*** The Official MSI GP73 Leopard Owners and Discussions Lounge ***

PM sent for tweaking

 

So far, I absolutely love this laptop. the 1060 is actually a fairly strong little GPU. It is more powerful than my 980M in my GT80S.
The only real gripes I have is the keyboard. I miss my mechanical keyboard that was on my GT80S. The spacebar on this keyboard seems kind of flaky at times.
As much as I wish I could overclock the CPU and such, it actually is a pretty decent CPU just as is.

 

The keyboard is certainly not anything special. But I'm amazed at the power that the 1060 packs. I'm running top games at top settings.

 

I've seen a few places posting 64gb ram supported (dual channel 2666mhz). Can anyone confirm who actually tested it?

I don't actually need it right now, but it's good in terms of evaluating longevity of this beast.

 

We have, and offer it on all the models we carry that will support it.

 

Just gotta say, I freaking love this machine. If my freaking internet wasn't such crap, it would be such a pleasure to use it every day.

 

Now that I have had sometime with this laptop, the only real true gripes I have is the spacebar, and the location of all IO. I wish the RJ45, and the display ports (HDMI, mini display port) were on the back for a cleaner look when it is on my desk. I always like having an external monitor or 2 when I at my desk so I can multitask very easily. This will make it a little more difficult to keep it clean. Just a gripe, I knew what I was buying when I bought it, but just a heads up to anyone with the same type plans.

 

Agreed. When I'm at my desk at home, my GP73 is plugged into my mouse, keyboard, headphones out, speaker in, ethernet, and power. I want to eventually run two more displays from the HDMI and mini display ports. It would be really nice to put the ethernet, HDMI, and display ports on the back of the laptop.

 

Did you guys go straight to a fresh reinstall of windows to get rid of the bloatware?

I'm planning to install a SSD myself, and I was thinking of doing the USB drive windows install method. I was wondering if I'll need to insert a product key later or is the OEM product key that comes with the laptop already tied to the mbo so I wouldn't need to put one? This is my first time reinstalling windows on a laptop, its a bit daunting lol

 

Not necessarily. It's not like it's unremovable. You uninstall or reset your os in the settings.

 

Thanks for the swift reply!

I'll try cloning it first then, what did you mean by resetting my OS in the setting?

 

When I did my installation of my NVMe drives in raid 0, I did a fresh install off a usb drive. It was quick, painless, and easy. But this isn't my first rodeo with doing stuff like this. I like it a lot now becauseI got rid of all the bloatware, and re-installed just what I wanted as far as the MSI software. Most of it is just so you have a pretty GUI, but I wanted stuff like that. If you are going to be removing the back, I would change the TIM if you feel confident. My temps improved by about 5C,and its enough to eliminate a lot of the odd throttling. I also got a small laptop riser that really helps this thing breathe.

 

I'm planning to clone my HDD to my SSD, and then changing the settings in the BIOS to boot the SSD. Then I'll do the fresh start windows 10 feature to do a fresh install. Hopefully that will work.

As for the drivers, I'm on MSI's support page and I'm a bit confused on some of the drivers.

1.) Is it required to install these drivers in a particular order? I read somewhere that it is required to install the chipset driver first before anything and so on.

2.) Are all drivers required? I'm wondering if I'll need the following drivers; Radio Switch, Intel Management Engine, Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Did you install all of the drivers laid out on the support page?

3.) Through reading 20-40 pages of this thread, I read that it would be best to download these from the ulitiy page; Battery Calibration, Steelseries Engine 3, System Control Manager (SCM).

• Realtek Audio Control (Not sure what this does, but I'm guessing to control the volume?)
• Dragon Center 2 (read mixed reviews on the Dragon center, it doing more bad than good for your sys)
• Killer Control Center (Don't know what this does either)

4.) Did you install the EC firmware update after reinstalling windows?

 

To be honest, most of the drivers self install. Fire up windows the first time, and just type in update down for cortana, and got to windows update. Anything that doesn't work afterwards, just go find the driver and install it. I don't think I had to install any drivers manually, even with the raid. It will be the utilities that you will need to decide on afterwards.
I always install the Dragon Gaming Center, Killer, Nahimic, and Battery Calibration. Past that, a lot of it is just not worth it. The dragon gaming center is almost a must now though. It's how you do any of the customization for this laptop. On my older MSI laptops, you had to download steelseries directly to do anything with the keyboard.

