Khenglish

@phila_delphia Yeah the RX 480 performance and efficiency are certainly disappointing, and the history of AMD not competing with Nvidia in the mobile space since the 7970m vs 680m will continue. Due to this Nvidia GPUs will continue to be stupidly expensive. At this point the 1080m seems to be too costly with too little benefit to upgrade to from a 980m.

@Derlep Liquid metal is huge for CPUs and yes a 40C jump like that is a direct sign of poor cpu-heatsink contact. With liquid metal that jump will be more like 20-25c at high clocks. Unfortunately liquid metal is more difficult to apply, and it will permanently stick to the heatsink. Proper remounts after the liquid metal has been in place for some time require sanding the previous liquid metal off the heatsink. The die can develope a residue, but this is just a cosmetic problem.

Ah good memory @InfectedSonic. Yeah only the v3 system bios supports drivers newer than the 358 series for EM series laptops. I forgot that catch. v2 and stock have equivalent gpu support. For v3 prema changed out the mxm module in the bios with one from another system for proper 900 series support. On a 358 series driver the gpu will still operate correctly under the v2 bios.

Those drivers stopped working when you changed the GPU?

Your system did not launch with the 970m, so your GPU/motherboard combination is not in the Nvidia driver's files. You need to add it. Instructions for doing this are in the link I posted above. There is no bios issue. Don't start flashing random BIOS. Just do the .inf mod.

The bios saying there's no GPU means nothing. If you didn't have a GPU, you wouldn't be able to see anything. There is nothing wrong at all. You just need to install the Nvidia driver and you're good to go.

This can happen if you're using an unrecognized power supply. Do you get power adapter warnings on startup, or did but disabled them? Disabling the warnings does nothing to prevent the resulting throttling.

Its a pull from an MSI laptop, so its a rare card. Not sure why it was pulled, but I'm not complaining. The card was cheaper and is faster than the clevos.

No it doesn't. The cpu runs way hotter than it should. Any review I see has that thing up in the 90s when doing anything mildly cpu intensive.

@str8_an94baller That's an interesting cooling solution. A vapor plate is really nice and I wish we saw them more on laptops and desktops. If they could drop heatpipes and have the vapor plate go into the radiator that'd be great, but unfortunately we don't have that here. The ultra thin fan blades is interesting. I was noticing how fat the blades are on my fans and was thinking how much better air flow may be if they were thinner. That fan near the GPU may look small, but it isn't. The CPU fan is massive. As for why they put the bigger fan CPU side instead of GPU side I have no idea. With the GPU pipe being last in line of the 3 in its radiator though that fan isn't going to cool the GPU very much. This cooling for be good for a 980m, but for a 980 I am skeptical. A unified heatsink is a concern. Those things need to be manufactured very precisely for them to function well. GPU temps for a 980 already concern me since I don't see the CPU side fan helping out much. If they don't get good die contact the CPU temps will be poor, but if they do they should be good. The CPU heatpipes appear to be 5mm which is a little small and will add a few extra degrees to the CPU temps over something bigger, but they should be adequate. Also everything being BGA is weird. I suppose for the 980 it doesn't mean much because the mxm versions are larger than standard and don't fit into most systems anyway. This is my main issue with the 980. I fear the introduction of its non-standard format it will break down the mxm standard and we'll lose GPU upgradability in future GPUs.

I'd really like to see more 1440p and 1620p (1620p died out VERY fast, but did exist at 15.6"). 4k, which is 2160p is just too high of a resolution for a single GPU to drive in a modern game. Having only 2 resolution options, with one being 4x higher than the other is odd. Remember ~10 years back where you had around 3 resolution options for a system? Ex 1280x800, 1680x1050, and 1920x1200. It wasn't 1920x1200 vs 960x600, like 4k vs 1080p is today.

TL866CS

This guy mostly knows what he's talking about. He was right in ignoring the number of PCI-E power connectors. Those have zero impact on overclocking and more just makes the card more power efficient. He did properly identify phases, which many people don't, but he did annoyingly use the recent Nvidia nomenclature defining phases which is misleading. Ex. when saying 8+2 he's saying there's 8 core phases and 2 memory phases. This is only the recent meaning of that phrase. In the past 8+2 meant you have 10 core phases, with 8 switching in sequence plus another 2 switching in their own sequence, both summing up to deliver current to the core. For example the ATI 4890 was a 3+2 configuration for the core. Minor thing, but using Nvidia's misleading marketing terms annoys me. For bigger things that I think he did wrong, he ignored cap quality and vdroop. Many "overclocking" cards try to have big impressive looking phases with big electrolytic caps that look cool. The problem is of the 3 main cap types you can have the big radial electrolytic caps are the lowest quality. Surface mount electrolytics tend to have superior ESR (effective series resistance. this matters for sudden load changes, or a phase switch) than the round radial electrolytics, but are more expensive and look less cool. Radials do tend to have higher capacitance than SMD, but usually electrolytic capacitance is overkill by nearly an order of magnitude on "overclocking" desktop cards, with ESR being more of a limiting factor. Even better ESR are ceramic caps, but these are the smallest and most expensive. Many of these boards completely lacked ceramic caps for the core on the front of the pcb. Maybe they made up for it on the back, but its obvious that many manufacturers are trying to make their boards look cool. As for vdroop, many of these boards screwed over the memory. All high phase count cards except the zotac threw the memory phases way to the right of the card. This gives the current a long distance to travel, and even worse is the current needs to travel under the core phases, which will already be using many pcb layers. This also hurts core vdroop because pcb layers that the core would otherwise receive are needed to route the memory power. Then add in that 3 memory chips also have data and address lines between the core and power phases, and you have one overly worked pcb. In short, the ASUS looked like crap to me. No top side ceramic caps and no SMD electrolytics. The powercolor card looked good for air and H20 with a good ceramic cap count, but seemed to lack the FETs to push the current or LN2. The EVGA should be good for LN2 if the backside makes up for the front side's lack of ceramics. Its electrolytic count is insane with tons of SMD caps, but it looks like it will have vdroop problems. The MSI looks decent with a good chunk of ceramics and high phase count, but lacks SMD electrolytics. I don't get why he gave the Zotac so much crap. This card looked to be the best to me. That memory phase location is great. The PCI-E slot can route current up the left side so it can get a strong 12V connection that avoids messing with the core power side of the card and memory data and addressing. The Zotac will have the best vdroop of any card. It has a good count on ceramics and a few SMD electrolytics. Yes the FETs COULD be poor, but they could also potentially be better than the high/low combo chips on most cards. Honestly the 25A high/50A low chip that he said Nvidia is using sounds like crap. Having a lower high side current limit than low side makes no sense. Yes high side conducts current way less often than low side so you want a smaller faster switching FET, but if you exceed that 25A the FET can still blow up. If the low side conducts 50A when it is on, then the high side also conducts 50A, so this chip is only rated for 25A due to the high side. I can see why manufacturers would avoid this chip. I'm surprised I didn't see the TI 83750 high/low combo chip on any cards as this has a 40A rating and is very commonly used on mobile cards.

