~GX660(R) Owner's Lounge~

I have got a spare 5870M heatsink. It is like new, untouched ( did no make any modificacion to it ). How much are they worth ?

 

Does this Bios mod work with Gx660r, Raid 0 configuration

 

Im little bit confused atm with my MSI GX660R ...
I bought Vertex 4 128 GB SSD and now i have 128 Vertex 4 + 500 GB WD HDD inside.
Ive flashed BIOS with UltraGSM's modded one and now I can set SATA mode to AHCI but ...
HD Tune show me average speed of my Vertex 4 around 150 - 170 MB/s - so is it normal ?
I was trying to find BIOS made by majster msi , but all links there are dead.
So is it normal speed for my laptop with this SSD or try with other BIOSes ? Anyone has master msi's BIOS somewhere or working link ?
thx for any help

 

Is SSD your Boot drive ( is Windows on it ) ? If so, than this is normal speed. If this is your boot drive, than try to boot from HDD and test SSD than.

 

Yes, its my boot drive. Ill give it a shot as U say.
Just hoped for something faster tbh.
Im still hoping for that moded BIOS

 

Seriously, if you are using your SSD as a boot drive, than none of the drives will be faster than what you have. Just install Windows on your HDD and use HD Tune to test your HDD, you will be surprised how slow it is.

 

Hi guys havent checked this thread in ages, yes I have had 2 x vertex4 SSDs 256GB each, I had them setup in RAID0 so I could get up to 550MBs/ R/W, as single ACHI vertex4 I nevr got more than ~220MBs, its only due to SATA2.0 limitation. I could easy reach 520MBs per single vertex4 drive in my M18X , but I have terrible experience runing these two drives in my alien... returning to dell.

I do miss my old all mighty GX660R, shouldnt have sold it...

however, for 940XM if I ran it stock on wprime 1024 test I could run it for hours in ambient temperatures of 25c + and never reach more than 85c+ if I oc to 21x on all cores never more than 92-93c+ thats with all stock panel, unelevated back, turbo fan on or off doesnt make any difference, but I did polished surface of the heatsink to mirror shine will upload pic later(if you intend to polish your cpu/gpu pad surface that touches chip, use small brick and wrap 3500GRIT sandpaper over it and work your wy with least pressure to avoid making any gaps or hard sand-ofs at the corners etc), and I did used MX4 thermal paste.

I dont really have too much time read trough all the above posts so just please let me know if yous need any more help regarding any question?

and BTW 740QM doesnt bottleneck 7970m as much as people think, you should try before you feel need of better CPU, I found not too much of improvement, but loved the idea of overclocking the MX chip

 

I bought 940XM and still waiting for it. Now I have got 740qm and 6990M and in Dirt 3 I have got about 50% usage of CPU and of course 100% usage of GPU. That's mean that 740qm is more than enough for 6990M and should be just right for 7970M. I have got 120W PSU and it works fine. But when I hit Turbo ( 8% - changed it in unlocked BIOS ) I get less scores than without Turbo. Does it mean that my PSU is to weak to handle overclocked 740qm and 6990M in the same time ?

 

Yes, this may be the problem, 6990m are power hungry GPU if im right this card is rated at 100W, and your cpu max is 45w plus take in account remaining system components... this can be the trouble. I have had 7990m and 940xm and 180W liteon PSU and I have measured power draw from the socket I can easy hit 185W + runing stock cpu and gpu on heavy load , even if I overclocked GPU and CPU never had problem with power draw , But I remember when I got 940xm first and used it with 5870m my 120w psu was too weak for longer run and was powering out so was dropping the performance and noticing battery left under 70%

best buy is 180W psu for anybody who is planing modifying their GX660R, buy good psu first time = buy PSU 1 time. Some people say 150W is enough, I personally disagree, most because of 150W can make probably more Watt then its rated but thats RAPING the PSU, and it may not last long or performance may not be equal to PSU that was built by the factory to produce 180W on load and then on top of that it can make EXTRA power


EDIT: @vwrafi

Glad for your choice of 940XM over 840QM, one day when you go totally crazy with overclocking CPU you can hit high clocks with this XM chip unlike other cpu's. Also, when you get this XM CPU, disable MSI overclock % feature in bios, and use only trottlestop windows utility all the time. Better,safer,more user friendly. Do not try, at least I dont recommend. OC from BIOS, rather dangerous than usefull

 

Yeah, please help me. I have a GT660 (GTX 285m) and booting from a Samsung 830 SSD (128) in IDE mode since BIOS does not support ACHI. Would you please tell me if the BIOS mod you posted for this issue on the GX660r works on the GT660 as well? Or am i stuck in IDE mode?

