~GX660(R) Owner's Lounge~

I have pm you...

 

Just an update, got my hands on new stock LG 15.6 Full HD display panel LP156WF1-TLA1 ,



very impressed in colors and viewing angles, nothing to compare to my previous AOU v5 LCD, this one is still glossy but I get perfect viewing angles , perfect blacks now and it produces way better live vivid colors. Images looks so different from now, delighted.
But will sell this baby soon as Im going M18X R2 for extra storage options, and dual GPU etc etc...

 

From those of you who've had the lid off these for things like the graphics card swap etc.

How hard do you think replacing the DC socket will be on these? Mine had a problem with the cable, overheated, melted the cable onto the pin and broke it. MSI's UK repair centre wanting £176 for parts (new motherboard) and repair. Considering the sockets about £5 that seems a MUCH cheaper option.

 

Live in prosperity my old MSI GX660R ... gave it away this morning, new owner will be more than sattisfied... I will always remember the sound system it had ... but life goes on

Live in prosperity my old MSI GX660R ...



gave it away this morning, new owner will be more than sattisfied... I will always remember the sound system it had ... but life goes on

 

OK...hi everyone...my first post.

Have had my GX660R for 18 months now and extremely pleased with it. However getting the urge to upgrade the GPU from the 5870M to the new 7970M. Looks relatively straightforward - I'm used to building and overclocking desktop systems.

Trouble is that I am struggling to source the 7970M card...can anyone point me in the right direction. Would prefer to buy from someplace in the UK.

 

Hi man, yea many of us upgraded to 7970m with no big issues, some modding of the heatsink required and set of fresh pads and thermal paste and little knowledge of computers, as you say you're familliar to these things from the past it will be ease with glance doing it so.

The one man I can recommend here is pau1ow , reading this thread few pages back you will see him replying to this tread just PM him, he has access to those cards and he is from UK, me and many others got their 7970m from him. One thing to be sure off when you're getting one, ask any seller to make sure that the card youre getting in 3D full load profiles run at least at 1.05v and no less otherwise I can nearly guaranty pain in the bones for you fella. anything thats 1.05v and more is good to go in GX660R

 

Great...many thanks.

Call me thick but how do you PM...just spent 15 minutes looking for options!

 

PM stands for Private Messaging

just click on username and menu will popup with options, just choose "send private message"


Cheers

 

Thanks...but tried that and the only options I get are view profile, add to contacts and view posts!

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/private.php?do=newpm&u=453807

click this link

 

lol...can't open link

CLHicks, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1.Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2.If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

I only created the account this morning so guess that might have something to do with it...

 

Yea, I guess you will need to wait for further approval, so be patient now. I will however send you PM with his email so you guys can talk direct


nope, doesnt send

error: "CLHicks has chosen not to receive private messages or may not be allowed to receive private messages"

just post your email here and I will forward your email to him, Im not sure if he wants his private email publicized.

 

ClHicks you need to hit 5 posts before you can PM. 1 more post to go. On the topic of getting a 7970m, I would make sure to get a Dell card. I find they are fully compatible with the GX660, with the minor heatsink modification mentioned. The Dell card will offer plug and play compatibility beyond that. I believe the Clevo/Sager based cards don't allow for HDMI out. Check the marketplace here on the forums, thats where I bought mine. Ebay might be another acceptable place to source a card. Expect to pay $500+ US.

 

Thanks...I'll be patient and wait for my account to be fully activated. Don't really want to post my email to everyone.

Cheers.

Many thanks.

Spotted some Dell/Alienware 7970m's on Ebay for £400.

Hmmm...with that pricing it's not looking so attractive bearing in mind I could purchase a brand new 17" Clevo based system with an i7 and better screen for around £1200.

Assuming I can sell my existing GX660R for circa £500; it works out at £700 to get a brand spanking new 17" machine with warranty, piece of mind etc.

