1610ftw

Usually one can switch pretty easily between different jokebooks as there are so many of them. If you are happy with 2 sticks of memory and storage each then there is a huge selection out there. Just saying but it is not like you HAVE to stay with your current one. Next step up would be machines with either socketed GPU or CPU but it is harder to get good deals with them if you want to at least break the 10K Time Spy barrier and last but not least you could get something really nice like a P751/775, P870 or X170. Especially the P751/775 chassis can come up with pretty low prices and it is the most portable, the others less so.

The new lineup so far is more than underwhelming. A few "highlights": Most of them only have two SSD slots - that is right, they cannot even bother to give us decent storage options. All of them top out as 64GB max memory - looks like 128GB are a thing of the past now for flagship gaming machines - they do not even pretend to be usable as DTRs. All of them are really quite small - much smaller than previous gen 17.3" laptops and all but one (Alienware) seem to stay at 7 lbs or below. None of them seem to have increased the total system power envelope beyond 250W. Brother @Papusanhas pointed out that none of them will have dual power supplies but to be honest with that power envelope they will not need it. So far this is extremely disappointing and I would not really be happy with any of these options even aside from the fact that none of them will have MXM graphics or a socketed CPU. As far as being socketed there is a small chance that there will be DGFF cards in the Alienware M18 but we all know this will not be good for much. On the relatively positive side I like the 2560 x 1600 options and that 13980HX looks to be a pretty well performing CPU that will not lag that far behind an air cooled 13900K. But on the graphics side it looks to me as if laptop buyers of high end GPUs will be inferior to desktop systems like never before. I would personally be happy with a 4060 or 4070 in a laptop so this would not affect me but 4080 and 4090 will lag so far behind their desktop counterparts that the 4090 will be lucky to not fall too far behind a desktop 4070 Ti but at a much higher price point. Oh well, as long as a 7 lbs laptop can now be called colossal and a "behemoth" we should be good to go 🙄 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Predator-Helios-18-Colossal-gaming-laptop-announced-with-a-250-Hz-mini-LED-display-Intel-Raptor-Lake-HX-processors-and-GeForce-RTX-4000-graphics-cards.678524.0.html

Yes that memory bandwidth looks anemic but so do the Time Spy scores leaked so far, especially for the 4090 and 4080. Benchmarks are a good indicator as long as they are already underwhelming as games are unlikely to fare better. Here are the specs in full according to Nvidia: https://www.nvidia.com/de-de/geforce/laptops/compare/ If dynamic boost stays at 25W max then we will end up with the same TGP for a supposedly much more powerful card and with a whole bunch of upcoming 18" laptops that could have been made beefier if necessary.

Would be interesting to know your max wattage during your 26K CR23 runs. For some reasons there seems to be a rather wide range of efficiency with these CPUs with some CPUs easily consuming 15 or even 20% more power than others. Getting up to 26K and beyond on a limited power budget may depend very much on a user hitting the silicon lottery. whereas other may only end up with lesser results at the same power level. Makes a big dfifference for thermal throttling if one achieves those 26K scores with 140, 160 or 170W.

Last generation gets cooled pretty easily in BGA with not much less watts. Did some TimeSpy runs on an MSI CreatorPro X17 and temps for the GPU did not even reach 60 degrees with 165W TGP and ca. 13.9K Time Spy. That was all stock with no extra cooling and I would expect similar for at least the bigger TongFang, Asus, Lenovo and so on. So I do not really see 200W as the issue here except that Nvidia will usually start throttling at ridiculously low temperatures. The real issue is that MXM seems to be off the table except for workstations from Lenovo and HP and those are usually gimped with regard to TGP nor do I find them desirable with their recent trend to smaller 16" screens and other limitations.

You should be able to make the adjustment after installing 527.56. For some reason the drivers for the professional cards do not allow for that adjustment but it should not be an issue to install the one for the regular cards and then you will be good to go to get full 3070 Ti / A4500 performance.

Speaking of falling behind, it may be all BGA now for Clevo if the following is their upcoming X370 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/6152812 Maybe @Prema will give us some Prema magic but lately he has been more involved with TongFang / Uniwill.

