Windows 10 free upgrade

[Kin Hell]

Apparently, users of Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 10. I also understand that Windows Phones qualify for a free upgrade too.

Release date is scheduled for July 29th.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-upgrade

Anyone else going for it?

[Teho]

If I recall correctly you have one year to get it for free. I have never jumped on any Windows at release and I won't now either. Not one have been without numerous issues out of the gate.

[Harrison]

Apparently even those running pirate copies of Windows 7 will be invited to take part in the free upgrade. It's Microsoft's way to attempt to get all users onto the same code base and secured with the same updates.

Now the bad news. Microsoft haven't mentioned that the new version will be missing some things present in all recent versions of Windows. Windows Media Centre is gone, as is WMP. No huge lose but I'm sure some older software and games required it to be present for FMV playback. We will see. Also missing is any DVD playback support, assuming because WMP has been removed, so users will need to install their own software, and Microsoft recommend using VLC themselves, which is quite cool of them, although I'm wondering if this shows they have admitted defeat to the better developer.

There is also some other stuff missing but I forget what at the moment.

Also a change which will annoy many, myself included, is forced Windows updates. The OS won't give users the option to install updates, instead they will roll out and self install the moment they get released. Gone will be the ability to vet when some updates create stability issues, especially for high end gaming rigs. Could be a big issue for some.

However, saying all that, I will probably upgrade one of my systems to Windows 10 shortly after launch. I own a Win 8 license anyway so can easily get the upgrade.

Something else currently uncertain is the upgrade path. At the moment it is stated to only be for current users and the upgrade will be a direct upgrade of their current OS. As you all know only too well a clean OS install is the only real way to install a new OS, not an upgrade, because they can leave a big mess and a very messed up registry. I want to be able to create an install DVD or USB media and install from a blank HDD.

[Stephen Coates]

I don't think I'll be bothering :).

[Kin Hell]

I own 8.1 after running a hookie version of Win 7 for 18 months. Back in those days, I did try Win 8 & hated it in every manner.

MS have stripped their OS's ever since & after Win XP. Media Centre was always BS for me & is no loss for my money but not including a Mail Client within the OS is completely out of order. :thumbsdown2:

I just hope Win 10 allows you to run stuff like classic start menu & doesn't force that shocking & fixed Windows 8.0 look.

I will be backing up before the 29th July, that's for sure. :sly:

& yes Dave, a clean install really is the only way to do it. Problem is, will that be at all possible with the way MS are farming this free upgrade out?
I expect someone will find a way to hack it.

[Harrison]

Just to confirm. . All of my "copies" of Windows 7 had the upgrade to Windows 10 icon appear in the notification bar. I've registered the upgrade just so I have the option within the next year without having to pay, but still want a clean install route.

[Demon Cleaner]

Uninstall Windows 7 update KB3035583 and the Windows 10 icon will not pop up anymore.

[Harrison]

It is annoying that the icon remains, even after completing the registration and selecting close.

[Demon Cleaner]

In Microsoft's description of the KB3035583 update it says:


This update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user. It applies to a computer that is running Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

KB3035583 is the executable “GWX.exe” which autostarts through the Task Scheduler. GWX.exe is the system tray icon. When you click the system tray icon, it spawns the application “GWXUX.exe”, which is the upgrade dialog.

So there's no problem with uninstalling it again.

[Harrison]

Good to know, but why didn't they just have it quit once complete? Should have worked like the 30 day to authenticate your license message Windows throws up when first installed.

[Kin Hell]

It is annoying that the icon remains, even after completing the registration and selecting close.

About right for Micro$haft..... leaving all their rubbish behind after updating.... :lol:

Prolly summat to do with when the update is available & for it to be automated, but..... meh!..... couldn't they have used a Hash-Tag or even one of thos browser-choice Ad-twernt thingy-mer-bobs? :rolleyes: :D

[Harrison]

Anyone wishing to, you can download the latest preview ISO for Windows 10 to give it a try.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/preview-iso

Worth joining the insiders program to have access to the latest build. I expect the final release ISO will also be available from here too once launched. However rumours are still flying that M$ will only be releasing the final 10 code initially as a Windows update. But we will see.

I've not tested Win 10 for some time so downloaded the latest preview ISO and will be giving it a try in a VM later tonight. As I'm using Windows 7 I'll be setting it up in Virtualbox, however anyone running Windows 8.1 Pro has Hyper-V already installed as part of their OS, which is a Virtual Machine emulator and the successor to Microsoft's older Window's Virtual PC (as used to run Windows 7 XP Mode), so you have a VM already built in and ready to go. And Windows 10 will also have this built in.

