***The MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 970M Owner's Lounge***

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/742589-msi-gs60-ghost-ghost-pro-thread-133.html#post9643753
This works. But it only allows you to either turn the CPU fan off or higher than 44%. I kept the 48% speed while raising the threshold of higher fan speed.

 

Just pulled the trigger for this laptop, it was a slugfest between this, the gigabyte p35wv3, and the sager np8651. After a long month of nitpicking, I eventually settled on this laptop because it had the least cons out of the three for me. The gigabyte had driver and heating issues though it had a great battery. The Sager was pretty much perfect for me except for the screen and the fact that the 970m had 3 gb rather than 6 gb. I am planning to use this laptop for the next 4+ years so with games touching 2-3 gb of vram usage on high/ultra I wanted that extra bit of future proofing. Honestly if I wasn't concerned with vram then I might have just gone with the sager. I just wish that this laptop didn't have logo on the lid which breaks its disguise and shows off that its a gaming computer. I like having a subtle and ordinary looking laptop with monster specs for its size . Its looks isn't a deal breaker though it might be awkward bringing it around school/work if people recognize it.

 

Interesting! I didn't think that would work with these new ECs. Good find

 

Could you be more specific about how to order in this way? Also if you can get some of the upgrades, would you be able to get some of the free stuff they're offering right now, such as the nvidia pick your path promotion, thermal compound application, and free mouse/dragon plush?

Thanks in advance

 

So I finally decided and bought MSI GS60 with 3K screen and 3 GB GTX 970M (unfortunately the only option available with 3K screen, which I wanted).

Sadly I had to return it after checking it just very briefly. I must have won some bad luck lottery with a display. I got both quite a strong backlight bleed and many dead pixels (at least 8 but probably more, some dark dots were quite large so likely these were clusters of several pixels instead of single dead pixels).

See attached image for the backlight bleed (screen set to show pure black image).



As others said before: in person the bleed doesn't look nowhere near as bad as on the photos (just check how crazy bright cursor is there). Though I could see the bleed even in the daylight, not just in the dark. In shop, with a different lighting, it was hard to show to technician, only one small spot was visible. Also it only shows with pure black, with other dark colors or grays it's not noticeable at all.

I think I could live with the backlight bleed but that dead pixels Armageddon was a bit too much for me. Fortunately at least it means I should be safe with the display defect claim.

----------

In case you weren't aware, there is ISO norm which allows some count of pixel defects to be considered as normal, which manufacturers / shops sometimes can use to decline complaints :

ISO 13406-2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I called MSI support and they told me the easiest is try to get a brand new replacement unit via shop (as opposed to RMA and fixing that one faulty unit). So I brought my unlucky unit back to the shop and now I'm waiting to see how it'll go.

----------

Besides these troubles I didn't get to check a lot but at least I managed to run 3dmark firestrike (sports mode):

total: 6,527
graphics: 7,498
physics: 8,617
combined: 2,796

These numbers should be quite what's expected, I think. GPU temperature was a bit on higher side: max 85 C after firestrike (ambient room temperature 20 C), other people were getting less. GPU-Z was telling about power-limit throttling.

CPU temperatures I didn't have any logging app, just had a look at MSI center with current temp few times. It was pretty low, idle at 46 C, with load going to mid 50s C (not firestrike, just some heavier WebGL demos).

Outside chassis temperature was very cool on touch, no troubles there.

Keyboard was ok, great tactile feedback, layout will probably need some time to get used to. Touchpad worked ok. Chassis was built well, no obvious troubles. Feels very lightweight.

WiFi worked perfectly fine, it was maxing out my net connection (I didn't allow any rate-limiting, I think people who complained about WiFi may had used those, my net speed autodetection timed out).

3K screen was listed as VVX16T029D00. Besides troubles mentioned above it is indeed quite pretty - bright, sharp, vivid colors. It was glossy but reflections didn't really bother. I tried to check if it was indeed RGBW (Anandtech review claims that, no other confirmations) but I couldn't see any pattern with just naked eyes (pixels are really tiny on 3K display).

Windows 8.1 is a bit worse to use than Windows 7, but probably I could get used to it (it's better than 8.0 which was terrible, I tried one preview version). Default scaling looked ok. MSI setup claimed 125% but I think it was more, later on I manually set 125% and things got smaller.

I did try setting Windows to downscaled 1080p and this did look noticeably worse than native 1080p, quite fuzzy.

