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

I don't think you'll ever be able to go below 44% until MSI changes the firmware to allow it. They used to allow it on the 870M version but recently made a change which now prevents it. From my understanding, many with the 870M version opted to use the older version for that very reason.

 

Since this is my first time messing with EC firmware update... This version is safe for MSGI Ghost Pro 2QE with GTX970m, right?

 

Yeah I had the same thought but unfortunately their remedial sale is today and they are sold out of them. Oh well. Even 50% off is too expensive lol

 

Thought that was only for EU. Any idea when the US one is coming?

 

Yeah, this is for GS60 2QE GHOST PRO with GTX970m.

 

https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/na-ces-remedial-sale.3015/

 

Well crap. Thanks for the link thought..

 

Does any one have new version of bios 44% limit and old normal with 1500rpm? I can see what I can do.
But does 1500rpm enough to cool down cpu/gpu?

 

The old one is in the other GS60 thread somewhere. Mardon and Sen7inel were two people working on it. I don't think the GPU needs to be messed with as much as the CPU one.

See here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/761608-msi-gs60-ghost-tweak-information.html
and here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/742589-msi-gs60-ghost-ghost-pro-thread-226.html#post9669725

Keep in mind these are all 870M

 

I'm very happy knowing that windows 10 will be a free upgrade. Hopefully it's a nice blend of Win7/8 where I don't have to hunt for all the old legacy settings menus anymore.

 

Why bother waiting for Win10 for this ?

Classic Shell - Start menu and other Windows enhancements

A wonderfull free tool that restores the former Start menu, among other options.

 

Hey all, I apologize if this is a very noob question... I just got the Ghost 4k model (went from the Dominator GT70 because I needed something I can take to work as well as school and gaming at home). I have no issue with the refresh rate but what I have noticed is that if I try to get any game to play at 4k resolution it crashes instantly. (Far Cry 4, Shadows of Mordor, and even the less demanding Lego Batman 3). Can the laptop not handle 4k gaming at all or am I having a driver / game issue? They all play fine at 1080p and 3k ultra (haven't done a FPS test yet to see how well they are running) but they won't even attempt to run at 4k medium or better. I immediately get a windows failure. Is this normal?

 

4k is roughly 4x the pixels as 1080 and 2x the pixels as 3k. It should run but there will definitely be a significant performance drop. I can't run shadow of mordor decently on 3k so 4k is definitely out of the question. From my experience with 4k gaming, a lot of games became buggy at that high of resolution I had to turn it down.

 

I've got the 4k model... 16gb, 128gb ssd, i7, 970m 3gb.... it runs 4k games, def a significant performance drop as stated in the previous post... turn it down a notch and all is well.

i just switched to win10 tech preview 2 weeks ago... it runs nicely on the gs60... 90% of the drivers are auto installed and the others are downloadable from msi website using win8 64bit drivers. im a fan of win10 and cant wait for the full version to be released soon.

a funny note... when i first got the gs60 on nov 9 it had a bad blue screen error that would pop up 1-3 times a day. it was a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT blue screen. i ran the built in memory scan tool and it came back with errors and said i needed to send it back to manufacturer. i just got an rma from newegg and sent it in to be replaced. long story short, newegg sucks at returns and kept my laptop about 5 weeks, all through the holidays and longer. finally they sent it back to me without even fixing it. on a whim I decided to install windows 10 technical preview to play around with it before sending it in to MSI for repair/replacement. but ever since i put Windows 10 on it, it has not blue screened on me even once!

i'm pretty sure it still has a bad memory module or controller... i ran memtest86 on it from my usb stick and it returned something like 80,000 errors??? anyone else have that problem?

still, no blue screens and everything seems to work great. like i said, since i put win10 on, no blue screens or crashes at all.

one thing about windows 10 of course, a lot of software doesnt work with it yet. having a hard time getting starcraft 2 to run, diablo 3 wont run, although WoW and hearthstone work... steam works.

absolutely loving this laptop since win 10. runs cool. lightweight. fun to show off. my first computer with an ssd and boot times are superb. got to say the steelseries keyboard is great, even though i run an Anasi, i still dont mind using the built in steelseries, it's really solid. speed with i7 and 4k screen are irreplaceable to me now, wouldn't have it any other way... even tho i struggle a bit with the small text at times.

battery life sucks the hairy meatball. audio isnt very load from onboard speakers. webcam is sub par.