I'm definitely considering going with Windows 10 at launch because I've wanted to reinstall my Main PC's OS for a while now and was going to get a SSD boot drive and upgrade the GPU, so I might hold off and do this when 10 is released.

[Demon Cleaner]

So I tried now already on 2 PCs the "trick" with removing the so said update, but as soon as Windows restarts, it installs it again automatically. The Windows icon will stay in the bottom bar.

Problem is, I cannot make normal Windows 7 updates anymore. It looks normal when I chose them:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/win%201_zpsnhux4cqb.png (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/cioprgr/media/win%201_zpsnhux4cqb.png.html)

But when I click OK, I get back to the update screen, and I have no button to update the upgrades, only to install Windows 10.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/win%202_zpsa4vj9gqw.png (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/cioprgr/media/win%202_zpsa4vj9gqw.png.html)

Quite annoying. So at the moment I'm updating Windows 7 via Bitdefender, who recognizes a vulnerability and lets you update Windows 7.

Tried it on my father's laptop, and even though he also has the Windows 10 icon, he can still chose the normal updates.

[Harrison]

Why not just upgrade to 10? It is better than 7 amd fully compatible.

Regarding the icon. I never had any upgrade issues whilst still on 7 with the icon. I also never upgraded via the icon anyway as I downloaded the usb stick iso.

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[Demon Cleaner]

Can you make a fresh install of 10? My PC seems a bit cluttered anyway.

[Demon Cleaner]

Found a way to get rid of the Win10 icon. The tool is called GWX Control Panel (http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/), and will remove and disable the 'Get Windows 10' notification area icon on Win7 & 8. Newer versions can also disable 'Upgrade to Windows 10' behavior in the Windows Update control panel.

[Harrison]

In answer to your other question. Yes you can do a clean windows 10 install. However you need to first upgrade an existing registered copy of 7 or 8 to convert the serial number to 10 and registered with Microsoft. You can then do a clean install.

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[Tiago]

I upgrade to Win 10. Everything was fine, but i had issues with my Nvidia driver. I have a loptop, and when i try to update the driver he told me it was not compatible with W10. I waited some days, and after a week try it again, and this time it worked.
I prefer W10 to W8.1, but i can't find any difference in performance.

[Harrison]

Performance from 8.1 to 10 is less noticed compared to upgrading from 7. You will only really see a significant performance boost with high end hardware.

Regarding nVidia. I had a similar issue when upgrading with my GTX970. It worked but kept saying my drivers were out dated windows 7 drivers. A week later they updated and everything was fine. I also had an issue where it wouldn't download and update them initially.

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[Demon Cleaner]

However you need to first upgrade an existing registered copy of 7 or 8 to convert the serial number to 10 and registered with Microsoft.
I have an original Win 7 Home edition at home.

[Harrison]

Don't upgrade a home edition as you will be stuck with the home edition of 10. You can upgrade an unofficial copy of 7 ultimate to 10 just fine if it was correctly activated by the Microsoft Toolkit (not the Daz activator) and shows as genuine. Once upgraded to 10 you will have a genuine copy of 10 Pro.

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[Demon Cleaner]

What's wrong with the home edition of 10?

[Kin Hell]

Don't upgrade a home edition as you will be stuck with the home edition of 10. You can upgrade an unofficial copy of 7 ultimate to 10 just fine if it was correctly activated by the Microsoft Toolkit (not the Daz activator) and shows as genuine. Once upgraded to 10 you will have a genuine copy of 10 Pro.

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Really?? :blink:

[Harrison]

Yes. I've done it for a few systems. As long as Windows 7 is showing as genuine it will upgrade ok to an official licence.

Regarding Windows 10 Home vs Pro. Home has some useful things missing such as Hyper-V virtualisation so you can run virtual machines such as XP or Linux. It supports network domains, remote desktop and bitlocker which home doesn't. It also supports scheduled updates and delayed update system reboots, whereas home forces system updates as soon as they are pushed to the system and forces reboots. There are many other things missing from home but these are the most important.

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[Demon Cleaner]

There was no way anymore that I could update my Windows 7 anymore, not in Windows itself, neither with Bitdefender, so I decided yesterday to upgrade to Windows 10, and to my surprise, it didn't make a fresh install, but instead I still have everything running like before, it even kept my desktop wallpaper.

