win32asmguy

@electrosoft The family is taking a road over the next couple of weeks and my wife asked about something we could use to enjoy WoW to do collectors bounty and other relatively non-demanding things while driving. So first we look at some windows handhelds that are on sale for under $1000. But then we remembered about her Zbook X2 G4 2-in-1 tablet which does have a low power Quadro M620 GPU. Got it up and going after clearing up some space: Its pretty decent in the old raids at lowest settings (but view distance medium so flying around is not miserable). Unfortunately our config has the 7500U dual core, and while the memory is modular it only has 8GB in it right now which is pretty tight for just WoW. The SSD is also modular so I would want to put 1-2TB into it if I go through the process of removing the display and mobo to get access to everything. Running around dornogal doing profession dailies smoothed out a bit after switching to dedicated only mode. It tanks battery life but the 90W power brick should be fine to use in our car. The next trick will be to get the ConsolePort addon installed and a controller setup without messing our regular keybinds.

There is no reason MSI could not offer a Raider 18 config with 9955HX3D, 5090M, QHD+ 240hz, 2x16GB and 2TB Gen4 SSD for ~$3500 or less. Going beyond single rank with memory is silly for a gaming system and paying for overpriced Gen5 OEM SSD's is just as bad. Also should have a vapor chamber too. They are just too disconnected from what their customer base would want to see these poor config choices. The Intel Raider 18 is definitely interesting with its further price drop. It also has a TB5 port that is MUXed to the iGPU in hybrid mode which is essentially why I did not stay with the 14th Gen + 4090 systems. The Hydroc G2 has that as well though and to be honest its build quality is better, it is more portable which is nice as I take it to work each day along with traveling. I also am eager to try out the Premamod bios which should be available soon. MSI does have unlocked advanced options but that does not mean it has bugs or other weird stuff fixed. Lets not even talk about the stupid RGB zone rainbow defaults they use now...

Nice reviews. Eventually we should get some good details on how Eluktronics variants of AMD and Intel do. I am disappointed that MSI will not sell 9955HX3D + QHD+ 240hz + 5090. Their loss to neglect users who do not want UHD+ or their miniLED without FALD option. The prices on the AMD Raider 18 are still rediculous anyways. Nobody should be paying that much for what it is. The AMD chip would have to be significantly better than the 275HX to be worth trying to swap to it. I guess it should at least be superior in memory latency.

That is very interesting. Why is the latency better on the 265K? Also the numbers for cache do no add up. 3x8MB per P-core and 3x4MB per e-core should be 32MB total instead of 30MB. Either way the price of the 265K at $270 is significantly less than $560 for the 285K. Interestingly enough the AMD Neo 16 ships with lower latency Kingston Fury 2x16GB 5600 CL40 modules which is significantly better than most other units they had reviewed. For a while I think they had even compared it to an Intel 275HX Neo which was using the 6400 CL52 CSODIMMs. Speaking of laptop memory Prema is validating the Eluktronics Manix 2x16GB CSODIMM kit with an XMP profile that should decently close the gap with desktop arrow lake memory. I do not know timings but this was a resulting Timespy run: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/56560323 I think I would still opt for the Taichi OCF as its less risky than getting a damaged open box board and having to ship it back and forth for replacement. Unless the Apex has some specific features that make it better than the Taichi.

Yeah it does not make sense to omit benchmark data collected, especially considering the amount of time it takes to generate. He did have to completely redo his tests with the laptop 5090 because of the bugged power limit in early drivers. Nvidia is having a rough time selling the 5090 mobile. I am surprised it is not 200W as I have seen it pulling over 30k in Timespy shunted. Maybe a theoretical 9070M would be close enough to make them bump the magical PL barrier up a notch in January! 9955HX3D from Eluktronics is supposed to be released next month. I think they are going to try and get as much tuning unlocked on it as possible, along with the new 140W PPT that AMD allows which is much greater than the 100W we got with the 7945HX3D. On another note, I know you had mentioned 285K a few times here and there. Have you looked at any Z890 boards? I was thinking about testing an Asrock Taichi OCF with a 285K and see how it does with the 5090 compared to the Xeon.

The funny part about all of these new models is the CPU is at best a side-grade to a 14900HX. Its pretty weird to spend a moderate time trying to tune and decide that sub 90ns memory latency is good enough for now. If it were not for the fact that the 275HX model has better display output connection configurations I would have just stuck with 14th Gen.

