-->*OFFICIAL: MSI GT725 Owner's Lounge*<--

I don't know anyone with a GT725 or MS-1722.

 

I used atiflash utility blindly, apparently the card is working, it just doesn't display anything on the laptop's screen. I even managed to dump the BIOS into a file.

"atiflash -i" command gave me this:

adapter bn dn dID asic flash romsize test bios p/n
======= == == ==== =============== ============== ======= ==== ===============
0 07 00 944A RV770/M98 M25P05 10000 pass -


Here is also the BIOS file:

 

what is your laptops current bios version? also marecki... wheres the heatpipe go on top of that bad boy.

as for the video card, it worked quite well in its first home, my advent 7555.

It gave me the pleasure of enjoying modern warfare 2 in my advent 7555, as well as my 1722.

I know that the 7555 worked with the 9600gt as well so there shouldn't be any problem either way.

What I may suggest is flashing the bios to the gt725 version, I'm not sure if theres any difference, as the laptops physical internal components are exactly the same, however from my experience the bios is clearly intelligent enough to recognize video cards and change its name accordingly.

My 1722 changed its name in the bios to GT729 after I installed my 1GB 4850!

Also check your heatsink, ensure that its not on their too tight as it does sit directly on the die! as well as check and see if the heatsink is touching anywhere that may be causing a short. I believe the backplate i supplied came with a rubberised material on the bottom of the backplate correct? If not you may want to try taking the backplate off and putting some sort of rubber insulation between the backplate and the card.

Although whatever the problem it cant be TOO dire as the cards seems to be responding to basic commands at least.

As for it getting warm, yes it will, ensure that you are keeping that card cooled with your heatpipe. You don't want your investment getting cooked right off the bat. As for the construction of your custom heatsink... it looks very professionally done. Very impressive indeed.

But before flashing the bios we may want to get some clearance from peeps here on the forum or maybe through msi. At least their techs should be able to confirm if theres any changes.

 

I have a theory, but to prove it right or wrong, I'm going to need Your help guys. My theory is about electrostatic current. There are two metal elements on the mainboard of my MS-1722, which make contact with the backplate of my 9600M GT. I marked them here:



When I put the Radeon card inside the laptop, these elements do not make contact with the backplate of the card, but with the circuit board of the card itself. I believe that these two elements are grounded to take away the electrostatic current from the heatsink of the GPU.

Can someone please be so kind to make a photo similar to the one above and post it here for comparison? I would also like to ask about a photo of the backplate of the MSI Radeon card.

 

yes there should be some sort of divider between the two, the plate on my card does not touch from my knowledge, however the bottom of the 4 lugs on my backplate have plastic pads that prevent shorting on the motherboard.

as for the card making contact, a simple double layer of masking tape will suffice as an insulator between your card and the IC on the board. In fact think thats whats on mine, or a combination of plastic and masking tape.

Try that and see what happens. That IC more than likely has someting to do with the pci slot your card connect to so it's possible that doing that will solve the problem outright.

 

In that area I have a black plastic sheet.

 

I forgot to take a pic of those pin thingy last time around but here's a pic of my back plate.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

Still no picture , despite isolating the pins on the mainboard and the backplate. Guys, do Your laptop display any messages during POST (Power On Self Test), like before Windows logo?? Like MSI logo or "Hit Del to enter setup"? Another thought I had was that maybe the card itself doesn't display anything during POST, and during Windows startup there's nothing on the screen because my old nVidia driver is loading?

 

I've currently got the barebones advent bios, which displays "Hit Del to enter setup", but the official MSi bios displays an MSi splash screen.

 

Theres also a message that flashes so fast on the 6555 bios at one point i can't read it...yet,

Ima keep trying haha.

 

marecki, so to recap, you are using the bios for gt725, the card is seated all the way down in the slot and secured with the outer screws.

now with your custom heatsink, are you absolutely sure that you have a good contact with your heatsink to your die? also are you certain that the heatsink is flat and not stressing the corners of the die.

i'd say to take off the heatsink and thermal paste and check and see how the thermal paste looks on the die to determine if you are even making contact. These cards do get quite hot, however if they aren't cooled properly it could kill the card.

One thing you can try.... do you have any computer repair stores near you? you may be able to get them to try the card (be careful with that option) or do something less scarey which is a usb diagnostic device. Similar to the ones that you'd plug into your computer's pci slots. This gives a numerical code that communicates with the bios to tell you what exactly the problem is?

What abotut the EC firmware? From what I understand thats all the higher functions but I wonder if it has something to do with the bios.

