~GX660(R) Owner's Lounge~

Evening everyone,

I have recently become the proud owner of an MSI GX660 (474UK) with the following specs:

i5 460M
6GB DDR3 1333 (2+4gb)
1TB HDD (2x 500GB 5400 rpm)
1GB Mobility Radeon 5870

the system is due to arrive tomorrow and i am preparing all apps, games and drivers for installation.

I'm hoping the system comes witht he latest versions installed, but just to be on the safe side could anyone please let me know which radeon driver version would be the best to install? The MSI website indicates that they have not been updated since July 2010.

Also, does anyone have a solution for the Youtube flash greenscreen into driver crash issue?

Thank you for your help

-Zal

 

Fix

Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 6

Hard Drive Parking Fix
Here's the fix for the hard drive parking / game pausing / clicking problem.

1) Download UNetbootin from here UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

2) Download the RE2GP Idle Mode Update Utilityfrom here http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...id=113&lang=en

3) Insert a USB flash drive into the laptop and run the UNetbootin utility

4) Change the "Distribution" option to FreeDOS then change the drive letter
at the bottom to your usb drive. Click OK. DON'T RESTART WHEN IT ASKS.

5) Copy the wdidle3.exe (Idle Mode Update Utility) file to the USB drive. Then restart laptop

6) [If using RAID] Restart the laptop and press DELETE to enter bios, change the SATA mode to AHCI before step 7. Save and Exit.

7) Press F11 to show boot menu, boot from USB drive. Choose DEFAULT then select FREEDOS Safe Mode.

8) Type B: then press enter..
Type wdidle3.exe /s30 ( /s30 = 30 seconds but you can change the number to however long you would like to pass before the drive head parks, default is 8 seconds)

 

welcome 2 the club.

First thing i would do is check what hardrives you have.

the latest drivers from the ati/amd website are fine

also id reccomend you read throught the whole of this thread yes the whole of it

 

hey guys,i bought my GX660 just now and I find it quite impressive. I've been reading this forum right from the start and i've got a familiar problem with my system as well. all features are working fine except the wifi and cam,i just hope that its just a matter of getting latest BIOS or installing some other software. So,i'll really appreciate if someone can give me an idea what to do to get the cam and wifi working?
AND yeah here are my GX660 specs:
core i5-460M, DDR3 4GB(2GB*2), ATI Radeon HD5870/1 GB DDR5, 15.6" HD 1366*768, 500GB 7200 RPM

 

and guys this Catalyst control centre is giving me a headache. whenever, i maximize all the settings individually in the 3D graphics settings and apply changes then my standard settings automatically goes to custom settings and the bar there goes towards performance. and when i undo the custom settings in standard settings and move the bar there towards optimal quality then all the other options do not maximize quality(anti-aliasing goes 4X instead of 8X and Catalyst A.I goes to standard instead of advanced,vertical refresh shows off,unless application specifies and there is no triple buffering). now i am not getting what"s the reason behind this,cant i maximize all my settings there or does it has to do anything with the compatibility with resolution or something. i've just had 1366*768 resolution so i bet i can maximize all my settings but its not happening. plz help me out what to do or can anyone here make me understand what settings should i exactly have to get the maximum quality of of this machine. Here are the specs once againcore i5-460M, DDR3 4GB(2GB*2), ATI Radeon HD5870/1 GB DDR5, 15.6" HD 1366*768, 500GB 7200 RPM

 

@arpit ATI control panels have always confused an Nvidia fanboy like me :/ Are you using the default drivers or did you update them? I've been having some problems with the supplied drivers already and ive only been using the system for a few hours.

@FlyingMonkey thanks for the info. I'll read the entire thread as soon as i have the time.. i had intended to before the purchase but work and illness made it difficult to focus :/ I seem to have Hitachi drives btw, so saved from the issues caused by the WD ones.

I just stress tested my system (specs in sig) with Furmark in 1920x1080. The GPU peaked at 90 degrees, however as soon as it hit 90 the fan speed increased, cooling the GPU down to around 85. at that point the fan speed dropped again and the GPU slowly climbed back up to 90, promoting the fan to speed up again.

The temperature basically jumped between 85 and 90 for 20 minutes, but the application itself seemed to be stable.

The GPU idle temp is between 52 and 55 degrees.

