MSI GX740 with 5870 1gb ddr5

The i5-430M turbos up to 2.53GHz (19x multiplier) on two cores. The i7-920XMs max on two cores is 23x or 3.067GHz, though, which still isn't fair.

Nonetheless, we'll see how the benchmark goes later. If the difference isn't large, then it's down to the video cards, but if it's big we'll have to see what we can do to even out the CPU comparison.

 

There aren't really any benchmark thingys on the Stone Giant thing...

Hmm.. It was really nothing to me.. Just ran it and realized how um.. useless the thing was..

except it did look kinda cool.

 

There should be some things you can do with the benchmark, maybe we should run the heaven one?

I know you can toggle wireframe modes (Well tesselation should work).

Ill try on my 4850 to see if anything happens.

Wont run

 

Can someone bench the laptop using re5 benchmark with 8xaa highest settings. Definitely considering this one over the g73jh because it would probably be more practical when transporting.

 

I'll give it a go,

I'm feeling generous today

 

Um,

what resolution do you prefer?

I installed this, just waiting to pick the resolution.

 

1680x1050,

55.5FPS.

B.

Stock clocks, No OC.

8xaa, settings all high, motion blur off, vsync off

 

1680x1050

55.6FPS, B.

( Variable Benchmark )

 

holy ****.

 

I got 55.7FPS (B) with my GX640 at stock clocks with the same settings. I got 53.2FPS (B) for the Variable Benchmark, though.

I must say, I quite like the graphics in that game.

 

Can someone tell me what kind of temperatures can I expect with the GX740 while gaming?
Is the cooling solution good?

 

This is what I want to know as well. I'm not a fan of single-fan notebooks (no puns intended).

 

i lold a bit...
I assume the GX740's temps will be ok, since the copper used is kinda thick, and it has 2 exhaust vents (to 1 fan, yes) but it expells heat to the right and to the back...


amirite?

 

Yes you are right. I played dirt 2 with everything on highest today, holding the notebook on my upper legs while sitting. I played an hour or so and the only problem was low battery life(set performance, not battery saving). 30% left after an hour.
But no heat issuses. Ofcource it went warm, but not hot.

 

omG borgqueen I was just watching the MSI gx740 review haha!!
it gets warm i can assume but, have you ran fraps or whatever to measure your FPS in games?
What about temperatures?
Could you give me numbers?
In your review, did you update the drivers before playing?
cuz it looks a bit choppy for 20-25 fps in crysis. :\

 

No i dont wanna use fraps because it eats fps.
Temperatures...what app should i try?(one that makes a log file)
yes i have the newest ccc.
Crysis was choppy indeed, but my graphics card had power saving enabled.
It plays really on high-very high, highest resolution and 4x aa without lag. About 25fps with sometimes a bit stuttering but not much.
Very playable

but always when the game starts it has to load textures. Wait about 5 secs then its all loaded.

Oh and something i wanna ask you guys: in many games, i see objects and shadows appear in distance when i get closer, and disappear when i get futher away from them. Its bothering me. I would say with 1gb memory it must have the power to have them all loaded up.
Its not adjustable in the game itself, every game exept gta4(view distance 42 instead of 100 but everything else on highest) and crysis runs on all highest settings.

 

No matter what setting, all games have textures load up as you go. 1GB is not nearly enough to load all textures in a game, impossible. Crysis alone you know loads up 3 MILLION polygons per second...

Fraps DOES NOT eat FPS. Only if you are using it to record video. I just wanted to let borgqueenx know if he uses it just to measure FPS, does not affect the FPS in game at all. If you see game benchmarks that don't have a benchmark tool, pretty much guaranteed they used Fraps to do so. If you don't believe me, than ask someone you trust on this forum and they can confirm this.

You should use fraps to show your FPS also in Prototype. Just don't record with it...

But Dirt 2 does have a Benchmark tool, so you can use that. Like this

 

As you can see from Quagmire playing Dirt 2 with Fraps to show FPS, FRAPS DOES NOT EAT YOUR FPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W_Ah8_CIEo

 

That doesn't exactly prove it, though, because you'd have to compare framerates with and without FRAPS to know what effect it has. Nonetheless, I do agree that the CPU cycles used by FRAPS and many other such monitoring tools are pretty much negligible. You don't see people worrying about Real Temp or GPU-Z eating their framerates, do you?

Even the Steam Overlay doesn't really have much impact when you have a decent CPU. If you've ever looked at CPU usage during gameplay you'll see that there's plenty of spare cycles to work with, unless your CPU is very slow.

 

borgqueenx (and other gx740 owners) . . . are you overall happy with the screen quality/brightness? In normal lighting situations (i.e. a daylit room), is it fairly easy to read still or is it too dim?

(I know I keep pestering everyone about this, thanks for your patience)

 

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
1274, 50679, 21, 29, 25.139

from fraps log file, with everything on highest.
and btw: it went smoother today. i dont know why. usally i have 5-10fps lower.

@peekaboom: expected to have a notebook i couldnt use outside. its true you dont see a thing when the sun shines onto the screen. but sitting in the shadows outside, i can play perfectly!

 

Playing directly under sunlight is already a bad idea because of the extra heat your system is going to have to endure so playing the screen being unreadable under direct sunlight is sort of expected and not a detriment to anyone who's not crazy

 

Nice frames...All on High-Very High? (shadows on high?)