 

hey guys, i was dead set on getting an alienware for my next notebook... loved the m11xR1 that i had when it first came out. Always thought I would end up with a flagship alienware 18. and then dell cancelled it... and also went with all the soldered crap. Ended up going with the GS60-045 with the 970m...
although i read many of the reviews and was already expecting the notebook to be a great gaming performer, pretty much able to max out all current games in high/ultra and still get reasonable framerates (my standard is 30fps, since i heard thats approx what the eyes can really see), i can't help but be pleasantly surprised and impressed at just how smoothly the games run on such a slim system. so far i've tried BF4, SC2, farcry 4, titanfall, company of heroes 2... all of them maxed out without any problems and very playable (i did tone down the AA to minimum)
One thing i noticed though is the system's bottom does get REALLY hot when you push it for gaming... reading how ppl say this system is much cooler than previous 8xx GPU series, i never expected for it to get that hot... it was actually hot enough that i slightly burned myself when i unexpectedly held on the the vent area a second too long... was like touching a hot kettle type of heat. funny thing though is that the MSI included software says the cpu and gpu were only at about 70C... is that normal? i guess the heat being transferred out is better than staying inside to cook the important components? what's been everyone's experience?

also, i'm getting that plugged in, not charging thing, stuck at 91%... i read the forums and learned to go into device manager to delete that one section under the battery section, and reinstall it as it may have gotten corrupt... seemed to fix it at first... but last night i noticed it again, this time at 97%... reading more forums ppl say MSI actually sets it to not charge above 95%?
How should i test this to ensure my battery is not DOA so that i can, touchwood, do return/exchange with retailer rather than deal with MSI.. how is their warranty support btw? never bought a system from them before.

 

I'm curious what you don't like about the webcam. The few times I've used it I thought the video quality looked very nice. Maybe I'm just used to crummy webcams.

 

That's been my experience as well. I actually found the speakers to be rather solid as well, agreed on the battery life, but the rest I am quite happy with.

 

Just in case any of you is considering, the ELAN touchpad driver stopped working after upgrading to the latest Windows 10 technical preview.
The old control panel is gone, and I can't seems to find the ELAN touchpad panel anywhere.
So you will have to use a mouse if you want to try this out.
Other than that, all seem to be good.

 

I am also planning to buy this beast! howver the display refresh rate is capped at 48Hz. How does this affect to you? also I am planning to connect it to an external monitor (4K) or dell ultrasharp U3415W. Does it drive those displays at 60Hz?

 

Want to connect an external 4k monitor. What will be the best model to choose. I am happy with the 1080p model. So the 6GB memory will be able the external monitor @ 60 Hz or same like 4k panel, 48 Hz?

 

I am currently running with an Alienware 17 with a 7970m and a i7-3610QM. Other than of course a massive decrease in size and weight, what percentage of a performance boost would I see with this machine?

I know that going from 7970m to 980m would be a good increase in power, but since the 970m is about 30% less powerful than the 980m I was curious as to if this would still be a significant boost in power.

Thanks!

 

You're probably looking at a 20% boost or higher, depending on the game. The 970M is the perfect card for this machine because it rides the line of being GPU limited and being thermally limited - usually the former. So the benchmarks you read online for the 970M in general are mostly valid for this machine as well.

 

Thanks! Is my assumption correct that overclocking of the 970m is going to be very limited (or not possible) due to the 150w adapter?

 

Check HTWingNut's review, he did experiment with mild overclock (+125 MHz):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/765829-msi-gs60-ghost-pro-gtx-970m-6gb-review-htwingnut.html#gpu

It should be possible, but not sure if it's worth it. You'll get ~10% improvement in performance, but in some cases adapter is not enough so battery starts to drain. You'll get higher temperatures and likely also shorten lifespan of your notebook.

Also I think people were complaining newer Nvidia drivers disabled ability to overclock notebook Maxwell GPUs.

 

The rate is limited by panel but not displayport, so U3415W will be usable at 60Hz as its spec shown.
[3440 x 1440 at 60Hz]

 

phew... after a painstaking 3 1/2 hrs i did it. Covered the lid with a wrap. imo it turned out nice...

http://s8.postimg.org/69m9buk3n/IMG_0070.jpg

http://s11.postimg.org/p3kyaz4bl/IMG_0071.jpg

http://s23.postimg.org/8mq9b7gt5/IMG_0073.jpg

http://s13.postimg.org/jhhl425wl/IMG_0075.jpg

http://s15.postimg.org/lrjzkqsll/IMG_0077.jpg

i felt that taking off the bezel was hard to do, it wasn't, just very intimidating. getting the air pockets out of the wrap was by far the hardest thing to do.

