MSI gx660r-060 is what we've been waiting for

Thank you

KR

 

They should accept paypal, if not email Ken at Gentech, last time i talk with him, he did accept paypal.

 

i have never personally bought from them, but i have heard fairly good things about them....

 

I emailed Ken and he answered:

I would buy from them first

 

Hey guys!

I'm new here and just ordered a MSI GX660R-060US and I'm pretty stoked about it. I'm a graphic designer, computer music creator, college student, and moderate gamer. With the exception of buying more RAM and giving it a hard drive upgrade later on, I don't plan on modding it out since this will be my first laptop, I'm broke, and I don't want to dance with the devil lol. However, I wanted to ask any of you for some advice.

I want to make sure the laptop is fully functional when I receive it so I do want to test all aspects of it to make sure it's running in tip top shape. I'm not overly interested in overclocking it until it crashes, but I'd just like to know I have a nice, functional laptop before the RMA period expires.

Any suggestions??

It's been fun reading this post and hearing how much everyone is enjoying this beast. I'm looking forward to checking out some more modern games.

Thanks!

Jason

 

Update: I did a clean windows install and when I was finished my sub is working and there is a sweet realtek audio suite. NOW the sound is just what they said it was, best I have heard on laptop and exactly what I was hoping for.

I can't seem to find the driver for the built in webcam though. Or find it in the manager but I'll trade webcam for speakers any day.

 

Good to hear you have your audio working now. This webcam uses the native driver bundled in Windows 7.

 

Problem is I don't think Windows sees it. Could one of you owners let me know what it is suppose to be under in Device manager?

Maybe walk through me how to find it in a PM? I'm sorry this isn't a tech help thread but ...

I did the auto scan for plug and play devices other than that I'm not sure hot to make windows find it. Skype doesn't see it obviously.

 

I just ordered my GX660 from XoticPC with a 80GB SSD 3 days vefore the Labor Day weekend. I really hope I get it before the end of the week.

 

Congrats Rob, you will be pleased. Very happy with my laptop and very happy with XoticPC's service.

 

You have to activate it first with the hotkeys. I forget the hotkey, but it's fn+one of the f-keys. Windows didn't see it either--I couldn't install the drivers for it--until I turned it on.

 

Hey so I've got this same blue screen a couple of times.
Could someone assist me in this?
Thanks.
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 1a
BCP1: 0000000000005003
BCP2: FFFFF70001080000
BCP3: 0000000000000628
BCP4: 0000062A00800C50
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1
Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\090610-25896-01.dmp
C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-50684-0.sysdata.xml
Read our privacy statement online:
Windows 7 Privacy Statement - Microsoft Windows
If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

 

What does Event Viewer say? Also, what were you doing before the BSOD?

 

Thanks Forge, I forgot about those. I'll try it when I get home but I'm sure that is what I needed.

 

What's the main difference between the HM55 & PM55 motherboards. Is one better in performance than the other or have better architecture that would make much difference. What are the benefits of each, I know PM55 is older and supports raid has the express card slots and is in the GX660r but that's about it.

 

ok i need to confirm this, what is the warranty on this unit, about the the international, is it 1 or 2?

the web panchowska gave said it has 3 years usa and 2 years international warranty.

 

Sorry I didn't notice your reply sooner PTRob, FN+F6 I believe turns on the Camera. (Should have a little Camera Icon on the F6 Key)

 

Just pulled the trigger on this laptop. I can't wait for it to arrive.

 

I think that depends on the shop.

Xotic has 1 year.

 

Anybody know what software this is in the attachment.
It's the gray thing at the bottom right of the screen.
I got rid of RAID without burning the MSI recovery disk since I had some problems so I erased all the programs.
I liked that little feature so I was wondering if someone can like upload it or show me where to download it.
I also need the MSI burn recovery.
I wish someone would kindly upload it online or show me where to download it as MSI doesn't offer it.
Thanks a lot for helping if you can.

 

guys how good is the web cam? since they are promoting it as one of their selling points.
battery, can it last at least 2 hours? what is the best time you guys get from the battery.

 

Best time I have got so far is 3 hours with battery ECO settings.

 

hey Forge, I am planning on doing the reinstall of windows that you did with a separate iso file... Will I lose anything like the turbo OC, eco setting software, recovery program or anything else that I won't be able to recover (not on included system disks?)... Just wondering

Thanks,
superoo3p

 

web cam is supposed to be great from what I've heard

Edit: sorry for double post =S

 

does the body for GX660R have a plastic lid or a solid material?

