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

So I just received my GS70 and I'm pretty happy with it. If you guys want me to explain anything or review anything let me know and I will. One thing I noticed right off the bat is the USB plug are super snug and they don't fully allow the plugs to go in. They stick out partially. Just downloading a bunch of stuff my CPU temps hang out around 60c and had a max of 76c. No gaming or anything yet.

 

Congratulations on your purchase! A generally review wouldn't be too amiss since I'm still up in arms about size/weight etc. Subjectively, is it hotter than you expected? Louder? You know, those things. How does it compare with your expectations?

 

Yes, it is correct.
3K model will benefit from the higher amount of VRAM, and most of games don't need more than 3GB if your system doesn't have 3K.

 

See I can't understand why msi is offering the 1080p version with the 6 gig card and the 3 gig card on the 3K version. .

Am I crazy for thinking of buying the 064 and just hooking up to full sized display when I want the UHD experience?

Seems the version with the 6 gig of vram and a 1080p display should be the smoothest of the bunch. .. am I wrong thinking that or is the 6 gig card wasted on the 1080p version?

 

Well, it doesn't really matter that much. 1080p with MSAA or 3k without antialiasing take pretty much the same amount of memory. A 3k HDR framebuffer takes about 36MB of VRAM, throw in triple buffering, a Z-buffer and some special buffers for shadows etc., we are talking about less than 200MB total. That's like 7% of the 3GB VRAM, so the additional 3GB won't make much of a difference.

Major reason for more VRAM are the hires textures as said before. And this of course totally depends on the game and whether it even has such high quality textures requiring (or even benefitting) from more VRAM.

 

I'm also waiting for the 064 model, but here in Europe it seems to be not available even for preorder.
You can find mainly 3K models with 3gb vram.

Is it normal that in Europe some models arrive late? Or is there a chance that it never comes here?

 

Answer to your question ... :/

 

Thank you.
So, let's wait.. otherwise I'll buy it in an US online store, but considering shipping costs + import fees it's very expensive :/

 

Few quick questions on the GS60.

1. How easy is to upgrade the HDD to a SSD on the GS60? Does it involve removing the mobo or is it as simple as popping the back and dropping it in?

2. Does the HDD slot support SATA 3? I thought i saw it being mentioned as limited to SATA 2.

3. Does the 12 GB memory configuration give less of a performance than the 16GB dual channel config or its not going to be noticeable in games?

 

1. Hdd is super easy. Undo ribbon cable and the drive pops right out. No screws. Ssd requires removing motherboard screws and lifting the motherboard to expose the other side. There's a few YouTube videos demonstrating.

2. I haven't heard sata 2. I read a few who replaced the hdd with a ssd but I don't remember there being any complaints of speed cap.

3. You shouldn't notice a difference unless you run out of ram.

 

This is a youtube video on replacing GS60 RAM or SSD...not straightforward: HowTo: SSD or RAM upgrade for MSI Ghost GS60 (GS60-2pci581) - YouTube

 

Well I broke down and ordered a GS60 (Pro-044).... the Amazon store card has 12 months interest free financing and it was only $12 for overnight Saturday delivery. Can't wait to check it out!

 

3GB vRAM enough or 6GB is worth the price bump?

 

So I asked MSI about MSI GS60 and there are no models with both 3K screens and 6 GB VRAM GTX 970M available now

They didn't want to comment on possibility of future models.

According to these tests it doesn't seem that dual channel RAM configurations would make a much practical difference, outside of few very specific scenarios.

RAM Performance Benchmark: Single-Channel vs. Dual-Channel - Does It Matter? | Gamers Nexus - Gaming PC Builds & Hardware Benchmarks

On the other hand running out of RAM and starting swapping to disk is a massive performance hit, so in general the more is better.

It is worth it. Maybe not necessary right now, but definitely good for future proofing.

The problem is you can't really get models with 6 GB VRAM right now, all is just pre-order, and also just with FHD and 4K screens, not 3K ones (which would be ideal).

 

What do you think the price difference between a FHD and a 3K screen with 6GB VRAM?

 

FHD screen should be about 150€ cheaper than 3K one ... or more
3GB vs 6GB also ca 100€ difference in my opinion

 

Thank you, so far it's pretty warm to the touch, but not hot. I've spent a lot of time just getting it back to the way I had my Asus G750. The fans are loud, much louder than I anticipated, but it's not off putting for me. The only thing I'm noticing right now that I can't verify if it's me or not at the moment is dead key presses. I'm not used to the keyboard yet. So I could just be missing the shift key. The only time I notice it is when I'm pushing the shift and trying to make a capital letter.