Note: For some reason RealTemp 3.4 and 3.6 do not allow me to track the GPU temperature.. i have to run GPU-Z to get accurate readings. During maxed out Sc2 and Crysis Warhead the temp maxed between 71 and 78.

I am using the original drivers for the time being (dated 22/06/2010).

Given that the system operates on one fan and heatsync, is it fair to assume that these temperatures are ok?

 

Ok, so i was having game lock-ups in fallout 3 and decided to update my drivers.

After installing the latest drivers for the mobility 5000 series i am told that they do not support my video card...

could anyone please advise me as to how to sort this out?

EDIT: Problem solved, it had something to do with the number of shadows displayed... lowered from 6 to 4 and "seems" stable now. So far no other issues on any other games using latest ATI drivers (downloaded the catalyst app to select the download automatically, seems i initially odwnloaded incorrect drivers)

 

1. Ha ve you got any software for the cam
2.turn cam on with fn+f6
3.turn wifi on with fn-f8

 

those temps are quite high when compared to mine i stress tested(with my overclock) i didnt get past 85 and was hovering around 79-83

 

High, but still safe i hope? Apparently the threshold is 104 degrees and it refuses to go above 90, and that was after oer 30 mins of 100% load running Furmark at 1920x1080.

During gaming sesisons so far its hovered around 71-75.

I have also noticed that it runs at 700/1000 while gaming and downclocks to 450/1000 in windows, running at 50-55 degrees idle.

 

Yeah 90 is still safe. It is highly dependent on ambient temps. I personally use Turbo fan all the time when I game so my temps are quite cool. That, and my current ambient temp is 32°F heh.

My highest current temp when I last game was 64°C

 

32°F really thats 0°C do you live in the north pole or something jheeze lool

 

No, just a bit of a winter cold for a couple of days. It will get back up to 10s°C and up by the weekend. It's usually rather hot here, a week ago I was practically wearing shorts with around 30°C temps, but weather be crazy man!

Even using my laptop on my bed right now, with the vents semi covered.... I have 40°C CPU temps, and 42°C GPU temps

This will only last like another day though. I will get back to normal soon.

 

hey thanks a lot buddy, in the end it was a case of installing software for cam and wifi and both are running fine now.
but still confused by the settings in ATI catalyst control panel where 3D settings are being set(i've posted in my previous post also about that problem).plz give me a solution for that too.

 

So far so good with the GX660R. The temps did worry me a bit, but i knowe for a fact that the mobility 5870's are notorious for getting rather hot.

The GX660R only uses one vent (poor decision in my opinion, must have been a space issue) rather than the two the case was originally designed for. My slightly older Clevo W860CU has a seperate fan for the CPU and GPU, and keeps them both rediculously cool (i7 720QM and Geforce 280M idling at 38 degrees, maxing at 66 / 71 respectively).

Still the 90 degrees is after 30 mins of 100% load WITHOUT turbo fan, and during actual gaming it doesnt seem to go higher than 78 (according to GPU-Z).

It does worry me a little, but hey, the system cost £938.00 delivered, a good £720.00 below the i7 + 460m competition, or dell 15x equivalent (i5 520M, 6GB DDR3 1333, 640GB HDD, Geforce 460M GTX, 1080p screen = £1768.99).

 

Hmm. I do have hardware mods on this guy, but I rarely go over 70C on an overclocked (840/1025) mobility 5870.

Then again, I'm playing the relatively lightweight Killing Floor and it's like 65F in my room.

 

my GX660 has great temps....GPU/CPU IDLE 38/34 and while gaming(black ops crysis, BC2 55-60c cpu and gpu 65-70c...rarcely over 70c-...love this computer sofar if we dont mind some problems with bluetooth and cam!!

 

Just ran MSI Kombustor again to check, the system maxed at 84 degrees (100% load) during a 30 min run.

The idle temps are around 50-55 degrees, but this is with the system fan running at 30%. The CPU itself idles at 28-31 degrees.. i think the fan control averages the temperatures until they cross a threshold.

during gaming my GPU peeaked at 68-72 degrees during Crysis Warhead, Fear 2, Left 4 Dead 2. I think my measurements while stress testing with MSI Kombustor / furmark might have been a little missleading.

