Gaming with the 4K G-Sync

I've been tempted to get a p870dm with a 4K screen, but thought I'd have to settle for the 1080 screen since it was the only one to support g-sync. But now that there's this great news of 4K g-sync screens, I'm very tempted.

My main concern at this point is frames per second at such a high resolution. From what I've read, even with 980m SLI, I'll have to play with lower settings if I'm aiming for higher FPS, or just deal with with lower frame rates in the 30-60 range with high settings. Any current 4K p870 owners care to share their experiences? Also, what's the response time for the p870 4K screen and how bad is the input lag with g sync on?

If only we had more info on when a p870 with 980 desktop SLI might be released... That would help with the FPS quite a bit.

Also, please no discussion on whether you need 4K screen or not. I know 1080 is good enough, but after seeing how much better higher resolution looks, even in a smaller form factor, 4K is definitely something I'd want in a gaming laptop eventually.

 

This can be a useful guide for seeing frame rates on graphics cards from a community. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

Looks like even the 980 SLI can struggle with 4k and decent frame rates (depending on the game) at least you could scale back to 1080 on the games that couldn't get a high enough frame rate.

 

HIDevolution now have the P870DM-G with a 4K Screen and GSYNC support with a free upgrade to the Prema BIOS/VBIOS you might wanna check them out

Also, if you email them with your config telling them you are an NBR member, they will give you a small discount

 

Thanks for the link! Very informative, although makes me wonder if I should just hold out for pascal if I really want a better 4K experience. Sure I could turn down resolution, but that doesn't always look the greatest. I remember an older laptop of mine that had 1900x1200 resolution and I frequently had to turn down the resolution to get better frame rates on a nvidia go 7900gyx 512mb. It worked, but the different resolution always brought a level of blur/distortion, almost looked a little washed out. Not sure if that's common or specific to older screens.

 

Thank you for the heads up. I've read your posts about your positive experiences with HID. I'd rather buy from HID than Eurocom, even though HID gets theirs from Eurocom. Eurocom has been incredibly slow in responding to me with other issues, and I would trust HID acting as a middle man as I'm sure they communicate more with their partner vendors. I've been waiting for over two months for Eurocom to send me the latest p170em bios and 980m vbios and I keep getting the run around. I've called and emailed. No one responds to email and when I call I get told "We'll look into it today" and then no response.

 

1) When buying from HIDevolution, you can go the the vanilla Clevo P870DM-G or ask them to order a Eurocom branded one. It's the same although I would suggest getting the vanilla Clevo P870DM-G for faster shipping to you, and now they have their own Prema BIOS so no more waiting. I have tested their Prema BIOS and it is even newer than the Eurocom one, the Eurocom one I had was Prema BIOS v1.3 while the HID one is Prema BIOS v1.5, changes are updated CPU Microcode and support for 4K Screens GSYNC in the 1.5 version

2) You will not have to pay $200 USD extra for the Prema BIOS/VBIOS with HIDevolution and your warranty would still be honored

Don't forget to read about my great experience dealing with them:


HIDevolution - The Best Company I ever dealt with


HIDevolution's Warranty!

 

Yeah 4k is doable with 980m sli or a 980, but to truly max every game your gonna need fury x crossfire or 980 Ti sli.

 

All Partner Shops have the same Prema Mod base revision...

 

G-sync helps, especially in slower titles.

 

This begs the question, wait for possible desktop 980 SLI p870dm, or wait for Pascal? There is no good answer since we don't know if/when those will happen...

This is why I might be okay with 980m SLI for now. I just have such an aversion to v sync's drop to 30 or worse, so maybe g sync would be fine.

 

If you don't want to wait you could look at the MSI GT80 Titan with GTX 980 SLI.

 

I've thoroughly checked that thing out, and, while impressive, I'd rather hold out for a possible clevo machine that does the same. There are a few things about it that really irk me.

The battery boost "feature" sounds like it would be a big problem. I often do long 6+ hour gaming sessions, and with the GT80S 6QF the battery boost runs out after 4 hours (from what I've read), leaving you with throttling/lower clock speeds and a low battery. I know most people don't game as long as me or they take breaks, allowing the battery to recharge. But this seems like a silly thing to have to worry about on a $4500+ laptop, and I actually use my laptop unplugged often, and wouldn't want to worry about a dead or partially empty battery after a gaming session. What MSI is doing here is taking the "Desktop Replacement" term to a whole new level by removing some of a laptop's mobility. Sure, not an issue for many because they leave their DTR laptop in the same place for the most part, but it's a deal breaker for me. My laptop goes with me pretty much everywhere everyday and I depend on that mobility. I wish MSI would just make a bigger power supply or allow for power supply daisy chaining like with Clevo. This would also be great as there'd be headroom for overclocking, the possibility of a desktop CPU, and no more concern about battery boost.

