\/\/\/\/\/\- The Official MSI GT60-2OD Owner's Lounge -/\/\/\/\/\/

I'm in the same boat xD 7:00 AM out for delivery.

As for your plan... as interesting is it is, I don't fancy the hassle of trying to sell and buy a laptop everyyear (and given that I'm in college such infidelity might not look so good financially for me). I like SquareTrade because they're one of the best companies for warranty... but in the end it's still a warranty so there's TONS of fine print. I'm not too worried about the service itself; people seem to think highly of that enough. My main concern is whether or not I am entitled to buy the cheaper warranty.

Really the best solution right now would be if Ken could offer me GenTech's 3 year warranty I'm pretty sure that's a solid plan, but has anyone had any experience with that plan?

 

A warranty is different from a plan for accidental damage, but SquareTrade seems to offer both in one policy. Typically a warranty won't cover accidental damage -- I would be surprise if Gentech would offer such a policy.

Also, let's see whose laptop arrives first? .

 

Their package for the Clevo was 300$ for 3 years, which is about the same as SquareTrade's. I just messaged him; hopefully I'll have this issue resolved soon.

With this being said, do you think SquareTrade sounds like a good idea?

 

For me personally, I do not need such coverage. The 2 year manufacturers warranty plus a year from my credit card is all of the coverage against malfunctions I need. For me, the MSI 1 year accidental damage is a bonus. I tend to be a careful and non-accident prone person. I carried laptops around with me for school for 7 years without ever having an issue, but I know some other people who did (screen cracking on mac book air, etc). If you could see yourself having an accident, then it'll probably be worth it . Also, did you notice that SquareTrade doesn't appear to cover theft? Didn't know if this was one of the things you were worried about (insecure dorm rooms, leaving laptop in the library unattended, etc).

For $350, I think it is at least reasonable. A $500 policy seems like a stretch. Hopefully someone else here has some experience with SquareTrade, or you could start a new thread hoping to pick up someone who does.

 

Alright. I mean, I am careful, but you never know. Esp since I'm going to boston. So if I can ge the 350$ deal to work out I will def jump on that.

Btw I just sent this from my new laptop! Currently catching it up with all software. Any recommendations for software or drivers? Throttlestop or what not.

 

Follow up post,

I just made a simple desktop background for my MSi using Ruby from RWBY (for those of you how know what that might be). https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/980126_626660700677977_1400882064_o.jpg if any of you might like it or be interested, go grab it

had loads of fun making this on my new puppy. The audio boost and crystallizer is fantastic.

Btw, some issues.

It appears that if I enter and leave sleep mode, the laptop's keyboard can no longer be customized.
2nd, the alt key is one left than I'm used to. I'm space-tabbing instead of alt-tabbing on instinct

 

I am also on the new computer!! Love it, I swapped by big SSD in the primary bay and installed Win 7 -- couldn't deal with 8, although I left 8 installed on the mSATA so if I ever feel like booting into it, I can.

I like MSI Afterburner

 

Mine just arrived a couple hours ago!

I'm really liking it so far and I haven't even gotten to benchmarks/gaming yet

 

Hey I can't find the adaptive vsync option in the nvidia control panel. Has anyone else found it?

 

Still curious on this "NOS" system... from reading the 780m thread, the 780 really sucks some power and is closer to a 120W GPU than a 100W, ie 200W+ system draw during a light overclock, and I can't figure out why MSI went with this approach... I'd be fine buying a higher output PSU for overclocked gaming and usage, but as I understand it as is, it doesn't matter what PSU I hook up? It will always just use the stock draw and then take the rest from the battery?

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, every time I game with overclocked settings, I'm draining the battery until 30%, and then I lose the ability to overclock... not to mention when I want to game and then take the laptop to work for mobile use, I'm going to have a near dead battery.... have I understood this all correctly? Seems totally wrong IMHO.

Sounds like they just needed to include/sell or at least allow use of a better PSU. Other brands are experimenting with higher output PSU's already due to voltage limits. Very interested in this machine, but this I struggle with.

