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

aqnb - thanks for the link to the 1080p model, pity it's not the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro-064 6GB VRAM model, but that looks even harder to find. It's also only 8GB, though I guess I could upgrade the RAM

 

BTW does the GS60 support 1866Ghz DDR3 RAM or only 1600Ghz DDR3? If wanting to upgrade from 8GB RAM, is it best to buy a new match pair of 2x8GB RAM, rather then an unmatched single stick?

 

Also does the RAM need to be 1.35V not 1.5V?

 

Ah, I was exactly you few weeks ago. MSI produced a pretty good notebook with MSI GS60 but they messed up SKUs.

No idea about exact RAM types. I also have only 8 GB RAM because no 16 GB RAM models were available in my country too

It's really shame because extra 8 GB RAM stick is cheap, should be ~70 EUR extra (and likely even less for MSI, they buy it wholesale).

Unfortunately adding extra RAM (and also M2 SSDs) is really messy in MSI GS60, you have to remove the motherboard as slots are on its other side. Only HDD slot is easily accessible.

Whole notebook insides are supposedly rather fragile, plus there is a warranty sticker over one of the screws you need to open the chassis.

That warranty sticker is supposed to be ignored if you don't break anything inside ... but only US MSI has this explicitly written, other countries MSI service centers may interpret it differently, and it's easy to break something anyways.

So I left RAM expansion as the last option. Only to be done if I'll run into some showstopping issues with just 8 GB RAM. So far it works ok, just you get a bit lower benchmark performance for CPU subscores because it's just a single-channel memory. No noticeable lower performance in real world use.

Oh, and about 6 GB VRAM: as far as I'm aware there were no 6 GB VRAM models available anywhere in Europe .

That 064 US model is indeed the best MSI GS60 model out there, pity it's not easily obtainable (in addition to hassle of getting things from US, you would also get just international MSI warranty which is worse than EU one).

 

DDR3L = 1.35

All Haswell motherboards require that type

 

This seems the cheapest place for the current (2.6Ghz CPU) 8Gb RAM / 128 GB SSD / FHD matte screen option in the UK:
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/9S7-16H512-247-MSI-GS60-2QE-(Ghost-Pro)-247UK_1700034.html

I might go for this one, and upgrade the HDD to a 512Gb SSD, might need to upgrade the RAM to 16GB at some point, perhaps could get reliable computer repair shop to do this for me

 

Okay, thanks. Does the GS60 support 1866Ghz RAM BTW?

 

Like I said before, I'm not sure. I doubt anyone here has bothered to try either. I honestly don't think the real life performance improvement is worth the effort. Most games are going to be gpu limited and some cpu limited. I've never been limited to where I wish my ram was faster.

 

Yes, but I want to upgrade the RAM on the FHD model (which doesn't seem to be available with 16GB RAM in Europe) to 16GB anyway, so might as well go for the best RAM.

 

Received my brand new GS60 - 064 from Gentech guys.
I am already in love with this thing. It's just beautiful. Haven't noticed any issues like back light bleeds or trackpad problems, but maybe I am insensitive to these things. Haven't had the time to properly test this baby by throwing games at it, but will sure do soon.

 

Hey Guys.

I have the MSI Ghost Ghost Pro - 066.

I am trying to update my Killer Network Driver. I do not see any available update for that. Only Intel and Chicony.

Killer's website has a new driver that came out this month but I am sure its not going to be MSI specific like this one.

What are you guys doing? Are you updating to the killer one or finding an MSI one somewhere?

Also are you on the latest bios? What all have you updated?

Thanks.

P.S. Here is the link. It says to uninstall everything first. Is that safe? How would I go back if I don't have the original driver?

http://www.killernetworking.com/support/driver-downloads

 

Both Gentech and xoticpc offer the faster ram as a custom option, so it's probably safe to assume it'll work

 

Does any of you use a cooling pad for your GS60? Is it worth it?

 

Hello ,

I bought a Msi gs60-044 about two months ago. This laptop is almost perfect. Only issue i have is the very insensitive touchpad. I have to remove my finger from the touchpad two or three times to navigate through the screen.

