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

I only had it on green but the noise stopped bugging me. I got used to it. How slow and laggy internet browsing was what got me mad. I think my model was just defective. I currently dont have a laptop yet though due what i said above lol.

 

The 1080p option will suit the most people as being ideal.

 

@Mistah_Jayden are you sure Svet's personal tool (VBIOS) doesn't work on Skylake? According to the thread I linked earlier, folks claimed to be using that tool on Skylake.

EDIT> Svet himself said the utility works on the Skylake Ghost Pro (for purposes of fancontrol) here:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=148273.msg1507264#msg150726410

 

Hey guys wondering if you can help.

I have the MSI 2QE Ghost Pro 3k with 970m. I also have a 4k TV. I'm trying to connect to the TV so I can get 4K resolution. But its limited to 4k@30hz due to the intel HD graphics.

How do I get the NVIDIA gpu to push normal desktop graphics? Then I can push 4k@60hz at 4:2:2 chroma with HDMI 1.2. (Nvidia thing)

The hardware I think is HDMI 1.2 even though the 900m series can do 2.0 hdmi.
Regardless, I can do 4k@60hz at 4:2:2 chroma with HDMI 1.2 ( I have done this on my 780)

Ideas?

 

While the 900m latest can use up to HDMI 2.0, this is only implemented in some Clevo laptops. The actual controller on most MSI machines is HDMI 1.4. Use the nvidia control panel to check which port is connected directly to the dGPU and not through the iGPU. In my older GT60 for example, the VGA was tied to the intel GPU while HDMI was through nvidia gpu, so I had no problems using it directly.

I don't know if maybe GS series has minidisplay port tied to the nvidia GPU so that you can use that.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

How do i go about checking the directly connected port?

 

So has anyone tried Fallout 4 yet?

I would be interested to hear how it is running on the 970m.

 

It plays ok. On ultra, with AA and AF off I get anywhere between 30-50 fps. So I dialed it back to high and turned a couple other settings down a little to get close to or at 60. There are probably still parts where I get frame drops. This is all on FHD of course.

The game uses a suped up skyrim engine so I expected similar gameplay, but it's definitely way more detailed. If there weren't so many wrenches, cigarette cartons and boxes of laundry detergent lying around, I might get better frame rates!

I also play on my desktop at 2560x1440, which looks phenomenal compared to FHD. It's clear they are using hi res textures.

 

With some tweaking of the details you can get a VERY nice experience as above A great game to get the best out of the 970M.

 

As more people owning and playing the game, the experience will be smoother when developer rolls out tweaks/fixes as well as newer Nvidia driver.

 

How do i go about checking the directly connected port? I dont see anything in System info in Nvidia manager.

Ideas?

 

Where you configure physx, it should show your device and display and what is attached to it (via intel or nvidia) like these pictures:

http://i48.tinypic.com/34q8dgh.png
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/nvidia-displays-png.119611/

That last one is from another older GS60, which may suggest all ports are directed from the iGPU.

 

That GS60 with Rift DK2 screenshot is probably mine .

Yup, as far as I'm aware, GS60 ports are connected to Intel GPU, sadly .

Though I only tested my HDMI port, not mini DisplayPort (for external display I only have Oculus Rift DK2 which comes with HDMI). So may be worth a shot if you have any device which works with Display Port.

I checked now on my GS60 and seems Nvidia Control Panel shows ports only when something is connected:



Though on my other notebook that has MUX (hence display + ports connected to dGPU), it shows ports on Nvidia GPU even without anything plugged in:



Pity Nvidia Control Panel for GeForce GPUs is crippled. For Quadro GPUs it shows extra information about ports directly:

 

It is probably yours indeed! I googled it but it does show it was posted in the forums

Thanks for confirming. We should try the displayport but seeing how HDMI is directed, maybe there is no chance

 

hey guys, well uh, I'm Planning to buy this laptop, the 6QE model that there is, who ever got it, i wanna know whats the cons and pros of it and how it performs in games and if theres any problems with it, Thanks.

 

Have you checked reviews for the GS60 in general? The chassis is pretty consistent through time. Gaming performance should be as expected considering the GPU.

