This ASUS RoG Strix GL502VS-DB71 laptop has to be the “steal” of the century at only $1700. Mobile Pascal in the form of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 along with the Intel i7 6700HQ CPU and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. I was also lucky enough to get a Samsung SM951 (MZVPV256) 256GB NVMe SSD for my OS drive (I’ve seen Sandisk and LiteOn) and a 1TB HGST (HTS721010A9E630) 7200RPM HDD for my storage drive. All that wrapped in a “decent” plastic shell (a bit chunky) with a “pretty good” 15.6″ IPS G-SYNC panel.

Unboxing pics below, some CPU-Z, GPU-Z, and AIDA64 shots plus links to ARK: Survival Evolved gameplay videos on YouTube…the performance is definitely a bit “WOW” for the price!! EDIT: Added 3DMark benchmarks…

CPU-Z, GPU-Z, and AIDA64:

ARK: Survival Evolved gameplay videos:

3DMark Benchmarks:

Time Spy – 4743 – http://www.3dmark.com/spy/303405

Fire Strike Ultra – 3604 – http://www.3dmark.com/fs/9837651

Fire Strike Extreme – 6703 – http://www.3dmark.com/fs/9858276

Fire Strike  – 10853 – http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14278593

Amazing.

“High Bandwidth”

+140 MHz Core Clock OC in MSI Afterburner = 1911 MHz boost clock in ARK: Survival Evolved:

MSI Afterburner settings from the above run:

Received my 3-slot and 4-slot NVIDIA GeForce GTX SLI HB bridges today! 2-slot coming soon. Benchmarks, etc. to come!

Installed with 2x EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 FE:

Lights out!

Upgraded my “secondary rig” (4770K CPU) from a meager GTX 950 to a GTX 1070. More to come!

Now that the GTX 1080 is showing up on gamers doorsteps everywhere, a lot of attention has turned to the “new” NVIDIA SLI HB bridges and their lack of availability. Will they make a performance difference and in what situations? In the Tom’s Hardware GTX 1080 review NVIDIA stated: “Using new SLI bridges, both connectors can be used simultaneously to enable a dual-link mode. Not only do you get the benefit of a second interface, but Pascal also accelerates the I/O to 650MHz, up from the previous generation’s 400MHz. As a result, bandwidth between processors more than doubles.” Additionally: “…that its SLI HB bridges aren’t the only ones able to support dual-link mode. Existing LED-lit bridges may also run at up to 650MHz if you use them on Pascal-based cards. Really, the flexible/bare PCB bridges are the ones you’ll want to transition away from if you’re running at 4K or higher”.

Source: NVIDIA.com

Luckily, I have two of the NVDIA light-up bridges from 2015 – one for two-way SLI (with one “finger” connector) and one for three-way SLI (with two “finger” connectors – which should more closely mirror the upcoming SLI HB bridge) – is there a performance difference?

Unfortunately, it appears that there is no difference. My 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra scores actually went down slightly across the board (with identical conditions) – although that can likely be chalked up to within the margin of error (I only did one run for each scenario).

For the record, here is how MSI Afterburner is configured (with only the core clock value changing for each test, as indicated below). No crazy fan curve or forced 80% or 100% fan…just semi-aggressive.

9,200 – Stock GTX 1080 SLI (2-way bridge / 1 SLI finger)

9,112 – Stock GTX 1080 SLI (3-way bridge / 2 SLI fingers)

9,592 – +150 core GTX 1080 SLI (2-way bridge / 1 SLI finger)

9,580 – +150 core GTX 1080 SLI (3-way bridge / 2 SLI fingers)

9,713 – +200 core GTX 1080 SLI (2-way bridge / 1 SLI finger)

9,626 – +200 core GTX 1080 SLI (3-way bridge / 2 SLI fingers)

versus

Will the new SLI HB bridge make a difference? We will find out soon enough…I’m checking NVIDIA.com regularly! 🙂

1080 in the house! So far, not proving to be much of an upgrade over the TITAN X…but it is new and shiny!

Current Specs:

Intel i7-5960X CPU @ 4GHz (Corsair H110 280mm Liquid CPU cooler with 2x Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000), G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 series 32GB 2800MHz DDR4, EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 FE SLI, Samsung 950 Pro SSD (512GB), Samsung 850 Pro SSD (1TB), and a 4TB Western Digital Black WD4003FZEX 7200RPM HDD on an MSI X99S XPOWER AC motherboard inside of a Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper full tower – powered by a Corsair AX1500i power supply (1500W; fully modular) with braided cables.

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra Results:

9,200 (stock) – http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/12274624

9,592 (+150 core) – http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/12274952

9,713 (+200 core) – http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/12275052

Power draw (Corsair AX1500i) readings (ARK in-game for the higher part of the graph):

This game has me hooked! What settings are you guys using? Even with a 5960X CPU @ 4GHz and NVIDIA GeForce TITAN X SLI my machine chugs at 1440p due to no native support for SLI in the game…any tips or tricks for tweaking? I’m running the latest NVIDIA drivers: 365.19. My settings are below (updated: now showing my current settings for my GTX 1080 FE SLI setup):

One good tip that I received is to use NVIDIA Inspector to edit the “SLI compatibility bits (DX10 + DX11) to the value of “0x080000F1” – which is from Hitman Pro and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. This enables pretty decent SLI performance.

SLI working – per MSI Afterburner:

More tips here. Give it a shot!

EDIT:

Screenshot from my new GTX 1080 FE SLI setup. This is with no OC! 🙂

2012 MHz (stable):

MSI Afterburner configuration and fan curve, for reference:

The game is awesome and it has a great in-game stats readout! SLI support isn’t really baked, yet (the 365.19 driver disables it for the game, in fact) but it still runs really nice on a 5960X @ 4GHz and a single TITAN X with no OC.

The latest version of unclewebb‘s great utility.

Be sure to check the support thread to see if there’s a newer version and go there if you have questions/problems. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD HERE [625 KB]

Just installed a Samsung 950 PRO M.2 NVMe SSD [512GB] on my MSI X99S XPOWER AC motherboard – pretty awesome results compared to my Samsung 850 PRO SSD [1TB]:

Samsung 950 PRO 512GB (Top) versus Samsung 850 PRO 1TB (Bottom)

Make sure that you update your MSI X99S XPOWER AC motherboard to firmware 1.8 or newer for full compatibility. In the BIOS – set your “M.2 Source Link” to “Auto” and your “M.2 PCH Strap” to “M.2 PCH PCIE” for full x4 speeds (verify using Samsung Magician – as shown in the above image). I used Samsung’s Data Migration software to move from my Samsung 850 PRO 256GB SSD and it worked flawlessly.