~GX660(R) Owner's Lounge~

very well, but you should see temperatures difference max 2c as in my own experience

Also DISABLE:

C1E
EIST
Power Saver

and check paste again remount again and test again

 

I know this is probably somehere else, but How do you flash the bios?

 

download official bios from msi website for your laptop, extract it to bootable USB stick, and copy paste modded bios in to directory on USB stick where you have extracted the original bios flash(if thats what youre about to flash), then copy the name of the original flash file name, and delete original flash file, then paste the original flash file name with its extension on to modded bios file name, and save. safely remove the USB storage, and boot from USB after restart. Launch executable and be patient wait up to 10 minutes or more until it finishes flashing the bios

 

Wow easy. And scary at the same time. If I end up breaking it, can I still flash back to the original Bios?

 

^^ bricking means not being able to power on, BSOD and fan 100% , then you will need buy new BIOS chip from ebay and ask seller to program stock BIOS rom for you prior posting it, then you can resolder replace faulty BIOS chip with new that seller sent you and you should be sorted back on track, otherwise DONT FLASH AND DONT RISK, no risk no champaign

 

Yeah Im not going to bother. it runs fast enough without. Just need the new cpu and it will be AMAZING!

Ok so i took the risk and removed the heatsink to find out why it wasnt lying flat and ... See pic.

What a noob. Well now it sits lovely and temps are EVEN better! 30 degrees idle 67 load!


One of the prongs on the case was sticking too far up. Must of knocked it or somthing.

EDIT FOR REFERENCE 3PIPE HEATSINK WILL FIT IN A 2 PIPE SETUP MACHINE

1 prong was sticking up causing the Heatsink to not sit level. I took off the heatsink cleaned it all off and was about to start to dremel the case open, then saw the prong! All i had to do was push it down back inot place and BAM all done. Lovely.

 

hehe, you now better go back in the posts and remove your comment on 3-2 pipe heatsinks incompatibility for GX660 laptops not to mislead future readers

What was needed to be done why it wasnt sitting well? Temps I must say are impressive if thats what you have right now!

 

Sorry Ultra, yes I have ammended and explained the issue

 

well done, Im jelous of your temps, these are savage really nice

 

Well I am using YOUR heatsink that you lapped beautifully, and YOUR thermal pads that you gave to the really nice polish man who's name I always forget (sorry mate) AND your reccommendation for thermal paste and followed YOUR instructions to assemble the pads with the paste so dont be Jelous!

Must be a lucky card?

 

very good card + very precise work = job well done and the results that you have, all outcome I imagine just couldn't be better

 

Thank's mate. Now just to get the processor and break the whole laptop

I joke, I think the GPU mod is the hardest bit?

 

One of the hardest if you need to modify heatsink, but as you didnt have to do it, there are no difficult things in there
Most noticeable performance wise mods are:

#1 SSD
#2 GPU
#3 CPU
#4 RAM
#5 PSU (in other hand PSU is not a MOD its a MUST HAVE prior modding anywhere past SSD)

 

You could always go for a 230W mod like me!

 

GX660 non R
#1 SSD
I upgraded to a crucial m4 and the only difference I noticed is the 7 second boot time. Photoshop and other programs feel the same.
#2 GPU
#3 CPU
I have 7970m and 940xm. I feel that the performance and eye candy gain is not as huge a jump as other people made me think it was. The games that I want to play nicely still runs like crap(GW2, Mechwarrior Online, Shogun 2). The 5870m can run bf3 with 35% overclock with mixed settings of high/ultra at 46-60fps. With the 7970m I can run everything at ultra 50-60fps, but it looks exactly the same as high. The recently released games like Dishonored and XCom ran flawlessly on the 5870m. Noticeable performance gains were in Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2. On other games the performance on highest posible settings are the same.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Granted I am mostly playing at 1366x768 which is the original screen. The performance gap only comes in at higher resolutions 1080p and 3x1366 eyeinfinity. Thats where the 7970m really shines. I have no plans to upgrade the original screen because I dont think the 7970m can handle 3x1080p eyeinfinity.
MSI really built something great. even with brand new upgrades the performance gain feels small.

to those walking the fence on buying the upgrades and you dont really care about high resolutions and benchmarks. Dont feel that an upgrade on the cpu and gpu is a must to play games at native nicely. (i buy into the hype easily hahaha my mistake)

 

You were at 60fps already, and any advisement would have assumed a 1080p screen.

 

I suggest you revert back to HDD, standard QM cpu and 5870m and try enjoy same, you will change your mind in a blink of an eye, unless youre one of these haters that are never happy

 

I belive half the enjoyment is the tinkering and building anyway. But even with just the gpu and ram upgrades games j play like wow doubled in frames. Like you said dishonered was flawless anyway but its about future proofing. Its nice to know that anygames that arrive next year i will be able to play no problems.

