Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

You're kidding, right? We have ambient room temps of 36-38C every summer. At that temp, my GPU has hit 97-98C while gaming. Room temps are a little cooler now since the rains began, but when it isn't raining room temp is around 30-32C. The GPU hits around 92-94C.

With air-conditioning room temp is about 24-25C, the highest I've hit is 90C.

 

Out for delivery. I'll hopefully get some temps and oc'ing info out soon. How do you oc the i5 450m? Which program?


Oh and anything I should do with the battery?

 

SetFSB.

What's there to be done?

 

Has anybody ever used Frostycomputers? They have the 430m version in stock it looks like, and I'd rather not wait until august to get a laptop. Is the difference in processor that big?

 

I've heard you are supposed to drain the battery first or something. Can I just start using my laptop with battery normally from the get go?

 

Yeah, don't worry about it, the battery will work fine out of the box. It's just a healthy thing to cycle (Full drain, Full charge) the battery a few times when it's new, so it can work optimally. It's like breaking in headphones or a new plasma TV to get better performance in the long run.

You'll probably still have to buy a new battery in 2 years anyway.

 

Does anyone know what the ETA is for NCIX? I've decided that I will purchase this laptop, but it's on backorder anywhere. NCIX is the only canadian retailer i've seen so far.

Any other sites i could order it from that would have a decent ETA? Even an american site wouldn't be too bad if the shipping wasn't too expensive. I get free shipping from NCIX. Also, anyone kow any good canadian sites with a better price i may be able to price match? NCIX has theirs listed at $1199.00 CAD.

 

You should have ordered last week, when NCIX had a small batch in stock. They went out as quickly as they came in. You could ask Linus for an ETA, but I'm guessing it's gonna be Mid-July, like everywhere else. You could try contacting an MSI distributor directly or through a local shop that specializes in MSI laptops, that's how I scored mine.

 

I don't mind waiting 2 weeks. I spent all of last week deciding on a lappy to buy. I was assuming it was going to be mid to late august.

Are we talking about the 260US?

 

Affirmative.

 

Well that's ot too bad then. If i was to order it now, I'd get it by the 15th or the 20th? I think I can handle that.

There is one local distributor though I may check. Well, they're an hour away. Not really worth the drive though considering i can get free shipping with NCIX.

 

you would also save on tax if you're outside of BC, or did that all go to hell with HST?

 

HST ruins things.

 

Finally got it, I really like the chiclet keyboard. Layout takes a little getting used to, but I feel pretty little flex at all. Temps max out at 93/92 on memio, 84 on the two others with furmark xtreme burning at 800/1000. I am quite impressed. How do you use setfsb to oc this? I am kinda lost with the tool.

 

I was nosing around on the MSI website and stumbled up on this laptop
MSI Global ? Computer, Laptop, Notebook, Desktop, Mainboard, Graphics and more
The GX640-260US isn't even out yet and they've already created a better gaming rig, ready to replace the GX640. Apparently it can downclock its cpu and gpu to save power, includes a function called turbo cooling, the placement of the function key and the control key has been switched, and it has 2 USB 3.0 ports, new sleek look (looks kinda like an alienware), and it (apparently) has better speakers. But as good as everything sounds on this laptop, MSI screwed it over (again) by adding a GTX 285M in it (no DX11) instead of a more powerful GTX 480M or a HD 5870M. You can probably get it with the GTX 480m if you can dish out another 300 bucks.
Does this make the GX 640 obsolete? It's practically everything the GX640 is not.

 

those temps with oc sound really nice, especially since your running furmark! Got mine too, but I've transferring my music, video, etc. It's taking forever, especially steam!! steam really is annoying. It's taking forever just to transfer 15gb of games with steam.

And Applecubed u really should not worry. The gt660 has a lower res.; is heavier; has a crappier graphics card. I was considering the gt660/g53 along with the gx640. But I chose the gx640, and I'm very happy with it.

 

whew that takes some of the worries out of my head, thanks for the reply

 

This has been a known system for a while its the gt660 and there is a whole thread dedicated to it. And no one really has any idea when it'll be out. And to be fair the 640 has been out for a few months now and the 660 wont be here anytime soon.


And its not all the gx640 is really

Specificationss:
MSI GT660
-Core i7-720QM
-16" 1366x768
-Nvidia GTX285M (1GB GDDR3)
-Up to 12GB DDR3 (3x ram slots)
-2X HDD bays
-USB 3.0 (x2)
-USB 2.0 (x2)
-eSata (x1)
-HDMI
-VGA

The first thing that strikes me as sad on it is the 1366x768 res. Otherwise the only plus is the usb 3.0 slots. As the 640 will beat it elsewhere.

