MSI GS60 Ghost/ Ghost Pro Thread

So update:

I kind of fixed the wireless issue. It was just a simple case of changing the power profile on the battery, going to wireless and selecting performance. I still only get 40mb but I guess for online games doesnt matter so much, besides, internet browsing feels VERY VERY snappy and I am liking it.

I played ESO for around 1 hour (on 5ghz wifi) and compared with AC adaptor and battery. On battery, you get around 10 FPS lower I would say give or take, but still doable. I also uninstalled the touchpad driver thing, and I could even play ESO with the touchpad, even though I wouldnt recommend it, it is doable haha. FPS forget about it.

I also have to say the details on the sound is very good, i was hearing alot of detail and despite such small drivers i think they perform well. But you should use headphones where possible I suppose.

The left corner, ie the bottom left corner of the screen, whilst the top is not warm, the bottom gets slightly toasty. I could still rest my palm for a good 5 seconds on it, but that is where the heat is. the right side is cooler. The palm rest did not get warm at all and stayed solid, and with me bashing keys, there was a satisfying feedback.

Overall I am still delighted with the laptop!! I like it!

PS The "Audio" preset on the steelseries colour scheme is very cool haha very DJ style lol

 

Not known as far as I'm aware, I'm sure it works fine as long as you get the right RAM, but the performance difference and the possibility of more errors due to it just make it so that we don't offer the option to select through the site. Just not really worth it to bump up to 1866 as it makes a marginal improvement.

 

Guys If I want to bling out the MSI, should I upgrade to 16GB of HYPER X or Corsair Vengeance? Would i notice anything at all you think?

 

That's weird, my wireless works flawlessly, I haven't even configured my GS60 to connect to the 2.4GHz network and it goes from wired to wireless to the 5GHz without any issues, on AC or battery...

 

If anyone else is having Wifi problems I had some luck with with DOWNgrading from the 17.0 drivers to the 16.0 drivers. Still not perfect but much better than before.

 

Waste of money. Very little real world gain. Use the money to buy some games.

 

Try another router, like a friend's?
Check and see if your router has firmware update?
Check the settings for 5GHz?

 

Try manually selecting the channel/freq for 5ghz.. I had to set mine to low channel (36 or 40) because the higher channel it defaulted to caused issues with some devices. Everything works great on the low channels. Can't blame it on interference doing a scan I oddly enough have the only 5ghz router in my bldg.

 

The wifi slot on GS60 are much smaller than standard wifi slot, the Killer-N won't fit:

No known issues with higher speed RAM.

 

The router is fine, on a friends laptop for testing, he got around 80mb on 5ghz. Anyway, i guess i can deal with 40mb on wifi in the house, i hope a fix will be out soon.

 

Is the keyboard layout ANSI worldwide, or do e.g. European versions get the ISO layout?

 

Could you please give us the model number for your Wireless Network Card. As i can see there are only a few cards from intel with AC band:

Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 maxing out at 433 MBit/s (approx. 40Mb/s with optimal conditions) this is maybe yours
ARK | Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160

Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 maxing out at 867 MBit/s (approx. 80-90 Mb/s with optimal conditions) this is what i want
ARK | Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260

Both cards are the only available notebook adapters with 802.11ac standard. Other cards will "only" have WLAN-N including the ones from Killer with Atheros Chips. The Ghost Pro seems to have Killer LAN and Intel WLAN

WLAN-Adapter mit Schnittstelle: SATAe M.2/PCIe Half Mini Card, WLAN: 802.11ac Preisvergleich | geizhals.eu EU

 

Yeah I got the Dual Ban 7260, but only get 40mb or less, dunno why....when I guess according to you , it should be closer to 80--90, and the laptop is very close to the router.

 

Would you mind telling me the exact model of your router? There are several different implementations of the 802.11ac standard. Most implementations are based on a draft state of the standard which is official since December 2013

 

Ah ok, im just using a router called the Virgin Media Super Hub 2, dun know who makes it.... new Super Hub review - in-depth Super Hub 2 review

Also do you have a recommendation actually to the fastest possible router?

 

Mystery solved!

This is a WLAN-N Router. 802.11n is (by definition) max. capable of 600Mbit/s disrespecting conditions and overhead with one client. This would be something about 40-50 Mb/s (net) under optimal conditions.

