MAX Q

There's a lot of money on the line, lots of people with lots of hardware to move, I'm not saying there will be misleading benchmark's published to move hardware, but I'm already seeing impossible results being published.

I'm seeing "impossible" performance results in some benchmarks - matching full power 1080 330w vs Max-Q 1080 230w vs RBP 250w, which of course is impossible. Not to mention the slim case's not having enough thermal cooling capacity compared to the full frame laptops to sustain high performance results, especially when cooling is limited to 39dba noise output.

I'd say buyer beware, and use your common sense to help guide your purchases. If you end up stuck with a laptop that doesn't perform as you expect, return it, and be sure to check the restocking fee situation before putting your money on the line.

If you want to buy a Max-Q laptop, be critical to the point of verifying performance claims when you get your laptop home, and use the acceptance period wisely to make sure you want to keep it long term.

I hope everyone that buys a Max-Q laptop keeps it, enjoy's it, and finds it's well worth the money invested.

 

It is like I said, in these benchmarks, if the game isn't requiring more than 100-110 watts worth of power from the GPU, a MaxQ and Normal 1080 will perform near identical, but for every watt above that, the 1080MaxQ falls that much further behind.

Those benchmarks "LOOK" impressive, but how hard are the cards being pushed?

 

I'll be honest, I bought the Asus one. It comes in today. I get why spend so much money on a laptop. Here is my justifications. I'm military I'm on the road a lot doing inspections and other sorts of stuff. On my lunch. Deals at work i have my laptop out and I play video games and watch movies. At home I really don't have a man cave so I have a lap board that the laptop sits on and I play on the couch while the wife plays ps4. I have had the the 15 r3 and current have the blade. While I love the power of the 1070 the laptop gets cumbersome over time on the laptop and carrying that huge laptop through airports is rough. The blade is a beautiful laptop but when I play games even lowly wow, that thing sounds like a hairdryer even when the CPU/gpu is at 65c and it's on quiet mode. From hearing about the gx501 I got excited that I can have 1070 performance in a very thin/light laptop and it be only 40db. I was excited. I can finally play next to my wife without her complaining on how loud it was. I can care less if it's a gimped 1080. From the benchmarks it looked good and everyone is reporting its quiet that's a win/win for me.

 

how is the panel? is it the same as the alienware 15 r3 120hz panel? Only thing i am looking forward to from the new laptops are the new screens hopefully they have better viewing angles. an oled 120hz panel would be nice!

 

It sounds like you are the perfect customer for the Max-Q.

Please come back and let us know how it works out after you've had a chance for a quick review and after you've had it for a while. It sounds like you'd be a good reviewer for performance and use evaluation feedback to the thread.

 

A well thought out reason purchase to Max-Q. I suppose there is really a niche for the maintained noise level.

Unfortunately most uses will not be informed however, and that is where most outrage lies

Sorry to say, I suspect you will be returning this Asus (maybe in favor of another Max-Q). I suspect that you will never be able to use it as a laptop on lap or lap-desk on couch. You would need T-REX arms in order to use the keyboard that way. This is solely a Desktop Replacement in disguise

 

true the keyboard placement is retarded imo and that bottom panel is the definition of gimick.

I dont understand why the gs73 could not fit a 1080maxq in it or just a 1070non max-q! i think the gs73 would be a perfect laptop if they could do that and of course change the horrbile position of the charger/powercable where in you have 2 options if you run the wire towards you, it will be covering the usb ports, if you put it away from you, you will be covering the side vents/exhaust.

 

They did, just not the gs73, but Clevo's Carbon copy, the P950

 

It's for more than db, it's for temp and form factor (overall performance for size/weight). You can certainly downclock a 1080 in a bigger machine to get similar noise and temp numbers, but you can't shove a 1080 into a small machine without throttling out of the box or watching it melt. Also, I'm treating it like a choice of upgrade from the 1070. Want more performance? Go for a bigger machine with a full 1080 and get your better frames. Want a small upgrade in performance but a big upgrade in form factor and efficiency? Max-Q. I completely understand that most people here do not value these things at all and I would urge you not to buy them because the former category is still a thing and is not going anywhere. But I am less and less convinced that it's some sort of dastardly trick to try and screw enthusiasts out of high performance laptops as time goes on. Clevo (and anyone else who wants some of those sweet enthusiast dollars) is still going to make full performance machines. Once again, I really think the biggest problem is labeling. The name "Max-Q" implies a different place on a performance to form factor scale than the end result sits at, and I don't envy anyone who has to explain that to people who immediately think "max" can only imply performance, but my opinion stands that it's a legit product and there is a type of user that it's for, even if it doesn't fit with my personal usage priorities.

