Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

You can get take out the optical drive and put another HDD in it.

No one ever uses that thing anymore anyway, outdated technology.

 

I have been following this thread for quite some time.

I have a question for Jonathan3000. I would like to upgrade my processor to either an i7 640m or an i7 840qm. I mostly game on my laptop but occasionally also do some video rendering.

My question is,
1. Did you find a noticeable improvement in speed after you put in the i7 840qm over the i5 ?
2. Does the laptop run hotter?
3. Has the battery backup time taken a hit? How much?
4. What thermal paste did you use?
5. Would a QS version of i7 work fine in the laptop?
6. Would the dual core i7 640m run faster than the quad for most general uses? I am almost sure it would be better at gaming. Also since it uses 35w, I should get better battery life. What do you think?

I heard someone say that after they installed the i7 720qm, the performance was noticeably slower for common tasks compared to the default i5. So I am a bit concerned about that. I am sure the 840qm would be better at video encoding. But would it be better than i5 in general tasks?

I am sorry if there are too many questions. Thank you.

 

The i7-640m will be faster on a single thread and 4 threads. It does 3.46 on a single thread. 3.2 on two threads and 2.8 on all 4 threads. Now this is max speed with intel turbo boost. Plus this is only a 35 watt chip. Less heat. The i7-840qm is going to be fast also. 1.86 on 8 threads and 3.2 on a single thread. 45 watts and more heat. It really comes down to what your going to be using it more for. Gaming, the 640m hand down. Multitasking the 840m.

 

outdated yes, but I still use mine for many things and would like to keep it handy inside the laptop. I already lug around enough crap that I have to hook up to my laptop that I dont need another thing.

 

The optical bay replacement HDD is completely inside the laptop, where-ever you bring the laptop, it goes with it.

 

I love the i7 840qm; the performance difference for common tasks is unnoticeable, but definitely not slower.
1.Yes i noticed improvements in quite a few games. To name a few: Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Arma II, Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl, and BF Bad Company 2.
2. Yes it runs hotter, but its not that bad. The i5 450m idled at around 45C, but the i7 840qm idles at around 50C.
3. Battery life is just a little shorter, maybe 20 minutes shorter while doing common tasks.
4. I use Arctic Cooling's MX-4
5. QS is the same as an ES, and my i7 840qm is an ES/QS. I'm not sure how other models will work though as I have not tested any others.
6. Well yes, the i7 640m will be faster at common tasks and probably a lot of games, but it depends on the game you are playing and if it takes advantage of a quad core cpu. Also the battery life will probably be better with the i7 640m, but not by that much. So far i am very happy with my i7 840qm, and I have no regrets for going with a quad core. It may also future proof your laptop because more games may take advantage of quad core cpu's. I think Crysis 2 will benefit from the quad core if you plan on getting that game, but it's hard to tell because it's not out yet lol. It is also a lot better for multitasking and video encoding. So it is up to you really.

 

If anyone cares, I tried to flash my 3800m (which is ES) to an HP vBIOS, well now its dead. Tried to blind flash it back, and it seemed successful but still nothing.

Guess I'll have to return it. After I bought a 150w and 180w power adapter Oh well, I'll need them some day.
Good price tho if anyones interested:
19V 7.7A Laptop Notebook AC Adapter Charger for ACER US - eBay (item 280427380687 end time Mar-17-11 02:12:42 PDT)
Mine was gateway and only 17$ shipped.

 

ha sorry to hear that man.

 

Anyone gonna try to put an ati mobility radeon hd 6970 in this laptop? you can buy them from this site MXM 3.0 Cards Store

 

I don't think that 6970M would fit in the thermal envelope of GX640, as its' TDP is rated at 100W.

 

ohh ic. that sux. i'm hoping i can upgrade the gpu sometime in the future so i don't have to buy a new laptop

 

You can upgrade the gpu, just not to something that needs dramatically better cooling that the 5850.

 

Why does powerplay only drop my GPU to 405MHz?

My old laptop with its 5650 idled at 100/150, and this one idles at 405/1000... ?

The fan is noisy... when gaming it's no big deal, but when it cuts on while doing homework, annoying!

 

to me its very quiet even though mine idles at 60+C. i used to own an alienware m17x r1 and it has 3 fans but that laptop sucked so... haha =)

 

wow man thats a pretty high idle lol. you should put some good thermal paste on it.

 

thats cuz im living near the equator. temps of 30+C to 40C

 

ohhh that makes sense lol

 

What drivers are you guys using? 11.2 was a piece of garbage on my machine introducing massive slowdowns(20 fps or less) on games that would stay at 50+ fps...

 

i'm using 11.2, yea i think i did notice some slowdowns. bulletstorm is running like crap on high settings. crysis 2 doesn't run too bad on hardcore settings at 1440x900 resolution.

 

I'm back to the factory 10.8... I guess I'll wait for 11.3.

 

Hey guys,

I've flashed my Vbios last summer when I bought my computer and everything was going fine...