 

Has anyone had any issues with the keyboard? Sometimes it'll register 4 simultaneous key presses but sometimes it won't register combos like Ctrl+Shift+Z or X, or Shift+O+M. They're pretty uncommon to press at the same time but I use em a lot!

 

Likely either the keyboard data cable needs reseated, or the keyboard itself may need replaced. That's not a common issue - unless something has been spilled on it, maybe.

 

Hi, been lurking around here for a while.
I bought my GS60 2QE some time ago (1080p, i7 4720hq, 970m).
It's my first gaming laptop, I've been happy with it so far, the 1080p (Samsung PLS I believe) screen does struggle quite a bit with blacks, compared to my 150€ 24" Samsung PLS.
It's really cool to have as much power as my desktop (HD7950 overclocked) in such a small package though.

Lately I've been having an issue with the CPU fan though. If I leave it on the default fan curve, when idling, it will go down to 3090pm (lowest mine will go), and then stops for a few seconds, then ramps up to 4000rpm, goes down to 3090, and repeat.
I don't mind having the fan always on, I can get used to constant noise and ignore it, but the transient noise is REALLY annoying me.
I've updated the EC to the latest (5.06), it made no difference.
Anyone get that same issue ?

I've actually just found I can keep the fan on at all times by using Silent Option, and keeping then fan at 52% for the first 3 temp levels. This keeps the fan around 3140rpm, and it doesn't stop at that speed apparently.
I've also tried running it as passive, but honestly it doesn't make much less noise than just the hard drive, and it gets kinda warm. It ends up having to use the fan in short bursts after a while of web browsing.

 

Hm, I'm having a few more problems with this laptop. Occasionally the keys register twice when I have hit it only once, and the webcam is not working. Yes I am aware of the FN+F6 trick, I am using latest EC and SCM, I have all my drivers installed. When I press FN+F6 the webcam is not turning on. I have even gone into the SCM and I have tried to turn it on with the button in there, I can change the appearance of the button but there is no reaction from the camera. Any suggestions?

Also, I can pull my SDcard right out of the slot. Is that normal?

 

*ACCIDENTAL DOUBLE POST*

 

I would call your reseller, could be a cabling issue.

 

What kind of battery life can I expect from the skylake FHD version ?

I am trying to decide between MSI GS 60 ghost with skylake i7, 970m and FHD IPS and the Gigabyte Aorus X3 Plus V4with 4k screen, 970m etc. I need a stylish slim gaming laptop, which gaming obviously and some work.

The ghost pro seems to tick the boxes, but really worried about batterylife, as I have seen people report as low as 1,5 - 2hrs of use when browsing / watching movies (People with the aorus reporting up to 5hours). That seems extremely bad for todays standards. Obviously when gaming I am fine with having it plugged in, but really need 4 hours of batterylife for work. Is that a no go you guys think, with the skylake FHD version?

 

I have the haswell FHD version. So Skylake FHD may have slightly better battery life.
But the fact is you have a quad-core i7 with a 50wh battery. There's simply no way it'll have good battery life.
With the CPU limited to 50% power, and low brightness, I probably got up to 3h30 max; doing word and some browsing.
3h is what you count on most of the time, probably a bit lower if you're gonna be watching a movie.

For better battery life, your best bet would be the Aorus X3 plus, or even better the P34W. The drawbacks of these would be the build quality, which isn't so good for the price you pay.
Note also that while the P34W is pretty discrete, and the GS60 can also be if you cover the big ass gaming badge. The Aorus on the other hand looks like a gaming machine, no way around it.

 

I agree with Artemis completely. I've used the X3+, GS60 and the P35x. I was torn between the GS60 and P35X but ultimately stick with the GS60 even though the battery life was worse. The build quality, keyboard and trackpad on the P35X just wasn't as good. I actually wrote a article comparing the two in detail.

