MSI 16F2-012 Is Here - Review

I ordered a "force" branded 16F2-012 from the guys at Xotic PC during their black friday sale and after quite a few back and fourth emails due to some parts not being available, I finally nailed down a configuration that would work for me and all the parts were in at the time.



Specs

- i7 2630QM
- GTX570m (clocked @ 750Mhz w/Afterburner)
- 8 gigs HyperX 1866 (I added this in place of the generic slower RAM that it originally came with)
- 120 gig OCZ Vertex 3
- 750 gig Scorpio Black
- BluRay
- 95% Gamut Screen
- IC Diamond
- Win7 x64

Initial impressions on build quality

I work with laptops/computers all day and there are about 25 or 30 various models from the different companies I will see at any given time so I'm basing the MSI's materials/construction quality vs that of all these others.

It's pretty standard all plastic design. It's got a very low key look, nothing flashy or anything really that would hint at how powerful a machine it is. The LED panel lid's outer shell is particularly flimsy feeling and I really am scared at what any half way hard hit would do to the panel inside if it got hit from above or anything heavy was rested on it. That's my main concern.

That is the one area that I truly wished MSI would have at least put some sort of thin aluminum shell on the thing. I'm sure it wouldn't have affected the price very much but considering how much more solid and durable the lids of the dell and HP business class notebooks feel in comparison, it makes the MSI feel like piece of cardboard.

The palm rest is plastic as well and while it doesn't bother me near as much, it's another area that would have been nice to have aluminum.

Thankfully though, the actual inside "skeleton" that everything mounts to is a metal cage so it's not totally cheap/flimsy.


The keyboard is a commonly complained about problem with it flexing and being "spongy". Mine was no different. Particularly the upper left portion of the keyboard had a thin layer of space between the bottom of the keyboard and the cage inside causing it to clack whenever I would hit any key up there. Obviously this was unacceptable so I took a few pieces of the thin foam 3M brand double sided tape and taped one side down onto the cage below and left the other side of the tape covered so the keyboard wouldn't stick to the tape. I did this on 3 areas to ensure a uniform amount of pressure was on the keyboard and no area was more raised up than the other.

The results are nothing short of night and day difference. Keyboard feels SO much more solid, no bulge or dips in the board and best of all, no more noise or clacking or spongy feel!






Anyways...


My brother has a macbook pro and from a purely feel and construction stand point, the macbook makes the MSI feel like a cheap toy.

That's where it ends though. Once you power it on, the tables turn dramatically.


The performance!

To put it bluntly, this thing hauls . My desktop has a core i7 920 clocked at 3.8ghz and 6 gigs of memory and a crucial real 300 SSD with the OS on it and this thing seems like it just SMOKES that the desktop.

Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom rendering, HD video encoding with Sony Vegas 9, everything just moves faster. Programs open up nearly instantly. I think it takes CS5 about 5.5 seconds to load up completely.

For daily use computing, the speed this thing dishes out is on a totally different level of fast vs any other laptop I've used. Hands down.


GAMING!

The real reason I went with this laptop though instead of one of the new slim Dell XPS i7 laptops is for the gaming performance. I'm happy to say that the 570m doesn't disappoint me.


I knew the minute I saw this screen, this thing meant business.







The only games that I've played (when maxed out at 1080p) really push this system to it's knees forcing me to lower the resolution/detail levels are Witcher 2, Crysis 2 w/DX11 patch/high res textures and MaldoHD's textures, skyrim with the Ugrid count set to 7 in the ini and saints row the third in DX11.

The only game that I've actually had to lower in game graphics settings on is Witcher 2. The rest of the games are running at ultra settings with 768 resolution.

The best thing right now has been just hooking the laptop up to my home theater with the HDMI and playing games on THAT on the big screen. Totally different level experience vs my desktop and the studio monitors I use in that room.

setting up the TV's resolution/profile in the Nvidia control panel handles all the settings automatically and will flip to the TV as the primary display and the laptop screen is the secondary so I can see any new emails, CPU and GPU load/temps.


The 95% gamut screen (matte v4 I believe) is bright and glorious and when setting this laptop side by side with about 4 other high end business class laptops at work, the MSI's screen makes the others seem like their brightness is set all the way down. And these were screens that I used to think looked good! They look dull, dim and washed out by comparison.

Only negative I'd have to say about the 95% gamut screen is that you DO need to calibrate the color as the reds/oranges can be a little in your face and in low ambient light, at full brightness, the screen will melt your retinas with the fury of 1000 suns.

