Official MSI GX640 Owner's Thread

The reason the Envy's case is warm is the reason why the cpu run's cool. It's very efficient at dissipating heat and the case plays a part in absorbing some of it. Something to that effect according to the guys in the Envy threads.

 

Arghhh, guys, your are teasing me with those results. I wasn't planning to sell mine, but now I might reconsider my decision...

 

Yeah, but I was under the impression that it ran cool (the case itself) on battery power, which doesn't seem to be true.

 

I was just wondering, if the owners could do a full/mini review on the GX640.

Thanks alot!

 

I'll do that tonight or tomorrow. I already have the pictures in my digital camera, now I need to upload them.

 

One thing I haven't seen so far is a battery life test

 

I'm curious how noisy it is at under full load? I know thats subjective.. but... thoughts on this are always appreciated.

 

About the same noisiness as my G1S. Which, I suppose, may be a bit noisier than the average laptop, given that it has one heat vent and very powerful components.

Battery test, I can do later. Earlier I put the laptop on battery saving mode and pulled out the power cord, and Win7 estimated 2:30 remaining on 100% charge, 9 cell 84Whr. Although I doubt that that's completely accurate.

 

Pretty good ! Windows 7 is a bit pessimist IMHO, so I think you could get 3 hours of day-to-day tasks.

We're all waiting for the confirmation, however

 

use windows power saving mode + the eco turbo battery thingy (whatever it's called now) and see how much it will give you ..

 

thats amazing. faster than the last generation of 256 bit cards.

 

OK. I brought this thing to work with me, played around with it at lunch, put it back in the bag. I forgot one very critical thing - disable the entire "Sleep" functionality altogether in Windows. The thing turned itself on and burned out 20% of the battery before shutting back off. The scary thing is not the battery use, but that 20% of a 9 cell battery's energy storage got dissipated in my bag! The thing got so hot, holy cow.

As a reminder to everyone, if traveling with a laptop, always DISABLE SLEEP. Always hibernate or shut down completely!!

 

Was going to comment on the price, but I see that you beefed up your system.

 

Maybe it's not worth the test but... how much time can you get when putting wireless off?

Also, in your review, can you tell us about the screen? Is it alright even though it is not LED?

One last thing : how are the trackpad buttons? Does it feel cheap?

 

The track pad buttons don't feel cheap, since they're part of the brushed aluminum palm rest. Trouble is, though, they're kind of loud when you press them. Louder than my G1S, anyway.

Screen is quite nice, very little light leakage, less than on my G1S. The colors are more vibrant and the whites are true white also. I'm not feeling any issues with it not being LED.

LED back lit screens are known to have bad black levels, but high maximum brightness to compensate. This one's maximum brightness is probably about average, but the blacks are very nice.

 

How is the screen brightness of GX640? In the past, MSI laptops suffered from low brightness levels. How is the display now?


Thank you

 

Simple question for owners: what kind of keyboard/facing is it shipped with? The one shown on xotic's site (without all the gd stickers) doesn't have the strange "|/" key and has a normal sized spacebar, and also the top control panel is blue. The one on frostycomputers looks like it was just taken out of the box (covered with stickers...) and has the weird keyboard :/

Bonus question for canadian buyers: is the 3yr warranty US only? And where did you buy from?

 

pictures from frosty are actual pictures. xotic has fake ones.

 

I read through the warranty the other day and said it covers as long as you purchased the laptop in either USA or Canada so I assume it carries over

 

Just put my order in NCIX, will update when I receive the laptop. Cost me $1,286.97 CAD shipped. That's a very decent price for a laptop with such specs. Especially in Canada.

 

I think you could get a better price at PC Canada. 1139 CAD, free shipping, add taxes. (50 less than on NCIX)

I don't know if their reputation is equal to NCIX's though.

 

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=50207

This is the correct picture.

I haven't looked into the warranty yet, will do so on the weekend.

PC Canada supposedly adds 2% surcharge to the price, or so I was told when I got NCIX to pricematch them. Came to $1160 before tax and shipping from NCIX. The reason I ordered from NCIX is because doing so lets me avoid paying PST.

The screen is nice and bright in my opinion, brighter than the G1S's screen. It's not the brightest I've seen, though. Still, the black levels seem superb.