IS there a way to increase the touchpad's sensitivity ? ( I already maxed it from the elan software - any other methods) ???

 

You try the Samsung drivers I posted many pages back?

 

Nope, can you send me a link to the drivers or your post ?

Sorry for the trouble

 

http://goo.gl/Uwhgvj

 

Anybody else with MSI GS60 here noticed any weird diagonal tearing artefacts?

I'm trying to figure out if my notebook has some hardware issue or if there is maybe some driver or Windows bug or some GTX-970M-GPU-wide problem (after GTX 970 ramgate and that mobile g-sync thing who knows).

At first I have seen those artefacts just with WebGL demos, but after digging deeper and trying many different things I can make them happen also when running games in windowed mode.

Games in fullscreen mode are ok, they behave as expected - no tearing with v-sync on, just regular horizontal tearing with v-sync off.

But running games in windowed mode gives in some cases weird diagonal tearing artefacts (independently of v-sync settings).

These artefacts don't appear in screenshots, you can see them just with own eyes or take a photo. The easiest way to see them is with some content that has a lot of vertical stripes and fast moving camera. Artefacts go from upper-right to lower-left corner but can have also some smaller horizontal subsections.

Check for example this WebGL demo in Chrome (make sure it runs on Nvidia GPU, either via Nvidia Control Panel, or right-click "run with graphics processor", then move mouse quickly left-right, look for flickering triangle in the upper-left corner):

http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_particles_shapes.html

Here is what I get (ghosting is from phone camera, the true artefacts are those sharp division tears):



As far as I was able to tell, these artefacts do seem like some synchronization glitches. They don't look anything like usual GPU failure images (at least what I could google).

Content is not random, it's always intended pixels, just mixed up from different frames. Similar to regular v-sync-off tearing but with tears shaped differently and persisting even with v-sync on.

 

I have a pair of 2x8 gb 1866 crucial ram sticks. Runs pretty good, but I never compared to 1600mhz sticks though.

 

Thanks, there's not really any price differences compared to the 1600mhz sticks, so I'll probably get the 1866 ones. Does the Bios say they're running at 1866 and did you have to change any bios settings to support this, or did it just pick these up automatically?

 

Future owner of a GS60 970M variant -- Very excited to get my unit in this week. Just wanted to ask a couple questions ahead of time for the owners here. How're you finding the build quality and battery life of the machine? Has it improved over the previous iterations of the GS60 kepler version? Anything I should be looking to do the minute I unbox and power on ( e.g what bloatware am I expecting to see? )

It seems like everyone is EXTREMELY happy with their purchase of the 970M version of this model. If you had to nitpick, what are some of your gripes with the machine as far as personal usage goes?

 

Trackpad can be improved with the driver I put on the previous page. Battery life is pretty bad, so if you want to stretch it, make a power profile that disables turbo boost. Also, you'll probably want to disable hibernation mode.

 

Thanks for the quick response! It seems like the average bat life is 3 hours for this model, which is plenty of life for me. Bad for all-day usage of course, but I do move from room to room/building to building. So that's good enough battery life.

What don't you like about the touchpad? Is it just the mouse sensitivity or the texture of the pad itself?

 

Hey everyone.

I am returning this laptop. I absolutely love it and wish to the world I could keep it.

The only problem is the battery life is just to horrid. I mean 2.5 hours I can't get anything done normally on battery life. I mean just for basic note taking with no wi-fi, min brightness, and nothing running I get 2.5 hours only.

If I am going to be tied to an A/C adapter I mine as well have the best of the best. Like the GT80 Titan.

How are you guys justifying the battery life? Do you just not care? Do you just leave it on the table plunged in? My point is if you are just going to leave the laptop plugged in on the table mine as well just have the Titan 80 plugged in on the table. Get my point?

I mean I really want to keep this laptop but I'm afraid there is nothing I can do.

