Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

thats where ur wrong. another guy with same laptop on youtube only upgrade to 6gig ram and can play at max settings. the thing is mine doesnt even improve a single fps at all

 

Guys. You don't need more than 2GB to play Crysis. A better CPU and GPU can improve the performance much better. Big amount of ram is for multitasking and virtual machines not for gaming. As for gamin you need FAST rams not more.

 

ohh yea? in dirt 3 all high settings my minimum framerate was 30 and when i add another 4 gig ram it became 42fps. hows that not a need for ram? if ram is not needed wats 64bit for and why the hell ppl buy up till 12 and 16gig of ram?

 

limpei1, just because increasing the ram worked on other games, it doesn't necessary mean that it will work on all games.
Sure, more RAM is better but it really is up to how the game is programed.
Increasing RAM on very graphic intense games usually result in very little fps gain.

What you should do is check the fps of Crysis youtube video you are suggesting at,
and compare it against your fps when running Crysis on your rig at the same settings and same resolution at the same stage.
If its significantly lower, theres a problem with ur pc or the youtube guy might have his rig overclocked.
If its quite similar, thats all your are ever likely to get without other upgrades.

I still think its GPU limited thou. Try running Crysis at a lower resolution and see if you get better fps.

 

ok thanks. ive reformatted, reinstall drivers, reinstall game and still same performance. guess this is all i can get. plays at medium fine but just dont like to see many stuffs popping up when moving

 

When you added another stick it became dual channel so its faster, than single solution. Btw my msi can handle it at the same level, with the same fps. LOL

64bit is for professional users, such as architects. They are working with 5-10GB 3D images

usually for gaming 4gb in a 2x2gb very fast modules is the best solution. (if the mobo support tri-channel than it goes to 3x2gb) Who is non-professional, just a gamer, they buy tonns of rams to show off that they have bigger pocket and bigger c==3 than you.

 

lol i added an extra 4 gigs of ram, but i havn't really noticed that big of performance boosts in games. I can now leave all of the special windows features on when i game now because of all of the extra ram so i guess that's a plus. But i think some of my games benefited from it like bc2.

 

If I wanted to add copper ram heatsinks to my gpu heatsink, can I just attach the ram heatsinks to my gpu heatsink with just the tape from the ram heatsink+some ICD7??? I've been looking around for an answer for several hours now and couldnt find anything. I saw that I could use thermal tape but I really don't want to keep buying things.

 

just use the tape thats already on the ram heatsinks. When i first did it, i put a little thermal compound under them, but they didn't stick very well and they started to move around on the heatsink.

 

thanks a lot for the advice!

 

Ok, so my CPU is still randomly going from 2.66 ghz to 1197.3 mhz while gaming at random times for no reason.

At first, I thought it was because it was throttling but nope, it happens when temps are around 78-79...

It is extremely frustrating and I don't know why it keeps doing this.

Anyone have an idea as to why?

 

Also, my GPU values are 625/1000 default.

I tried going to 640/1000 and the top and bottom of my screen start flickering at random times.

My temp's are fine though hitting around 72... any idea why it would flicker?


EDIT:

Let me also add that it only flicker's on the desktop, during games there is no flickering.

 

dont know it always flicker if u overclock from catalyst. try using amd clock tool to overclock and the screen wont flicker.
about the cpu that i dont know. my old alienware m17x also kept having that problem and dell cant fix it so i sold it to get this =)

 

K, i'll use that instead... quick question though any idea what would be considered "safe" overclock settings to begin with?

 

below 800 is fine

 

lirik, thats probably because the cpu thinks its temporarily idle.
In another words its EIST doing its job.
Try using the gaming mode, it should keep your CPU at max frequency.

The screen flicker is actually a bug in the Radeon 5000 series.
Whenever your GPU memory change clocks, it does that.

To avoid it, you can use tools like AMD GPU Clock Tool which will override
the bios settings and keep a specific clock for the gpu/mem.

 

The thing is, it happens on gaming mode as well.

I've been playing on "balanced" recently though and it doesn't seem to be happening. Balanced seems to also put my CPU at 2.66ghz fulltime while gaming.


EDIT:

Also, I currently have it set at 700 / 1030.... is it worth tampering around with the voltage?


Keep in mind that I have stock setting with no added on cooling devices except a cooling mat.


Thanks for responding to my questions as well Appreciate it.




Also is it worth overclocking the CPU at all? If so, what would be a good OC speed and should it be done through the bios or a program?

 

u dont have to up the memory it hardly does anything. u can increase the core to 800 and slightly increase the volt alittle. if u wana stay safe then just leave it at 700 or 750

 

I just tried setting it to 800 and everytime I load up a game, once I join a server it freezes and I get "display drivers stopped responding"

 

How is your GPU temps.
Perhaps it could be that the MSI BIOS is programmed to throttle down
the CPU first when GPU reaches critical temps?

I really can't tell if your temps are too high or not because I was fool enough
to mod mine on the day that it arrived.

Still, if I were you, I'd definitely try undervolting the GPU first.
There is the slight risk of bricking you card, but in the long term, I would think
that less heat will in theory prolong the life expectancy of the laptop itself.
And if you feel like it, try adding lots of copper heatsinks. It should help too.

I'm fairly sure most M.RadeonHD 5850 could do 700/1000 at 1.0 volts.
Mine can run 700/[email protected].
Trial and error is the only way to find out

 

I run CPU-ID everyday and my highest temps while gaming are about 79 degrees for GPU and 84-86 for both CPU cores.


With those CPU temps would it be worth overclocking the CPU? And what should I OC too?

 

I wouldn't try overclocking the CPU with those temps.
Your GPU temps are probably hovering around the limit too.

If you really want to overclock, you need to make modifications to the laptop
so that it can deal with the excess heat.