As for the version of the laptop you have... I seem to remember theres two different types of bioses and EC for the gx720 series. If you have the gx720 then it should be the same as the barebones model. but I seem to recall something different about the ID1 Models.

Cat you have a 6555 right? or a 7555? I'm thinking we can try a 7555 bios and see if the card likes that option.

 

Im on the 6555, i also have the older 4850 vbios (Probably the only one haha.)

 

My new card is 032415

 

Marecki_clf, I didn't read all of your posts, because of your first one I know what your problem is.
Now, you say that you have made a custom heatsink, but what you use to catch it? I mean what screws are holding it? Put below the screws some tape to isolate them (use the two sided tape from your GT9600), so they don't do contact with the card. After look on the right side of the MXM Slot (without your card in it ) you'll see two small metals, like springs. They are pressing the card upwards, so to make better contact with MXM slot. Isolate them also with some tape, but leave them loose, so they can still press the card upwards. When you isolate thouse two places you'll have a working Mobility Radeon card in your laptop. If you have more questions, go on
So now I have a quetion How did you do that heatsink? And does it contact also with the memory chips on the other side of the card (you said that it's with 1 Gb, right). I have the heatsink of GT725/GT735 and they come with 512 Mb of VRAM, so they do not have chips on the other side. I want to make some small heatsink so to spread their heat away and to sqeeze this baby.

 

For those interested , 10.5 are out.

64 bit linky : ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

32 bit linky : still using that crap dot com

 

Anything new? Any improvement? Is the driver version in the new one 8.74 as the leaked ones had?

 

It's 8.732 , we now have Avivo converter (might try) , Hydravision (meh) .. , support for 120hz monitor for 3 & 4 series ..
and ATI overdrive enhancement - delivering full support for overclocking functionality on supported ATI radeon graphics accelarators connected to multiple display configurations.

HDTV resolutions are now properly reported by the tooltip when the mouse cursor hovers over the CV display icon under "desktop displays" in CCC.

That's the most interesting changes i can see in the release note. Performance should be about same as 10.4

 

Well .. I didn't try all those features ...
I tried my only game for now (fresh Windows install) NFS Shift and seems like the game gained about 10 more frames. And my settings are High; 2xAA; 8xAF; 1680x1050. before on same settings my frame rate was 33-36 and now is 40-46. I think that is good improovement.

 

Ahh nice, thats a fairly massive increase?

 

Automatikjack, The heatsink makes contact ONLY with the surface of the GPU and RAM chips. I made sure of that. The print of the thermal compound is perfect for all these surfaces.


Thanks Genna, I will try Your solution ASAP. I will keep all of You guys posted. Keep Your thumbs up for me!

Genna, my card is the MSI one, so it comes with 512MB of RAM, however it has memory chips on the reverse side. They are covered with thermal pads, something similar to this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320536538591&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

I made the heatsink in a following way:
I purchased one 3x3inchx1,2mm copper shim
and
two 2x1inchx1,2mm copper shims
and
Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive.

Then I attached the shims together with the thermal adhesive in such a way, that the big shim was covering the GPU and partially the memory chips, and the small shims were covering the memory chips entirely. Then I used some tools to shape the heatsink properly, so it wasn't making contact with anything on the circuit board of the card. Next, I put some copper RAM heatsinks on top of it. Have a look at my previous posts, there are some photos of the heatsink attached.

 

Marecki_clf,
It took me whole three months to find out the solution I've describe in my previous post. I see in one of your previous posts a theory that was very near to the solution.
About the custom made heatsink - very good job! I'll try to do something similar.
Guys do you know where I can buy ... well I need the correct name actually ... that green/blue thing that is used as some kind of thermal paste and is placed between memory chips and heatsink? (what a description a? ) Because the memory chips are lower that the core and I need something that can fill this gap. I used the one from my old card, but when I was removing it from the old heatsink I tear it. Also do you know something about the thermal conductivity of this .... thing? Is it good, or I have to search for a better solution?

 

I think it's called a thermal pad:
thermal pad items - Get great deals on Computers Networking, Business Industrial items on eBay.com!

I replaced my thermal pads with just copper + paste (non condutive paste).

 

Thank You for sharing Your knowledge Genna. As soon as I will have a little bit of time, I will give Your solution a try. If it works, +rep for You .

 

Hey I had this question for whoever has upgraded to the Qx9200 or Qx9300, is the multipliers unlocked?

 

Not in the BIOS. I haven't found any working software to change it either. Maybe others had more success in this field.

 

error! sdf

 

Yes, the Qx9200 is recognised as a Core 2 Extreme series, so the mulitpliers are unlocked. Finally thinking of getting one?