 

Out of the blue, my GS60 unfortunately is stuck on the MSI boot logo and wont proceed any further. 10-15 minutes later, I get a blue screen saying DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE and the laptop reboots. Then it says PREPARING AUTOMATIC REPAIR and gets stuck there indefinitely. I'm unable to boot into Safe mode, or the Windows recovery menu, or the MSI recovery Mode via F3. I can only boot into the BIOS, I changed the boot order and tried to boot using a USB Windows Recovery Stick, but that too remains indefinitely stuck on the Windows loading screen.

I haven't performed any Windows updates or driver updates or installed any new software. The only thing I did was update the nvidia gpu driver to 347, but that was 10 days ago and the laptop played games fine after that till this error.

Am at my wits end. I got in touch with my reseller GentechPC and they suggested I RMA it. Sending my system back to MSI USA today Will have to go without this incredible laptop for a month now :/ Worst part is I'm going abroad for 4 months, so I'm not even sure if I can get it back until I return.

 

Will replacing the HDD with an SSD help a little with battery life?

 

Both the sensitivity and the texture. I got used to the texture but the max sensitivity of the default driver was pretty poor if you ask me. They have a new driver on their website but I haven't tried it yet. The Sammy one works fine for me so I'm not planning on switching anytime soon.

 

I just don't care. It sucks but it's about all you can expect with having a quad core CPU with dedicated graphics in such a thin chassis. I could have a bigger battery but it would weight twice as much and I wouldn't like travelling with it. Since I don't typically spend more than 3 hours on it at a time, plugging it in is no big deal to me. It's not like I can play games without being plugged in anyways. Personal preferences, but I certainly agree that it sucks and it's not for everyone.

 

Slightly but not anything worth noting.

 

I thin Xentar712 is right, unless they manage to massively decrease power requirements for both the CPU (perhaps possible with Broadwell) and the GPU (unlikely for high-end GPUs in the near future, though at least the 970M runs cooler than the 8xx series), then I can't see that happening. Apple manage long battery life by either having no dedicated GPU or a weak one (as in the 750m in the top of the range Macbook Pro), everything (bar the SSD) soldered on and a glued-in customised batteries filling every nook and cranny.

I currently have a 13" Macbook Air and love it, it's small and light and the battery life is superb, but even though it's maxed out (2Ghz dual core i7, 8Gb RAM, 256Gb SSD, Intel 4000 HD graphics with 1GB shared RAM) and setup to dual-boot Mac OS X or Windows, it's definitely no serious gaming machine. I can play less demanding games on it at lower settings reasonably well, but only a quad core machine with an up-to-date GPU is really going to cut it for gaming, and that means a machine that needs power. You could make battery life longer by sticking more cells in there, but that's going to increase weight and bulk, reducing portability.

The only serious reasonably gaming laptop I'm aware of that has reasonable battery life is the Razer Blade. but the current generation has serious shortcomings - in particular it runs very hot and vents out above the keyboard. I also don't like that it has a 4K screen that involves the need to scale. More importantly (for me, anyway) Razer don't sell (or even ship to) the UK/EU and won't honour warranty if I imported one from elsewhere. The new Gigabyte/Aorus models look interesting, but build quality doesn't seem to be anything like as good as MSI and they seem to have other shortcomings (e.g. flex).

I'll probably keep my Macbook Air for when I need off-grid power all day and to travel very light, but the MSI GS60 2QE seems to offer the best there currently is for a reasonably light gaming laptop. Just wish they did a 14" version with no numpad and a 970m GPU...

 

I dont even reach the 2.5 hours thanks to the 3k display, but it doesnt really bother me because its still among the average battery life of laptops in general.. if you want more battery life you have to go for a laptop that doesnt have a GPU like most ultrabooks... Its up to you to decide if a gaming laptop is worth it... What I do dislike is the size of the power brick but you can buy the one from razer.

