MSI details well-specced GT725 17-inch gaming laptop

Remember that GT725? You know, that behemoth of a gaming laptop announced alongside 43.8 other MSI machines at CES. Anywho, MSI has just come clean with the actual specifications, and gamers in the crowd looking for a portable rig should be pleased. The machine is claiming to be the first ever gaming lappie to include ATI's 512MB Radeon HD4850 GPU, and that's complemented by a 17-inch WUXGA (anti-glare) display, a 320GB SATA hard drive, Blu-ray optical drive, 4-in-1 multicard reader, up to 4GB of RAM, a plethora of ports, nine-cell battery, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, gigabit Ethernet and a 2 megapixel webcam. There's also an ExpressCard slot, four standard speakers plus a "subwoofer" and a Turbo Drive Engine to make overclocking a lesson in simplicity. The 7-pound unit is being billed as MSI's new flagship laptop, and with a list of internals like that, we can fully understand why. Full release is after the break.

MSI Announces GT725 – World's First Gaming Notebook to Feature ATi Radeon HD4850 and Deliver Desktop Gaming Performance with a Single GPU

GT725 features 17" 1080P HD LCD Monitor, Blu-ray Player and 9-Cell Battery

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – March 02, 2009 – MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce the GT725 Gaming Notebook. MSI outfitted the GT725 with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology (Intel® 45nm Penryn P9500), the ATi Radeon HD4850 video card, a Blu-ray player and a 17" 1080P HD LCD to create the ultimate mobile gaming experience.

"GT725 is our flagship gaming notebook," said Andy Tung, Vice President of Sales, MSI US. "Graphically speaking it is in a class by itself – the brilliant 1080P HD display and 4GB of DDRII allow the GT725 to run 3-D titles that few other gaming notebooks could handle."

MSI built the GT725 in its brushed aluminum gaming case with stamped aluminum sheeting for increased protection and durability. However, despite the rugged case and a standard 9-cell battery, the GT725 weighs just over seven pounds.
MSI's also included its exclusive Turbo Drive Engine Technology and ECO Engine Management function which are activated by two touch centers located just above the keyboard.

[Sibuna Posted Mar 2nd 2009 9:24PM]

7 pounds? Daaaamnn...

[Sibuna Posted Mar 2nd 2009 9:25PM]

"7 pound unit" - hah, it took me another read through to notice that, but I got it Engadget, don't worry :P

[maveric101 Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:49PM]

if that's with battery, that would be pretty impressive. this is a pretty nice rig, i just want an i7 mobile in there.

[maveric101 Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:51PM]

oh engadget please do post some reviews of this thing when they come out...

[ZaxCG2 Posted Mar 3rd 2009 1:01AM]

WHAT? TOO HEAVY?!
Weak BABY.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:28AM]

have been using this laptop for last month, and I can say it's truly amazing.
when hooked to onkyo 705 and ptax200 projector it can run COH with highest settings on 1080p resolution.
no hiccups or slow downs.
benchmarked in 3d06 goes well beyond 10k mark.
All that for under 1200€!!
HOORAY!!!!!!

[seanGadget Posted Mar 2nd 2009 9:47PM]

am i mistaking or is this the same laptop i already bought?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152103

[The Dead Marxist Trio Posted Mar 2nd 2009 9:57PM]

You are clearly mistaken, RTFA.

This one is an upgrade from yours, in that:

2.53 ghz
BD drive
WUXGA screen...

I don't know maybe some other stuff; this laptop is effin sweet.. I'd love to make some osx86 love with this thing.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:01PM]

yours has P8600 2.4GHz, and the GT725 has P9500 2.66GHz 6MB L2
also your has DVD multi drive, the GT725 has Blu-ray drive

[deepBLUE Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:32PM]

as the above to commenter said. but if you want to say "but i don't need the extra xxx MHZ speed or blueray or exra sharp screen.

well, let's put it this way --> yours doesn't do true HD movies, first off, your screen can't do 1080p, and you don't have the drive to actually play HD movies.