So far everything seems to run fine, although I only spend 10 minutes with the new OS, the only thing that I don't like so much, like usual, is the new design, doesn't look good in my opinion. But I guess there's some way to make it look like Windows 7 again?

[Harrison]

Yes that is quite cool that once complete everything remains the same. It's the first Windows update that has achieved that so well.

Initially I was a bit unsure about the flat windows look compared to the older 3D look of 7. But I soon grew to prefer it. You can configure a lot and it's worth working your way through the settings.. especially the security as you will want to check some things are disabled.

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[Kin Hell]

Well, I finally got there. Not a happy chappie with Windows 10 Home, which was an official upgrade from a Legit 8.1 installation. I did try the Aktivat0rd Win7 Ultimate to 10 upgrade to try & get a Legit 10 Pro key, but something installs itself for Win 7 to do any updates & then doesn't do any updates after 2 hours of spannering around doing nothing! :rolleyes:

Managed to find an Aktivat0rd Win 10 Pro 2nd Generation ISO. Win 8.1 saw my 40GB partition get nuked to 5.5GB free for all the damned updates. Win 10 Pro leaves me with 18.7GB free, but it's lean & mean with no Swapfile other than the small one it must have & no Hibernation in place. ("powercfg.exe /hibernate off") I might just buy Win 10 Pro. :cool:

I also get a better experience with IPS Gaming on 10 Pro than 8.1 Home & the IPS issues I've had since Novemeber last year are still ongoing. I'll post a thread about it once I get sorted. :shades:

[Teho]

I've built a new PC recently and was going to get Win10 for that. I fully expected to have to pay for mine as my old Windows 7 was an OEM version, and allthough I could probably upgrade to 10 on the old pc the license wouldn't work on the new one. And it didn't, so I clicked on the store button and that is when I finally saw the price for a Pro license; more than £200! Kinda balked at that, saw you could get a Home license for half that amount but... Home edition is for muggles. I'm a wizard!

On a whim I decided to try the support number listed on the activation screen. I figured there's no way, but what the hell. And after struggling through reading the Win7 license key AND the Win10 installation ID (9 groups of 7 digits each) over the phone with all the confusion that entails they actually gave me a Win10 Pro license! I even flat out told them at the start of the conversation that I was using a Win7 Pro OEM license on an old machine and was installing Win10 Pro on an entirely new one, and still they let me have it. So that's a thing to try if you have any old license lying around apparently.

That said I'm not very happy with it so far. I've only used it for a couple of days but for me it's been an unstable mess with lots of MEMORY_MANAGEMENT bluescreens. Googling a solution for that wasn't easy as this seems to be a bug that manifests itself in a myriad of ways, and there's a hundred solutions people claim worked for them. I do think I've ironed it out now, for me it always happened right at startup so I disabled everything in the startup menu and that seems to have made it go away. Once the computer is done starting up I can then launch those programs manually just fine. Strange thing.

[Kin Hell]

OEM Win 10 Pro can be found for £115 @ ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/718646-windows-10-professional-64-bit-oem-fqc-08929?gclid=CKiltu7KnMsCFQkq0wod7k0O-g#fo_c=951&fo_k=1ed5d3d252f5acfb1a9438eb68440c50&fo_s=gplauk?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=66603666788&pkw=&pmt=)

I've seen some memory issues with games like COD Black Ops III but another torrent version sorted it out. Tom Clancys recent Beta release on Steam also had memory issues. I deleted the content without really seeing the game run. I've not seen a single MEMORY_MANAGEMENT blue screen though. Just a prompt to close some apps due to lack of memory with the M$ sound effect poppiing up on the desktop for a System problem. :eyebrow:

However, Outlook 2010 is much more secure than when running on Win 8.1 Home: I find this hard to believe for such a recent OS. Win 8.1 appears to allow your .pst data file contents to be robbed with a bombardment of failed delivery emails from whoever tried mailing the contact robbed from said file. :o

The hardware I'm runnnig atm is Ivybridge 3770K @ 4.7Ghz, 8GB DDR 2666Mhz Ram via Dual Slots & 2 x 780ti's in SLI & have thought about perhaps getting a 16GB dual kit. Not sure I really need it tbh.

