The Official 1722/GX720 Lounge

oh and on the MSI GT725 GX723 GX733 GX720 GX630 . the msi badge on the back of the lcd ..is it just a stick on badge or is it fuzed ?

 

It's a sticker/badge. The gx720 barebone and the gt628 barebone both came with a blank one.

 

in theory with the power only capped somewhere on the board, if you were to bypass that then you could have a fully powered card there with plenty of bang. id say get at it.

 

anyone got a more detailed pic of the third tab on the 9800? top and bottom?

 

I'll post some pics later of the corner up close and pics of the infamous makeshift heatsink reconstructed for posterity's sake.

 

I prefer you leave the mutilated alienware heatsink out of this

 

It's happened that I've set master bios password for this notebook.
So I cannot boot from anything except hard drive and cannot change bios settings.
Is there any way to reset the password?

 

I'll take things that make you say "doh" Alex for 500.

 

if im not mistaken a master bios password can usually be removed by removing the cmos battery and ... oh wait, i dont think theres a bios reset jumper, im not sure man, id say your best bet would be to email msi and ask if theres a jumper somewhere for bios reset. if not, i imagine flashing the bios would do it, but ive never had to flash a password protected bios, i cant say how itd turn out.

 

yes email msi probs your best bet .....does any one know were to buy a ati 4850 mxm

 

Does MSI actually have a spares department?

EDIT: This kind of thing was actually really easy with DELL. Except for the price of the parts, the whole experience was good

 

FYI - My heatsinks from MSI are due to be delivered tomorrow along with a slew of desktop components from Newegg for my soon to be rebuilt desktop (i7 920, ASrock Extreme x58, 6GB, 2x eVGA 280M SLI, PS&C PPSC910 PSU, 30" Apple), so hopefully I'll be able to get to the notebook testing.

 

Ugh, heatsinks came in, and the one for the 627 is the combo Heatsink = no good for the 9800M GT.

Here is a pic of the heatsinks lined up.

The GT735 heatsink (which is made for a 3850/3870) fits the 9800M GT technically, but isn't as thick nor covers the other parts like the 9800M GS heatsink.

I won't have time to run more exhaustive tests, as last night someone snagged the 9800M GT to replace their dead 8800M GTX in their M15x, and it wouldn't be till next week until I'd potentially get a 9800M GS heatsink which I'm not entirely sure is available now for order.

And to top it off, a 9600M GT I bought on eBay, upon testing, is clearly a pre-production/ ES sample with the crusty ancient BIOS and more importantly faulty temp sensors. Pre-production / ES 9600M's have no temp sensors or if a shady seller tries to flash them with a modern gBIOS, the card will technically report "temps," but your system will not know how to respond to them properly and your fan speed will never increase under load and they will eventually overheat.

So now I have to contest it with PayPal or potentially my credit card company and order another one from a more reputable source, but I have to verify it comes with the rear bracket on the back, since the MSI heatsinks do not ship with the GPU brackets, just the heatsinks. I asked about ordering a 9600M GT with the specific part number, but just like all the other GPUs, MSI does not sell them.

Grrrr......

 

You need the one that comes with the gt628

btw, how much did you get for the 9800m gt?

 

Yeah, I just went and checked my email. How I put 627 vs. 628 is beyond me.....

I could mount it on the wall as some weird type of conceptual industrial art.

A gent in France had his M15x GPU die a horrible death, and he paid my, "I really don't want to sell this, but I will for THAT price if I must," of $400.00.

I didn't get a chance to pop the dying 1722's dying DVDRW drive in the mail today, but the ball and chain will mail it out tomorrow to you.

Kinda sad, as I wanted to really give it a whirl with the 628 GPU heatsink. Still kicking myself over putting 627 vs. 628.

Ah well, maybe while I'm tracking down a real, working OEM 9600M GT, a 3870 will pop up somewhere.

In the end, I'm still laptopless atm (well, outside of my work M4400).

I see the pros in everything coming in a neat, tidy, working package, heh.

On the bright side, my new desktop components will be in today and now tomorrow, so by the end of the week, I'll at least have my desktop back up and running.

My sig with, "Currently Under Construction," has been that way for quite some time now......