EDIT: To further expand on thoughts, this means that I will need one set of settings while playing with a normal OC, and then once my battery hits 30%, stop and change to no OC and lower game settings if I want to continue playing without stutter? Does nobody else see this as a poor design choice? I have to assume I am wrong. For comparison, I regularly use the software allowed 135+ OC on my current card just because it's free and there, which as shown in a previous post on the GT60 without battery installed a 100+ OC won't even work.

 

hey guys how do I force the Intel chipset to run on battery? I'm currently running on battery with the 780m which is quite pointless and draws power I dont need drawn :x

 

I'm assuming and hope it uses Optimus? If so, then it's a setting in the Nvida control panel, where you select which program uses the dGPU... often times Steam and some other programs are set to use it by default when they shouldn't! Enable the icon in the options to show what is using the dGPU and you can adjust accordingly!

Enjoy the new machine!

 

I'm basically setting the intel chipset as my main; it's a very powerful chipset (almost as good as the gt 555). When I actually need to game; I'll switch it over to the 780m.

Still can't find adaptive vsync though

 

Yep, that's the beauty of Optimus, you only tell it when to turn on the dGPU, otherwise it's off.

 

i believe the power drain on the battery will not be that much that in a 5 hr gaming session it will go from 100% to 30% , since most of the load will be on the PSU , but thats my assumption , i will have to wait and see when i get my unit

 

I have envy motherf.u.c.kers that I with my GX60 that weighs damn a.s.s and can not move the NFS Most Wanted

 

Alienware reveal showcased a mostly metal new chassis today at e3. O_O

 

With very underwhelming specs and if you want better hardware they get very expensive, laptop mag did a review of the M14 and it ran hot and was very loud:

Alienware 14 Review | Gaming Laptop Reviews

It seems DELL hasn't fixed any of the issues that the R1/R2 had and if you wan't a smaller 14" laptop the RAZER looks much,much better, AW had a huge opportunuty to impress with the M14 but completly blew it, it's expensive,thick,heavy and runs hot not what you wan't to hear from a gaming laptop.I guess the only thing going for it is the IPS screen, personaly I'm not to crazy about the new design either.
Now it is in a different class than the GT60 but the price is about the same but it's really a no brainer as to which is a better deal with price and performance.

 

Yeah the presentation was disappointing and the customization options on the site are almost non-existent and more expensive.

I'll give them credit for the metal chassis though, that really should be the standard on these notebooks that cost several thousand dollars.

 

Yes it should but you can't game on a metal chassis alone, you need the guts along with the bones, and the M14 is not even on the same planet with the GT60 when it comes to an all around package.
Sure they are in different categories (14" vs 15.6") but the GT60 is really not that much bigger but it will obliterate it when it comes to gaming which is why we buy these laptops in the first place.

 

Agreed -- that's why I have the new GT60 sitting my desk instead of waiting for the R3. I figured Dell would never be able to match, or come reasonably close, to the GT60 with its 14. In addition, I hate the new design, and I was very surprised to see how poor the brightness was on the IPS display in Laptop Magazine's review.

Hopefully my m14x R2 will be picked up by someone who appreciates the old design

 

Does anybody know if you can use part of the SSD to cache the 5400rpm Hard Drive?

 

I've don 5hr gaming sessions and I don't remember my battery having shown any sort of discharge. Pretty sure it was still at 100% after I was done gaming. I don't think NOS puts that much of a load on the battery that it actually runs my battery life down while gaming.

 

Also, it appears that one must open the program "Hybrid Power" in order for this feature to be utilized.

 

Wow thanks for that! That would explain it. I'll try that later today.

 

Right, well I've amassed a small number of problems or quirks about the laptop I have so far. I'll see if anyone else has these issues, or knows some fixes. I'm running all stock drivers and utilities; and only added Start8 / disabled many windows 8 gestures in terms of modding my system so far

Main concern: Touch pad is super non responsive in any game. I've tried to play Beat Hazard Ultra, Steel Storm Burning Retribution, FPS type games (BF3, Deadspace 2, BFBC2). I cannot aim at all in game.

others:
The click buttons require quite a bit of force to push down on
Sometimes when coming back from sleep mode the keyboard LED manager wont have any effect
Battery calibration got stuck at 18min left when charging.