 

Plastic, but pretty sturdy other than the keyboard which does flex a little

 

The driver disc that came with the computer comes with all those utilities. Just install those after reinstalling Windows.

 

Alright sounds good thanks!

 

Protip: if you're going to use aftermarket thermal pads on the GPU, make sure you have good contact. If you're using the 1mm BergQuist thermal pads, you will need a copper shim.

I touched the "go" button on Furmark, and literally two seconds after that my GPU hit 100C. Upon reopening the laptop I saw that only a little corner was contacting the heatsink. A simple sliver of copper fixed that, thank God.

As of right now, ten minutes after logging on, with my holey bottom panel and 16 blocks of copper (eight on the GPU, eight on the CPU), my CPU is idling in the mid-forties and my GPU just hit 42C.

 

Hey guys, I got my GX660 this week, mostly due to information I read on this website (and thread), so thanks!

I am really pleased with it so far. Sound is good, screen is fine for me, and it plays WoW/Starcraft 2 really well, so it's just what I needed.

Two questions though: 1. Why does the framerate in WoW drop when I press the Turbo button? 2. I have a spell bound to shift+z in WoW, and sometimes I try to cast that while running (holding w), but it doesn't work. The keyboard doesn't seem to register all 3 keys at once. Any ideas on that?

Thanks!

 

Will the GX660 support an i7-920xm or i7-940xm? I've searched around a bit and can't seem to find a mention of this.

 

Mine just arrived 5 minutes or so ago! of course now I have to sit here all day at work, waiting impatiently to get home and tear into this beast . I'll try to post some benches after I get her all cleaned up and ready to party.

 

yep definitely support that processor, just whether you want to spend those cash or no t

not to mention, you need a bigger wattage of psu when you get the xm processor since the psu that came with the gx660r are supposedly only 120w

 

Nice, be sure to throughly enjoy it's power

And yeah the GX660 should support any current core i7 CPU, including 920m and 940m

 

Yeah the EXTREME i7 will work but they are a little overkill even for gaming, only reason to get one is going for the highest benchmark scores.
Better off getting a SSD, now that would really be a upgrade that is worth doing.

 

Ikas, when are you getting your replacement GX660R, young man?

 

Hi guys. I plan to get this laptop. I just have 2 questions so that I can decide which parts to get in it.

1) What is the default wireless card? How does it compare to the Intel 6200?

2) Can you overclock the CPU (either in BIOS or Windows)? I want to know because I plan to play GTA IV and use AutoCAD, and I need to know if I should get the 840QM instead of the 740QM. If overclocking the 740QM could take it to 840QM speeds, then the only factor would be how much performance cache adds (6MB vs 8MB).

I've overclocked many desktop processors through the BIOS, but this will be my first gaming laptop, so I'm not sure about overclocking with it.

 

Concerning wireless, it depends on what you're using it for. For the majority of people here, even on a techy website like this, it'll be mainly for gaming and surfing. The stock Intel 1000 is perfectly adequete for those tasks. For me, though, I opted for the Intel 6200 since I'm moving multi-gigabyte folders wirelessly between my computer and my NAS and I could use the extra bandwidth.

The CPU cannot be overclocked in BIOS. However, there is a one-touch overclocking program in Windows that MSI has built-in. Touch a button and you're overclocked. I'm not sure on the performance gains, though. I'll hit up WPrime or something.

The 740qm is about the same level as an 820qm, and the 840qm is about a 920qm Extreme. Use that information how you will.

 

If you upgrade your wireless card, I was reading in the Dell section (almost a week ago) that it increases your download/transfer speed by up to 30% and connection stability/range.

As for overclocking, I'll let someone else answer that

 

In wPrime for the 32m test, it took my stock 740qm 23.243 seconds.
With the overclock button, it was 21.353 seconds.

About a 9% faster with the overclock in that particular benchmark.

 

Ack! Disaster!

So I did a clean install, everything was going great until I got to the ATI drivers, the second I installed 10.8, I got a GSOD. Okay no problem I thought, I cleaned up the driver install in safe mode and reapplied it, no GSOD for an hour or so after, I thought I was good....But then, I tried watching a 1080p video on YouTube and got the dreaded pin stripe suit pattern and another lockup.

By this time, my concern level had risen considerably and I decided to load up furmark and see if my fears would be confirmed...They were. 2 furmark runs. First resulted in orange pinstriped screen, Second resulted in black screen, both happend in less than 5 seconds.

