The Official MSI GS73VR Owners' Lounge

NHF · Aug 26, 2016

Hi, guys:

Welcome to MSI GS73 owners' lounge. I definitely think this is a great combination of power and the mobility. The key reason I choose 17" because I really want to have the 120Hz screen with 5ms response time !!!

I found a MSI 120Hz 5ms video on Youtube:

Equiped with Nvdia Pascal VR Ready graphic card GTX1060

The skus proposed by MSI
GS73VR 062
GS73VR 052
GS73VR 025

They also provide the 4k panel as option
GS73VR 016

Some support links
BIOS
Driver
Firmware
Manual
Utility
Mouse Driver

Video

Where to buy

MSI Pascal landing page

Comment:

3DMARK Fire Strike score: 9489 (test with MSI sporty shift mode)

Graohics score: 11 596

Graphic test1 : 54.53 FPS

Graphic test2: 46.88 FPS

Physic scor 9378

Physics test 29.77 FPS

Combined score: 4047

Combined test 18.83 FPS

In-game test: Overwatch setting: 1920*1080/ Custom limit FPS/ EPIC graphic quality/ 100% Render Scale/ Local Fog detail Ultra/ Dynamic reflections high

FPS:97

TEM: 83°C

VRM: 1301MB

PMG: 61MS

RTT: 85MS

IND: 24M

Noise and temparature: I don't have any device to test noise and temperature, so I only can judge with my perception. The temprature is always acceptable and never overheat during the game. I touch the hotest part with my hand but I just feel warm. According to their product pages, they use 3 fans and 5 heatpipes for the cooling and one of 3 fans is a big fan with very thin blades. Really curious how they put 3 fans in a slim model as GS73. as caitsith01 said, it's quieter than I expect. With AC on on my home, I barely heart the noise when runing the Fire Strike test. With my AC off, I can hear the fan is runing. not really noisy but the frequency is kind of high, which I don't like.

"In progress"

DukeCLR · Aug 23, 2016

Are you currently using one? What kind of gaming performance are you getting?

NHF · Aug 24, 2016

I just ordered from newegg and waiting its arrival. I'm really not good on gaming performance test but I will update the basic test results. I think they claim around 40% or 50% of performance enhencement than 970M.

acerbhattac · Aug 23, 2016

Would be very interested in how hot/loud it gets under gaming load, and how hot/loud it is doing ordinary websurf / photo editing / office work.

I was not impressed with the 70 or 72. The gtx 1060 as a design runs hotter than the gpus they had in those.

DukeCLR · Aug 23, 2016

I can't wait to hear how you like it. Please keep us updated.

aban714 · Aug 24, 2016

Nice to see this lounge.
Do add any info that might be useful to the OP. Users who browse these forums, and who are looking for more info on the specific notebook, will really appreciate it as all the info in neatly in one post. Thank you

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

caitsith01 · Aug 24, 2016

I had one in my hot little hands, but there was a problem with it. I posted about it over at reddit, so I'll repost here:

I bought one of these the other day, although unfortunately it's had to go back to MSI as DOA... However, I did get to have a bit of a play with it. Thought others might like to hear some actual impressions, given the amount of confusing marketing material out there at the moment.

First impressions, coming from a 4-5 year old Asus gaming laptop but primarily using a fairly beefy desktop gaming system:

The screen is glorious. This was the 1080p 120Hz model. The response time and refresh rate make it noticeably more responsive, even (in my entirely subjective opinion) on the desktop. I only had the chance to install one game (Dirty Bomb) but it was silky smooth. No idea if it is IPS (I don't think so). Viewing angles were not great, but colour was nice. Reds were especially nice compared to most laptops I've used, and I was surprised to see that MSI's out of the box calibration was much closer to correct than most laptops, which typically have a really strong blue cast to them. I have a calibrated Panasonic plasma TV, and the MSI was pretty close to it right from the get go.

The 5400rpm (?) hard disk is a total disgrace. Why the hell would you put this POS in such a high end machine? It means that you have an uber-responsive unit which then slows to a crawl when you run anything off the secondary disk. E.g. Dirty Bomb, which is a last generation, fairly lightweight Unreal Engine game, took a solid 30-40 seconds to load before a round, and this was all because of the hard disk thrashing wildly (I installed it on the secondary HDD as an experiment). You would definitely have to swap this out for an SSD to get the most out of this thing.