 

If you live in the US - they won't ship it to UK/Europe (same goes for their laptops) :-(

 

Would the FHD matte 1080p display use a little less power than the 3K and 4K displays? This is the model I'm looking at as don't want to have to deal with scaling and prefer a matte screen (and from the reviews sounds like a very good one)

 

I found that mine has a very high wear level on the battery, around 15%, I've had 2 of these lappies and they both have very high wear level, tried battery calibration and it didn't help. I asked msi CS rep and didn't get any reply. This high wear level obviously reduces battery time, so if this is the case for you as well maybe you can by a new battery? I don't mind hugging the wall

 

I'm looking to buy an MSI GS60 2QE with FHD 1080p matte screen, probably from http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk

They offer some extras at checkout, are any of them worth it at these prices?:

EDIT: £1 = $1.50 = 1.3 Euro

• Gold Star Service - "If your laptop is faulty within the first 14 days we will Collect & Replace so you wont need to use the Warranty Centre" [£9.97] [not sure this is worth it if covered under the MSI warranty anyway?]
• MSI 3 Year Collect & Return Warranty For MSI Products - HALF PRICE (£49.97 instead of £9.99) [seems reasonable value, possibly considering this - even if I sell it before the 3 years are up, could be a selling point]
• Pre-Delivery Check [£39.97]
  • Run hardware tests [possibly useful]
  • Setup User Profiles [I don't care, would actually rather do that myself]
  • Inspect for defective pixels [might be worth it, though I've heard this is more of an issue with the 3k and 4k screens]

Are any of these extras worth it for peace of mind?

 

Same here, I had a lot of wear right out of the box. Glad it's not just me. I wonder if they are variable and just calibrated them all with a higher capacity. They aren't exactly standard sized. Mine was like a pancake encased in plastic

 

Technically yes. The 3k is beautiful but has some drawbacks like the scaling and others.

 

I've raised this issue with msi multiple times but haven't received any good response yet (something that makes sense, msi rep in this forum replied that it should have 1 to 5% wear and asked me to email one of their supervisor but I already did and receive no response), the funny thing is that even the htwingnut's review unit has a very high wear level 13%, I believe there's something seriously wrong with their batteries .......

 

Owned both a Kepler version and now the Maxwell 970m version, build quality and battery life are the same, no noticeable differences. It's a very nicely built laptop, I'd say one notch below the best but better than most.

What you aren't taking into consideration is we aren't just leaving them sitting stationary on a table plugged in... the lightweight makes them MUCH easier to actually travel with... Try lugging that Titan 80 sucker around an airport terminal a few times when running late between gates on top of your other carry on luggage and let us know how it goes! I take my GS60 with me on work trips, on vacations, from jobsite to jobsite, around the house, etc... it's just so much easier to move around when needed. Once I get where I'm actually going, there's always either a plug or power source (use an inverter on the plane or in the work truck). And, as others have mentioned, no laptop will game on battery for any usable amount of time.

Just different usage scenarios I suppose... if you just need a laptop to stay in one place, then absolutely there are better options.

I noticed a slight improvement (+15 minutes or so I'd guess on average) in Windows battery estimate, but as mentioned above I don't do enough full battery cycles to fairly say. Definitely doesn't hurt but don't do it just for battery life.

I too had 12% out of the box (and still do) on mine as well... being they all are reporting the same, seems it's either a widespread problem or more than likely, simply a reporting problem. Battery life between my 970m version with 12% and my 860m version with ~3% isn't noticeable and depends more on what exactly was being done usage wise.

 

Anyone? Am hoping to place my order for an an MSI GS60 2QE with the FHD 1080p matte screen today...

 

Hi guys sorry if some one already answered my question but I couldnt find, so what happen is my gs60 had only one ssd toshiba 128gb than I bought one more ssd the same model to use the "Supe raid" I had to do a clean winstall of windows everything is working great but the boot time is like 20 seconds more then before the intel rapid storage have to check the driver but I sow many videos on internet of gs60 with raid 0 by factor that the boot time is just seconds and just shows the msi logo some one have the gs60 with 2 ssd how is the boot time?? so is that a driver on the OEM windows or preset of drivers thanks a lot

 

I'm not sure what videos you've seen but RAID 0 usually increases boot time for SSDs, not decreases it. Only exception is spinning HDDs because they are the bottleneck of your boot sequence. Modern SSDs are not the bottleneck, so loading RAID drivers at boot will more than likely increase the boot time.