It is around 25-28 degrees celsius (76 - 82 fahrenheit) in my room as i have 3 systems running

NOTE: all of the above temps are without running turbofan.

@Porre and forge: Is there any chance you could please download MSI Kombustor and GPU-Z, use MSI Kombustor to stress test your GPU (default settings) for 10 minutes and let me know what the highest temp recorded by GPU-Z was? I'd really appreciate it.

By the way, has anyone found a RealTemp that works with the GX660R's 5870? I have tried 3.4 and 3.6 but they do not allow me to display my GPU temp

 

I haven't run Kombustor, but I did do Furmark way back when.

First picture is bone-stock at 70F ambient.

Second picture is 850/1050 @ 75F ambient. This is with my hardware mods.

Passive cooling for both, and auto-fan.

 

Thanks for that - our temperatures seem very similar, although i ran mine at around 84F.

At the most mine is getting 2-3 degrees hotter than yours at stock.

 

If you're really adventurous, or just plain stupid, like me, do lots and lots of holes. And copper. There's never enough copper.

 

@forge, i jsut noticed something

Furmark takes the value of GPU Temp 1 in GPU-Z to take readins on temps, whereas GPU-Z displays the highest temp.

I have been going by GPU-Z's reading, however my temp in Furmark was only 79 degrees whereas GPU-Z was displaying 87 degrees (see pic http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7509/gx660rmaxloadgputemps.jpg)

Maybe this accounts for our differing temps?

Either way im sure both of our systems are stable

I am a system builder myself, but as opening the case would void MSI's warranty (even removing the HDDs, lol'd.) im going to hold off for now

I see what you mean about the holes though.. MSI designed the case so that cool air from outside will flow over he other components (ram, hdd, mem controller etc) before it reaches the CPU and GPU heatsync to cool them, thus cooling the other components moderateely well at the cost of CPU and GPU temp. Its a good solution for a single fan system.. still i wish that they utilised both slots

 

opening the case doesent void your system.
even if there is a sticker on the back saying otherwise.

I think there shoud be awswers to these faq's on the front page

 

Hmm

Thanks for that, i haven't had a chance to read the thread yet. I'm acting on information passed to me by the retailers i purchased the system from... especially as MSI dont seem to keen on answering their phone.

 

Meh I wouldn't worry about temps until you get over 90.

 

That mentality always make me cry a little bit inside.

 

It's not like the card's gonna die sooner if you have it at 90 instead of 70. You'll probably upgrade to a new one before the card dies.

 

True. But as an overclocker, seeing those kinds of temperatures makes me all squirmy.

 

Although its always good to be mindful of a systems limits, temperatures can be a little missleading.

I know 90 degrees can be quite scarey when the threshold is 104 degrees, but don't panic unless it doesnt stabailise until it reaches that high.

As an example, i owned an XPS M1710 from 2006 - 2010, with a core 2 T7100 (2 ghz), 4gb DDR2 533 and a 512mb Geforce 7950 GTX.

I had temp monitoring software for the system, but up until 2010 i had no idea what "safe" temperatures were. this system would idle at 55 / 65 CPU / GPU and maxed out at 88 / 96 CPU / GPU while playing taxing games.

Obviously these temps are a little alarming, but here's the thing... they were like this for 4 years and i NEVER had a single problem with the system. My brother is now using it and it continues to work stabally at these temps.

I'll keep an eye on my 5870 temps but i wont panic until they break 95 ^^

 

To each his own.

Speaking of scary temperatures, my brother's old HP has a Turion that hits 90+ on both cores every once and a while. Now that is scary.

 

I overclock my card to its limits as well but it's usually below 80C. Before the vBIOS update it went to 90C at stock and I was irked but got used to it.