I belive there was a whole thread dedicated to GX640 cooling mods, try reading it.

 

Does anybody know the thickness of the thermal pads under the heatsink of the gpu? I'm thinking of buying better replacement pads, but i don't know how thick of pads to get.

 

Is it normal that while I'm in game such as WoW my GPU is only using 50%-60% according to the graphics card windows widget?

Seems kinda low and this is with ECO set to gaming.

 

ur in game settings and fps?

 

In WoW I go from 100 fps at times down to 30 on boss fights or in a major city on ultra graphics.

Assassin's Creed 2 on all high settings I sit around 30-50fps.

TF2 I go from 120 to 60fps on all high.

 

then i dont supose theres anything wrong with that

 

The stock pads are the wrong thickness.

This is why people have been replacing them with thermal paste only.
If you still want to use pads, I would highly recommend getting a copper shim for the GPU die and 1mm pads if they are the gel (squishy) type.

 

Are you sure they are the wrong thickness on the gx640-260US? Because i don't have any gpu die and heatsink contact problems with the thermal pads on. Maybe they fixed the issue with the newer models?

 

I'm not using the thermal pads right now, but the pads I removed looked like its 1mm thick.
Its the yellow greenish one, right?

The surface of the heatsink that comes into contact with the GPU die is a bit raised in the 260us. Maybe thats the difference.

 

I might replace them with these Extreme Performance Thermal Pad 30 x 30 x 1.0mm | eBay or these Ultra High Performance Thermal Pad 30 x 30 x 1.0mm | eBay UK but it will be expensive and i don't know if it would be worth the time and money. What do you guys think?

And are you just using thermal paste?

Do you like the i7 840QM ES? What temp does yours idle around?

 

I have a thin piece of copper plate placed between the GDDR and the heatsink.

As for i7 840QM, idle temps are a bit higher than I thought but it is reasonable and the performance is much better than the i5 450M.
Idle temps obviously change with ambient, but this was my temp a couple weeks ago.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...al-msi-gx640-owners-thread-light-browsing.jpg

I'm thinking about buying an extreme CPU so I can tweak around a bit more

 

Yours idles a lot better than mine. Mine idles at around 50C. What is the thickness of the copper that you use?

 

The copper plate I use is 20x50x0.5mm.
Thickness is perfect but its a bit short by about 5-10mm in length. So theres a bit of GDDR that isn't covered.

If you are planning on getting a copper shim for the GDDR, it might be better to go for 8 separate pieces of it rather than 2 big ones like me.
Its not very neat lol.

 

thanks lol.

 

Can someone point me to the thread or an external source showing how to replace the keyboard of this laptop? I have the chiclet style keyboard and I'd like to switch to the traditional raised style. It's not awful for typing at all, but for gaming it's a bummer because I need that tactile feel when playing games.

Sorry to ask this, but I simply could not find any YouTube videos or other Google sources for this, and I did a search via the Search tools on this forum to no avail. All the info is scattered, unfortunately, and I can't find the one YouTube video showing a person doing the swap last year (I think it wasn't specifically marked as a keyboard fix). Many thanks in advance.

 

any possibility upgrade 5850m to 6970m?
[Guide] M15x with AMD 6970m - everything you need to know

 

99.9% not possible

 

While looking for drivers at the MSI site, I noticed that the vbios version posted there is 35701-031. I hadn't realized they released a "newer" version. What I have installed is 35701-030 which was released originally as a beta. My question now is: is there any significant difference between the two that I should flash it?

 

Can you tell me what you mean by plastic meshes. its because i dont see any meshes around my fan.


Greets,
Robert

 

My month-old MSI GX640.

Intel Core™ i7-720QM, 8GB DDR3, ATI® Radeon HD5850 1GB DDR5 VRAM, Hitachi 500GB SATA 5400 RPM, Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit



Click me (YouTube video) to view full specs and other salient info.


Doing great so far.

 

do you mind to give me the url link for the bios download?
i dont see any new released bios on msi website though..

 

It's not really "new" as it was released last December. However, it appears to be newer than what is currently installed in mine. Here's the link: MSI Global ? Notebook - GX640

If you didn't buy your laptop when it first came out, chances are your vbios is up-to-date.

I think the changes aren't significant over the beta and so I won't be flashing it just yet. But if others can say what changes over the beta there are, it would be much appreciated.

 

Man, is it just me, or has my Gx getting hotter and hotter by the day?

I wonder what it is causing it. Like if I just have Internet Explorer in a few sites this lappy gets super toasty.

Anyone else getting this?

I will load ThrotleStop. Seems to be the suggeestion right?

And the heat this fan is outputing is crazy hot. and loud too.

Any ideas? I mean I could put some new Thermal Paste, but whay is the heat being created in the 1st place????

 

hi everyone! i'm new to this forum.

having gx640 for a year ,i was very worry about the temp
when idle,the temp is about 5X~6X
when i run fah (gpu) , cpu(450m) gets about 95 gpu(710/1000) about 88 and there was twice it reaches 100 even once it shutdown automatically.
after seaching the forum, i found that putting copper pieces is possible for me but i wasn't sure about it. can anyone give me some suggestion ? by the way i was thinking about upgrading to i7 820qm?

 

ur idle temp seems fine though. try using default clocks?

 

give us the temps? to some ppl even the temps are ok feels hot while to some its fine

 

Maybe your heatsink needs cleaning. Remove the bottom panel and use an air compressor to blow the dust out of the fins. My idle temps reached as high as 66C. After cleaning, they went back down to 57C.

 

What makes you say that?

I believe it would work but destroy the laptop.

The gtx 460m works.

 

Throttle stop wont help you, thermal paste doesn't solve everything either.

You need to create custom downclocking and undervolting profiles with the ATI CCC