Blazin

 

We need a modded bio from svet!!

 

Doesn't work. There's no way one can change the multi .. It's locked.

 

PIN MOD!

Intel Xtreme Tuning Utility (If its somehow doable.)

 

XTU doesn't work aswell , Pin is the only method left. Although Moral has a nice little guide , it still sounds like Chinese one say one day ... When I'd be in the Market for another lappie then I will destroy this one.

 

My damn card still doesn't want to work, despite isolating it accordingly to Genna's advice .

 

hey all, i just joined the forum. i am a proud owner of an msi gt725-212us. i have had it for about a year or so now, it seems to be quite the machine. but i planned on upgrading it in the future as things get cheaper and more demanding programs come out. i am just out of highschool and got this for "graphic design" ( it was really just a good reason to not get a mac...and play games) i was wondering if the mobo will actually handle 8gb of ram native in win7 x64 stock bios, or will it only work with an modded bios? because i do use photoshop and maya, and lightwave, in conjunction with cad tools and often multitask between a few running at a time, but they eat my ram, especially if im running virtual machines. if it would work i would do it. also i got an ssd recently and am using an expresscard ssd for game storage, and the old hdd for bulk data in an external enclosure. and i also wanted to know how much of an improvement the updated cpus you are running helped out. would a q9200 es be my best bet? im just trying to sort stuff out so when my warranty is up i can get more use out of it. i coulda made a killer desktop for all this but i needed the portability for college. thanks everyone

 

Welcome here, kustus.
It's already tested and you don't have to do anything else, exept to get the memory modules and put them in.

 

well thanks, its good to know i wont have do anything but buy em, hopefully by next year when my warranty is up they will be cheaper, and with new i7 rigs rolling around the old mobile quads should be cheaper too. if they offer noticeable performance boosts over the q9000 i would be happy with a new drop in cpu. not that i cant live with it now though because as it stands now i can finish rendering things in auto cad/maya/photoshop etc. faster than the teachers macbook...and he said that his was top of the line and i was going to regret not buying one. but i get my work done in half the time and get to play games while others are waiting, so no biggie.

 

Marecki_clf, this is strange now ...
Do you have different heatsink to test it with? May be now there is another place that you custom made heatsink is touching and the original one is not?
The dark screen you get (still back-lid is on) according to me means that the card is OK, but there is some signal for final acknowledge that is lost. So try to find places that are not covered by the original heatsink.

 

Upgrading your ram shouldnt effect your warranty btw.

 

Genna, I just purchased some insulation tape. I will cover all surfaces of the heatsink except for places where GPU and RAM chips make contact with it. I will let You know if it worked.

 

Just tell your teacher to take the Macbook and shove it up his @$$,(for those who dont know, I am a Hardcore Apple Hater )

And yes do buy the Qx9200, it will increase considerable performance.

Yup, I am very much tempted, the thing is that I fear that they may get sold out and I will need to shell £500 for a Qx9300.
Btw for how long can a model remain an ES, I mean a final retail version has to come or else does it mean Intel proposes for total shift to Core i# Series.

The thing is that I suppose that Marecki has a Qx9300 which is a proper Xtreme Series proccy whose multi's should be unlocked, there a Modded BIOS should work, shouldnt it?

 

For some reason the Q9200 will never get release , Intel decided not to go ahead with production. It's ES or nothing.

When it comes to overclocking , you can't really do much in a MSI notebook. And like I said in my previous post , modded bios is a waste of time.

 

Apart from software overclocking, although I don't actually need to overclock my CPU to play games etc, its purely for benchmarking purposes.

 

Its always fun to browse Chinese forums,

MSI GT729

I never knew a processor named e8435 existed !!!!

Intel Core 2 Duo e8435 3.06Ghz

 

That's the apple version of the X9100.

 

Those mac specific CPUs have been mentioned here in NBR many times.
So you dont have to browse Chinese forums

 

The thing is that the dude there slapped that Mac specific cpu in the MSI Gt729.

EDIT : I hate apple so dont expect me to browse through Apple Forums, actually its real bad that Forums for Apple'ers exist on NBR.

 

Yes, but people put them in many notebooks.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...1425-apple-imac-specific-c2d-cpus-anyone.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gat...mobile-e8xxx-series-processors-fx-series.html

And many more examples here in NBR... (ask Ayle, he put one in his GT627):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...grades/486882-e8335-my-g60vx.html#post6290131

 

I hate apple too, I have only been to that sub-forum once or twice and my posts got deleted

 

Make it 3 Apple hater too

 

Never had and touch an Apple, so you can count me as hater