Plus that keyboard looks to be in such an awkward position all the way up front and to the left. There's nowhere to rest your palm and it looks terrible from an ergonomics standpoint. You're going to have your wrist in such an awkward position, which is especially bad for anyone that uses a computer as much as I do. Even if you use that wrist rest that I believe comes with the GT80, your hand will rest with your wrist angled downwards on the wrist rest and fingers elevating upwards, which is still bad ergonomics. Plus having to bust out the wrist rest all the time is kinda funny and sad at the same time. And you'll be forced to position yourself further away from the screen with the keyboard that much further forward, almost defeating the point of getting an 18 inch over 17 inch screen. And I use the numpad frequently and many GT80 owners have said that little touch pad on the right doesn't cut it. Complaints aside, I love the idea of a mechanical keyboard in my laptop and I'm glad MSI brought this to the scene.

Oh and the screen on the GT80 6QF is good but doesn't seem that great from the reviews I've read and it doesn't have g sync or a 4K option.

 

Yep, all valid points, hopefully Clevo will come out with a new variant with sli 980s.

 

If you hate tearing then it's a huge improvement over v-syncs drop to 30 yes.

 

Just my point of view, but having sli 980 is not really the future. There are very few apps that work with sli profiles, and as I see it, P870 can overclock the GPU, which is guaranteed to bring more to all games and programs, not only to those which can use SLI setups

 

Eh i disagree. Pretty much all major games work fine with sli, I literally can't think of one I've had problems with. BF4, Battlefront, Black Ops 3, Witcher 3, Crisis 3, Star Citizen, Bioshock, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and GTA V. They all work great. And DX12 is making it work even better with its new forms of multi gpu.

Most people who say that don't use sli or haven't in a while. There can be buggy releases, but I haven't had any recently.

 

The one software that I really use abusively and would really need more GPU for cannot use SLI. madVR cannot work with SLI. But this is something you find out only when you try, and notice that it can only use master GPU.

Besides it, SLI could be useful. I have my doubts that any software can use SLI (Photoshop, 3D rendering, video processing which relies on GPU).

Probably this is why quadro does not come in SLI ? (at least as far as I know)

 

quadro does sli. Also sli 980 would still leave you with one powerful 980. I would not recommend like sli gtx 950s for example. SLI makes sense only on high end cards I would say.

 

Ah, then quadro only does sli on desktop, because on notebook variants I had not seen yet a SLI quadro.

I totally agree with that statement. I would, in general buy an expensive GTX980 instead of SLI 965 or SLI 950, because of better theoretical performance. I think that I would come to get SLI only after I bought the best performance single card that my setup can accommodate, and only if I really need more processing power. I would get sli for example, if I had gtx980m, there was no gtx980 for laptops, and I could get 980m sli in the laptop I already had.

As far as I have seen, SLI does not equal double the performance of single, but about a 70% increase in performance, with this number varying across games and their optimisations to use sli.

I also believe that SLI + Gsync might alleviate the problems that were imposed by SLI in the past, with visual artifacts. On second thought, I highly doubt that a GTX980 in SLI would output low enough framerates, even at 4k, to create artifacts.

 

I've been using two 980 Tis without hitch for months at 4k. Performance gains can vary, but are usually very high compared to lower resolutions. Games like Tomb Raider are exceptional at nearly 200% scaling, but 180% is pretty common in most triple a games at that resolution.

 

Thanks for letting me know!

IF Clevo P870 will come with SLI 980 desktop in the future I might be interested, then, especially as I am into 4K.

 

Don't count on that happening anytime soon.

Fortunately a single 980M can still run most games pretty well at 1440p, and there are quite a few great G-Sync compatible options, even panels that can operate at a full 144Hz.

 

This would be awesome, but unfortunately I haven't heard of any plans for this.

 

I am not sure if cooling would be sufficient as it is right now.

On the other hand, if there was not the need of sli connection between cards, I am pretty sure that someone would had bought two 180W GTX980, like those found in Clevo P775, and tested if they would work.

I am not accustomed with the SLI technology, but your day to day 180W GTX980 does not have the ports necessary to just do this, no?

 

I thought the current problem is that GTX 980 has a wider mxm module than normal so they needed the version that was a standard size?

 

I might be wrong about this, but the GTX 980 that is found in P775 should have been the same dimensions as GTX980M cards? Though, I am not sure if the dual coolers on one GTX980 180W would be enough.

If someone has a P775 on their hand, and a GTX980M card, they could chech of they are the same size. It is not that easy to find them both in a photo, to compare.

EDIT::: You are right, the 200W GTX980 is too wide to place two, but nobody tried placing two 180W GTX980 AFAIK.

 

Ah, I thought the 180W card was the larger size.

