1610ftw

Thanks, excellent! I also just checked again as I read on notebookcheck that Tongfang has been renamed to uniwill but it is possible that both now exist in parallel - they surely seem to have the same hardware on their sites: https://www.hk.tongfangpc.com/products_gaming/ https://www.uniwill.com.tw/?page_id=1129 I reached out to Tongfang for clarification.

Good to hear about the noise and it looks like your memory read speed and latency have improved so that's a good start! You may want to try and download Throttlestop to check out the power consumption of your CPU and when it throttles. Hope you can get away with some meaningful undervolting without affecting stability. I am pretty sure you should be able to undervolt and adjust speed for different core numbers in that secret MSI menu. Not sure if that is possible in Throttlestop but it would be nice for testing as with the MSI solution you always have to go into the bios for adjustments.

Yeah, that made little sense, edited for clarity. Still not quite sure how the whole MXM production process is/was done but I assume that as the manufacturer of this kind of cards you have to ask Nvidia for chips and if you do not get them you are essentially out of luck.

Good info @DukeCLR, how are the noise levels? Good choice going up to 32GB which I consider the bare minimum today if you want some headroom in your system. Apart from that you may want to consider to max out your GE77 with bios settings, MSI Afterburner, Throttlestop etc. before you do any repasting and the like. It will give you a good baseline of what can be achieved with software alone and I doubt that you Time Spy score cannot be improved without any repasting as I have seen quite a bit higher from several GE76 with the 3070 Ti.

Yep, that's what I thought and compared to other BGA books they tend to get less love even though their price performance ratio seems to be top notch. Maybe @Reciever and others can look into it.

According to @jaybee83Clevo was already planning a new X170 heatsink for the larger 3080 Ti heatspreader to go with a 3080 Ti MXM card but Nvidia wouldn't want any of that. You can have a healthy R&D budget but it is not worth much when you cannot get a new GPU. I liked Turing - desktop and mobile were a lot closer as was the TDP of desktop and mobile. Different nomenclature could just be dropping the zero and call it 308 Ti instead of 3080 Ti for example or 3080m Ti. Even the added m would show it is NOT a 3080 Ti like in a desktop. But deception is the name of the game here so this is unlikely to change and the gullible t&l crowd will be ecstatic when they can get a 3080 Ti in a 0.8" thin laptop - never mind that it has a performance that at worst it may have trouble surpassing a 3050 desktop card.

Is anything else known about this? Was the 3080 Ti only meant for a new machine with a 1700 socket or also to upgrade existing X170SM-G and KM-G units?

I find it deceptive, better to just come up with a different nomenclature altogether. Another option would be to just use the desktop chips and let manufacturers add power as they see fit but clearly this was ruled out as an option long ago. Glad that this is still possible for Intel CPUs with at least one model in every generation sporting a proper LGA socket - now if only it would not be a seriously gimped design this time around....

Not so sure about that when we are talking about coming down from the 350W of a desktop 3080 Ti. With 225W instead of 350W everything would be running a lot cooler including GDDR6X. Not that it really matters as a decision seems to have been made that laptops get truly high end cards in name only. Would be better to just call the top end in a laptop an RTX 3070 desktop equivalent to give people an estimate of what level of performance they can expect with a 3080 Ti mobile.

When the laptop is to be used as a desktop replacement it will often be connected to an external 4K display so being able to run games at 4K 60 Hz or more should be possible, no reasons why that shouldn't be a goal or alternatively people may want to game at a QHD resolution but with really high refresh rates - one needs more power for that than the current mobile designs allow for. Yes of course there are other issues with mobile graphics except the TDP being too low but power delivery is the parameter that I used for illustrative purposes and to show that in contrast to other performance related parameters that have improved TDP actually went down and not up. While I have not been around at the height of the GTX 1080 DTR monsters with SLI I am sure that @Papusan @Mr. Fox @jaybee83 or @electrosoft could fill in the gaps and tell us about what was possible back then with regard to power delivery and performance - a P870 with a single GTX1080 card surely was quite a bit more competive back then when compared to a desktop 1080i Ti then what we see today where a desktop brutalizes the "Titan" in the most humiliating way and without having to wear ear plugs... As for the market for more powerful machines there are companies that wanted to serve that market and by several accounts they were/are denied by Nvidia. Nvidia probably checked what kind of cooling could be accomplished in small bezel 17.3" laptops with a weight of about 7 lbs tops and decided that 175W TDP was more than enough. Didn't matter at that point that both Clevo and Uniwill/Tongfang would have liked to build higher TDP models or even just an MXM 3080 Ti with the beefier conventional cooling or liquid cooling in their models as they could not get anything with a higher TDP from Nvidia. The result is that the liquid cooling solution from Uniwill runs at ridiculously low temperatures for the GPU and the X170 project seems to be dead for now. So this is the issue: Nvidia is effectively holding back companies who want to do more, it is not that no company wants to serve what surely is a niche but in other areas of the economy there are also companies that serve a niche but they do not have to beg a big chip manufacturer to let them do it. Nvidia has in effect prevented any company from serving such a market by setting a very low max TDP and memory bandwidth that will result in superior designs having almost no performance advantage over the thin and light brigade that thanks to Nvidia does not have to fear that any other company will strive for superior performance with a beefier design. In any case Nvidia is still defended for the ridiculously low TDP and memory bandwidth when it is clear that more could be done in order to allow companies to differentiate themselves and to truly allow customers a choice. While I have obviously no knowledge of any backdoor dealings / informal conversations taking place I would be VERY surprised if Nvidia chose a max 175W TDP and a much lower bandwidth despite their bigger partners wanting more from them, it is not really a realistic scenario. Very good points and indeed I would think that being able to go up to 225W combined with a higher memory bandwidth and GDDR6X would have been a step in the right direction for this generation of Nvidia mobile chips. But maybe it is really more interesting to go with AMD next generation when they put out a chip that with an open TDP effectively makes them the king of the laptop world when working with laptop manufacturers that want to go for that. Of course that would have to be with a basic design that would also profit from a higher TDP and you need enough performance potential to make good use of that added power. With TB4 support now being possible with AMD and 16 core chips on the horizon in both desktop and mobile form factor AMD could really end up in a lot of higher end gaming and DTR solutions and then Nvidia and Intel will hopefully want to strike back - hurrah to competition.