The build quality was overall very impressive. Pretty much all brushed metal, IMHO subtle enough for professional/study use. It's ludicrously thin, but the 17" form factor means it's still a big unit. You wouldn't want to use it on a plane, for example, and it doesn't fit comfortably in my current work satchel.

The power brick appears to be made of uranium and is very heavy.

The touchpad is a million times better than my ASUS.

The keyboard is quite nice for a laptop, although I used a mechanical keyboard on my desktop so all laptops feel like crap compared to that. Still, fairly nice. No Windows key on the left which is annoying and weird, and the delete key is in a weird spot. The lighting is hilariously ridiculous. I expect I would end up turning it down to almost nothing pretty quickly.

It comes pre-installed with a whole lot of crapware. Like, about 12-15 little programs start when it starts. Most of them seem lightweight and actually have some purpose, but still, it needs a good clean up. The m2 masks the extent to which it is loaded with crap, it loads very, very quickly from a cold boot.

It also comes with Norton. God dammit, MSI. Why? Do you want to punish people for buying your hardware?

The sound is ok, but pretty typical for a laptop (a bit tinny/muffled compared to real speakers or headphones). Headphones sounded very good, no idea if the fancy sound processing it allegedly has was doing anything though.

In a game, it is quite loud. My older laptop was also a bit noisy, but had a bigger/fatter chassis. You can really tell that the GS73VR is trying very hard to push air out of a small space. The GPU fan in particular really makes some noise when it fires up. There are fan controls, which I had a bit of a play with, and I believe it will be possible to get this down to a reasonable level for most games without the temps getting too bad.

In terms of temps, it did get noticeably hot while gaming. But I was able to have it on my lap. It's winter/early spring here (Australia). This thing would be uncomfortable on your lap in summer while gaming. The heat was worst on the underside, but pretty severe on top too. That said, internal temps were quite good (hovering in the 60-70 degree range).

Now, the problem I had. It had a weird, crackly, electronic noise. Sort of a combination of scraping, electronic chirping, and that sound that a small electrical short makes. Not present all the time, but certainly present after the machine warms up. Oddly, it was not present during gaming for the most part, but was very noticeable when doing ordinary desktop tasks. My perception was that it was linked to the secondary HDD doing stuff, but it wasn't a normal hard disk noise. The trackpad also seemed to cause problems. So, sadly, I had to immediately take my new toy back to the shop. Thankfully they were very good about the problem, and MSI (Australia) were also very good and agreed to treat it as DOA - so there was no attempt by MSI to suggest that this noise was normal. Their suggestion was that it sounds like a bad solder point causing something to generate electrical interference.

So - overall, a very nice unit, but a bit bigger/heavier than expected and so not particularly mobile. A+ build quality other than the minor issue of something shorting out or causing an odd noise inside the unit(!). I now have to decide whether to stick with a new GS73VR, or switch to something else. I'm tempted by the GS63VR, but I don't want to give up the lovely 120Hz screen and I am concerned about the cooling situation where essentially identical hardware will be crammed into a much smaller space.
Click to expand...

aban714 · Aug 24, 2016

@caitsith01, thank you for the review
I should say, you are more thorough than most of the initial reviews around the web at this time regarding these notebooks hehe kudos for that

Cooling i guess should be essentially similar on the GS63VR and the GS73VR. If im not wrong, both use the same design cooling solution. Its really good to know that your temps were around 60-70c. Im guessing with something like a witcher 3, temps will be lower 80s and high 70s. But im hoping for 80c max . Most of the reviews up until now say around 78c internal temps.

So did you RMA?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

NHF · Aug 24, 2016

caitsith01 said: ↑

I had one in my hot little hands, but there was a problem with it. I posted about it over at reddit, so I'll repost here:
Click to expand...

Thanks caitsith01 posted the review before I got mine. I will check the problem you mention. nice they took this as DOA. I checked, all MSI 120 Hz panels aren't IPS. It should be wide view TN panel or something with 94% NTSC gamut according the spec chart. Anyway, this doesn't bother me.

caitsith01 · Aug 24, 2016

MSI agreed to treat it as DOA and so I am entitled to a new one (or I can just cancel what is now effectively a pre-order, because that was the only one in stock at the place I bought it).

I would think the size difference between the 63 and 73 would make the 73 slightly quieter and cooler. Just more materials to absorb and dissipate heat, and more separation between components.

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