 

yea if you like taking things dead easy do so, I have just received my M18X R2 trough the door, now this thing is massive, its huge! have some work to do while looking at it on front of my desk, cant concentrate... I bet I will have sleepless alien night right now... if feels like it would fit two GX660R in size of it... lol ... maybe not eaxctly but this is huge...

I sold my GX660R for 1200eur basically ran on 0-loss/0-profit but Im more than happy having new one so soon after selling GX660R, msi was a real nice and good machine, if to choose 15" laptop , MSI anyday!

 

So OT, but ULTRA how is the m18x?

 

Hi Filip this is one heavy gun I must say... Im already running trough some issues and I feel its one of those stinky M18X I got that is going to run marathon with my brain!

Conclusions:
Its approx 60% faster (considering passmark extra 3k extra CPU score, unigine just about 55-60% more in score, and so the same in any other benchmarks)VS my old pimped GX660R (Im now sorry I sold it so fast)
Ok here I ran in to some troubles setting up my OCZ 2 x 256GB Vertex4 RAID0, problem after problem from the first minute I tried doing it so, windows would jam freeze would not finish setup, later then I have seen one of my OCZ vertex drives gave error message in Raid bios screen as drive error (0) however I identified drive removed and since setup in single SSD which didn't fail yet, so far so good, it works, first it worked just at 3GBps sata rate, later after reinstalling latest intel manager I got 6GBps sata speed (sata port0 - ACHI)
other two drives are 500gb and 1000GB also they both run at 3GBps, thats f-in weird because 1TB drive which is in sata port1 should run at 6GBs too, whatever... moving further
Day I ordered M18X R2 I went and bought 1866MHz vengeance 16GB ram later same day found out these machines dont run with this ram, machine needs tinkering with tons of settings bother bother bother.... so I canceled order luckily before it got dispatched and ordered a set of 16GB 1600MHz ram from crucial, still waiting to arrive... however, 7970m, they idle 55-58c as we speak now, thats HOT!!!! my MSI idled with new 7970m card approx 38-45c all the time !!!!!, ran some benchmarks , got some expected flickering and un-rendered squares during benchmarks but did not crashed yet
Only times it crashes if I close the lid of the laptop, it enters sleep mode or hibernation, I resume session, screen comes back on with maybe 1-3% max backlight, so Im forced to look at my screen from an extreme angle to see image and I go trough start->shutdown->restart, once laptop restarted it shows proper image again.
Very often I have noticed browsing firefox I get some nasty artifacts all over firefox screen (only firefox, like flash plugin would fail or something, but not browsing in pages with flash... this is weird one,since I went and disabled hardware accel. in firefox, will see how it goes) Im running latest 12.8 official driver ... dont want to go lower modded version in case crossfire doesnt work on it... Im little p-ssed off this machine requires so huge of attention and it basically requires not to be touched otherwise it will wear out the chassis soft touch rubber paint in no time, i already see rubberized paint pealing off at the places on the back of the battery - THATS BAAADDD! I can see the same happening with palmrests if I will do alot of typing while wearing my watch!!! , screen is big and clear colors easy to see and reflective thing is not as bad as many would make out, but black colors are nothing like my LG upgraded LCD I just put in before I sold my GX660R... one more thing sucks heavily, CD eject doesnt work unless youre fully booted in windows, so if youre installing OS and you stuck in CD that doesnt boot or wrong version you will likely have to finish setup before you will be allowed to eject cd... this is nasty!!!!!!! I havent gamed yet, but I will maybe tonight... yes, while typing I can nearly feel keyboard is gonna wear out like chips, its not chicklet and thats disappointing as I can see now, at first impressions it felt good but now I see I dont like this thing not one bit... bad part is mate finish on the keyboard and palmrest will make it all look spotty and oily dirty in no time as if your hands sweat even a little bit you will see no more mate finish just sort of oily stains that mate surface will absorb... it is heavy or even heavier as two msi's and yet I have had trouble finding carry case for it, so carrying in my hands with cheap cloth bag it came with... few more days and I will see if I decide to keep it or just return it and buy something else... probably will be eurocom if not going to keep this... I feel I should have really went for GTX680 SLI config instead... alot to think of before final decision.... oh saddest part I thought it was my SSD that failed in RAID0 setup with M18X at the first place it seems it is working in all my desktops and other laptops I tried, just not alienware.... just my personal experience... disappointed already