I agree with your comments on parts being swappable. A laptop being upgradable used to mean upgradable GPU and/or CPU as everything else being upgradable was a given. Now we get a hurrah for memory, SSDs and network adapters not being soldered. As for the first part of your post and what @Custom90gtthere would be zero harm to anybody if Nvidia allowed a TDP max of let's say 275W for the 3080 Ti. In the end it is up to the manufacturers to implement the TDP that they see fit. If they weren't interested there would not be a single laptop built that can handle such a TDP but I am pretty sure that instead we would see laptops that support at least 225W if not more. And then customers could decide what they want to buy - it is called having a choice as opposed to telling customers that companies know better what they want. This is how it SHOULD work. Instead we have an artificial cap and both Clevo and Uniwill who according to several accounts have asked for a higher TDP implementation and in the case of Clevo chips/support for an MXM design get stonewalled by Nvidia. It is hard to believe that others who do not want to be upstaged /forced to release better product have nothing to do with that.

With brother @Prema now working with some of their chassis and them being linked to strong vendors in both Europe and the US I suggest to create a new subforum for uniwill: https://www.uniwill.com.tw/?page_id=1129 Not sure if they did themselves much of a favor with their new name but it is what it is 😄

I can see how the Asus would annoy you with its gaming gizmos. I did not know it was that bad - looks like MSI is really discrete compared to that. I am not sure how different the X17 and the GT77 will really look when all lighting effects are off and I am not sure if I would prefer the mechanical or the regaular keyboard all things being equal - in any case there do seem to be pros for both and the ability to go with a smaller GPU and bigger CPU is a good move for a workstation. I can see how Eluktronics have to be very careful what they offer and as their laptops are not really the go to for people looking for a workstation the combo of 12900HX and 3060 would probably be a bad idea.

Interesting to see the TDP development of the top desktop GPU model that was also in laptops, at least by name: GTX 980: 165W GTX 1080: 180W RTX 2080: 215/225W RTX 2080 Super: 250W RTX 3080: 320/350W RTX 3080 Ti: 350W It is clear that starting with the 3080 the gap for laptops opened wide due to Nvidia limiting TDP to at most 175W and mobile also fell behind massively in memory bandwidth. We used to have laptops that could deliver at least 350W to their SLI GPUs alone and they also had two power supplies and the customer could decide if he wanted to use one power supply or both so no problem with using only one power supply on the go and if people wanted to go for it they could travel with two. So we already had all of this power and we lost it due to the industry and Nvidia deciding to not even make an effort to let mobile solutions stay competitive. Looking at desktop cards it should be possible to get at least 90% of the performance out of a GPU with an at least 25% lower power consumption so it would have been possible to have something like a 250W 3080 Ti with very competitive performance if only the other parameters would have been comparable to the desktop. I can only speculate that the big laptop manufacturers together with Nvidia decided that it would make their life a lot easier - and the laptops thinner and lighter - if they limited the TDP of the GPU to 175W while also limiting its memory bandwidth. What this does to laptop performance vs a desktop can be seen here - the way the desktop dominates especially in 4K is rather brutal: Going forward even 250W will make it difficult for laptops to keep pace with desktops if those go to 400+W for the 4080. Only going up to 200W would simply be too little too late.

Might be an idea to contact Asus about it. If it was temperature related then I would expect more of an unpredicatable on/off behaviour. Maybe really some driver / windows related stuff or windows corruption? In any case this is so specific that there is a chance somebody at Asus may know. Would you be able to go back to a backup of the system before all that happened by any chance?