I think I can live with Windows 8.1 at 3K. For applications where it works it's pretty stunning, definitely improvement over native 1080p (with my workflow I'll be spending majority of time in those). Though surprisingly even some internal Microsoft Windows application don't handle high-DPI correctly and have those ugly aliased fonts.

 

Could someone post a video showing up the difference between with or without lowered fan speed ?

 

I just got off the phone with MSI representative for my country:

About screens:

• apparently production of MSI GS60 models with 3K screens is being discontinued, they are being replaced with 4K models
• if you see some 3K models being sold, these are just already produced units left in the warehouses around the world
• 4K models should come to Europe sometime in January 2015 (these are the only new models coming, at least in nearer future)

About 3 GB vs 6 GB VRAM for GTX 970M:

• most countries besides US didn't get any 6 GB VRAM GTX 970M units due to perceived lack of demand (I was the first person to ask about them there, sidenote: if you want different models, you have to speak with MSI directly, complaining on the non-official channels doesn't count), also because they think people wouldn't buy more expensive SKUs with more VRAM (for more expensive SKUs they prefer to up other parameters as screen res / RAM / SSD)
• for getting 6 GB VRAM in Europe the highest chance you've got is just with newer 4K models in 2015, those would be positioned as premium units vs cheaper 1080p 3 GB VRAM ones
• very unlikely to get equivalent of US 064 model with 1080p and 6 GB VRAM, they don't see it as differentiated enough from 1080p and 3 GB VRAM model to warrant another SKU
• as 3K models are discontinued, there will not be any 3K and 6 GB VRAM models

About warranties:

• if you buy MSI notebook in another country than yours, your warranty is valid worldwide, but you'll only get 1 year (instead of EU standard 2 years)
• if you get some more exotic SKU vs what's available in your local market, eventual repairs will take longer time because region repair centers may not have components

Now I'm not sure what to do. I can't get replacement new unit with 3K screen, they are sold out here (also now I'm concerned defects may be common with that SKU, there are signs of other returned units circulating on the market).

Then my next preference is 6 GB VRAM 1080p model. But there will not be any 1080p 6 GB VRAM units in my country and likely also not elsewhere in EU. If I get one from US (seems the only place where you can get 064 model), I'll lose half of warranty time, also real mess with delivery and customs (especially if anything goes wrong and return would be needed).

Is there any EU country where you can get MSI GS60 with 6 GB VRAM? So far I didn't see it anywhere but maybe some shops do import US SKUs?

 

The gigabyte heating issues are with the p35x v3 not the p35w v3 as far as I know no one has said that the p35w v3 runs hot unless I missed a post somewhere.

 

I had recently acquired a GS60 044 and absolutely love it. its very sleek though one thing that bothered me the most was that it didnt have a Msata port, why would this bother me you might ask? in my previous laptop i had an xbox wireless reciver wired into the Msata slot using an adapter. after thinking of what i could do over the next few days i had gotten some things together and started to make something special. though that somethings special just flopped. if any of you guys out there in the community can explain why this wouldn't or couldn't work please leave a reply. Thanks guys~

http://postimg.org/image/gry79a3ir/
http://postimg.org/image/hkx2k6uo9/
went all hobo with the plastic baggie and solder b,c i forgotten where i had left my hot glue gun along with my soldering stuff.

 

A neat idea you've got there, and I genuinely smiled seeing it. Unfortunately, I imagine your previous machine's MSATA port also had a mPCIe bus attached to it. SATA connections at the 2.5" location you are trying to use here do not carry mPCIe which is required for your USB adapter to function. Creative engineering you've tried to make there none the less...too bad it didn't (and won't) work.

I'm unsure whether the M.2 SSDs in the GS60 have a PCIe bus attached to them or not...maybe someone more familiar with the machine can answer that. The P650SE for example has 2 M.2 SSD slots, and one has a PCIe bus attached to it, where the other is just SATA. Trying to find an M.2 PCIe -> USB device is a priority for me at the moment, because I too would like to have an internal USB port for a wireless controller / mouse / etc.

 

Huge bummer. Interesting though, this is the third 3k display I've seen or heard of with a huge number of dead pixels. My buddy with a GT60 3K display had a similar problem, and when he called customer service about it, they suggested he was imagining it, or it was dust since the pixel density is so high...surely you can't see them.

Good luck with a replacement.

 

oh, ashame it wouldnt have worked （´・ω・｀）, glad to have made some one smile, i thought would have gotten a comment like "why would you even wanna do this?" would have been nice to see it work, oh well. sooner or later someones gonna find away to make the receiver integrated. for now ill just make a small housing for it.

