Underwelming GT80s Performance

Hey Guys,

bit of a random one here, decided to pull the trigger and buy a GT80S thinking i would be investing in a fairly decent upgrade from my GE72 (GTX1070) but unfortunately so far im extremely disappointed. I've had all kinds of issues with random software freezing which i found was because of the Nahimic software causing issues which was easy enough to fix but unfortunately, both games i've thrown at it so far have proved to be fairly underwhelming...

Pub G runs like crap on any system but id expects more than 30fps @ 4k from a 980 SLI setup overwatch scraped by at 60fps on 4k, am i doing something wrong? i've given it a fresh win 10 install using the recovery usb but i can't help but feel like something is holding the machine back from its true potential so i thought id post here to see if there are any known bugs (software or otherwise) that impede performance on these machines... questioning if it might be worth performing a fresh (non msi recovery) based windows install....

Right now, the GE72 is giving me better frames whilst not sounding like a boeing 747 on takeoff. ( i understand the advantage of a stronger single card vs SLI but it still feels like the GT80s should be holding its own...)

Am i going mad or are my expectations out of line?

 

1. Have you updated BIOS & EC?
2. Are the drivers up-to-date?
3. Did you observe the fps to see if it's consistent?
4. Fresh install is recommended, but make sure to install all of the latest version of drivers.

 

Yeah, your GE72 1070 laptop was faster than the GT80S 980 SLI overall, when SLI isn't supported in a game you only get 1/2 of the GT80S 980 SLI performance at best.

Also, the GT80S 980 SLI was a bit of a white elephant because it was the last high performance laptop from MSI to force only 1 330w maximum power draw, the BIOS limits power draw to less than 330w - and draws power from the battery to make up the deficit.

The performance of the GT80S 980 SLI was less than expected to begin with, but also wouldn't be OC'able to any useful extent due to the BIOS limited power draw, and single 330w PSU.

The GT83 and GT73 SLI's use dual PSU's to solve the power problem.

The GT80S is a very nice power limited laptop, given the incredible performance increase from Maxwell to Pascal it's been surpassed by a wide margin by even a single 1080 / 1070 current model.

 

The issue you're facing is for the most part bad SLI support on pubg part. Overwatch should run around 130-140fps on average, sounds like vsync problems on that one since you happen to run around 60fps.

Also ignore what Hmscott is writing, GTX 980 SLI is more powerful than a 1080 unless a game doesn't support it, but he has a point about the power limit, that is indeed real causing the GT80s to underperform a little bit.

Try and do 3dmark and 2dmark 2011 benchmarks and post them here, while keeping an eye on the temps, powerlimit, temp limit and clocks on your graphicscards.

 

Here's what I said:

"Yeah, the 1070 was faster than the 980 SLI, and when SLI isn't supported in a game, you only get 1/2 of a 1070 performance at best."

The wording could have been better in my post, because this is what I was saying, even though the words didn't make it through the keyboard:

"Yeah, your GE72 1070 laptop was faster than the GT80S 980 SLI overall, when SLI isn't supported in a game you only get 1/2 of the GT80S 980 SLI performance at best."

@JoelyMoley
Many / most new games won't support SLI, at least not at release, and in that case you will lose 50% or more of the power, down to 1 GPU, or even less with the GT80S 980 SLI.

As I recall owners of the GT80S 980 SLI tried to disable SLI to get more performance in games that didn't support SLI; to reduce the power usage from the other unused card. I don't recall if it helped increase performance for the single 980, but you could give it a try.

Check out the game performance comparisons for 980 SLI laptop vs single GPU's, it's very game dependent as to which is best, single 1070 or 980 SLI:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 SLI (Laptop)
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980-SLI-Notebook.157920.0.html

And, compare a single 980 vs 1070 in games; a single 1070 comes out ahead of a single 980 at 1080p/Ultra in most games:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980-Desktop.128942.0.html

And, don't forget even when SLI is supported it doesn't scale to 100% (2x 1 card performance). I'd hope for 70% when I had my GT80 SLI 980m, and I've seen it down in the 40% scaling range more often than above 70%. Again, it's game dependent.