PS: forgot to mention, storage Drives bezel that is plugged in to motherboard, was plugged in not in level, at probably 15% angle, engineers fault, but yet it was still touching approprieate pins inside of flex slot so it was booting ok with its original HDD, since I have reinserted it but this all connector thing is really loose, I really dont like the way it was built..

 

damn that's lots of problems :/

 

yous all can follow this up here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...experience-brand-new-m18x-r2.html#post8828124

there are more imperfections...

 

Dang that's a shame to hear Ultra. I seriously love my GX660 in its current state. My 7970m idles around 38-43C depending on ambient. Usually sits at 41C though. Gaming temps depend on the game. BF3 fully maxed out will cause temps to climb up to around 83C. Crysis 2 about the same. Other games I hit high 70s. I don't OC the gfx card for gaming, and usually have the CPU OC to 26,25,22,22 to keep the temps happy.

I have been torn between selling or hangin onto this laptop another generation. I am just having trouble justifying it die to the minimal performance gain I might see over my laptop. Plus my LG screen replacement is amazing. I think I will hang onto the laptop until the next generation CPU is released by intel and the next power house GPU. I don't have a preference on which team I join for GPU as long as they are both good.

 

yes man, hold on to your GX660 its excellent piece of equipment, and its well worth keeping it, comparing what you would gain is minimal...or mathematically as doubling gpu performance as dual 7970m but again... not much worth hassle unless you go nvidia gpu

 

Hi Guys, Long time reader here 1st time poster. I haven't modded my GX660R other than putting in 2 Vertex 4 SSdrives. I always used to build my own pcs but due to house space at the moment I got this laptop last year and love it. I always like to play on max settings and this was fine for a while but guildwars 2 runs at around 25-45 fps on medium settings and i wanted to know... would it be worth ugrading to the 7970m or will by i5 processor just bottleneck it?

 

Hi man, yes, I can tell you its totally worth it! Get yourself 7970m but yes you will likely need 920xm cpu to run that GPU smoothest, also 8GB ram or more would be nice upgrade, as you already have SSD's may say more than half job is already done.

 

Welcome Savier1. The 7970m would be a serious step up for your GX660 laptop, and would allow you to play most games with max settings and playable fps. Though I do think that your i5 would severely bottleneck the 7970m. When at stock CPU settings, my 920xm does create a slight bottleneck on 3dmark 11. I score about 600 points less than a stock 3610qm/7970m combo. When the CPU is OC a bit, I get a normal score for the 7970m. Because my CPU is xm series, I can OC it very easily with ThrottleStop. Something your i5 cannot do.

 

exactly my point, best of the best CPU will always help!

 

Thank you guys, Sorry it was so long ago I forgot to mention I ugraded the ram to 8gb.
Wow sounds like it really is worth it, can you reccomend a good place to buy one? I'm pretty good with a dremmel so not worried about the mod work. Also what cpu would be a good upgrade then and is there any mod required? Can you let me know where you guys buy your memory also?
Really got the tinkering bug now and love the 660R. If i can spend £700 and get basically a massive improvement then I would be really chuffed.

 

you will easy fit in to 700gbp package with 7970m and 920xm es cpu, easy, I ran for kingston CL9 9-9-9-24 ram @ 1333mhz was the best buy for my laptop regarding ram.
I was fortunate enough to pick up my 940XM ES cpu just for under 200eur in ebay auction, most people pay around 200mark for 920xm which is same exact cpu , as they both overclock 940xm or 920xm its irrelevant same performance.