 

Savier - is the 7970 running ok now that you have fitted the 180w PSU ?

 

Not fitted yet mate. Hopefully tonight. I will keep you posted.

I will post bench marks with the i5 460m and an 7970m before the week is out.

 

^^ updates???

 

Ok, So new PSU is on and works beautifully. BUT the voltage on the GPU is still at 1.00v

The speed is correct, and the clocks run at the right settings. So DO I need the card to run higher than 1.0v? and if so how do i achieve this?

Also my usb wireless device still does not work. ?

 

if you experience no crashing or freezing you need nothing to do with your gpu.

I had 0.97v on problematic 7970m and had terrible stability issues while in idle, but not while in load.... maybe had unique terrible 7970m

How is the performance since 180w psu?

 

The performance seems the same. Should I up the voltage in mis afterburner? Also Ultra, can you link where i can get afterburner 2.20 as i have searched and cant find it anywhere. And on the current version it doesnt let me overclock or anything.
I have no crashes at all. Im just really confused at why my wireless usb device is no longer working.

OH AND FYI
if you disable powerplay in the Catalyst control panel the 7970m will stay in 2D clock speeds even in 3D applications. Thats the issue I had at the start.

 

well in mobile GPUs you cant overvolt so easy , and especially not with msi afterburner, and messing with the bios I would leave in the last place, Id rather wait till XM cpu arrives and start from there.

I have no idea why your USB wifi not working any more, maybe you should try reinstall clean driver for that USB device or try it in other ports? sometimes non usb 3.0 device in usb 3.0 port may not work to full potential , incompatibility of some sort...

 

Yes I have been reading up on it and 1.00v 7970m is fine. It seems the voltage varies amoung different Dell cards.
Link here.
AMD 7970m - modified VBIOS

There is also great info on there and various VBIOS options to download and flash. But Im not going to bother tbh.

I will have a proper play tonight and post some findings.

I did try to reinstall drivers. Twice and move to various different usb ports but still nothing. I am thinking somehow I broke it. But really weird.

 

Savier - is your 7970 running at the correct speed / performance level now?

Also did your card come from China? The one from LaptopMonkey i have ordered said it was in london uk, but looking at the UPS tracking details it is actually coming from China... Grrrrrrr

 

well in mobile GPUs you cant overvolt so easy , and especially not with msi afterburner, and messing with the bios I would leave in the last place, Id rather wait till XM cpu arrives and start from there.

I have no idea why your USB wifi not working any more, maybe you should try reinstall clean driver for that USB device or try it in other ports? sometimes non usb 3.0 device in usb 3.0 port may not work to full potential , incompatibility of some sort...


better broken wifi card rather than bad 7970m



I would say there is nothing wrong if you just use 2.2.5 Msi Afterburner

MSI Afterburner

and when after install run to its installation folder, find MSIAfterburner.cfg file, open in notepad, and find at the bottom of the content these fields and make alterations so to match these:

Then restart MSI afterburner and here you go OVerclock

 

Yes it runs great now Davey. There was no voltage issues in the end it was just that I disabled powerplay in the CCC and it held the card at 2D clocks while gaming.

The card is perfect.

In regard to where it came from I would say it came from china also. It took 1 week to get here and when I asked where in London they are so I could come collect it in person (I live and work in London) they just ignored it.

PERFECT!!! Thank you Ultra.

I will post some scores tonight. Is there anywhere I can get 3Dmark for free?

 

oh alright so I missed that, so your card now runs @ 100% potential? can you read power draw from your socket using 180W psu + 7970m + i5 cpu while 3dmark11 or unigine runing? thanks!

well thats not a fair way of doing it but you can try catch a torrrent and see how it goes but other than that we should purchase the licence if we like the product... you know what I mean

 

Yes 100% Now

How do I read the powerdraw?

 

You may wanna have something like these:



there cheap enough, and very handy where it comes to reading power draws etc, I suggest clamp on, can be used more widely

 

3DMark is free to download the Basic version, and that is all you need for benchmarking.

3DMark11 for Windows 7
3DMark Vantage for DirectX 10 video card benchmark tests
3DMark06 - DirectX 9 video card benchmark from Futuremark

 

Thanks Davey.
Yes Ultra of course I would buy the product If i wanted the full version.


Just found out Im running catalyst 12.10 drivers and not the BETA 12.11 drivers which have a significant boost for the 7970m! Should be even better tongiht.

What about the PCI Express bus only being 1.1 instead of 3.0 speed? Would that effect performance?
Can I change it / force it to pci express 3.0?

