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

Don't sweat, it's being replaced by the GT729...

only difference is DDR3 RAM and double the VRAM

 

Pretty much, I was going to buy a GT725 before I ended up ordering my M17 (you can see me asking a lot of questions about 70 pages back or so in this thread).

The original story I heard from several places was that MSI were having trouble obtaining the screens they were using; however after over a month had gone by with still no word on stock, and one of the stock buyers at one site directly replying there was no ETA at all, as MSI wasn't giving any ETA on new stock batches, a few people began mentioning that MSI was telling them when they contacted them directly, the GT725 was now end of line; and was to be replaced with the MSI GT729.

The GT729 will basically be the same spec as the GT725-210 (aka Q9000, 4GB, 4850 512MB) but will use a DDR3 based motherboard. It should be about the same price as the similar GT725 model (around £1200-1300 in the UK).
It's a shame there'll be no turbo powered dual core model, as to be honest this interested me much more than the low clocked quad.

One of the other reasons I decided to go for a high clocked, dual core M17 (which unfortunately has ropey quad support, but hey, I'd end up buying a QX9300 and overclocking before I'd be happy anyway which'd add heavily to the cost)



@ Blazing - my M17 is costing me £1600, inc extra mug, respawn discs so I can be lazy etc, and I will be upgrading a few parts myself. The price has dropped since I ordered; however Alienware agreed to throw the blu-ray in rather than dealing with the hassle of a cancelled order etc.

You also laugh, but you are aware that even to buy, 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMMs are bloody expensive. You're looking £300-350ish or so to buy them yourself anyway

The base model M17 is now £899 in the UK, and comes to approximately £1300, which includes some upgrades, with P8400, 1920x1200 screen, 2GB DDR3, 160GB 7200RPM(IIRC) HDD, DVDRW and Crossfire 4850 1GB, along with Vista 64 and the free upgrade to Windows 7.

My total order will cost me a bit shy of £1900, but will be a bit of a beast [and also means I get to pick the hard drives for example, the WD seem to be noticeably better in a lot of cases than similar Toshiba or Seagate drives, and the blacks are pretty much the best 7.2k rpm 2.5" SATA drive out now] , and spread over 12 months is affordable to me with my job (which is part the reason I wanted something like this)

With the Alienware it really depends on what you choose, upgrade offically and upgrade yourself...if the upgrades I was fitting were done by Alienware, it'd cost me about another oooh... £400 or so, and if I'd bought now with the price drop, again I wouldn't have ordered bits like the Blu-Ray and DIY'ed it.

The M17 is a much better buy in the UK for a comparable performance than buying an M17x, which is hideously expensive in comparison here; however has less upgradability in the future; as the M17x supports MXM3 for example....for me it was not worth the extra £600 or so!

 

nice!

well when i bought my 725 £1300 was really just above my budget.. but for that price i couldnt find anything that really competes.. it was either going from a £800ish laptop with mediocre graphics or a £2000 with slightly better performance than the 725.. so obviously i took the 725.. and just in time by the looks of things.. i must have rang about 10 different websites that all told me they were waiting for more stock from msi.. luckily i managed to get one of the last 725s.

 

Tell me about it, the UK laptop market really is appalling when it comes to TRUE midrange laptops, ie not just one with a slightly faster CPU or more RAM!

I just missed out an MSI GT725 myself by a few days; but what can I say, I have some regrets (cost), but I think Im gonna be overall happier with my M17, it's not a perfect machine; but its going to be pretty damned fast, and probably the best DTR I can afford without really stretching each month, just from Marshalls early windows 7 tests (running some 9.3 modded DNA drivers, cards and CPU at stock [X9100 so 3.06Ghz]); his machine got a higher 3DMark06 score than my quad based 4870 equipped desktop, even when the Q6600 was overclocked to 3.4Ghz a piece and my 4870 was running the mildly overclocked Asus Top BIOS.

Im really interested in the Vantage scores as that'll be the real teller; but all the signs so far are saying I shouldn't feel a huge loss moving to the laptop, infact bar going back to a dual, my performance may even be higher; which was my main goal - keeping the performance, whilst shifting the heat, noise, power consumption, and being able to take it around with me and to late shifts at work, which I do quite a few of.

 

looking forward to see how much the 3dmark06 score will go up with dual 4850s!

 

Marshall's initial [dual GPU] 3dmark 06 score was 16K, he got a bit over 11 with a single.

With better drivers, overclocking etc we're confidently expecting higher. Vantage we're not quite sure on yet...hoping 10k or so.

