Thinking of getting a GT80 series laptop but have some questions.

So ive been looking to get a GT80 series laptop, but with how expensive they are its not something i wanna go into blind, and i had a few things im a bit confused and/or indescisive on;

What's the differences between a GT80 Titan and a GT80S Titan?

Ive read some stuff about the battery discharging while gaming on AC and effecting performance, does this effect the 980M GT80 or GT80S?


Are the 980M SLI ones still worth considering? Or would i be significantly better off to just get a laptop with a single 1070 or even save an extra $1k to get the GT83's base model?

 

think twice about a GT80S see this thread the last 7 or 8 pages.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...s-owners-lounge.785384/page-117#post-10323089

 

get the GT83VR safer or don't go MSI they screwed us over on upgrades to the GT80S

 

Ive read through it and thought twice, but i dont feel the lack of GPU upgrade kits on the GT80 concerns me in my situation (though i can understand that being super frustrating =S, its like waiting for a working shield portable but with much more money invested in it ><'), since at the price MXM cards are i might as well get a GT83 instead as i dont already own the GT80 /to/ upgrade.

 

Perhaps consider the other SLI option the Clevo P870DM as it has a desktop cpu. However, I don't think in depth reviews are out for either model with Pascal cards so its a bit of a risk for both of these models.

 

For you, the concern isn't as much about the availability of upgrade kits as the way MSI treats its customers. I spent a month and a half working with MSI support and engineering trying to convince them to fix a pretty serious flaw in the GT80S regarding power delivery and in the end their official response was "it's by design, deal with it," even though there was more than enough evidence that the fix would be both trivial and free to implement and safe. The jury is still out on whether or not MSI will follow through with the GPU upgrade promise, but it's more than a little worrying and gives me the impression that they don't care one bit about their customers. That said, hardware-wise the GT80S was fantastic, and since they resolved the power issues with the GT83 it very well may be a great machine. But I would personally be reluctant to spend so much on a laptop made by a company with a track record of don'tgiveacrap, at the very least until people are sure there are no issues with the model.

 

I concur...

 

I say lets be patient first. Since they are rolling out new laptops, i doubt we will hear much info about upgrade kits at first.

 

but customer service told me and others that it cant be done because of the new motherboard and power issues or something like that. Go to the GT80s 980 laptop version thread and all the other GT80 ones and take a look GT72 also this has been going on sense the launch of the 1070 and 1080 Nvidia cards

 

What customer said for the time being can be anywhere between an official stance, to some random internal answer they came up with to try and gain some time.

This has been going since the launch of 1070 and 1080? Dude, those launched a week ago. Literally. Screaming and raising hell right now is nothing short of impatience and bad form. We have MSI representatives here that are busy but DO read feedback and trust me we will get an answer.

I do take a look and read most of the posts. I also read everyone's increasingly angry posting over a simple customer service answer.

When my laptop updated to Windows 10 Anniversary Update, my windows became deactivated and said not genuine. I contacted Microsoft customer support and you know what they told me? "You should buy genuine Windows license to fix your issue". Obviously I had a valid license and the issue lied somewhere else. After a couple of hours of discussion, my issue was finally fixed. If I started to raise pitchforks over this silly answer, posting everywhere, it wouldn't have made much of a change except getting me worked up over nothing.

I suspect the answer you got was in line because literally all MSI models, ALL of them, got new cooling solutions to accommodate the new GPUs. If they had no information at hand over upgrade kits, they would default at the differences in models.

I am not saying you should not complain, you should definitely do, at MSI, once we have official comments regarding upgrade kits.

 

I'll be sure to take a look at the Clevo too, though it seems the GT83 i was looking at went up in price and is now kindof out of reach =S. Does anyone have an answer to the other two questions?

