The Official MSI GT70-2OD Owner's Lounge

Hey there! Thanks for the amazing round up of information in the OP, I've used it to great value. Just wanted to join the Owners Club here, Got my GT70 Dragon 2 GT70 2OD-039US Notebook that I have for use for our local eSports org, SoCal eSports. Been playing StarCraft 2, League of Legends, Dota 2, and others on it, with incredible success. MSI has been a really supportive sponsor, and their equipment is amazing. I reformatted it and threw Windows 7 Ultimate on there - I prefer it so much better to Windows 8.

Even more, we've used it as our main streaming machine, using OBS software, uploading to Twitch. We can stream at 1080/30fps or 720/60fps very smoothly, with no problems at all. Temp & CPU don't max out either, so I'm working on tweaking my settings a bit further to see how much I can juice out of this baby.

I also just got myself a BenQ XL2420TE. Hooked it up with MiniDisplayPort out from laptop to DisplayPort in on monitor, gives me up to 144hz refresh, its insane looking. And again, the Dragon2 doesn't even break a sweat. (On that note, as an FYI, our GT70 2OD has HDMI 1.4a and MiniDisplayPort 1.2 outlets - confirmed this with MSI Tech Support. So if you want over 60hz, you have to use the MiniDP with a 1.2 version cable. HDMI will not output >60hz on our notebooks).

Couple of questions I have for this baby:
- Can anyone point me to a good thread or link with stable Video Card OC settings using Afterburner? I've overclocked CPUs & GPUs before on desktops, but laptops' cooling intimidates me a bit for OCing. But I still wanna try
- To that effect, is it even possible to OC the CPU and Memory?
- As I continue to tweak this thing and push it to its limits, I may want to increase cooling. Has anyone had good success with any cooling pads? That fit the form factor well and provide effective cooling for the specific shape/design of Dragon2? I've also seen people do liquid cooling mods to laptops - is that something anyone has even conceived for the Dragon2?

Random suggestion for addition to the backpacks: Tt eSPORTS Dragon Bag. Not only does it continue the theme of the Red/Black and the Dragon, but it fits perfectly, is padded, and can also then fit Keyboard, Mouse, MousePad, Headset, PowerAdapter, and more. I've stuffed so much in this before.

Anyways, thanks again for making this lounge, and I look forward to being a part of the club (if you'll have me )

 

- Look at the kepler vbios and overclocking thread over at tech inferno.
- Yes with intel XTU and/or an unlocked bios
- 0.5mm pads replacement for all pads (CPU and GPU) along with a high quality thermal paste.

The belkin slim series matches too if you just want the laptop and one or two bits and pieces.

 

Hello i recently bought MSI Dragon Edition 2, i was playing Assasin Creed : Black Flag.
My FPS Averaged ~35 fps .. but in the woods and dense areas 24 fps

I saw in the notebook check that the Average fps is 35 FPS even in any area it is above 30 fps.

I still remain on the Stock Drivers wich came with the Laptop.

Also i don't think Hybrid Power is working, it says status On, The result in Assasin Creed and Far Cry 3 are the same nothing changes in Fps.
Hybrid power is ty.

Should i download ( Power Boost ) and does it work with the laptop stock drivers and BIOS ?

 

Without knowing exactly what they "benchmarked" it's hard to know exactly if your settings were the same and you will have had different drivers.

You can check GPU-Z (monitoring tab) or nvidia inspector to check if your clocks and utilisation are what they should be.

 

Update BIOS, and EC as they will help with power flow, etc as well as Intel & NVIDIA VGA drivers.
Hybrid power works when battery level is above 30%. It works even without the utility itself since the utility is just a monitoring utility.
Power Boost is a successor to Hybrid Power software (rename by MSI) and there will be no performance gain/loss if you upgrade it.

 

The biggest gain would come from keeping your graphics drivers up to date, but the AC games have never been great performing ports.

 

If you upgrade the processor, it will help with the fps a bit since the game weighs more on the processor.

 

If you are playing AC: Black Flag with the most recent patch and have enabled Physx in game, don't. It totally destroys the framerate. Without physx on I can get 35-60 FPS most of the time, depending on whats on screen - with pretty much all the other settings on max. This game will push your laptop hard however. Without turning on the fan boost there is a very very good chance that your GPU temp will go above 92c after about 10mins of play, which will cause GPU throttling (and could explain the lower fps that you report). I recommend downloading the fan control software linked in this thread, then setting it to 80% for this game. That should keep your temps under 80c (as a reference setting it to 70% will cause the temps to just nudge 90c). Hope that helps. P.S - the temps I mention are all on a stock system, no re-paste done.

 

Hey guys,

Sorry to press on this subject again, but has anyone been able to install any ubuntu distribution under UEFI ??? I have tried almost everything.. (and yes I only tried 64bits distributions with Fast Boot and Secure Boot disabled - even tried under UEFI with CSM)
Would really appreciate any tip on doing that. I have searched but could not find any answer....

Many thanks for any help!

 

..............

 

Hey guys,

I've had my MSI GT70 for some months now, and I love the laptop, but for the past few weeks I seem to be having a minor issue with my touchpad. Everytime the laptop is done booting up, the touchpad indicator near the bottom left of the spacebar begins to flicker on and off very fast, and also the touchpad indicator on the laptop flickers as well. This happens whether an external USB mouse is plugged in or not. It seems to go away if I push the tab or shift button on the keyboard, but its an annoyance nevertheless. Has anyone had a similar issue with their laptop or knows how to fix it?

