OMG: MSI is coming with a GTX 980M SLI notebook!!!

It would be nice but I can wait. I was almost on the edge to buying a GT72 last week and then heard about the GT80 through you guys.

FYI the Aussie cost is $6299 for the i7-4980HQ model...and all vendors appear to be listing it as having 32gb which is a bit wierd.

 

Do you plan to do a review about it here once you receive it? I'd me most interested to hear your opinions. Good luck!

 

I will be giving my opinion to lend a helping hand for sure.

 

Thank you very much! Much appreciated. Good luck to you too! Happy to see that there are few people trying the GT80 out.

 

Yeah sure, although I'm not that versed in many laptops as this is replacing a old 18 inch Toshiba qosmo which is long due for an upgrade.


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buy one with basic spec or manage to find a barebone with internals and buy the rest yourself. also kinda sad this machine releases near the end of a CPU generation, just like back in the old days XPS M2010 from Dell, really a shame. M2010 was never continued and CPU/GPU was at it's end, I just hope MSI doesn't drop this machine in 1 yr, cause haswell CPU is already almost 2 years old.

 

At the moment, the laptop is available with two configurations - i7-4720 and i7-4980. Other than the processor, not much difference between the two I think. The laptop comes with everything else loaded and I am not sure if they can be stripped before ordering. Others can clarify.

Hope MSI updates the machine when Skylake processors are released.

 

I like GT80, despite bad opinions. Lot of people said it's ugly, yes maybe, but the form factor is revolutionary. I think the palm/hand will rest cold, it's easy upgradable, and the mechanical keyboard is amazing. I only have removed the touch pad and put a mechanical numpad.

 

I personally don't think GT80 ugly - in fact I quite like how it looks. The fact that MSI has taken initiative to provide an easy-to-remove upgrade facility above the keyboard is to be commended. I think they said that they will provide cooling upgrades when new GPUs are available. I am not sure though whether CPU upgrades are possible. I would imagine the motherboard will need to be replaced.

 

Where will you have the track pad then?

 

I attended the launch of the GT80 Titan here in Malaysia and I made a hands-on video. Enjoy

 

from the looks of the heatsink, upgrading GPU/CPU may be a pain. CPU is shared by both fan and only 2 heatpipes run off it so not sure how thats gonna work. 350watts is barely enough for 4940mx when it is OC'ed which is why they really need to release this for broadwell/skylake as they would use less power. currently at the moment m18x R2 can draw towards and over 330 watts if just 1 extreme CPU edition + 1 GPU OC, anything more would need dual power supply brick.

another big thing is Skylake would serve this machine well simply because amount of pcie 3.0 lanes. right now all those m.2 x4 raid0 SSD are all running off pcie 2.0 from chipset as we all know CPU only has 16 lanes which is split by the dual GPU at 8 each leaving nothing left. with everything running off chipset means that 1.5GB/s read/write sequential performance gets slowed if a USB/wifi device is being used at the sametime, or they really just to have this go all the way up to skylake or this machine dies at haswell and I can totally see it coming with how much they are charging.

 

If I buy the GT80 now, can I always send it back to Xotic and have them put in a Skylake Processor when it comes out (or do it myself)? Or should I wait? I REALLY REALLY want to get the GT80 now, but Skylake sounds pretty sweet.

 

I agree!

I think they should forego the touchpad altogether, it's not truly necessary.

I strongly suggest they change and go withba full mechanical keyboard including number pad. While for many the number pad is either unnecessary and/or superfluous, having it would go a LONG way to quell the "ugly" comments; giving the machine a more normal and likely expected look. Even without a touchpad it would appear "normal".

For many (non buyers imo) its just too odd.

In place of a touch pad, a IBM/Lenovo style "pointer" would be PERFECT!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick

The only reason laptops still have the touch pad is because (back in th day) IBM didn't have the balls to dump the touchpad; and went with the "dual use" compromise of both the red "eraser" pointer AND the touchpad!

IBM (in its proprietary way) choose not to license the "eraser" pointer. Soo, the industry was left with the touchpad (which IBM didn't own).

MSI/Steel Series should either license and/or reverse engineer the old eraser "pointer" for use with their mechanical keyboard.

Possibly even a cross license of the laptop mechanical keyboard and the eraser pointer between MSI/Steel Series and IBM/Lenovo (given IBM still controls the patent).

 

I wouldn't count on compatibility with Skylake. Knowing Intel, it will likely require a different socket. And if the proc is soldered on, you're screwed anyway.

 

So long as the machine supports it and it's bought through us we're happy to do upgrades down the road.

 

Isnt the GT80 using soldered CPU? as far as I know it is not upgradable.

 

More than likely. In our meeting with MSI they said that Intel is pushing manufacturers to use non-socketed CPUs moving forward. The reason why the GT72 are such and the GT70 line still continuing along, because they're designed to be socketed for those that want that option.

 

I guess what I was really wondering is if Skylake is worth waiting for...? I am literally starving for a gaming laptop, I held off from buying in October to wait for the GT80. Plus, I don't even know if MSI will release a version with Skylake when it comes out....should I wait or no?

 

Nobody knows if Skylake will be great or poor so I am not trying to predict the future. I am ready to try something new and I am grateful for the GT80 being alive in the 18 inch form factor especially that the aw18 is dead. I really like to see a company think outside the box with the design so for me this will truly feel new. Bottom line is something will always be better or worse but this will be the only 18 inch on the market with 980m gpus installed and working without modifications needed.

 

Just preordered off newegg.. Only wondering is the gtx 980m card 8gb each or 4gb each .. Every site says something different.. I hope its a total of 16gb of ram ..

