The Official MSI GT76 Titan Owners and Discussions Lounge

Im feeling the same. I was wanting to upgrade my gt73vr 7rf but now I'm looking at different brands which I never really considered. I've never owned a laptop with optimus before, maybe keeping the gt73 a few more months and see what's about is a better idea

 

Agreed, it's a shame that MSI tried too many "new" things in the GT76... MSI should have stuck with the MUX, dGPU, iGPU modes instead of Optimus.

Optimus without a mux for physical display output shifting forces all video to the internal display to go through the iGPU which is co-resident on the CPU - which means the iGPU is a parasitic power and thermal resource stealing useless appendage that plops itself between the dGPU and the internal display.

That means the iGPU controls the display properties, color management, and doesn't pass through or allow dGPU special features - like G-sync - from working with the internal display.

Asus did something similar a long time ago, putting Optimus in their whole high end gaming laptops line - for one generation - users complained so much that Asus abandoned Optimus and the next generation were back to dedicated dGPU only.

A giant laptop with a literal "ton" of resources and services sucking power isn't going to see an appreciable improvement in battery time with Optimus especially when the dGPU is powered on - tripping on due to App GPU selection settings.

It makes far more sense to be dGPU only, and at worst provide a switchable display connection between the dGPU and iGPU so you can boot up under one or the other for longer battery time.

Even with a switchable mux'd iGPU-only mode the increased battery time extension for me is only about 30-45 minutes - which for me is never useful enough - better to have a light 2in1 or other light long battery run time device in the bag along with the big laptop.

The MSI GT75 8950HK + 2080 doesn't have Optimus...

 

Well hopefully they do some kind of revision of the gt76 or as you say the next gen laptop without the optimus.

I have been looking at the GT75 Titan 9SG-295. I have until August really to decide what route I'll go down.

 

I was quoted 2-3 months as the delay for the 9th generation GT75 by MSI USA.

I don't think the 8c/16t power / thermal requirements can be satisfied even with the heavy duty GT75 as it is now, at least as far as the 6c/12t 8950HK GT75 performance I am seeing indicates.

With a GT75 6c/12t 8950HK it needs to have the power limits disabled to get much past stock frequency performance.

Power throttling before thermal throttling is what I am seeing, with the sweet spot around 4.7ghz/4.8ghz all core with -75mV - -100mV undervolt, and I still see occasional power / current limit throttling. The 8950HK will OC clock stable all core 5.1ghz but under load it power / current limits so hard it actually isn't worth setting the clock that high. Stock clocks were 4.3ghz with a taper down from there.

Not a fan of unlocking power limits as that leads to re-pasting, re-padding, and many lost hours just to get a few more percentage points of performance. Probably needs to upgrade the power adapters from 2 x 230w to 2 x 330w as well.

For it's intended use the 8950HK + 2080 is more than fast enough right now.

What I am looking forward longer term are the Ryzen 3xxx / Navi high end gaming laptops to come.

 

Oh no... I hate to break it to you, but it looks like the 9th gen GT75 might have Optimus too...

I googled your model number and the specifications list the UHD 630 Intel GPU!

https://www.laptoparena.net/msi/msi-gaming-gt75(titan)9sg-295-16020

GRAPHICS
On-board graphics adapter Y
On-board graphics adapter family Intel UHD Graphics
NVIDIA G-SYNC Y
CUDA Y
Discrete graphics memory type GDDR6
On-board graphics adapter DirectX version 12.0
Discrete graphics adapter Y
On-board graphics adapter model Intel UHD Graphics 630
Discrete graphics adapter model NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
On-board graphics adapter base frequency 350 MHz
On-board graphics adapter dynamic frequency (max) 1250 MHz
Maximum on-board graphics adapter memory 64 GB
On-board graphics adapter OpenGL version 4.5
Discrete graphics adapter memory 8 GB

Can anyone confirm whether or not the new GT75 9th generation has moved to Optimus too?

 

Yeah but model I was looking at has Gsync and that's why I'm put off by the gt76. If I got a gt75 that has Gsync so I guess I could live with it. The new gt76 chasie really did appeal like but as it stands I wont be getting it because of lack of Gsync

 

That's what is confusing, it does list G-sync for the dGPU, but is that on external video ports only or does it support G-sync on the internal display?

NVIDIA G-SYNC Y

It's odd that site's GT75(titan)9sg-295 specification listed so explicitly the UHD 630 iGPU as the "internal" GPU, that's usually reserved for Optimus descriptions, and I don't see any mention of MUX or Optimus, that's why I asked.
https://www.laptoparena.net/msi/msi-gaming-gt75(titan)9sg-295-16020

The 8th gen GT75 specifications page doesn't mention the Intel iGPU:
https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GT75-Titan-8SX/Specification

And, neither does the 9th gen GT75 specifications page mention the Intel GPU:
https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GT75-Titan-9SX/Specification

So maybe it's just that particular site's way of putting in the specs?