7970m I suggest contact pau1ow here on this thread you will find him, he will set you up with 7970m for good price, just make sure he tests it for you and you wil get one that runs at 1.05V in 3D profiles so you get no problems stable 7970m

 

that's amazing thank you. Yes i was watching one of Pau1ow' cards on ebay but was stuck at a party when it ended and missed out.
On the subject of overclocking, sorry if this is a silly question but how do you unlock the bios?

 

I have made comprehensivelly unlocked GX660R bios, that I have successfully used in my past GX660R and so the same few other members here (few had their machines to fail after flash bios, that's unfortunate but its a gamble you may take flashing bios)

For overclocking you dont have to interfere with your bios whatsoever,

For CPU you use throttlestop
For GPU you use msi afterburner etc
if you get advanced enough and you feel comfortable you can later get your GPU bios modified and flashed directly to your 7970m but I dont recommend that, stock specs of 920xm and 7970m will be on the par with notebook cooling capabilities.
For temp overclock it is always good to use msi afterburner, so card doesnt stay in high performance mode 24/7 if you know what I mean.
I was fortunate enough to push my 7970m and pass all benchmarks to 1000MHz @ GPU leaving stock RAM clocks, and just at the cost of barely few celsius degrees extra! but I was just testing the card out of curiosity, I always ran it stock clocks.

 

Fantastic. I used to overclock and mess around with bios flashing etc in my desktop building days but always been a little worried with laptops as once they burn out your pretty much buggered.
But not having to bother is even better! So stock 940m and 7970 would be a massive boost for me, are we talking 50-60% faster? What kind of gaming performance are we talking? what games do you run on yours UltraG?
In regard to upgrading the cpu is the stock PSU ok?
Sorry for all the questions .

 

After upgrading to 940XM cpu alone, I experienced my 120W liteon PSU was suffering sometimes , had 5870m as GPU, later upgraded PSU to 180W, and got the 7970m, max reading ever pulled from the PSU was 189Watts at the socket, so if you see what I mean, you be better of with stock clocks as it does peak out that much and I have had 180W psu, it must have some extra overhead thats why it still was going well.

I ran Driver 5 Sanfrancisco, mass effect3 , crysis, crysis2, call of duty MW4, metro 2033 ran very nice after to upgrade 7970m, liked some shooters like tom clancys rainbow six vegas, etc there were few more I tried cant remember.. I think it was dead space 2, F.E.A.R. (the latest one) kind hard to tell what else, I dont game alot, just sometimes if time allows. with 5870m I always had to domedium detail settings on higher demanding games like crysis2 crysis, and metro 2033, with 7970m any game was playable at maximum settings, so here you go, gaming features at your fingertips, the key is 7970m and 920xm/940xm cpu (alltho I feel 920xm runs cooler so would suggest that, as my 940xm cpu ran hotter)

 

Ahh ok, so I need to change the PSU too. Where did you get your 180watt psu from and which model?

 

ok the psu was the hardest part to get... so begin searching now I suppose
http://imgboot.com/images/mobileserviceshop/dsc000362.jpg

 

ahh ok. Best get on it. Thank you!

Does it have to be 150watt or can you go to 180?

 

A 180watt power supply will do just fine I have the Targus 180watt universal adapter. They can be found on eBay for around $30. Been using this unit for around 1.5 years and has given me zero trouble. Make sure it comes with the adapter tips!!

Edit:
This is the exact power supply I have. Please note this does NOT come with the tip adapters. Find an auction with this PSU an the tip adapters.

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=360273242849

 

I think i will get for a cheaper quad core instead to upgrade to a 920xm/940x because i will get a intel haswell desktop setup And i hate this dual core cpu when i play bf3... It bottleneck as hell! So do you guys think i a 720qm will be a cheap and good upgrade?

