P955ER throttling

No mention of thermals.
No mention of *actual* gameplay performance (is this NOT a gaming laptop, after all) and still that's categorized as a review?

 

This thread has opened my eyes to a lot of the BS that some of these Clevo vendors would call 'normal'.

 

lets be fair, all notebooks in the thin and light category are mostly BS (clevo is the siasterking when it comes to performance tho). Even the aero, cannot really handle its top speeds on very demanding stuff.

They all took a ~45W TDP designed heatsink, slapped a 130W CPU and limited it to 45W TDP at best, while nerfing a 150W TDP card to 80 or 90Watts.

 

Still, eye opening.

You have my gratitude. Some lessons can only be learned once.

 

Going thin and light is a compromise.

Put when a company goes out of it's way to gut it even further it becomes a bad compromise.

Going from 115W TO 90W is a 10% drop
Going from 90W TO 80W is a 6% performance drop
Going from 80W to "this" is a 6% performance drop

Let's not even mention the throttling CPU

We need to drow the line somewhere on how much gutting is too much

 

So, the upgrade tab on the Q6's page stocks the 200W PSU for ~$121.

So, @Eurocom Support : What happens to these that had pre-ordered this unit?

 

lets see what Prema does with it, but in a nutshell I would generally stay away from thin and lights. People are being WAY to fussy about the weight. When it comes down to practical use, if the notebook is 800grams or 2.5KG it doesn't matter, it won't break your arm when carrying it, neither is it really heavy.

that's why I'm sorta excited about the new Asus notebook, which has the same design as the thin and lights but is thicker and seemingly has better cooling.

Clevo itself can be good, if you mod it and don't do ridicolous stuff to it. You can make a P870TM run a GTX 1080 and a 8700K stock @ 4.7ghz with high but acceptable temps, however the amount of modding and lack of support makes you question if you really want to spend 3-5k bucks on a machine that sorely relies on 3rd party support. Imagine one day Prema saying he doesn't want to fix clevo anymore, all hell would break loose, not to mention we are waiting for a proper control center for over 8 years and still didn't get squat. That's the only thing that really makes me never recommend clevo, lack of support from clevo themselves. If clevo would sell actual finished products, then they would have never released this 150W abomination of a notebook.

 

Amen.

 

I need to fix this post, 150W is the standard. 115 is the notebook version nerf, 90W is the maxq half castration nerf, 80W is the maxq castrated nerf, whatever clevo is doing is abysmal nerf.
I would much rather have them do something that runs stable instead of this garbage. I don't want to see fluctuation in my clockspeeds. I'm used to see stable clockspeeds that don't move (maxwell, kepler) (this is also the reason I'm so pissed about my pascal not wanting to flash vBios with my programmer without me buying a new hotair station). I hate seeing that thing go back and forth from 1.7 - 1.8ghz.

I want my GTX 1060 to have 120W TDP which it's designed to run with, not 80. I want a GTX 1070 to run at 150 etc. If they can't do that in a notebook, hell then give us a mobile version. Stop giving us castrated desktop parts, just so you can say "hey look u have desktop hardware in your notebook, huehueheuheu"

 

I've already contacted @Prema about this. But still, at this rate...I'm not expecting miracles out of this hardware.

Why in the seven hells hasn't Clevo hired Prema exclusively for this? The guy knows his stuff! This is the kind of skill you pay to retain! But I'm assuming the wankers at Clevo clearly couldn't give a **** and they'd rather let resellers screw the consumer over, with ******** addons such as Eurocom's "unlocked BIOS" (which they actually sell and profit from on some models). And I'm pretty sure there are other resellers in on such practices.

Whatever "unlocked BIOS" "mod" that the likes of Eurocom offer is a fast (and outright dangerous) mod. Someday, someone will brick their ~2k+ laptop with their stuff and they'll be out of warranty because of such an oversight.

Clevo: Get your **** together, and tighten up on quality control.

 

I recall how the P751DM2-G performed out of the box (by then it was marketed by Origin as the Eon 15-X).

The stock BIOS on it had(has, assuming they never released an update knowing how trashy Origin's support is) major show-stopping bugs.
Bugs only @Prema 's mod addressed, with no regressions. Were it not for his work, this wouldn't be a machine worth using. But now, its' a capable rendering, gaming and programming workstation with no issues whatsoever.

I can understand, and painfully so, the legitimacy behind @Danishblunt 's frustration with Clevo barebones, based on (horrendous) experience(s) with the likes of Origin.

 

115W is the standard for medium sized laptops.

90W is the standard for thin laptops.

Do you think a company is stupid enough to design a 150W cooling system for a 1070N from a company perspective as you can get that sweet "1080" label instead.

100-115W is the area of decent efficiency. The further you go the less you get. Going from 115W to 150W is 10% perf bumb for 30% more heat and power consumption.