 

@Alexrose1uk:
The GT729 is going to have 2 flavors actually.
Quad Core Model-
17" WUXGA Matte
Q9000
1GB ATi HD4850
4GB DDR3
2X Blu-Ray Reader / 8X DVDRW/CDRW Super Multi Combo Drive
320GB 7200RPM
Choice between 32bit or 64bit (extra $$ though) Vista w/ Free Win7 Coupon
$1599+
http://www.xoticpc.com/gt729-wuxga-order-p-2632.html?wconfigure=yes

Dual Core Model-
17" WSXGA Glossy
P8600
1GB ATi HD4850
4GB DDR3
2X Blu-Ray Reader / 8X DVDRW/CDRW Super Multi Combo Drive
320GB 7200RPM
Choice between 32bit or 64bit (extra $$ though) Vista w/ Free Win7 Coupon
$1299+
http://www.xoticpc.com/gt729-wsxga-order-p-2633.html?wconfigure=yes

Of course this is for the US, I don't know if the UK will get the dual core version but it is alot cheaper than the quad version...

 

Last I heard the UK at least was only having one single model, might be a europe thing; as mentioned our midrange laptop market is pretty...poor. At least they're upgrading the HDD on them; the euro model of the GT725 only came with 5400RPM drives; and thats a bit of a limitation.

 

GO MSI!!! That recognition is fair enough. This lappy is an engineering milestone. Like they said, lighest gaming laptop, as well as the cheapest, and one of the best!

 

I'm kicking myself I didn't wait another month for the 729, and get the Win7 upgrade. Price doesn't matter, my boss paid for half mine anyway

 

Originally Posted by Alexrose1uk View Post
Last I heard the UK at least was only having one single model, might be a europe thing; as mentioned our midrange laptop market is pretty...poor. At least they're upgrading the HDD on them; the euro model of the GT725 only came with 5400RPM drives; and thats a bit of a limitation.

Funny thing is.. some of the 5400rpms have been close to or equal to some of the 7200rpms.. how does THAT work!

im not complaining!

 

Hehe me neither, its pretty good, 5400 rpm drivers also have the luxury of running coolest in the family

 

HDD temps are usually pretty cool aren't they? I don't even monitor mine.

 

Depends on the drives I think, you can still get good and poor 7200/5400 drives. One of the areas a GOOD 7200rpm holds its own is access times just as much as higher writes and reads; now especially when doing smaller, multiple loads (like loading programmes/OS); this matters; as it's how long it takes to find files.

Even with RAID0 I'm expecting the 7200RPM drives to hit under 20ms; whilst a 5400RPM setup would take in the 20s. Might not sound like much, but it can add up. Read speads have increased on 5400RPM drives as the actual platter density has increased; basically more data in the same room, which of course also makes it quicker to read

Edit: Look at Madshrimps review

Kinda sums up why I wanted to RAID the blacks over the higher storage potential of blues.

 

True, i am quite happy with 5400 rpm performance, but with an av and firewall, performance drastically decreases.

 

I think a defragged 5400rpm would be faster than a fragged 7200rpm anyway wouldn't it?

 

BTW, did that .inf I sent you work?

 

Well from what some people have posted on this forum, i would say that some of the GT725 7200rpm HDDs are pretty poor (and most of the 5400rpm HDDs are pretty good) ; lenarass, for example scored lower than me in the windows experience index (yeh i know its not the most accurate measure of performance, but he is not the only one)

Blazin

 

Thanks for the GT729 info. No where to buy it yet after a preliminary Google search.

However I am still afraid of the keyboard (haven't seen this new model pics yet), the tiny keys will kill my typing over time is what I fear. Will wait and see.

 

That was what i was worried about when i got my GT725, but after a couple of weeks i had become used to it (yes, even the inverted fn and ctrl keys - which only causes problems when i use a normal keyboard and keep hitting the windows key lol)

Blazin

 

Ah the FN/CTRL keys don't bother me, my first ever laptop back in 2004 had inverted keys, it was a 2nd generation alienware (with the skullcap).


ahhh
Was good back then ... P4 3.0ghz, 512mb RAM, ATI 9600 128mb... used it for 3.5 years before stopping. It's now in suspended animation. I hope it will be worth £10000s one day (for the case alone).

The GT725 has tiny Directional/enter/period keys around that area and I use those lots. Basically I like to be very precise when typing/chatting.

I'll still look around though.

 

Yeah I thought the same thing when I bought this laptop, because the games I mostly play are racing games, which all use the directional keys. They don't really bother me, larger ones would be nice, but I wouldn't go and buy another laptop because of it, for sure.