It depends also on the router and adapter hardware. In this case i think your WLAN performance is near maximum.

I can recommend the ASUS RT-AC66U which i am using myself. But there are newer possibly better models available. I'd also recommend using a custom firmware like the one from RMerlin

Asuswrt-Merlin - custom firmware for Asus routers | Merlin's Tower

This firmware is based on the original but extended. There are other firmwares like Tomato. But i like staying as close to original as possible.

 

Really? According to the review, it shows:

"Testing the new Super Hub at our usual distances of two metres (line of sight), 10 metres (line of sight) and 13 metres (with two solid walls between) gave us average speeds over 5GHz of 17.5 megabytes per second (140Mbits per second), 11.6MBps (92.8Mbps) and 4.3MBps (34.4Mbit)."

Or am i confusing the units here?

 

You are probably confusing units or you are confusing me...

MBit/s = Megabit per second
MB/s or MBps = Megabyte per second

You have to devide MBit/s by eight to get megabyte per second.

Your router is capable of 450 Mbit/s => 450Mbit/s /8bit = ~ 56 MB/s (gross)

You said you're getting "40mb or less" this is something around 300 Mbit/s

If you're talking about 40 Mbit/s this is something completely diffrent. With 40Mbit/s a download would max out at 5 Megabyte per second. Then maybe something is wrong with your configuration router or GS60 settings.

 

I started experiencing issues last night with the wireless card as well. I played Guild Wars 2 for around 4 hour last night, and I was getting frequent disconnects or inactivity (or saying the connection is unusable). At one point, it just refused to reconnect after disconnecting and I had to restart the computer. I tried tweaking a couple of things: Forcing it into Wireless G mode by turning HT to disabled, and changing to power settings to never turn the device off. This seemed to help a little bit, but the disconnects still continued. I will have to play around with some different drivers this weekend.

Router: Cisco E-3000
Mode: Wireless N 2.5G and 5G tested

 

Do you have the stock card?

 

Yea, I have the Ghost Pro-052 stock currently and it comes with the Intel 7260. To be honest, I have not spent a massive amount of time looking into the issue so I am mostly just reporting my experience.

Edit: I plan to updated my drivers tonight after work.
Intel® Wi-Fi Products — TechNote: Sporadic wireless disconnects caused by data reordering issue

 

Ok but I get over 120MB download speed according the speedchecker with an ethernet cable, so I don't understand why i only get ~40 with my wirelss card with the same speedchacker on 5ghz.

 

Try attaching another computer using Ethernet cable, then transfer a file from the computer to your laptop over 5GHz, then measure the transfer speed.

 

You are comparing 1000 Mbit/s LAN with (theoretically) 867 Mbit/s (when using AC standard) WLAN. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Your router is capable of 450 Mbit/s (gross) WLAN with a maximum of 40 megabyte per second (around 300Mbit/s net) for me this looks absolutely fine.

Maybe i'm getting you totally wrong, but i don't see any problems here.

[speedchecker/internet] --- <your verizon connection> --- [modem & router] --- <your internal connection> --- [MSI GS60]

If your internal connection is LAN (with an ethernet cable) and you get 120 megabyte per second (this is what you see next to a file download in your browser for example) then you've got a provider (Verizon) which gives you most likely a gigabit (1000 Mbit/s) connection to the internet (speedcheck).

If you have 120 Megabit per second then something around 15 megabyte per second (MB/s) should be visible next to a file transfer/download.

Even with WLAN-AC you would not even get close to Gigabit LAN.

 

I think I'm not the only one getting confused by these numbers. For my $.02, my wife's FINALLY showed up about 6:30 last night. I only got to touch it for about 5 minutes, but it was long enough to see that, just like my 2014 RBP, the intel wifi card was *NOT* optimally configured. 20/40 coexistence was set to 20 instead of auto, and WMM was disabled. Once I fixed those, the card speeds increased to "normal" [for my household, for similar machines at similar distances]

I don't know if changing those settings will help you in your quest to track down your speed issue or not, but the performance I've seen between those settings default and changed COULD resemble the performance difference you're seeing. [assuming I'm reading your numbers right, but they're a little confusing compared to what I'm used to]

I'm still inclined to say it's your router, but that's the result of a hard prejudice against generic routers rather than any hard evidence.