 

Even the GT628's HS wont work in a 1722, its still a combo set for GPU + CPU just like the GT627..

 

Is it possible to detach the plate for the heatsink where I circled and reattach take the heatsink you need and place it there instead?


Also, are you looking for the heatsink they used here in the notebookcheck review? Because they show one thats orange colored, but they say its in the gt627.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-MSI-Megabook-GT627-Gaming-Notebook.14601.0.html

 

Yep, exactly Rorschach. That is the one I was looking for.

Yes, it is possible to detach.

Does anyone know a source of the GPU backplates for the 9600M GT's and 3870's? They do not come with the heatsinks themselves and the legitimate source of real OEM cards apparently do not have them either. I asked the seller, and you need to remove the backplate from your old GPU and attach it to the new GPU and then attach the heatsink.

And the project continues......

 

They are hard to detatch, there like soldered on, you would need to heat it with a torch and then resolder it on the other one, time consuming..

 

sounds like the road to a better gpu is a hard and long one, im trying to decide right now if i wanna play that game, ive seen several new laptops coming out that are catching my eye, but its killing me cause the possibilities this machine has are not being fully "exploited"

I understand why darth was wanting to get the 98 with his quad, cause a quad and a 96 seems a little unbalanced,

and now the new laptops i see have led backlit screens which are apparently amazing in color quality and contrast.

I was almost looking at a DV7T series from hp, but apparently they solder their cards to the board, =[

Where exactly are you guys looking for your replacement cards, just scouring ebay? the only thing ive found so far was electros 98, and a 3870x2, which definitely wont run in this machine, since the wattage requirements are far beyond what the slot can provide, if im reading it correctly. such a headache man...

Has anyone gotten a chance to play with the GT729 perhaps? im kinda curious about that for a stepping stone, apparently its close to identical, but the motherboards been reworked a bit, and has a 4850 if i remember correctly. or something crazy high like that.


....also just kinda curious anyone here still play with super pi, id like to compare scores for that, the best ive gotten so far was 17 seconds at 1 ,mil, havent tried the higher ones yet, also theres a multiple instance successor to super pi out there, think its called multi prime, gonna give that a whirl and give my machine a little workout.

 

I ended up scooping up a 770M FX (Quadro 9600M GT equivalent) for the time being to pop in when it gets here by Saturday. I'm still in the process of contesting that POS 9600M GT ES/Pre-production sample with PayPal, but either via them or my CC, it is going back.

I agree with you Automatik in that while the 1722 is upgradable, MSI doesn't sell the GPUs and a 3870 will work with a GT735 heatsink, but a 4850 is where it's at for the 1722 chassis.

If you're wanting Nvidia, I do think the top config that will potentially run at full speeds is the 9800M GS (60w) w/ the appropriate Heatsink/Fan. If you aren't stuck on Nvidia, the 4850 is in the same league as the 260M/280M.

The GT729 / 1722-ID3 looks nice as the new motherboard is DDR3 and the 4850 is the 1GB version versus the 512MB version in the GT725.

 

Well technically this board should work also with ddr3 right? or is there a different pinout...

I remember someone somewhere saying it was ddr3 compatible also, even though ddr3 is kinda useless right now in terms of performance gains.

I think im getting to a crossroads with this laptop, i love it but im really tempted to get the 729 barebones that rk has on his website, cause i cant find em anywhere else at all, just so i can get the 4850. If thats the case i might sell this laptop, but thats more of a greed thing than a necessity.

As for this laptops power requirements it might be able to do a 98gs but i think the max power output for this slot is 55w, so wether or not itll work is up in the air, but its close enough to where it might go off without a hitch...

I wouldnt mind the newer nvidia cards, im just kinda annoyed with their naming scheme, i'l take a look and see what i can find for nvidia cards... they need to hurry up and standardize this so we can get a laptop modding frenzy going.

 

Well, outside of a motherboard update to DDR3, the real question is are you happy with your gaming performance? If not and you love the 1722 form factor (I do. I think it is near perfect), then the 725/729 is the logical choice.

Performance wise for memory, the old mindset was that DDR3 offered ~33% more bandwidth than DDR2, but that was negated by DDR3's latency. Kingston does offer a set of real SPD 5-5-5 DDR3 modules directly from their website for laptops (versus the XMP 5-5-5 but actually SPD 7-7-7 crap modules offered on Newegg). So you can equip the 729 with theoretically better memory performance (more bandwidth, equal latency).