 

I agree that the touch pad could be better. The touch pad buttons are a little hard to press, I notice that it engages more easily by pressing the front of the button rather than the rear of the button. However, I almost always game with a mouse. For internet browsing, I usually "tap to click."

I don't use sleep-mode, mostly because its so common for SSDs to have issues with sleeping, and because the computer boots up and shuts down so quickly. It's never a bad thing to let Windows have a full shutdown/boot-up .

Haven't tried battery calibration yet, I will give that a try soon.

As an aside, I ended up migrating back to Windows 8. Not all drivers and programs are available online, yet, so functionality was not at its fullest. In addition, the NVidia's driver seemed to not play nice with Win7.

 

Yes when I opened that program and gamed for around 30 - 45 min my battery went down to around 96% or so. Have no idea if it affect performance or not.

 

Have anyone try to burn a recovery disc? Whenever I try to use the recovery disc utility, it give me an error message saiding I don't have the original hard drive. I replace the 1TB drive with an ssd. So do I need the 1TB drive to burn a recovery disc?

 

I have the same exact problem -- I didn't have mine shipped with the drive, because it took $60 off and I already had my SSD to put into the bay. If you have the 1 TB drive, I would swap it in and try burning the disc and then swap it back out.

 

I for one hate tap to click because I always accidentally click on things. And while it is always good practice to game with a mouse, there will be many occasions where I just want a casual round of Steel Storm or Beat Hazard or some other small indie game on the go. The touchpad functions fine outside of gaming; I just don't understand why it becomes completely non-responsive in any game of any sort.

I thought sleep mode only "wrote" to the memory? I thought it was hibernate that poorly affected SSDs, not sleep. Are you sure? Because I use sleep a lot with my laptops since I hate having to pull everything up again after a full shutdown.

Win8 isn't too bad... I used Start8 and some registry edits to remove all win8 gestures and charms and now it almost feels like Win7. The biggest let down is that windows Aero is gone; so your windows will all have shade of color

 

I have everything still set-up as stock. I will try it tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

 

If this is the case, that is not too bad. That will help regulate when it is being used.

When I was doing benchmark testing, I did not notice a difference in the scores. I will try some more testing tomorrow!

 

You need to have 2 partitions named as follows:

C: OS_INSTALL
D: DATA

 

MARS!!!

Did you ever install your 840 pro and remove the other drives? If so, how is your battery life looking now? I hit close to 5 and half hours yesterday doing internet scrolling, excel, word, and some youtube, but that was it. I am wondering if we can get this up to 7 hours on battery! Removing the HDD and changing out the SSD should drastically reduce the power consumption.

I am thinking about getting the regular 840 at 500gb. The power consumption is about the same as the 840 Pro, but a lot less out of the pocket. The read and write speeds, Im not as concerned with. If I do this, I will be selling my my current 128g drive. I know you were asking about those last week!

 

Don't expect drastic changes.

 

One thing I noticed is that while gaming (Like with GW2), MSI afterburner is not displaying that 100% of GPU is being used, more like max of 75%. . . . Frame limiting and vsync are turned off. Anyone have any ideas? Is this a MSI Afterburner bug or Nvidia drivers?

 

Has anyone gotten battery calibration to work? I always get stuck in the recharge phase around 15~ or so minutes

 

Might be cpu bound.

 

I ran battery calibration when I first got the laptop because it wasn't charging to a full 100%. It ran fine and the battery charges fully now as it should. Maybe let the battery fully discharge once and then try running it again?

 

how long does calibration take? I'ts been nearly 2 hours

 

Mine tooks hours. I left mine calibrating while I went out to do weekend stuff with the girl. When I got back a few hours later it was still running. Probably took around 5hours.

 

Just got to Phase 4 (Order Shipped) today. Should be here friday-monday. Can't wait!

 

Nah I didn't swap, I'm keeping the 1TB drive for space.

 

I have had my GT60-2OD for about 5 days now. And it's been awesome. Using it on a coolermaster stand and with the IC diamond neither the CPU nor the GPU ever go much above 80 with heavy gaming for hours at ultra settings. The cooling pad is mostly for elevation, but it does help ease the airflow around the system. Without it the temps are a little higher due to the fans recycling some of the hot air that bounces of the table wooden table(VERY insulating wood)

I haven't had any problems with the battery or choosing wich GPU Windows uses.