[seanGadget Posted Mar 2nd 2009 11:19PM]

lol dam yall settle down. I dont even have that laptop. I have a dell studio xps 16, i was just kidding. chilll

[seanGadget Posted Mar 2nd 2009 11:35PM]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152102

[Ozymandias Posted Mar 2nd 2009 9:59PM]

The best thing about MSI is that these things have Matte displays in them still.

I love my 1651.

[Paul C Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:03PM]

battery life of 10 min?

[maveric101 Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:53PM]

no, that processor has a TDP of only 25W, so the biggest power draw is gonna be that beast graphics card. but with a 9 cell battery, this thing should could get 3 hours under normal use.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:16PM]

this is amazing. I wonder how kids will play high end games on the 100$ laptop -
http://www.techreviews4u.com/2009/01/30/100-laptop-for-kids/

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:56PM]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152102

$1599.99

Should I pull the trigger on this one? ;)

[Weber 09 Posted Mar 3rd 2009 12:14AM]

Wait, What?...

[Raul7 Posted Mar 3rd 2009 1:13AM]

Are you on drugs again?

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 2:10AM]

I don't know much about that processor, but I would assume it's weaker than a core 2 duo.
I say good call putting a weaker processor with probably less power consumption, since most games are significantly more GPU dependent. I would expect this to have a pretty decent battery life, and if it had some kind of integrated graphics card to switch to while not playing games, it would make it even better.

[kkl1014 Posted Mar 3rd 2009 2:39AM]

Actually, it is a Core 2 Duo. It is the highest end of the P series Core 2 Duo 25W processors and should gives the same performance as the higher end T9400 35W processor. I believe it's clocked the same as it and has the same L2 cache, just a higher energy efficiency.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 3:14AM]

Thanks for the explanation man.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 5:37AM]

My SONY VGN-FW285j have Blu Ray Rewriter, so the Bly Ray player is not something special...
Full HD (1920*1080) display @ 16,4" looks amazing for me... 17" also...
My battery empty for 2h and 20 min, but i have P8600, 4GB DDR2 @ 800, ATI HD3650m 512DDR3...
Sorry 4 my English...

Bye

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:27AM]

have been using this laptop for last month, and I can say it's truly amazing.
when hooked to onkyo 705 and ptax200 projector it can run COH with highest settings on 1080p resolution.
no hiccups or slow downs.
benchmarked in 3d06 goes well beyond 10k mark.
All that for under 1200€!!
HOORAY!!!!!!

[Diesel1313 Posted Mar 3rd 2009 7:45AM]

GT 725 OWNER: Im delighted to see that my recently purchased laptop is on this forum and on Engadget :). This is an amazing laptop. I was lucky enough to get the higher spec model noted as the 2.53 Core 2 Duo, funny enough though mine came with a 500 GIG Western Digital HD and not the 320 GIG Western Digital One. So the specs do vary considerably ( I reside in the UK) and got it from Micro Anvika who were according to MSI UK Sales the only reps for this unit in the UK.

XP Installation and Drivers: This is the tricky bit: It took me ages to find the drivers for this baby, but after bickering with MSI continually I finally managed to get one of the Tech Heads to e-mail me a link to beleive it or not a rapidshare based download of the certfied MSI XP HD 4850 drivers, the other ones ara a doddle as the drivers can be installed off of the Vista Restore Drivers CD, although not stated for the most part work, some however require googling, and some jsut require right clicking on Windows Drivers for a standard Update which it manages to find. ANOTHER IMPORTANT POINT: You will need to slip stream AHCI ICH9 drivers so as to be able to support SATA in XP using Nlite into the actual Windows XP installation and burn the modified CD with the newer drivers. If you dont do this the machine continually boots into a Blue Screen while trying to install XP :P "good one MSI". Oh and bizarrely enough the SD card reader cant read SDHC ( I have done all respective firmware updates as well).

All in all a Labour of LOVE and worth every hard earned Sterling. Please ask me anything you like about this baby and I will be happy to help.