I know it's not a 100% authentic screen review without another MSI next to it with the default screen but the other laptops I had next to it were HP elite books, a dell M7500 and a lenovo X300.





So that's about it. Time will tell how well the shell can withstand travel. My old HP DV9000 was all plastic too and it's been totally fine as I'm typically very gentle with these expensive types of things.

I've got this on the way to hold it. I know it's for 17" but I tend to travel with a ton of stuff instead of JUST the laptop so it won't hurt.

Amazon.com: PEGASUS from SwissGear by Wenger Computer Backpack: Electronics



So far though, aside from the keyboard issue that's now taken care of, I've been totally satisfied with the performance and stability of everything.

Also, a quick shout out to Brett at Xotic for helping out with the order details and stuff.

I'm going to try and get some video capture of gaming on it to show how it performs. I find 3dmark and vantage scores to be meaningless vs seeing a frame rate in game.

Here are some pics of the hardware.

 

great Pics

and thanks for the review

Cheers

 

Thanks for this, I am also strongly leaning towards getting Xoticpc's FORCE 16F2. This review answered a few questions, and Its always nice to see some real-world application rather than theory on paper.
Is it okay if you post more pictures of the machine? Aesthetics and such.

Would you say the notebook would fair well in a backpack? With the weak plastic lid and all.

Have fun with the beast, I hope it lasts for a good while.

 

yeah I'll try and get some more pics tonight. all I've got is a cell phone at the moment.

Also, I went back and edited part of my review, specifically the bit about the power button not feeling like an actual button. Turns out, there was a tab right behind the power button on the cover strip that runs across the top that wasn't snapped into it's groove properly.

Once I snapped it back down, the power button feels normal now so disregard that.

Tinytop, I'm using the wenger pegasus backpack made for 17" notebooks and it fits like a glove with a little room to spare. I'm convinced that these bigger 15" notebooks actually need bags/cases designed for 17" notebooks to offer a proper fit.

as far as traveling with it in a regular non padded backpack, I wouldn't do it even if it DID have a more robust shell. That wenger bag I've got is absolutely STUNNING. So much padding, pockets, incredibly well designed and built. Worth every penny. $65 is a small investment to ensure that hundreds of dollars worth of damage doesn't happen in the future.

 

First of all you don`t have msi but somethink like medion. You dont have special features only avaiable in msi notebook like cooler boost or turbo mode. Also you dont have steelpad keyboard and sensor board. On mac you wont be able to play games like on msi notebooks. We are gamers not grower(apple).BTW for mac you have to pay 2 times more to have the same performance like msi. It is up to you - you choose pretty plastic or good components.Hmm nice HyperX memory modules !!!

 

MSI builds these they just don't have the MSI badge or the lights/turbo buttons, etc like the officially branded MSI GT683's have.

MSI Notebook Product Specifications

After seeing some reviews of the non msi branded vs an MSI branded GT683 side by side, it seems the turbo button and cooler buttons don't actually yield any benefits over these non msi branded versions.

As far as I know the 15" MSI notebooks don't get the steel series keyboards. Only the 17" 780 versions.

 

But yoours looks like Gt 780 . Turbo button with unlocked bios and cooler boost = good idea. I know what I am talking about. Try to bit me up in 3dmark06 and others . Generaly I don`t read reviwes I know what gives additional cooling flow in notebook.

 

You think cooler boost is a good thing ? How could we get this extra feature in our barebone then ?

 

pau1ow, the fan in the 16f2 is already capable of running at full speed.

With the 570m clocked as high as afterburner will allow it (I don't want to flash the bios to go higher right now) I've yet to see the temp of the GPU go higher than 81*C.

 

So post your score on 3dmark 06. It is an review so give some marks . You have nice config so make some 3dmarks tests.
BTW

Can you achieve thet level?
Cooler boost gives additional voltage to cpu fan so it spins faster - thats simply difference. The same situation about turbo option in msi notebooks. Pressing turbo button you rise vcore not only MHz.

 

Thanks for the info, I do plan on taking the notebook on a few rather long commutes between countries so I want to know I can take it around without having to treat it like a newborn child. My Sager NP5793 was good in that aspect; Built like a rock.

I look forward to more updates from you. Much Appreciated.

Also, I can't understand what the MSI Jockey is on about?
But some benchmark tests would be nice to see

 

3dmark 06 all default settings.

though I consider them meaningless in the grand scheme of things. actual game benchmarks are what I tend to focus on which I'll post up later today hopefully.