I'm keeping an eye on the 729 barebones too. It really seems to be the perfect compromise (1722 chassis build, DDR3, 1GB 4850), but remember the 1722-ID3 barebones is in an ID1 chassis (All black), not the ID2 chassis (Red/Black), if that is of concern to you. The retail GT729 will have the red/black ID2 look.

Or you could wait for some 725 refurbs to show up hopefully cheap on Tiger or elsewhere like they did for a bit with the GX720. Only compromise vs. 729 is DDR2 and 512MB 4850 instead of DDR3/1GB 4850.

 

there are windows programs to change memory timings.

 

Yeah, but I prefer low level SPD timings so timings are OS agnostic.

 

Received my Quadro FX 770M today.

It is a clean pull from a HP Elite 8730 OEM. I was wary considering the POS Pre-production / ES card I was sent before.

Had to modify the rear mounting plate (par for the course for 1722's), as MSI uses an inverted rear plate (mounting posts protrude from the back vs. thread through GPU mounting holes). In addition, the MSI GPU heatsink uses slightly larger screws (same as used for the chassis and clamping down the GPU/CPU fan and CPU HS), so I had to drill them out to ~3/32" for a tight, perfect fit. Copious electrical tape for grounding purposes, some MX-2 and voila.

Unlike the ES POS, this boots everytime and the fans respond accordingly to increased heat.

Nvidia's unified notebook drivers also address their entire Quadro line including the FX cards now.

Just need to replace my DVDRW drive (due in Monday from ZipZoomFly), and I should be good to go. Contemplating an Intel SSD.

 

Glad its working. Do you think this card might work?
http://cgi.ebay.com/nVidia-Quadro-F...286.m7QQ_trkparmsZalgo=LVI&itu=UCI&otn=1&ps=6

 

I'm going to have to say either it won't or it may potentially be downclocked since it has the same 65w consumption rating as the 9800M GT but with half the shaders (48 vs. 96), it may actually perform worse than the 9600M GT.

 

I'd say the same, it probably wont work, Thats a great price though..

 

holy ****! I might buy one just for the hell of it.

 

Hmm i'd say try and get hold of the gts160m prehaps from a 628?

Its most likely running lower power requirements...right? i think its on a smaller die and all of that..xD.

 

No one seems to sell the gts160m =/. Considering trying a few different graphics cards to see what works. Electrosoft, I know the 9800m gt wouldn't run at full clocks, but would powermizer still work and downclock the gpu further when it was not in use?

 

buy 160m http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=418876

It's not worth it though, i would so buy that one you posted earlier.

 

GUESS WHAT? I just looked and I discovered that the 9700m GTS, which is the same thing, uses only 60W! You can therefore flash the quadro to the 9700m and it should work!

this pisses me off. I could have easily bought one of these and sold the 9800m gt.

 

Hmm well thats confusing, because nvidia says the quadro version is a 65w card. The gpu would be even worse than my current card if it downclocks like the 9800m gt. Notebookcheck also says the same thing, for the fx 2700m....

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9700M-GTS.9899.0.html

the 9700m gts uses 60w. A simple bios flash should make it work. It's only $70, it doesn't cost much but you can gain a lot.

 

I guess $70 for the card,and $30 + S&H for the heatsink parts (Unless you want to rip apart your current MXM-II heatsink, I'd recommend ordering another 9600M GT heatsink @ $10 + $20 for a 628 HS), so ~$105-110 to take a stab at it. You will still need to mod the heatsink from the 628 and add the piping from the 9600M GT HS.

Only concern is with a flash, you are still on thin ice consumption wise. If it downclocks like the 9800M GT, the additional 16 shaders (32 vs. 48) won't compensate for the large drop in overall clock speeds unlike the 9800M GT with 96 shaders IMHO.

 

>.> yah or I sell my laptop for say 600$ and put the money I'm willing to spend on a new gpu towards a whole new system....tough decision. Especially since I've seen a few local sales for a g50vt. Electrosoft when you tested to see how much power your gpu slot puts out where did you measure with the voltmeter? -.-' the card I would really like to get my hands on is a ati 4850, seeing as how it doesn't even have a he tab.