 

yeah well...the guy was asking. and i only play on-the-go and at the desk on my bedroom.

@BenLeonheart: it was nice today...for the first time i played, of the total of about 20 times. wouldnt expect it to continue.
yes, all settings on highest, but v-sync disabled.

 

Just because this is a gaming laptop doesn't mean it's only for gaming. Still, it's no surprise that the screen is unusable under direct sunlight, because that's the case with any glossy screen anyway.

 

I use mine outside, turn the backlight down and let the sun phase through the screen hehe, you can do basic tasks but with like an antique filter over the screen haha, and the sunlight doesnt really effect temps because i think its like keyboard / metal layer / mobo underside / components / heatsink and fan.

 

Opps . . . i didn't mean sunlight as in outside under "direct sunlight" . . . just using the laptop in a "well lit" room, with either overhead lights or light filtering through the windows. Have you found the low brightness to be a big issue?

Also, I know people mentioned the older 7xx models had bad light bleeding problems. I'm assuming their will be some light bleed, but how is it on the gx740?

 

Any pics of the interior yet? Is the HD5870 on this is the standard MXM like Clevos? Just asking for future laptop, I'd like an MXM, and if MSI uses them, that's tempting. Tired of Asus using proprietary or integrated graphics... it's beyond lame.

 

It is standard , should be same as the Gx640 (mxm 3b)

 

the gx640 or the gx740 are not upgradeable?

 

No not upgradeable.

 

They are upgradable

 

wut?

Dead, you have a 1727, right? is the 1727 upgradeable?
Does anyone know if the GX740 would be exactly the same mobo, etc... from the 1727?
That way I'll know for sure its upgradeable...

 

I have the 1722 but i know for sure that the 1727 is upgradable.

 

The gx740? Whats available for upgrade? If possible id like a i7 instead of i5. How much would that cost?

 

Everything is upgradable .. No point looking at GPU though as you got the best single GPU out there.

All depends on where you look and budget-wise , ES is cheaper but not covered by Intel's warranty or MSI and retail/OEM are way too expensive .. And doing so yourself will void your warranty .. unless like me , you don't really care

 

I think the original question regarding upgrading the GPU was asking if "in the future" the card can be upgraded. For example, a lot of sager's have used a "more" standard mxm format card . . . so assuming the base/mobo design hasn't changed, you could buy a new card 1-2 years down the road and it would work. I have no idea if this is true for the MSI's though.

Otherwise, the gx740 comes with an i7 by default (720qm) if that's what you were asking.

 

every store in the netherlands, brings it with a i5 equipped. at 2,26ghz.

 

Yes the question isn't whether the GX740 uses modular GPU. I'm asking is it the standard MXM 3.0b so that it can be upgraded with any MXM 3.0.

For example, the Asus G73JH uses a modified MXM 3.0b. So yes G73 has MXM 3.0b also, but it's not upgradable like a Clevo/Alienware is.

 

I've spoken with some retailers and although the GPU in 1727 is MXM, it's not upgradeable.

 

ten char

 

Thanks for the confirmation. I feel this is the trade off with these cheaper notebooks. Asus, MSI want you to upgrade every few years with them. Whereas with Clevo, you spend $3K on the machine they already have 4 years worth of your Asus/MSI money so no big deal. At least my impression.

So they make them MXM just so it's easy for them to repair it seems. Replacing an entire mobo or just replace the GPU. But they don't go far enough so it's upgradeable. There is the tradeoff in cost I guess.

Hmm maybe things will change in 2 years time.

 

Eh your chassis will likely break down over time as well. If you're intent on upgrading every couple years you'll probably wanr a new:
-screen
-hard drive
-cpu
-gpu
-ram

so at that point you might as well buy a new motherboard since you'll need it to use the latest hardware, at that point what's the point in having an "fully" upgradeable laptop. The only practical upgrades after purchase imo is RAM and HDD, maybe screen if you really want a nicer screen but if you're going to upgrade the screen you might as well just buy a laptop with the screen you want.

 

screen - why upgrade if your happy with the resolution?
hard drive - not expensive, easy to do. maybe an ssd will be cheap in a couple of years
cpu - GPU will be bottleneck before this.
gpu - this is the one to upgrade
ram - 4 gb will last for quite some time. If not, memory prices will drop low enough to warrant and upgrade.

 

but the point is, by the time you want to upgrade, likely (although not always) the pins on the newest thing are different from what your motherboard supports.

 

Not likely, the only pin that is likely to change is the CPU. For ram, it's being a long time since we moved from ddr2 to ddr3, DDR4 don't come anytime soon, for storage, even for ssd, the sata 2 standard isn't really pushed to it's limit, sata 3 won't be a lot more useful. For GPU, the MXM slot type might change due to power consumption changes, but the current MXM spec should last around 1 more generation of GPU. But anyways, you are not paying 3k for a clevo, more like 1.5k.

 

Enoughs talking part degradation and part revisions over the coming years so he means buy now rather then later (I think.)

But yeah, theres not too much going to change for a while now, which is quite nice, and ofc consoles are still being used madly.

 

When is it coming out? The wait is killing me

 

haha yea, when is this thing finally gonna come out? it's our in europe and the barebones is on sale but the official gx740 is nowhere to be seen in NA

 

I want it out bad, want some direct comparison to the 725 to come out, not some boring review data...