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

Sorry I still can't see it. It gives me exactly the same list as Control Panel/Programs and Features. The only ATI related thing listed is Catalyst Install Manager.

 

That's weird .. it should appear as for me i can't access cat install manager , ccc and some other prog through windows prog & feathers .. i need to use Ccleaner to unistall etc etc

next thing you could try is driver cleaner .. go into safe mode and get rid of ccc only ... then install from the package you've modded

 

Ha thanks your the best. Will try this later today. Also, did you try that hardware info program I posted a few pages back?

 

catacylsm ...for some reason that webside doenst work for me..
http://st.deviantart.com/minish/main/blank.png

 

http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...art.com/art/Vista-Visual-Style-Help-112508734

uPDATEd linky.

Lambo, which hardware program again mate? Must have slipped by.

Cheers
Cata

 

Patched the dlls and default aero style fine. Will get around to applying your theme. HERES that link Cat. You could have hours of fun with this program.

 

If you're refering to the background, I don't know where I got it , but the theme is Cat's theme but with red instance of black.

P.S. What kind of FPS do you all get on Far Cry 2 with ultra, dx10 and 1680x1050. Id say I average 30, low is 24, high 45 and is there anyway to make the touch pad automatically turn off on start up?

 

I don't know how you guys would look at your video bios, but I will rep anyone who tells me what Volts the ati 4850 runs at.

 

Wow, lambo thats one hell'a program
Thank you very much !

 

Lambo, have you tried uninstalling by running the Install manager and selecting uninstall? That's always been the key for me.

 

for some reason it says my cores are at 2500 when they should be 2.4
i wonder why

 

That program I posted that everyone is talking about will tell you.

 

Yeah I love it. Thats why I just thought I'd share it with all. I got that theme working too. It just takes a whole heap of fiddling.

It uninstalls fine, but when it goes to install, it doesn't copy any files over to the directory I specify. I'll work it out eventually, even if it means a reformat.

 

Notebook EVANGALIST!!! PROMOTION!!!

 

i don't have an ati 4850, which was why i was asking

i am just curious about the voltage of the 4850.

 

OverDrive 5 Limits Adapter 0
Core clocks Min 125.00 - Max 550.00
Memory clocks Min 100.00 - Max 900.00
VDDC Min 1.000v - Max 1.100v

looks like 1.1v, but maybe this isn't the right place...

 

THANK YOU!

 

Sorry, I just assumed you had this laptop.

 

Can anyone confirm/deny if it has MXM?

If you look on this picture, it appears to...

 

If im correct, its an MXM 3 slot my friend, i dont know if its 3b though (like the alienware ones but who knows.)

 

Guys i hear 4 Beep sounds at start-up .. is that normal ?


UPDATE : contacted msi .. we'll see the outcome .

 

Ok, thank you.

It's good to know that the graphics could be upgraded in the future.
...I'll try contacting MSI, maybe they can tell me what kind of MXM slot it is for sure. I'll be sure to post back on here with the answer as well.

 

MXM just denotes the slot type, mechanical & electrical connections.

The numerical value indicates the relative "size" of the card IIRC.

[EDIT2]
AFAIK ASUS is the only company to really not use a standard MXM card for their nb GPUs, but all they did was reverse the electrical connections IIRC and they don't do it with all of their notebooks either, just some. (Likely other companies do this as well, but ASUS is the only one that I know for sure that does. Also AFAIK MSI always uses standard MXM mechanical/electrical layout.)

Also note that MXM heatsink attachments vary from card to card, so don't plan to pick up a card that works and swap it in unless you're very lucky. Most likely you will have to fabricate at the very least a new heatsink attachment, but preferably a new heatsink. If you can't do it, may you have a friend who can or a small machine shop that might do one cheap.
[/EDIT2]

Thermal "grease"/paste: If you use this and use a type that is electrically conductive, e.g. Artic Silver 5, be careful NOT to get the grease all over the place as you may cause unintended shorts in the board. It's also a good idea to NOT go overboard when applying the "grease". (The spread method works best here as you're not really free to rotate the heatsink/GPU, but in other applications where you can rotate one or the other a good method is to apply a small blob of paste to the center of the IC then apply slight pressure and rotate the heatsink as it seems to do a fairly good job of evenly and smoothly spreading the grease. The trick of course is to NOT lift the heatsink when finished but to attach it to its mount restraints w/o lifting it....)