 

I never pay for the extras. If it's defective, I just return it. Those extras are for if you hate dealing with the hassle and you want piece of mind.

 

Fair point, though will I still be able to return it to MSI if it just has some dead pixels?

For the warranty, I think I'll just go for the standard two years (and I think I read somewhere you get an extra 3 months if you register online?)

 

Hi thanks to answer me here is the videos



All they say the laptop is in raid 0 so thats how my laptop os before I add the ssd does anyone have a gs60 in raid 0??

 

Just saw that the new 970M Razer Blade is now available, which should resolve some of the complaints about it overheating/not being powerful enough for the 4K display. I would be sorely tempted, but they still won't sell nor ship to Europe nor provide warranty cover here... So, although I was very excited about this, looks like I'm back to the looking to buy a GS60 2QE

BTW apart from the price (and for me, availability) in what ways is the GS60 2QE *better* than the 970m Razer Blade? Might help me to feel better about my purchase then!

 

Last year I did a side by side comparison of the two: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...de-2014-and-msi-ghost-pro-gs60-non-3k.752450/
I also did a 870M to 970M comparison here: http://www.ultrabookreview.com/5337-msi-gs60-ghost-pro-3k-review/
Besides the GPU bump, not much has changed in either model. The ram bump on the RB is pretty good. Either way, it's going to come down to whether or not you want touch and portability over hard disk options and a little better performance. The 970M is going to drive the GS60 3k screen better than the RB 3k screen. But the RB has a better build quality, hands down. I am really excited that they made a FHD RB, but it only has 8GB of ram(facepalm). Really, for me, it comes down to the single M.2 slot with no sd card reader. That's not enough storage space and M.2 is still limited to 512GB...

 

Interesting. I had both and I definitely noticed the Raid 0 took longer to boot than the single ssd option. I broke Raid because of that. More trouble than it's worth, if you ask me.

 

I'm ideally wanting a matte FHD 1080p non-touch display, in the UK the GS60 model for this only comes with 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD + 1TB 7200rpm SSD, but at least you can upgrade that to 16GB RAM and 128GB + 500Gb SSD (which is what I was thinking of doing).

I do like the smaller footprint, better battery life, better build quality, and lack of numpad (which I don't really need) on the Blade, as well as a nicer logo implementation on the back of the screen. I do prefer the upgradabeability (albeit awkward) of the MSI GS60 and that it vents air straight out the back rather than above the keyboard, in front of the screen, as well as the card reader and miniDisplay port. The trackpad is meant to be nicer on the blade, though the MSI has a better keyboard (though I'm not so keen on the font).

MSI has a 2 year standard warranty (one year international), Blade has 1 year (on none if you're in the UK, grrr...)

If the Blade was available in the UK I'd probably buy it, it's more expensive, but I probably wouldn't need to keep my Macbook Air too if I had the Blade, so would make some money back on that...

The Aorus X3 Plus V3 looks like a pretty nice 14" model, but the price is close to a Blade and the build quality doesn't even look as good as the MSI GS60. I also don't like the "boy racer" style vents at the back

 

I wasn't a fan of the X3+. The price was too high imo and I would rather just have the Blade. If you're a lap user, you'll like the GS60 more than the RB. The vents of the GS60 are on the side and back edges, while the RB relies on intake from the underbelly and exhaust on the screen. The exhaust on the screen really isn't a big deal but the intake almost forces you to use a cooling pad while playing games on your lap. I play games on my lap with the GS60 all the time and have no issues with temps.

The matte(assumed) 1080p Razer Blade is $2k and it only comes with 8GB or ram and a 256GB SSD. Pretty sure the ram will be soldered but the SSD is upgradable. I'm with you on the font, but the RB is not much better, plus it's green. Good luck choosing. I know the feeling for sure - I had a difficult time myself.