 

I hope they fixed the charger position! A non maxq 1070 would be to die for!

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Should have been GTX 1080 Lite, Quiet, Stealth, Min..... anything but Max

 

Exactly. Though I would go a step further and say it should have carried a 1070+ label instead of a 1080- label.

 

Yes they do have them available with normal BGA GTX 1060 or 1070. Not sure about charger position though, never seen the gs73's

Check out first page for specs
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-clevo-p950hp6-sager-np8950-owners-lounge.804747/

 

Not sure about that. For the their credit, they still carry same # of shaders, pipelines, and RAM speeds as their superior cousins.

 

A fair point, but most of the wailing and gnashing of teeth comes from user comparison between card number and overall performance, and if the numbers that come out on the other side of a benchmark more reflect a 1070, I'd say it would have the most positive impact in the end.

 

So far the tests have been singular and independently brief with these Max-Q reviews. It would be of interest to see how they handle a long gaming session.

They are limited to 39dba in Max-Q mode, so the only way to handle thermal build up over long use is to continue to throttle - rather than ramp up the fans as most other laptops would do - they would get noisier, but the performance would be maintained.

The owner reviews and use reports will be helpful in deciding whether the Max-Q benefits work in day to day use.

 

Still has the ugly position for the power input but a different charger perhaps something like the alienwares charger would fix the issue! Problem with msi chargers is that they are like this . I tried the gs73 in a microsoft store and i must say, i found it solid. It didnt feel cheap at all. Hope reviews come out soon of the 1070 in it.

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I'm picking mine up today.ill run heaven for an hour to see how the freqs and temps hold after that plus noise.

 

Gaming usually works best, but heavy load benchmarks can illuminate too. The Futuremark benchmarks looped can be good, prime95 + GPU benchmark, etc.

Looking forward to your results

 

My plan is to run 3Dmark cold than run then stress test for a while than run mark again while it's still warm to see the results. I like heaven due to its about the same dynamics as a normal video game 3D mark tries to run everything at 100 percent which is a real world scenario... least for me lol

 

It sounds good. As you get to know the weaknesses of the new laptop - they all have them - you can focus in on exploiting them with the right tools.

Some have suggested simply back to back runs of individual 3dmark benchmarks to keep the thermal pressures up, and see if the scores start dropping.

 

Our tester did a longer looping benchmark (an hour or so) and said the results were interesting, I'll post some too when I get them.

 

Occt with firestrike ultra graphics test 1 loop please?

Run for 30m, reset monitor, run 30m, then show us temp.

 

Whatever they did they're already done with it. Don't think they'll get it back out for more testing, but I'll ask.

 

So I don't know when they added this, but on the Alienware laptop configuration pages (at least for the US and CA pages), the power rating for every Nvidia GPU (except GTX 1050 ti 4GB) have been added.
GTX 1050 - 48w
GTX 1050ti 2GB - 59w
GTX 1060 - 78w
GTX 1080 Max-Q - 110w
GTX 1070 - 125w
GTX 1080 - 180w
The upgrade price from GTX 1070 to GTX 1080MQ on the 15R3 is the same for the GTX 1070 to GTX 1080 on the 17 R4 ($400).
The GTX 1080MQ comes with a 240w charger, just like the GTX 1070 and RX 470.

 

I look forward to your next post. On the topic of your previous post regarding noise from my experience playing low tier games like league or wow has been pretty quiet but I would say my 15 r3 is one of the good ones. I however have been very interested in the portability factor of the asus and if it could be even more quiet then my 15 r3 I would drop the money.

Edit: Found this video

Mentions temps around 6 mins hitting upper 90s on cpu. Waiting on more temp reviews.