Update

Playing TitanFall for approximately 30 minutes made the left side of the laptop "hot" to the touch. Using HW Monitor I achieved 83c after about 30 minutes of play. I'm gonna try to play Witcher for about an hour or so max settings and see what happens.

 

vahdyx, can you hear the fans when the laptop is just idle?

 

Is the highest possible model now is GS60 Ghost Pro 4K-079?

 

Cpu fan is anyways running

 

I guess with other surrounding noise, such as home standing fans, TV, music, etc, the fan noise may not be significant.

Is it correct to say that when you are playing music from the laptop speakers, the music will overcome the fan noise?

 

guys, any advice of what will be the best performance M.2 SATA3 SSD upgrade to replace the stock Kingston 128GB SSD? Looking for 2x 256GB or 2x 512GB in Raid-0 as my OS disks

I am considering Crucial M550 256GB SATA M.2 Type 2280 Internal Solid State Drive CT256M550SSD4:
Amazon.com: Crucial M550 256GB SATA M.2 Type 2280 Internal Solid State Drive CT256M550SSD4: Computers & Accessories

 

Depends how loud you play it if course. The idle fan is quiet so it's really not bad. In a silent room, you know it's on but if there is a tv on, you won't notice

 

Just wondering- why are you interested in running in Raid-0? From my very limited understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong), Raid-0 provides marginal benefits especially considering the amount of money that you have to put in. Some tests that I've seen have even shown that Raid-0 may actually slow down your write speed. Unless you have a very specific need where you need the extra read/write then it isn't worth it (usually if you can't specify why you need it, you won't really reap the benefits of Raid-0). IMO, it would be more economical to get a 'higher end' SSD and leave it at that. Plus you are basically running twice the risk of a drive failing in which case, all of your data is corrupted.

 

Actually Raid 0 is an equal number of drives striping data across all drives in the set. 2 drive theoretically can double your read/write speeds, in actuality its probably somewhat lower and I don't know enough about that particular topic to speak intelligently about it. The big problem is as you said the possibility for catastrophic failure of one of the members of a RAID 0 set and for ever drive you add to a RAID 0 you basically double your chance for complete data loss. You can also usually place disks in a JBOD (Just a bunch of disks) allows you to take 2 smaller volumes and pair them into 1 larger volume and losing either of those disks doesnt completely screw you but you get no redundancy or performance improvement.

Sorry I rambled on a bit,

TL;DR RAID 0 does provide a perfomance boost at the risk of doubling your chances to lose all over you data due to either drive failing.

 

Guys i've been wondering if it would be possible to set 1ssd as system partition only and 2ssd as cache for 1tb hdd (this basicly makes hdd fast as 80% of ssd most of the times).

Have any1 tried something like that? I know that for such thing you need speciffic ssd controller (certain model of intel or marvel) but its not a problem to change one m2ssd and buy other one equipped with such

Reason why i started to wonder is quite a long time i need to w8 to load the BF4 from hhd and i honestly dont like to keep games on c:

 

From what I experienced, raid 0 nearly doubled my boot time but I couldn't see any actual benefit from the programs loading.

 

RAID 0 will yield a performance boost in nearly all situations. If the CPU is performing the striping, you will not get as much of a performance boost as if a dedicated hardware RAID controller were doing the striping. And my personal preference is to not RAID 0 a boot disk if it is anything more than a gaming rig. If you have an error on one of the two drives, you can lose all of the information on both because they relay on each other to be correct. Again, having a CPU do striping via software is not the same as having a dedicated hardware controller on a desktop.

I do not see the GS60 advertised as having a separate/dedicated RAID controller, so I can only assume it is software-RAID. I will not be striping my boot disk on my GS60. I agree with andrew.gk and recommend just getting a bigger or better quality SSD if you want to upgrade. Going with a single drive removes the chance for a software-RAID array to crash on you.

Just my 2c.

 

Sorry, double post.

 

Just got my GS60 Pro-044 and started putting it through the paces. No long gaming sessions yet, but I did run the firetrike demo and benchmark. Temps peaked at 74 CPU, 77 GPU. Idle CPU sits at 35, and during non gaming use hovers between 40-55 depending on the task. Fans are much quieter than the GT70 I used to have even at peak. They get somewhat loud but not enough that they interfered with hearing the tv. Idle fan noise is quiet but noticeable.

