--->The Official MSI GT780/GT783 Owner's Lounge<---

That was my worry/concern. Fair enough. Who wants to be an $800 guinea pig? Bad enough I'm very tempted to be a $500 guinea pig and upgrade to a 970m. At least that is much closer in power consumption to what we know the old Sandy Bridge era boards could take. I think/hope anyway...

 

The 970m is more likely to work as not only consumes less but, just like the 770m, is more "the-jack-of-all-trades" card with higher compatibility. The 980m is the high end card. And as past configurations have shown the top dog from Nvidia always had a lower compatibility than its closest relative (exception being the 800m series where both the 870m and 880m were easily exchangeable between them).

 

Hey everyone,
New to the gt780 ownership, already have an acer 8920g and msi gt627.

Anyway I have just fixed the screen hinge on the gt780 and installed a ssd into the machine, the computer will occasionaly shut down - just the screen will dim, the sleep button at the front edge of the laptop will blink once and the main power button will flash twice. It doesnt happen when the laptop is under load. It also happens OUTSIDE of windows. The system will not resume, it will power up as normal, go thru logging in etc. No "unexpected shutdown" errors either. Oh and it happens plugged AND with battery. Also with fan on high speed mode or standard. Checked gpu temp and cpu temp and they are less than 60*c . And like I said, this doesnt happen when under load.

Any ideas? does the GT780 have a sleep/hibernate function built into the bios? It doesnt seem to happen if I am using the machine.

ps: siince I bought the laptop last week it has never showed a fully charged light at the front of the laptop. Yeah an orange light comes on, at the front edge of the laptop, when charging but when fully charged there is no light. Is this normal?

Thanks

 

I sure hope so. Order placed, card ships on Monday and should arrive at a relative's in the US before I visit next weekend (much cheaper than shipping directly to Canada). Fingers crossed! Assuming all goes well, here's to hoping the CPU isn't a huge bottleneck (though I'm sure even then it's a huge step up from the old 560m that was never really cutting edge).

 

That part sounds normal. My front panel power light only illuminates when charging, and is off when fully charged.

Unsure about your other issues. Doesn't sound quite normal to me.

 

Thanks for the reply, at least thats one thing off of my mind. Did you install the 16gb into your machine yourself, did it make much difference to you?

I am going to try flashing the bios / firmware later . I tried disconnecting cmos battery and also taking the new hdd out to see if there was any difference, no change.
Also one thing ive now noticed, for example if i set my keyboard to red colour, when the laptop decided to turn itself off, when I reboot the keyboard has lost its memory options. Strange eh ?

 

This machine had 16 GB stock, but I've upgraded other machines to that. Does it make a difference? Well that really depends on what you do on your computer. I usually have lots of big applications (Adobe Creative Cloud, Visual Studio, several browser tabs, sometimes even emulators for Linux or mobile platforms) running simultaneously so for me it helps smooth out the multitasking. If you primarily are just using a browser or playing a game with everything else closed, you probably won't really notice a huge difference. Standard rules of RAM.


Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

From a 560m? You'll be surprised
The CPU should not bottleneck it that much. Only on CPU heavy games you'll notice a small difference, otherwise it should run like a charm

 

The CPU will be enough for the most part, a 28xx type cpu will help but for the most part the GPU is the main area to improve.

 

Hey alltogether, wonder if you could help me,

I had a barebone gt780, but as my powerplug burnt down I changed to an original msi 17611 ver 1.1 mainboard, so I thought yey now I can finally use the backlit keyboard. Ordered it on Ebay, the Backlit is working perfectly, but all my keys are completly messed up, some of them seem to have no function at all.
Tried allready a keyremapper but as some of the keys are not working at all, that wont get me very far.

I already tried the ecall.bat firmware update, but it wont start up. Starting it without adminstrator stuff, it gives the message "Not compatible with the 64-bit version of your system", with administrator settings, it only shows the cmd-screen for a split second without doing anything afterwards.