Clevo "1070MQ" Is 24% behind a 115W 1070. While a 1070MQ 90W is 9% (razer) and an 80W 1070MQ is 12% behind(MSI GS65)

Add that to to the lack of OC headroom "as the notebook wasn't designed for it, go buy an LGA laptop for that" and you're stuck there with this abysmal performance.

Add CPU throttling as icing on the cake.

The only one who can save the P955 is prema.

 

Because clevo is not a notebook manufacturer like MSI, Gigabyte etc. They only make parts for barebones which resellers can then proceed to use. They don't have the whole fintuning stage like other manufacturers have. You have never seen a clevo branded notebook for that exact reason.

Also for some reason people seem to think I've only had bad experiences with my clevo notebooks and that's not entirely the case. So far my clevo notebook is doing well and works flawless, however I did purchase that notebook knowingly that I will have issues and will have to do a LOT of modding to it, this is what I enjoy doing, other people here share the same "hobby", however I do understand that people cannot bring the time or patience to learn how to mod their system, adding more heatpipes, doing cooling overhaul, writing custom software etc., hence I always seem to hate clevo but in reality I simply don't recommend clevo to people who aren't able to fix it.

@ahmad hendeh Thats exacly my point, they put castrated hardware only to brag about specs which cannot even remotely stand up to the actual hardware running at 100% speed. I hate how the notebook market is developing right now.

 

And unrelated,

Here's how the P751DM2-G performs to date in Battlefield 4 using the auto preset.



That's being played on a widescreen 2560x1080 panel (The Predator Z35).

 

I am somewhat suprised that the system also isn't entirely stable.

Maybe do some finetuning. that way it might stay at stable clockspeeds and some udnervolt on Pascal.

 

Yep, it hits base clock and drops turbo under some loads despite the multiplier being set to ~45X in the BIOS.

 

I figured out what's causing it: The Flex ratio override setting was disabled. Re-testing.

 

I heard that the P75x series has some throttling issues when stressing the CPU and GPU at the same time, for example Assassins Creed origins. have you tested that?

 

@yrekabakery

 

Without prema mod. Should have added that one.

 

I did not see that. These were on stock BIOS:

 

Maybe this affects certain BIOS then, there are some P75x Users who simply cannot maintain stable clockspeeds. If I remember correcly eurocom had that issue.

 

Yes there have been several reports from LGA users of Eurocom's unlocked BIOS being worse than stock.

 

Modifying a modern bios has quite a few pitfalls as I am sure Prema will tell you...

 

Awful results. Can it be worse? I think so. This is the future and only the beginning. Just wait inti the chassis being a lot thinner.

 

It's mostly the cancer EC limitations, not the chassis.

Thin and lights can work, it's just that pulling them off is a lot harder than 10 pound tank.

 

90C in Firestrike won’t be much better with EC limitation unlocked. Only worse. Look at clocks and temp. Stable max clocks all over the benchmark would frying the chips. This was a single run, what with running it in loops?

 

That's why UV/LM exist.

 

I run my Cpu with stock or +voltage. Of course with Liquid metal and delidded.

 

Form factor is always going to be a limitation in some form, desktops will always be able to dissipate more heat quieter for instance.

 

Stop using that as an excuse

P955 is larger than the laptops that are constantly outperforming it. It should be the one outperforming the competition.

The reasons the P955 suck has nothing to do with form factor . Just incompetence.

 

I'm talking in general terms here, they are all the same size bracket. Cost, chassis durability, serviceability and other factors come in on the precise form factor.

 

Is the 90W 1070MQ more expensive than the 80W one ? No, It's not.

Is it too much to ask for the largest laptop in a certain market to not be the slowest one in this market ?


The worst is that as much as you guys use the P955 form factor as an excuse for your incompetence. The hardware can probably take a 100-115W 1070.

There is no excuse that this screenshot is not taking from an OC'ed 1070MQ in the P955

 

Different design decisions like having a 2.5" bay and making it easily user accessible.

 

The space taken by the 2.5' slot was exchanged with a larger battery, not extra cooling in the RB2018.



The P955 can do this if it wasn't gutted(frimware wise). Design desicions have nothing to do with it, only incompetence.

 

If that's what you want to believe then feel free, you can ignore the price and what I have said above.

 

I understand that you wanted to keep costs down. But there is a point where paying a bit more for superior experience is worth it.

A 1599$(70$ increase) P955 with a 200/215W PSU and a 90W 1070MQ that doesn't throttle is miles ahead of the 1529$ throttling one.

 

I think we need to differentiate between Clevo and Sager to have a fair discussion. You can't say 'your incompetence' or 'why you wanted to keep the cost down' to Sager, they don't design the chassis or set the barebones pricing any more than we do...these are points for Clevo.

 

The only way for the P955 to match the RB2018 is to use the 90W card + a 180/200W PSU. and a 180/200W PSU will end up forcing resellers to raise the price to 1549$ at least.

