MSI GT725, ATI 4850m dead, looking for a replacement card..

Hi all

The 4850 Mobility in my GT725 is dying. I have put it in my oven several times but it is still very weak...

I have found this on Ebay ( NEW FOR Asus W90VP ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 512MB Crossfire Video Card | eBay ) and I was wondering if it is possible to put it in my GT725...

Do I need to do some bios mod or things like that?

Thank you

 

A very good chance it will work. A little bump in performance for you too if it does too. Looking at 550mhz stock core clock vs 500mhz on the 4850 if I am not mistaken. The 4870M is however also GDDR3 not GDDR5 like it's desktop version. Sadly.

Anyways unless your MSI only allows a certain MSI 4850 to work with it you should be good. Perhaps someone else can chime in. You could PM user "niffcreature" he is the foremost expert on MXM 2.1 cards and older MSI laptops on here and would know for sure if it would work or not.

 

Hello

Thank you for your answer. I have PM'ed him. It is indeed almost my only possibility since I don't really want to spend money in a slower card that the one I have currently..!

However, I have found a post of him saying that the MSI laptop do have a different video card output layout and that some cards from different OEM won't display on the in built screen...

 

From my experience I tried the exact card that you had from your laptop. The MSI GT725 a 4850 MXM 2.1 III card in my old asus C90P. The card only outputted to external monitor.

Now your situation is exactly opposite. The 4870 for the W90vp is a totally asus card and you want it to work in your MSI. I cannot say for certain whether the problem lies with the MSI card or with the MSI system bios. Worth a try perhaps but I hope you can hear from niffcreature before you make your decision.

Good luck!! I really hope it can work out!

 

Hello

Thank you for your interesting answer. It is indeed what I am fearing.. niffcreature can't help me sadly since he doesn't remember.

I don't really want to waste money if it doesn't work on the built in screen...

 

Hi guys,

similar problem here but my 4850 mobility seems to be dead already.

It was working like a charm for more than 4 years, no issues ever.

On the 27th of Dec my gt725 suddenly turned off during playing World of Tanks.
I was playing this game a lot on my gt725 for more than 2 years and never any signs of fps drop, overheating etc. nor this time.
Anyway it turned off and it was impossible to turn it on with AC adapter/battery/both.
At the moment it broke down it had both battery and adapter attached.

I went to one of the London laptop repair services which advertise on their website that they specialize in MSI amongst other brands.
They said it is an graphics card issue. They reflow my 4850 mobility and also replaced one burned MOSFET on it.
After that there was FurMark burn-in test running for 10 min and everything seemed fine - max 78 C, 8 fps.
So both me and them thought the job was done.
What they did as well was cutting the edge of my AC adapter jack cause there was no contact.

At home it turned off again after 30 minutes of web browsing...
Went back to the shop, they said that the replacement MOSFET is dead, but it was 40A in place of original 50A, now they put 100A so should be 200% fine.
I've seen it working for a few minutes in an idle desktop.

At home, after 26 minutes the screen started to blink and then just appeared grey with green vertical stripes. Unplugged the power, waited couple of minutes, turned it on - Windows started but after 4 minutes again grey screen and then black but laptop was still on. When I was unplugging my adapter jack I've noticed that the battery charging diode blinked briefly.

So couple of questions:
- Does it look to you that there is any chance for my 4850M to work normal again?
To me not really...

- Does it look it is only graphics card issue? Or can some short circuits from power supply also come into play?

- What are the graphics card replacement options?
I understand from the previous posts that there are some manufacturer cross-compatibility issues, but lets say I will try with MSI compatible card.
Am I right that 4xxxM are the only options or not even that? (I wouldn't mind having 4650M put instead).

- Do you think it is worth trying to put my gt725 back to life at all?
It is over 4 years old, in terms of technology 5+ years. On the other hand it seems to me powerful enough to serve even 3 years more (I lost a pace with the newest games long time ago) and has one big advantage - screen in 16:10 format which is way more convenient to work with for long hours without external screen than 16:9 of the recent laptops.

Tomorrow I will take my gt725 to the service again but I'm loosing hope so any advice appreciated.

Thanks and a Happy New Year!

 

Time to say goodbye - unless you want to sink real money into an old platform.

I would at least get any money refunded for the work you had done (and replacing a component with one at double the rating is always a bad idea... I'm sure there would be other issues with the system even if the video card kept working).

 

Hmm the problem here is furmark. It kills cards. No real life scenario will bake your card as much unless you game in bed and under the covers lol. Very pointless and damaging test especially on old cards.

 

Hi.
I am realy interested to buy your r4850m vga card. If you are interested to make a good deal please PM me .

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

So tomorrow I will ask to put the transistor as similar to the original one (50A) as possible instead of 100A even if the latter is still alive.
If not FurMark, what kind of benchmark would you recommend for my r4850m?
At the moment displaying desktop for 30 minutes seems too much for it, but ultimately I would still like to play games (obviously with reasonable settings) with it - this is what it was made for

If nothing helps I will move on - MSI GS70 looks interesting - MSI GS70 Stealth review - powerful gaming laptop surprisingly thin and light - PC Advisor
If this will happen then I will think about selling my r4850m.

Any other suggestions?

 

what are you guys gonna do with the dead video cards?

 

3d mark 11 should be sufficient. Otherwise the best test is a game

 

My Radeon 4850m appears to be dead...

Both the service guys and me look for replacement but it is hard to find one because of the vBIOS compatibility issues.
I may be not entirely clear about this issue.

So my understanding is that apart from MXM mess prior to MXM 3.0 (my gt725 has MXM 2.1 Type III to my knowledge), there is the issue that motherboard BIOS and graphics card vBIOS need to match, without this even if the card fits into the MXM slot it won't output to the screen.
This is why there are compatibility lists around like http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/396320-acer-mxm-models-cards.html etc.
The only option is to replace the card with the exactly same model or very similar that can work exactly as the original one (after reprogramming the vBIOS?)

Am I right in my understanding?

But what about taking the card from the similar laptop of the same manufacturer?
Like ACER 6920 / MSI GX-700 NVIDIA 512MB - GRAF NR15945 (3853304354) - Allegro.pl - Wi (sorry about the language, it is from a Polish website).
It is claimed to be compatible with gx700 which is very similar to gt725 although they have different motherboards (MS-1719 vs. MS-1722).
There is also one other issue that completely confuses me: NVIDIA G84-600-A2 (8600M GT) seems to be MXM II and here:
GX700 8600 GT - Official MXM-Upgrade.com Forum - LaptopVideo2Go Forums
is an interesting sentence - "the GX7xx series supports up to MXM III, but an MXM III card was not included" - so do MXM II cards physically fit into MXM III - MXM technical before 3.0 - dimensions of the cards are different, but slots seem to be the same.

Long story short:
- Does anybody have an idea if gx700 compatible nvidia 8600m GT can fit my gt725?
- Can you advice any gt725 compatible card that is possible to get for good price and easily? It does need to be anything around r4850m in terms of performance, it can be a massive performance downgrade, just to fit and work!
- In general, can MXM II card work with MXM type III? Does it fit in terms of size and electricaly (voltages etc.)?

Cheers!

 

Hello there,

I'm going to up this thread, because I have the exact same request.
GT725, ATI 4850 dying.

Does someone know how to get a replacement card somewhere?