Firestrike score was 6549. For comparison, my desktop scored 7519 with a 4770k OC'd to 4.2GHz, GTX 770 slight OC'd, and 4GB more RAM than the laptop.

 

I have the same desktop hehe. This laptop isn't as good, but it's surprisingly close to the point where I don't care. Only thing is I miss is 120 Hz

 

Yes and sometimes it gets loud-ish. Not full load loud, but loud enough to hear it in another room if everything is quiet and I'm listening for it. I'd say it's similar to a refrigerator noise it's noticeable if you're paying attention, but if you're not you won't hear it.

True statement.

Also the GS70 has an issue with the mouse pad. It literally cannot go diagonal?

When slowly moving the mouse cursor diagonally it steps up then horizontal then up again. I can watch the mouse cursor move in this fashion. I don't know if that's a defect on my unit or something wrong with the ELAN drivers. I'm gonna see what I can dig up.

I asked my Fiancee if the fans at full load are crazy loud, she didn't think it was bad. She said it reminds her of the PS4. So it's bareable for sure.

I played Witcher on Ultra high settings using my Xbox One controller and PS4 Gold wireless headset for approximately 3 hours non-stop. The highest temps I saw was 87c on one CPU core where the others were around 83c. The GPU max was 88c.

My house ambient temps were 75F and I had the GS70 resting on a CoolerMaster laptop cooler, but the laptop cooling pad was not turned on. It just provided extra clearance to dissipate the heat.

Right now the trackpad thing is kind of a bummer but so far I'm pretty happy with the laptop. Luckily I primarily use a G602 Logitech gaming mouse, so it's not a deal breaker, but it's definitely a bummer for sure.

 

Adding to the RAID 0 discussion:
The BIOS is providing RAID 0 but I suggest to everyone in my family/friends never to use RAID 0. I want to pair 2 x M.2 SSDs into a RAID 1 (mirror) thus getting very fast read speeds and same write speeds.

RAID 1 is also great for protection. If one of the drives die you can order a new one and prepare to replace the dead SSD while your other SSD keeps you working normally.

You want 2 drives in RAID 0 ? you get 2 times more likely to lose all your OS data. If you have backups it still takes many hours to restore/recover. Is it worth it ? I think not.

Can the GS60 do RAID 1 via BIOS ? I'd love to find out.

Just my 2c
JD

 

Hey guys! Can you help me? In Spain we are only two versions of GS60.

Gs60 2QE(Ghost Pro)-093ES -Portatil Gaming (9S7-16H512-093) > pc - informática > portátiles | Alvicius.com

GS60 2QE (Ghost Pro 4k)-092ES-Portatil Gaming (9S7-16H512-092) > pc - informática > portátiles | Alvicius.com


I have a question, it's worth buying the 4k version?

I must buy how future investment?

I do not know if I will have problems downscaling to 1080 and if I really get tired vision

Windows 10 will support 4k screens I am a programmer and like to play games occasionally. What do you say?

 

Anyobody play Tomb Raider on the 970m? I can get into the menu but it crashes when I try to load a save or start a new game. I stopped all the MSI programs and still have a problem, so I figure it has to be a driver issue

Edit: Nevermind, it was a corrupt installation from Steam

 

How good is the witcher 2 turning ?
Do you think the witcher 3 will turn properly with "just" a 970m ?

 

There's no reason it shouldn't do raid 1. Hit ctrl I on boot and you can see the options.

 

Well, Witcher 3 has to run also on PS4 and XBox One, so it'll definitely be perfectly playable on GTX 970m (which should be pretty safely more powerful than both next-gen consoles).

Beyond this, it's all just speculations right now. Game is still far from release and there are no official minimal / recommended requirements published yet.

There were rumors earlier this year about early development version of the game having very brutal requirements:

Rumor: The Witcher 3 Running At 900p on PS4 & 720p on Xbox One, GTX780Ti Pushes 35-45fps At Max Settings | DSOGaming | The Dark Side Of Gaming

But bear in mind that was before optimizations and before having all features and all content in.

My educated guess would be - even with desktop GTX 980 you'll probably not get solid 60 fps at 1080p with everything maxed out. CD Project Red tends to make their games "future proof", intended to keep getting prettier as new GPUs come in the future.

