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MSI has made a sleek laptop radiating raw power with its metallic, aluminum chassis in a beautiful red frame and a blue-lit touch panel with hotkeys. The exterior is without a doubt exquisite, and the hardware easily lives up to this. Among other things it has an ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4850 GPU that provides plenty of gaming power, but more on that later.

The product was kindly lent to us by MSI

Specifications

Category:
Gamer or Multimedia

Processor:
Intel® core™2 Quad CPU Q9000 @ 2.00GHz  - 6 MB L2 Cache

Chipset:
Intel® PM45+ICH9M - 1.1 GHz FSB        

RAM:
2x 2048 MB PC3-8500S DDR3-1066

GPU:
ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4850 1GB DDR3    

Storage:
500 GB SATA /320 GB SATA HDD

Display:
17" TFT-LCD Widescreen Display

Sound card:
MSI (ICH9) HD Audio Controller

Optical Drive:
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7560S - Super-Multi / Blu-Ray

Battery:
Li-Ion 9 cells / 6 cells

Connectivity:
Built-in Gigabit Ethernet LAN and Modem Module
Built-in 802.11b/g/n WLAN Card / Bluetooth V2.0+EDR

I/Os:
1 x VGA Output (15-pin, D-Sub)
3 x USB2.0 Port
1 x Mic-in Port
1 x Headphone Output
1 x Modem Port
1 x LAN Port
1 x PCI Express Card
1 x eSATA (USB Combo)
1 x HDMI
1 x IEEE1394 Port
1 x 4-in-1 Card Reader, SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro

Operating system:
Vista Home Premium

Dimensions:
395(W) X 278(D) X 26.5~35(H)mm
3.2KG (with 9 celled battery)

Warranty:
2 years

Software included:
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
Tomb raider
Driver CD for the fantastic mouse
Driver CD for the rest of the hardware in the computer
Two CDs for making backups

Price:
Around £1,300.00

Package contents








- Charger
- Great, wired mouse
- Bag designed to hold the computer
- Installation media (drivers and OS)
- Two empty CDs for backing up data
- Tomb Raider Underworld
- Antistatic cloth
- Manuals

This computer comes with plenty of high-quality accessories. The included mouse is absolutely amazing for gaming, capable of reaching 3200 dpi, which really goes to show the whole gaming is concept is well thought out; no need to go out and buy a new mouse in order to start fraggin’ away. The mouse has the same black/red design as the computer. Another great feature of the mouse is that the bottom contains some small weights, allowing you to adjust its gravity – see the picture below.



The sleek bag included is also designed to match the laptop’s awesome looks, and is very comfortable to use as well, thanks to the soft material the wide carrying strap is made of. In addition, its interior is imminently practical with plenty of space for the laptop and all the accessories as well.
All in all it seems like MSI is providing the full package here, with a handsome exterior in a red and black design, as well as a strong collection of hardware.
If you are going to a LAN Party, you will be ready as soon as you get the package in your hands. You will quickly discover just how much attention MSI has paid to even the smallest detail, all the way from user friendliness and quality to design. Even the power supply has been equipped with a nice, long wire so you will not have trouble reaching an outlet.

Construction & Design

First impression






The lid:



The lid has a black, glossy surface with the MSI logo on top and an aluminum pattern below. The battery sticks out a bit at the back since it is a larger 9-celled kind.

The front:



The design looks great with the black and red metallic surface.


Beautiful front where you can see the two frontal speakers for the Dolby 4.1 system.



2.0 Mpixels webcam and microphone.



By the black touch panel are two speakers connected to the Dolby 4.1 system. At the left of the touch panel are some media buttons, and in the middle are the ECO and Turbo mode buttons.
The ECO button is used for power management; with it, you can toggle between Gaming Mode, Movie Mode, Presentation Mode, Office Mode and Turbo Battery Mode, or you can turn off power management completely which can be quite handy if you are running on battery.
The Turbo button is used to overclock the CPU and will only work on AC.



