One User's Experience - MSI E7405

Hi MSI fans,

This thread is mostly intended to be a place where I can share my experience, opinions, and statistics of my new laptop, the MSI E7405, with other users on this forum. By all means, anyone who owns this or the GX740 should also share their experiences as well. I will post my thoughts on certain topics of discussion about the laptop's performance, ease of use, etc. If anyone would like me to get more specific on any detail, don't hesitate to kindly ask. I have a number of game titles I would benchmark if anyone would like as well. These titles include:

Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Arkham Asylum, Borderlands, Blur, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Halo 2 Vista, Gears of War, Oblivion

For this first post, I will post my brief thoughts on a few areas, and provide a bit of info on performance in Crysis Warhead and Arkham Asylum.

First, my specs:
Intel Core i5-430M (2 x 2.27 GHz - 2.56 w/ Turbo Boost )
Mobility ATI Radeon HD 5870 w/ 1GB DDR5 VRAM
DDRIII 4GB RAM
HDD: SATA 320GB, 7200rpm
17" WSXGA+ GlareType screen, 1680 x 1050 native resolution

Now, a few thoughts:

Ease of Use:
Processor and RAM combination provide extremely snappy response in web browsing, desktop applications, etc. on Windows 7 Home Premium. I have not hit any CPU bottlenecks, and I don't expect to for quite some time. Not to mention Windows 7 is LIGHTYEARS better than Vista and I prefer it to XP - if you haven't tried yet, now's the time to upgrade.

Special Functions:
This MSI laptop uses touchpad sensors above the keyboard to activate certain elements, like WLAN and Bluetooth. It took a quick Google search for me to first realize that I needed to tap the WLAN sensor to pick up any wireless signal, but since that little snafu these controls have grown on me. The touchpad sensors also allow you to easily switch between different modes of operation (for power consumption and efficiency), including Gaming, Video, Presentation, Office, and Turbo Battery. Quite nifty - by appearances, it seems that when none of these modes are activated, the laptop rests in a a generic Gaming mode by default.

Cooling:
After a couple hours of general use, the back heat vent of the laptop (primary source of heat output) feels lukewarm or a bit warmer. While gaming, it takes about 30 minutes to an hour, game dependent, for the vent to produce some noticeable heat (where it is uncomfortable to rest your finger on the vent). Obviously I could be a lot more specific here; if there's an easy method to checking internal temps, etc. and there is interest, please let me know and I can check that out.

Design:
Brushed aluminum mixed with bold red outlines creates a clash of retro and futuristic/gaming that I personally quite like. This chassis is easy enough to find without me providing a picture here, but I will if requested. The laptop produces nice quality sound, and I don't personally notice a difference in quality between the onboard speakers/subwoofer and the Dell twin speakers I used to use with my Vista desktop. The 9-cell battery does protrude about an inch out the case in the back. I have found that for its size, this laptop is very surprisingly lightweight; advertised at 7.04 lbs., the 17" E7405 is noticeably lighter than a 15.6" laptop, single Radeon 5650 GPU, of iBUYPOWER build that I have compared it to.

Picture Quality:
Admittedly, I am not the best judge of contrast and viewing angles. All I can say is that from my perspective, as a lifelong gamer, the clarity and color is quite crisp and rich, respectively, especially while gaming at native resolution.

Performance:
For my initial post, I have chosen to do brief FRAPS playthroughs of Crysis Warhead and Arkham Asylum. Arkham Asylum does not require any screenshots or otherwise; the game ran locked at 60fps, 1680 x 1050, V Sync On, every setting enabled, and Very High detail level.

Crysis Warhead, on the other hand, is a bit different story. I can say from personal experience that Warhead does indeed run a bit better than vanilla Crysis. At 1680 x 1050, no AA, all Enthusiast settings, Warhead runs at 15-20 fps. While this is "playable" in small bursts for me, I generally need at LEAST 21-30 for a playing experience that I'll be comfortable with. Because of this, I play both Crysis and Crysis Warhead with the following settings:

1280 x 720, 2x AA, all Enthusiast except Shadows: Gamer (Enthusiast = Very High and Gamer = High in vanilla Crysis).

I personally don't mind this lower resolution, although some might take issue with the lose of clarity. The small amount of anti-aliasing helps balance this in my mind. I recorded a few FRAPS screenshots in the chapter "Adapt and Perish", which features an icey, snowstorm landscape that was one of the hardest areas to render in the original game, but which Warhead handles a bit better. Still, it's a good stress test. See the thread attachments.

WOOPS! The Attachment Manager keeps quitting out on me and losing its connection. Sorry guys, I'll work on getting the screenshots up. Suggestions?