[Teho]

OEM Win 10 Pro can be found for £115 @ ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/718646-windows-10-professional-64-bit-oem-fqc-08929?gclid=CKiltu7KnMsCFQkq0wod7k0O-g#fo_c=951&fo_k=1ed5d3d252f5acfb1a9438eb68440c50&fo_s=gplauk?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=66603666788&pkw=&pmt=)

Well I was sitting there on friday and wanted to activate right then and not wait days for an OEM disc to arrive. I did consider it, I found a retailer that had one that I could go and get. It was around £150 though, and the round-trip would take an hour and a half, passing several tolls on top of that. So with the expenses it would pretty much end up being in the £200 range anyway. :/

[Kin Hell]

OEM Win 10 Pro can be found for £115 @ ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/718646-windows-10-professional-64-bit-oem-fqc-08929?gclid=CKiltu7KnMsCFQkq0wod7k0O-g#fo_c=951&fo_k=1ed5d3d252f5acfb1a9438eb68440c50&fo_s=gplauk?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=66603666788&pkw=&pmt=)

Well I was sitting there on friday and wanted to activate right then and not wait days for an OEM disc to arrive. I did consider it, I found a retailer that had one that I could go and get. It was around £150 though, and the round-trip would take an hour and a half, passing several tolls on top of that. So with the expenses it would pretty much end up being in the £200 range anyway. :/

......& all for not waiting & wanting to be an instant Wizard! :lol:

[Teho]

Being a wizard is *important*. :p

Well actually this PC build has been troublesome and time consuming, starting with a suicidal PSU that took the mobo with it when it killed itself. And I'm working away these days so am only home in the weekends. So taking the thing apart, water cooling and all, mailing the broken bits off and getting replacements... rebuilding... it's taken weeks. So I am sitting there on a friday finally with a semi-working rig and am looking at waiting yet another week for an OEM disc.

Nope. :p

Then spent most of the saturday on the MEMORY_MANAGEMENT thing, tearing my hairs off my head.

[Kin Hell]

Fully understand & empathise, but........

Oooooh! - I wasn't aware you had a water cooled rig. :cool: Do u mind me asking the spec?

[Teho]

This is actually the first time I've built a water cooled pc. It was easier and more straightforward than I feared, but then I spent some time learning about it before I started.

So it's an i7 Skylake 6700K on an Asus Z170 Deluxe motherboard. 16GB of DDR4 3000MHz RAM and a strix 970 GPU. Also I got one of the new M.2 SSDs which is just crazy fast. 1400/600 MBps read/write speed. Yeah, 1.4 gigabytes per second. With a clean install and nothing in the startup folder the bootup speed is... *what* bootup speed? :p

I haven't looked much at overclocking yet, just incremented the CPU from 4 to 4.2GHz as a quick test. Didn't even dent the temperature in a stress test which was as expected. I should get 4.5 easy with my cooling, and can probably get close to 5 with some tweaking but I don't intend to push any limits. I go for high specs so the system lasts a while, I used my old one for over seven years and only upgraded the RAM and GPU a couple of times.

As for the 970 GPU, I still don't have a dedicated computer corner in my apartment so I still use my pc only on a TV. Once I've torn down some walls here and rebuilt this place I'll have a proper pc monitor, but for now all I require is 1080p@60Hz. I intend to get a VR headset eventually, and at that point I'll get another 970 and run the two in SLI. I dimensioned the water cooling for three heatsources with that in mind, right now it's only cooling the CPU and the one GPU.

[Harrison]

The 970 GPU is brilliant for the price. It's what I upgraded to last year and it's a great upgrade. I posted the upgrade test results somewhere at the time. It tripled the performance in most games and some games like Dirt 3 actually hit an upper FPS limit which is mad.

Regarding Windows 10 Pro. As you concluded avoid home as it's missing some very useful stuff such as very good built in virtualisation. Home also has all the new m$ data collection and spyware active from install, whereas pro has it disabled.

Regarding memory crash issues. Especially during boot time. This is normally old drivers and launch bar programs running. It can also be older win 7 GPU drivers. Mine has been pretty stable on all 4 systems I'm running 10 pro on.

Oh and I didn't have to buy an official 10 pro licence for any of them. I had an 8.1 licence so upgraded that on a clean install for my main gaming rig. For the others I just had pirated windows 7 ultimate installed on them made genuine via windows toolkit. These all upgraded perfectly ok to 10 pro and therfore are now all official licences. I don't quite get the upgrade trouble you've been having.

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[Demon Cleaner]

I'm considering buying a new laptop, but I'm still not quite sure to go for the 980M, or just stick with a 970M. The price difference is 380€, so quite much.