The standard movement keys for most games, ASWD, are highlighted. This is a nice feature that allows you to find the keys quickly and avoid the enemy faster after, for example, switching weapons. Notice the keyboard also has a numpad.



The two mouse buttons are shaped like an S just below the touchpad. Below those are seven diodes, indicating the status for e.g. wireless and Bluetooth. The one shining in the picture indicates the computer is in Sleep mode. The touchpad is fairly susceptible to fingerprints, but I must stress again that as a gamer PC, all the details are really well thought out.

The rear:



The rear contains the VGA (15-pin, D-Sub) and HDMI outputs, as well as the DC-in jack.

The bottom:




The bottom contains two speakers – one at each side – as well as a subwoofer for the Dolby 4.1 system. The large lid provides access to the RAM modules and motherboard. Notice how MSI has decided to place a ”Warranty Sticker Void if tampered” above a screw here, which is pretty odd as it robs you of the possibility of cleaning the fan (and it can suck in a lot of dirt and dust, especially if you overclock the processor). So if the machine begins to make a lot of noise because of dirt within, forget about cleaning the fan because then your warranty is void.

The right side:



First a 4-in-1 card reader and above a PCI Express Card slot. Then E-SATA and IEEE1394 ports, audio jack in- and outputs as well as a large vent for cooling the GPU and CPU.

The left side:



Contains an RJ11 Modem port, an RJ45 LAN port, 2 USB ports and an Optiarc DVD RW AD-7560S - Super-Multi / Blu-Ray drive.

Hinges:



The hinges blend in well with the top part of the computer. They are cast in plastic and may have some metal on the inside as well, for they seem very sturdy.

The display:




The display runs a resolution of 1680 x 1050 and is TFT LED backlit. The picture is very clear regardless of angle of view, though the colours turn slightly grayish the greater the angle. The backlighting is very even throughout and there do not seem to be any errors.

Overview:

Benchmark

The GT729 ran the following benchmarks at standard settings, both on battery and AC. As such there were no tests in “Turbo Mode”, which only works on AC in any case. I have decided to put it up against the Abook 1590W, a laptop with a slightly more humble design than the GT729. Though slightly cheaper, it does fall in the same price range and is also primarily aimed at gamers.

Abook 1590W specifications:
-    Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.80 GHz
-    4 GB DDR3 RAM
-    320 GB HDD
-    ATi Radeon 4650 HD GPU at 512 MB GDDR3 RAM

CPU-z and GPU-z are used to determine how fast the GT729 runs.

It scored surprisingly well in the Windows Experience Index.

Boot times and out of standby:



Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed and the Windows desktop appears.

The GT729 starts up in 51 on AC, which is alright. In general you can be satisfied with anything less than a minute, and you should not expect better regardless of which computer you are looking at.

Battery life



Battery-eater Pro 2,70 is used to measure the longevity of the batteries.

Idle test settings: Windows Vista ”Power saver”, 1600 MHz, 1/8 brightness, hard drive standby after 10 minutes, and WLAN & Bluetooth deactivated.
Classic test settings: Windows Vista ”High performance”, 2000 MHz, 8/8 brightness, hard drive standby after 10 minutes, and WLAN & Bluetooth activated.

The graph clearly shows the GT729 uses up a lot of juice in Classic mode, but is also capable of saving power if needed. It is obvious MSI has actually done some work on power management, optimizing the different components to deliver as much performance as possible while at the same time saving power.

Processor

WPrime



wPrime calculates the number Pi with 32 million decimals. wPrime is capable of utilizing multi-core processors, which means it gives a more accurate picture of CPU performance than for example SuperPI. The result is a time in seconds – the lower, the better.

The GT729 is clearly faster on battery but falls behind the Abook 1590W on AC, presumably because the GT729 has a lower clock frequency.

Sisoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic:




SiSoft Sandra’s Whetstone and Drystone benchmark tests the processor’s ability to do pure number crunching, which occurs during gaming or different forms of picture editing. The measure is in Mflops (Millions Floating Point Operations Per Second) – the higher, the better.