There were 2 main GT80S SLI 980 owners threads, one opened when it was announced and one opened after it shipped, this first one has been closed:

Be A God of War - The new MSI GT80S 6QF Titan SLI!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/be-a-god-of-war-the-new-msi-gt80s-6qf-titan-sli.783205/

This is the currently open thread:

***The Official MSI GT80S Titan (w/desktop 980 GPU's) Owner's Lounge***
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...itan-w-desktop-980-gpus-owners-lounge.785384/

The main GT80 thread, still going, and there was a GT80S Owners thread too, but I can't find it...

***The Official MSI GT80 Titan Owner's Lounge***
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-official-msi-gt80-titan-owners-lounge.769092/

Check out the owners posts in those threads for more info on your GT80S.

@Danishblunt Thanks for bringing it up so I can clean up my post.

 

i believe you are correct, overwatch was monitor locked to 60hz so thats why that wasn't increasing, i removed the cap and was between 100-130fps, pub g runs like poo but that might just be a matter of finding the right settings, ran 3d mark 2011 and received the following result: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/12606721

 

Hmmm, that's odd, my GT80 980m SLI 3dmark11 scores are pretty close to your GT80S 980 SLI scores, GPU only 18% faster and CPU 19% slower... you need to tune
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10169847

Overall: P18,281 vs yours at P18,349
Graphics: 23,715 vs yours at 28,091
CPU: 10,893 vs yours 9,098
Combined: 10,749 vs yours 8,840

P18,349 is kinda low, a single 980 gets P15,284, a single 1070 gets P21,560, and a single 1080 gets P24,867.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 review - DX11: 3DMark 11
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-review,27.html

In this 980 SLI 3dmark11 test, the results show much higher score: P22,120 for 2x SLI.

GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI review - DX11: Futuremark 3DMark 11
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/geforce-gtx-980-sli-review,20.html

The other 980 SLI performance link I gave in the other post says P20055, which is higher than you are seeing.

If you compare the GPU score's, your's is still low at 28,091, vs 980 SLI 30k-36k, vs 1070 laptop 20k-24k, 1080 laptop 26k-31k, click the blue text to go to the benchmark score pages.

The futuremark benchmarks scale SLI well so it's better to compare game benchmarks to get a more real world comparison.

We usually use FireStrike for comparisons here rather than 3dmark11, here's a thread with a collection of GT80 series laptop Firestrike scores:

MSI GT80 3dMark Scores, test and tune
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/msi-gt80-3dmark-scores-test-and-tune.773245/

I think this post by @Katiecat is a GT80S 980 SLI score, she didn't say in the post, but the scores look about right, and she complains about the battery discharge under sustained load in other posts:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...es-test-and-tune.773245/page-37#post-10192759

You might run 3dmark Firestrike (same version as she did) and see how your scores compare.

And, here's my best 3dmark Firestrike score on a GT80 980m SLI, you should be able to beat that, @Katiecat 's 980 SLI FS posted scores are well above mine

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/5708173

 

See if you can fiddle around with dragoncenter and put the performance mode to Turbo or whatever you have as he best setting. Your cards should have around 30 - 33k score.

 

that result was with it on turbo mode, im going to install a fresh copy of windows 10 and see if that helps anything, i've just got an off feeling about this MSI recovery re-install.

 

There's nothing wrong with the stock OS, I hope you keep the backup recovery volume intact - or you already made the 32GB USB 3.0 flash recovery drive then you've got it all and can reformat and repartition

The MSI apps won't reduce performance per se, but you can disable the startup of the ones you don't want to start services at boot time, to ease your mind.

It's a bit of a red-herring, and a waste of time, to think a from scratch media install of Windows + downloading drivers + apps will improve performance over the stock MSI OS. I've found it does nothing but waste time, when instead you can just disable the MSI apps and features you don't need in a few minutes instead of spending hours reinstalling. Just download the latest MSI support drivers, apps, and firmware and install them for the same effect.

My GT80 980m SLI Futuremark scores are all on a stock MSI OS, with some MSI apps disabled - I don't use ROG Gaming Center, I use Intel XTU + MSI Afterburner to do the OC, and use the Windows High Performance Power plan with 100%/100% (Min/Max) CPU set in Advanced Settings, and Nvidia 3D Global or Program settings set for highest performance.

Have fun

 

Agreed, I just go to startup and disable everything that I don't need, then go to services and switch off all autostarting stuff not needed and still check running processes if there is something to switch off. Then I have 81% free of 16 GB memory on Win 8.1.