It was an Windows 7 System, upgraded to Windows 8,
16 Gb Ram
64Gb SSD
2TB HDD
i7 somewhat 2nd Gen
560M Nvidia

Hopefully someone can help me, as I am really satisfied with the backlit function. The only option I'm thinking of, is to put the backlit from the new keyboard to the properly working keys of the old one. But I think thats not quite an easy task.


EDIT:

Okay, so the Ebay guy just texted me, that the keyboard fits only for 1762 Mainboards, but he couldnt tell me, why he is offering the keyboard described as compatible with the gt780, can I do a Bios Upgrade to the 1762 without any trouble as the firmware is still the same?

 

No the bios is different between the two generations due to the CPUs they support.

 

It was probably a mistake, but it's not going to fit onto your system because yours is a 1761.

 

Can someone make a guide to do this in English?
I'm pretty sure about how to do it, but a informative, step by step guide would be a great help with this costly project!

 

I believe there was a thread on this with pictures showing where you need to grind away.

 

So today I'm on my comp, all is well, I try to close the lid a bit and I hear something snap. Turns out, I can't close the lid, after some probing and checking out how to remove the front cover of the screen in this thread I see that my left hinge is basically unmoveable all of a sudden. Which is weird, 'cause it wasn't even a bit slow before now, it went from fine to full stop. Unfortunately the plastic holders for the things the screws go into that hold the cover connected to the hinge broke, so the left side is kind of messed up.

I feel like I could live with just supergluing it together, the hinge to the back cover, maybe even front cover if I can make that happen. It won't be very steady but I can survive. Problem is I can't at all move the hinge so it wouldn't help. Anyone experience the same? I see some of you had some hinge problems, and WTP even had problem with the left one. Was it the same problem? Any way I can get it moving again?

It's almost 4 years old, so maybe it was inevitable, but I did buy this (pretty expensive) computer 4 years ago, so I could have a great comp 3-4 years from then, and I must say I do love this laptop. It's still so damn good. It has it's hiccups here and there, but this thread has also been a huge help with my pains! So thank you all a lot.

 

This model did have the odd model with hinge issues, talk to your reseller.

 

You think they can help me? Like I said, it'll be 4 years in January, so no idea how willing they will be to help. It's just an online electronics shop basically, last time I sent something in to their msi repair it took quite some time. Can I buy a new hinge somewhere and replace it myself? I guess I'd need a new top cover as well maybe, hmmm....

 

Most likely the hinge itself is still OK.The problem is usually that the inserts that hold the hinge in place and fastened to the lid break away from the lid.

The left side is where the heat exhausts from the notebook and where almost all reported hinge problems occur.

You can either buy a new top lid cover or try a hard epoxy as I did and still have.

With the epoxy it's important to have close to exact amounts of each part so it hardens correctly.

You'll need to take apart the top half of the notebook so the shell can be laid flat.

The brass colored metal inserts that broke from the shell need to be epoxied into the exact spots they broke away from with as much of the surrounding black plastic as possible.

Let harden for about 3 days before attempting to reassemble.

BTW,I've seen new replacement lids offered for as low as $65 and as high as $150

My epoxy job is still holding but I try not to open/close it very often.The GT780DX sits on a desk and is open and covered when not in use.It's 37 months old at this time and I'm trying not to invest any more $$$$ into it.This has been my all time favorite notebook.

 

My hinge won't budge. It's sooo hard to move it up or down. Tried applying some oil to it, but it didn't help. So even if I get a new cover, the problem will continue. I'll try taking the hinge out now, and see where that leads me. I will need a new cover, or some epoxy type of thing yeah. I'm not too handy, so maybe the new lid solution will be easier.

edit: Ok I just took the hinge off, and it's so damn hard to rotate. I tried putting oil on it several times and turn it back and forth, but now my hands hurt too damn much. I'm suspecting the heating to be the problem. After 3 years the metal might have expanded. The weird thing is just that I didn't feel like I had any problems with it and then it all of a sudden did a full stop. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the epoxy thing, but I'll give it a go. I guess I'll have to order a new hinge as well. "Only" $50-60, and that's before the cheap shipping of $22! haha.

