15r3 1080 Max Q

Searched high and low on the forums and have read very little about the 1080 Max Q on the 15r3. Seems like the consensus is that it would provide very little benefit over the 1070 considering the extra cost.

Has anyone actually gotten their hands on one? I'm curious if the thermals are any better than the 1070 and also what sort of OC headroom to expect. Would be really sweet to get it close to full 1080 (or beyond) performance with a repaste and mod.


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@iunlock would be the best person to ask although I'm not actually sure if he's seen a Max-Q unit yet.

 

Yeah, I contacted him a couple weeks back about it, but he seemed to think there wouldn't be much benefit over the 1070. Not sure if he had actually worked on one yet.

It's odd that there hasn't even been a review of that config yet...at least I couldn't find it if there is. I might be the guinea pig on this one if I decide to go that route.


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Given the new 1070 units are overclocked by default you're not going to see much, if any, benefits over the 1080MQ and, personally, I don't think it's worth the added cost.

 

Yeah, that seems to be the common sentiment, but I'm more curious about the thermals and OC potential. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that screenshot in your post is comparing the Asus Zephyrus to the 15r3 1070. Considering the Zephyrus is much more thermally limited than the 15r3, that makes sense. Pair a 1080 max Q with the AW cooling solution (modded, of course), and I suspect that the benchmarks would look quite a bit different. But again, I still haven't found anyone who has actually gotten their hands on a 15r3 w/ the 1080.


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The screenshot is from Umar's video that he put on Youtube so I presume it was an Alienware 1080 MaxQ vs the 1070.

 

Lol I know this is an old thread but I'm not so sure about that. Your right there is very little evidence for the gtx 1080 max q in the alienware but there are good reviews on YouTube for the gtx 1080 max q in the zephyrus and one particular review showed gaming benchmarks for witcher 3, mass effect, and some other AAA games getting well over 100 fps and seem even reaching 120 or higher. And this was in the zephyrus which is a less powerful version of the 1080 max q and also has a locked hq cpu whereas the alienware comes with a 110 w version of the 1080 max q and a 7820 hk cpu. I think there's a lot more potential in this combo than people realize. This was all at 1080p just fyi for the games I was talking about

 

Ravern, you're discovering the problem I had when researching this topic. I could only find opinion/conjecture about the performance of the product and not any first hand testing. Pairing a max-q 1080 with a (potentially) robust cooling solution like what is found on the 15r3 continues to be intriguing to me. Had a couple other expenses crop up since I posted this topic so I haven't been able to buy one yet, but hopefully will soon. If anyone else has one, I'm sure there are others that would like to know!

 

Ya am considering buying it myself. I don't any bigger than the 15 r3 and I want the best gpu I can get in it. But I actually spoke to an owner of a gtx 1080 max Q zephyrus on the asus boards who said that the 1080 max q overclocks nicely...and that he was using it at home to power a 1440p gaming monitor and was able to play on ultra settings on all games. Didn't specify what fps he was getting but still that's something to take notice of. I feel like once max q was announced everyone was so quick to jump all over it and call it a scam that nobody really wanted to take a serious look at it. But when I see the zephyrus, which is less powerful mind you than the alienware in both the gpu and gpu, doing over 100 fps in games like the witcher 3 it makes me scratch my head and say...wait a minute. Something doesn't seem right here in comparison to what everyone in this site has been saying. I hope you do buy it so we can finally have some real world data.

 

So heres something interesting to look into. I spoke to someone on youtube who purchased the alienware 15r3 with the 1080 max q and he told me that the gtx 1080 max q in the alienware does in fact outperform the 1070 by about 10 percent but he also said it cannot be overclocked because he claims that nvidia locks it?? Im not sure about it obv because of the lack of data on that particular model. It seems strange to me and im not sure if its accurate or not since i know for a fact that it can be overclocked in the zephyrus. But if it can be overclocked and the cpu as well i think it could perform quite well. I just need someone who has one to verify. ANYONE?? PLEASE?? lol

 

It all depends on what game, and how much power the card is actually pulling.
If you are comparing two identical laptops aside from the 1070 and 1080-MaxQ Variant. If you are playing a game and the regular 1070 is pulling 130 watts, then unless the Max Q version is much more efficient and pulls less power per bit of performance, you are down 20 watts (15% lower), losing a decent chunk of your performance. If you are playing games that do not exceed 110 watts average usage, then both cards will perform close, with the MaxQ 1080 pulling ahead until it caps out on power.

THAT is why people are saying the 1080 MaxQ is most likely non-overclockable. If you literally have no leeway in power consumption versus power limit, how are you expected to overclock and gain more performance, when more performance requires more power? In some models, the GPU probably is hard-locked and cannot overclock based on the users wishes. Those situations are probably because the cooling system definitely cannot handle the excess heat from higher load due to overclocking.

 

It isn't locked, it is power limited. Remove the Power Limit with a hard flashed bios mod and you have a plain GTX 1080 laptop.

 

Lol removing the power limit is probably easier said than done. Hopefully in the future someone will find a way to unlock these chips like maybe a prema type bios for the gtx 1080 max q.

 

If the MaxQ chips could be unlocked, then the regular 1080 chips in current laptops would have been done ages ago though.