GT725 with Quad core, the Advent 6555?

More on mobile GPU driver:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=355375

 

Downloading futuremark now quicklite, so when its done, ill have a look at getting some scores up thisevening. Im currently on 8.5 ish drivers, and its giving me 5.5, however this seems to be down to the hard disk (5.5), as everything else is 5.9
Also, got it from southampton, i think the guy said they had a few there
and yeah, standard one year warantee.. providing you dont get suckered into the protection plan thing

 

Blakers, how is the build quality? Is there flex in the palm rest, keyboard, or even on the screen when opening? And what about the hinge, is it strong enough? To me the hinges look a bit too far apart. When pushing on the top of the lid, when closed, does it flex?

 

southampton! you beauty. I'll go buy one this week as i live a few miles from there!

 

Thanks very much, very interessted in the combo of ATI + C2D. Though just hope mobility 4 series is less reliant on CPU performance.

How would you sy the general performance of the laptop is? is 2 GHz lagging at all?

 

I'm really thinking about picking one of these up now, I was after an Asus G71g but I couldn't find one in the UK and this just seems to good to be true.

I was just wondering what kind of settings you could run Crysis on through this? I expect High or Ultra high with the lower res of the laptop.

Also I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the batery life is like on this?

Thanks for any help you throw my way!

 

OK I taken the plunge as well, only downside I can see is the res on the screen.

But saying that the actual quality of image on the screen is spot on. I think I can live with the low res as the reason for laptop for me was to replace old work laptop and combine desktop, which this seems to be doing so far.

Build quality is top notch, you get blu-ray software out of the box.

Its quiet running normally only fans kick in when heavy gaming, which it good on as well. CS:Source Maxed out running 1900*1200 on ext montior cam in over 183FPS.

Quirky keyboard, as the right hand side shift and ctrl keys are small, will take time to get used to.

The Hard drive is a toshiba, but model name comes back as a 5400rpm or 7200rpm so cannot comment on that.

Memory is DDR26400, will double check with z-cpu and let you know.

Other odd one is it packed with 32bit Vista so you only get access to 3GIG of memory, so may want to upgrade to 64 bit.

For me looking at other ones, this was the best fit for me, as the ATI GPU is amazing, and the quad core is great for Photoshop and tools like that.

Max

 

Dig around as the ASUS have a stupid linux shell that drains battery life, mates got one and we cannot get rid of it. It looks like it may be loaded on the actual BIOS CHIP. So check before you buy.

 

hmm the 32 bit vista is a bit of a let down also, but can be upgraded easy enough i would imagine?

Any chance you could get a couple of photos of it up?

 

Hi

I bought this laptop the other week and i have to say it rocks ! No overheating problems, no crashes, will run Crysis and Fallout 3 on very and ultra high settings and playable too. only issue is that with Hdmi sound enabled it freezes when you try to run a dvd on an HDTV. Have heard its a catalyst problem which has been fixed in 9.1 or 9.2. No support at minute though

 

congrats on your purchase! ... mind posting some pics?

 

Cheers. I think i've pretty decided on the Advent now. I was just wondering about it's battery life? 2 hours would be nice but i think i'm being optimistic with that.

 

man, i really want to get one of these..

I phoned up currys and they said they dont have any in the branches near me.

i think im going to drive about and try find one maybe tomoro if someone could post some pics or anything iw ould be super happy!

 

hi

think your being very optimistic at 2 hours, there is a leaflet in the box that states if you want to run games you need to have it plugged in. I,m more than happy with the quality and performance. you even have the facility to overclock the graphics car with the catalyst page. I bench tested the processor and it absolutely left the competition for dead. what is doesnt tell you in the specs is that it has 4.1 surround and infrared and an HDMI out. will try and get some pictures on later

 

Yeah I was expecting as much, but how long will the battery last if i wanted to do something else, i dunno watch a film or something?

 

advent 6555 owners are in demand! i hope one of you is kind enough to put together a review or something

 

Can someone do a 3D mark 06 with modded mobility 9.2 driver?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=355375&highlight=mobility+9.2

 

the modded 9.2 drivers dont install, there is no support currently for mobility hd4850, they only go up to 3800

need a fix

 

I'm hearing a lot of serious misgiving about the resolution of the 6555.
Then - what a surprise - those that have take the plunge discover that their GPU-bashing games run sweet at the native res - and look fantastic.

The 1650x1080 GT725 has already been benchmarked to death and just about manages Crysis at native resolution with most of the eye-candy ramped up to high or very-high.
Drop this res to 1440x900 and of course, you get better fps and/or better quality; take your pick.

In the Advent 6555 we have a notebook that pretty much ticks every box with a big grin on its face.

Yes, 1440x900 is a bit on the low side for a 17" screen (I actually believe it's the perfect res for a 14.1"/15.4" screen), but the promise of great frame rates in every current game at native res with all the eye candy max'ed - thanks to the very capable and emininently OC'able HD4850 easily trumps a bit of extra screen real estate.
We all want games to look their best at 30+fps. That seems to me to be the absolute priority. Notebook GPUs are getting pretty powerful, but even in the best rigs (which are invariably very expensive) you have to make some concessions.
A lot of folk seem very disappointed not to see a WUXGA sreen in this notebook, but I guarantee you that if it did, you'd be dropping the res just to get playable frame rates for games that we won't see until 2009/2010, and this pretty much muddies any quality settings you try to ramp up.

For the required, playable fps, imho:
Low Res with AA/AF/High Quality > High Res with no AA/AF/Medium Quality > Non-Native Low Res with AA/AF/High Quality

By the way - has the Advent got a better keyboard than the GT725, I wonder? It looks wider (assuming the chassis to be identical to the MSI), so perhaps it doesn't have those troubling little keys...