With more realistic settings though it should still look quite awesome and run well even on GTX 970M. Remember - majority of people have worse GPUs than GTX 970m so it has to run decently there if they want to be able to sell the game (according to 3dmark firestrike GTX 970M is better than 69% of all GPUs, including desktop ones).

Well, at least that's what I'm hoping for, Witcher 3 is one of the reasons I want to get a new notebook

 

Have any of you guys re-pasted with IC Diamond? If so, what sort of temperature drops did you get?

 

hi all,

Thanks for the Raid-0 information. I know how Raid0 work.

My main purpose is to fully utilize the 2 M.2 Sata slots on GS60 (which is very difficult to assess to) to max out SSD read/write performance, rather than protection. Only OS, programs, and games will be installed there, which can be backup via Acronis True Image. My data will be in 1 TB HDD, which important data are sync to onedrive. Also I want to avoid installing any program/games on the mechanical 1TB HDD - which is slow.

in my country, the default GS60 2QE 3K edition comes stock with 2x128GB M.2 Sata in Raid-0 (256GB Stripe) and 1TB HDD, which means I can only create a 80GB OS Partition, and 170GB Games partition, out of the M.2 Raid-0 array, and have the other data or files in the 1TB HDD. Knowing 170GB may be too low in capacity for game installation, I want to max out GS60 capabilities - which I read is 2x256GB (512GB Raid max), although not too sure about the support of 2x512GB.

Thus, the Crucial M.2 model that I considering - very limited choice, as most Sata are mSata interface, and most better M.2 are PCIe wired. Of cos, I can replace the 1TB HDD with a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro, leveraging of Rapid mode cache. But the stock 2x128GB is just wasted.

Anyone can verify if this model of Crucial is suitable to install in GS60 2QE Ghost Pro 3K ?
- Crucial M550 256GB SATA M.2 Type 2280 Internal Solid State Drive CT256M550SSD4


Edit: Seems like compatible. I did a check on Kingston RBU-SNS8100S3128GD sku (shown in a picture on Xentar712's review) on GenTechPC's earlier post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi...o-gtx-880m-owner-s-lounge-63.html#post9755382

Xentar712's review:
http://www.ultrabookreview.com/5337-msi-gs60-ghost-pro-3k-review/

 

Just played Tomb Raider for 2 hours on Ultra settings. Max temps were 72 CPU/77 GPU. Pretty impressive!

 

Hey guys,

It's time for me to make a little "refresh" with my current MSI laptop and I plan to buy this new beast.

However, I have a small question :
- I'm hesitating between the gs60 pro 970m Full HD with the one with the 3K definition.

How will be the quality of the games with the 3K screen once I lower the resolution to play in Full HD ? Since 1920x1080 isn't the native resolution, I'm afraid to get bad quality images, interpolation, streched images etc...

Or won't there be any difference switching 3K resolution to full hd ?

Thank you for the advices and have a nice week end.

 

the resolution is still 16:9 and thus theres no stretching and from people i've heard that the image quality barely lowers compared to fullhd(when scaling down to fullhd)

 

Thanks for that answer !
I was just wondering if it would run with good settings without compromising the quality too much, as I want to enjoy the game as much as possible and I cannot buy a desktop computer, nor a bulky laptop as I travel a lot.
But I will wait for the P35X review, that comes with a 980m and amazing specs. I just hope Gigabyte has resolved the build quality issues especially for the screen and keyboard.

 

Is yours the 3gb or 6Gb version? How is the screen? I got the GS70 6Gb version and starting to wonder about the screen and wondering if I should of ordered the GS60 6gb instead for its IPS screen.

Edit: Found answer in GS70s forum.

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk

 

There ia absolutelly no quality lost, when downscalling but to be honest - atm there is no point of doing so i have checked over 15 games (including BF4, BF3, Farcry 3, Diablo 3, simcity) and all was perfectly fluid in native rez with ultra settings

 

I was not talking about downscaling, but about the ingame settings that may have to be lowered a lot to be fluid (I'm talking about the Witcher 3 on a 970m).

 

If you lower things like anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and shadow detail, you'll improve your fps with hardly any detail loss at full resolution. It will run cooler too.

 

I was also wondering what the power supply of the MS60 is ?
Because a 970m can need a big amount of watt to run at full speed.

The 980m can consume about 200 watts, and the Gigabyte p35xv3 will come with a180w power supply.
Does that mean that these cards may not be running at their full potential ?

 

Any news on 6gb 970m 3k version yet? MSI is either crazy or stock/technical issue yo not offer 6gb 970m version for 3k model.