 

Maybe a little bit late, but I just got my gold 4k model with 6GB vram. Haven't done much yet, still exploring my new lappy.
I'll be doing some tests soon, but I'm playing Assassin's Unity and I've reached a max temperature of 75 while gaming on my lap, so I'm expecting better temperature's while placing it on a desk or plugging it into an external TV.

So far so good, enjoying every bit of this beautiful beast. Miles ahead of my previous Y50, which is laying around like a piece of furniture.

 

Thanks. Finally I decided to give a chance to 1080p model and 3 GB VRAM. It should come tomorrow, fingers crossed

About dead pixels in 3K screen: for me these were both several large dark spots and also more of smaller spots. I assume those small ones were individual pixels (probably could live with just those) but those large ones must have been many pixels together (easily visible all the time, bigger than both eyes in this smiley together ).

 

I returned my 3K model due to excessive backlight bleed.

Bought the 970m 1080p matte instead. Display is pretty good but still backlight issues, but nowhere near as bad as the 3K one. I don't understand it and sometimes think I'm OCD, but at work we all have dells and I've gone to best buy and looked at many other models and none of them seem to have this issue in such a pronounced fashion. There were also no backlight problems with my GT72. I expect a little, but blobs of yellow light shooting into my screen where the fastening is uneven is not acceptable.

I will keep using it until CES and see what is down the pipe. I have until Jan 31 to return it. Hopefully MSI fixes their mfg process on the bezels with their new 4k model or a company like Razer introduces a high build quality device. Its a shame I love everything about MSI's chassis except their poor attn to panel/display assembly.

 

Yup, there indeed seems to be something wrong with display assembly process / quality control at MSI for this model.

For comparison, here are photos of MSI GS60 (3K IPS), Thinkpad T500 (1050p TN), Thinkpad W520 (1080p TN) and iPad3 (Retina IPS) screens showing black background, taken by the same camera in similar lighting conditions:

View attachment 118338

Usual disclaimer: it does look better checking in person, photos exaggerate intensity and saturation.

For 1080p model it seems to be a lottery. I had in my hands a 1080p MSI GS60 model with GTX 870M and there I didn't notice any obvious light bleeding. I'll see tomorrow how will my new unit fare .

 

mSata slots and PCI-e slots look the same but are different. They either have a PCI-E lane attached or they don't. I've never seen an mSata slot that is compatible with PCI-E components. The same goes for M.2 unfortunately. M.2 was supposed to be the new universal standard, but you still either have SATA or PCI-E, not both. For the GS60, there are two M.2 SATA only slots that can be lined up in RAID.

Elaborating more on what alaskajoel was saying, are you sure it was mSata you were attached to? Did you try taking out the Wifi card and plugging in your device there? That's an open PCI-E slot that should fit your card. If it really was mSATA you were hooked up to, I have a M.2 to mSATA converter wire that I used with the Razer Blade a while back. It might be worth a shot, however you have to do a full disassembly to get to the M.2 slots.

Edit: I just checked eBay and it looks like it's a PCI-E controller, so it won't work in a 2.5" bay no matter what you try. Also, the M.2 slots are out as well. Your only option is to replace the Wifi card with it unfortunately. I don't think you can convert SATA to USB, only the other way around.

 

Hi guys ,
I have my new MSI GS60 model with GTX 870M from 3 days and I've experimented that when I configure the keyboard in white color ,the first line of the keyboard there is not a white LEDs but a mix between green and violet . I also tested it with yellow, orange, blue and it happens too. it's normal? see attached images.

Thank you guys

 

So, a few corrections here. MSATA and PCIe do share the same interface design as Xentar mentions, but they can exist together on one individual port. My thinkpad x220 has a WWAN slot that will use a PCIe WWAN card (which it originally came with) or an MSATA SSD (which is currently in it). One port, two interfaces (only using one at a time obviously.) I'm not saying that's what Inuzuka has on whatever machine he was using previous...it could very likely have just been PCIe WWAN slot and he mislabeled it in his original post saying he had it in his MSATA port (obviously a common mistake since they share the same port design) but I wasn't going to assume either way. We knew what he was talking about.