As far as EC goes, I only update firmware at the bios level when a major change happens, or a performance fix has occurred. Like I believe we will get a bios update to limit the throttling of the 8750H eventually. But for now,I am still on the bios my laptop came with.
I work in the service industry for emergency power, and doing firmware updates always has the capability of bricking things. And once its bricked at that level, good luck.

 

Hello folks,

I don't suppose anyone has any experience/thoughts on this? My 'factory seal' sticker has become half-punctured by accident because I picked up the laptop with one of my fingers placed over the factory seal sticker (without me realising).

So I'm worried that the warranty is now void even though I haven't opened the laptop up or done anything to it. And I was planning on sending this laptop back due to the fan making a buzzing noise (for which I posted a separate thread). Maybe someone knows whether this would void the warranty at all? I know in the US it's fine to remove the sticker but I am in the UK.

 

Thanks for the information, I'll try and see how the laptop is first before wiping the OS.

Do you have any undervolting profiles that I could use as a guide/reference?

 

Hello,

How cool is your model while you play games ?

I have try to play CS:GO, my CPU usage is about 25-30%, but CPU temps are around 90C.
I think that is too much.

Laptop is stock, did not try underwolt or repaste.

 

Well I took delivery of my GT73 Leopard 8RF-615 on Thursday! On Friday Ultra Male helped me set it all up. He did a fabulous job, there is no way I could have done it all by myself. This replaces a MSI GT40 that is almost 6 years old. I wanted to replace it about a year ago, but I was hesitant because I hated to replace my Windows 7 with 10. Fortunately with Ultra's help that fear was pretty much erased.

I've spent the last two days trying to transfer everything over. It's been smooth although I have to wait until Monday to get some tech support for one of my programs. A big bonus is my internet speeds have more than doubled (from around 200 to 450).

There are some things I'm going to have to get used to in how they work and look. I'm sure in a couple weeks it will all look normal and I'll forget all about the old laptop. I'm trying to figure out a few things on my own, but I'm sure I'll be back to ask for some advice here.

 

I got this laptop three months ago and I have to say I am pretty disappointed with it. Granted, it's not the most expensive MSI so I shouldn't have expected too much, I was coming from a GT 72 which 3 years ago was a tier above this one, still I wasn't prepared for some of the issues I found with the GP73.

Without giving a review of the product, because who cares, let me tell you all that it just heats up too much. Sure, you can undervolt, apply an industrial heavy duty vacuum or play from within a refrigerator, but this doesn't change the fact that a huge amount of games or even simple applications push the CPU (not the GPU) to 95-97 C degrees and yes in some cases even with the cooler booster on (otherwise, it doesn't shave that much off). Gaming becomes unpleasant because not only you are playing with a jet booster in your room, but because it gets so hot that my fingertips burn up just by having them on WASD. What the hell?

Counterpoints:
"Man, you are supposed to undervolt it!"
- Uh yeah ok I can do that but the questionable rating of the product out of the box stands.

"Oh you should change the thermal paste"
- See above. Also, not so eager to break my warranty.

"Dude, you should get a chilling laptop stand"
- Done. Barely helps.

Also, Dragon Center (which seems to have multiple and more advanced versions out but you can only use the barebone one on the GP 73) barely works. We are offered 4 default settings that are pretty much the same powerwise except for the "meeting" one which is awesome to cool things off but basically cuts performances in half. Still I use it when the game doesn't demand much. The other three settings (Current, perfomance and theatre) all push the cpu to 95 degrees on most programs and games. In short, Dragon Center is pretty useless in my case. Lots of things that cannot be changed, and some overclocking capabilities which are the last thing I need given I can already cook eggs on my keyboard.

"Oh but maybe your laptop is broken man, you shoud send it back"
- This could be the case except I have read of so many other customers with similar issues that I don't think it's an issue. It seems to me that the GP73 is a powerful machine for its price, which is great, but it is not designed to last. It is not just a matter of being uncomfortable, I have a hard time bellieving a laptop this hot will last much longer after the two years warranty expires.