But will the 980M perhaps give me longevity for 1-2 years, whereas I would need to buy a new laptop again, due to the 970M being obsolete earlier?? Then the 380€ extra would of course make sense.

Considering also that the mobile versions of the GPUs are less powerful, a 970M doesn't come close to a 970 desktop version GPU.

Screen is just a FullHD 1920x1080 IPS, so no 4k.

[Teho]

Oh and I didn't have to buy an official 10 pro licence for any of them. I had an 8.1 licence so upgraded that on a clean install for my main gaming rig. For the others I just had pirated windows 7 ultimate installed on them made genuine via windows toolkit. These all upgraded perfectly ok to 10 pro and therfore are now all official licences. I don't quite get the upgrade trouble you've been having.

The trouble was I only had an OEM license for Windows 7 Pro for my old computer. I could upgrade to Windows 10 Pro on that, no problem. However I could not use that license to activate Windows 10 Pro on the new computer, neither would the old OEM Windows 7 have activated on it, just as it shouldn't. So I was happily surprised when the Windows Activation Helpline guy produced a new license key for me as I didn't expect them to approve an old OEM license for a new computer. And then they did.

[Harrison]

Is good that they did.

However to save the hassle I just would have installed a cracked copy of 7 with the Windows Toolkit on the new system, then downloaded the Windows 10 Pro ISO from M$ and manually run the upgrade. Hasn't failed me yet. Once upgraded if you then want a completely clean Windows 10 install you can extract the key from the OS and do a format and clean install.

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[Demon Cleaner]

I'm considering buying a new laptop, but I'm still not quite sure to go for the 980M, or just stick with a 970M. The price difference is 380€, so quite much.

But will the 980M perhaps give me longevity for 1-2 years, whereas I would need to buy a new laptop again, due to the 970M being obsolete earlier?? Then the 380€ extra would of course make sense.

Considering also that the mobile versions of the GPUs are less powerful, a 970M doesn't come close to a 970 desktop version GPU.

Screen is just a FullHD 1920x1080 IPS, so no 4k.

Any advice?

[Kin Hell]

This is actually the first time I've built a water cooled pc. It was easier and more straightforward than I feared, but then I spent some time learning about it before I started.

So it's an i7 Skylake 6700K on an Asus Z170 Deluxe motherboard. 16GB of DDR4 3000MHz RAM and a strix 970 GPU. Also I got one of the new M.2 SSDs which is just crazy fast. 1400/600 MBps read/write speed. Yeah, 1.4 gigabytes per second. With a clean install and nothing in the startup folder the bootup speed is... *what* bootup speed? :p

I haven't looked much at overclocking yet, just incremented the CPU from 4 to 4.2GHz as a quick test. Didn't even dent the temperature in a stress test which was as expected. I should get 4.5 easy with my cooling, and can probably get close to 5 with some tweaking but I don't intend to push any limits. I go for high specs so the system lasts a while, I used my old one for over seven years and only upgraded the RAM and GPU a couple of times.

As for the 970 GPU, I still don't have a dedicated computer corner in my apartment so I still use my pc only on a TV. Once I've torn down some walls here and rebuilt this place I'll have a proper pc monitor, but for now all I require is 1080p@60Hz. I intend to get a VR headset eventually, and at that point I'll get another 970 and run the two in SLI. I dimensioned the water cooling for three heatsources with that in mind, right now it's only cooling the CPU and the one GPU.

Nice rig, though 60Hz on your TV screen isn't getting the best from the 970. Get yourself a G-Sync capable monitor when you have knocked walls down etc. You won't regret it. :thumbs:


The 970 GPU is brilliant for the price. It's what I upgraded to last year and it's a great upgrade. I posted the upgrade test results somewhere at the time. It tripled the performance in most games and some games like Dirt 3 actually hit an upper FPS limit which is mad. <snip>
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I know you went to the Dark side recently acquiring an nVidia card, but it would be better to say what you were comparing it with to be 3 times faster in games. :ninja:




I'm considering buying a new laptop, but I'm still not quite sure to go for the 980M, or just stick with a 970M. The price difference is 380€, so quite much.

But will the 980M perhaps give me longevity for 1-2 years, whereas I would need to buy a new laptop again, due to the 970M being obsolete earlier?? Then the 380€ extra would of course make sense.

Considering also that the mobile versions of the GPUs are less powerful, a 970M doesn't come close to a 970 desktop version GPU.

Screen is just a FullHD 1920x1080 IPS, so no 4k.