The cleaner product sounds like a good thing, and should save a bit of work which is nice if you muck with your thermal paste often.

Also it takes a few months for most thermal grease to "cure" and show FULL effectiveness.

[EDIT]
I wonder whatever happened to faisalhero and his GPU problem... He never did give us the specifics.
[/EDIT]

meh I give up on the edit tags, this thread just grows too quickly.

The original MSi shipped catalyst was 8.12 and AFAICT the "new" one looks to be 9.1, maybe 9.2.

Tom's Hardware had a comparison of a machine with a GTX280m v. GT725 IIRC not too long ago (two articles had the GT725 in it actually IIRC), and the 4850 was trounced, but the nb they tested against was significantly more expensive.

Actually the conclusions of the Tom's Hardware testing is the lower number of shader cores on nVidia parts & lower clocks on ATI parts are the primary reasons for lower performance v. desktop parts. They also make mention in testing of possible thermal problems with the MSI single fan design as in one test they found that the GPU was overheating. I haven't run into this myself, but I don't own that game OTOH furmark seems to peak out at c. 86-87C for me and it IS very demanding of the GPU.

Also played Darkstar One, Space Rangers 2 complete, and some other games earlier in the week with zero atikmdag has stopped working problems, so that seems to be confined to thos three games Drakensang, UFO: Aftershock, and rarely in Mount & Blade. I'm guessing it's a rendering path problem that the ATI drivers just don't handle well at all as the VAST majority of games/apps are optimized for nVidia GPUs. (As a matter of fact I can't recall a single game with ATI's counter point to nVidia's way its meant to be played program... I wonder if it still even exists...)

linux + X.org + catalyst 9.8 are still sucking hard...

I mention this again as it DOES bear repeating, rarely have I seen synthetic benchmarks to be a truly accurate predictor of game/application performance, so I could care less about 3DMark scores of any sort. Game FPS, 3D modelling FPS/render times(CUDA/Stream(right) assisted), video encoding/decoding(CUDA/Stream assisted), etc. are FAR more useful, although in the latter tasks CPU arch/speed can affect the results by enough to render them nearly invalid unless testing very close configs.

I know that redding is teh hard, but had you paid attention you would have noticed "linux", where it does NOT work properly. A fair statement would be that catalyst/fglrx + X is mostly broken.

Overclocking: your choice, but I wouldn't do it with MSI's heatsink/single fan solution. It's just not up to the task.

 

^^^
Ok, thanks very much for clearing that up.

Maybe in the future i could use another MSI card that the heatsink would fit on.
I guess only if they keep the same heatsink design... Oh well, we'll see.

Another question...
The heatpipe that connects to the CPU, and extends farther to connect to something else. What is that?

 

HI there guys, sorry to jump in here; I know Im a dirty AW M17 traitor as I couldn't get the GT725, but I wanted you guys to know theres a new 9.8 Hotfix driver out for windows now. It fixes several bugs in the 9.8 update; whilst retaining the decent speed boosts many of us saw. RE5 for one is now completely working, my setup now has and has an average framerate of 71fps at 1920x1200 DX10...excellent when you consider the old average was about 36!

Also for anyone interested; I dabbled in some mild overclocking for the sake of interest on my Xfire setup earlier; these things can push 10.6k GPU score in vantage; mine was only a mild overclock (560/541) as mine get too hot and unstable too quickly; a downside of my laptop unfortunately; you guys may well get a better BIOS with the GT729 though judging by the official clocks on your 512MB cards [let me know if you do; tempted to try flashing it ]

 

Thats the Northbridge I believe..

 

Ahh, ok.

Hmm, thats strange (but good ) to have a heatsink/heatpipe on the Northbridge.

 

Significantly more expensive? It was a $5000+ i7 monster!