 

So far:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/20747802?
The drivers are 382.22. Geforce experience says there is no new ones for my model.

Temps for cpu max at 80 gpu was 68c. I do not have an under volt on it. The fans were spinning but they were like the 15r3 slow speed fans barely audible. Pretty nice. I am about to walk the dogs and going to have heaven bench looping just to see temps. I will under volt it though during it. the keys are very soft to press, it feels like its got a membrane instead of a spring. The lighting is nice, but as of right now the touch pad, power button and the underglow is red and cannot be turned off or changed. (hopefully a software update fixes it.) The typing is actually nice, I use a lap desk thingy and its got a palmrest on it so its perfect for the laptop. The screen is beautiful, there isnt a spec of light bleed on it. Above the trackpad there is 4 keys, the numpad thing, a rog key and pg up and down. clicking the rog button opens up a very nice interface that tells temps, gives shortcuts to certain apps and allows you to change the keyboard lights. Its an instant pop up without the program being on. iIwould take a screen shot of it but I cannot find the print screen key lol. The top piece does flex a tad but its giving for how large a surface area it is. The trackpad is very smooth to use. I believe it uses the windows drivers and not the weird ones alienware uses. It kinda feels glassy even though its a slick plastic. Not as good as the Blades though.

If anyone has any questions hit me up. Mobile doesn't work for me right now, when I go to the website I get that I won a free gift card...
Sorry for the long paragraph, I am not an english major.

Screenshot of the ROG software.

http://imgur.com/a/h0hnf


edit:
Gsync was on during firestrike new scores are a little bit better.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/20748036?

I had a -110 mv undervolt on it also.
CPU max was 78c GPU was 70c so not much of a difference with the undervolt.

 

They could also used the old pure M branding. All know the older mobile graphics performed worse than the desktop version. Same as Max-Crippled, the former 980M performed worse than the 980. Also use the same pricing as before.... 980M cheaper than 980. Pure simple!!

 

"Interesting" is a much better reaction than, "Eeeeekkkk!!"

 

78c isn't bad with an undervolt, at least it dropped you down from the 80c's.

The ROG software has a tab that caught my eye, it doesn't exactly say "Max-Q", instead it says "GPU Limiter"

If you can drill down into that one, and "ROG Utilization", and any other tab that has to do with performance, CPU or GPU, Fan Control, Overclocking or "Limiting", and please post those too

You aren't commenting on the noise during benchmarks or heavy load use, does it creep up, or does it stay at 39dba - even if you can't measure it, you should be able to tell the tonal difference - maybe check the airflow out the exhaust too to see if it increases without sound level increase.

Yeah, Gsync and ROG limiting can be turned off, and verify Nvidia 3d settings and Windows Power plan are all on High Performance. Explore how to unlock all the limits including "noise" and fan speed - is there a 100% fan button / setting / fan curve customizer in the control software?

Very interesting stuff

 

It was in high performance mode. the gpu limit button is unclickable. I havent figured any thing else out in the software. It kinda seems like its in beta mode still, hopefully updates come along and allows more tweaking with the laptop. I cant find the option to put it in whisper mode either.

 

Ok, so it's in constant 39db noise mode?

There's no way to unlock it all?

Another thing to try would be to run it with a "fresh" from scratch Windows install, maybe booted from an external USB 3.0 SSD. And see if running without the "tuning" software is any different - how much of the limits are defaulted on in the hardware.

Did you do a backup of the Asus OS recovery image? It's been a while since I've used it on Asus - I think they may rely on Windows imaging now for a recovery image - check docs.

You could use Macrium Reflect Free to backup the C drive and create a recovery flash drive (Macrium will built it from the app), so you can recover back to a full out of the box OS install later - before you make too many changes.

One of the reviews mentioned CPU temps reaching into the 90's after 6 minutes, how are your CPU temps without the undervolt, and with the undervolt while keeping the CPU under load for longer time periods than 1 benchmark run?

So, besides the benchmarks and exploring the limits of the limiter software, how do you like it?

