Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

Hey butter123,

I see that you got the new chiclet keyboard and I was interested in getting the same. From your post I presume that you must have tried out both keyboards.

Is the new chiclet keyboard better than the stock keyboard? I know that you are not a fan of the colored keys on the stock keyboard but other than that are the two keyboards identical or is the chiclet keyboard better to type on.

Please let me know, what in particular you like about the upgraded keyboard compared to the stock keyboard.

Thank you.

 

How do you turn on the micro boost?

 

Do what you must, but I warn ye, the result is not a pretty affair. You'll realize pretty quickly that the internal mic is a big pile of doo doo.

 

kind of a stupid question that i know has been answered before but can't find the answer.

do i need to uninstall the old ati driver after installing the new one? and how do i go about doing that?

 

you don't need to
a lot of ppl have differing opinions on whether you need to uninstall old drivers but you can if you it makes you feel better

you can do it from the control panel -> programs

same way you'd uninstall a normal program

 

I'm going to buy the GX640-260US soon. Are there any mandatory updates/tweaks I should be aware of? Hopefully not I'm a noob, I'm not comfortable with flashing Bios and vBios, driver updates are OK.

 

No bios/vbios updates are mandatory, although if you're buying the 260us it's probably already updated.

The main thing would just be to update the video driver

 

You only need to uninstall if You go down in numbers, from 10.7 to 10.6. Most often the drivers just overwrite so no need to uninstall if You add newer driver

 

Nice, just what I was hoping for!

 

Hey guys I have decided I'm going to get this laptop over the Y460, m11x, envy14/15.

Main reason is price.

This has better specs than the envy 14 and looks better, 15 may have better resolution but it still has a gay flower etched back.

Though the reason I decided to upgrade laptop was portability and batterylife.

I know this isnt exactly portable but its still lighter than my old Aspire 6920g (7.7lbs).

My question is how long is the battery life with MINIMUM brightness and all of the wi-fi etc etc turned off performance at its lowest?

I'm hoping it will last atleast 3 hours? or am I being ambitious?
ALSO last question does the previous model 6 cell work in the new one? thanks!

 

You can expect 3 hours with the 9 cell battery in ideal conditions. You'll most likely get between 2:30 and 2:45 doing everyday stuff.

 

I get about 2h 30m with the brightness most of the way up, video card downclocked to 150/400, and wifi on. I'm pretty impressed with that. I imagine turning wifi off and the screen brightness down more I could hit 3 hours.

I find this laptop to be very portable for a 15" notebook. It barely weight more than my old 14" asus.

 

Yeah, but its gonna be down in capacity by almost 50% i.e 90 mins by the time the your nb is a year old.

Btw is it possible to game on the battery, I mean does the fps match when on power?
And if it does(assuming you're using rmclock, nhc or setfsb) how much battery do you get?

 

My GPU idles at 66C... that is with the Memory clocked down by 100 mhz and using a laptop cooler. <_< that seems a bit high.
Edit: Oh, and IC Diamond thermal paste upgrade.

 

The only way to really bring down the temps is to do the copper shim mod.

 

Can anyone tell me all the cons/bad things/problems with this laptop? And anything that balances them out, or why they aren't a big deal, if you can. Thanks.

 

Probably the main problem with this notebook is "taming" the video card. Most of the notebooks were released with a bug in video bios when ATI's PowerPlay attempted to manage GPU's clocks and caused the infamous issue when computer could not wake up from sleep/hibernate. However, this was fixed in an updated vBios, users just reflash and it's all fine.

Second thing for me is power management and temperatures with the same GPU. As we know it's quite powerful and idle temps of 63 C (when on full clocks) are a bit high. Some of the users solved this by making a "copper shim mod" (inserting additional plate of copper between GPU and sink) and it reduced the temperatures greatly. Some use powerful notebook coolers underneath for good temps.
My approach was a little different - I wanted the GPU to underclock/undervolt automatically when in idle and provide me with full power when I go gaming. After some reading and experimenting, I found out that I don't even need to mod vBios (one time it costed me a video card).
Using older drivers (Catalyst 10.4) I managed to create a proper profile of GPU clocks: 300/400@0,9V when idle, default full clocks when gaming and automatic transition between those modes. I disabled powerplay as it still gives no use for me. I had to use older drivers (newest are 10.7) because from rev 10.4 it is not possible to change memory clocks by adjusting clocks in ATI Catalyst profile.
U used this guide of increasing idle clocks for my clocks and voltage moding:

I changed the 2d clocks to 300, memory to 400, and voltage to 0,9V (there is also a setting for that!).