 

Pretty cool. How hard was the badge to get off for you? I'm assuming you took it off and put it back onto the wrap?

 

the badge was pretty easy to pop off, just applied some heat.

 

Hi guys,

I'm a bit behind on the thread so I don't know if this has been covered but there's an issue with the Killer WiFi driver under Ubuntu (and other linux distros).

It would be great if we could get a few more voices calling for a driver to be implemented on the Ubuntu bug tracker.

If you use Linux or plan to try it, can you take a few minutes to post a comment on the following bug thread asking for a driver:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1383184

Thanks!

 

Hi guys,
I am currently considering buying this baby. I'm coming from a HUUUGE alienware m17x with 6990m and the compromise between size and power is really appealing.
I have a question though, I am planning on bringing my laptop to work and this huge dragon logo with lights is sort of a deal breaker for me (at least on the pictures i saw it was really unmissable). Do you reckon it is at least possible to turn on the light on this logo? Because making a such good looking brushed aluminium finish on a laptop that thin to put a disgracious red and childish logo is awfull.

 

No, it's lit by the backlight of the panel. When you remove the logo, there's nothing but a shield shaped hole. You can remove it, cover the hole, and then replace it - That would permanently keep it dim, but it might be challenging to get whatever you are using to stick. Black electrical tape might do the trick actually, I just don't know if the badge will stick to the back of it.

 

This was really the only thing that bothered by about my GS60 (I guess my legs burning was a slight down side, but that's beside the point)

I used a buddy's vinyl cutter to cut a black piece of vinyl exactly the size of the logo, but It didn't look as good as I wanted it to. I wish it was flush fitting--then it would be easy to just vinyl the whole lid. Bummer the WS60 also has a silly "workstation" logo. Neither are very professional.

 

I settled for the cat decal over the shield. It would be better if it were flush, but it's not so bad since the decal is black. I get a few laughs but there are a few people here that have decals over their apple logo so it's not unheard of. Lots of cat lovers too. Anything beats that dragon imho...

 

Hello everyone,

I still have the problem I mentioned earlier, I don't know if anybody faced it before, but I would be glad to read any of you about that:

Sometimes, unexpectedly, my screen just turns to black (still on, but doesn't display anything) and I don't have any control on it anymore, so I am forced to either enter sleep mode or force it off. When I switch it back on, sometimes it gets better, sometimes the black screen comes back even faster.

The only way I found so far was to switch the power mode. It usually works pretty well, but it comes back sometimes... and on this video I took, it got even worst !

I checked many details :
- Graphic drivers updated ( TousLesDrivers.com - Téléchargement gratuit de mises à jour PC (drivers, bios, firmwares, utilitaires))
- Plugged it on a external screen through HDMI : picture ok, I have total control on the computer (which is weird, because when my screen turns black, even the Alt+F4 shortcut doesn't work !)
- I opened the case to plug in and out the connector I highlighted bellow, in order to see if it would get better (which it did, but not for long sadly)


I am equipped with FullHD screen. I am kind of desperate, do you think my screen is broken? Should I send it to rma ?..

Thank you all

 

It's not a cabling issue if it does not happen in the bios/while booting. I would suspect the system ram or video chip if that's the case.

 

So what do you recommend? Do you know any diagnostic software to detect that ?

 

Hey guys, one of the little rubber just started coming off the bottom of my laptop. Looking at the flimsy glue pads they used I presume this happens a lot.

What's a good glue to use to put stick it back on 'permanently'? Would super glue handle the materials and the heat?

 

I totally agree, I presume there's no elegant way to get rid of the logo altogether

 

If you have a hard decal to put in it's place, it's not too bad. Just take the shield off and put your replacement in its place. Soft decals work too but you'll see the shield outline because there's a ridge. Worth it if you ask me.

 

BTW is the non-SSD HDD easy to replace? I've replaced HDDs with SSDs in older Macbook Pros before and was comfortable doing this. Am I right in thinking to replace the HDD you don't need to get get access to the side of the motherboard under the keyboard? I don't like non-SSD drives in my laptops due to the extra noise/heat/power consumption and was thinking of dropping in a 480Gb/500GB SATA SSD or maybe even just a 256Gb one. If I get a GS60 I'd probably get the 16Gb/dual 256GB SSD model, so shouldn't need to upgrade the RAM or M2 SSDs, though the 256Gb SSD model seems to be harder to find.