Frankly when I read this I have zero respect left for Nvidia. I know the feeling that high performance laptops are a lost cause but then we go and buy desktop cards from the very same company that more and more seems to be into neutering their laptop offerings. Nvidia seems to be going out of their way recently to increase the differential between serviceability and performance between a desktop and a laptop and this has to stop. I get it that it will not be possible to have 800W graphics in a laptop but we used to have 2 x 200W GPU in previous generations and going even in that direction coming from 175 to 300W would probably go a long way compared to the anemic 175W we are left with now although frankly I do not see why we could not have top of the line DTRs with a 400W GPU, a unified vapor chamber and added water cooling Eluktronics style. So instead of manifesting the complete degradation of GPU performance in laptops I sincerely hope that Nvidia will come to their senses and work on some kind of new standard for socketed GPUs in laptops - it is about time.

You may want to connect it to an external monitor to see if it is anything display related but from your error description I doubt it. I hope you get this sorted out somehow as I do not even want to know what Asus would charge for a motherboard with CPU AND GPU!

Agreed about the chassis - the Asus screams gaming even when all the RGB lighting is deactivated (if that is possible). I will probably have a look at the GT77 at some point, hopefully long enough to be able to run some benchmarks and check out noise levels and then it will be interesting to see how the 12800HX is doing - I predict that it will again be the best bang for the buck solution, same as the 11800H in the last generation but this time with full undervolting and overclocking capability. Yes I saw that, people who need top tier CPU with lesser GPU are mostly out of luck in the BGA world. Remains to be seen if they get the HX processors where the 12800HX may actually be a good option for more single core performance.

I remember that the GT77 was too deep for you and luckily you do not really need what it brings to the table over the GE77. The GE77 should be a lot faster than your GT73 although I predict that it will not be very quiet 😁

I was not counting the GE77HX as it is BGA for both CPU and GPU while I expect the 7770 to have the typical DGFF graphics card which is better than nothing. Here is the cooling solution, not sure if it was changed:: more pics: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/Raider-GE77-HX-12UX/Overview Did you consider Eluktronics back when you got the GE76? They look interesting, especially now that they are working with Prema. Not for you at the moment as they do not have the HX processors but possibly in the future. As for your Clevo nothing surprises me any more with them, they just seem to be losing more ground to Tongfang / Uniwill with each generation and they make a lot of bad decisions in designing their laptops.

Looks good and definitely the sweet spot for the GE77 - QHD and the 3070 Ti should work very well. You also save almost 600 compared to the GT77 although that is mainly due to the GT77 having 32GB DDR5 and the more expensive UHD panel: https://www.gentechpc.com/product-p/msi-titan-gt77-12ugs-009.htm

Good to see another familiar name from the Notebook Review forums! Unfortunately you will not be able to just drop in the only display that could go into the GT83 as it has a different connector compared to what is in the GT83VR. If you check on this site you should find both your original panel and the possible replacements, one of which was used in the Asus GX800: https://www.panelook.com/modelsearch.php?op=advancedsearch&order=panel_id&inch_low=1840&inch_high=1840&resolution_pixels=8720 The replacement candidates have an eDP connector while the original panel has an LVDS connector, I think it was a Samsung panel. While there are converters between eDP and LVDS I am not sure if they would be of help in your situation, maybe other members already have more experience with that subject?

Looks like the Dell 7770 will be the best option for you. At 32GB you will also not be affected that much by their memory pricing. It is a shame that currently Dell seems to be the only option when you want a high performance relatively modular 17" laptop with the current CPU generation. As for the Clevo I do not think that they had any MUX functionality for many years now if you went with their desktop socket offerings. Very stupid and unnecessary imo as these laptops cost a lot and if they cannot do it all many people will look somewhere else.

Saw your changed signature - did you get rid of the Asus and if so why?

You can probably get a similar CB23 result from the smaller version that retails for 3.2K with a sub 3k street price to follow soon. I would also expect for it to achieve an up to 14.5k graphics score with Timespy as the GE76 can do that, too: https://www.3dmark.com/search#advanced?test=spy P&cpuId=&gpuId=1434&gpuCount=0&gpuType=ALL&deviceType=ALL&storageModel=ALL&memoryChannels=0&country=&scoreType=graphicsScore&hofMode=true&showInvalidResults=false&freeParams=&minGpuCoreClock=&maxGpuCoreClock=&minGpuMemClock=&maxGpuMemClock=&minCpuClock=&maxCpuClock= Goes to show that paying the premium for the 12900HX and 3080 Ti is mostly a waste due to the thermal and noise constraints of the design. And it also shows that no matter how much power a system can use manufacturers almost always like to underspec the power envelope and cooling even when total power consumption has gone down a lot compared to previous designs. And before somebody says that total power will almost always be lower in games or real world applications there is also something to be said for running a system that does not always have to be at the limit - cruising at 80% or less is much more relaxing and less loud and hot plus it lets the laptop live longer. As for its fan and cooling design it looks to me like there are too many fans and too little cooling surface / heatpipes. I would wager a guess that especially with this compromised (ultrathin) form factor three fans and a vapor chamber would have resulted in better cooling and less noise - maybe for the next model.