The GT76 should also support G-sync on the external display ports.

 

What happens if I go into the NVIDIA settings and manually select the dGPU (RTX 2080) for an individual application in the Program Settings? Will the iGPU still be "parasitic" and therefore degrade the graphic performance of the machine, even when the discrete GPU has been overtly selected for that application?

 

Video review GT76

 

Here's a quote from Nvidia's current docs on "Introduction to Optimus" for developers:

"Using NVIDIA’s Optimus technology, when the discrete GPU is handling all the rendering duties, the final image output to the display is still handled by the Intel integrated graphics processor (IGP). In effect, the IGP is only being used as a simple display controller, resulting in a seamless, flicker-free experience with no need to reboot."
https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/optimus-developer-guide/index.html

Optimus sux because you can't turn it off. When Optimus is designed into the laptop, it's because the iGPU is wired to the internal display (and sometimes to one of the external display ports) and with the iGPU being the active controller for the internal display it heats up and reduces the thermal headroom of the *CPU*.

That's right, with Optimus the CPU performance and thermals are hit not the dGPU performance.

When this happened with Asus with a generation of G750's, the previous generation CPU was the same - Haswell - and the models with Optimus were running 10c hotter than the non-Optimus models.

That's one of the times undervolting became so popular as it helped drop the 100% load temps 10c and brought the CPU's back under thermal throttling.

I didn't need to undervolt the previous generation G750 with the same CPU because the iGPU wasn't wired up or powered on.

Using Nvidia / Windows to set Optimus iGPU / dGPU per application can force dGPU to be used, but the iGPU is still powered on and passing the video through from the dGPU.

Some applications don't respect that forced dGPU setting and will still use the Intel iGPU - Windows 8.1 and before could only utilize the iGPU for rendering, I'm not sure about Windows 10 - it might use the dGPU - but I doubt it.

This is why people were so disappointed with the new G750's they bought as upgrades only to find out that when browsing with IE or using Windows itself that their CPU would heat up and kick on the fans whereas before without the iGPU powered up they could browse the internet and watch video rendered from the dGPU only and the CPU fan would stay silent.

I'll see if I can dig up the info on whether Windows 10 is finally using the dGPU - or you can try it if you have Optimus, try to right click on IE and force it to use the dGPU and then use the Optimus monitoring / state tool to see if IE switches to using the dGPU away from being locked into using the iGPU.

Now, there are a lot of people that say they use Optimus without issues, but days, weeks, or months later they hit one of those Optimus gotcha situations - so be aware it might be ok for you at the start but as you install more software you may find issues where the app won't switch to the dGPU and you are stuck with iGPU only operation for those tools.

Edit: I think this guy was speaking about Windows 10, I'll see if I can find a more definitive mention:

Joshua Martin Reputable, May 3, 2015
"No, it will NOT use the Nvidia card for basic Windows. Keep it on "High performance processor" so it'll auto switch the the Nvidia card when launching appropriate applications."
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/how-to-set-dedicated-gpu-as-default.2271030/post-15111074

Here's the original Optimus Whitepaper, and at the end it describes how internet browsing is done on the iGPU:
https://www.nvidia.com/object/LO_optimus_whitepapers.html
Found here: https://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html

"Scenario 3 – Web Browsing: When simply browsing the Web and checking email, the processing power of the GPU is largely unutilized. However, as Flash-based content continues to grow there are situations like watching streaming HD content where Optimus can harness the GPU‟s power to provide the best possible experience.

Experience on IGP: Running on integrated graphics, general Web browsing will perform as expected. This will provide the highest possible battery life without sacrificing the browsing experience.

Experience on GPU: Although the GPU will provide the same experience as the integrated graphics when doing general Web browsing, the GPU will consume more power resulting in lower overall battery life.

How Optimus Reacts: Optimus detects that there are no intensive applications launching and keeps the GPU powered down. In doing so, the system is able to observe the highest possible battery life without any sacrifice of performance or the overall user experience. However, if the user is streaming Flash video using a website like YouTube or Hulu, Optimus will recognize the performance and quality benefits the GPU provides to Adobe Flash 10.1 (especially HD and high quality content) and will enable the discrete GPU."

Optimus was designed to use the iGPU as much as possible and only call the dGPU in for heavy duty rendering.

Microsoft Edge may be able to take advantage of the dGPU - stepping outside the Windows Desktop paradigm may have freed itself from being locked in to iGPU only primary use. But, everything else running as part of Windows desktop environment would still be iGPU only in Windows 10 unless redone to support direct dGPU.

Again, you can check it out by trying to force the Edge and IE apps to use dGPU and see if it sticks to dGPU only usage.