My GPU temp is around 50 when idle, max 83 after few hours of playing Starcraft II. So I get both performance (with full clocks) when needed and silence (fan is barely hearable below 53 C) when not gaming.

An advantage of this method over AMD GPU clock tool is that it works automatically and allows you to change the voltage of the card resulting in lower temps and (theoretically) longer battery life.

Speaking of other flaws...hmmm....keyboard surely needs some time for adaptation, speaker quality is very poor - the grill over the speakers and the upper buttons of the keyboard vibrates to louder sounds and causes unwanted noise. Best solution is to use some high quality comfortable headphones. However, in safrifice of some loudness on the speakers it is possible to change the frequency band in SRS tab in Realtek sound manager to some 200kHz and the vibrations are noticeably lower or are absent completely.

Everything else is very nice. So as you can see there are some things that have to be tweaked/tinkled with, some have to be worked around but nothing is unbearable and dela breaking. For the price given this is a really great performing, nice looking, easy-to-carry notebook with very good battery life (for a gaming laptop).

To sum it all - this is probably the most powerful notebook that you can carry without breaking your back or shoulder. There are more powerful computers in the market, but they are mostly desktop replacements 17"s or 15"s: much thicker and heavier.

 

I'm a bit of a retard when it comes to computers i.e. updating and all that kinds of stuff, so when I get my laptop do you guys reckon you could tell me what to do ? i.e. that driver download for the GPU? thanks.

Also does anyone know where to buy a spare 6 cell battery? a link i found in a different thread had one but the shipping is 70 usd!!!

 

I need the laptop to last at least 3 hours with lowest setting and all the wifi etc turned off

and the only program ill be using is Microsoft word to type my notes out in lectures...

 

Protip: Get a netbook.

 

The keyboard is something You need to get used to. But I like I have a full kb. Heat is no issue for me so I can't comment on that.

I may miss a few USB ports - there is only 2, but then again I survive and if I like I can always add USB-hub. But not needed at the moment.

nothing else, it's a kick laptop

 

The e-sata can also be used as a usb... So there is indeed 3 usb ports ;-)

 

After updating the vbios, I am getting a bit over 3 hours with my laptop. I have the laptop at 50% brightness. Have powerplay enabled after updating the vbios and it seems to be working great for me. Of course this is for general use and not gaming. On gaming I expect it to give a bit over 1 hour maybe.

 

There goes your credibility.

 

I can't afford both... Thus why I wanted
The m11x but those hinges are just retarded I can't believe the designers didn't even pick up on it as soon as u look at it u can just tell it's just a matter of time before it breaks

 

The screen on the M11x (rev 2 included) is terrible, by the way. Even worse than the GX640's, which is already subpar in my opinion. Avoid like the black death.

 

Still waiting for someone to give me an idea about the msi chiclet style replacement keyboard from Rk computers.............

 

Hi guys and dolls, I'm back again! This time with rather disappointing news. I added my copper shim and re-pasted the GPU with MX2. The ideling temperature didn't change and I only saw a 6C temperature drop when the GPU is under load. What did I do wrong? And why isn't anyone worried about the CPU temperature? It hovers at around 85C under load, isn't that a little too high?

 

Cool, thanks for all the info, guys.

 

I agree that 85C for the CPU seems a bit high. The highest I've seen mine go is around 83C, but that was rare. I average around 70-75C for the CPU during gaming, but I don't think that counts as "under full load."

 

My GX640 was running as hot as a pistol. Using Furmark, my GPU temps were over 100C and would eventually lock up the computer at 110C. The CPU under load was around 70C.

What I did was take off the heatsink(s), take off ALL thermal pads, and then put a nice "blob" of Thermaltake Chill Factor Paste on all chips that will make contact with the copper heatsinks on the GPU and in the CPU area, as well as the Northbridge?? chip between the fan and the two heatsinks. Reattach heatsinks.

