Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

maybe yours lol

 

one thing that worries me in the picture you posted. It appears to me that the power connector and its wires for the fan on the heat-sink is touch in the copper heatpipe. Wouldn't that melt the protective sheath of the wires?

 

1. Only a little is touching.
2. When you see the 90 degrees temp readings, its only the actual gpu. The heatpipes and heatsink are considerably cooler (otherwise the entire laptop would melt).

 

no I'm pretty sure the backside of the screen is not aluminum, just plastic with a coat of metal.

 

As far as I know all PS3's are 1.3a compliant only. Upon further reading, the PS3 (And Sony) seems to be an anomaly.

Still, that leads me to believe 3d support is a function of software more then hardware and you don't really need 1.4 to do 3d (But you do for most of the other specs associated with 1.4).

Here's an interesting article on Sonys positioning.

Sony's Blu-ray players do 3D in 1080p even with HDMI 1.3 -- Engadget HD

If they can do it, not sure why Nvidia or ATI couldn't. But would they is a different question.

 

Most likely a licensing thing. Also HDMI 1.3 can do 3d, just not HD 3d. You'll be limited to 540p on 3d stuff.


here's a good read on it

Hold everything — HDMI 1.3 gear will work with 3D | DVICE

 

Hello, this is my first post in this forum!

I've been with my GX640 for about a month, but now i`m noticing a weird problem. Whenever i'm on battery, and i watch a video on youtube or anyother flash format video website, when i begin playing a video, the screens get full of weird colors (it gets some kind of distortion) then it goes black. If i'm connected to the AC line there's no sign of this problem. I have POWERPLAY disable and CC 10.5. I have disabled power saving in control pannel. Does any body have encountered this issue?

THANKS

UPDATE: I got a blues screem, with an error coded BCCode: 116, the screens pixelate before giving the bluescreen, i updated to CC 10.6 but the issue continues, always be battery, with AC connected it wont happen.

 

Although you have disabled your POWERPLAY in ATI control panel, it is still functioning if right settings are set in windows power scheme advanced settings. Maybe this causes problems.

 

Well aluminum is a metal so you just made my point. Take a look at the trim around the touchpad, the shiny part. It's beveled and polished...you guessed it....aluminum. Oh and not to mention the touchpad buttons which are also aluminum. Now close the laptop lid and look at that material. Sorry to sound sarcastic but you keep insisting on something that's simply untrue and have already apparently steered someone away from this laptop based on your misinformed statements.

 

What configuration should be put on windows power settings for ensuring that powerplay is totally off????

THANKS

 

Guess that would make only the Asus G51 the only available 3d lappy then...that stinks. As I understand the video card is better in the MSI GX640, apparently thats not the primary driver for 3d playback.
Anyone seen anyother links that would be good reads on 3d lappys. Thanks for all your future and previous replys.
PCW

 

Not true, like was mentioned before if you want Full HD 3d then you'd need a 1.4 hdmi. 1.3 hdmi will do it at 540p. The capability is there. No reason the hardware cant do it. Just the drivers prob need to be written for the functionality.

 

I don't agree with you. HDMI 1.3 has all hardware it takes to display 1080p 3D movies.
With HDMI 1.3 (and even 1.2), you can display 60 1920*1080 pictures per second.
So you can diplay 30 3D pictures per second, it's as simple as that.
That's why Sony can sell HDMI 1.3 3D BD players and tell it's true 1080p 3D.
HDMI 1.4 sets standard for 3D displaying, but 1.4 hardware is not required.

 

That's not entirely true either. VIA the article:

That's not going to be a huge difference for 99.5% of 3D users (Although it might be a stink for more tech savvy early adopters). It also makes me wonder if they could do the same with 720P, which would allow cable boxes in HD.

So again, the only limitations are if vid card manufactures want to enable it on 1.3 devices. But why would they want to do that when they can sell you the same card, but a little faster and 1.4 compliant?



back on the GX640 front, noticed that RK shipped from MN, and not NY. Does RK have a warehouse there, or is it possibly being shipped directly from the distributor?

If it shipped from NY, I'd probably already have it.

 

1080i = 540p, broski.

 

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. It was probably shipped straight from the manufacturer so that's why mine is taking so long, it hasn't even got to ny. Oh well, I'm fine with that.

 

Does anybody have had an issue with powerplay and flash video playing (like in youtube), the screen puts some weirds colors (like pixelated) and then the PC freezes, but you can hear the video playing. It happen occasionally but when i turned on powerplay, if freezed inmmediatly. Does anybody have a solution for this issue?

THANKS

 

No it doesn't, broski.

They're two completely separate resolutions.

 

Valdis specifically asked if the OUTSIDE CASING is aluminum. Of course anyone with an eye would know that the speakers and the accents around the touch pad are aluminum, but the chassis itself is not! I would hardly call my quote misinformed, since it answered his question perfectly. But you seem to have posted some misinformed information yourself: where's your proof that the touch pad buttons are aluminum?