 

The 4850 will work no problem, as it has a consumption rate of 55w. In addition, Nacr swapped his 4850 from his GT725 to his 1722 (They are basically identical chassis wise, but it never hurts to test) as a test when he had them both and it worked fine. The output was ~59w +/- 1.5 with Dxdiag real time running to stress the GPU.

 

Electrosoft, I've never used a voltmeter before, "whats strange is a I do have one in my tool box" where on the picture below would I connect the voltmeter to get a accurate measurement?

 

i bought a MSI 1722 id 2 that came with a elevalutation copy of windows vista 64 bit and at first everything worked the Eco button and the turbo button, but after i installed my windows vista 64 bit my turbo or eco buttons are not working, i found the firm ware and the bios but i do not know how to use them thanks.

 

Rorschach:

I'll ask my bud. I know he ended up wire wrapping the leads and soldering on thin pads to fit along a couple of the connector leads of the card with it plugged in to register the power at low load and under complete load for isolated stability during testing.

I didn't know you had a 1651. I guess I should pay more attention to your .sig. I thought you had a 1722 too, heh.

Jmireles2:

The turbo buttons should be exclusive of the OS install. After multiple re-installs on various ID2's, the turbo button worked fine as is.



The turbo button should work regardless of the

 

okay the turbo button is working fine now, but the eco button is not working yet what do you recommend

 

Uninstall scm and reinstall it, but do it as administrator and also set it to run in compatibility mode. If that doesn't work your really out of luck. It doesn't work in windows xp for me either, but all it seems to do is turn down the monitor brightness.

 

well guys check this little doozie out, i was crawling around on the internet and i happend across this gem of a site, if the part number is the same, ive found a massive stockpile of 4670's.

first i was on ebay, looking for mxm cards, found a 4670 that apparently was an acer spare, so i googled the part number, cause the seller was saying it was new when the pictures have thermal paste all over the card with no returns... skeptical i was indeed...

now heres the gravy, i found this website apparently theyre a supplier of an amd video card with the same part number, now theres no visible specs so im gonna call/email the supplier, but if thats the case, then ive found us THOUSANDS of 4670's... more to come...

 

The acer 4670 model is ddr2 and uses mxm 3.b, not much of a upgrade and its not compatible.

 

ah, well then there goes that idea, at least acer users will be happy....

 

DDR2 though, bit low for a card of that power i think, thats a true bottleneck right?

 

yeah ddr2 will definitely be a bottleneck for the card, as for the performance hit, im not sure, there isnt a set percentage for ddr2 vs ddr3, but since the card is plenty fast, 1gb of ddr2 will be a bottleneck in itself cause the memory controller isnt fast enough to fill 1gb efficiently and hence performance will suffer. I think im gonna scan that site a bit more, and see if i cant come up with other cards, it looks like a wholesaler site, so if i can score a decent card, with ddr3 ill get em moving.

Hey does anyone know the part number for the gt729 barebone, i wrote it down somewhere and i cant find it now.

 

oh also, has anyone had issues with the hdmi in terms of scaling, i think it might be a tv issue but i can never seem to get the native resolution to show up the way it should, for example, ill have my tv in its respective resolution, and then have to resize the desktop using nvidias tool, which essentially shaves off pixels till it fits, thust reducing the overall resolution. seems it happens on multiple resolutions and multiple tvs, just curious... Thinking of getting a Sony 32'' here in a bit with the bravia II engine, hdmi looks amazing on that tv, compared to the two thrid party tvs ive used, an HCT (mine) and an AVOL which belongs to a friend. i think it might be due to the fact that the few tvs ive used dont really have an auto resize option, but ill check the bravia here in a bit.

now that i think about it, im gonna play with the hdmi audio, ill let you guys know how well it works, but if anyone has an amp with surroundsound, id be curious to know how it compares in terms of quality, with Optical, id possibly consider getting a new amp.

As a last thing for comparison, whats the highest khz rating anyone has gotten out of their amp using the onboard sound, i think mine only goes to 48khz, a buddy of mine gets his out to 96 or even 128 i think. but hes got a different amp and machine.