 

MSI Left Hinge:

msi gt70 left hinge | eBay

MSI Genuine GT70, GT780, GT783, MS-1761, MS-1762, MS-1763 Notebook Left Hinge E2M-7610512-G60

LCD Case Cover:

LCD Cover Case Assembly for MSI GT780DX GT70 GX70 E2P 763A411 Y31-in Other Computer Products from Computer & Networking on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

MSI Genuine GT70 GX70 GT780 GT783 GX780 Notebook LCD Cover w Crest A Panel | eBay

763A411Y31 E2P 761AXXX Y31 Genuine MSI LCD Display Back Cover GT70 MS 1763 A | eBay

 

I got myself a Clevo GTX670MX yesterday. Installed it in the GT780 (to replace a broken 560M) and I get a black screen. The laptop powers on at least. Any ideas on the issue? Is there a custom bios to make cards other than the 5xx series compatible?

 

You can try to update your main BIOS and EC firmware to the latest version with the original GPU and then try again with the new card.

 

The GTX670MX is not compatible with the old MS-1761 Barebone / GT780. Only one Kepler Graphiccard is compatible, the GTX770M. In the (green) MSI Version you don´t need modified drivers... only another heatsink (or you modified your GTX560M Heatsink)

 

For anyone else still kicking around with a GT780/783, I have successfully upgraded my system to a GTX 970M using a self-modified heatsink from my old 560M. The instructions are pretty much identical to what is in Talon's thread on upgrading the GT60/GT70 models. As others have noted, this seems like the best upgrade path for these old machines given that the 970M seems so compatible, and is quite power efficient for the performance it gives you.

My Fire Strike score is a vast improvement over the stock 560m, but I think it's being held back now by the CPU. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2630QM Processor,Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-1761


Oh well, should keep this machine humming along for another couple of years before I can justify a whole new machine. I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

 

Nice, too bad on the CPU bottleneck. :thumbsup:
Please post some benchmark scores/screenshots if you can, thank you and have a good one. :thumbsup:

 

I am definitely interested in performing this upgrade. I have read through the Talon thread but any additional pictures of the mod would be great!

Thanks!

 

Yeah, I was hoping it wouldn't be as far off as it looks like it is from the i7 3k and 4k benchmarks I've seen, but oh well. I've looked at other 2k series CPU upgrade options, but not sure if it's worth it.

I notice the socket didn't change going to the 3k (Ivy Bridge) generation. Do you think those would work, or would I max out at an i7 2860qm?

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

Hey FredS!

The mod wasn't too bad. Basically I just lined the old 560m heatsink up to the 970m card and checked for whatever part was bumping into a module, then cut it off. Took about 20 minutes or so since I was trying to be really careful about it all and have never used the Dremmel to cut off that much metal.

Here is the before and after pictures of my 560m heatsink now ready for a 970m.

Before:


After:


There were three spots that I needed to cut off:

1. Shorten the top left block
2. Remove the small nub below that
3. Reduce the width of the wide contact in the middle/right

I get enough clearance now that I'm confident that it isn't causing undue pressure and everything fits together. I took the thermal pads from the original Clevo heatsink, as well as one of the long bank pads from the old heatsink to place between the 970m and the modded heatsink. The Clevo pads seemed thicker, or at least not yet crushed under pressure.

So far, my temps seem good. Under hours of load playing DA:I, it's peaking at about 79C just on a flat surface. My 560m was peaking at 90C. The fan is also surprisingly quiet both at idle and under load. It runs cool enough during basic tasks that I think I even hear it shut off. I used Arctic Silver 5 to repaste both the GPU and CPU (why not, was already under the hood), and will let that run for a little while since AS5 apparently needs a good amount of cure time. I might try IC Diamond in a few months if I see temps rise, but so far I'm satisfied with both the game and physical performance.

