***The Official MSI GT80S Titan (w/desktop 980 GPU's) Owner's Lounge***

Even if you do not run them at their full capability what or who is topping this right now?

It only stands to reason that MSI has room to improve this notebook further.

 

Of course they have room to. That's why I spent a month and a half having a 60 e-mail conversation with their support department trying to convince them to update their EC firmware, only to have the BIOS team flat out refuse to fully address the issue. They cited liability concerns, which means that upper management likely played a part. So I wouldn't count on them changing their mind anytime soon.

I don't count any performance with a time limit as performance. 6 hours of gaming at 130W/card seems reasonable now, but say that again when your battery has dwindled to a third of factory capacity, or worse, when it stops charging altogether. At 105W per card with the battery out of the picture, we're talking stock SLI 980M performance, at which point I would go with the P870DM, or even the 980M GT80S. Why pay $1200 more for performance you can't use?

 

I can certainly see how that's frustrating but I'm thinking they are refusing because nobody is pushing them and frankly this notebook is still awesome regardless.

Should it be an issue? No. They should resolve this and fully utilize the hardware.

I plan on picking one of these up unless once again there is a better option?

 

It shouldn't, but it is, and will likely remain an issue until someone releases a modded EC. But don't hold your breath on that one either.

If you fully understand its limitations and still want one, go right ahead. The build quality is excellent, and aside from the disaster that is the EC firmware, the GT80S is an excellent machine.

If you plan to upgrade to Pascal later, the GT80S will lose out to the P870DM because of its desktop CPU and much higher power limit with the Prema BIOS, but as far as right now is concerned, GPU-wise it beats everything that exists until the battery dips below 30%.

 

MSI pulled an old Alienware/Dell trick on this one. Too bad they didn't learn from their mistakes. This decision completely ruined their product.

Sent from my LG-H901 using Tapatalk

 

I moved on to the P870DM. It has a 200w GPU vs the two 130w and desktop CPU, overclocks way better, better cooling, is a little more portable. It is faster in many games, and once the battery dies it's better on almost all games. I've not had good luck with SLI in games so many times I'm running off one card where the P870DM always wins by a huge margin. The P870DM has fully replaceable parts which is a huge plus for me.

I'm selling the GT80S for 1k less than I paid. It's an ok machine but just not for me at all, and I feel burned by all of the issues and the way MSI handled it.

 

I get 4 days ago new MSI GT80S with two 980m SLI, i want two desktop 980, but i cant find it on ebay, what is the hardware name of partnumber, were i can but two awesome desktop 980 for my beast ?

 

Since you now have a single 980 configuration, did you think ahead of time to benchmark a single 980 configuration of the GT80S? Disable SLI, and use all the available power envelope for the single GPU OC.

The desktop GPU 980 claims 165w, so the 180w/200w versions are "over spec" - and benchmarks show the 180w benchmarks the same as the 200w - within individual 980 samples vary in OC capability.

So you should be able to get the GT80S GPU performance up to the same as the P870 980 single GPU performance, all on a single 330w power supply, just like the P870.

While you still have the GT80S available, give it a shot

 

Yes, I have already been playing games off one GPU so I know what to expect, and have benchmarked a single 980 stock and overclocked as well. I expect about a 20% increase in performance off a single and non-SLI games, and 20% decrease in performance in SLI capable games. Benchmarks will decrease quite a bit of course due to them being showing perfect SLI scaling (which I don't see on most games).

I expect some games to be playable at 4k, and some in nvidia surround as well. All without any SLI issues I have been fighting on my 2x980m and 2x980 machines. I figure if I ever want to I could go with newer (1080,1180 etc) tech to get more performance if I am able to. I like the ability to repair/upgrade even if I have to give up some very slight performance in exchange.

 

My point was the GT80S 980 SLI could be configured as a single 980 the same as the P870, essentially doing the same job as the P870 980, while still being able to do SLI 980 for faster results as well.

I don't see the advantage of the P870 over what you already have with the GT80S 980 SLI.

The 95w CPU isn't going to improve GPU gaming performance, and 99%+ of a gaming laptops job is high GPU performance, not CPU performance.

There can be needs to fill for a 95w CPU in a laptop, but it's not gaming.

The GT80S Intel i7-6920HQ is more than capable of performing the job needed to keep the 2 x 980's busy, or 1 x 980 max OC