Second, you can also have a PCIe and M.2 SATA interface on the same port as well. My current Clevo P650se has two NGFF (M.2) ports available. One is M.2 SATA only, and the other will take an M.2 SATA, PCIe WWAN Card, or PCIe 4x SSD (like Samsung's XP941). I've tried both ports with M.2 SSDs (Crucials) and they work as M.2 SATA. My Intel Wireless card also works in the port that is designated as a PCIe Interface. In this configuration, the M.2 port is essentially a SATA Express interface, being compatible with either PCIe or SATA (as well as USB 3.0 FWIW). Something to note though, is if you are using a PCIe device in the PCIe compliant M.2 port, it will consume all of the other available PCIe bus--meaning you can run one 4x PCIe SSD at a time, or 1x-2x M.2 SATA SSDs. Runinng SATA M.2 with PCIe devices can not currently happen--it's one or the other.

Now, clearly not all M.2 NGFF ports support everything. Some support USB + PCIe 2x / 4x + audio, etc and others support ONLY SATA. How the port is keyed (where the notches in the port are) can indicate what type of interfaces MAY be supported, but this is obviously not guaranteed. You can see below what interfaces MAY be present on which Key IDs.


I don't know enough about the ports on the GS60 to say if they can support anything other than M.2 SATA. In my experience, if the manufacturer did not offer something else for those ports (like a WWAN / 4G / LTE) other than SATA devices, chances are pretty slim it will work with anything other than SATA.

Inuzuka: If Xentar is 100% certain your M.2 slots only support SATA, then you're probably out of luck unless you want to repurpose the PCIe slot your wi-fi card is in. Again, I don't know enough about this particular machine to say if it's mini-PCIe or M.2 NGFF PCIe, but I would suspect the latter. You would lose the on board 802.11x wireless, but you could likely install your USB controller via an adapter like this:

P32S-P32F (M.2 to USB3.0 Extender Board)

 

I am looking for a case for my Seagate Barracuda 7200.14, 3.5" so i can record during the time i am not at home
What USB 3.0 Case can you recommand me?
The cheaper the better for me
I dont want to bottleneck in any way since the HDD writes with 200mb/s

 

No, unfortunately MSI GS60 M.2 slots don't support PCIe.

I ran into this FAQ entry on MSI site when looking for info on SSD drives:

 

At least according to MSI, the GS60 uses the M.2 interface but SATA protocols. Otherwise, RAID couldn't be used.

MSI USA - Online Technical Support FAQ

"A M.2 slot is typically compatible with both PCIe & SATA type of SSD. On MSI GS60 (16H2), this laptop only linked SATA signal but without PCIe signal.

Therefore, if the M.2 SSD uses PCIe signal then the BIOS will not detect it.
Only SATA type of M.2 SSD allows RAID-compatibility, but not PCIe. This is why in our application, SATA signal is used."

 

Not sure why they say the "slot is typically compatible with both". In my experience, none have been compatible with both - it's always been one or the other. The model alaskajoel mentioned is the first confirmed one I've heard of and there's also the NX500 and GX500 which theoretically have one. I can name probably 30 models that don't. I really hope they make more because that's how it was supposed to be in the first place. I was so disappointed when I got my first M.2 slot machine and it wasn't PCI-e compatible...

 

Good to know. Looks like our friend is out of luck.

See, now this comment from MSI is interesting to me...Clevo and Sager both sell the P650se with the option of either 1 PCIe SSD in 2x or 4x, OR two M.2 SSDs using the SATA interface, with RAID 0/1 supported. It sounds like MSI is either confused, or they poorly worded their statement. Technically, they're right--only SATA SSDs can be in a RAID, but that doesn't mean you can't also have a PCIe signal on the M.2 interface. If a SATA SSD is connected, the PCIe is ignored, and vice versa. It sounds like MSI is saying: "We did SATA only because that's the only way to get RAID" when in reality they may mean: "we use M.2 SATA SSDs instead of PCIe SSDs because RAID is only supported on the former"

From the P650se Configuration:

 

Since they promote SuperRAID in many machines it is likely that they just want to stick to SATA signal instead of both.
Also, majority of M.2 SSD should be able to provide SATA signal.

 

Few questions on temps:

I'm idling at 40-42C on the CPU, and loads on a game called Vindictus (if you even know what that is) are maxing out at 72C. It's a fairly CPU intensive game.

GPU is maxing out on the same game at 70C.

Am I doing alright on temps from the sounds of it? Haven't had a laptop/notebook in a pretty long while, let alone one to game on; just want to make sure this is within reason.

EDIT: Idle has been slowly dropping closer to 36/37C now.

 

Yes, it's a normal range for the CPU.

 

Those are actually great temps.