Thanks

 

Alright, some people reported they have flashed my bios to their GT660 and it worked just perfect and few reported this bios flash bricked their laptop bios chip, so its a risky one. If you give me a few days I will download GT600 specific bios flash file and will mod it for you so you can have your SSD running full power supported by your motherboard

Thanks

 

I bought this LiteOn 180W that I showed you, but it is still waiting for the tip 5,5mm x 2,5mm to be solder on it, so as for now I am using 120W. I choosed 940XM cause I have won auction for it on ebay, it was quite cheap, so why not, but still waiting for it. The only thing that worried me before was the temps. With my 740qm and MX-4 paste I have reached 87 degree on one core and about 84-85 on three others. But if you with the 940XM and same paste as me achieved 2,8GHz than I think that 3GHz is possible until CPU will reach 97 degree ( on 740QM and 97 degree the CPU slowed down for some time and after cool down it back on full speed and so on ). And 3GHz with 8MB cache on 940XM compared to 2GHz and 6MB cache on 740QM must be major improvement to my notebook. It will be like 50% faster than it is now, so in Dirt 3 CPU will fall asleep and will be waiting for GPU to his work. The next step will be 7970M, but after they will reduce the price on it.

 

Great for the PSU well done, I nearly forgot about it until you mentioned it. For the CPU, you must check for blockage of dusts on the heatsink fins and make sure fan wings are nice and clean, oh I just remembered, it was not MX4 that I used last but phobya he-grease, this was the very best I could find for the money, and believe me it was amazing compared to MX4. I have never hit more than 78-79 on my 740qm unless I was wpriming cpu, in games I do remember clearly never more than 79c+ on long runs... weird, is your CPU heatsink polished or does it look factory finish on the plate where it meets the CPU chip? also did you check the 4 fitting legs for the cpu heatsink if they are in similar tilt level? maybe some are out of alingment so doesnt press down well? I suggest retro fit cpu heatsink many times between every time place four very tiny dots like 1x1mm or smaller, and one in the middle, randomize placement of the theral paste dots in the areas between fitment, fit fasten screws referring to numbers on the heatsink and unfasten in reverse order then gently lift the heatsink and see for thermal dots spread out oif they have turned to ultra thin film all over the heatsink or some did not, this way you can see if you have any heatsink attachment problems, for such testing best to use some dirt cheap ebay silicone thermal compound.

740QM vs 940XM stock may not feel like 50% faster, it will most likely feel like 10-15% faster out of the box and the real performance feel will kick in when you have cool air feed to back of your laptop and you OC somewhere crazy, then you can feel the power of XM chip

Most cpu intensive softwares will respond way better with 940XM cpu guaranteed but everyday use wil not be much noticeable, only intensive softwares and games that require fast quadcores will give you massive impression

 

Thank you so much, that'd be great! You're so nice helping everyone =)
Hope it's not too much trouble.

 

no problem, if I find enough time I will make complete unlocked bios for GT660, not only SSD features

 

I'm grateful either way, though it would be nice to have the other features unlocked too. I will be waiting eagerly for whichever you find the time to make =)

 

87 degree was after overclock in BIOS by 8% ( FSB ) and on Prime95 for 15 minutes I believe. I am a little skimpy, so I think I will not gonna buy phobya. You know, few pounds here, few pounds there and my laptop will be too expensive to sold after some time. The MX-4 was given to me by the guy who sold me 6970M ES as a freebie, the same way as you gave me therm pads for heatsink that I bought from you . And believe me or not, the difference between my older Arctic Silver Ceramique 2 and MX-4 was about 10 degree ( but I did clean the heatsink fins so maybe this helped a little as well and not only repaste with new paste ). And my CPU heatsink is not polished and I will do this when my 940XM arrive.

 