I have noticed too small issues after the upgrade though. Until yesterday, I couldn't access the BIOS. Unsure why, or how it fixed itself, but on POST it would never give me the options or recognize when my pressing Delete or F1. That seems fine now. The other issue I have not yet resolved is that I can no longer control screen brightness through SCM or Fn-Up/Down. I see the OSD, but it doesn't do anything. Not a deal breaker, just an annoyance. Will try to figure that out over the holidays.

The only things left to even consider upgrading are the CPU (probably not the best ROI), and my Wifi card. I put an Intel 7260AC in last year, but it's always had an issue with Bluetooth (won't ever turn on). Another annoyance, but at least Wifi works on both frequencies.

 

Yes, you would max out at 2860QM.

 

Would that be worth it in your opinion? On paper it only looks like a 10-20% performance bump. Guess it would depend on how cheaply I could get the CPU...

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

It's not really worth it to upgrade GPU on a notebook but since you had already done it and you needed to unlock more performance.
You probably would spend about $200-300 for it according to the pricing on ebay for the processor.
intel 2860QM | eBay

 

Soon after my MSI GT780DX passed the 2 year mark of warranty coverage the motherboard,graphics card and 2 memory modules needed replacement.

Not long after that the left side hinge broke away from the lid cover.

When you decide to heavily invest in an out of warranty notebook be aware that there's hardware with high replacement cost that can go belly up at any time.

The second drive bay SATA slot was replaced recently.

Murphy's Law is good to remember

 

Which is why I don't think a CPU upgrade is really worth the investment. The GPU upgrade was $500, and if the machine lives another 1-2 years I'll be happy. If it lasts > 6 months and < 1 year, will suck, but such is life. I've done expensive repairs to cars only to have the car stolen or scrapped not long afterwards. Such is life; can't control everything.

Buying a CPU would put my total upgrades at over $1000 (if you add in changing hard drives and SSDs over the years). At a certain point it's just throwing good money after bad, and I'll just get a new laptop. The beauty of the GPU upgrade though - apart from the 3-4x performance boost - is that it's virtually undetectable from the wife. She would notice and question a new laptop. She will not notice a new GPU inside the same laptop.

 

I love how you worded these.

 

Now you just have to hope she does not see your posts

 

An out of warranty 2 to 3 year old working stock MSI GT780DX sells for about $600.

Would you buy one for that price or would you consider it high risk?

That $600 plus what ever you are thinking about spending to upgrade,is not that far from the cost of a new notebook that has a warranty

 

This is why he did only GPU, if he moves ahead with CPU then it's definitely going to be way too much, and very risky.

 

for those looking to fix AMD screen brightness on Windows 8 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9MUsPAEohk

This video fixed my problem I had with not being able to adjust the brightness when I installed a HD5870M in my GT780 that's been upgraded to Windows 8.

 

Doesn't seem to work on W7. Key is not here. So Sad
Still stucked with 100% brightness or 0% depending if i reset my EC or not.
And it's a driver problem. It worked ( and still works ) perfectly with old drivers to 13.6 beta2. Then after, no brightness control.

 

screen brightness problems, try this:

Go into the power settings and set the "choose what the lid does " setting to "do nothing"
save changes , then shut the lid and reopen.

---and / or---

A quick fix was uninstalling the monitor device (NOT display adapter) in Device Manager and then scanning for devices again.

 

We'll said!!! lol That's why im doing this also for my laptop

 

delete please

 

is there any program / software that i can check for fan rpm speed ?
i already used hwmonitor , speedfan
but there were none i can check rpm speed for msi gt780dx fan ... thx !!

 

No it's not reported externally.

 

Hi all!

Just wanted to give a quick two week follow up on my GTX 970M installation in case anyone else is interested in doing this.

Performance is still very solid. I've mostly been playing Dragon Age Inquisition of late, and I've tweaked performance out to generally be at 55-60 fps, with occasional stutters (particularly in Skyhold) dropping frames to 15-20 momentarily. I'm not sure where the stutters are coming from, and wonder if it's partially a CPU bottleneck.