The Clevo outperformed the MSI by 24% in games (average percent increase for highest resolution tests (least CPU dependent) with the fan aberration thrown out).

Here are some other collected comparisons of my p8600 GT725 to an overclocked 280m paired with a p9600. All with equal settings at 1680x1050.

Crysis - 32.2 v/s 28.8 - (12%)
DMC4 - 114 v/s 74 ---- (54%)
X3 ---- 66.8 v/s 71 --- (-6%)
WIC --- 35 v/s 37 ---- (-5%)

In DMC 4, the 4850 gets owned, but in all other tests, they very close. Crysis does give a slight advantage toward the 280m, but the 4850 edges it out in X3 and WIC. Now, if there were games out there that favored ATI like DMC4 favors Nvidia, I would say the cards are pretty even. However, the reality is that most games are either neutral or built for Nvidia, so that should factor into the equation.

Also, attention to MSI gamers and benchmarkers. This may be old news, as the articles I found it in are a couple of years old, but our game benchmarks (and real performance) may be dragged down if we're still using 32-bit Vista (depending on the game). I got a 7.5% boost in Crysis going to 64-bit W7, and that's not because Windows 7 is magical - it's running Crysis in 64-bit mode. I need to try DMC4 as well. That may close the gap some in that game.

Edit: 64bit added 4 fps to my DMC4 fps. That makes it 114 v/s 78 for a 46% advantage to the 280m... still pretty big. Although, in retrospect, I'm not sure the DMC4 demo has 64-bit support. It installed in the x86 folder and doesn't seem to have separate x64 files.

 

Hey Neil, I've got a bench for you that you may like. It's the STALKER: Clear Skies benchmark, you don't need the game for it, and it can be found here: http://cs.stalker-game.com/en/?page=news&item=119

It's a beautiful game, arguably has the best lighting tech to date. It's very demanding, but easier to run than Crysis on very high. The draw distance isn't close to Crysis, but the technical details are top notch, and it has DX10 effects not found elsewhere, like "wet surfaces". Sounds... kinky

The Xray engine has always preferred Ati, but you never can be sure these days. Here's my result with DX10 Ultra settings (no AA) @1680 x 1050, overclocked.



Sun rays will bring any system to its knees. When I play the game, I use maximum details but drop the sun rays to low. It looks pretty close to the full thing without the killer performance hit.

 

^^^
Wow. Interesting!

The 4850 isnt very far away from a 280M
Except for the one game, where, you are still getting 74FPS!

Thanks for the comparison!
+27 rep.

 

I'll download it when I get home. That's one that had the biggest gap in Tom's tests. I'll be interested to see if it's an NVidia v/s ATI issue or CPU issue... Can you disable two cores and run it to see if the quad is making a difference?

 

It's definitely not a multi-core optimized engine, not even dual cores are really taken advantage of. Because of that, clock speed is more important. I'll run at 2.53 and 2.93 to compare, and if I can I'll try even lower speed.

 

Thats exactly right. Spead evenly, just cover. I would reconmend Artic Silver 5 + cleaner.

 

Here we go...



Not too shabby... and look at the sun rays. GPU-z says 500/850, but I'm pretty sure it was off. I was set at 550/900

 

Hey cutterjohn, did you read my tutorial? I'm just after someones oppinion of anything I should change or whatever.

 

That benchmark looks cool too. I'm going to download that now. You know, I've owned this laptop for months now, and have never ever run a benchmark? I think I'm weird

 

Man I can't find ANY gt725/727 anywhere, what in the world happened to the supply of this laptop? I haven't seen any on ebay in months, it's like they dropped off the face of the earth in availability. I just had to sell my 6831FX laptop and i'm very bummed about it. So I am already planning on what to get next when finances get better. But I have been wanting the Gt725 for months now, and was just thinking about it, but yet I can't find any for sale anywhere.
Funny thing I'm not all that bummed due to getting $910 out of my 6831, I couldn't believe it... does that sound right? I mean did I just get silly lucky or have laptops gone up in price. I have the x7800 in it, but I only paid like 180 for it, and paid 670 for the laptop.. I almost beat depreciation here... on A COMPUTER. I only lost 40 bucks after owning it for almost 8 months Someone call the President!