 

The thing is MSI makes great desktop replacement gaming laptops the difference between the 80 and 80S mainly is the S has the new Intel Skylake processor there are other things I think that's the major thing ( Google Intel Skylake processor to learn more) plus some other features. Other people here have other views but that's what cought my eye when comparing the two

 

With the prices of these things, i think SLI 1070 is more accessible than single 1080 haha. I would probably even settle for a single 1070 at this point, if I had to buy a new machine. Seems like great price/performance.

also yeah between GT80 and GT80S is the new CPU which means chipset and support for m.2 PCIe. Previous titans had M.2 Sata only.

 

That's also what we are saying, don't buy an MSI laptop now, wait for reviews to see how the new models are performing, and then check to see if the promised GPU upgrades for the "upgradeable" GT72/GT80 have been made available by MSI, and continue to look elsewhere.

To be fair, Clevo made changes to their P870DM/P77xDM series to make their Pascal MXM cards incompatible with the previous 870/77x laptops.

Most owners of those laptops were counting on the implied upgradability of the GPU MXM cards as well, expecting to upgrade their GPU's to Pascal, and also feel cheated.

Sooo, just a heads up, there seems to be a rash of anti-consumer activity from laptop vendors.

Personally I am checking out all the other new laptops for alternatives should MSI / Clevo not come.

 

Considering only MSI and Sager do MXM, I suspect nvidia's Pascal GPUs were the reason of the change. If Sager simply made the new ones incompatible, MSI might be researching what the hell they can do to make it work haha.

Laptops in general have become very anti consumer, damm. with everything becoming locked down, soldered and unupgradable, choices are becoming very thin.

I agree that waiting is a good option, and see new reviews and all. My worry anyways is that even if MSI does not come through, there hardly is a "better" option, and most likely in my case, will be the last use of laptops for gaming. It was a very good and promising run though.

 

It does seem convenient that both MXM makers suddenly can't figure out how to make a compatible MXM card for their previous models.

 

A lot of money to be made if a company can make it work for Clevo and MSI then design them a card with working software.

 

The situation is odd enough that as a developer looking for an open market, I would stay away from it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/pascal-mxm-gpu-upgrades.795169/page-3#post-10321655

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/pascal-mxm-gpu-upgrades.795169/page-4#post-10321739

An independent poll:
https://polldaddy.com/poll/9501858/

Here are the numbers, right now:

PASCAL MXM GPU UPGRADES

• If only given a choice, I would purchase a Pascal MXM 3.xb GPU upgrade in an instant! 66% 165 votes
  
  
• If Notebook GPUs stop being upgrade-able I'll probably switch to Desktops instead! 28% 69 votes
  
  
• I prefer to purchase a complete new Notebook over GPU upgrades! 2% 4 votes
  
  
• Polaris MXM 3.xb, here I come! 3% 8 votes
  
  
• Other 2% 4 votes
  
  250 Total Vote

-Is Nvidia the source of this whole problem, with their only 1% want upgradeable mobile graphics?

It also seems odd that Nvidia washes their hands of the mobile MXM design, just before release, only to have all the MXM cards the same - all changed to keep them from being compatible with the previous generation MXM slots - by two independent companies.

It's an Evil Genius idea if I ever saw one.

Completely alienate your best customers, stop the predicted Gaming PC 30% growth ...and make a Million Dollars...

Spoiler: Another Evil Genius

 

I'd rather by a single 1070 machine for just over $2k, and then buy whatever is out around $2k in a couple years.

Seems wiser than spending $4k on a laptop that may not have an upgrade path.

 

If I buy another PC it will still be a laptop I will definatly not go with the high end laptops! I learned a close to $3,000 lesson. From now on I won't spend more than $12 or $1300 if that and buy another in a year or so that way I keep up with the new tech.

 

Here is the latest word from MSI:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...for-the-msi-rep-2.795226/page-3#post-10326270

We started a thread for GT72/GT80 owners to discuss the upgrades:

GT72/GT72S and GT80/GT80S Owners GPU Upgrade Discussion
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...0-gt80s-owners-gpu-upgrade-discussion.795236/