~GX660(R) Owner's Lounge~

Hey guys! I upgraded my i5-460M to i7-920XM(QS) today..
I've gotta say that it was worth it! 3DMark score went up about 3000(4000 with throttlestop) + 20fps more when playing New Vegas.. It was really easy to install it!

 

Congratulations

In a perfect world that would be great. How much did you spend on your 920XM?

P.S. does anyone know of any programs viable for forcing vsync for the GX660R? ATI Catalyst doesnt work.

 

Is it possible to set the CPU multiplier manually with/without the use of the turbo button?

 

It wasn't that expensive, got it for 300 from some random guy on ebay.. Works really well, no issues here Mafia 2 runs at 60 fps now all the time with all on full.. Crysis is at 60fps Gamer + 8x AA

 

Hey guys

My reg is new but i have been following the thread for a while.
I've got a Gx660 (non R) with core i5 460m (k0slbzw)

I have found out a lot of interesting stuff about the lappy, so let me share

First of all it works with the registered version of
Setfsb (Version 2.3.163.129) Pll:ICS9LPRS113AKLF
My i5 460m goes from the stock fsb 133->145 , so 2800mhz --> 3045 mhz
At this speed it is rock steady. Increasing max cpu temp from 75°c-> 80°c only. (1hour of wprime&furmark)

At 145mhz fsb the memory becomes the bottleneck going from 1066 -> 1160 mhz
You can know the problem is the memory and not the cpu,as lowering the multiplier with Throttlestop app to 10 giving you 1450mhz cpu speed it still won't pass 145mhz fsb for me.
Some have been lucky to hit 150-155, with stock ram.
My lappy came with Nanya 1333mhz ddr3's but booting them at 1066 sets them at cl 7 timers at which they can only take so much beating.
If you can get your hands on some 1333 or 1600 mhz cl9 modules chances are you can go to 3,4-4,2ghz like others where the cpu/fsb/cooling is the limit.

The second thing worth mentioning is that the "TDE" button raises your fsb from 133->139 (and not your multiplier) thus the jump from 2800mhz to 2919 (for i5-460m)
BUT it also raises your vcore. (worrying for QM/XM users)
Since there is no way monitoring vcore in core i cpu's(that i know of) this can be seen from the ~12% increase in heat output comparing turbo on / off at same cpu speeds. For example for me:
139*21=2919mhz (with setfsb, no turbo) -->15,5watts , 80°c max temp
139*21=2919mhz (with turbo button) -->17,5watts ,94°c max temp
*wattages can be seen in the app "hwinfo32"
So consequently you are far better off using setfsb than using the turbo button,as most core i cpu's won't need extra voltage below 3,4ghz.
Setfsb can even be set to autostart with windows at given fsb's in the background.

I also have to note that changing the factory cooling paste to a mid level paste took me from 100°c and cpu throttling to 94°c max and no throttling with turbo on.

Another thing you might want to know...I've seen you guys stress the vga with furmark, and been reporting 60-70°c temps, which is not accurate.
The thing is that those temps furmark (also rivatuner and msi afterburner) shows are Display I-O temps...at 70°c I-O the Shaders usually hit 80°c and memory hits 90°c.
So don't go wild and oc the crap out of it ,because for me ocing it from 700/1000 --> 820/1040 will take it to I-O:80°C Shaders:90°C MEM:104 °C
Which are max stable clocks for me btw, but i wouldn't run it at that, the gpu can take it but the memories won't for too long, especially when summer comes, so i left those at stock speed.
(ambient temps were ~25°c for me when testing)
*Most of you surely knows that rivatuner,Amd overdrive and Msi afterburner doesn't give a lot of headroom for down or overclocking, so i used Amd Gpu clock tool. (not the same as overdrive)
**Also it's worth mentioning that while the notebook is plugged in your Vga gets 1,05 core voltage, and on battery it gets 0,9v. Which might surprise you
if you leave the vga overclock on the card while on battery as it will lead to messed up screen/bsod/restart. Almost had me think my unit wasn't working right.

We will be going on a long trip with friends so i was triing to increase battery life.
Lowering the cpu multiplier to 9 in throttlestop, and clock modulation to 37,5%
Will give you 533 mhz cpu speed which interestingly enough runs divx movies and browses internet smoothly.
Lowering the gpu to 180mhz and vga mem to 405 mhz will be smooth for such tasks too, BUT it increased my battery life when watching movies from
109 minutes to 144 minutes at 50% lcd brightness so i guess at minimum brightness it might be a bit more...still thats 25% increase, might be that bit more you need.

Oh and, what is so nice...that the notebook sucks most of its air through the keyboard! , so doing wprime on 4 threads and putting it on the bed covering the whole bottom won't even increase temps.
Do that with some other lappy and burn the house down lol.