Full comparison review between GS60 Ghost and 2014 Blade pro coming soon!

 

Ok i will check the exact speed on my computer when I get home but when i run a speed checker on Ethernet, i get 125 MBPS under the "download speed" something like on this screen ( https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=v...dia-hosting-on-speedtest-page-14.html;644;397) its not mine but you get the units.

But on 5G wireless i only get like ~40, so regardless of units, etcetc, what you're saying is that getting 30% of the performance on wirelss 5G is what I should be expecting right?

 

But just to clarify, I guess I don't really have an "issue" in the sense that the connection is stable and everything. It is more a networking question in the sense that I just want to check that the speed I am getting on my 5G is what I should be expecting I suppose.

 

I see whats confusing here...

Speedchecker states Mbps thats MBit/s or megabit per second. If they'd say MBps it would be MB/s or megabyte per second. Thats important to know and you should not mix them.

Data rate units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What i can read now from this is that you're getting 40 Mbit/s or 40 Mbps NOT 40 MB/s or 40MBps

This is indeed low and you should check your configuration as said previously. Check for Channel Width (20Mhz/40Mhz/Auto) and check if WMM is active. That should increase your speed i guess.

 

Hi, hope someone can help me.
I'd like to purchase an MSI GHOST or GHOST PRO customized so as to replace the default storage with m.sata; I am located in Ontario, Canada.
I did look in the forum but I failed to locate if there is a reseller that;
a. would perform the updates and deliver to Canada -- preferably in Canada to avoid the nightmare of customs
b. is reputable and can be recommended

Pardon the relatively noob's questions for the forum -- all in good 'gaming spirits' as they say ...

Eduardo.

 

Most resellers which offer customizations ship to Canada and pretty often. Notebooks are duty free, you just have to pay your local tax (PST/GST/HST) at the time of delivery.

 

Netgear R7000 Nighthawk: Newegg.com - NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router (R7000)

Absolutely love it, not the cheapest but its arguably the current fastest consumer router. I can vouch it works great with all my devices, including the GS60.

 

Nice, thanks!!

 

I would advise waiting for a sale on that router. I see that frequently pop up on slickdeals.

 

Unfortunately im in the UK so i dont get to participate in the great pricing you guys enjoy

 

Asus AC66-R is also one of the best on the market. Great speeds and phenominally excellent range.

Networking - RT-AC66R

 

Looking forward to what you have to say. My decision will weigh heavily on it. I'm still in for a Blade but now that there's only 1 M.2 slot, I'm leaning towards this again. Do I want limited storage or crummy trackpad and battery life? Decision decisions... When do you get your blade?

 

Not that I am a fan of their reviews, but CNET just gave the new Linksys WRT1900AC a great rating and said it's hands down the best consumer level router. It's way too damn expensive for my tastes though. I'm using a Netgear AC1750 (R6300v2) and I love it.

 

Anyone get a chance to try the card reader to see if it transfers at USB 2 or USB 3 speeds.

 

Fingers crossed gentech gets a shipment of the pros today (it's about the 2 week mark since newegg received them, which is how long it took for gentech to get the 860m gs60s after newegg and that was also on a friday).

 

I don't have this laptop but I did install the Intel 7260AC in my GT60 and I just bought an Asus RT-AC68U router yesterday. Therefore, I've been copying files all over my home network like a madman tweaking settings trying to optimize everything. For the 7260 which I believe is identical to yours, I connect at 866.7 Mbps according the the status details in Windows 8.1. For testing, I used a 1.3 GB linux iso. Copying to a desktop machine with a 1Gbps wired port, my file transfer from the laptop to the desktop runs at 43 MB/s according to the standard Windows 8.1 file copy dialogue. Copying the same file from the desktop back to the laptop, it runs at 62 to 63 MB/s. I don't know why it is faster copying files to the machine with the 7260 than it is copying outbound on the same laptop but it is what it is. I thought the info might help. Incidentally, copying out from the laptop on the wired port gives me a steady and solid 110 MB/s so I think the network is pretty clean and fast so far. I was expecting/hoping the 7260 connected AC would yield something in the 80MB/s for file transfers. From all my internet searching it looks like many people get 37 MB/s so my 43 MB/s is actually pretty darn good. To maximize the speed of these new routers, my understanding is that you need a three antenna setup and the Intel 7260AC is a 2X2 MIMO card. Hope that helps.