 

I suggest go 920xm minimum, not much to loose and thats the best move for your laptop - believe me it is noticeable performance. The only CPU with unlocked multiplier and all cores can be set to load at the same time in full at your own preference, vs any other where they load just 1 core max speed, and 2 -3 - 4 cores at way lower speeds, so multicore processing is slow, where XM cpu will beat any QM cpu, other than that its for you to decide, bt upgrading it is worth for your msi laptop

 

Thanks Talon that's great. Time to start spending !

 

Oh okey, so it will be at 1.6ghz all the time when i play? Okey, thats sucks...

But i dont want to waste 2500SEK on a cpu to my laptop when i am going to use it to march when intel haswell will be release.

I dont have a job or something like that, im only 15 years old.

EDIT: a 720qm goes for ~ 700SEK

 

If you plan getting all new gear, dont upgrade at all, save all the money for newest hottest latest hardware out there comming in simple as this

 

OMG, 15 years old ? I am 32 and I still play games. Must be something wrong with me. How old are other users of GX660 ?

 

hahaha im 26, makes no sense how young/old you are, is the moto of your pleasure/work combined if possible and when possible IMO

 

25 and still gaming, but I find I have less and less time to play games. I still make time and play a few hours a week, but I used to play hours and hours each day when I was younger and had less responsibilities. Now between work and spending free time with fiance, friends, and family, I only can manage to fit in a few hours a week. Even if I had more time, I doubt I would play much more though. Maybe I've just been growing out of it since I left college a few years ago, and have refocused my free time into other activities that I see might be more useful. Whatever the case, I think I will continue to keep playing for awhile.

 

same all same here with me, work, family, other activities and some hobbies makes me terribly occupied and gaming is something I do to patch nights when I cant get my eyes to close nor want to go sleep. I dont entertain games as much as before, but there are few good ones that are as interesting as reading a good book, other than that I love PC stuff its sort of another dimensional world for my brain to run free, and so is the work I do, I need perfection in PC...

 

Okey, but this cpu bottleneck like hell! Sometimes sounds can disappear.

So i think it is my cpu. And it only happends in bf3. 64 players, but when i play a map with 32/48 players nothing like this happend.

Because 700sek is not a big deal.

The intel haswell computer i will get for a 120 hz monitor and i will only have ssd the computer will cost something like 10k-20k SEK. It depends how much i will have when its releases

Nothing wrong about that When i played bf2 very much i played with one who is over 40 years old

 

Hi guys, just bought my GX660 about a few months back and loving it!
I just have a single problem, I am not able to transfer files using the USB 3.0 ports and 3.0 speeds. It ends up being approx 20 mbps.
I have tried different drivers, the NEC and Renesas ones but still nothing.
Are the USB 3.0 ports working for you guys?

 

I have had exactly the same problem. I have tried different firmwares and drivers ( now I am on 2.1.36.0 drivers and 3028 firmware ) and nothing worked for me. I was so pissed off because of that. And than I have insert the cable deeper into the USB 3.0 port and voilla Earlier I thought that I have inserted the cable deep enough, but I was wrong. Really, you should try this. I have spent lots of time reseting the system and uninstalling drivers, but the asnwer was easier than I could think.

 

If you guys try using USB2.0 devices in USB3.0 ports they may only give extra few mbps speed only, you must use USB3.0 connection device like USB3.0 hdd caddy and or USB3.0 certified flash drive etc, when Im using my SSD in example over USB3.0 port using USB3.0 hdd caddy I get speeds up to 95-100mbps mostly averages 85-90mbps , if I plug in any USB2.0 device in to my 3.0 ports they still behave at same speeds as they would in USB2.0 ports so just a tip for yous if in case you were expecting your USB3.0 ports to boost up all the way to 100MBps

 

upgrade my gx660
1.change cpu to i7 820qm
2.up ram 4gbx3 bus 1333mhz
3.up ssd ocz vertex2 120gbx2 raid0
4.change psu 180w hp
5.change chip bios

 

How did you manage to insert 2 x SSD and 1x HDD ? It is like 3 drives inside with space for only 2 of them.