As for the Aorus, between build quality and how insane looking it is, I had zero interest in keeping it. The trackpad was nice but the keyboard was super cheap since it wasn't really held in on the model I had(lots of flex)

For battery, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake quad cores are all going to be the same. They all have virtually the same specs on power consumption. Remember, for these types of CPUs, Intel is focusing on speed not battery life, so the TDP is the same and there is no TDPdown frequency usually. Your main source on battery savings with gaming machines will be the battery capacity and the screen type/resolution

 

What do you think about the new Dell XPS 15 with 960M? It's obviously not as capable as these gaming machines for having lower end graphic card and 4k display, and I really doubt it has good heat dissipation, but it can play some games and its got a much better battery life when not doing power consumptive work.

 

It's because it has an 84 Whr battery. I don't believe that 17 hour claim Engadget says for a minute. That makes no sense at all. I would guess it could get 6-7. Probably more if you can get a FHD model.

The XPS 13 didn't last 15 hours like they claimed either. It was more like 9 for me and that was being really conservative. I even went the extra mile to try and get 15 and came up short - see here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/index.php?posts/9935127

Truth is, they always over estimate...

 

MobileTechReview said the same thing about the battery life, but even then it seems like a pretty good compromise between performance and battery life. With better battery life comes better portability. GS60 is also very light, but it would be nice if I don't have to move the power adapter around so frequently even if it means less hard drive storage.

EDIT: The XPS seems to have some display issues though, but I hope MSI could move into that direction in their PE/PX line.

 

These things haven't improved much.
- NB's total power consumption.
- NB's battery capacity/technology

They are usually averaged 2 ~ 3 hours under normal usage.
There's no way you can do 10+ hours with wifi on, and visible text/graphic on the screen.
The rating on battery life has to be practical to consumers.

 

So, new GS60 owner here and this is pretty much the first time I have owned a gaming laptop. I was pretty surprised though by how light the laptop would be. Feels great to type on too. A few questions though:

1. Are there any tips to improving battery life? I just bought this earlier today so I'm still probably in that setting up stage (finding the latest drivers, windows update, etc) but I noticed I could get the battery to drain to 0% in just an hour without any gaming.
2. I normally use MSI Afterburner to monitor gpu/cpu stats and noticed the 970m on the laptop maxing out at 540mhz. Isn't it supposed to reach like 900ish mhz or is this a monitoring bug?

Other than that, I think the laptop is pretty awesome in both looks and performance. Never thought gaming laptops could look this good since I was always put off by all the other bulkier gaming laptops

 

1. Not sure why it drained in an hour, but if you are running things that keep the system busy constantly then for sure the battery time will be shortened.
2. When the system is on battery it does not have all the power from it unlike AC adapter, therefore the GPU receives lesser amount of power allocation which permitted it to operate under minimal performance.

 

Might be all the downloading I'm doing right now. I'll probably keep an eye out as I use it more.

As for the GPU, I've tested a few games + 3dmark while on AC and they max out at 540mhz. I also saw your youtube review video and I can't seem to match the firestrike score you have. I was only able to do a score of 5486 with 6265 for the graphics score vs what your review showed of 6574 (7553 for graphics)

 

Could anyone who has this laptop record a video of the fan noise while gaming? I'd like to get an idea of how loud they really are (relative to other sounds like talking, etc...)

The fans are the only thing standing between me and buying the skylake version of this laptop, and I'd like to know how bad the noise really is.

Thanks in advance!

 

Could anyone who has this laptop record a video of the fan noise while gaming? I'd like to get an idea of how loud they really are (relative to other sounds like talking, etc...)

The fans are the only thing standing between me and buying the skylake version of this laptop, and I'd like to know how bad the noise really is.

Thanks in advance!

 

Make sure you don't have any power saving going on.

MSI calls their power setting modes "Shift" (plus there are Windows native power settings and things in Nvidia Control Panel, but most common reason for low performance on GS60 is simply not having MSI settings at full power).

In MSI control utility select "High Performance" and "Sport" mode:

 

I've also seen the GPU core clock drop to like 400+ mhz but that might have been during power saving or when running off battery.

I've tried all 3 shift modes and while everything seems to ramp up as I go through the different modes (framerates, gpu mem clock, temps/fan speeds), the core clock still does not go past 540mhz. My 3dmark result was with Shift set to Sport + High Performance.

Here's my fire strike result by the way: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/6564359

I think nearly every review I've seen shows this laptop doing over 6000.