 

Wow is that 3 screws on the CPU heat sink? I don't think I have ever seen that before. I like the heatpipe layout on that,just one fan for all 3 chips...very good, but I still can't get over the fan being on the right side. I wonder if that CPU/Northbridge pipe won't work as well due to being connected to 2 chips? I could see the wick flow being sporadic inside the heatpipe. I do like the layout of the HD and Disk drive, I understand why the fan is on that side..but I wonder if they could have done a complete reverse? Or am I overlooking a design conflict with that? Also, what type of material is that copper colored outline on the motherboard?

 

It's being replaced by the GT729, same specs but faster ram, quad core (2.0ghz) and 1gb video memory.

 

$900.00 for your 6831 is great, You sure didnt lose money on that deal!! As said before the GT725 is pretty much gone due to the GT729 model coming out, The dual core version of the GT729 is alittle cheaper than the dual core version of the GT725 was..

 

Again cutter, your assumptions of the MSI machines are quite poor, especially when it comes to the GPU itself.

The single fan designed machine we have here (using all the hardware at one time in a burn in mode) in OCCT ran wild through the whole test, as apposed to say a machine costing alot more (the asus w90) with 2-4? fans, which hit up to temperatures of 117....

I urge you again to post the links to toms hardware.

The single fan design can also take drastic temperature changes with undervolting, since there running on the same pipe i can knock off about 15C from CPU and Northbridge and even that bleeds onto the GPU, althought the one flaw i see is that they didnt fully open the bottom fan intake, they just opened half so i may run some tests with the bottom off.

I shall attempt to get some of these games that your GPU keeps failing on as i've played older games on both nvid cards and ati and they just refuse to work on nvid.

Ive not played an nvid card on this ATI GPU at present that haven't had any issues at all so hopefully its an error on your cards behalf rather then the whole of ati.

Its a shame about the linux drivers but i think ati are trying to work on fixing some of the issues arent they?

I would definately overclock this machine ^^ especially when i get a thermal paste replacement and even a cooling pad, them ill be even happier.

 

Im back to mention that currys have the advent version (7555 gx) back in stock at £999

Seems identical to the first batch, still in silver and looks like it lacks turbo function (which im sure can be flashed). I think the old version had a lower res screen. But the res on this one is not stated.

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/sto...08109&category_oid=#productInformationSection

 

newegg has the open box GT725 for $984.00:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152103R

 

Not too shabby, but it does agree with the general consensus 9800M GTX = 260M = 4850, with the 280M about 10% faster. Seems Nvidia has caught up with Ati in driver support for STALKER games as well.

Almost forgot, in advanced settings there's a check box for DX10.1, can you try it out? It may or may not be faster...

 

Last run included dx10.1, which explains the sunshaft boost... they like 10.1. This is the run without dx10.1. Very little difference in day/night/rain... but 10.1 does appear to give it a tiny boost.



Edit: I forgot turbo on this run, which probably accounts for the .5 fps difference in day/night/rain... I'll run again and fix it when I get a chance.

 

HD4850
CCC max OD clocks
1650x1080.

 

Woah Cat, either that game is quad optimized or you're not running on the same settings. And if the game is quad optimized, that still doesn't explain you tearing the 280m a new one... I gotta say I'm skeptical. I guess you got the external monitor working to get 1680x1050?

I won't clog up the thread with more screen shots of minutia, but after some consistent runs, I found that DX10.1 added .1-.4 fps to the average fps of day/night/rain and a full fps to sunshafts... that is all. Also, excuse my previous excitement about my sunshaft results... I am apparently stupid and didn't notice that the 1 was getting cut off of some of the numbers and thought I was getting WAY higher instead of like one frame per second more.

 

Yeah, external LG AT 1680 res, max ccc clocked (stock unflashed card still)

DX10.1

Q9000 running at 2.00ghz.

Very impressed with performance.

 

Yes very impressive.. +1

 

Very nice indeed Cat.