If you must have gaming potential on a Laptop, spend as much as you can afford & leave it at that. Perhaps you could search for benchmark comparisons between the 980M, 980, 970M & 970 for a true evaluation, or.... Say f'k it & throw the extra 380 Euro at it to be as fast as you can be on a flip screen box. :p :D

How about an MSI Laptop with GTX980M in SLI?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/184-msi-gt80s-6qe-titan-sli-heroes-fhd-27ghz-i7-6820hk-32gb-ddr4-256gb-ssdplus1tb-hdd-8gb-gtx-980m-s

Here's the direct video link....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_V0q4ixEU8

:lol:

[Harrison]

I went from an XFX 6950 XXX Double-D 2GB to an MSI GTX970. I had the old card for quite some time since building my i7 2600K gaming rig at the start of 2013 and it had performed perfectly well up until last year. I normally run games in my Dell monitor's 2560x1440 resolution but Mordor and GTA5 struggled and I either had to drop the graphical settings or run in 1080 to get max settings. Even then GTA5 only managed 30-50fps. Now with the 970 it's running at a fixed 60fps with no fluctuation. @Kin I know you might comment on running at 60fps and not higher, but my monitor is 60Hz and I'm happy.

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[Demon Cleaner]

If you must have gaming potential on a Laptop, spend as much as you can afford & leave it at that. Perhaps you could search for benchmark comparisons between the 980M, 980, 970M & 970 for a true evaluation, or.... Say f'k it & throw the extra 380 Euro at it to be as fast as you can be on a flip screen box. :p :D

How about an MSI Laptop with GTX980M in SLI?:lol:
I want the configurable Clevo chassis based notebook, as it's slim built.

http://www.notebookguru.de/en/Notebooks/Guru-STORM-S-17-3-inch-config.html

With the configuration I want, I would get it at the moment for 2000€. It has a promotion at the moment where you get 100€ off, plus the SSD for 90€ cheaper. And I also need a swiss/french keyboard, as I'm used to that, and with this one I can chose that.

The 980M is around 30% faster than the 970M, it's quite a big difference, thus the price difference.

@Harrison: The mobile versions are slower than the desktop versions though. Like I said, it could still be more future proof.

[Harrison]

Yes, mobile versions are a bit less powerful. Before you decide just check to see when the next series of GPUs are sure to be announced because they might not be far off. The 970 and 980 have been out for some time now in technology terms. They will still be perfectly good for at least the next 2 years and if you are only running 1080 resolution then they will be more than enough.

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[Demon Cleaner]

Before you decide just check to see when the next series of GPUs are sure to be announced because they might not be far off.
That's what I initially thought, but so far I didn't find a lot of information. NVidia announced the Pascal GPUs, perhaps for Q2 this year, but nothing is confirmed.

What if YOU had to chose now? Does the 980 justify the higher price?

[Teho]

I did choose now, or two months ago anyway, and I thought the 980 was too expensive. I figured I'd be better off with a 970 now and getting a second one for SLI at a later point. This wasn't for a laptop of course.

[Harrison]

@DC. No, the 980 doesn't justify the huge difference in price compared to the performed difference. If you were planning to run games in 4K resolution or were serious about VR such as Oculous Rift then maybe, but at the moment for the price the GTX970 can't be beaten.

When looking I did consider the AMD R9 390 as the performance is similar to the 970, but the power consumption is double that of the 970 and they run hot and noisy. Even compared to my old 6950 my 970 is so quite. In fact when not gaming the fans don't even need to spin. Such design would be very good for a laptop.

I also looked at the 980 but £500 compared to £280 for the 970 was a huge difference in price for relatively small performance gain. Stick with a 970.

It's also the card most develops seem to have in mind for currently developing their games.

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[Kin Hell]

Before you decide just check to see when the next series of GPUs are sure to be announced because they might not be far off.
That's what I initially thought, but so far I didn't find a lot of information. NVidia announced the Pascal GPUs, perhaps for Q2 this year, but nothing is confirmed.

What if YOU had to chose now? Does the 980 justify the higher price?

I heard the next Gen of nVidia was suppose to be end of 1st quarter....

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-gpu-gtc-2015/

I don't have to choose & only you can justify the extra money. ....But a 30% performance boost in any Graphical environment is going to be a win.

@ H

Pah! @ 60fps. :eyebrow: :D

[Demon Cleaner]

On the other side, I mainly play older games or Steam stuff on the PC, as most AAA titles I play on my PS4. Therefore a 970 might suffice. But then I think I might still be able to play them on my old laptop, which although is only a dual core with some old Radeon.