 

OK here is the results running the crysis GPU.bat benchmark



1080 resolution, no AA and my own custom configuration which is a blend of very high and ultra settings.

Here is my config. If you want to try it out, save the link into your root crysis folder and run the benchmark. It should load all the custom config options.

www.drewlankford.com/files/games/autoexe.cfg


I'll hopefully have some more tests later.

 

Crysis 2 benchmark

1080p, DX11, high res textures, max settings, no AA, etc.

I've been playing this one in 720p. frame rates are better and IMO it looks better at max settings @ 720 vs medium settings @ 1080. well that and I'm usually playing games on my TV which is 720 anyways.

 

battlefield 3 at ultra settings, 1080 resolution, no AA but all other settings maxed out.

Averages 30~40 fps.

 

Looks like I won't be disappointed with my purchase. Excited to try out a SSD also, since it will be my first.

 

Hows the battery on the 16F2-012 anyways? have you seen how long it lasts yet? (im mainly asking from a school environment, not how long it runs games)

 

I'm willing to bet that if you underclocked the video card when not gaming (MSI's afterburner can save multiple overclocking profiles) that it would last quite a while.

I haven't tested it though. I may give it a shot tomorrow at the office. I'll see what it does when I lower the GPU clock (not sure if that will actually help lower power draw to the card or not) and just surf the net all day on it with the screen at the middle brightness.

 

hello,

can i ask some questions a bit oot, can somebody point me where can i found the cmos battery for bios reset ?

i have been playing with unlocked bios feature and a faulty black screen appears .. hiks..

i think mine is also use 16f2 barebone

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/638321-16f2-battery.html

 

Why did you get the 1866 RAM with the i7 2630QM? I thought you needed the 27xx series to use anything faster then 1300? Or am I missing something here?

 

It was an option on Xotic's order page. I found it cheaper on newegg than what xotic was wanting for the upgrade so I got it from there and everything works great.

 

Overall, are you happy w/ the 570M? I'm thinking about MSI, just trying to decide 570M vs 580M. Skyrim runs on Ultra settings at 1080P on the 570?

Very nice looking machine you have.

 

I know it'll run fine, but I just wanted to know why you bought it. If the CPU can't support any RAM faster then 1300, AFAIK (I could be wrong), there is no reason to get faster RAM. Especially as faster RAM has higher CAS latencies. Right?

 

GTX570M ran BF3 on ultra and still running over 30fps! I highly doubt it wouldn't run skyrim maxed settings!

 

Can your show us the temps using HWmonitor, running a game and idle?

 

There is often a large gap between what intel says a chip is able to do and what it's actually able to do.

 

how would you calibrate the screen?

 

DCR Workshop: Color Calibration, Part I - YouTube

 

Thank you very much for this thread Fast, I myself just submitted a thread in the which laptop to buy board and I am heavily leaning towards this machine. You have swayed my decision even further and I especially like seeing your individual specifications on the settings and such.

I would probably get the same machine just the default ram, and just 1 hard drive; the 750 hybrid hard drive.

 

I am sooooo anxious to get my hands on mine. Patience is not one of my virtues!

 

Order mine a couple weeks ago. It gets here Wednesday, now I am looking all over about it just drooling.

Just curious do you have a picture of the back of it you could share? I am curious what logo/brand it has, and there are no good pictures of it anywhere. Although I do get it soon, so don't bother unless its handy...

I ordered the standard with a few upgrades:
Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz
GTX 580M
IC Diamond
30 day Dead pixel
Bigfoot 1103 3x3
OCZ Vertex 3 120gb
750gb 7200 rpm hdd

Came to just over $1800 shipped, since I ordered OS and SSD from newegg, it saved a bit of money.


One thing- I didn't notice the 3 antenna option on the 1103, and I see no point in only 2 antennas with it. I really wonder why they even have that option, since you might as well just get the 1102... I guess when I get my 450mbps router I will have to add the 3rd antenna, my current router is only 300 mbps so I guess it works for now.

More pictures and even video would rock! I can't wait for it... let me go refresh UPS.

 

That looks like an awesome build! I'm currently on the fence on ordering one with the gtx 580m or the stock gtx 570m. $400 bucks is a lot.

Please come back and post pics and your review if possible. This thread is what has convinced me to get the 16f2 over the sager.

thanks guys.