All in all, a 25.1 fps average in this small section, with small jumps and dips here and there. The FPS numbers are, as follows: 22, 26, 27, 23, 25, 31, 23, 24, 25. Running through jungle areas in the game would boost the games FPS closer to and above 30 with these settings.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! While my reports on this laptop are pretty rudimentary right now, I look forward to seeing comments, hearing any requests, and maybe the experience of others as well. This thread is aimed not necessarily as a way for me to document results, but to assist laptop buyers, benchmark enthusiasts, and other "notebook reviewers".

 

Nice. I'm considering getting this laptop or the G72GX.

Could you give internal temps, I would love to see them!

 

Sure thing. Under "average load" (for me, Google Chrome and iTunes running), the GPU runs at about 65.0 C, with exact temps of 63, 65, and 62.5 on separated locations of the card.

After playing Crysis Warhead for about 45 minutes (a quite "hot" game), GPU load is 98-100% and average temp. is about 92 C. Bearing in mind GPU-Z also reads a 30% fan speed.

Also, CPU threads read as follows: 56, 57, 59, 61. These frequently flip around in the 56-61 range. I'll try adjusting fan speed to see if I can't bring all this down.

 

UPDATE: After playing Warhead for another 30-40 minutes with 80% fan speed (with ATI Catalyst Control Center), GPU Temp was averaging 75.0 C. Anyone know if this is a safe fan speed, at least just for gaming? Or a bit much and I'll see breakdowns sooner?

 

Nice review

 

The GPU sounds a bit hot, but like you said it was only 30% speed. 80% speed is a safe fan speed I would imagine, and that did bring the temp down to a reasonable one.

Good review!

 

Actually 75C after 30 minutes of gameplay on a mobility 5870 seems perfectly fine to me. Btw, I know ATI catalyst has a fan control feature, but it does nothing to the actual fan speed on your laptop. It's controlled by the BIOS.

 

I think Crysis should output more frames on the 5870?

You should try ATI's driver

Good review/overview though!

 

Really? Hmm, I wonder why the GPU temp dropped so much... That's an interesting point actually, I entered setup during the laptop's start-up, and I can't find any options for adjusting fan speed. Am I in the wrong place?

I'd be interested to test the 5870 on Warhead or vanilla Crysis with the settings/resolution of your choice. Admittedly, I haven't tried native 1680 x 1050 with all Gamer settings (which I presume would be most gamer's preferred setup). I'm a sucker for the Enthusiast shaders and motion blur. I'll try some Warhead gaming this evening with the above settings instead of my strange config. to see what I can get. I have full faith the 5870 will play through those settings VERY smoothly.

Also, I'm noticing that no other location in the game has been as intensive as that ice region.

(On a side note, GPU running at stock speeds. No OC)

Hopefully 80% is safe! After seeing the drastic temperature reduction, I'm thinking i'm gonna start doing all my intensive/long session gaming with a fan speed close to this.

Thank you all for your review compliments! I'll add some more overtime as I explore the laptop more, and again, any requests?

 

UPDATE: Testing out the 5870 some more, I changed Warhead's settings to 1680 x 1050 (native), no AA, all settings Gamer. I also loaded from the same save file in the icey "Adapt or Perish" chapter as my above benchmarking.

In a 10-minute playing period, the framerate never dropped below 31. It frequently flipped back and forth in the 34-37 range, occasionally hitting as high as 41-44 in less-intensive frames (zoomed-in scope view, etc.)

 

Did you upgrade to the latest Ati Catalyst 10.6 drivers? If yes any increases in graphics performance?

Is it safe to increase the fan speed over the default 30% speed? It did say increasing it will decrease the lifespan of the graphics accelerator fan.

 

As said by kosti, the shown fan speed settings in the Catalyst Control Center are not the actual fan speeds, and so the 30% figure is false.

 

I have not yet. Nice laptop
I'm not sure about safe speed or not, I noticed that disclaimer as well.

lackofcheese, where can we get a proper view of fan speed then? And alter it?

 

Thers only one fan(cools 2 parts), so thats the end of controling the fan speed talk, if you think you need to lower the fan speed then read up on under clocking 1st. Half the talk on the 640 is about under clocking and stuff.

 

hi how is the laptop looking? is it bulky? any 17" backapck will fit this right? coz g73jh will not fit in most of the backpack models... and wat abt the accessories that come with this beast?

 

Help! I have a e7405 and i made the mistake of trying to upgrade the ati drivers (running 8.690 at the time) and it completely destroyed any drivers i had at the moment along with making CCC completely inoperable. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers off the CD that came with the e7405, but it did the same thing. At one point, the screen res reset to 800x600 and dxdiag couldnt detect any hardware (i was running off of integrated graphics, *shudder*). on the verge of suicide, i rebooted and magically my drivers reappeared (8.690, not the new ones) however, CCC is nowhere to be found. i tried updating the drivers in the first place because steam was telling me that CODMW2 was 'unavailable at the moment' and troubleshooting told me to update the drivers. any help is duly appreciated.