My CPU temp has stablized at 60C and the GPU has stabilized at 84C running Furmark for 30 minutes. A huge improvement. Idles at 45C.

Hope that helps.....

 

thekubiaks that is awsome.

I would love to do that, but since this is my bread and butter rig, I wont be doing that procedure just yet. I want to, but I shouldn't.

 

Wierd, my laptop hasn't broke 70 yet(at least if Core temp is accurate) been playing mostly older games like bioshock 1 and starcraft though so could be why.

Dang coating is already disolving on the keyboard though where your fingers rest all the time. No matter how much you wash your hands. Minor flaw, but gdang.

 

would you guys recommend adding a 0.5mm shim to the cpu? I'm using the i5 450m version

 

Adding a shim? Yes.
Adding a 0.5mm shim? lolno.

0.5mm is way too thick. You're probably thinking of something like .05mm. In which case I'd recommend sanding it down a little bit or you might risk putting too much pressure on the GPU.

 

Damn, bustet I am

To be honest I have not spend much time reading about the e-sata so I did not know but actually happy to know it's there

 

J&R/Amazon has the MSI GX640-260US on sale for $1,019.99. I've been looking at this laptop for a while and want to jump on it quickly before it goes back up.

If I've built my own desktops before, would you guys think I'd have no trouble adding some IC Diamond/Arctic Silver 5 and the Intel N6300 myself? J&R doesn't let you customize the notebook. Also, would you guys recommend the N6300 for me if I'm going to be using this at college a lot? And are there any reasons for not getting it at J&R besides the lack of customization? Thanks!

 

I purchased my GX640 from J&R. I've done a fair bit of business with them, and (so far) I've never had any issues. I've also done several of the mods/upgrades recommended here without much trouble. The CPU, GPU, RAM, and wifi card are all accessible under one panel making things easier. I added the copper shims to the CPU/GPU, and threw in an N6300 (stock card was a 5100 I believe). So far everything has been running smoothly.

 

Does anyone know what this 4 in 1 multi format card reader is on this laptop? I looked around on mine but there isn't anything that looks like you can insert a memory card into. Is there some other kind of "card" that is different from the express card slot?

One more question. Can this laptop take any laptop blu ray drive or does it have to be specific to the MSI Gx640? And if it accepts any, what would be the best one for the least money?

 

Are you sure you're using the right units of measurement? I used a 0.6mm shim on my GPU. You might have inches in mind because 0.05mm will be paper thin.

 

While you are discussing about the width of the shim, a man was asking about adding shim to CPU, not GPU

 

Hey guys, thought owners thread would be best place to ask this. What kind of cooling fans are you guys using if any? Cheers

 

Dang, $1,019.99?!?!?! Good deal! I paid $1,200.00 CAD for that only last month! I guess things cost more up here in Canada...

 

Yeah, it actually came out to $1,009 after using the code GEICO10. Free shipping and no tax either. Great deal if you're OK with stock components (besides the HDD which is 500GB 7200 RPM) or if you're comfortable upgrading by yourself.

 

ATOMIC FU CKING RAGE

I paid over $1300 monopoly money for mine.

 

Hey guys, I just bought the GX640-260US for $899CAD + HST, so around $1000. Got it from NCIX at the First Markham Place grand opening today. Waited 3 hours in line... Well worth it specs wise ^^

Anyways, how's this laptop? I'm mainly concerned about the battery life and lack of switchable graphics, build quality, and the overall feel of the laptop. There may be some other things that I don't know about this laptop so please point me in the right direction.

I'm going through the forums and I found this review and well, I must say it's pretty helpful though I still have my doubts.

 

I explained some things how to "tame" the video card few pages back:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/473766-official-msi-gx640-owners-thread-207.html#post6628760

 

Yep I saw that, and basically, it just looks like you're downclocking the GPU.

It seems that the battery life is around 2 hours. Is this right? Or can I expect a bit more?

 

GX640 cooling/cleaning Guide

How-To: Give Your Laptop a Cooling Overhaul | Maximum PC

 

yes, you're right, I'm downclocking GPU together with undervolting and forcing GPU to automatically switch to slower speeds when not needed. Basically this is what PowerPlay was supposed to do. Somehow i don't reckon 405/1000 is a good downclock (PowerPlay chooses these values for 2d apps.)