 

Hi./

Sorry not really been about the last couple of days apart from 1 or 2 posts. It's first on my to do list when i get home

 

I cry at the thought of bigger keys on this machine, its so comfortable.

 

Damnit this really makes me think

Anyone living in London that don't mind meeting up with me with the laptop? Haha

Don't worry I won't eat you.

I need to touch this laptop.

 

haha someone call the cops!

 

If you think the Windows cataclysm drivers are bad, try running linux + X + X.cataclysm. It's like being an alpha tester... e.g. random black rectangle corruption "fixable" by forcing a full screen refresh, lockup on video playback after sleep, freeze upon awake with desktop effects on(compiz/beryl), etc. I just keep hoping that something awful happens at AMD and they mistakenly release a quality X.cataclysm driver, but it hasn't happened yet. (Well they've managed to fix some small bugs, e.g. opengl windowed apps no longer flicker like mad, but I'd've though that those lockups on video playback after sleep would've gotten more attention/fixed by now as my CTL-PRTSCR + R+S+E+I+N+U+B keys are getting worn out.

Funny note: the MSI driver page now has drivers with a 7/24/09 date IIRC yet opening up the .zip file and poking around all of the internal dates on the files are at newest towards the end of January and correspond IIRC to what they formerly had there with a January '09 date...

According to an ATI employee working on the OSS X.org drivers, they sometimes prevent the generic catalyst drivers installing on some OEM GPU cards. He gave some vapid wording about hw differences(right), and that those OEMs usually paid ATI to make new drivers for them(now the truth comes out $$$). Although I notice that the MSI drivers all imply WHQL tested which also costs $$$, and a fair amount IIRC, along with being mostly useless.

[EDIT]
Has anyone managed to find out what the newer BIOS version are supposed to fix/add? I'm still running the 1.0R IIRC release that mine shipped with as I haven't had any noticeable problems, or at least ones likely to be BIOS related.
[/EDIT]

[EDIT2]
I don't remember who suggested leaving memory downclocked(mine is set to 667 or 600 in BIOS which is c. 791 when overclocked) yet I set my memory to 800 once and ran overclocked for a bit with no problems, however I hardly ever use overclock functionality as my general feeling is that notebooks are already thermally stressed enough that I don't want to add to the wear by running OCed. Actually 2.4GHz CPU is usually plenty fast enough for most of my apps & games.
[/EDIT2]

[EDIT3="doesn't apply here fun info"]
Oh and to make X.org drivers worse, you should've heard the screaming when AMD decided to drop support for RV5XX and lower GPUsfrom current catalyst releases. They're banking on OSS drivers, but ended up relenting IIRC and will release catalyst drivers supporting "legacy" GPUs every 3 or 4 months now... They may actually get to see improvements between releases.

For our 4850 the OSS drivers are, basically, up to 2D support -> useless other than for initial GUI install.

I suggested dropping the monthly releases in favor of measurable milestone goals, e.g. major bugfixes first, but was told that, that wouldn't really help the situation... Also the X.org catalyst series is, apprently, primarily based upon the "pro" drivers as they claim the majority of their "customers" are workstations running linux rather than consumers. Have no idea about their "pro" card(firegl) or nVidia's(don't remember what they're called) other than they cost a great deal more while using the same GPU w/added memory plus higher levels of support as in, apparently, you actually get to talk to someone from the driver team if you have problems. Never saw a machine with a "pro" card from either mfg ever... Given the extra memory they're probably limited to CAD usage where gigantic monitors are useful.
[/EDIT3]

 

Yeah... can we meet in a dark back alley or outside a pub.. Just want a look honest guv

 

Marshall over in the AW section finally got a Vantage run in with his 4850 X2 setup (still with 9.4 drivers)... GPU score of over 10k

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=399576&page=73

I still can't believe the recent article on 2009 GPUs on this site said ATI's high end cards were for people who "Just have to have ATI"...

 

BIOS is now 1.0U.

I have every one apart frmo my orignal R. Doh i forgot to backup

I found S to work the best but im sure many others will disagree or have other comments.[/QUOTE]

What improvements did you see in S over the original?

Blazin

 

Got mine from micro anvika for only £1040 (EX-display though) been using it for 2 months now and it's awesome ! no regrets whatsoever in buying it it's even better with windows 7

 

hi Blazin23 .. just wondeing is the antec 200 worth it ? been looking at it recently but for the price tag was bit hesitant in getting it ..

 

What improvements did you see in S over the original?