 

Hey guys ,as i am new to gaming ,i am not able to figure out some of the things in my ATI catalyst control system. There are few things which i want to clear out.
1)In my ATI overdrive settings,there is a key shown on top and while moving the cursor on it it says locked and when i clicked on it, it shows a warning of opening the overclocking settings at your own risk and if during the overclocking procedure system can suffer damages(including processor damage,or lead to other problems,data loss,reduction in system performance,and in extreme cases total system failure)an if anything happens ATI will not be responsible and warranty would be voided. now i don't know what to do next,should i activate the key or should i let the system run on default settings???
2) Secondly,can someone tell me exactly where does my graphic card stands when it shows current GPU clock @100 mhz and memory clock @150 mhz,while the GPU clock settings are being locked @700 mhz out of 860 mhz and memory clock settings are being locked @1000 mhz out of 1200 mhz. Also,activity always remain locked at 0% while the fan speed is locked at 30%. what exactly do all these things mean?
3) Thirdly,as i know that i haven't activated the overclocking settings(which in mention in 1 point),so if i note some lagging or decrease in performance in my system while running games,then what"s the use of pressing turbo key,will my system maximize its performance or will i have to activate the key in overdrive settings first and only then it will maximize performance?
4) Lastly, please advice me of some software which are safe to use and by which i can able to see FPS and GPU temp on the screen and where does i can see the the CPU temp within my system?

 

i can only help on your last question. I use MSI afterburner to show my gpu temp on screen during gameplay, and i use fraps (the free version) to show my FPS during gameplay. Be aware that by default they both display their figures in the top left corner, so i have changed fraps to show its figures in the top right corner so you can see them both at once.
I only use fraps to set up my games settings, basically i want the highest settings i can still get 40 + fps, so far all games apart from one is maxed at 1080p res, only nap total war is on high settings instead of ultra

 

Msi afterburner is all you need it has a fps counter on afterburner.

 

if your new to overcloking i would read up on it be4 you take it any further.

when playing games make sure to use the eco buttom to go to gaming

 

The one thing about Afterburner's FPS counter is that it doesn't refresh as fast as FRAPS'. You can set the refresh time in options, but it's not as "fast" as FRAPS.

That being said, I want to have as few programs running as possible, so I just set refresh to 500 milliseconds and had at it.

I suppose you could go lower, but eh.

 

Hey guys (and wenches).

I'm going to look into the vbios update when i have a chance as it did help lower Bearclaws' load GPU temps.

I noticed that the ATI Catalyst control centres vsync override doesn't work for sh*t. Does anyone else experience this? If so is there a workaround? Some games have horrendous horizontal tearing without vsync

 

Hi guys, simple (hopefully) little question for you here Like a lot of people I bought two WD5000BEKT drives to replace the WD5000BEVT's that came with the laptop, but seeing as how there's no Windows 7 installation CD or anything (or at least I wasn't given one) and I'm a noob to this sort of thing, I'm not sure what to do now .

So, does anyone have an idiot-proof guide to what they did when they swapped out their GX660R hard drives? (e.g. how they got windows on their new hdds etc.) Thanks

 

I havent used them yet but you could try booting from the recovery discs. That should install windows again with all the MSI OEM crap to.

A preferred way would be to acquire win7 binary or dvd from wherever. Install that and simply use your dvd key from inside the battery compartment.

 

You mean the recovery disks MSI send with the laptop? Unfortunately they only gave me a drivers/Utilities/Manual disk which doesn't seem to have Windows 7 on it, just the OEM crap .

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

 

Thanks for the link

So I'm guessing that once I've followed the instructions and created a windows 7 installation DVD, my next step should be to swap out the hard drives and turn on the computer with the new win 7 installation disc in the drive?

 

Yes, and assuming you want a fresh install of 7. Don't forget to backup your data etc.

 

Yeah, I've backed up the important stuff elsewhere. Only had this laptop for a few months so there's not too much stuff there Thanks for your help

One added question though - do I need to "deactivate" windows 7 before I change to totally different hard drives or something like that? I'm worried about my serial/product key for Win 7 not working because I've already used it on the first set of hard drives. Or can the online activation process detect that I'm using it on the same laptop?

Sorry for the noobish questions heh.

 

i am having a mobility radeon HD5870 along with a core i5-460M. my FPS count is not going above 60 in almost all the games that i've played(prototype,darksiders,PES2011,section 8). anyone having any idea why is it so? and yeah, for FPS count i'm running FRAPS.

 

V-Sync/Frame Limiters?

 

No prob No you don't need to deactivate or whatever. Yeah you can say that.

And don't forget to install SCM , Good luck.

 

turn off vsync

 

This has probably already been mentioned, but for anyone looking for a good GPU temp monitor, MSI Afterburner does the job.

Has anyone found a way to force vsync in game globally? As the ATI Catalyst control centre doesn't work for sh*t.