 

Well, I got mine a couple days ago. My first impressions:

Keyboard is sub-par, as people have pointed out. The spacebar actually has a little click to it and sometimes will want to stay down. I took it off and removed a little chunk of plastic under it, and it is a little better, but still slightly off.

Drivers are ridiculous. Some of them you have to get from the GT683 page, some the the GT685 page. Nvidia's drivers don't even recognize their own video card. The GTX 580m isn't exactly brand new, so this is extremely disappointing. They should have drivers that work by now. I'm using beta drivers, which seem to work OK, but Windows Experience Index won't run anymore. Xotic tech support pointed me to the beta drivers, and the guy I talked to was pretty friendly.

Windows experience Index: from top to bottom 7.5 7.6 7.5 7.5 7.6
I got the 580m overclocked to 750mhz stable, stock voltage, but WEI won't run due to a driver glitch. Not the biggest issue, but still annoying. I'd like to see what it registered with the card OC'd.

The lid is the same as the GT68X but came without any logo or decal. I have emailed MSI and Xotic because I think it looks dumb with the empty space there. Two days later, no answer. Not thrilled with Xotic, I have called for a couple small things and they tell me to email. I'd complain about the keyboard, but I don't want to send the whole laptop back for that one issue. I might just swap out the scissor spring from a key that doesn't get used much.

I don't know what the buttons at the top are supposed to do, like the webcam or windows logo button. Nothing happens when I click the windows one. The webcam one enables and disables the hardware. I don't know if I should try the 683 or 685 drivers.

The only game I have installed so far is Final Fantasy XIV. It runs smoother than my desktop with a GTX 470. That impressed me.

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling. I'll be glad to answer anyone's questions.

 

The windows button disables the windows key on the keyboard.

I think it's completely useless, and I would remap it if I could.

 

the top lid logo isn't there because it's not an MSI branded product so that's one reason. another is that Xotic didn't make their own badge to put there like I think one or two other 3rd party companies chose to do.

I can't comment on the 580 video drivers but for the rest of them, you should find all the drivers you need on the included cd.

The windows button I believe disables the windows key on the keyboard so if you press it by accident when gaming, it doesn't kick you out of the game and show the start menu popped open.

For the keyboard, go to any hardware store, target, walmart, arts and crafts store and buy the THIN 3M foam double sided tape. Apply a few strips as shown in my initial post and see if that helps. It made a huge difference on mine.

 

I have used the 3M as you did. Followed your pictures exactly, but the scissor under the spacebar is broken. So it catches and clicks and hangs.

As far as the logo, I assumed it would come with a MSi logo that we could put on if we wanted. That is the way my Sager came.

 

Sparker, try run WEI @ 740mhz instead of simply flash the vbios with the required clocks (750/1800 for instance)

WEI should be 7.7 after overclocking, 7.8 after overvolting and o/c.

 

So would you buy it again? Would you only recommend this to someone who's a tinkerer?

I get the feeling that this laptop is "all go and no show"

Still at the top of my list for my upcoming purchase.

 

It won't even run at stock clocks anymore. I have tried figuring out why, but no luck. The error log says "Could not create d3d Device". WEI is jacked up for some reason. Think it might be due to the driver, some people suggested wiping the WEI folders and trying from scratch. I have disabled every start-up item and service to see what might have interfered, and it still won't work.

 

I don't think one day is long enough to make that call. Every time I hit the spacebar I get annoyed. I hit the spacebar a lot. Chances of getting a bad spacebar are probably pretty low though.

Overall, it is a beast. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who expects things to "just work".

 

I kept playing around with it, and I disabled the Nvidia driver helper service, scored 7.7 @ 750 Core, stock memory speed.

 

I'm just curious, I just received my Force laptop with a 2670qm cpu. Are idle temps above 50c normal? Shouldn't I expect mid / lower 40s? GPU temps are fine, Idles 45c.

 

Mine idles @ 35-40 for both GPU and CPU, you should be aware of ur slightly high cpu temps.

 

Is there a decent amount of air coming out of yours? There is hardly any from mine.

 

Not really, you can feel the hot air but the fan is not blowing it in a decent amount. Anyway, you should monitor your temps while playn Makes more sens as when idle, I can't even feel any air coming out.

 

Also what are your load temps? I posted a separate post to see if I can fix the temp issue.

 

load temps should be around 65-85 depending on the game for the CPU and 78 for the GPU in worst case!

 

Okay, I guess I have cpu normal now, gpu is still a little high.
Getting lower 80s playing bfbc2.

 

Load temps in the 80's for a GPU aren't particularly bad.