MSI G70-3CC destroyer Review & tweaking guide

[chad2625]

Not a huge fan of unboxing reviews so I did take a few photos to show off, but nothing major. The thing to note was the inclusion of a driver DVD that made me very happy. It includes just the basics, chip set and wifi and nic.

This notebook right out of the box looks bad ass, it has a led light no the top of the lid that just says look at me, it is the MSI dragon shield logo. Multi color backlit keyboard is just freaking great. The notebook is well built and very heavy all the power, and outputs HDMI, displayport and nic are in the back. I have mixed feelings about placing them there, I think they could be easily forgotten, but it does keep them out of the way. The exception to this is the power cable which has a huge core filter on it and it tends to get in the way of setting the notebook down. The keyboard is very nice, it is quiet and works well it is made by steel series and is a tough construction. the backplate of the keyboard is all metal, instead of plastic. The touchpad has a physical on/off switch which is much better than a FN key combo. The top of the chassis overhangs a little and protects usb devices plugged into it, a nice touch. The bottom of the notebook is nice it has lots of little legs to keep it level but from sitting on a surface either to help it be drink spill resistant or to give it better air flow. It is one important note, to upgrade hard drives, ram, anything like that you must VOID your Warranty. If you can get this customized with the features you like do it or be prepared to void that guy out.

Hardware.

The G70-3cc came with a m290x it says, but it is reported to me as being a Radeon 8970M, which as far as I am concerned is great because it is faster. It supports hybrid cross fire, if I read hardware section of the CCC, it say it is linked to the APU. The integrated 8650G is fully and stably overclockable to 1300 mhz, but that isn't too important to me. In benchmarks I see maybe a 50 to 150 mark increase (3dm11). I really like the APU format, but the A10-5750 is definitely the set back on this computer, a core I5 would have made a better choice, but its what we have to work with. We can lock this guy into 3.1ghz turbo mode which I will cover later. Normally I don't believe the cpu performance hype, but there are games that Need that high performance Cpu, games like Skyrim, and the likes. Theoretically If you do want to use the physx mod then you have to run in on the CPU which should be hard on the slower CPU.

The sound quality of this laptop by far was some of the best sound I have heard. It’s speakers are nice and robust and can get annoying loud in a busy room. this computer doesn't have the tinnie sound problem as it comes with a “subwoofer” or a speaker dedicated to lower frequencies. The creative sound app is nice it comes with some preset eq some digial surround sound for your headphones. Another feature I like about the sound card was that it had 2 inputs (mic and line in) and two outputs, so in theory you could run 4 speaker surround system. The sound card is made by realtek and not creative btw.

Now lets talk about the 8970M this card is freaking awesome, it beats my old OC’d 650 GT sli set up. As the only real games my 650s could not handle was on full settings were Metro 2033 last light, and maybe Xplane.

Now lets void the warranty!

So I wanted to add my two 480GB solid states (in raid which is awesome), there is a real lack of info here so lets get some facts out. NO there is no free Msata port (full size minipcie) there is an empty 2.5 slot with the necessary hook up, you are how ever missing the kit that holds the drive down. I'm using an msata in a 2.5 in adapter so its light enough. The other thing I thought was odd was 12GB of ram, in 8gb and 4gb. The GPU on the APU best works when you dual channel, so why aren't we here in such an high end notebook even worse you void your warranty to fix it.

SCORES (out of)

Looks

XXXXX

Gaming

XXXXX

Performance

XXX

Upgradability

XX

Over all

XXXXX

My thoughts,

At $1100 this is one hell of a gaming laptop, it will beat hands down anything that nvidia can put out for the price, I am more of a GPU guy so I am inherently biased, someone who is more CPU driven will tell you to look for an intel cpu, but if this is in your budget then you will love this guy.

Recommend?

Hell Yea

My tweaks use at own risk voids your warranty (if you haven't already)

FIrst of all I installed MSI Afterburner and got the core clock up to about 1000 Mhz , and ram up to about 1175 MHZ . Next and to my surprise I Oc’d the APU to 1300Mhz and saw a cpu score boost in 3dm11. I then took a copy of the bios, and increased the voltage to 1.225 V for the top two Pstates from there I could get the core up to 1175 mhz and mem up to 1300 (ATM). And saw good increase in performances. I have Bios for both increased voltages at stock clocks and at 1175 core and 1300 mem if anyone wants them ask me if a get a few requests Ill post them. 0

I mentioned earlier that you can modify your computer to so that it always stays in the 3.1 Ghz power state. Here is how, and be warned it’s tricky but nothing you're going to do here is permanent it will reset on next boot!

1)Google and download an app called Bar-edit, install restart computer blah blah blah.

1. open bar-edit go to Bus 0 Device 24 function 3
   
   1. 
      
   2. 3 up from the bottom right hand corner corner find bits 31 and 30 both should be 1 and the very first numbers change to 0. Not that below the box you are editing there is something that tells you what Bit location you are editing.
      
   3. on the row next to it (left) you wanna go 6 up from the bottom and change bits 9 and 10 to 0, they both should be 1’s if not something isnt right
      
      
   4. enjoy 3.1 ghz while gaming…
      
      
      This still doesn't make up for the choice of cpu but you could see performance increases of 10 to 15% I have seen reports of 20% but I don't believe I saw those in benchmarks.
      Credit goes to someone else for cpu Tweak I just watched a video that explained it who learned it from someone else. So thank you nameless pc tweaker
      3dmark scores
      Stock
      http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8721256
      [h=1]P4921 ouch [/h]
      Fully Moded. Custom Bios (xmp 16gb at 1867), Custom Video Bios, 3.1GHZ lock 1150mhz core 1300mhz mem
      http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8732247
      [h=1]P5570 EHH[/h]650m sli with intel core i7
      http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7875095
      [h=1]P5752 [/h]the power of a better cpi