It is obvious the GT729’s Intel® core™2 Quad CPU Q9000 @ 2.00GHz outperforms the Abook 1590W’s Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 – 2.8 GHz.
The reason is probably that the GT729 has a Core™2 Quad, i.e. 4 cores, while the Abook 1590W only has two cores, being a Core 2 Duo. It might be those two cores run at 2.8 GHz, but the GT729 has four cores running at 2.0GHz.



The multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra is calculated on a 2D figure. The output (it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, i.e. the bigger the better.

The GT729 is close but just not fast enough, probably because of the difference in clock frequency of the two CPUs.

RAM - SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth:




Sisoft Sandra’s Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure the speed of the RAM – the higher the value, the better.

The shows how many GB can be moved per second. Looking it at the Abook 1590W, we can clearly see it is capable of moving around a lot of gigabyte per second (GB/s) on AC, but not nearly as many when running on battery. This indicates that the speed of the RAM is significantly lowered when it runs on battery.
That does not appear to be the case with the GT729; GB/s for battery and AC are almost identical.

GPU performance - 3Dmark

3DMarks tests the GPU at various graphics sequences, as well as the CPU’s ability to process graphics. That gives a total score which then represents the total power of the PC.

The GT729 wins comfortably as expected, since it possesses an ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4850 1GB DDR3 GPU, a younger generation than the ATi Radeon 4650 HD GPU at 512 MB GDDR3 RAM  in the Abook 1590W.

But let us now focus on the GT729 and the various ”modes” it can run in, and how those modes impact performance in 3DMark06. The most interesting mode for the test is standard, which works both on battery and AC. These results can then be used as basis of comparison for the ECO gaming mode and Turbo mode, an overclock feature.



The test clearly shows the computer performs very evenly when it comes to graphics, regardless of mode.
For those interested, it scores a Passmark rating of 1021 in PerformanceTest 7.0 from Passmark.

Gaming

All games were played with an overclocked GPU and in Turbo mode in order to reach maximum performance.

Call of Juarez DirectX 10 Benchmark:



The six-shooters are blazing and the whips cracking in Techland’s western. The game is run at maximum resolution 1920 x 1200 to push to GPU as hard as possible. Let us see how the GT729 handles it.



Frames Per Second measured at different detail levels.
The result is a pretty decent 40 fps at low details, in fact it is fairly impressive when you consider the high resolution.

Resident Evil 5 PC Benchmark Utility:



Just when you thought the threat from Resident Evil was eliminated, a new and much larger threat comes along to send chills down your spine. In this benchmark version you can choose between fixed and variable. We choose variable as it more accurately represents really playing the game, as well as the maximum resolution of 1680 x 1050 and anti-aliasing at 8x. This is how the GT729 handles it:



Frames Per Second measured at different detail levels.
It performs pretty well overall, but an FPS of 23 is not really playable so you will probably want to turn off anti-aliasing or lower the resolution.

Conclusion

MSI GT729 is a very convincing gamer laptop where design and performance go hand-in-hand. There are plenty of small details and features that really prove MSI thought out the whole gaming concept very carefully and meticulously, all the way from the hardware to the design. The accessories are outstanding; the mouse, for example, is on par with some of the most expensive on the market. The bag is likewise incredibly sleek. When it comes to graphical performance, this computer can provide a high resolution, great performance, Blu-ray and connectivity is plenty as well. It may be a desktop replacement, but with that perfect bag and weight of 3.5kg, it is not too hard to carry around. As for software, it has everything you could ask for.

Pros:
Sleek design
Good performance
Good audio
Display with a high resolution
Easy to use
User-friendly software
Plenty of accessories

Cons:
Fan noise
Battery life
Weight

Battery: 2 / 5Graphics: 4 / 5Construction: 5 / 5Mobility: 3 / 5Software: 4 / 5