Please help with Octane VI specs

enquel

Member
Hi there,

first off : PCS forum registration does not work from Firefox, needed Chrome for this.

the topic: I want to buy a laptop for 3D rendering and simulation. I am considering Octane VI with 64GB Ram, 9900K and RTX 2070 or 2080. My main concerns are:

a) what about CPU/GPU temperatures? I expect to be rendering on all cores/threads, sometimes not only on CPU but also CPU+GPU. What's the "effective" speed of this unit like after 2-3h of full CPU/GPU load?
b) the performance difference between RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 is roughly 15%, memory is the same, so I can gladly stick with 2070, especially if the power usage/heat is lower (is it? I am a TDP noob).
c) is anyone here using this unit for heavy computations as well and can share his/her review of Octane?
d) I am totally happy with Full HD screen now, can't see the point of 4K for my work. Is there also a performance consideration to be taken into account when choosing screen resolution?
e) I've read about 330W brick of this unit and that competition uses dual bricks for lower specs (mobile CPUs). So how that affects performance? Should I order custom mega brick for this one?



Best regards
 

debiruman665

Enthusiast
I've got an Octane with 9900k and an rtx2080

a) what about CPU/GPU temperatures? I expect to be rendering on all cores/threads, sometimes not only on CPU but also CPU+GPU. What's the "effective" speed of this unit like after 2-3h of full CPU/GPU load?

If you leave at stock settings your CPU will rise up to 100C before thermal throttling, thermals is the limiting factor. On 8 package use which is 8-16 threads, you will achieve a boost speed of around 4.2Ghz to 4.7Ghz, with the GPU on full and adding more heat to the heatsink the GPU can reach up to 90C and the CPU will be hitting around 4.2Ghz on 8 packages.

Applying and undervolt and manually tuning the core multipliers to your workload you can make things faster. I'd be happy to guide you through it once you got yours. Up to 4 package workloads which are 1-8 threads can be between 4.7GHz and 5.2Ghz if you fine tune it with some overclocking but this is with 0 GPU usage from my tests but there was some 10C-15C degrees headroom (from my memory) which means you might be able to sustain this on light loads.

I have not bothered with the Power limits or current limits as the current limit is capped by the BIOS and the power draw limits only add some level of chaos to the Overclocking so hard to keep a baseline.

For your question at full GPU/LOAD at stock you can get 4.2GHz that will be throttling and give you overall less performance with higher clock speeds. An example of this would be when playing anthem at stock settings my core speed would be in the range of 3.8-4.4Ghz with around 60fps. After tuning it down to max out at 3.6-3.8Ghz i was able to acheive 90-100fps.

It's all about the fine tuning and saving your XTU profiles.

Octane is the formula one car of laptops and offers a lot of optimisation options for different tasks.


b) the performance difference between RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 is roughly 15%, memory is the same, so I can gladly stick with 2070, especially if the power usage/heat is lower (is it? I am a TDP noob).

As far as I know all generations of any particular chip or card practice 'binning' where they aim to make 100% 2080s and the ones who don't make the grade are turned into 2070s and 2060s. When buying a 2070 you might get a 2080 that barely made the grade so its a very good 2070 that runs nice and cool or it could be a 2060 that barely made it into the 2070 bracket.

They don't call it the silicon lottery for nothing.


c) is anyone here using this unit for heavy computations as well and can share his/her review of Octane?

I'd be happy to run any benchmarks or tests you are interested in.

My initial review before i delved into the overclocking aspect:



My little diary of overclocking tests and thoughts:

d) I am totally happy with Full HD screen now, can't see the point of 4K for my work. Is there also a performance consideration to be taken into account when choosing screen resolution?
no comment

e) I've read about 330W brick of this unit and that competition uses dual bricks for lower specs (mobile CPUs). So how that affects performance? Should I order custom mega brick for this one?

for me, the dual power brick crosses the line of what can be called a laptop and what is a flat pack pc. the 330W brick is already massive. The competitors with the dual bricks use smaller rated bricks so it's not exactly double the power. They all run the 9900k at the 100C thermal mark too. I'm not entirely convinced that the dual brick offers much more in terms of cpu power, but maybe can afford more overal power to the board for other things such as more overclocked ram etc

The chip is just too beastly for a laptop but even running it when it throttles from heat its still the best consumer chip for multithreaded workloads, even in a laptop.
 
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debiruman665

Enthusiast
Thank you for extensive reply, debiruman665. I will be running Houdini / Blender / ZBrush / Substance Painter stuff on this.

The only way this laptop could look worse than the other options is if a pc with the same specs would be more suitable.

Once all the peripherals are included the price will still be roughly the same, except with a pc with decent cooling you will get higher boost speeds and a non-power-draw-capped GPU.

If a laptop is a must the octane is the value for money option with the like for like components in other manufacturers like Alienware or ROG who don't offer as much variety for customisation.

when considering the 9900k it doesn't run free as it would in a pc, but the octane will let it run to the absolute limit of its capability inside a laptop with thermals being the least of its priorities.

Older generation chips throttled at around 80-90C and I think that's, where the assumption came from that those, are ideal temps for a CPU. the 9900k is specced to run up to 100C reliably.
 

enquel

Member
Yeah I have 2nd Asus now, am very pleased with it, but it's becoming old and slow. ROG Mothership it's much overpriced, same goes for Alienware. I do not need overclocking, I just need stable speed I can rely on, so that I can plan on render times as well.
Thank you for support.
 

debiruman665

Enthusiast
You can't overclock it, it's going to run at maximum out of the box, What you want to do is fine tune the multipliers so that it sits at a stable at the very limit and doesn't throttle down and then speed back up again.

Imagine a stable line compared to a sine wave.

It's not particularly hard either.

Undervolt: set the value as low as possible, if you randomly get a bluescreen it's too low and you reduce the value till it stops happening. This increases the thermals of the chip and allows higher speeds.

Clocking the multipliers.

Run your task and open up XTU and set all 8 multipliers to x36.

Change the first one to x50, then the second, the third until you see your clock count suddenly jump up.

If its comfortable at 5Ghz and its not throttling then try setting all to x51, then x52 (hard limit x53 will crash it for me)

if instead

If instead, it's sitting less than the targetted 5Ghz and is throttling then you reduce the last multiplier down incrementally until you get it stable with no throttling.

eg.

You might end up with x50, x50, x50, x50, x36, x,36, x36, x36 and the clock speed is at 4.2Ghz

then you would set it to x50, x50, x50, x41 x41,x41,x41,x41 for that a stable speed at that particular workload for a stable 4.1Ghz with the ability for it to rise up to 5Ghz again for short bursts.

Save this profile in Xtu to quickly re-apply it.

If your rendering tasks take 3 hours there might be some benefit in doing the clocking adjustments to shave off time.
 

enquel

Member
Can you look at this conf for any kind of misalignment?:

Chassis & Display
Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 Eight Core Processor i9-9900K (3.6GHz) 16MB Cache

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Get Total War: Three Kingdoms & More w/ select Intel CPUs!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1

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Get Wolfenstein: Young Blood with select NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs!
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (upto 1800MB/sR | 1800MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 330W AC Adaptor
Battery
Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH)
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre European Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
4 x USB 3.0 Ports + 2 x USB 3.1 Type C Ports
Keyboard Language
OCTANE SERIES BACKLIT USA KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
 
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