Blazin[/QUOTE]

Hi,

I got higher 3dMark scores and higher FPS in games . We're not talking massive amounts but as Tesco says "every little helps"

T was the worst BIOS for me. SLOW SLOW SLOW. Worse than the original.

I must have done loads of 3mark benchmarks/gmaes benchmarks to eliminate any doubt that it wasn't the BIOS but when i went back to R again (or any BIOS apart from S) my benchmarks suffered so i'm gonna stay with S for now

 

Hey, I was just wondering after reading this forum if there is any real benefit in changing to 64 bit from vista or indeed to windows 7? I see a lot of peoples 3dmark benchmark scores on here and they seem to be only higher by 200 than my vista 32 os, which i would therfore imagine would not mean a lot of difference in real life gaming terms, a couple of frames per second at best, so why does eveyone change? I dont know an awful lot about it so Im sure there are things im missing out on but I dont see the benefit in changing and having the problems people have with drivers and such for what appears to me to be a pretty negligible difference. Has anyone done any benchmarks in games that show a real difference? I google it but typically only find ones that show little or no difference between them, even with the extra gig of ram being available

 

Yeh its a great cooler, its dropped my idle temps by about 10C and in game has dropped about 5C. It works pretty well on the GT725 because it has vents on the bottom and there are no fans blowing downwards. However on a laptop that either has no vents on the bottom (Mac Book Pro) or has downward blowing fans, it will not be effective.

I also like the cooler as it raises the laptop on my desk so i dont have to look down as much.

I had £20 of amazon vouchers when i bought it so i got it a bit cheaper, but it was definitely worth it. It is plastic, but really sturdy (much better built than the £10 pieces of crap) and did i mention it has blue leds!!!

Blazin

 

thanks for the quick reply 10 to 5c ain't that bad .. i might go for it as my 725 is getting too hot whilst gaming

 

Yeh i found it kept heating up my sky box (which sits to the rear right side of my 725), so now that my 725 is raised in the air, the heat disperses more evenly.

Did i also mention how awesome the cooler looks? xD (altho its covered up most of the time so thats pretty irrelevant, but what the hell its still awesome )

Blazin

 

i always smells burning rubber while gaming , i thought something was wrong with it .. guest i was wrong ! it was the ac cable was too close to the vents ! this thing will help in a lot of ways and have to agree with you it does look good

 

as you can see i have 64bit windows and i cant have 4gb of ram ? please i need help ((
here is the pic
http://img34.yfrog.com/img34/9338/58582426.png

 

the move to 64 bit would imediately utilise an extra 1/2 gig of RAM, which isn't used in 32 bit. Win 7 64 bit is certainly much much!!! better than Vista 32 bit.

Boot time is faster general windows operation is noticeably faster, performance seems much responsive switching between windows, multi-tasking and so on. In fact I was quite shocked after using Vista 32 bit for the last two years how much better it is. I've noticed also that connection to the wireless network seems to take less time.

As regards drivers the only problem I've had is running the Catalyst Control Centre. Refuses to install the files in Win 7.

Aside from this, the MSI Control Centre, and power strip work, and I'm pretty happy. As the OS rolls out to final release things will I'm sure just get better and better.

 

Ok cool, thanks for the information, its appreciated. I think I will upgrade in a month or two

 

lenarass.. you..are..back??

 

am back... but... can u please help me?? ((

 

I don't have a 64bit version of windows atm so sorry i cant help..

have done a bit of research though and other people who have encountered this problem have had to either update their bios or turn on memory remapping in the bios (altho i am not sure if u can do that on the 725)

Blazin

 

You could have at least disguised yourself...

 

ah well what the heck, You have to disable the memory remap in your BIOS, in the Advanced Menu -> Chipset -> North Bridge Configuration. Then choose the Disable option for the Memory Remap Feature option.

No idea if this works on 725

 

Well just had my first random lockup and then my windows didn't want to start. Fixed it by using a system restore point.

I'm wanting to upgrade to 64 bit Vista, anyone mind burning me a 64bit copy of vista onto a dvd and mailing it to me? Of course I will pay for the disc, the shipping and I could give an extra little bit to cover labor if you'd like.

. Not sure as to what caused the lockup of my system but I'm sure it's windows related as I've not had any problems with the laptop itself (and I wasn't using OC). Weird.. Hm..

 

It seems I have a new problem after all the new driver issues from before. Now, when I leave the laptop asleep for more than an hour windows says resuming, but never does. I have to power down and restart. I know people always complain about the sleep function in windows, but I think win7 has the worst. At least in my main pc it is an s3 problem, but here we are very limited in the bios.Anyone? Anyone?