 

Yep, the HDD is easily accessible.... all you'll need to do is remove the bottom cover.

 

I've had great luck with 5-Minute epoxy... I've never lost one after going back with that. Clean both surfaces with a bit of rubbing alcohol, dab on a bit of epoxy with a toothpick, let it setup and good to go.

 

Great, what about changing the RAM and/or M2 slot SSDs? Do you have you get on the other side of the motherboard (under the keyboard) to get at those slots? If so, how tricky are they to access? Am having some trouble finding the exact spec I want, also might want to upgrade the RAM at some point - BTW does the GS60 support DDR3L-1866 RAM like the Aorus X3 Plus?

BTW would it be possible to to re-use the 1TB HDD by putting in a USB 3.0 external case, if replacing it with an SSD?

 

Yes, they are more difficult to access. There are videos on YouTube demonstrating how. Can't help with the RAM although it should be possible. And yes, you can use the old hard drive in a usb 3.0 enclosure. It's just a regular 2.5 inch drive

 

Can the 4k model drive extrnal monitor (34 inch dell u3415w) via display port? What about gameplay on that monitor? Will it be smooth enough? Can the 3gb handle the resolution well enough?

 

Okay, thanks

 

Looks like GS60's with FHD (matte) displays are hard to find in the UK, so am considering the 3K display. I have a few questions about this:

• Is it a glossy display, if so is it ultra-glossy mirror-like (which could be very annoying) or just moderately glossy? I would prefer matte, but could live with glossy if it's not too mirror-like

• My eyesight isn't good enough to work with 2880 x 1620 in Windows un-scaled, what scaled resolution would work well with a 15.6" 3k display? 1440 x 810 sounds a bit too low for a 15.6" display, that's more like the resolution I would use on a 13" or 14" screen. Can it scale to FHD (1920 x 1080) well, or is 1440 x 810 always going to look better?

• Is there only one type of 3K MSI use on the GS60, or do they use displays from different manufacturers? Do the 3K displays used have a good RGB range and reasonable calibration out of the box?

• Is the 3K display IPS or something else? AFAIK there are no TN 3K displays, though

Thanks!

 

Anybody for my weird screen behavior? Since I last opened the case (last Tuesday), it didn't happened again. I was thinking of 2 special events:

- I installed Xentar's Samsung driver for the touchpad, which works much greater than the original - thank you Xentar for that - but I didn't uninstall the previous driver, is it possible there is some kind of incompatibility with the fact that 2 drivers are installed for the same component ?

- As a student, I performed some Mecatronics labs after which the screen problem happened every time (but it also happened days after that), is it possible there has been some static electric field that perturbated the laptop? I am not sure since the black screen happened sporadicly, if it was "broken", I guess it would be more of a permanent problem.

Any idea of a diagnostic software that could check the whole computer?

Thanks a lot Meaker for your answer BTW

 

Here you have 1080p model in UK:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/156-...gb-128gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-3gb-nvidia-geforce-gtx-9

About 3K display:

- it's moderately glossy, not too bad
- Windows with 1080p resolution on 3K screen looks terrible, very noticeably blurry
- for Windows: you should run it in native 3K resolution but bump up Windows scaling
- for games: running at 1080p on 3K screen is not as bad as Windows, blurriness is less noticeable (some people don't see any difference vs native 1080p, some do)
- as far as I'm aware there is only one 3K screen used by MSI: Panasonic MEI96A2 VVX16T029D00 (the same one as in Gigabyte P35X and Clevo P650)
- 3K screen is IPS, it's a good screen, nice colors out-of-box, many people like it very much (unlike 4K one which is mediocre)
- be aware that 3K screen has higher chance of dead pixels (I had one with tons of them, multiple other people had them too, I'm now with 1080p one)
- also 3K screen models are discontinued, so if you see some, it's just old stock being sold (you know older units also by having i7-4710HQ CPU, new units come with i7-4720HQ, not that it matters much)

 

Planning to buy the 4k version with 3gb vram. Any user of that model? Can you suggest the pros and cons? We dont have the 3k and 1080p option sadly. Coming from mac