 

Hello all! My GS60 Ghost Pro-044 arrived yesterday. I'm pleased with the overall look and feel of this laptop, but having a few issues:

-Windows 8 was zippy, but I was getting the occasional BSOD(Page Fault In Nonpaged Area). This was my first experience with Windows 8, so I attributed the problem to OS. I wiped the 128GB SD with the OS on it and installed Win7 64. I have all drivers installed on Device Manager except one: "Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller". MSI doesn't list drivers for this model under Windows7 so I've been playing internet detective for the past day trying to figure this one out. My guess is it's the USB 3.0 controller drivers that Win7 doesn't have generics for.

-I'm still getting the same BSOD(Page Fault In Nonpaged Area) in Win7 64 that I was in Win8.1 64. This worries me that it is a hardware memory issue. I would re-seat the RAM if it didn't mean tearing this sucker completely apart.

-I have run chkdsk on both drives with nothing coming up, tried removing the Page file altogether, and still the BSOD occurs.

In the offchance anyone has solved this issue, please feel free to post here. If not, take this as another datapoint in your possible purchasing.

P.S. Newegg is currently giving away $400.00USD of software and accessories on my laptop model.

 

So I've got a new MSI GS60 QE unit, this time with 1080p screen (the same 3 GB VRAM GTX 970M as my previous 3K screen unit).

---------------

About 1080p display:

No dead pixels this time, yay!

Also backlight bleeding is much better, though there is still some. Now it's not noticeable unless you try to look hard for it; a little bit coming from the bottom when the display is completely black. This one you would have hard time to demonstrate unless person knows what to look for and you are in the dark (with 3K screen you could see it even in daylight).

For comparison photos of 3K and 1080p displays (showing black color):

View attachment 118417

One thing though that's worse than before is a chassis quality: now there is a small gap between front and back of the display frame, you can see backlight shining through with certain angles of looking . I think I've already seen also somebody else complaining about this, just at that time I didn't understood what they meant.

1080p display itself is pretty nice, less shiny than 3K one but still with nice bright and vibrant colors, wide viewing angles.

---------------

About 1080p vs 3k display:

I do miss 3K screen, at least some aspects of it. Once you have seen 3K, 1080p does feel like old technology, you are aware it's lower resolution than it could be. Don't let anybody tell you 1080p on 15" is enough and you wouldn't see a difference with higher-DPI of 3K/4K. When native 3K works well it's simply stunning. I tried some of my own 3D demos and there were fine-grained details noticeable I wasn't even aware of, that textures I used had it in them.

This btw also answers question about extra VRAM needed for ultra quality in modern games. 1080p comparison screenshots seen on 1080p screens simply couldn't capture visual difference between high and ultra, you need high-DPI screen to see the difference.

This also means 3 GB / 4 GB versions of GTX 970M / 980M should be pretty ok with 1080p screens for quite some time, as you'll not lose much if any details by using smaller than maximum possible textures. On the other hand if you go with 3K / 4K screen, you should be able to get much higher image quality simply by having more VRAM, independently of GPU power (of course on condition the game provides ultra high detailed textures).

Another thing about high-DPI screens: now I'm aware besides extra details coming from the resolution also pure colors on 1080p do feel different, much clearer (especially pure white). On 3K uniform colors are more pure thanks to smaller pixel grid, so you get much less of screen-door effect.

Now the advantage of 1080p screen is that native 1080p is noticeably sharper than 1080p on 3K. Before seeing it in person I assumed it wouldn't bother me but it did. Also no hideously aliased legacy applications and Windows dialogs and no occasional black borders around content that can't handle upscaling.

Summary: native 3K is much nicer than native 1080p (both text and 3D). Non-native 1080p is much uglier than native 1080p (in 3D it doesn't bother much, with text it's really bad).

---------------

About performance and thermals:

So far I tried just 3dmark firestrike and Tomb Raider benchmark (those GBs take ages to download, BTW wifi seems fine, it maxes out my net connection).

With Firestrike I'm getting pretty similar numbers to before (this time there was no throttling reported by GPU-Z, before with 3K model I got power-limit throttling a few times):

total: 6,512
graphics: 7,461
physics: 8,827
combined: 2,775​

I got better GPU temperatures now with 1080p model, even with higher ambient temperature (22.5 C vs 20 C) I got max 78 C vs max 85 C (firestrike). So that's almost 10 C difference (7 + 2.5).

I noticed this 1080p unit is a bit noisier than 3K one. So at least some part of temperature difference may be due to stronger fans (now idle at 2,891-3,000 RPM, don't remember before).