Too long/didn't read: Intel 7260AC is giving me 43 MB/s file transfer copying outbound. Getting about 62 MB/s copying large file coming inbound.

 

Is there a patch or driver update available for the trackpad? I got mine today, and the trackpad is pretty choppy, and really sensitive.

 

Go to mouse settings, Élan tab, and you can reconfigure the trackpad any way you want it.

 

I was wondering about this. I just received my GS60 a couple hours ago. I'm wondering if I should send it back and try purchasing another. The plastic bezel is so poorly made that it feels like I could almost cut my finder if I slide down the edge... Anyone else have this issue?

 

Another Russian review of the GS60, this time the 870m version. Use Chrome or Google Translate.
Èãðîâîé íîóòáóê MSI GS60 2PE Ghost Pro

Highlights and tidbits I hadn't seen elsewhere:

- Screen hinge opens up to about 150 degrees.
- No screen latch for when laptop is closed. Screen twists a bit.
- Includes audio tests with frequency response curves(!), noise level, dynamic range, distortion, other goodies. Overall result is very good.
- 335 cd/m^2 white, 0.37 cd/m^2 black, 905:1 contrast ratio, 2.32 gamma.
- 91%-95% sRGB coverage, 65% Adobe RGB coverage. This is very good.
- 6700K color temperature. This is good (6500K is standard).
- delta-E is mostly between 6-10. This is poor. Calibrate the screen if you're gonna do graphics work.
- CPU temp 42C (idle) to 75C (integer load), 85C (FPU load).
- GPU temp 82 C (load).
- Memory 24149 - 24987 MB/s (1600 MHz dual channel).
- 2x128 GB SSD RAID-0 CrystalDiskMark:
- 984.4 MB/s seq read, 804.1 MB/s write.
- 16.42 MB/s 4k read, 50.56 MB/s write.
- 483.5 MB/s 4k queued read, 270.3 MB/s write.
- 31 dBA idle (measured at your head), 46 dBA load.
- Battery life 2h 2m viewing video, 2h 56m office apps.
- Min/Max quality game FPS (870m version remember):
- Aliens vs Predator D3D11 benchmark: 108.6 - 35.4 FPS
- Grid 2: 165.3 - 54.1 FPS
- World of Tanks: 96.3 - 56.9 FPS
- Metro: LL: 68.9 - 14.6 FPS
- Hitman: Absolution: 58.5 - 19.2 FPS

The reviews I've seen seem to split between 2-3 hours battery life and 4-5 hours battery life. I have to wonder if the reviewers getting 2-3 hours are running their test with the nVidia card active.

 

An update on upgrading to 16GBs of RAM and repasting the GPU and CPU on my GS60 Pro:

First of all, the GS60 Pro is, out of the box, an amazing little laptop, truly capable of running any current game (as of Apr.2014) maxed out, but I decided I could try to squeeze a bit more power from it:





I found basically all games I've tried so far run at the native resolution out of the box, no need for scaling, the screen is so gorgeous and 1080p has such pixel density on a 15.6" display you hardly need any antialiasing, but you can certainly enable it if you want to; games like Crysis 3, Titanfall, TESO, COD: Ghost look amazing on this display:




Getting to the RAM and SSD is a very complex procedure, but par for the curse for an ultrabook class system:



This Kingston RAM module runs flawlessly, at the right timings, voltage and clocks when paired to the 8GB module already present in this system, this is imperative if you want to enable dual channel operation (which unfortunately is not available out of the box due to MSI's puzzling choice of a 8GB+4GB configuration for the RAM)



These are the GPU and CPU dies after cleaning the paste MSI uses, which IMO is very effective, but by using Gelid GC-Extreme I was able to achieve temps that where 4-8 degrees lower compared to the original paste:



Now for the results, before repasting my GPU was reaching 92 degrees and the CPU 91 degrees on extended gaming sessions, after repasting, the max temps I've seen are 86 degrees for the GPU and 89 for the CPU, which I find pretty reasonable considering how thin the enclosure is on this laptop.