I did bought myself hpbya he-grease only because when I was trying softly overclock and keep the overclock while runing stress loads like games and apps I would reach beyond 95c usually I get power-out past 96c cpu temps on my 940XM QS, I think this QS did not have approrpieate thermal characteristics hence why, but my goal was to get it cooled better without cutting the chassis so I went for phobya he-grease and it helped me alot, but its only if you really must. I havent tried IC Diamond 24 carat yet, but I may with my next XM cpu...
About value of the laptop, sadly but you will never get your full money back after some time when hardware gets old, so modifying is only good for as long as you have great use out of machine and when it gets old, new hardwares comes out, new technologies come out, new requirements arrises for newest games etc etc , you can not outrun these things and such things will render your highly modified laptop low value in the future no matter what you do. for real if you bought 940XM and 7970m set up with 12GB ram, perfect display like AUO v.4, SSD RAID, Blu-Ray writer, good wifi module, this machine becomes as valuable and as powerful productive as any other bought today for the money spent on named mods, but you wll get higher value. People most times who dont know what to look in to but "NEW MODEL" will never value your system like they should so only enthusiast may want to buy your system, and yet because its not "BRAND NEW" they will always neg the price, its a life man and you really need to get used to it. I suggest mod it nicely and precisely and use it untill you see its trully useless for you then see how many years you have got out of system which was higher quality than any other system you could have bought back in a day for the money you have put in to this, and you will still be happy to see best image quality trough your modded display, graphics will still kick most apps and games, and your SSD will still perform like a dream, plus you have bluray burner and best wifi

That kinda thinking of mine, dont take too personal but just my 2cent

 

Not to mention that buying spare keyboard and things like screen bezel should be rather cheap, so when you want to sell your machine, it can look brand new and pack a punch in performance.

As for temps, even when I had mine OC I generally never went over 84C while gaming. In particular, my CPU would throttle when it reached 100C as far as I remember, which was overclocked to 3ghz, on a hot day, and my laptop not so clean, running those tasks that put the CPU to 100% on all threads.

I will upgrade to 7970m later too, when price comes down a bit. Meanwhile a healthy 2.5ghz for general use and gaming was more than enough to keep everything fast and smooth. I also want to stress the importance of an SSD here. I recently reverted to my old 320gb discs that came stock, normal HDDs 7200rpm, and man it feels SLOW. Once it has been all boot up etc its okay, but multitasking gets a huge penalty, and generally feels slower. I am too acustomed to SSDs now.

So I will at least keep 1 SSD for boot and one HDD for games. all other apps will use the SSD.

Oh yeah, any screen besides the stock one, be it the AuO or the LG, are much better choices. In the long run, you will be happier with an upgrade there.

 

everything he said makes big sense

also @ryzeki, you should be able to pickup kingston hyperX 128GB ssds cheap nowadays, there pretty good t reliability and speed so its worth upgrade, if I was you now I still go 2xSSD RAID0 for max performance and replace CDROM with HDD caddy and throw in big HDD in there, while getting USB CD caddy cheap of ebay works wonders too

 

Hi guys, i am looking to buy a 7970m but the ones available on ebay from ugrade monkey are 'not mod cards' are these ok to buy? Im buying this before my cpu ugrade, currently got i5 460m 5870 combo. Will i see a decent performance increase in games? I know the cpu will bottle neck the 7970 but can only acford 1 upgrade at a time.

 

For 7970m you must get better CPU, 920XM or 940XM is highly adviceable. Im not sure if you need mod version or not, I have used DELL branded 7970m card so it means it came from M17X or M18X alienware setup... I suppose you may want to contact seller and ask if this will be compatible to your laptop

 

Hey Ultra, I was thinking about grabbing 2x Samsung 256 830s and putting them in Raid 0. I use an external for most of my storage now anyways and most of my games and programs should fit on that nicely. Can you point me in the direction of which Bios I will need? My laptop was was sold without the R or raid bios. Obviously its been heavily upgraded since then!

I second that LG display, its the one I am using and compared to my old 768 screen, this thing has been amazing.

For the 7970m, and i5 460m will definitely bottleneck that GPU! Though you will probably still notice better gaming gains upgrading to the gfx card over upgrading to the better cpu.

 

Yes i understand the bottleneck. What i wanted to know is what to upgrade1st for the best framerate gains. Gpu or cpu.

 

As for bios from GX660 to GX660R I believe should be no problem, I have previously uploaded links of my unlocked bioses, that support newest SSDs like Samsung 830 vertex4 and others, If links are dead please check and confirm it will be few pages back, I will reupload. But note, prepare buy BIOS from ebay in case your gets bricked but this really shouldnt happen, I know many has flashed from non-R to R version with no issues and it worked.

GPU will show more FPS with slower CPU vs slower GPU with faster CPU

 

Amazing ultra thank you. Next month will get the 920 i7 you reccomended and the psu then job done. I just remembered my dremel is broken. Can anyone reccomend a good one?

 

Cheers to UltraGSM for the modded bios - I'll give it a stab tonight in my GX660R.
Just wondered if there was an update for the Option ROM to version 11.5 for the Intel RST. Would be nice to have RAID0 with TRIM.