 

Going back to my issue with not coming back from sleep. It only seems to be a problem after i change back and forth between 100/100 and stock clocks. And wont turn back on till i plug into power and start it that way.

 

For people who are curious about the heatsink upgrade that RK offers, this link, RK Computers Notebook Forum :: View topic - MS-1656-ID4 720QM CPU-W/ATI Radeon™ HD 5850 Benchmarks!, shows its performance. It keeps the 5850 reallly cool at a very high overclock. Looks like its worth it to me, and I'll do my own benchmarks when mine comes.

 

I used the optibay on the GX740.

No, this laptop does not have an integrated RAID controller,

so hardware RAID is out of the question(which beats the purpose, as software RAID is ****)

One setup is that you could boot from a SSD, and use HDD as storage.

That way, both drives could be used to their max and intended purposes.

I did that, and it worked great.

 

hmmm??? I need to go back to metallurgy school. I don't think there's any point arguing with you. You're obviously right.

 

Neither do I, truth usually speaks for itself. Nice picture of you with your 2 girlfriends at the airport btw

 

bowling alley*

 

Mark it zero!

 

Dios mio man, Creo que es de aluminio

 

Sorry if this has been asked a lot, but I've been unable to find an answer. Anyone has managed to swap the Fn and Ctrl keys?

Thanks in advance!

 

Yeah, just pop them off and swap them.

 

I meant the functionality not the appearance

 

I'm not sure you can do this as the FN key is controlled by the BIOS.

 

Yup I'm aware of that but I've seen some modded BIOSes in the official MSI forums, for GX630 even IIRC but just not for our model here. Just trying my luck here if anyone knew the solution..

 

can you point me to the gx630 modded bios? What does it offer?

 

I'd like to ask for GX640 owners here... does the GPU temperature really can raise up to 107C as reported from notebookcheck here?
Notebookcheck: Review MSI GX640-i5447LW7P Notebook

or it's just only can shoot up that high when running furmark for a while (but not when playing actual game)

 

Mine reached 101C once during Crysis Warhead before I modded my heatsink.

 

I've reached 93°C at stock clocks with Furmark and around 85°C after 45 minutes on Bad Company 2. It's pretty high, but it's still within acceptable range. I'm gonna try adding a copper shim and replacing the factory compound with OCZ Freeze, since the thermal pads on the GDDR5 modules prevent optimal contact of the heatsink with the GPU and they put way too much thermal paste on there anyway.

Holy run-on sentence, Batman.

 

ive personally never gone over 90. Honestly notebookcheck is crap as far as reviewing goes and prob just got a bad unit.

 

Thanks for the replies. I guess those are pretty acceptable number. I have my current ASUS A8Js stay around 90c when playing games.

How low it went after you modded the heatsink?

 

Check this thread...I posted temps somewhere

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/482836-thermal-past-upgrade-worth.html

 

whats the maximum amount of battery life someone can get out of the laptop?

Is downclocking worth it? I've heard 4 hours while downclocking, but the computer has problems when coming out of sleep mode after this.

How heavy is the battery? I might consider getting 2 batteries.

Thanks!

 

There you go bud. http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=123611.0

 

Awesome, thanks. Maybe you can e-mail Svet from the MSI forum about a modded BIOS for the 640 that also swaps the FN/CTRL keys. I'll try sending him one too.

 

In that thread you stated that the cause of the overheating of the GPU is due to inadequate contact between the heat sink and the gpu die due to the excessive thickness of the thermal pads. So here is my question: Is it possible to trim down the thickness of the stock thermal pads?

 

Manually downclocking the GPU has nothing to do with the sleep issue

 

Does a thermal pad = copper shims? Or are they 2 different items?

Also, do both the GPU and CPU have a thermal pad on them? Or just GPU?

 

Thermal pads are not copper shims, copper shims are little pieces of copper that you put between the heat sink and your CPU or GPU to increase heat transfer, while thermal pads are little spongy pads stuck on your GPU memory to keep it cool. And thermal pads are only found on your graphics memory, not on the CPU ( I think, don't flame me if I'm wrong)

 

Ohhhh. How does it keep it cool? Are they conductive/absorbent/etc? Is it possible to throw thermal paste ontop of the pads? Or is that not the same thing as throwing it on the shims/cpu/gpu-chips?

 

I think the pads transfer heat by conduction. I've never actually heard of anyone applying thermal paste on top of thermal pads, since the are already designed to keep components cool. And no, applying thermal paste on to thermal pads is very different from applying it on to the CPU and GPU.

 

besides I'm sure you know these info already, you have had 736 posts and 8 rep points. Pretty impressive by my standards.