 

To 6555 user, does it have intel 5100 wireless?

it should show up in device manager.

 

right, im taking the plunge on friday as i get paid. Hopefully before then a few of you that have already purchased this will have got some pics and benchmarks up. i hope its the right choice for me! 1000£ is a lot for a student!

 

OK Please see the attached images.

Hopefully this will answer some questions on what in this bit of kit, such as HDD, Wireless, CPU and Memory. NB That only Slot 1 and 3 are filled at the moment Slot 2 and 4 are shown as empty in z-cpu so I guessing that means that iy could go up to 8 Gig of Ram, but please do your researcarch on that I not that much of a hardware techy.

Also NB I not fully tested Battery life yet, but on balanced it seems to give about 2 hours. Which is not bad as the CPU is rated as a 45W.







I will try and do a 3DMark 2006 rating later..

Max

 

AWESOME...

Sorry, I'm a Vista WEI nut, do you think its possible to upload a WEI (windows experience index)?

Cheers

 

Here you go

 

Thanks not bad score at all...

 

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WOW, nice pics!

Can you take a few of the laptop, of the area near screen and keyboard (front)?

 

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there ya go... ive gone and crudely plastered my pics all over your lovely clean forum

still working on the benchmarks..

 

Nice pix...
CPU-Z first pix info is exactly the same info as the barebones 1722.
From the pictures, unless I am missing something, looks like nothing changed on other than the video card & cpu on this model vers the 720/1722 barebones.
Of course some new colors on the plastic, yet the heart is still a 1722
I see the gpu heatsink now has two pipes

You may want to blacken out the software keys, or remove that back pix as you did

 

Blakers, cheers for the photos.

 

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there we go.. nice and blurry

 

to me, it looks like the cpu and card could be quite easily swapped out... not that id want to of course... but just incase

 

Blakers, so what do you think I quite impressed by mine, and for the price amazed to be honest. I really think PC world may be doing this as a loss loser just to get people in and buy stuff.

 

Nice photos

 

Hi everyone,

I've just joined this forum and you guys seem to know your stuff so here's the thing:

I've been interested in buying the Packard Bell Ipower laptop for the past few months but after reading this it appears the advent would be a better buy.

I'm still a little confused why though because from what I've heard about the graphics cards the 9800 and the ATI are about the same but the 9800 has twice the memory so should be better?. Granted the advent is a quad core but I've also heard that hardly anything can actually use this.

I'm not too computer savvy so any explanation would be great.

Thanks guys!

 

Nice pictures

 

The added 512MB of memory really doesn't make any difference unless you want to run games at 1900x1200. What really matters are the shaders I believe (If this is wrong then feel free to correct me ).

 

That Packard lappy is pretty much a Gateway P-7811 FX ; its similarly sized to 6555, but has a additional HDD slot.

As for graphic memory, let me tell you this, there is literally no difference in the performance at all 9800m GTS w/512 mb or 1024 mb ram. Due to the limited memory of 256bit memory bus, 9800m GTS would have trouble filling up 512mb anyway. The difference is in the actual GPU core.

9800m GTS has performance level of Ati's last gen 3850, where as the 4850 in 6555 is a hefty rework of 3850; with 2.5 times more shaders than 3850, along with other amazing improvements, its performance easily bests Nvidia's much higher end 9800m GTX in games(than 9800m GTS), if you turn up the AA filter, 4850 can actual perform better, where as NV's performance deteriorates quickly. Combined with quad core CPU, if you run games that takes advantage of 6555's full power, it ought to run circles around Packard bell's 9800m. Further more, on 6555, you can pretty much max out everything at 1440x900 in todays latest game.

The same cannot be said for the packard bell, with its higher res screen, and less powerful GPU, finally dual core CPU (2.0Ghz P7350), does not take a genius to work out you's have to turn down the resolution and quality if you want to play absolutely the latest games...

Though that said, your fine with either lappy, as they are more than sufficient for most people, its a matter of taste, but I think the Advents far more futureproof....

Edit:

Just realised that Packard system has 1440x900 screen as well, in that case its alot worse value than Advent 6555 at same price

 

There is a reivew of the gateway mentioned here if your interested.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3373

 

Can someone with an Advent 6555 list the box contents?

 

thanks for the insight pics +rep for that

have u install gpu -z and can it recong ur ati 4850 bz its not reading my card in my gt725 thansk in adv

have u got some temp for ur gpu?

 

i bought one of these and im super happy with it tuns cod 4 pretty much maxxed out and the screen is suprisingly nice for the ress.

Only downside i have is the hard drive 250GB is pretty small, considering you get about 200gb out of it.

also my WEI thing went down to 5.5 on the hard disc which is pretty wierd.


would it be hard to swap it out for a better hard disk?

 

Yes, it is extremely easy to. See the pics on the 9th page? Just unscrew the smaller rectangular area near the battery and the HDD should be inside. Replacing should be straightforward, though there are numerous guides available if you are unsure.

WEI is very bad, btw. Don't base ANYTHING off it.

 

could u list the box contents? or give some benchmarks? thanks

 

yeah, i will post some stuff up this evening for you. I dont really know how to get the benchmarks tho so help would be cool i took some photos of unpacking it and that i wll sort out tonight

 

Use these software to benchmark:
3D Mark 06 http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/3dmark06/download/
3D Mark Vantage http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/3dmarkvantage/introduction/

 

box contents weren't that amazing., just the laptop in an antistatic bag, the powercable, microsoft works disc, and an advent-ised vista guide. nothing else.

 

There's versions of MSI GT725 being sold on ebay with a WUXGA screen, unfortunately it's only dual core. If they only have a version with both quad core and WUXGA - and not more than 200 quid more expensive - I'd buy it in a heartbeat...