I was wondering how far can i push the cooling so it stays within 95°c under prime&furmark.
2 ghz - 8,8w - 52°c --> 5,86 °c /w
2,5 ghz -11,4w - 63°c --> 5,5 °c /w
2,8 ghz -14,6w - 74°c --> 5,04 °c/w
3,04 ghz -16,4w - 80°c --> 4,81 °c/w
As you can see the cooler efficiency actually improves with higher heat,so the i5-460 @ 3,6ghz would put me at ~95°c under prime, and well within limits with normal use.
If changing the memory will get rid of the fsb bottleneck that is...
(For those of you thinking the efficiency improvement is because of the fan speeding up, it is not, as it was on 100% for the time of the testing)

Maybe most of you already knew this kind of stuff, sorry if it became a bit too long
And also i apologize to those who don't get some parts or not interested at all

 

Your thermal paste was not applied properly, or there's dust in your fans.

FurMark takes whatever temps are the highest out of Core, Mem and Shader. Most people get to around 80C memory. My temps go to about 80C on 835/1090 and that's mem; core and shader are lower.

Your CPU thermal paste was also not applied correctly. My CPU maxes out at about 65C. (i5-430m). Even when I OC'ed it in SetFSB to 3.4 it still only went to 71C

 

Well i think otherwise about the vga temps, as it shows on the screenshot i made.
See as Furmark says 72°c current, and hwinfo32 says dispIO:73 shader:85,5 mem:95,5
So it clearly doesn't take the highest of the 3...

 

i've got MSI GX660 laptop and because it got a glare type LED screen,it gets dirty very frequently. i was wondering if there is some lotion with which i could keep the screen and the chassis of the laptop clean? and what kind of cloth(whatever cloth,cotton) should be used alongside that lotion.

 

I personally have used ordinary vinegar free window cleaner for my laptop screens and chassis (dry cloth) and that has worked out well for me so far, but don't do the same from my comment alone as i have no real evidense to support my claim that it does not damage the screen.

 

a little rubbing alcohol and a microfiber cloth will also do the job and not damage the screen

 

Hi,! this is my story: i was a proud owner of a asus g73jh , after 4 months the problems came, 1st dead monitor, then overheating and finally asus release an bios update that briked my laptop, really bored of problems i found an gx660-053 really cheap (1000$) it came with i5+4gb+1hdd, and decide to buy it and move my asus upgrades to it, i must say the machine is a dream, right now it runs with a i7 720qm+6gb kingstom+128gb patriot torqx ssd(plus the 500gb hdd)+blueray player (btw dissasembly was a easy thing), the only think i need to upgrade now is the screen, but im really impressed how well this machine keep the cpu and vga really cold, the only think i miss from my asus is the led keyboard, well thats all sorry for my english, by the way anyone knows if is there something we can do to this machine? i dont know like cooling mods etc.

thanks for your time!

 

Seven Wonders of the World has been updated,,,,they took away
the great pyramid of gaza and replaced it with MSI GX660(R)

 

I advise mucoff products to clean your laptops etc

Scan.co.uk: Muc-Off 250ml Spray - 208

Scan.co.uk: Muc-Off Luxury Cloth - 271

These are the best ive used ,as the cloth is lint free and very plush and soft unlike most microfibre cloths. Also the cleaning fluid leaves no residue and gets everything perfectly clean

 

Just did a clean install, and for some reason MS doesn't like my activation key.


EDIT: Never mind, works now. I guess MS didn't like me "repeating" the key so soon. Or something.

 

Hi guys! i wanna ask you about your cpu and vga temps, mine works arround:
in iddle
cpu: 55c(131F),
vga: 53c(125F),
thrm: 56c (132f), stock fan speed
-------------------------
cpu: 43c(109f),
vga: 43c(109f),
thrm: 47c(114f), with CoolerBoost
-------------------------
while gaming:
cpu: 60c(140f)
vga: 61c(142f)
thrm: 63c(146f) stock fan speed
-------------------------
cpu:56c(132f)
vga:56c(132f)
thrm:58c(138f) with CoolerBoost

is this fine?

 

you used an already used activation key on the same laptop? cause i was planning also to change my hard drive.

 

it looks like your idle temp. is a little bit too high and your gaming seems real great(im talking about stock fan speed)

my rig produce this figures.(witout coolpad)
idle 40c (cpu)(stock fan speed)
idle 39c (vga)(stock fan speed)

with (cooler pad) idle cpu 33, vga 34)

and in game same as yours,,,around 60-70 depending on wich game. hope this helps

 

mmm, looks like something is bad here, ill try to repaste again with artic silver

 

Maybee i should add that i have the i5 460m cpu, runs a little bit cooler than the i7 you have

 

Well thats helps too, i did the repaste work a few hours ago, and what i see was a thrm thermal pad in bad position, my cpu now in iddle runs 10c cooler than before, thx porre for the help

 

This is all overclocked.
920xm overclocked at 3.3GHZ over all 4 cores
5870 overclocked at 860/1075
Idle
CPU: 44C
VGA: 39C
THRM: 47C
Stock speed no cooler

Gaming
CPU: 76C
VGA: 67C
No cooler boost

 

Could anyone PLEASE advise me as to how to force Vsync in games which do not allow you to select the option? The horizontal tearing is doing my head in.