At stock clocks, Firestrike continues to score around 5300-5400, largely due to the lower CPU Physics score. The Graphics score is in the same ballpark as 970M's with better CPUs. I think 4710hq/mq's score around 8500-9000 in Physics, so my ole 2630qm is a good 30% slower there. I found a cache of old dev laptops at the office running i7 2720qm's, so I might try processor swapping to see if the 2720qm's give me anything. I'm guessing +10% tops (which is the base frequency increase from 2.0 to 2.2 Ghz).



Temperatures have stabilized to about 80-81C under load on a flat wooden surface, like a desk/lapdesk. If I use my gaming lapdesk with a 120mm fan in it, the system peaks around 74C under load. Pretty happy with the temperatures overall, and wonder if a different paste would have been even better (I used AS5).

As far as niggling issues, the only one that remains is that I can't control the screen brightness. It has to be a driver issue as if I do a full device driver uninstall (using DDU) and revert to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, I can control screen brightness using the Fn-Up/Down key combo. Once I install the GeForce driver using modded INF, I lose control of screen brightness. Any other ideas on how to fix this would be welcome. If I have time this month, I might try a fresh Windows re-install and see if it makes any difference.

 

Hey Gentlemen, I have a MSI GT780DX (intel 2nd Gen 2670qm with GTX 570 1.5GB) and very interested to upgrade the GPU.

Just wanna ask few questions below:-

1) which GTX 970M to buy? the green (for alienware?) or the blue (Clevo?) PCB?
2) Follow what everythingsablur did to mod the heatsink?
3) After installing the card in. do i need to do any vBios flashing?

Address me if i missed-out anything. Thanks.

 

Hi melvin66,

I bought the blue Clevo PCB with 6 GB of VRAM from rjtech. It's the only one people have proven to get working, so I wouldn't chance it on the Alienware. I haven't seen an AW version for sale actually... Got a link?

Heatsink mod might not be exactly like mine. Really depends on the layout for the heatsink on your current GPU. 560m to 570m is probably similar if not identical, but never know. Just line the heatsink up to the new card and note what posts hit something they shouldn't, then cut them off.

I did not flash the vBios, so I am still running the stock Clevo vBios. Talon flashed the MSI vBios onto his 970m, and he needed to then flash new system BIOS for the laptop to work anymore. Given that our old laptops haven't seen a new BIOS in like 2+ years, and we don't have an integrated GPU to fall back on and try to recover from if something goes wrong, I don't think I'm smart enough or brave enough to do that yet. I just install drivers using the modded INF method until someone figures out the vBios thing.

Maybe if I save my pennies, towards the end of the 900 series product cycle, I'll try flashing the vBios. If it screws up, I'll buy myself a Clevo or MSI GT80 with a single 970M card, then try to put the existing one I have in it to make it SLI (and reflash it with the right vBios).

 

Hey everythingsablur, Thanks for replying back. its means alot to me.

Do rjtech make shipping to worldwide? as i'm from asia regional. The only place for me to get the card is on ebay (if rjtech did not ship worldwide) from a reseller named upgrademonkey1.

For the green PCB GTX 970M - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB DDR5 for MSI Clevo Alienware Upgrade in Stock | eBay

Blue PCB GTX 970M - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 6GB DDR5 for Clevo MSI Alienware Upgrade in Stock | eBay

Regards of flashing vBios, as i read from someone thread's (i forgot where i read them) saying it might not post by just installing the card in. This is why im still confused and hesitated to proceed the upgrade.

I hope some successor could guide me to the light.

Best Regards,
Melvin.

 

I'm not sure about rjtech's international shipping. They might, but customs and duties charges would be your responsibility, which could add quite a bit to your upgrade cost.

The Clevo card was able to post just fine on is own vBios. If it hadn't posted, I don't know how I would have even flashed other vBios onto it since the only computer that could interface with it wouldn't be working!

The first goal is to just get it installed and working in Windows as is. VBios don't seem to be a necessity for anyone who has done the upgrade, though I'm sure we'd all prefer native support instead of hacking driver files to work.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

Got in contact with rjtech. They ship worldwide, but they don't accept paypal outside of US, only bank transfer.