The 3DMark 11 scores before going dual channel at default settings were:

6761

After going dual channel at default settings:

6952

And finally after a bit of OCing for the 870M:

7366



I apologize for the generic VGA details on the first two results links, for some reason sysinfo didn't work properly for my first 3DMark 11 runs until I updated to the last version before the final run.

As for 3DMark 13, out of the box:

4283

After going dual channel w/ 16GBs of RAM:

4303

And finally, after OCing the 870M:

4607




In conclusion, I think you guys would agree with the fact that this is an amazing notebook, light, thin and it packs quite a punch; the cooling system reaches thermal equilibrium before any throttling occurs, even when OCing my GPU to 1013MHz, I had MSI's AB running in the background at all times and the GPU never lost any performance, even after playing games for over 3 hours and then running multiple benchmarks on it, in my mind, you can't go wrong with the Ghost Pro in terms of performance, portability and price; hope you guys like my small update, and if you have any questions or suggestions, don't hesitate to let me know

 

15th Warlock, thanks a lot for the nice review of the GS60 Pro, very detailed and with lots of interesting information

I'm getting mine hopefully on Monday (already dispatched), really looking forward to ditching my MBP Early '11 and getting decent performance and lower temperatures.

Regarding the temperatures, have you tried underclocking the GPU to reduce the max temperatures under load? Does it have any effect in performance and temperature? I'm a bit worried about those 90ºC during summer...

 

Since 3dmark 11 is a relatively brief benchmark, it usually takes subsequent runs to observe throttling with the 870m. In other words, while it's a good tool at checking theoretical rendering performance of one's settings/driver version etc, it's not representative of sustained gaming performance. With the help of nvidia inspector I was able to observe a slight step-down to 950 or 941 by the second 3dmark run. Utilizing Furmark's default 15min scenario, once temperature reaches beyond 91C, gpu speed drops into mid-800s in 14mhz increments. The card not only drops the speed but also voltage (and thus heat output) and as such manages to maintain ~91C.

So yes, performance does drop somewhat, but nvidia inspector indicates that the few-seconds time frame it takes for the card to downclock actually affects playability for that moment: During this time, the gpu speed oscillates between that clock speed, and 400-something mhz, about once per second. The gpu speed graph is all over the place, and this was what bothered me most, as for those few seconds your gaming experience is actually affected.

I was able to successfully address these issues with a custom vbios that both eliminates turbo boost (responsible for inconsistent framerate), and undervolts the card -75mV across the board. Erratic gpu speeds and downclocking are now mitigated, consistent performance with better temps to boot NO drops in Fur Mark or Blood Dragon, so worst case scenarios are about covered.

Now whether or not this works for you depends on your luck of the draw I suppose. I got lucky with a gpu that is happy at -75mV, if every gpu out there could do this I'm most certain MSI would have done this for us. So for those interested, attached to this post are two versions of my custom vbios: one set at -75, the other at -50. Do let me know what you think, but be aware that if you happen to brick your laptop, it's on your own accord and I'm in no way responsible. You should definitely not be attempting this if you're not comfortable with/have experience flashing firmware, I'm not here to provide technical support.

With that out of the way, enjoy :hi2:

View attachment GS60_870m.zip

Stock vbios behavior after 10 mins of Furmark:



Modded vbios after 10 mins of Furmark

 

Great review!

Shout out to the old stalwart gamer 7.

 

Is there a guide somewhere how to access the m.2 SSD slots? Mine is on it's way, but it only has 1x128gb SSD, and I wanna put in another 120/128GB to run raid0. I have previous experience from upgrading Alienwares, but nothing as compact as this "ultrabook" style.

If we're talking just screws it's fine, but I am more reserved if it requires removal of glued down parts etc.

Oh, and a big thanks to 15th Warlock, he answered my question about which brand SSD is in the computer without me even asking. Looks like a toshiba m.2 SSD, I wonder if I can buy the same one somewhere, I don't like the idea of sticking a second brand in there for raid0.

 

It involves taking the entire machine apart as seen above and will void your warranty.