Thanks.

 

Wow nice temps with the 920xm, with coolerboost they should go down! really nice

 

Purchased one! Thank you all for valuable information, and a special thank you very much for ryzeki, who PM me answering my boring questions.
Greetz.

 

d3doverrider, downloaded as part of the Rivatune package.

Cheers

10 char

Congrats. After spending an hour or so configuring it, ithe GX660R certainly is unbeatable for its price to performance value.

 

Hi!, any1 knows if is there a screen replacement for the gx660? im looking for a wuxga fhd screen

 

Does anyone knows how to underclock the cpu? :S
The fan is rly loud. (and its not the fan from the gpu )

 

Hands on! Amazon and Fedex really do their job. 5 days before estimated! Gonna make an unboxing video, the first in portuguese, I think, and surely the first by an old man (and I mean old).
Greetz.

Edit*

Typing on mine now. Beautiful machine! As rizek said, much more serious than the pictures. Only drawnback: a lot of flex on keyboard, mainly on WASD side. But nothing to worry, unless you slam the keys. Turbo fan is not a jet plane, you can ignore it. Screen is good, too much said on viewing angles, I was scared, but no... gaming will be a pleasure, and my wife will be able to watch my frags without any wash almost 0 bloatware, it took me 1 hour to set it up and it's ready to play. More impressions on next days.
Greetz.

 

Old? You can't be older than Mr. Wingnut. Zing!

What are your temperatures? Download something like HWMonitor and tell us what you're seeing.

 

I realized that this laptop is not compatible with many games. Half of the latest games crash on startup. eg. Two Worlds II and Arcania

 

Don't blame the lappy, blame The OS.

 

Not had a single game fail on this laptop old or new. Everything is working just rosey.

 

What's wrong with 7 ? Should blame the game ..

 

Well, what I meant is that some games don't run on 7, Vista... your point of view is correct. Problem is the game. But I'm sure you got the point. Fact is the problem is not the MSI
By the way, after 1 hour playing BFBC2 I had max GPU temp 66 degrees C and CPU 63. This machine is cool. Literally.
Greetz.

 

hello guys, you tell me if it is true that our noteook has 3 x slot of the ram? 2 are near the sink in the pc, but the latro where is it? is under the keyboard? someone can take a picture?

thanks

 

Hi all,
I think I'm going to buy this laptop, but I'm not sure which "version" is best...

There are 2 different versions I can choose from:

1) MSI gx660R: i7-740qm, ATI hd5870, 500gb HDD AND a 128gb samsung ssd -> €1400

2) MSI gt663: i5-460m, Nvidia gtx460m and 500gb HDD -> €1160

So which one you guys think is best price/performance?
Thanks!

 

It is under the keyboard.

 

The ATI HD5870 is a better performer for the money. The i7 as well IMO. The addition of an SSD make this an easy decision.

 

^^^^ what he said

 

whilst im here....does anyone know if there is a thread here about overclocking the 5870m? i know there is one for the 5650.
I want to do a safe stable overclock without a frying risk and dont fancy any risky 'experimentation'

 

Hey guys. I heard that if you had bought the GX660, then you couldnt use 3 ram sticks. This was because of the I5 not supporting it. I have gx660, upgraded it I7 920xm. Do you guys think I could use 3 ram sticks now? Flashing GX660R bios etc

 

does the gx660 have space for 3 ram sticks....

 

someone can take a picture the third slot of ram?

 

"Frying" doesn't happen instantly, you know.

In any case, get a program like MSI Afterburner and make sure you have the onscreen display enabled. Now set your clocks to something that looks interesting (Maybe start off with a +10% increase on all clocks) and game on the most intense game you have. Keep your eye on the temperatures. If you start hitting 89C, maybe ease up on the overclock a bit.

 

Yes, under the keyboard there's an empty slot.

 

Hi all, just picked up a GX660R-060US. Thanks for all the positive feedback on this unit, made my decision easier.

 

YouTube - MSI Notebook GT660 --- Disassembling check this out a funny asian chick is disassembling the whole freakin gx660...every component and cable...peace!

 

"Remove Screw" "Remove Screw" "Remove Screw"... Does she have to keep saying that??

Very helpful video though, thanks for posting!

 

Do you have to remove the speaker bezel to get the keyboard out? I have the bottom off but can't get the keyboard out.

 

Wrong laptop or not, Kosti is still right. You need to remove the speaker/button bar and then you can remove the keyboard.