Gonna RMA this unit for sure, and not sure if I'm gonna request an exchange or a refund and try my luck elsewhere . For anyone keeping a tally, chalk mine up as a lemon.

 

Weird. Was it displaying this behavior before the clean install?

 

Not to my knowledge, but I also didn't do very much before the clean install. I did play one 1080p clip in youtube before install, but that was it. I just tried reinstalling 10.8 again using the following process:

1. unistalled driver
2. Used Driver Sweeper in safe mode to remove all instances of video driver
3. Reinstalled 10.8.
4. Rebooted
5. Ran Furmark...and same results, orange pinstripes

Gonna try it with stock drivers and see if it works.

Update: Reinstalled the stock ATI drivers that come on the DVD. Same result, after about 5 seconds of furmark, black pinstripe screen o death.

GPU temp is around 59-61 C when this happens each time, so definitely not overheating.

 

RMA the unit. it seems the GPU was bad from factory so you need to replace it. Get your unit replaced! You shouldn't have such problems on stock.

 

I've decided to go with the stock 740QM. If I find it's too slow for my liking, I'll upgrade to the 840QM myself since it would only cost ~$10 more off of Newegg. Then I can sell the original 740QM, maybe, depending on what that would do to the warranty.

Now I still need to decide if it's worth getting the Intel 6200... Does the range increase with the 6200? I would only be using it for gaming and surfing the web. In my dorm, I'm only getting 10Mbps download and 5Mbps upload, so that would be the bottleneck in my connection.

 

For only gaming and web, in all normal circumstances I would say no. The 6200 will really shine when you need the bandwidth to punt files around in a network, like I do.

Do you have another laptop right now? If you do, what wireless card does it use and how is it faring in connection speed?

Furthermore, are you using your own router? Draft-N needs some special settings to get peak performance, anyway. If there's a school router that's configured, say, to only have WEP encryption, you'll be sucking on 54mbps only.

 

I'm currently using the Asus UL30VT-A1. It has the Atheros AR9285 wireless card. It's for class (with a 10 hour battery life ), but I need a gaming laptop also. I did a speed test and got the 10Mbps download and 5Mbps upload that my previous post stated.

I'm using an Asus RT-N16 router with an updated version of the stock firmware, but I plan to flash it with DD-WRT at some point.

I was using the router at home with the same firmware as an access point. On wireless from this laptop, I was getting 22Mbps download and 17Mbps upload, and on wired it was 43 and 22, respectively.

That shows the bottleneck is definitely the school's connection, not my router or laptop.

Also, I don't know how the router is set up right now in the dorm. At home, I had it set up as an access point, but here, I literally just plugged it in, and it's working wireless and wired. I even have no idea what its IP is. The one that I assigned it at home is not working for accessing it. I tried IP config, but none of the addresses worked. In the bottom-right of Windows, if I highlight my router's SSID, it says it's in 802.11n mode, even though it was in G at my house, which tells me the router configured itself...

Just so you know, at my school, there is no wifi. We have to bring our own router to get it. Otherwise, we only get a wired connection. We also get to create the SSID, encryption, etc for the router. I don't know enough about networking to explain it very well or know how they have their network set up.

 

So you'll be using your own router then? Do you think range or interference might be a problem?

(And don't worry about the networking details, for two reasons. One, I'm only interested in the laptop-router-local network connection, not laptop-router-internet. Two, You probably know more about networking anyway. Haha.)

So, like I said, I still recommend keeping the stock card. See how it goes. And if you find you're not getting good signal strength--which I doubt since your router is pretty powerful--or you get yourself a home (dorm?) network and need the bandwidth, then upgrade the wifi. Not to hard to do.

Speaking of which, I should sell my Intel 1000.

 

Yes, I'll be using my own router. I got a signal 4 floors down from my router on my iPhone today while I was doing laundry, so I don't think interference is much of a problem.

I'll stick with the default network card. Isn't it hard to change, though? XoticPC's video review said it was on the top of the motherboard, and not under the keyboard area, so I would have to take off the top part of the shell.

Also, does anyone know what happens to the warranty if I manually change the CPU, wireless card, RAM, or anything?

 

You know the little top bar where you have the speakers and hotkeys? Just pry that off and you'll see the wireless card. Not too hard to do, though remember to open the laptop screen as far back as it will go, since the hinges will block the removal of the bar. A flat tool like a putty knife is a lifesaver.