 

I haven't done a clean install yet. The software from asus isn't available yet for it and I tried downloading the newest nvidia drivers and they are not compatible with the card yet. I don't want to mess with it and have a dead system for a few weeks. I just played witcher 3 for about 10 minutes the cpu was hitting 85c , and the fans finally ramped up. The GPU clocks were staying at 1700mhz though. I don't know if they are reading right but that is what it was saying. The fans were kinda loud, but no where near as loud as the 15r3 and the Blade.

 

That's why I suggested making a full system restore backup first, that way you don't need to wait for weeks to test it - after your return period is over...

So the fans will kick over 39dba without disabling Max-Q?

How much louder are the fans during long term use, when they finally kick in? Can you set the fans to 100% manually anywhere? Did you download and read the manual yet?

 

So in your opinion is this a keeper? The temps seem like it will shorten the lifespan of the laptop but I've had worse laptops last for years. In my case it would only be to play low graphics competitive games on the 120hz screen. Though I think I'll just continue on with my R3 for now but that Asus sure is sexy.

 

Agreed, or even MQ, I want to say there actually used to be XXXMQ cards before, so it probably wouldn't even be without precedent there.

 

I think he was expecting it to be terrible, and it wasn't. He went from "this is going to suck" to "not as bad as I thought" to "I think I actually want one of these" in the space of a couple of days. Zephyrus review posted below. (Note, I think he played Dirt Rally for the longest out of those games)

 

You really need to tell your reviewers to review laptops as laptops. I.E. put it on their lap at some point...

I stand by my claim that this is a DTR in disguise, and while your reviewer warmed up to the keyboard position on the desk, it would be terrible or unusable on the Lap, Plane, or Train

You may be getting a few returns from people who don't realize this expecting a laptop to use on lap or travel

To be fair most DTRs are easily recognizable as such, so your reviewer doesn't need to do a lap test to tell the clevo 870pm will kill your lap and be impractical (to big) for plane or train usage

 

I think that's more of a semantic issue. Laptop is the catch-all term for these systems, pretty much anything with a clamshell design regardless or portability or form factor gets called laptop even when it's probably better for the entire category to be referred to as 'notebook' instead.

That said, while I do not think any existing gaming machine is good for actual gaming directly on a lap regardless of form factor, even with a lap desk I agree that this one would not be ideal for typing.

 

The 15 R3 w/1080 MAXQ costs $400 more than the 1070

EDIT: This is with the same config the only difference being the MAXQ vs 1070.

 

Here is a noise test with Heaven benchmark, Ran for 10 minutes with a -120mv undervolt. I have a witcher 3 max settings being uploaded right now.

 

In what? The same machine? because that is a 1070 Max-Quid, in which case it will be like a 1060 (and the 1080 is like 1070)

But yes a 1060 < 1070 upgrade is $300 in most machines. So $100 increase (assuming RAM and SSD are the same; if they are not, it is right in line with competition)

Edit: was thinking the Asus Zephurus... which both versions are Max-Q

I see you meant the Alienware 15.... that just sucks

 

Same machine with the standard GTX1070 is $400 less than with the 1080MQ. Everything else exactly the same configuration for the Alienware 15.

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Ok, was thinking the Asus Zephurus... which has the exact same $400 price diff between 1070 and 1080

 

Awesome, that's fairly in line with what else I've seen.

 

Here is a video of Witcher 3, I ran it directly after the Heaven benches. I cleared the min/max out and started the Witcher. Its at max settings across the board. Hairworks is at 8. I did notice horrible coil wine at the menu due to the fps for some reason above 3000fps. They should throttle menus to 60fps.

 

No coil whine elsewhere? We didn't notice any on this side, but I'm not sure it ever hit that FPS in any of the menus on the games we tested.

 

It has a light whine. I don't think it's coil whine I think it's just the natural hum of electronics. You can't hear it unless you put your ear to the laptop. As for the whine on witcher. I think it's a bug that is causing the massive flux in fps.

 

Good to hear. Last thing I want to see is a series that otherwise meets expectations so closely and has so much interest to have a little problem like that mess everything else up.

 

Dell should replace 1070 in Aw15R3 with the *New* more modern 1070Max-Q. This way they could justify the higher price for 1080Max-Qrippled due noticeable higher performance