This IS NOT the HARDWARE fault.

 

That's not strictly true, there is a 150W default PSU which Clevo sells with the chassis. If you want to sell a different one to customers then its more complicated.

Do you have performance figures for the difference between 150W and 180W PSU with the new CCC, meaning throttling is only firmware dependant? Serious question, we need to collate as much info as possible still.

The revised notebookcheck review of the Key 15 was with the new and non-throttling CCC but still with 150W PSU if I remember correctly.

The price difference between PSUs is really not a big deal.

GPU config is a different topic of course.

 

Before you post claims, always know what’s stated in Clevo’s service manuals. F.eks what PSU is put in the Barbone package.

 

Sorry, I assumed it was solely the reseller choice when it came to PSU as EVOC sold it with the 180W one.



It will throttle no matter what when pushed hard enough. The PSU won't make a difference unless the EC is changed to allow the power draw to exceed 150W.



This guy isn't getting CCC throttling(probably due to new CCC) yet is still getting horrible throttling.this is the fast preset, other presets might be worse.

A P955 that can draw 180W doesn't exist. As the EC caps the power draw at 150W.

A P955 with a 150W PSU will perform identically to a P955 with a 180W PSU as both systems can only draw 150W anyway

All we can compare to is the competition that can draw more.(stock results)


Alot of people are getting 14K flat on the graphics score(the guy with the Q6 here + the Slovenian review of the Q6) this puts the 1070 VS 80W 1070MQ defect at 20% instead of 13%.



Even if we look at max power draw we can see a 150W PSU is not sufficient.

Q6(I7 8750H+1070MQ 80W): 150W
Q5(I7 7700HQ+1070MQ 80W) : 166W
Aero 15x(I7 8750H+1070MQ 90W) : 173W
GX501VS(I7 7700HQ+ 1070MQ 90W) : 173W
RB2018(I7 8750H+1070MQ 90W) : 179W
GS65(I7 8750H+1070MQ 80W) : 182W

The EC is not allowing the hardware to draw the amount of power it needs.

Can you link me the revised review ? Only seeing the original one .

I think resellers can request it from clevo with a higher PSU(which is useless due to EC limitations)

I'll edit my original post as it seems it's not so black/white when it comes to who is to blame for PSU

 

@ahmad hendeh - no problem, it's not always as clear cut as it seems. That was my point though, no matter which PSU the chassis would ship with and even if resellers had an option, it wouldn't make any difference.

Also it should be noted that a 150W PSU is only rated as that, this doesn't mean that it will only supply 150W. You can pull more than 150W from it in the same way that you can pull more than 180W from that model and more than 300W from that model.

The original review is still only in German, they usually translate it but doesn't seem to have happened yet.
If you open this in Chrome and auto translate you can se the comments; https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Schenker-Key-15-Clevo-P955ER-Laptop.308452.0.html

" Update: Cause of GPU throttling found. Updating the Control Center fixes the problem."

Update 23.06.18: As has been proven by prolonged trial and error, the new version of the Control Center is guilty of GPU throttling. If you "kill" the program via Task Manager, the GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q behaves normally in The Witcher 3 and works with active Turbo (~ 1.291 MHz), which is very well recognized on the graph and screenshots. Since the XMG A517 and the XMG A707 are affected in addition to the Key 15 , the software bug that causes the GPU throttling currently seems to apply to all Clevo barebones with a pre-installed Control Center.


Active Control Center (GPU throttling)

Disabled Control Center (no GPU throttling)
Update 07.07.18: Schenker has provided us with an updated Control Center, with which the GPU throttling no longer occurs (tested on the XMG A707). We therefore exclude the original devaluation."

As a result, the original text is all still in the review but they added lots of updated text to explain what was going on, plus they revised the performance and temperature scores accordingly.

 

Plus 150w means to the machine, it may pull as much as 170-180w from the wall to supply this and still be in spec.

 

The system doesn't draw more than 150W.

It's an EC wall. Even if the 150W PSU can supply more than 150W

 

From the brick but not from the wall, you add brick losses onto the machine draw.

 

I now have the 200W PSU from Eurocom. Running benchmarks as we speak.

 

And here is Assassins Creed Origins on the Q6 and with a 200W PSU after a liquid metal application and a 100mV undervolt across all domains.



Temps, particularly on the CPU are still wanting, although the throttling seems to be eliminated.
Currently uploading more clips from Battlefield 4, BF1, et al.

cc @Danishblunt @Prema @Meaker@Sager this is what I meant by the statement: LM alone may not be enough to satisfy the cooling requirements for this chassis.

 

99c :'D

I am amazed how much the game lags. Ive played the game fluidly on a 6700HQ + GTX 980M system, while you have stuttering and 99c.

If you were to play games like AC:O, the notebook wouldn't last 6 months before melting down.
Good job clevo.