Some annoying quirks, I haven't really looked into fixing it, but whenever I plug my G700 mouse (haven't tried any other mice) the computer auto disables the touchpad. And I have to go FN+F3 to enable again. I don't know if this is windows, Synaptics, or some MSI software that does this. If anybody has already changed that setting I would love to hear what causes it.

The fan has a very noisy idle. I don't know if it is just my fan, or it's because of the high performance nature of it. Sounds like the gears are very noisy or perhaps the bearings or the motor. I don't know, but it's at least 3x times as noisy as the one on my GX60. Can hear it even over my 7.1 gaming headset when not very loud sound is playing, all this while on idle. Sometimes I can even hear a pulsating sound. Think a very overworked diesel engine on a truck going uphill. That kind of pulsation, this on idle of course.

I have been thinking about doing two things to improve the aesthetics of the notebook. And that is

1) removing the stickers, or at least just the Specs and MSI gaming series and maybe even the Sound Blaster one. The Intel and Nvidia one are fine. Since the handrest is made of aluminum, I would think that any glue residue would be easily removed with alcohol, lighter fluid or some other light solvent.

2) coming from the GX60, I always hated the shiny screen bezel, yet I loved the chrome MSI logo. In the GT60 I love the matte bezel but the painted MSI logo on the bezel looks very cheap and detracts from the High-end look of the notebook. I would like to either remove it and go without a logo or maybe go to e-bay or something and get a good looking chrome one like the one on other MSI laptops. Has anybody else considered this? What are your thoughts on the matter?


As a footnote, I have been looking for good cases to keep and carry the laptop around. I haven't yet found a neoprene skin that would fit the laptop, it is bigger than a standard 15.6 incher and also thicker, but not as big as a 17 incher. Anybody has any experience with this and can recommend a sleeve that is buyable through ebay/amazon/newegg/etc. As for the case, after a lot of research I found a nice and decent case that I think looks amazing, has a good price and offers good protection. The Condor 3-Way laptop case seems to fit this laptop nicely. It seems to have a large enough pocket for the PSU, and has good padding and restraint all the way around. I'll post an update once I get it to see how well it fits.

 

Topped 8100 on 3d Mark 11 with light GPU overclocking -- Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-16F4 score: P8129 3DMarks

 

Crazy when you think what I had to do to get the 680m to just under 9000.

 

Thanks for that little review. Those are helpful to potential buyers. Also the fan should not make any audible noise when at idle. Unless I am gaming or benching I have trouble noticing any noise coming from my fan. Are you sure its not the laptop cooler making this noise? If it is really the laptop making the noise, the fan is faulty. I have had a faulty fan before that made noise at idle, I sent it back and got it replaced and the noise was gone. With a new laptop you shouldn't settle for anything but perfect.

I also have the mousepad disable issue whenever coming back from sleep or restarting the laptop. I think its because I have my external wireless usb mouse adapter always plugged in. Its one of those small slim usb adapters, so it doesn't bother me to always have it plugged in. I'm sure its a feature to disable the mousepad, and I'm sure you can turn it off, I just haven't taken the time to investigate that yet.


Also I am thinking about already changing my CPU. Thinking about getting the 4900MQ. But its about $550 upgrade for it.

 

Yup, it's the laptop fan. I don't even have the cooling pad fans installed. I have tried it at various positions and angles (completely on a table, and with the inclination of the cooling pad) And it still makes the noise.

Has anybody opened the laptop and taken note of the fan model number or should I contact MSI and get them to ship me a new fan? I wrote to Ken @GentechPC and he never responded. (I bought the computer from him)

I would think that MSI SCM is what disables the mousepad. I couldn't find any settings section for the SCM, as I would also like to change what the Media Key does. I'm sure I could easily modify the SCM files and get it do something else like opening a program of my choice. Say, open MSI Afterburner and Hybrid power for one touch game mode prepping.



We should investigate what disables the mousepad.. And yes, I'm sure it has everything to do with another mouse input deviced being plugged in.

 

Need that unlocked 780M VBIOS!