My next venture is to really get into Throttlestop and see if I can create a couple of profiles in between the "current/performance" settings and the "meeting" setting so I can find a sweet spot where I don't have the full power when I don't need it but I also don't run at a fraction of the speed simply to keep my fingers fresh and not wake up my roommate.

In fact, after so much criticism, let me ask you for some help. I have seen youtube guides for what seems similar CPUs but I don't want to mess up too much and eventually get into a trouble I can't recover from. Anyone knows a good guide (or could write one) on how to create an undervolted profile with Throttlestop for the GP 73?

Thank you.

 

I just got the Msi Gp73 a few days ago and I must say their cooling solution is amazing. The i7 8750h is known to get hot, even the i7 7700hq had a lot of problems with heating issues, undervolting is a must. I think maybe there was some thermal pasting issue with your unit, even out of the box, my unit never push past 85c.

Have you tried keeping the laptop elevated? Proper airflow goes a long way. I undervolted my laptop and ran Gta 5 at very high setting (with some tweaks) and vsync locked on 60 fps, my Temps are 50-60c. When it's locked to 30fps, Temps are around 45c.

Should try reading the first 15 pages of the GP63 thread. It helped me undervolt my CPU.

 

I suggest that you do a clean install of your OS, or at least,remove MSI gaming center,then load defaults on the BIOS, MSI Gaming Center messes with a lot of hidden registers/options on the BIOS, after modding my VBIOS Gaming Center would lock my CPU at 800Mhz, and over-ride my undervolt, after removing it and only using XTU OR Trottlestop(dont use both at the same time), everything started behaving, this was with a GT72 2QE, but Gaming Center is still the same disgrace, or even worse in newer models, it fiddles with way too many power settings on the BIOS and doesn't do a clean job switching states, and in the end of the day, you have a locked CPU so, all those programs can do is thinker with what XTU already allows you to do, dont user high performance power plan, all that does is inhibit the CPU of dropping its frequency all the way down to 800Mhz during idle/low usage, just use balanced setting on Windows, undervolt your CPU and its done, there is nothing else that you can tweak to gain any performance what-so-ever besides MORE undervolt to allow more thermal headroom.

Repasting doesn't void your warranty, not in EU, not in the USA, if outside of those regions ask directly to MSI, if they confirm that its OK, save that email, if you ever need warranty, you have proof of allowance on email.

And a repaste with kryonaut or even Artic MX-4 will drop your temps some 5-8ºC under load.

Thin laptops will always run hot, and if you come from a properly maintained GT72, thats a chassis that can keep its CPU and GPU under 70ºC, mine(with 4720 and 980m OC'ed will keep the CPU at 55-57ºC and the980m stays in the 60-62ºC ballpark while pulling 130Watts), but its the price of thin-ness, and you "choose" that path, but you can make it much better than what it currently is.

 

Just getting mine from the Newegg promo, and was wondering what RAM I should go for to upgrade the 8gb ddr4. The specs say it's going to be single 8gb 2666MHz, so should I just get another 2666 of any brand and stick it in, or should i go for the exact same make and model as the one inside for taking advantage of the dual channel performance?

Would this one be fine? Is there any advantage in getting a higher clocked ram? This page here says DDR4-2666, LPDDR3-2133, so is the maximum supported speed 2666 for the processor?

Lot of questions :|

 

I would be happy to help sort it all out for you if you shoot me an email, or give me a call.

 

@ultramale

Hi new to all this but i collect my laptop up tomorrow and wondered about the setup of it? I have seen on here about bloatware slowing them down etc any advice?


SPECIFICATIONS

GP73

MSI GP73 Leopard 17.3 inch Core i7-8750H 16GB 1TB + 256GB SSD Gaming Laptop

Manufacturers SKU - 9S7-17C522-6


Processor

Intel Core i7 -8750H

Memory

16GB

Hard Disk

1TB

Solid State Storage

256GB

Screen

17.3in Full HD

Graphics

nVidia Geforce GTX 1070 8GB

RF Network Standard

802.11 ac

Operating System

Microsoft Windows 10 Home