THANK YOU

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 30th 2009 3:46PM]

I recently purchased a MSI GT725 it came with vista and of course like every other vista installation I've ever had, after updating it crashed and wouldn't boot so I installed XP and now XP drivers are of course non-existant but what was the link for the ATI Mobility HD 4850 graphics driver? all the drivers from ATI don't work and right now I'm running a modded older version, I'm also having a hard time finding the realtek HD audio driver, and the "turbo" drivers, the one I have starts to install but then it crashes and doesn't install the "audio device on high definition audio bus" portion. MSI apparently doesn't like XP =(

[(Unverified) Posted May 4th 2009 7:48PM]

@Dean Cohen

I just bought one of these babies and I would appreciate any help you would like to give so I can set up XP as you seem to have nailed it already. I would also like to write a Google Knol article about it so that everyone has easy access to the method if they want it. Please email me when you get a chance:

mediablogger at live.com

Thanks for your help.

[Diesel1313 Posted May 7th 2009 12:40PM]

http://rapidshare.com/files/196361266/8.56-081112a-072696C-MSI-xp-cert.zip

Above is the XP ATI 4850 Drivers for MSI GT725, as for the installation of ICH9 you have to learn how to slip stream using NLITE. If you guys are to lazy just e-mail me your addresses at [e-mail] and I will be glad to post you the CD's of all the drivers so you can fiddle with it.

Many Thanks

Dean

[voodoo Posted Mar 3rd 2009 8:17AM]

As far as gaming laptops go, this thing is great value for money. I can buy this thing for about €1200, whereas most Dell or Alienware gaming laptops cost €2000+. And usually they have low-end processors as standard and don't include Blu-Ray.

Apparantly the laptop supports CPU overclocking from 2.5 -> 2.9GHz, that is pretty rare for a laptop to support overclocking out of the box. Nice!

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 9:25AM]

Not only that it overclocks(only with power cord) to 3GHz but it also have 5 different ECO presets to extend your battery life.
It will give you approx 60fps in world of conflict (same with COH all settings to the MAX) on medium/high settings.
the only weird thing is that, it seems that it is capable of getting better fps on 1920*1080 60p, when connected to the projector in the clone mode.

[(Unverified) Posted May 14th 2009 11:32AM]

Hi All.
Im quite clued up when it comes to computers but I may need some help with this one.
Well, it hapend so that bought this laptop today, and its coming on saurday:)...never mind
So I was just wondering if I you could possibly install 8GB ram in this machine...mhmmm?
MSI says that you can't, this is the laptop spec (I phoned them, they will say that cause they supply it with 32bit system)
but i have strange feeling that its acctualy quite possible, let me justyfy why...
The machine comes with Intel® PM45+ICH9M...thats what they say...you can check that here
http://eu.msi.com/index.php?func=prodtmpspec&maincat_no=135&cat2_no=271&cat3_no=&prod_no=1676#menu
Now this is what intel got to say about thier own product
(chipset):
http://ark.intel.com/chipset.aspx?familyID=35515
(processor):
http://ark.intel.com/cpu.aspx?groupId=40480

[(Unverified) Posted May 14th 2009 11:40AM]

...continuation, now it looks to me like this would even alow you to install ram rated at 1066Mhz
as both chipset and processor can operate at these speeds.
The only problem now is to overcome that 4GB maximun alowance for 32bit systems
...simple, Inatall Vista 64bit that supports greater ram values

so now would that be possible that by just changing the system from 32 bit to 64 bit
and buying 8GB 800Mhz or even 1066Mhz ram you could get boost your performance
dou you think that it would be possible no mater what MSI says?
of course there may be also limitation applied in Bios which messes it all
tell me what you think please:)

Regards.

Tom.

[(Unverified) Posted May 14th 2009 11:53AM]

you may even wanna read this :)

"Besides X series GT series of notebooks, suited for gamers, got few newborns in shape of GT627 (16 inch, GeForce 9800M GS), GT628 (17 inch, GeForce 9800M GTS), GT725 and GT727 (17 inch, Radeon 4850). All those models are equipped with Core2Duo CPUs and up to 8GB RAM. "

quote from:

http://www.insidehw.com/Editorials/Events/CeBIT-2009-Day-2-MSI-XFX-nVIDIA-and-takeMS.html