And you will prob not see a 480m in any case smaller then a 17" They are just to massive and a money sink that its not justified.

 

I agree about the resolution, but other than that, I'm thrilled about the dual hard drive bays (SSD anyone?) and the triple channel memory. And of course, the four USB ports + eSata.

One of the things that I'm dissatisfied about on the GX640 is MSI's choice to combine eSata and USB into a single port. See, I'm one of the few people who actually uses the eSata port. This robs me of a USB port, leaving me with only two (kinda like a certain fruit company's laptops, huh?) I've got a bunch of USB peripherals that need to be plugged in most of the time, so I'm gonna be spending an awful lot of time swapping my stuff.

In some ways, the GT660 is a welcome evolution.

 

Tell me about it. My current lappy (a8js) has FIVE usb ports (granted to e-sata), and it's wonderful. Lots of places to plug things in, and when get rolling with backups, I can have 2-3 external drives plugged in and still have my mouse going.

I guess you can always buy a mini USB hub?

 

2 USB 2.0 + a combo port is pretty standard, or many laptops don't have esata at all

usb hubs cost less than $10 these days so not like it's a huge deal

 

Cost is not an issue. USB hubs are just a hassle, especially when you need them to be powered and considering the fact that it would have cost MSI maybe an extra dollar per laptop to include another USB port. They seem to have no problem including 4-5 USB ports on some other laptops, so why cheap out on this one?

It's rather large flaw. But I'll be making use of that IEEE1394 port instead for my external storage, I'll report back on this one.

 

Just pre-ordered one from J&R. Hopefully it arrives before the end of the month. For the people who already have the 260US, does the laptop come with the updated bios?

 

Extra dollar? It's going to be more then that when you're talking about integration into a mobo.

Anyways, got my GX640-260 through UPS the other day. Came with the old bios.

I do have to say, this keyboard is taking some getting used to. No noticeable flex with my typing, but the fact that the keyboard is edge to edge is throwing me off a bit. I'm more used to my old laptop where it's more centered, so my brain is about 3 keys over. Maybe a few beers and some repetition will reset it.



So far I've done a clean wipe of the HDD, installed Win 7 Pro 64, reinstalled the drivers, and flashed the NB EC Firmware and the Vbios Firmware. Whats the newish AMI BIOS? Worth it to do that too?

Haven't reinstalled the applications yet.

Whats the trade off in performance vs use for the system control Manager? I'm guessing that allows the eco/media player/webcam/p1/and media buttons usable, right?

Also, whats the consensus of CPU/GPU monitoring and over/under clocking/volting software for this laptop?

 

Depends on what your doing with it really. If you need the extra hour of battery often the down-clocking of the gpu to 100/100 seems to be enough. If your using it plugged in exclusively like myself it doesn't make sense.

Also, and this may be exclusive to mine, i wasnt having any sleep issues till i started messing with the GPU clock speeds via the AMD tool. For some reason it kept re-enabling Power play.

 

Anyone know how to use setfsb? I am pretty confused with it. Also the laptop doesn't like certain memory settings. I have to find one that will work, but so far the laptop is awesome. I actually am liking the chiclet keyboard. I'll try to get max ocing data soon but so far it ran bfbc2 at max at smooth fps (however, I have grown accustomed to 15 fps gameplay so I might have a weird opinion). I don't use sleep so I have no problems with that.

 

Can somebody tell me what their 6X BluRay drive model is?? You can find that in the device manager for Windows 7. I want to buy one and replace the DVD drive in my GX640. Thanks.

 

hmmmmm.....my gx640 is having trouble restarting. It does not shut down all the way when I restart it. Also, my gx640 seems to freeze quite often. Other than that, this notebook is great. Wish it was problem free though....

 

Create a bootable USB drive or CD with memtest86+ and let it test the memory thoroughly for an hour. If there are defects in the memory modules, they will be detected by the program. Defective RAM can cause all sorts of weird, unexplainable issues.

 

Anybody.... I have been trying to get this info all afternoon, xoticpc and MSI both didn't know... they think it is Hitachi/LG...If you have a Blu Ray player on your GX640, just look at Device Manager and it should give you a specific device description, thanks!!

 

says: HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW CT21N

Appears to be this one: CT21N: Slim Blu-ray™ Super-Multi Combo Drive - LG Commercial

only 4x though

 

THANK YOU THANK YOU

 

no prob good sir.

 

Thanks for the tip Dakins, I'll try it soon. Hopefully I don't have any defective RAM because I really don't want to RMA this notebook.