Probably because they upped the power limit to 200W and maybe more? That should helped as the die is from a card that will go to 300W and beyond. With proper cooling and a shunt mod this should easily go even higher and my money would be on one of the vapor chamber Asus units to give great performance and I also expect great things from the AW18 if they actually make it a vapor chamber design. Too bad that both the Asus and the Alienware will probably have that typical gaming look which I do not particularly like. So let's see if it can crack a 22K Time Spy score - I highly doubt it as that would be almost 30% higher than the first rumors of its performance! Did you see the notebook? Looks like a Clevo X370 to me - obviously another all BGA unit which saddens me.

Impressive benchmarks from now MSI and Asus for the 13980HX: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?utf8=✓&q=i9-13980HX

Yep, this one looks a bit fishy and when that GPU goes belly up and you have no warranty things will get expensive. Especially with potentially compatible GPUs not being such a great choice after all as you also need to source a different heatsink for them which will usually cost you a lot. At this point I am not sure if it will not be more fun to just keep a P775 or P870 chassis to tinker with as they offer many more choices than the X170 both with regard to portabiliy (no need for two power supplies and all that crap) and available parts. I still did not get around to put the new bios on my KM-G so I should do that first and maybe invest some time to find an alternative solution to always needing two power supplies short of buying one of those Eurocom monsters.

Let me help you then with the scores for the 3080 Ti: And here are all the individual scores for the site that depending on power limit start at very low scores, I have left out the lowest ones. As you can see given its power limit your 7770 performs very well: Looking up a benchmarking site where by nature most people will benchmark only when they are interested in benching and when they think they have a good system is let's say a rather weird way of determining what is average especially given the fact that the top results are often achieved not in a normal setting but with some creative manipulation of temperature and/or power limits. @Dell-Mano_Ghas spelled out power limits of this line of laptops early in the thread and it did not look good to me and even then I decided that it would not make sense to even try these out with todays much higher power demands for the new generation of CPUs. This is the last I am going to write about this as you seem to continue to compare your 7770 to other hardware with superior TGP and power limits to conclude that this is something that Dell should offer us. While many here may agree that they should - I am of that opinion myself - they do not and they do not have to. They sadly do not even have to declare in detail what you can actually expect from their devices which is why we have forums like this one where users and sometimes industry professionals share their results - if in doubt wait and you will know what to expect.

I have come upon this thread looking for the Sager 9172 so I might as well ask if anybody knows the difference between the P775DM2-G and DM3-G variant? I was not even sure that a DM2 existed but now that @joluke mentions it I am curious!

The 3080 Ti is sold with a wide variety of TGPs so actually your performance is probably relatively average, looking at notebookcheck confirms that: https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3080-Ti-Laptop-GPU-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.588451.0.html Looking only at workstations the 7770 is actually above average so one could also say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king 🙂 If you want better you have to get a laptop that will have the TGP you desire and not buy one that hasn't, Dell has these but not in their Precision line. The TGP limitation has also been pointed out early in this thread although I agree that Dell should be more forthcoming with that information instead of giving answers that may give you hope that the lower TGP is somehow a mistake that will be fixed via firmware. MSI and Asus certainly do a better job with letting you know the TGP of their 3080 Ti laptops. As for the 18" unit it is possible that it will not be much bigger than the 7770 if it has a 16:10 screen and if it is too big there is always the option to get one of the 17" units that Dell also sells.

Your best chance to get the highest level of performance you seek from a Dell laptop (instead of going for the other brand choices) is to wait for the new 18" laptop coming out early next year. That should give you an at least 15k+ Time Spy and a 32K+ CR23 within your budget if you choose the 13900HX and the 4070 or more if you go for the 13980HX, 4080 or 4090. Warranty may be limited to 4 years max though. As others have pointed out even if this kind of hardware makes it to the Precision line it is most likely that they will stay with this years hardware in the 7870 and 7670. That is unless they do away with 17.3" and go for 18" - that might change things.

Link with teaser trailer: https://wccftech.com/asus-rog-hints-at-18-inch-gaming-laptop-to-compete-with-alienware-razer-offerings/

That one looks pretty much beaten up and it has two different power supplies and a Prema bios - WTF! Must be an SM-G and bottom or not so much damage to surfaces has to be taken into account, I would not be comfortable with it as the X170 has a rather flimsy rear end and bottom cover and will feel rather cheap even when not broken.