 

Im not that great with merging OROM to the bios, however I will inquire about it with person who knows that like his own fingers and will get back to yous! OROM is always experimental and it may corrupt data channels completely too, so I would say if its not broken dont fix it, but if yous want it I will see what can be done

Thanks

 

Wow what a response! and quick too!
Cheers mate, you're a star! :thumbsup:

 

np, when Im at work my NBR page is nearly always on screen

 

Well just got a 7970m form laptop monkey for £325. Now to break it when it arrives

Thanks for all your help Ultra.... Hero.

 

well done, now dont forget 180w psu and upgrade your CPU for best results

 

Of course! Already hunting for the PSU. Plenty of processors out there so next month should be complete. Good times.

Just a quick question. The guy from upgrade monkey infofmed me i would have to flash the vbios to get it to run on my laptop but as its a dell card i was under the impression it was plug and play?

 

welcome "back" into this thread ?
what's now about your laptop ? send for replacement or buy now - i don't follow your topic about that alienware

again i heard bad things about temperatur in XM if clock >3GHz - mine goal when I buy 920xm to hit more that 3.2Ghz or more to get 100% more speed compare to 720qm
I know that in gaming i never get 90C even without big clock but ...

now use 720qm + 6990m is good or even very good combination - cpu slowdown in crysis 1 and warhead when it's lot to do and gpu used hit even 60%
rest gaming that good cpu optimized works on 100% or near 100%

you are from poland ?
120W psu then you must works on battery when playing with this combination to be safe

why you dont change power cord from 120W to 180W psu ? i do that
ps where you buy that tip ?

i suggest to buy very cheap 720qm or 740qm - then you feel better performance comparable to any dual core [4 threads of course] cpu, even best i7-640m with OC get lower performance than any quad core cpu with almost half cpu speed

that's absolutely truth
but now is wise to stay and wait for 7970m price drop if 7990m gets out


now to open new threads
Im also preparing to buy i7-920xm [now 720qm for hmm 60-70 dollars] from probably laptop monkey because they drop price lately to around 300$ from 350$ and also thinking about 7970m from clevo [and if im sure need blind flashing to nonEnduro bios] from around 550 brand new of course - but that's only possible if i sell current 6990m dell card that cost me around 300$ and is very good for my little rarely playing games.
And important things for some ppl PSU cost me around 35$ with shipping [poland to poland from shop then is new] - thats 230W for dell laptop [then power cord needs to be changed] but that have from old 150W original from msi gt660. Both psu is from delta not some liteon .

Somedays ago i show around 200W usage on the wall now i can show 206 [peak, and 200 averaged] and even 238W on the wall with 16% OC od BCLK of 720qm and litte OCed 6990m [715/900 to 785/1050]
first 206W - check cpu temperature almost 20C lower in normal clock


and 16% OC from bios


edit

if i good informed 7970m from clevo usualy had bios with enduro then need to blind flashing

 

Yeah i know, thats why i bought a dell card as stated in my post

 

exactly, if its DELL card you must not worry about it has to work at first go.

 

Thanks ultra. Phew.
Is there anyway i can indentify that the card IS a dell when it arrives? So that i have not been mis sold an incorrect gpu.

 

savier1
hard to tell if only looking but if you find real photos of both card then you know for sure [or maybe color is different]

ps
anyone use ssd on usb3 as a system disk ?
wonder how it works/ behaviour under that usb3 - it should get max of speed of ususall ssd but what with response time ?

 

thanks

first faulty M18X R2 went back, refunded... forgived them and bought another one but this time with SLI 680M ... and yet under week later since my #2 laptop is delivered I noticed they threw new line of Ivy CPUs 3630QM 3740QM 3840QM 3940XM, so I decided I want to upgrade my CPU and they could only offer upgrade as an option wheb purchasing new system, so I opted in for returning #2 system, now there are more news that came out just days ago, new Nvidia GPUs launched including 680MX which is approx 20% more powerful than 680M ... so now maybe not only new line CPU but also 680MX SLI... just wonder how long will I have to wait... second 680M SLI M18X R2 was perfect piece of equipment (despite I still couldnt use RAID0 with my 2x256GB vertex4 ssd's I suspect faulty/weak HDD flex ribbon cable) maybe i should wait now till M18X R3 is out ... not so much left to wait haha

temperatures are the ones to fight in first gen i7 XM CPU but I was never bothered or worried about overclocking really, overclocking high or crazy high gives you achievement from few % up to ~15% gains max, and ton of hot temps... I think its not worth a bother since increase in performance is barely noticeable after OC, it was surprisingly well performing at its stock or all multis x21

 

Where is a good place to buy thermal pads for the 7970 heatsink mod?

And which are the best to use?

AND what TIM do you guys use on the gpu chip?