 

Yup, your scores then do look odd.

GS60 with GTX 970M running at full power settings (and connected to AC) should be getting 3dmark firestrike scores somewhere in 6,500 - 6,700 points range (graphics subscore in 7,500 - 7,700 range).

There was a drop in firestrike performance with last few Nvidia drivers, but it was still small, just maybe ~100 points.

You can try checking with GPU-Z and Intel XTU to see if there isn't some throttling going on (these tools also tell reason for throttling like temperature or power draw):

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...p-boards-software-extreme-tuning-utility.html

Also I noticed you mentioned MSI Afterburner. Try turning it off / disabling / uninstalling, just to make sure some settings there doesn't accidentally interfere with GPU.

 

Thanks for the links and suggestions. Will try to do a bit of investigating later.

EDIT:
Well, for some reason my Fire Strike score went up by a thousand points now ( http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9402669). I didn't even do anything other than install GPU-Z. GPU-Z also reports a core clock of 1037.8 so I guess everything seems to be working fine now. Thanks for the help!

 

Could anyone who has this laptop record a video of the fan noise while gaming? I'd like to get an idea of how loud they really are (relative to other sounds like talking, etc...)

The fans are the only thing standing between me and buying the skylake version of this laptop, and I'd like to know how bad the noise really is.

Thanks in advance!

 

Please refer to this video, and feel free to let us know if you have any questions, thank you.

 

The GS60 while not being that silent at idle (unless you put it in passive mode and put a SSD instead of the HDD), is not that noisy even at full blast (worst temps/noise I get is in GTA 5, CPU and GPU work very hard).
Of course it makes some noise, and if you're not using headphones it's definitely annoying, but that'll be the same for every single gaming laptop.
A very good point of the GS60 is that it's just a woosh noise of blowing air, there's no annoying parasitic noises, the video (starting from 7:45) gives a good idea of what it sounds like.

 

Sorry if this doesn't belong here but how do you guys have your 970M setup (in nvidia settings)? I'm trying games like CSGO, Borderlands and I get this annoying stuttering. Maybe once every few minutes. This didn't happen before I formatted and now I can't find a fix =/

Also, to the person who drained their battery in 1hr -- I experienced the same thing. I had to go to Device manager and manually update both battery thingies. For some reason, Win10/MSI software didn't automatically update them.

 

Seeing as how the gs60 has a type C port, would that make a type C power bank a good partner to have for charging needs on the go? I've been looking at these new power banks that can charge the new macbooks multiple times and was wondering if they would work well with the gs60 (and if they can provide enough to replace AC charging and allow the laptop to use the CPU/GPU at full)

It seems to be doing better now but I'll give that a try later. Thanks

 

Well max specs for power over USB type C is 100W (20V/5A).
The power adapter on the GS60 is 150W (19.5V/7.7A), and while gaming it does use 150W.
So no, you wouldn't be able to use full power.
And just because it has an USB type-C does not mean the laptop can be charged that way. Most likely it only supports USB 3.1, and not USB power delivery, since the laptop needs to be powered by another port anyway.

 

The port is designed for up to 3 amps (15W) of power delivery, it can not charge the machine.

 

Anyone run into issues with windows update? I received an update to upgrade Windows 10 Home to the latest build and its been stuck at a black screen with the words "Updating Windows" for more than 2 hours now. The percentage for Copying Files seems to be moving at a rate of 1% every several number of minutes.

 

What if you reboot the PC and try again?

 

I just left it alone and it finished just now. That was probably the longest windows update I've ever xperienced. Exactly the same problem as this guy ( http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...e/b790dddc-1faa-400c-b153-417c69b8dd41?auth=1) who coincidentally has an msi laptop as well

 

Hi guys! I tried to update BIOS on MSI GS60 6QE to E16H7IMS.10C version. Download BIOS file from here http://www.msi.com/product/notebook/support/GS60-6QE-Ghost-Pro.html#down-bios, update BIOS twice with UEFI BIOS Utility. BIOS ver changed to E16H7IMS.10C, but ME version steel remains 1171 (it never changing to 1180). Please help me to resolve this little problem. Thank you.

 

Did you flash the EC listed under the firmware tab?