 

Well, if you are unlucky enough to have defective memory in your notebook, it would probably be more productive to just replace the RAM yourself. More often than not, it's just one stick that has a defect, and RAM is dirt cheap nowadays.

 

well unluckily for me, I have a warranty sticker over the bottom plates of my gx640....maybe it's because I got it from RK Computers and got it upgraded. But still it really sucks, because I wanted to maybe upgrade the hdd or the ram in the future.

 

but keep in mind that the GX640 is using 1333mhz ddr3, which can be more expensive than ddr2.

 

btw i was too lazy to log on to say this but thanks to everyone who quoted on my thread, the responses were all very informative and helpful. ENJOY YOUR GX640s!!

 

I just ordered my GX640-260US today! Finally found it. It literally came in stock today at JR. Im excited to join the GX640 owners group.

MSI Microstar GX640-260US 15.4" Notebook PC - Brushed Metal Black/Red in PC Notebook Computers at JR.com

It doesnt void the MSI warranty if you go in and change the thermal compound, right?

 

Nope, not at all. MSI is pretty lenient about what's covered under the standard warranty.

 

well I don't think it is a RAM related problem, even though i didn't check the mem test yet (i takes quite a while), because I ran several applications at once without a problem. The problem seems to be from browsing the internet. Randomly, the browser would freeze, then my whole computer would freeze within a couple seconds. (when I refresh a youtube video, my computer ALWAYS feezes). I've googled my problem and I've seen pple posting the same problem, but they never were able to get an answer.

 

You wont void the warranty by removing the sticker. As has been told by MSI many many times. I even once linked a forum on their help site to a faq saying so a while back.

 

I've been reading a lot of posts about the gx640 on this thread and I thought a lot of pple said that there was no warranty sticker on their gx640's. (specifically the US version). So, I found my gx640 having a warranty sticker to be weird.

Also, I ran the memtest86 as you told me to Dakin and it showed that the RAM was fine. So I guess my problems stems from something i downloaded. The first day I got my gx640, when I didn't download anything, I had no problems. Since then I downloaded A LOT of stuff, so it's going to be hard finding the source of the problem. I might just give up and just reformat.....

 

I have a similar issue now and then. With me, my touchpad and keyboard freeze, not the entire system. I "fix" it by putting the computer into standby, then resuming again. I have not been able to figure out what is causing this either. I have rebuilt the system 3 times and it still does this, so I am assuming it's hardware related. Are you sure your entire system freezes? Perhaps you are having the same exact problem as me.

 

Well I'm almost sure it's not related to my keyboard/touchpad because when I refresh a youtube video, only my web browser freezes. I can do everything else, like open itunes and my documents. Then, after a couple of seconds, my whole system freezes. Plus, I use a wired mouse and turnoff the touchpad.

 

hey all. I too have been trying to decide between getting the GX640-280US(if it ever comes state side) or building a desktop rig.

Question, and yes I understand that comparing desktops/lappies is hard because of all the rebranding/diff components/etc.

Is the GX640-280US going to be basically equivalent to an e8600 C2D, with a Radeon 4770(only with HDMI and Dx11) ? I've only had benchmarks to look at so I could be way off.

 

Does this happen with all browsers, i.e., IE, Firefox and Chrome?

 

yes, i tried all three web browsers and I get the same thing. I've been searching for answers, but I can't find anything. I just reformatted my C drive to the factory defaults via the F3 hotkey recovery function but that did not help at all. It's only when I'm on youtube that this happens. Even when I switch from youtube to google, the freeze occurs. PLEASE I'm BEGGING for some help. I'm becoming very frustrated with this gx640. I was really hoping for a problem free notebook because the last computer I had was a dell dimension 4600, it is 8 yrs old. I was hoping i didn't have to go through the troubles I had with my pentium 4 2.66ghz/ 40gb/ 1gb ram computer. But i guess i do. I have the worst luck.....

EDIT: i just think my problem is with youtube. I tried watching three videos at once with hulu. I had no problem. I opened 10 different pages at once. I had no problem. But as soon as I go to youtube and navigate around the site for literally a couple seconds, my computer freezes. Unfortunately, I will have to give up on youtube. Finding a solution to this problem is too frustrating. The bad thing is that I go on youtube a lot, so this will be tough for me....

 

Have you tried updating flash, shockwave, etc.? Could it be your graphics driver?

 

DOOKIE I FREAKING LOVE YOU. THANK YOU SO MUCH. sorry for the all caps but I am so happy!! I just needed to install shockwave!! I installed flash and updated the driver already but I forgot about shockwave. Seriously you made my day!! Thank you so much. I am forever in your debt!!