Thanks

 

Yes, I am from Poland. I bought faulty ASUS PSU and cut off the cable to get 5,5mm x 2,5mm tip. I did not want to buy a separate cable, because all the cables that I've seen were too thin. So that's why I bought I think 120W PSU from ASUS to get thick cable.

And about this Crysis 1 and Warhead and use of CPU and GPU, I do not get it. Can you explain it a little more ? Is it like 60% usage of CPU and 100% usage of GPU in Crysis ? If so, than 720qm is enough for 6990M.

 

crysis 1 and warhead in more complex scenes need more faster cpu than 720qm - with it i get almost 60% usage of gpu 6990m on beach [measure on warhead] - and that shows around 30 fps or less , in other places it get 40fps and 100% gpu usage [or near 100%]
for now only that one game [both the same engine] shows that cpu is bottleneck other i tested [metro, crysis2, bf3,] looks like gpu usage near100 % then 720qm is more than enough for 6990m

ps
laptop moneky got crazy with 920xm price - yesterday it less than 300 dollars todays gets to 500 dollars... that crazy

 

ok thanks for the heads up on the processor price debianik.

 

OK, I get it now. And yeah, the 920xm and 940xm prices went up. That means that the source where upgrademonkey is getting his 920xm and 940xm CPU is shrinking and will be not enough for all of us who wants them. I mean I bought mine, but there will be not enough for others.

 

not really went up but monkey got crazy one or two days with better price than New Intel Quad Core i7 920XM Mobile 3 2GHz 8MB CPU QS Q3B8 | eBay :/
probably i buy from that if Im not change my mind and wait for selling 6990m and buy 7970m - finally i get much more real performance but like UltraGSM said it fun to use TS to change multipler etc. :/

 

Anyone got any recommendations for the thermal pads and paste For the gpu

 

Paste:
#1 Place: IC-Diamond24 carat or 7 carat
#2 place: Phobya He-Grease Extreme
#3 place: MX4
And dont look any further, these would be best tested by me so far.

Pads:
Original green pads are the best choice but its hard to get and never enough from old setup, and most times old pads get damaged too easy prior removal of heatsink
Phobya pads are too thick and doesnt flex for best setup, leaves too big gaps, doesnt even-out the impact zones etc. I find best to use silicone thermal pads of 0.25mm 0.5mm 1mm 2mm and 4mm combos. making thermal pads/compound sandwiches using MX4 which is very good to be used as sandwich paste, but also apply on surface of the chip, and then on the top of the thermal pad a tiny bit before applying the heatsink, makes result lowest possible temps, PLUS MX4 is non electric conductive and non ageing 8years longlivety speaks for itself.

to find exact heights of pads needed to use on every square inch of the card to heatsink, I suggest you buy play-doh (like plastic clay) from child toys stores, buy white one the best, and apply tiny bit of it everywhere and fasten the heatsink, then gently slowly remove the heatsink and measure pressed bits of the play-doh so you can cut and make appropriate height sandwiches for your card to heatsink pads setup

etc these would do decent job, there soft and flex well, plus thermal specs are good too compared to OEM

http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-5mm-Thick...93946876?pt=AU_Components&hash=item416c8b5cfc

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2mm-Thick-S...92159365?pt=AU_Components&hash=item416c701685

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4mm-Thick-S...97321259?pt=AU_Components&hash=item416cbeda2b

about 1st gen i7 XM CPU's they rise in price upon the higher demand, and go low in price due to not selling as well as they want them to. Its normal, they wont run out dont be worried but that one found here is at decent price:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Intel-Q...Computing_CPUs_Processors&hash=item2576cd2789

Ok, just after winning ebay auction for MSI GT683R !!! at the cost of 620EUR including shipping it was very tempting!
Its base spec so I will be spending some of my free time modding it... I think and I hope until the new M18X R3 comes out...
I will be getting:

Used ~10 months old but as good as new cosmetic and performance wise
Nvidia 1.5GB 560M
6 GB RAM
i7-2670QM
2 x 500GB
FHD 15.6"
DVD-RW

Happy days!

 

Thanks Ultra thats exactly what i needed. many thanks. 1 thing to note, on cpu z it states my processor as socket 989rPGA ? i thought it needs to be socket 55/65 etc? Can I still fit the i7 920?

Oh and mega congratulations on the new laptop!!

 

nevermind, as long as you have GX660 GX660R it all takes 920XM 940XM cpuz may identify incorectly/different from specs sheet, its minor bug, it will work, just stay calm

 

55/65 its a chipset pm/hm - socket is showing ok

@UltraGSM
back to game i see