Is there going to be any return of powering off the dGPU? For me having 2h of battery life is unacceptable. I would really like to see a mux in Clevo systems to get either full performance, or full battery life. MSI does this but they only sell big 17" laptops anymore. @Mr. Fox Yes unified heatsinks is definitely bad. It causes too much trouble to get good die contact on both dies. Also if your GPU is running hot your CPU is guaranteed to be throttling as CPUs have a much larger die to heatsink temperature difference than GPUs. In theory unified heatsinks are good, but in practice not.

I suppose no 1440p 120hz or 1800p 120hz screens? 120hz is nice, but 1080p is just too low of a resolution for how strong gpus are getting.

Also is someone doesn't want to send their card, but sand at the location of the 5 little squares, that'd be great too.

Power supplies don't cause throttling. Your laptop won't sense that it is at the psu power limit and throttle itself. Instead power supplies just turn off if their current rating is exceeded. In the case where the power supply is too weak its not so much as your laptop is throttling but instead that it is running on battery. Some power supplies automatically turn back on after a few seconds, but most stay off until you unplug them from the wall and plug them back in. Your problem is the cpu's low default vid table. You need to set the "additional turbo voltage" in ifr to raise the voltage. I can't remember if latitudes have access to this or not though.

On that laptop the vbios will be included in the system bios. You will need to decompress your bios so that you can replace the vbios module within it. Phoenixtool is a good program for that. As for the bios mod, the 620m is a fermi core. There's a Fermi Bios Editor, but that refuses to work with mobile gpus. I'm not sure how you would drop the voltage once the vbios is extracted.

I expect them to really do what they've always done. The 680m was a desktop 670, with lower clocks and tdp. The 780m was a desktop 680/770, again with lower clocks and tdp. They could just release the 1070 with lower clocks and tdp, but just call it a 1070 instead of a 1080m. The 1080 will likely be an exclusive larger than standard mxm card like the 980 is now. My main concern with this approach is that the 980 came in many size formats. If this trend continues we may lose the standard mxm form factor and the means to upgrade gpus in high end laptops, with everything being bga in the "m" realm, and everything non-m not conforming to a standard.

As the title says, I'm looking for a dead GK104. It doesn't need to be dead, but it won't look too pretty when I'm done with it, and I don't want to pay what a live card warrants. The reason is I think I found the laser cuts that disable cores on my dead 680m, but need a non-680m to compare with to verify this. If this is confirmed then I know what to look for on maxwell cards, possibly unlocking 980m and 970m cards. I spent a lot of time trying to see if Nvidia no longer did laser cuts, and came to the conclusion that they still do, so now I want to see if I can find them. Acceptable cards: k3000m, k3100m, k4000m, k4100m, k5100m, 675mx, 780m, 880m, 680, k5000, or anything with a GK104 that has a a different CUDA core count than the 680m. What I suspect are laser cuts are the 5 small squares in a group on the left side middle of the packaging. Without the insulating coating removed they are invisible, while all other markings are visible through the coating. I believe these laser cuts break a ground connection that would otherwise pull signals to low voltage in an underlying layer. I want to see another card first though before looking for them on my 980m. Also I did quite a bit of damage to this gpu by sanding off the protective coating (look at the edges). A chemical means would likely be preferable.

Link me your ME FW dump.

Hotkey is awful. I can't change my volume with anything full screen running or else the program minimizes to the desktop due to that stupid overlay...

So how'd you get SLI working @Mr. Fox?

Prema bios doesn't have the option in menus. Its something hardset behind the menus. You would need to flash back to a regular bios for the dgpu to work again. I can probably try it out for you tomorrow to make sure it doesn't cause a brick and actually works.

Unfortunately the p150em embedded controller interprets no gpu temp sensor reading as an overheating gpu, and it shuts the laptop down. There is a hidden bios option to not power up the dgpu. If you have a dgpu that is functional enough to let the laptop run, I can try this setting on my laptop. If it works I'll send you a modded bios. It may even allow no dgpu at all, but I doubt it. If that doesn't work, we can try pulling components from a dead gpu to make it draw no power and not need a heatsink or fan. If you have a dead card let me know what it is and I can point out components to remove.