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[MINUS12]

Im stuck for choice!!

Alienware m17x nvidia 280 sli, INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q9100(2.26) i can get this for £1050 off a mate or buy a new MSI GX660r.

Obviously the dell would be quicker, but i wanted a Direct x 11 graphic card!

What do you reckon guys is direct x11 tessalation worth it ??

Also can you switch graphic cards as the i5 has a integrated gpu doesnt it ?

Cheers

 

[Davey D]

I dont think its worth buying a card just for DX11, as it isnt massively in use yet, and probarbly wont be for a while. Just look what happened with DX10 when it came out.

 

[HOkay]

Im stuck for choice!!

Alienware m17x nvidia 280 sli, INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q9100(2.26) i can get this for £1050 off a mate or buy a new MSI GX660r.

Obviously the dell would be quicker, but i wanted a Direct x 11 graphic card!

What do you reckon guys is direct x11 tessalation worth it ??

Also can you switch graphic cards as the i5 has a integrated gpu doesnt it ?

Cheers

Yeah screw DX11 tbh, if that was my choice (with those prices) and the M17x was in good condition I'd almost certainly take that. Going to be generally much faster and that extra 2" screen size gets a thumbs up from me after having gone from 17" down to 15"...

 

[MINUS12]

I eventually decided to buy the MSI GX660r for £896

I opted for the MSI because, it has USB 3.0, good cooling,good sound,2 yr warranty,Radeon 5870 and very well priced

I didnt buy the alienware cause it had no warranty and i was worried about expensive repairs if it failed

Nevermind im sure ill be happy with my choice, as im not to worried about 2 inches screen difference

Ill let you know as soon as i get it

 

[barrix]

Where did you get for £896. Damn you luck you. You saved another 50 quid.

You wont regret your choice. There are less laptop with new 3.0 USB and eSata at the same time for external portable drives. Comes with HDMI It has good cooling fan for gaming like notebook fan. It will knook off 5 to 10 degree on graphic and cpu Too much pros.

 

[HOkay]

Where did you get for £896. Damn you luck you. You saved another 50 quid.

You wont regret your choice. There are less laptop with new 3.0 USB and eSata at the same time for external portable drives. Comes with HDMI It has good cooling fan for gaming like notebook fan. It will knook off 5 to 10 degree on graphic and cpu Too much pros.

If it was my choice I would have gotten this anyway. A winning factor was yday I got to compare it directly the the 14" HP Envy which is a similar price and the comparison between the speakers was just embarassing! I didn't think I would care about the speakers but it's so nice to have capable ones!

 

[barrix]

MSI has the speaker sound system on Laptop in my opinion so far.!

 

[MINUS12]

The touchpad isnt very responsive...is this normal

Everything else is awesome

 

[barrix]

I didn't like the touchpad. It is so hard. I have to touch so hard to move around. I use external USB mouse. Never used touchpad.

 

[DJKongo]

So how difficult is it exactly to upgrade this laptop? I'm not particularly technically efficient but I've ordered myself a WD 500GB HD and an Intel SSD with the mind of upgrading my GX660 from the stock drives. The new drives and laptop should be delivered tomorrow (fingers crossed) and I intend to make the swap right away. Will I have trouble swapping the drives out and getting my W7 OS installed onto the SSD or is it a doddle? Will I lose any software or features that come preloaded on the system by doing a completely fresh install on a new HD?

Also, I've bought the 6GB model but would rather take the 2GB stick out in favour of an identical 4GB stick. Can anyone direct me to somewhere I can pick up a lone 4GB stick of memory that will fit well with what's already in the laptop?

Thanks.

 

[MINUS12]

Congratulations on your purchase DJKongo

Im about to buy an Intel SSD drive and a Western digital Scorpio black for my MSI gx660r...I was also wondering about what DJKongo asked ?

Few Questions:

Should i do a fresh install on my retail copy or just use the recovery method.

Do i have to set SATA mode to AHCI.

Is it simple to install Win 7 to SSD.

What raid config do i need to setup in bios so i can use SSD as OS drive and the scorpio black as the games,mp3s etc folder??

Does the parking fix work ?

cheers peeps

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

How are people finding fan noise on the 660? is it loud/acceptable? hard to find a good answer

 

[ste-sim2x9]

Fan noise is fine but the fan does go very loud when the fan turbo button is pressed.

 

[ttaM]

Just purchased myself a 660 as I'm fed up of buying different bits just to keep my 5 year old pc build running (keeping going doesn't mean upgrading!).

How's the hard drives in this? I'm hearing they can have a weird read time in that they pause for a second every now and then when gaming?

Doesn't particularily bother me as I'll mostly be playing mmorpgs and the like but just wondered if anyone else experienced the same thing.

 

[tenikis]

The fan noise is fine unless its on full when you're hitting absolute max temps, then its quite loud.

The drives this originally came with (WD Blue) are ****, and I mean awfully ****.

Even if you're playing MMOs you will go mad because they caused every game I played (including MMOs) to pause for 3-5 seconds every 30 seconds. Basically it made games unplayable. Apparently the new batches come with Hitachi 7200k drives which dont have this problem. So I'am guessing someone mentioned to MSI their 'gaming laptop' did not come with gaming HDs and they sorted it out.

Upgrading the HDs is a piece of ****, 10 min job max.

Flip over the laptop and unscrew all the screws (you'll need a minature screwy to do this) holding the big black panel down including the one with the warranty void if removed bullsh1t sticker over it. Take panel off revealing all the internal gubbings including harddrives. Unscrew them, take off the metal caddy things, put them on new drives, screw them back in, put panel back on...volia.

At bootup press delete to go into bios and goto boot tab. Select the drive you want as boot drive first (this is where u choose the SSD as booty), save and exit, install windows onto it. AHCI mode is fine. Infact IDE mode would be fine also. No need to change any raid options unless you're going to be using it, although these are accessed via its own boot menu after the bios boot menu....if you care...

Forget the hard drive parking fix. More trouble than its worth when you can spend £30-£50 extra for a wd black and be running just fine.

Ram is the same. With the back panel off, center of the laptop, take out the sticks you dont want, put the ones in you do. Job done.

 

[ttaM]

Cheers.

Seems like a massive stitchup having to replace hard drives that come with a 'gaming' laptop because they run at 5400rpm and are cheap as chips.

Ah well everything else in this laptop is pretty damn good for the price so I guess I'll just get a new 500gb one in there and leave it at that.

 

[Worthy]

Cheers.

Seems like a massive stitchup having to replace hard drives that come with a 'gaming' laptop because they run at 5400rpm and are cheap as chips.

Ah well everything else in this laptop is pretty damn good for the price so I guess I'll just get a new 500gb one in there and leave it at that.

The parking fix does work pretty well, but it isn't perfect. It improved WoW a lot for me, but CoD4 was pretty unplayable in fairness.

 

[MINUS12]

Thanks tenikis

 

[DJKongo]

What exactly are the pros of using AHCI mode? I've read elsewhere that it's only really useful if you're using a server and that performance boosts for standard use are pretty negligible and that sometimes it's responsible for slowing things down rather than boosting them.

 

[ttaM]

In the end went a bit crazy and have purchased an SSD drive instead, can't wait for it all to arrive now though!