 

It's interesting to see the differing opinions on whether SLI is worth it or not. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say something like 80%+ are pleased. But there are always a few outliers that can't stand the micro stuttering. I'm mostly concerned about it's usefulness for gaming, not other software, and it seems like most major titles support it so I think I'd be happy. But then there are people, like Phoenix, who had SLI 980m and didn't like it and returned it and went with single desktop 980. Maybe if Phoenix had g sync, the micro stuttering would have been non apparent and he'd be happy.

 

I have been thinking if Gsync could eliminate microstutter caused by SLI. Basically, SLI has it from the way it works, and cannot be bypassed, but I think that the microstutter was only visible at very low frame rates, like under 30fps. I guess that someone has gone 980m SLI should not see under 30fps even in 4k+ultra, no?Gsync might alleviate the problem further though.

 

Oh yeah, I have GSync at 4k. That may be a reason why I've literally almost not even seen microstutter. It's all been fixable for me. I had it in battlefront for a little while, but going to fullscreen instead of windowed borderless fixed it.

 

It is great new for gamers that Gsync corrects the microstutter seen before with SLI setups. I had no idea about this, as Gsync is kind of new, and I am yet to experience it.

 

G-sync simply updates the display once a frame is ready, while it will help smooth things out you can still get inconsistent frame times.

 

Your not wrong, but I have tested with it on vs off, and for whatever reason it is definitely a noticeable improvement.

 

The main reason is that SLI will output frames in an very uneven way, and Gsync does allow you to see those frames without any delay. I think that anyways, as long as it does not drop bellow 50 fps, the delay between frames will be far less noticeable.





Guys!

I wanted to ask about Gsync, because we are in the 4K + Gsync thread. Of those of you who have 4K display, what is the best refresh rate you can get from it? I mean, how much does it actually go up?

 

It certainly should be!

 

Not all that much at all due to the number of pixels being driven.

 

Do you mean not that much stuttering or not that much unevenness.

OP I have an ACER XB271HK, which is incredible but won't OC above 60hz.

 

IF you are satisfied with your current display, that is all that matters!

I was curious especially about the 4K display found in clevo P870DM-G. Because that is the one I am about to order, and I am curious what is the highest refresh rate it can get.

 

I meant that because there are no displays out that go above 60hz at 4k. Yours won't get much above like 63hz tops, its not a thing yet for the most part.

 

I was talking about the overclocking. On seems to be a few Hz at most.

 

I remember that Gsync enabled screens can go until 75Hz usually. Do you think that because this one is 4K, it would not be possible?

Not pure oc for screen, but Gsync max frame rate.

 

Are you talking about on built-in notebook displays? Because there are no 4K ones that support G-Sync - they're all 1080p and many can be overclocked to at least 75Hz. I've even seen reports of folks getting as high as 100Hz out of them.

What do you mean by "Gsync [sic] max frame rate?" G-Sync's max frame rate is whatever the monitor hardware supports, be it 60Hz on 4K panels or up to 144Hz on 1440p and lower ones.

 

Well, the first 4K display with Gsync enabled is this AUO B173ZAN01_0, found in P870DM-G. I was curious particularly about this one what is the highest refresh rate for it. Since it is allowed by Nvidia for Gsync, I guess that it should go a bit higher than 60hz (at least).

I guess that someone who has it with Gsync can shed a bit of light on this question.

 

Yes they just added that 4k panel to the approved list, they are slowly getting there.

G-sync will work to whatever refresh rate the display can manage, though 4k panels don't tend to clock very well.

 

Here's a summary I've seen over multiple threads.

Yes there are now 15.6" and 17.3" laptop LCDs that are G-Sync approved. You can find them on some of the Clevo/Sager resellers now. However, it appears they won't get to 65 Hz on any overclock for the technologies in the panels released at the time of this posting.

 

Yes the controller just can't cope with that pixel clock, every extra Hz is 4x more expensive than each Hz at 1080p and that of course is already at a way lower level.

 

The resolution affects a screens ability to overclock. The pixel clock is way harder to raise at 4k. At stock its higher than 144hz screens. So because it is 4k the clock is already so high it can't get higher than 60hz. It definitely won't get to 75hz.

Also for everyone reading this the Clevo P650RG and RE models are listed with 4k GSync displays.

 

I don't understand this exactly.

Is not the clock controller in the GPU in this case? So 4K will not overclock because GTX980 cannot clock it higher? I mean, for external displays, I know that they have a separate clock controller, but as the display inside P870DM-G is connected through eDP 1.3, it should be able to pull UHD x 120HZ. At least I think so. I am not sure if this remains true for 10 bit, but AFAIK AUO B173ZAN01_0 is only capable of 8 bit colors.

Though, there are no information in it's detailed book about it's max refresh rate.