Hello! As far as bootguard goes I would need to test the Hydroc G2 and its state could vary from vendor to vendor. Even so the Hydroc G2 will get a Premamod bios so its going to be tuneable regardless. Prema may be able to make the mod then hand it up the chain to be signed for distribution to Eluk customers. The X580 service manual should eventually show up there, or if you purchase from System76 they will provide it as well if requested. I chose the Hydroc G2 over the X580 because the bios was locked on the X580, and the cost of the System76 X580 would have been over $5000. The Hydroc also has a TB4 port wired to the iGPU so it can drive an external display without the Nvidia GPU active which is a bit plus to me. The Clevo X560 is also wired that way, but it only goes up to a 5070ti mobile through Sager / System76 so not as appealing to me. This platform also needs to have memory tuned so its on par with competitors which would be much harder to do with the Clevo X560 or X580.

Did you get a chance to test out that display? I currently use a MAG 274QRF QD E2 which has been a pretty decent monitor other than a few weird quirks. The display resume time from a sleep state is pretty slow 5 seconds or more. It has a USB hub, but the hub shuts off when the monitor is sleeping so you cannot wake the system up via keyboard or mouse connected to the hub. It also has a basic KVM but the type-c port has a weird virtual USB drive that tries to auto-install control software for the monitor each time. The KVM / type-c port is also somewhat flaky with detection and switching so I ended up not even using it. I still think if I were going to try for a higher resolution display to pair with the 5090 it would probably be the 38 inch 3840x1600 ultrawide, 38WR85QC-W. I do not really want 4k, high DPI or OLED so it seems like a good option.

Interesting to hear about the M4 Max in WoW. What kind of TDP does it pull in those situations? I see that it is supposed to be up to 70W but unsure if that is sustained or just short bursts. The 275HX + 5090M does pretty good with WoW at QHD with a few things tuned, SA and D2D at 30x and 6400 at CL38 tREFI 16k 1.25v gear2. The Premamod BIOS is still being finalized so once that is available I hope it helps a little too, along with being able to ditch XTU to set a few things. I am not sure if it can compete on efficiency to the M4 Max, but maybe the Ryzen AI Max 395 is a closer type of product to what Apple is offering, just with access to the much bigger Windows x86 game library.

To me its more about the feature set than performance for this generation. It is the first where I can have a professional looking chassis and build quality, iGPU video outputs, but still have max wattage CPU and GPU. Often I find that one model offers great CPU performance, another offers great GPU performance, another has nice build quality and aesthetics, but rarely does any have it all, especially with tuning possible and acceptable fan noise. Not sure about SAC Bomber, but maybe if he no longer has an account then the associated threads he started get removed as well.

I am surprised it is that good after having tried a 7800X3D + 7900GRE combo last generation. Lots of strange driver bugs paired with lots of strange bios bugs with fingers pointing to "its an AGESA issue, so it will be fixed when its fixed". I think after the second time my M.2 boot drive just randomly disappeared I gave up on it.

Oh, the Xeons can also have scheduling issues. I have had trouble with CPPC, so processes on the 2495X do not automatically run on the highest clocked core or the favored cores. Also with hyperthreading enabled it can cause issues with the scheduler similar to what you would see on the 7950X and 9950X. In latency sensitive applications some cores are also more mesh hops away from a given DDR5 or PCIe5 block so depending on which slot you have a GPU in some cores may be better to use than further away favored cores. It will get more interesting if we end up getting a Granite Rapids WS Xeon at some point, with Redwood Cove P-cores. Maybe a LCC or MCC monolithic variant could be tuned to give a 285K or 9950X a run for its money. It would be great if it could also not require registered memory (as was the case on the 3175X) and the latency penalties associated with it.

On the X580 I purchased from Sager undervolting protection was enabled and the efi setup variables were write-locked.

There are different height pads depending on the slot. Always check for contact pressure on the pad in case the z-height of your SSD is different than the OEM drive. I did not really test drive temperatures in mine. It would not have been relevant data as I only use one drive which is not going to generate as much radiant heat as using four drives would.

Here is GPU-Z from the Hydroc G2: I am guessing the X580 cooling is on par with the P775TM1-G as they are both designed for around 250W combined loads IIRC.