There is no comparable workstation from Asus with regard to a professional exterior, memory or storage. I think that Asus unit you brought up earlier does not even have a camera or fingerprint reader and I would not be surprised if they did not have a Kensington lock either. I have no idea what a gaming based laptop means as I did not write about them, you did 😉 Obviously the MSI workstation has a lot higher sustained performance than the Dell units with very similar hardware, memory and storage capabilities which is why I mentioned it. It also does not look that much like a gaming laptop and can be had with I believe 4 years warranty but 6 years like with Dell probably isn't possible nor do they offer the same level of on site support to my knowledge. I was putting things in perspective. Is it reasonable to expect performance and/or an overall package that does not exist with any other manufacturer? Dell has been pretty outspoken about the performance limitations of the chassis short of explicitly stating that it sucks which is probably the clarity you would have needed to not buy? In any case you cannot have it all with Dell probably still ticking most of the boxes appreciated by workstation users which do not include maximum sustained performance. By the way: I agree with you that on an absolute scale the performance of these workstations is rather deplorable especially as they come from the factory but this has become very clear quite early in the thread yet you decided to go ahead with your 7770 purchase - it is not as if you are experiencing something that could be descibed as unexpected when it comes to the performance limitations of this chassis when @Aaron44126and @win32asmguy have been pretty outspoken about it from the very start of this thread. So overall I think that you still got the best compromise out of this generation of laptops. CPU may be better with Lenovo and HP but the power limits of the GPU make the Dell pull ahead in GPU performance even though it does not achieve the scores you may have wanted - 12K is pretty good already and not that far off.

There is only the MSI workstation that will give you 14K+ but it is based on a gaming laptop. The other manufacturers also do not give you what you want. So it is a bit strange that you keep coming at Dell here when both Lenovo and HP aren't any better and in fact possibly a bit worse when it comes to the GPU part. Personally I would rather have a mostly silent Dell even with lesser CPU stamina than the annoyingly loud HP Zbook 16 G9 or the Lenovo workstation with a ridiculous storage capability of only 2 NVME SSDs - it is not as if on the other side that grass is really greener once you have a closer look.

Don't do it then unless you want to break into the top listings on 3DMark or elsewhere. If this is about usability and everyday performance then I would rather try to optimize temps in a setting where you actually would use your laptop - that will probably not be outside when it is freezing 😄

Don't forget to play this while test driving the new beastly 666W 4090 bios:

data regarding the next BGA generation, still to be confirmed: https://www.notebookcheck.com/Intel-Core-i9-13950HX-Prozessor-Benchmarks-und-Specs.677207.0.html

Strong words but indeed the direction that things are going in is very wrong. Would be nice if the whole right to repair movement would also extend to a fight for the right to replace CPU or GPU on a chip basis - socketed CPUs and GPUs would also relieve us of the horrible issues with MXM cards - let's just swap the chip itself then. Maybe not all laptops but let's say laptops that cost more than 999$ list price - something that forces companies to do the right thing with their money makers. I can guarantee you that there would be a lot of pissing and moaning how it is impossible, the customers do not want it etc. etc. and after a very short while we would get back socketed laptops and they would even be better than before and maybe 2 or 3mm thicker which is not a bad thing anyway.

Apparently soon to be announced, 13980HX https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/19460618 So currently we have Alienware, Asus and Razer with an upcoming 18" chassis. Will be interesting to see if others will follow.

Very true, with no socketed hardware and no special firmware and no upgrade path they are falling behind. The P870, P775 and P751 and then the X170 were very robust and top of the line laptops with regard to bios, configurability and also upgradeability. This seems to be a thing of the past now. A relatively overclocking / tinkerer friendly bios can still be found with MSI and socketed GPUs are still available from Dell, HP and Lenovo although with limited upgradeability. I would say that out of the box all 4 manufacturers offer better build quality, especially the three classic workstation manufacturers, and also a more polished and stable user experience than a regular Clevo. If it wasn't for Schenker / XMG and other companies still invested in Clevo they would fall even further behind especially with TongFang now being on an upward trajectory where their top offerings are overtaking Clevo, not the least due to their cooperation with Prema. I would really like to see this change again even if it would mean that as before they can only offer a socketed CPU for one generation - it will still be more fun than having everything soldered down. For the last two socketed models they even messed that one up by not putting the socketed CPUs in a big chassis but in a smaller one that was not well suited to get the most out of that kind of hardware and there was not even a choice for a top of the line GPU.

Blender has seen an above average intergenerational improvement as it seems to profit from Ampere in an above average way: By the way performance of desktop vs mobile: 3080 Ti mobile: 3840 3080 Ti desktop: 5958 55% increase of desktop over laptop, basically the same as in Time Spy