 

are you sure that graphics under load not running on 2.0 pcie? 1.1 is normal for idle in gpu-z
3.0 not your mobo

26x and tsbench + very good or maybe best cooling environment + small mod [not really small ]

 

Yes Stays at 1:1 all the time. even under load.

 

enable ati power play

 

1.1 is idle low power link state, when its in full load it changes to 2.0

to be honest there is very little to no difference between 3.0 and 2.0

wow thats impressive, try 1024run with 8 threads! I got my 2670QM to run 1024 TS bench with this result yesterday after IC diamond24 repaste



it was on 28 multi's x 100MHz Bus x 8 threads and it throttled down to 26x multis after ~30seconds and stayed that way. Max temp 80c on all cores...

I will mod unlock my own bios and will flash it will test it any further to kill the throttling

 

Ok will do and post back tongiht to see if it works.

 

uuu man 8threads instanly show that actuall heatsink + modification cannot handle
26x errors or few moments later bsod
25x easily hits 90+ and grows
24x similar
23x slowly run after 90+ but it runs more
22x little better maybe but MAYBE heatsink can handle these options

without multithreading i can run 26x any multplier more and bsod but that's much better then 22x with HT and temp problem

Looks like if we connect gpu + cpu heat-pipe with 2 or even 1 heat-pipe directly we can make much more surface to dispath the heat because 6990m with idle get 33C

watt usage on the wall - near 150W for 23-25x with ht similar or around 140 with little lower multipler and without HT

edit
later i compare gta4 test with HT and without with the same multipler because that game is heavy cpu sensible

 

Ive better idea, it actually requires serious mod of the fan and possibly external power supply for the fan, or may be enough of internal power too, havent went that far to do it and or test it on my old GX660R but the main idea is to fit desktop graphic card centrifugal fan, refer to HD5870 HD5970 HD6990 fan



Back in the day I did measured it and its perfect fit for the placement in the case, but just may require to cut hole on the fan cover so it gets enough air to play with. That fan is serious tool with serious flow capacity, I think its rated ~5-6 wat DC12v even if it spins lower rpm it should outperform current tiny MSI fan

 

Yes the next MOD after the cpu i wanted to look into was the fan. I wanted more/the same airflow with a much quieter fan. Is the fan shown above quieter?

 

The MSI fan is not tiny, also you would need to create a vent point and shroud for it. The msi fan is over 4w iirc anyway.

 

Its a 12v fan right? Creating a shroud is easy enough.

 

OK
Like i said i do some gta4 test
Game version from steam 1070, catalyst 12.10 [default options] 6990m

1) Graphics details from game


2) Compare HT and nonHT benchmark on 22x multipler [temperature is very safe near 80 max even when i 10-15minutes drive only]

Average fps usage of: cpu_ram_gpu.ram
gta4 bench 8threads 22x 54.55_37_51_39
gta4 bench 4threads 22x 54.75_63_44_39

3) 26x multipler then mean max for me [temperature ofcourse still safe]

gta4 bench 4threads 26x 55.52_60_45_40

4) different multipler - one is 13x like lowest quad 720qm

gta4 bench 4threads 13x 34.78_70_44_40
gta4 bench 4threads 15x 43.04_73_44_39
gta4 bench 4threads 17x 44.40_67_44_40
gta4 bench 4threads 20x 49.03_63_44_39

edit
graphic options the same , resolution 1280x768
26x
gta4 bench 4threads 26x 1280x768 59.71_64_49_37


22x
gta4 bench 4threads 22x 1280x768 56.09_66_50_37


13x
gta4 bench 4threads 13x 1280x768 37.99_78_50_37

 

@UltraGSM

Hey! Sorry that I bother you, I have a problem with my Medion X7811 (GX740) in combination with my Samsung 830 SSD, it is invisible when I activate AHCI in BIOS
I saw that you have postet a GX660 modded BIOS, can you help me and all other GX740/ X7811 users too ?

Greetings from Germany

 

^^ sure, will do you an unlocked bios this evening

 

3D Mark 11 scores below. Intel i5 and newly installed 7970m with 12.11beta drivers. The cpu was woeful lol. Anyway...


SCORE
P4567 3DMarks
GRAPHICS SCORE
6195
PHYSICS SCORE
2659
COMBINED SCORE
2412



OH and Davely does that psu you bought make a funny noise when it gets hot? My makes a horrible low scratching noise.

 

To compare, my full 3DMark11 scores are:


P2571 3DMarks
Graphics Score
2381
Physics Score
4716
Combined Score
2375

Spec: i7 840QM, 5870 o/c, 8Gb DDR3 1333, 2x SSD drive jbod

i dont think my PSU makes any noise, but i usually have my headphones on whilst gaming

 

Nice to see the cpu there nice comparison for all to see. Davey add your specs to the score for others to know what we are comparing.

Going to send my psu back, should definately not be making this noise.