 

Can you comment on lap heat while doing regular tasks? How warm is it? (on battery power?)

 

I was playing Crysis with it earlier but not on my lap. After playing, the bottom of the notebook barely heated up at all, whereas my old G1S used to get burning hot on the bottom.

 

Dang.. so I'm assuming the ventilation does a pretty good job? That's my biggest issue with the Envy I have right now.. I'm just doing normal tasks right now and the bottom is quite warm... on bare skin its uncomfortable. I want to be able to use it as a "lap"top..

Also: How's the bloatware?

 

When the bottom of laptops get hot, its not so much a bad thing. You want the heat from the INSIDE to dissipate OUTSIDE. You should be worried if the envy doesn't get hot outside. That means all the heat is trapped INSIDE.

 

Therefore, you can either burn your hands or your GPU.

Make a wise choice

 

I understand that, except more often than not my laptop ends up on my lap when I'm not using it for intense tasks. I'd rather most of that heat going out the exhaust fans than sitting in the case... right now my fans are hardly blowing yet the front part of the laptop is uncomfortably warm. I'm surfing the web, that's it. Kinda dumb. I'd rather all that heat be coming out the sides, where my body and hands AREN'T.

 

1139.36*1.13 = 1,287.93 versus NCIX which was 1,286.97. NCIX would have been even cheaper had I not added $35 worth of insurance and express RMA. Both I hear are good sellers though.

 

Well, I got it with overnight shipping and insurance for $1260.

The temperatures, I played MW2 for a few hours and the max I saw was 84 for GPU, I think. A bit on the hot side, but still ok.

 

How's the review comming along? Waiting anxiously.

 

Please, include information about audiable noise level, temperatures, display quality ( black color level, contrast, brightness, vertical viewing angles, reflections ).

 

Eh... had a very stressful week, and it's 3AM and I'm still trying to fix problems that my blunders like updating Catalyst drivers have caused. Man, maybe I should have just left things be. I'm going to do a fresh reinstall of Win7 tomorrow and try again.

 

Any game benchmarks yet?

 

woot, i get to order after today...

 

That's the easiest thing to do , what you been doing exactly ?

 

I have had the chance to play with it for a little while. Screen is bright with vibrant colors. Used it for a couple hours last night doing a clean install of windows and installing my programs. Most of the time in my lap and never noticed it get hot.

One thing that is driving me crazy is the space bar. The rest of the key board is solid and firm. The space bar has lots of give and is loud when clicking on it. Anybody else notice this?

 

It'l possibly soften up willjob,

The modern warfare temperatures are good too min,

The cooling seems good enough for games then .

 

That's weird because the base price is 50 $ cheaper on PC Canada... maybe you bought from NCIX before they rose the price?

 

What FPS were you getting in CRYSIS AND MW2?

 

Seems like i was right regarding the cooling then

 

My keyboard's the same. Going to do the old double sided tape fix later.

Now I gotta work on the review.

I can show you a Crysis benchmark later. MW2.. When I was playing earlier, I didn't have fraps installed. But I put it to everything max, 1080p, including max AA, absolutely zero noticeable delay, no spike, nothing. SILKY smooth.

Mostly I removed bloatware and installed Catalyst 10.3. Problem with my catalyst installation is that, afterwards the computer never managed to successfully come out of hibernation.

Anyway, since the computer shipped with Win7 home premium and I have Win7 Professional from my university for free, I might as well install the better version.

 

It's not the first time I hear about that... but how do you do it (what is it exactly)?


I'm not used to open laptops everyday =)

 

It's okay, I will include that in my review. Oh, my review's on the first page of this thread, and I am updating it for every few sentences I write. So keep pressing refresh on the first page if you like

 

Have any World of Warcraft or StarCraftII FPS?

Also If you posted this earlier sorry, but what are your GPU/CPU temps at full load?

 

I haven't looked at CPU much, but I don't think it's very hot. The GPU usually goes up to about 80.

 

the msi dosn't have 1080p so howd u put it there

 

http://www.ncixus.com/products/48033/MS238H/ASUS/

 

10million to 1 contrast ratio? ?

 

Most likely a marketing gimmick. Still, the screen looks very beautiful.