the laptops. I think this is more power delivery than anything else (and maybe to a lesser degree, heat). Suppose MSI could get it to work - but it GPU throttled because of the heat and power draw, would that be more or less acceptable than no upgrade?

Most generations of cards look the same, but yet have very different power and thermal profiles.

I'm not so sure it's not technical. Clevo has had a very good rep for a very long time. The telltale will be if other companies can make it work with old hardware. Though it's still early, there isn't an indication at this time that that's the case.

See eastern vs. western cultures above.

To be fair, there hasn't been anything that these could be upgraded to in the Maxwell line. There never was a refresh. And if these were built on the understanding that MXM standard would be adhered to, then ...

Speculation. There's no proof of that. We don't know what MSI knew and when it knew it, and when Nvidia shared info - and also what kind of NDA they put on OEMs.

Time will tell.

And, that's what we are all here saying, angrily for some - and I don't blame them - that we aren't going to put up with nor accept MSI weaseling out of their obligations to us. [/quote]

Maybe they are, and may they're not. This has only been going on a few days, with a weekend thrown into the mix. I don't think they've even had much time to weasel, let alone assess the backlash.

Criminal is a bit much. Actionable at a civil level - sure. But no one's going to jail over this.

And that's the beauty of a free market - you have choices. If MSI doesn't resolve the situation to your satisfaction, then by all means, buy an Asus. Or a Gigabyte. Or whoever.

There have been plenty of companies that no longer get my money for various reasons.

I don't think MSI wants to kill the market for upgrades if it can otherwise avoid it. They're in business to make money, and one way they do that is by selling upgrades.

Hopefully they'll come up with something that works for every one.

 

That's their promise to us, and that's the idea, to give MSI a chance to deliver.

@MSIGeno @MSI Myco

 

I'm not trying to call you out or anything, but are you an electrical engineer? How do you know there is NO WAY that MSI couldn't deliver a Pascal kit? Have you torn the laptop apart and tested it see if it could handle the additional loads a Pascal puts on the system, or what those additional loads are?

I mean geez, even when they did offer upgrades, they weren't available as soon as the cards shipped. That's one of the problems of a "now" society.

I don't know if there's a way to make it or not. I'm leaning toward not though based on what we do know about the Pascals. Saying that they absolutely can implies knowledge on your part that the rest of us are not privy to.

 

So chill and wait a little while to see what happens.

Upgrades aren't going to come out right away. Being that they've been out a week and the laptops themselves aren't terribly easy to get, I'm willing to bet that the priority on cards would be going into moving whole laptops rather than selling upgrade cards. In 2-3 months when the market stabilizes a bit, I'd expect to see some more concrete answers - and hopefully products.

 

What is happening now, is what MSI told their front-line support staff to say to customers contacting MSI about their promised Pascal MXM GPU upgrades - nothing.

No commitment from MSI, asking for patience while the upgrades are made ready for shipment. Which is what we expect.

We aren't impatient in delivery, we are outraged at being told to buy a new laptop instead of getting any kind of commitment to deliver the promised upgrades.

Please stop acting as an apologist for MSI, and either get behind positive action to get MSI on board with their promise, or please stop posting.

Such talk is diluting the effort to get a statement from MSI promising to follow through with their commitment to us.

Stop coming up with excuses for MSI, please.

 

I'm responding to people posting, looking for unity in action, and waiting patiently.

Given the response from MSI isn't what we expected, we are looking for a commitment *NOW* from MSI that they are following through with their commitment to us for Pascal Upgrades for our GT72/GT72S or GT80/GT80S laptops. @MSIGeno @MSI Myco

We don't expect to wait 2-3 months for MSI's commitment assuring us that the MXM GPU upgrades for the GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S are coming. MSI needs to deliver the commitment now.

Do you even have a dog in the fight? Do you own a GT72/GT72S or GT80 / GT80S?

What are you doing here?

We don't need any help working with MSI, thank you.

 

Since when do I have to have your approval to post here? And I'm certainly not an apologist from MSI. I've already said MSI is handling this badly, and I've already explained why I think that. And I've also encouraged pushing this too.

My point is to try to get people to consider all things that may be at happening - and also understanding some cultural differences - which if you understand them, helps make sense of MSI's response thus far. What I see is largely pitch forks and torches. I don't see any "patience" or "positive, unified action" at all in this thread.

I'm sorry if you don't like what I have to say, but then again, I don't recall this being a place where only one point of view is presented either.

My dog in this fight is that I do own MSI laptops, and I was planning on my buying more (though waiting until the Kabies). And how this all shakes out also affects future buying decisions.

I'll continue to contribute, with or without your approval, thank you very much.

 

Hello,

I apologize if this may seem like it is going off topic. But if MSI is really going to be slick about this and kind of slither their way out of commitments, its time to hold them accountable. What I suggest at this point is to file a Class Action law suit aimed toward MSI for deliberately lying and committing to a Pascal GPU upgrade for GT72/GT72S or GT80/GT80S laptop owners which they knew they could not uphold. We could setup a Go Fund Me and find a lawyer with a Technology background.