Even on idle I'm getting a bit lower temperatures than before: CPU 43 C, GPU 38 C (1080p) vs CPU 46 C, GPU I don't remember but it was in 40s C (3K). The rest of temperature difference could be due to 3K screen (that was my theory before, seems to hold, I had two units with exactly the same specs except of displays, tested in the same room, albeit with a bit different ambient temperature).

Tomb Raider benchmark got also similar numbers to what others are getting (1080p, ultimate, FXAA):

max GPU 62 C (min 28 fps, max 46 fps, avg 37.6 fps) (green)(balanced)(power throttle)
max GPU 73 C (min 38.8 fps, max 62 fps, avg 51.3 fps) (sport)(high power)(no throttling)​

---------------

Overall impression:

It's not a perfect notebook but it's starting to grow on me. It does feel noticeably snappier than my previous main notebook (Thinkpad W520), which was kinda the point of this whole adventure

Right now I'm bugged by Windows 8.1. This is my first experience with it. It's just weird. Plus it needed ~1.5 GB of updates right from the start, ugh.

For notebook hardware: I wish there was a mode for more quiet fans with a bit higher temperatures for low-power-use scenarios (high 30s - low 40s C is overkill, my Thinkpad idles in high 50s C).

Separate buttons for trackpad would be nicer. For keyboard more breathing space around arrow keys would be welcome, also a bigger enter key.

That display frame gap bugs me, MSI should really improve quality control for display assembly. Both backlight bleeding and such gaps should be easily preventable by taking better care during the assembly. Dead pixels shouldn't make it through QA either.

But ok, I think I can live with this, at least it was much cheaper than my previous notebook

 

Review of Origin EVO15-S by TechRadar:

Origin EVO15-S review | Laptops & portable pcs Reviews | TechRadar

They claim it's smaller than MSI GS60 but I think they confused its dimensions with MSI GS70:

MSI GS70 dimensions: 418.5 x 287 x 21.8 mm
MSI GS60 dimensions: 390 x 266 x 19.9 mm

Origin EVO15-S dimensions: 15.35 x 10.47 x 0.78 inches => 389.9 x 265.9 x 19.8 mm

Though there are some differences: it has anodized metal finish instead of brushed metal look, only red keyboard light instead of RGB and no glowing dragon on the lid.

Pity MSI doesn't offer MSI GS60 with that finish (I assume it's something like current chassis bottom finish but everywhere). I'm not very fond of that brushed aluminum look.

 

Hey guys, I rarely unplug my laptop from the charger and I'm concerned about the less than decent battery life we already got.
So I wanted to ask if there's any option what so ever to prevent the laptop from charging above a specified percentage ?
Just like in my other laptop, which is the Lenovo Y50. I've got an option to allow the laptop to get power from the AC in order to game at full performance and prevent the laptop from over charging at the same time. The maximum percentage I can reach is 60%.
Is there a way for this to happen on the gs60 ?

 

not sure where to post this, but. has anyone else used the shadow play feature on the GS60 yet? Ive used it a few times and noticed that the color on the recording was super bright or had really high contrast. is there a way to adjust this in anyway? thankｓ in advance!　　　 (　・ω・ ン

 

I had considered the Evo 15s until they told me swapping out the 7200rpm drive would void their warranty.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Hows the battery life on the gs60 with 1080p screen and 970m not in use, just browsing, word processing on the integrated Intel?

I would prefer Gigabyte P35W v3 with the larger battery but availability is an issue for my country, especially a dealer that offers financing

 

The battery spec is Li-Polymer, 11.1V, 75.81Wh, which should give you about 5 hours since GS60 is about 3 hours on average use.

 

Hi everyone,

I live in Canada and I am really into this laptop, I am waiting for the sale on boxing day week. Anyway, everything seems perfect due to the new maxwell 2nd GPU except for the shield on the lid ( I will order some black aluminum sticker to cover it). The only one thing concerned me is the killer wifi chip set, I've heard that some people have problem with the wifi connection, such as the wifi connection reduces 70mb when that guy moved to next door from his room or it crashes sometimes due to some software problems. Since this is an ultrabook kind gaming laptop, I will carry this outdoor quite often so it will be the biggest concern for me about this laptop. shouldn't we just stick with the 7260ac? thanks a lot !

 

I had more problems with the 7260 than I did with the killer

 

That's what I've heard as well. Intel WiFi cards aren't that great. Generally, I try to avoid Intel cards when possible in favor of Broadcom or Atheros solutions.

Benches I've seen also show the Killer consistently outperforming the Intel.