 

8gb each is my understanding used in the gt80.

 

Thanks ..should be getting it next week .. Maybe I can post some vids or even show you guys a handful of games with fraps on with every setting maxed..

 

few interesting things to mention is, even if this machine cpu isn't BGA soldered, it'll likely die at haswell UNLESS MSI can make enough money off these first batch. once they realize it'll sell even with this gigantic form factor they'll likely make a 2nd generation which comes with broadwell. now the thing being said haswell and broadwell sharing the same chipset so we can technically just swap the CPU out, ONLY if intel doesn't pull some stupid sh*t again which likely won't happen. if intel decided to change compatibility, CPU pin counts then upgrading to broadwell would mean a new mobo, means its all up to MSI at that point. so if this machine doesnt sell well, it stops at haswell and thats end of it and we likely won't ever see another 18" laptop from MSI ever again.

another thing to note MSI stated it'll support up to 2 generation of GPU. 980m maxwell being 28nm so we'll likely see 20nm GPU in this machine, if it ever gets released. there are tons of rumor that only AMD doing 20nm and nvidia going from 28nm straight skipping to 16nm. if thats the case, the fabbers took 2-4 years from 28nm to 20nm, how long do you think 20nm to 16nm will take? this machine will likely stop with haswell soldered/non-soldered CPU and stop with 28nm nvidia/AMD GPU. everything aside, 2 years quote from MSI likely means they know MXM socket is going to change in 2 years, we'll see new generation of GPU in a different socket.

 

Does your Newegg order say that it will be shipped next week? That would be great. Good luck and am looking forward to your videos. Hope there are no throttling issues.

 

Good question mine just shows release date of the 14th and that's about it. I will report any changes hopefully everyone else does too.

 

Yeah, that's what I saw too - which is why I was curious. I haven't ordered though.

 

So msi says they only have 16gb. And 24gb models. My retailer is saying 32gb and I have asked him to confirm (telling him I still want it anyways) and showed him the msi page but apparently he has confirmed with msi that it is 32gb.


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That's great news, I am looking for the backpack images that come with it. Anyone have any?

 

2x 8gb gddr5 making a total of 8gb addressable space in sli (each card holds a duplicate of the data)

 

My question is... if it is available for pre-order, can our MSI rep start spilling the beans?

Homer

 

NDA lifted for all sellers on the 10th, now we can finally talk officially about things

 

Yeah new egg still saying the 14th .. I did do the next day air .. So hopefully I can have everything and I will do some photos ...
I'm super pumped for this thing ..
Upgrading from an alienware m18.. I'm waiting a year or so to do my desktop as I am running an aventum 2 with 3xtitan sli...

I want to try posting a pic so doing my desktop

 

Also does anyone have links to videos showing actual gameplay on the gt80

 

Thanks for the update. I wish newegg would send me a shipping notice too.

 

ok thats get started, the CPU does it have a 4940mx variant? or is it BGA soldered?

 

Hopefully the MSI rep will chime in here soon.

 

Right now it only appears two GT80 SKU's are slated for the US, both with embedded processors:

GT80 Titan SLI-001 (i7-4720HQ) $3,299.

and

GT80 Titan SLI-009 (i7-4980HQ) $3,699.

*** Both SKU's showing 8GB GDDR5 for each dedicated card, rather than the previously reported 4GB per card.

US MSI GT80 Titan site page

Enjoy!

 

With a 4980HQ there is little reason to think of a 4930mx.

 

I tend to agree with you here after owning an hq and a 4930mx.

 

Unless you have plans of running above 4.4ghz on all four cores using some gigantic cooling mod.

 

i'd do fine with just 4.2-4.4ghz with HT off. im not interested in puny 3.6ghz embeded CPU lol, what a turn off MSI, made the wrong choice could have sold quite a few more units if they had used socketed CPU.

 

The 4980HQ has a maximum 4 core turbo of 3.8ghz and can add 6 turbo bins to 4.4ghz so if it's important to you MSI have you covered and for that extra money you get a bit of extra ram too.

 

Only external mouse, maybe sold together. It's for gaming, most gamers don't use trackpad.

 

not really understand it, what you mean by add 6 turbo bins? ram wise its still 32gb dont see how its more than m18xr2 lol

 

The 4980HQ edition ships with 24GB stock instead of the 16GB the 4720HQ model ships with.

The speed of the intel processor is the base clock (in all recent series @ 100mhz) times the multiplier.

Each step up in multiplier beyond the base clock is a turbo bin (100mhz). So with the ability to add 6 turbo bins (6 x 100mhz) to the maximum turbo of each state you go from:

40/39/38/38 (1 core/2 core/3 core/ 4 core max turbo multiplier)

to

46/45/44/44

Most tweakers will usually level off the above to 44/44/44/44 (or whatever the system can manage in 4 core mode) to keep the voltage required to a minimum in the 4 core state (since this is where the max performance is achieved in most games that need CPU power and benchmarks)

 

Okay, I'm impressed

 

While a socketed CPU might be the "best possible" route, the intel 4980HQ is no slouch either, and as Meaker said, running at up to 4.4 Ghz should be more than enough performance for games.

Considering that it seems intel is not currently releasing any other socketed CPU aside from curren 4900MX, MSI offered the best CPU that can currently be used.

I think both choices with 4720 and 4980 should accommodate most users CPUwise. While one will give better performance in some games and in the long run, the 4720 should hold its own in gaming for years to come.

 

Found only this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nwTsKz9Dqc

 

Shot our video review yesterday, hoping to get it edited up uploaded in a day or so.