Thanks

 

Remove the existing driver and then install the newest version.

Synaptics Win 8.1
Synaptics Win 8
Synaptics Win7

 

Just reinstalled the latest Synaptics Win 8.1 driver, and I'm still having the same issue. I'm pretty sure I had previously installed this latest driver, and it may be after installing it that I began to see issues. Not sure.

 

It might be worth trying to roll back the driver to its previous version.

 

I had the same problem, check in your mouse properties / synaptic settings , the touchpad was desactivated.
It appeard with the win 8.1 update for me.

 

Remove the driver, reboot.
Install the new driver, reboot.
Verify the symptom.

 

Hi mates !

So finally I bought a GT 70 20D a few months ago. So much power !

I'm having some issue since I formated the hard drive and reinstalled win 8. I updated to win 8.1 but since this upgrade, the light is always orange, showing that the GeForce is constantly in use. This appears just after the win 8.1 upgrade.

The weird thing is I haven't this issue before reinstalling windows.

I've added the option on nvidia menu so I can see when the card is running. It shows "none" activity but the light keeps orange. The light is white for a second while booting but as soon as Windows launch, it keeps orange...

I tried to finish every tasks/processes one after one but still orange... Would it be a BIOS issue ? Showing orange light even when running the iGPU ?

I tried again to reinstalled windows but I've the same problem, as soon as I update to windows 8.1, the issue's here.

Do you guys have any ideas about how to fix it ? It seems to be more a software than hardware issue so I don't think I could RMA for that...

Happy new year to you all !

 

Try closing background tasks one by one and see if the light turns white.

 

Hi Meaker,

I tried closing every tasks running in background but it didn't change anything.

EDIT : I run Gpu-Z to check which card is really in use. I ran a video on youtube, and the iGpu was running but the light is still orange. How could it be possible ?

 

GPU-Z will activate the GPU...

 

Yes and this is the weirdest point ! Gpu-z activates the dGPU but it's still the iGPU running. I remembered used the liveupdate msi software and then I had a lot of issues (this why I formated the laptop the first time). I'm sure something happened on the BIOS level

 

I had this issue and resolved it by uninstalling both the Intel and Nvidia drivers and then reinstalling them. I was using the latest version of both drivers before updating to Win8.1 so I guess something in the upgrade process breaks whatever causes the Intel one to work.

 

Oh buddy, you're giving me very good hope ! I'll give it a try now.

 

Hi I have GT60-0NE with an Ivy Bridge 3610 and GTX680M. Will the G button trick work? How will I know if it actually worked? And how much OC will it give me? Also do I need the Stock overclock program (the one used when pressing TURBO Button) to be installed prior to using this trick?

Thanks!

 

Hey everyone. Just wondering if anyone was succesfull at finding a newer chipset driver than the default one MSI is offering on their GT70 2OD page.

This is what they offer now: MSI Global – Download Center

The driver version they have is 9.4.0.1017

I can't seem to find anything newer. Does anyone know?

 

Check out station-drivers for the latest chipset driver.
Station-Drivers - Intel Chipset Device Software

 

Hi Guys!

I tried to download Dave Pearsons Fan Control Software for my two Medion Erazer Notebooks (with MSI chassis) but the link leads to a file that doesn't exist anymore.

Thanks for help!
Greetings Mike

 

------------------

 

It worked ! Thanks mate. Can't believe it was only a driver issue.

 

Here's mine with Super Raid0 2x64GB SSD. As you can see read speed is nice but what about the write speed?

Anyone has this problem too?

 

Write speeds are quite low there, 64GB SSDs will be much slower at writes but that is quite excessive.

 

I found some test data from other users. Looks like the normal seq write speed should be around 300mb/s for 2x64GB version. Something seriously bad happened to mine.
Looking for solution...

 

Check the strip size of your RAID array in the RAID utility, it should be set to 128KB.

 

Also check your drive is aligned properly.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes I've checked that, It was 128KB. AS SSD says 1053696 K - OK so assume it is aligned.

 

What's the used capacity versus your total capacity?
But even so, it shouldn't have dropped the speed to that level.

 

about 60% used.

 

Agreed with Kevin and meaker. Even when I tried older 64GB and 128GB ssds, writes weren't that low. Something is off.

 

Yeah still off especially for 60%

 

This is going to be a bit of hassle.
Back up your data, break up the SSD array, load OS onto one SSD, then test each SSD independently and see if one of them is bad or not.

 

Thank you guys for helping. Problem solved. My solution: Remove the RAID0 Volume, create a new one with the stripe size set to 16KB as recommended by Intel, then clean install Windows 8.1. Now the speeds are amazingly high...

 

Great, enjoy it!

 

Lol nice I bet it feels quicker.

 

Another problem guys. I have a professional audio interface that requires an IEEE 1394/Firewire port. But I found that there's no 1394 port on the GT70-2OD and no PCMCIA slot either. Does that mean I'm never gonna have the soundcard connected to the latptop?

 

Have you searched ebay for "usb to firewire adaptor".

 

Actually bought one and tried with no luck. Device couldn't be recognized. 1394 is some kinda magic, not something that USB can handle IMO.

 

I know you can find adapters to connect a Firewire cable to a USB port, but the technologies aren't compatable. Your audio device probably relies on a direct Firewire connection. Sadly I don't think there is a way to make it work with a modern laptop.

 

Thanks for the reply. I think I'm gonna give it up...

 

Maybe you could find out if others using that device had any success with a particular adapter.

 

deleted .......................