 

that was really good to hear, thank you guys!

Origin did a really good job perfecting the GS60, I wonder will people spend $500 more to buy a copy cat when it logically supposed to be cheaper.

 

I have been looking closer at my benchmark results and I'm having suspicion there may be something wrong with my CPU.

My graphics scores seem to be more-or-less ok, total scores are a bit lower, but physics and combined ones are quite significantly lower than what others have been posting.

Here are ranges I'm getting (exact numbers vary between different runs)

3dmark 11 total: ~8,600 - 8,800 (others got 9,142, 9,211, 9,388) <= ~6-7% less
3dmark 11 graphics: ~9,800 - 9,900 (others got 9,773, 9,798, 10,027)
3dmark 11 physics: ~5,970 - 6,600 (others got 7,918, 7,961) <= this is suspicious ~17-25% less
3dmark 11 combined: ~6,450 - 6,630 (others got 7,652, 7,768) <= this too ~15% less

3dmark firestrike total: ~6,500 - 6,600 (others got 6,526, 6,554, 6,569)
3dmark firestrike graphics: ~7,500 - 7,600 (others got 7,468, 7,477, 7,517)
3dmark firestrike physics: ~8,800 - 8,900 (others got 9,146, 9,154) <= smaller difference but still ~3-4% less
3dmark firestrike combined: ~2,700 - 2,800 (others got 2,746, 2,788)

3dmark skydiver total: 17,470 (others got 18,188) <= ~4% less
3dmark skydiver graphics: 24,395 (others got 23,429)
3dmark skydiver physics: 7,660 (others got 8,646) <= ~12% less
3dmark skydiver combined: 14,475 (others got 17,801) <= ~19% less

My temperatures are pretty good (both CPU and GPU in low-to-mid 70s C). I'm running Sports mode + High performance power plan.

Any idea if these numbers may be within expected normal variations or is there indeed something wrong? Any additional tests I can run (with some reference values for MSI GS60 with GTX 970M for comparison)? Any diagnostic tools?

So far I have been using just GPU-Z, where GPU wasn't showing any throttling. And RealTemp for checking CPU temperatures.

One thing different on my notebook is having just a single 8 GB RAM stick. Others seem all to have 16 GB RAM. Can dual-channel memory create such differences?

--------

Edit: additional info from Intel XTU monitor while running 3dmark 11:

no thermal throttling
no power limit throttling
no current limit throttling
CPU temp: avg 53 C, min 43 C, max 74 C
CPU frequency: avg 3.34 GHz, min 2.39 GHz, max 3.42 GHz

 

Hi everyone, I currently reside in London and bought an MSI GS60 064 from Hideevolution.

My model is: MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 064 i7-4710HQ 2.5GHz 6G 970M 16G RAM 128G SSD 15.6" FHD.

I have been hearing a constant clicking sound from the base of the laptop ever since i've turned it on. Does anyone have any experience with this? I have two 128GB ssd's in raid 0 set up.

In addition, how is the total vram calculated? CPU-Z shows my 970M vram as 4gb and the intel graphic adapter as 2gb, so does this equate to the 6gb vram indicated? or should the 970m vram be 6gb?

Kindly advise!

Cheers

 

Are you me?!
I literally have the same model with 2, 250 gb crucial ssds in raid 0 and I'm getting a clicking sound after a while of turning on the laptop. It was fine when I first got the laptop a few hours ago, but now the sound comes up pretty early.

Also I still have the 1tb hdd in my laptop so I'm not sure if it's that making the "click of death" sound. However, I haven't downloaded anything to it... I noticed that once the sound starts, even when the fan slows down, the sound persists. It only shuts off when the computer sleeps or is turned off.


Funny enough I also was trying to check my vram with CPU-Z. It was also giving me ~4gb but I opened the NVIDIA control panel and check the settings from there. It showed 6gb vram there

 

hey salpan,

had a panic attack this morning, but solved most of the issues.

1. The GPU memory: I ran a couple of benchmarks like 3dmark11, 3d fire strike, and they turned out on par with the 970m 6gb. Try running these benchmarks yourself and compare it with those here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/765829-msi-gs60-ghost-pro-gtx-970m-6gb-review-htwingnut.html.

My values for 3dmark fire strike were Total 6590, Graphics 7257, Physics 9293, Combined 2782. You should get about the same values. Verify your ram with 3dmark and 2ith GPU-Z, you should get 6gb. not sure why cpu-z gives a different value but since the benchmarks were similar, i'm fine with it.