...but since a week or two, I can't recover from sleep mode (well, whenever the screen shuts down). What the hell? I reflashed my Vbios twice (1656_408) and it won't do anything. I run with drivers 11.2. Maybe I should go back to 10.08?

Thanks!

Edit : is the last Vbios version here : http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GX640.html#/?div=Firmware ?
MSI reorganised their website so maybe they put an older version of the vbios...

 

I had similar issue after installing 11.2 drivers. Going back to 11.1 solved the problem.

 

Thanks! However... how do I downgrade my drivers?

 

Just uninstall the drivers from the Control Panel and then install the new ones. Either that or use something like driver sweeper to fully clean them out o fyour computer.

 

Ahhhh alright! I thought maybe CCC would include a downgrade utility or something :/

 

I played around with CCC and got a steady 4 fps boost in every game i played by enabling advanced mode for the catalyst AI. There is also no noticeable quality loss from doing so.

 

What have you changed exactly?

 

under advanced view go to game and 3d settings. then under the section that has catalyst AI make sure "disable catalyst AI" is unchecked and slide the slider over to advanced from standard and thats it lol.

 

I have 2 questions:
1. How do I stop my desktop from flickering when using Overdrive? It seems the card doesn't like going from 100mhz to 700mhz... Which is what happens when an aero effect or anything 3d is activated but it's perfectly stable in game.

2. How do I decouple my audio outputs? When I cloned my system from my gx620 to this one, you could control the speakers and headphones volume levels independently. For example if you muted your speakers and plugged headphones in, you could change the volume for the headphones and when unplugging them, the system would return to muted speakers.

 

you should ramp up your card gradually

go 100 -> 450 -> 700
rather than 100 -> 700

 

And how do I do that?

 

manual downclock and overclock. Not sure there's anywys to fully automate those transitions. I just have them set up on my desktop as shortcuts so I just double-click one, then move to the next setting with 4-6 seconds in between.

 

Thats what I do. Seems to work best that way

 

The gx640-260us plays dragon age 2 okay at very high and dx11... I get about 20-40 fps.

 

nice. is that with an overclocked system?

 

nope, stock. Only thing is I upgraded to 8 gigs of ram.

 

Does using an overclocking utility to downclock force it to run at those clocks at all times?

 

Until you turn off your laptop yes. It will still boot at stock clocks.

 

I wonder why MSI GX640 normal temperature is so high ....... like 60~62

 

its normal for me at that temp cuz im living near the equator its like summer everyday. but if ur not then u might wana check with the others

 

It's quite normal with non-underclocked GPU. If you wanna lower temps, you have to underclock GPU or make some cooling mods

 

Hi,

I recently upgraded to a core i5 580m processor and I am loving it. It is fast enough to notice and still gives me the same backup.

I did not check the temperature on my previous CPU but this one idles at 44 - 49 and goes up to 92 while playing need for speed hot pursuit or call of duty modern warfare 2. Is that normal? I have used arctic mx-4 thermal paste. I believe it does not need curing time. My GPU is doing fine though after the copper shim mod. It idles at 47 and goes upto 82 while gaming. It is overclocked to 750/1050 by the way so I am guessing that is good temperature.

The other problem was that I accidentally ripped my thermal pad on the GPU and was wondering where I could buy some high quality replacement for it.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!

 

Yea those temps are good. I think your cpu can go up to 105C before it shuts down. Your gpu temps are really good. My gpu idles at around 39C and maxes at around 78C at 805/1095 clocks when playing Crysis 2 multiplayer beta maxed out, and my i7 840qm idles at around 50C and hits the 90's when gaming.

I used to use 750/1050 clocks; it is a good stable overclock. But if you change your voltage to 1.06 in rbe tool you can go beyond that stable point and reach a higher stable point; however, your temps will increase so you need to compensate for the rise in the temps if they are getting too high.

I was also wondering where i could get a high quality replacement thermal pad because mine got a little damaged when changing thermal compound, but it didn't seem to make a difference in temps.

 

new user here.

Been reading the forum for a while now. I wonder if someone knows how to update drivers to latest catalyst version, without having errors. I updated in december, and a black screen greeted, had to restore to defaults config.

On the msi forums I was told to stick with MSi drivers, but those havent been updated in a while now, and I doubt they will get updated.

Thanks!

 

Use driver sweeper to clean out your graphics drivers, then install new ones. ATI drivers seem to not like to play nice if you install them on top of each other.

 

Any other advice? Last time I upgraded drivers, I didnt use driver sweeper, but I removed them with the whole uninstalling, and device manager method.

The newest one wont bring me issues?

Thanks!

 

You should first use the catalyst install manager to express uninstall everything, then after that is done reboot. Then use Driver Sweeper and remove the left over amd driver files, then reboot. After u have done both of those things you should get the latest ati mobility driver and express install it. After that you should be good to go

 

I'm about to try a gtx 470m on the gx640
wish me luck

 

cool. good luck! report back with results please.

 

Looking forward into it