In the end, I might play some shooters or strategy/simulation games, which are more fit for PC.

380€ is indeed a huge difference, although I have the money, but it would perhaps be a waste and I could do something else if needed.

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It also supports scheduled updates and delayed update system reboots, whereas home forces system updates as soon as they are pushed to the system and forces reboots.
Btw, in the Home edition I managed to set the updates to ask for a reboot, then you can schedule them. It's in the Windows Update advanced settings.

[Harrison]

Yes, but in Pro you can set the OS to delay all pushed updates for up to a month and set a scheduled day for the system to perform a monthly update of accumulated updates. Not really recommended for most home users.

Also in home can it be set to notify you in the righthand notifications of new updates and allow you to pick the ones to download and install? The same as 7 did. It's how I have pro setup, but based on what I've read I'm unsure if home can be set to do this. Would be interesting to know.

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[Demon Cleaner]

I heard the next Gen of nVidia was suppose to be end of 1st quarter...
In the article it says: To launch in 2016, purportedly the second half of the year.


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I'm still reading articles about whether getting the 970M or the 980M.

Checking forums, a lot of people really have different opinions about it. Some justify the extra money by saying it's more future proof, like if you want to keep your laptop longer than 2 years, which is indeed my case, I don't plan to change for probably the next 5 years. And that is basically my main concern, will the 970M still perform well in let's say 2-3 years?

Still a bit stuck with my decision.

[Harrison]

Have you found any benchmarks that compare the performance between the 2 mobile versions and their desktop versions, just to see what the actual performance differences are?

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Demon Cleaner]

I only know that the 980 is 25-30% faster. The desktop versions are faster anyway.

Here's a comparison between a mobile 970 and a desktop 970: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-970M-vs-GeForce-GTX-970

The guy from the shop meant the 970M might be fine for the next 3 years.

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Have to decide today before 23:59 when the offer is over :hmmm:

[Kin Hell]

I only know that the 980 is 25-30% faster. The desktop versions are faster anyway.

Here's a comparison between a mobile 970 and a desktop 970: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-970M-vs-GeForce-GTX-970

The guy from the shop meant the 970M might be fine for the next 3 years.

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Have to decide today before 23:59 when the offer is over :hmmm:

Wow! According to the review above, the 970m is 33% slower than a desktop 970 in Crysis 3. - That's quite significant.

Chances are the 980m's will be huge piles cheaper when next Gen launches. :shades:

[Demon Cleaner]

Chances are the 980m's will be huge piles cheaper when next Gen launches. :shades:
Yes, but that will be probably end of 2016. The Clevo barebones are not gonna change anymore this year, I checked that. I wanted to buy this laptop already since 2 years, so at some point I should buy it, instead of waiting all the time.

[Kin Hell]

Chances are the 980m's will be huge piles cheaper when next Gen launches. :shades:
Yes, but that will be probably end of 2016. The Clevo barebones are not gonna change anymore this year, I checked that. I wanted to buy this laptop already since 2 years, so at some point I should buy it, instead of waiting all the time.

Absolutely. You just gotta make your mind up & decide if the 30% increase in performance can be justified by the Extra "Euro-age". At least you would be almost as fast as a GTX970 Desktop with your 980M Laptop. Decisions decisions huh!? :hmmm:

[Demon Cleaner]

Absolutely. You just gotta make your mind up & decide if the 30% increase in performance can be justified by the Extra "Euro-age". At least you would be almost as fast as a GTX970 Desktop with your 980M Laptop. Decisions decisions huh!? :hmmm:
Considering that I won't probably play a lot of AAA titles, but more like "oldish" and less power hungry stuff, plus the fact that I don't need to run games in ULTRA settings. And there's also the 380€ price difference, which is not negligible.

Also the laptop will be used for other stuff, as I use it here at work only. My old laptop is now 5 years old, so I wanted to buy a new one anyway, for everything, but gaming will of course be a big plus, doesn't really matter if I can't run the games at full details.