2. the clicking sound: i have no HDD, only two SSDs' so i think its safe to rule out your HDD as the problem. I ran the laptop for about half an hour running benchmarks, but without the rear cover on. There was no clicking sound. As such i think its safe to say that the clicking sound is from a lose part, maybe a wire. If you take the rear cover off yourself, you there is a little piece of sticker that flaps about. that could be the cause of the noise.

let me know how it goes.

 

With dual channel ram, you theoretically have two times the memory bandwidth so the potential to be faster is there. If you only have 1x8GB and the other slot is empty, that's likely your issue. Also memory speed could be affecting the results. If it's an empty slot, I wouldn't worry. While benchmarks take advantage of dual channel RAM, I don't think you'll see any major differences in most games.

 

Yup, I was aware single RAM stick config could be slower, just wasn't expecting such big differences beyond memory-specific micro-benchmarks.

I checked Aida64 memory benchmark and I indeed got just about half speed vs what this review shows for 16 GB RAM model (hard to tell exactly, free trial of Aida64 doesn't show all the numbers ):

MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K Review

I would be ok with getting lower speeds in some benchmarks if it's just due to single-channel memory. I'm mainly concerned if it's indeed just this or e.g. if maybe my CPU could come from a bad batch and doesn't do boosting well. Or maybe I have some wrong setting set somewhere? Not sure how to test for this.

Unfortunately in my region only 8 GB RAM models are available. If not for that damn warranty sticker, I would have already bought and added extra RAM myself. Right now I don't want to tamper with anything, in case some problem turns out in a period I can still return it (this is already my second MSI GS60 unit, I had to return one due to display problems).

-----------------------------

Some other CPU-centric benchmarks numbers I got:

Geekbench 3.2.2 (32-bit): single-core 2,802, multi-core 11,321
Cinebench R11.5 (64-bit): CPU multi-core 6.95 pts, CPU single-core 1.47 pts, OpenGL 54.62 fps
Cinebench R15 (64-bit): CPU multi-core 637 cb, CPU single-core 128 cb, OpenGL 90.7 fps
PCMark 8 Home (conventional): 2,927 points
PCMark 8 Creative (conventional): 3,064 points

From games that others MSI GS60 owners have been posting numbers, I just have Tomb Raider (bit hard to compare as everybody runs with different settings):

avg 88.9 fps, min 76 fps, max 102 fps (1080p, ultra, FXAA, no tessellation, no TressFX, v-sync off)
avg 80.2 fps, min 66 fps, max 94 fps (1080p, ultra, FXAA, tessellation enabled, no TressFX, v-sync off)
avg 52.1 fps, min 40 fps, max 62 fps (1080p, ultimate, FXAA, tessellation enabled, TressFX enabled, v-sync off)

Please let me know if you ran any of those benchmarks, which numbers did you get?

 

Is it me or are the temps quite high in this video:

http://youtu.be/E4ynxCodkgs?t=49m

Hadn't seen the GPU reach 87C before with no OC. Weird.

Anyway, I plan on getting the GS60 and oc'ing the GPU ala HTwingnut so that its performance is closer to a 980m (his temps seemed good, even overclocked). But I'd like to do so with the added insurance of a cooling pad. Since the air intake is on the top, it's hard finding a cooling pad which would be effective with it. Does anyone have a good experience with a cooling pad that would drop the temps a few degrees on the GS60?

 

Temps vary from machine to machine due to paste job and the quality of the GPU/CPU etc etc. Not all machines are identical. Some GPUs run cooler than others, requiring less voltage for higher speeds etc.

The good thing is, these new 900m series run sub 90 and at good temps, unlike 800/700 series we had haha. My 780m on stock fans with no added cooling, no turbofan stock pastejob still runs at 93 degrees haha.

 

I opened it up and I think I know what sticker your talking about (the black one underneath the right fan?)
Nonetheless, I dont get the sound without the cover on. But with the cover the sound comes on after a while; however, once the clicking begins, it stays even after the fan slows down. Here is a video of mine https://onedrive.live.com/redir?res...303&authkey=!AMlpmFA4MBBZwk4&ithint=video,MOV

Its driving me insane. This laptop is perfect besides that noise. The highest GPU temp I have seen is 78 and CPU with 70 with the diamond pasting. Just this sound....

 

My keyboard has the exact same green and violet shades in exactly the same sonts beneath "ctrl", "alt", "space", and "enter." Have you learned anything new about this? I'm very happy with my 064 model except for this one abnormality.