 

Nice review! I realize i'm a little late on this thread and hate to bump but I used the search and didnt find one of those nifty E7405 owners threads so I figured this was a good place to inquire.

I just ordered this machine last night and im eagerly waiting its delivery. I had a few questions though as to somethings that might be necessary to optimize, or if anything else, help protect it from overheating. I read a few reviews on the gx740 model of users who said they experienced overheating and crashing or unsmooth gameplay due to not having up to date drivers or bios or something like that.

Is there anything I should know about like this that I should get underway once i plug her in or is this something only with those models? Thanks

 

I just received mine today.
It had a lot of bloatware, I didn't bother with a clean install, just uninstalled them manually.
So far it's looking good, nothing was out of the ordinary, current temps with the Zalmon NC2000 cooler is about 58 idle on the GPU.
I'm very surprised with the quality of the speakers. They are topnotch, I'd say even better than my Sennheiser headphones.

EDIT: Actually the sound processor in the laptop is just really good. I put on the headphones and the bass is excellent, much better than my previous laptop(Asus m50)

 

did updating the ati drivers on the e7405 cause any problems? im getting some FPS lags in-game goes from 170 down to 30-40...is it overheating? or the drivers? will my webcam still work if i update to the 10series of ati drivers?

 

I'm using 10.8 CCC Drivers, with 8.762 display drivers. No problems. My max temperature has been 88C, haven't experienced any slowdowns so far.

Webcams still works, don't think that has any dependency on the ATI drivers.

 

tapeablelizard: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/457412-msi-gx740-5870-1gb-ddr5-132.html

Bearclaw: check your PMs

mindovermatter23: I have not yet updated my ATI drivers, but I have flashed my vBIOS. As far as I know, the version of the vBIOS I have is the most recent, and will result in massively reduced temperatures. Sounds like your game problem could 1) be a result of ATI drivers, or 2) be a game problem. I can't play the last level of Crysis in DirectX10 because of memory leaks (granted, this isn't just for systems like mine; it's a common problem; what's your game?)

 

Thanks for the PM but I'd like if people had an input with regards to controlling the fan settings via CCC and how their temps changed, if any.

 

Okay I just tried switching the fans to 80% and had absolutely NO CHANGE at all in game temps. The noise of the fans were not noticeable either. As i stands right now I'm in a 26.6C room and about 81C on load... With fans increased I think it should be at most about 75C

 

thanks, im assuming that the vbios in the link will work with the e7405?

and bearclaw did you go into control panel>system and security>device manager

and then go under display adapters and update that way?

I did not for like the first 4 days i had mine and i was noticing sluggish fps as well as high temps. After the update im about 70 degrees while playing SC2 or crysis with drastic improvement.

I unlocked my ati overdrive not knowing it voids the warranty but i figure while its unlocked i might as well do some minor OC'ing especially if that VBios update will really drop around 10 degrees

 

Overdrive doesn't void warranty.

You can set it back to locked with a registry edit anyways....

And I'm assuming you're talking about driver update? Those all come from either MSI website for their version or the latest from AMD. Both work.

Also, check temps with an on screen display, not after you alt tabbed.

If you're getting 70 deg max with Crysis on stock vBIOS, then either you're playing in a freezer or I should get 60 lol

 

ah, i see.

 

I am really really liking the look of this laptop!

I do have a couple of concerns though..

1. External heat, mainly the palm rest when playing games

2. Fan noise given a fast GPU coupled with an i5 CPU.. (I read this for the GX640, but I suppose the same would apply)..

Thank you =)

 

Never noticed any heat in the palm rests.

Fan noise isn't bad, even at full blast.

 

only place you feel heat is around the enter key section of the keyboard since the big guy is under there.

 

I am not sure if the vbios update is for this version of MSI but for my GX740 (the one with i5 450m), after updating the vbios, my load temp went down from ~95 deg C to ~76-80 deg C. No change in gaming performance, but somehow the update just lowered the temp (I think it does it by lowering the voltage when the laptop's not under heavy loads). Since the gpu is 'idle' when not in use, it is more stable when in use.

Before I installed the update, my laptop would turn off suddenly while playing left 4 dead 2, which was due to overheating (gpu went as high as 100 deg C in some rare cases).

So check your vbios version, and also double check if the update works with your version, and if your vbios is not up-to-date, then I recommend upgrading it.

P.S. Sorry for potentially bad English. My mother tongue is not English.

 

Thanks guys =)

But, now I am confused... I am looking at buying off XoticPC.. which lists the E7405, but is this the same as the GX740??

 

Nice review im surprised you even got it delivered DPD are a disgrace.

 

i'm thinking to purchase this. does anyone know if it can be modded with a blu-ray? i can't find the service manual anywhere to determine it for myself.

thanks!