If MSI will not tell us to truth maybe the United States Federal Court system will make them.

 

You know what I am saying, don't be embarrassed at being called out. I am saying that you are getting in the way of people trying to work with MSI to get them to follow through on their commitment to us, not you.

Those of us comparing notes on responses from MSI, connecting and making it known we are here together expecting a response from MSI.

We don't need someone trying to help us "consider all things that may be at happening". Really??

If you haven't a vested interest in getting a GT72 / GT72S / GT80 / GT80S laptop upgraded, then why are you involving yourself in our communications with MSI, and bothering us with your suggestions?

You don't have the perspective of someone that expects MSI to deliver a tangible result.

You are speculating from a completely disconnected viewpoint, and that's not helpful. Your suggestions are not helpful in keeping focused on getting this resolved.

We appreciate the thought, but please just stop. Thanks, but no thanks, we are doing just fine without your comments, they aren't wanted nor needed.

 

For now I have faith that this is just a silly mix-up of intentions at MSI HQ, and everything will get straightened out and the upgrades will be forthcoming.

But, stay tuned, as I am expecting the MSI guys to come up with a response soon, lets give them time to catch up on reading everyone's posts and communicate with home base, before we go too much further down the path of alternative actions.

Have you contacted MSI yet? Please post any communications from MSI support for the MSI guys here so they can get behind and support everyone going for their GPU upgrade request with MSI.

 

If you can't see how another viewpoint can help, you really have tunnel vision. You continue to pontificate like you're on some crusade that MSI is took your first born, and have yet to provide any tangible evidence that the power issues are fixed, save your word only. And when asked, you have not provided any evidence of it.

Why is it so hard, if you are indeed in the know? Clearly you're not an engineer, or you would have said that when asked.

And yet you keep saying the same things over and over again. Who died and made you leader of the movement?

And you act like I've never had a fight with a vendor over this stuff before or been in forums where the emotion gets all whipped up, people "revolt" and then don't get what they want. By all means, keep on your path and whipping up the emotion. I've been involved with false advertising with a laptop like this in the past. I've seen how these companies deal with it. I also know what I had to do to eventually resolution too.

But hey, you know best.

If you don't like what I have to say, then put me on ignore. Problem solved. But to shut up simply because you say so? Go fly a kite.

 

That's essentially what the xxxM's were. They were optimized for lower power consumption and thermal output but the trade off was performance in the 70-75% range of the desktop equivalent.

The card itself requires a certain amount of power to function. The MXM spec provides 100W of power thru the slot. Any additional power has to be provided by other means. So you're looking at external power connectors to provide the additional power or lower clocks and cores to fit with in that envelope, and thus lower performance.

Up until now, Nvidia chose the latter. Now they're going with the former.

 

@MSIGeno @MSI Myco

This is an update, 2nd day of the poll, with updated results.

MSI - in response to that 1% Poll number from Nvidia, a poll was started to see the high end MXM community upgrade choice percentages:

PASCAL MXM GPU UPGRADES
https://polldaddy.com/poll/9501858/

It's only been up for a short time, here are the results so far:

• If only given a choice, I would purchase a Pascal MXM GPU upgrade in an instant! 68% 125 votes
  
  
• If Notebook GPUs stop being upgrade-able I'll probably switch to Desktops instead! 28% 51 votes
  
  
• I prefer to purchase a complete new Notebook over GPU upgrades! 1% 2 votes <== There's the one percent
  
  
• Other 1% 2 votes

185 Total Votes

Spoiler

How could Nvidia have possibly gotten a result of only 1% of qualified 970m/980m MXM laptop owners wanting to upgrade their GPU's??

Nvidia must have asked the wrong pool of people.

First day results: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...for-the-msi-rep.761676/page-146#post-10321869

 

It really doesn't matter if nvidia "is to blame" for a lack of upgradability. In fact, let's just assume this to be true. It doesn't matter - MSI assumed the risk of such technological changes occurring when they chose to advertise these laptops as upgradable for two generations. Even if MSI answers everyone's questions here by saying "sorry, we wanted to offer upgrades but it's now technologically impossible because of nvidia", even that doesn't matter, because again, MSI marketed and sold laptops by claiming they'd be upgradable. In short, the reason why MSI refuses to offer upgrades is completely irrelevant. They must either find a way to offer the upgrade, or compensate their customers who bought the laptop based on the advertising that their laptop would be upgradable.

Indeed, if MSI does answer your questions by pointing their fingers at nvidia, don't accept that as an answer; push back. MSI should not have made promises they couldn't keep. This is on them, and them alone, to make right.

 

Here's a new MSI rep questions thread, this one is too far gone for us to revive.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-questions-for-the-msi-rep-2.795226/

Charles