I saw a comparison now of The Division, ran at lowest settings and at highest settings, the difference was barely visible, only shadows were better, but the rest, imo, was totally not really visible. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL0ru8F4ECQ

[Demon Cleaner]

I ordered it yesterday, here's the specs:

Guru STORM Slim

- 17,3 inch FullHD LED TFT 1920x1080 NonGlare IPS
- Intel Core i7-6700HQ
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX970M (6144MB GDDR5)
- 16 GB DDR4 SO-DIMM 2133MHz HyperX Impact (2x8)
- 250GB Samsung 850 EVO m.2 SSD
- 2000GB Samsung Spinpoint 5400rpm HDD
- Intel Wireless Dual Band-AC 7265 (with Bluetooth)
- Sound Blaster X-Fi MB5 (Onkyo Speakers + Subwoofer)
- Backlit Keyboard Swiss/French
- Dimensions 417(W) x 287(D) x 29.98(H)mm and 3,2kg

In the end I got 220€ off, 100€ was the offer, 90€ were off the SSD, and also I didn't take the game, that saved me another 30€, and so I finally paid 1684€ without OS.

For the OS I did the following. I went to a software selling site, bought Windows 7 Professional validation key for 18.90€. Will install that one, and straight away do the free update to Windows 10, which then also gives me the Pro version. A lot of money saved that way. Pro is 150€ here in shops.

[Harrison]

Very nice.

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[Kin Hell]

Excellent. :D

You finally made a decision at last. I was beginning to think you might go another couple of years before committing. :lol:

Please put a post up in the Hardware section when you have her. It looks fab from what I have seen via the ads. :thumbs:

[Demon Cleaner]

You finally made a decision at last. I was beginning to think you might go another couple of years before committing. :lol:
:lol: true.

It got already sent yesterday, so I guess I will have beginning of next week.

[Demon Cleaner]

Got it just now, looks very nice. Starting to put Windows 7 first now.

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Well, what the heck???

I tried now for 4 hours to install Windows 7 from USB stick without any success.

Tried 3 different USB sticks (1xUSB3.0 & 2xUSB2.0), one SD card, plus 2 different HDDs, but nothing works. Formatted them in different ways, made them bootable, used several Windows 7 programs that make your stick bootable, tried with and without UEFI setting in BIOS, nothing! The furthest I came, was when it actually starts, but straight away after pressing the INSTALL button, it gives you an error message:"No device drivers were found. Make sure that the installation media contains the correct drivers, and then click ok".

Some say that using a USB2.0 stick in a USB3 port doesn't work, problem is that I only have USB3 on this laptop. Anyway, I tried a lot of stuff I read online, nothing brought me further.

Tried also with Windows 10, but I get a blue screen with some error message.

Sometimes the Windows Boot Manager says that there's problems with the USB device connected and gives me an IO error.

I cannot install via DVD, as there's no drive, and I don't have an external one.

I gave up now, as I don't have a clue what to do? Totally puzzled :huh:

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So I mailed the guy from the shop, and he told me that I need to include a USB3.0 driver on the USB stick, as the laptop only has USB3.0 ports, and Windows 7 doesn't support USB3.0


If you have tried to install Windows 7 using a USB Flash Drive onto a system that only has USB 3.0 ports you might have found that you couldn’t get past the Language Select screen of the installer...

[Demon Cleaner]

Here's a good tutorial on how to install Windows 7 with only USB3.0 ports:

http://codeabitwiser.com/2014/03/how-to-install-windows-7-with-only-usb-3-0-ports/

Doing it at the moment, hopefully it will work.

UPDATE: Well it didn't. Have probably to try with different drivers, tried Intel now, don't know which USB I have on my motherboard.

[Demon Cleaner]

Works now, used Win Toolkit to patch the ISO with the USB3.0 drivers.

[Harrison]

Glad you got it working in the end. Bit of a nightmare. I had a similar issue when I first tried installing Windows 10. Got to the loading files for install screen and about 20% progress and just hung there not doing anything. This was from a DVD iso on a dvd-r. Changed to a USB stick and it installed first time. So was either a corrupt disc driver or the iso from m$ was corrupt.

You can see why many home users get stuck.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Demon Cleaner]

The nightmare continued for a bit, but now it's working.

Because once in Windows 7, my USB3.0 ports didn't work again. So no way of installing the drivers. So I allocated the 2nd internal HDD and copied the drivers from the DVD to a stick from my other PC.

Then I booted Windows again from the stick, and chose Repair Windows. There I have the opportunity to run cmd. Then I copied with xcopy /e all the contents from the stick to the internal HDD. After rebooting I was able to install the drivers from the HDD. Did USB3.0 and LAN first, and it works fine now.

What a journey :)

[Kin Hell]

I bet the GTX980m would have installed no problems! :lol: :D ;)

Joking aside, yeah, .....almost unbelievable. Really glad you sorted it though & don't forget to put a review up. :thumbs: