The GX723 ships with a gaming-capable, although ultimately middle-of-the-road, Nvidia GeForce GT 130M GPU, packing 512MB of DDR3 memory. The 17-inch display, to which it is attached, is fairly average, too. The general picture quality is good, but it's slightly too reflective and not quite bright enough in our opinion, meaning you may struggle to see what's going on in brightly lit rooms or outdoors. By the same token, its 1,680x1,050-pixel resolution is adequate, although media tarts will mourn the absence of a 1,920x1,080-pixel (or higher) panel.
Should the GX723's resolution prove inadequate, it's possible to output the video signal to an external display via the HDMI or D-Sub VGA ports at the rear. The HDMI port proves particularly convenient, as it feeds video and audio signals simultaneously over a single cable, eliminating the need to use the 7.1-channel audio ports at the right side of the laptop. The front-mounted infrared port means you can make use of a remote control, although you'll need to buy one from a third party.
We can't particularly recommend using the speakers built into the laptop. It has five separate speakers, including a so-called subwoofer underneath, but these are no substitute for a set of even very basic external speakers.
The 500GB hard drive in the GX723 is the bare minimum we'd expect from a laptop of this ilk. The drive is sensibly split across two sections -- a 44GB partition containing the Windows Vista Home operating system, and a second, larger partition designed to house your assorted applications and data files.
Turbo power
The GX723's CPU is no slouch. We've used the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo P8600 countless times and it has served us well in a variety of machines, scoring in excess of 5,000 in the PCMark05 benchmark test. In the GX723, however, the CPU ran at an inexplicably low 1.6GHz. As a result, it scored a rubbish 2,784 in standard mode, and just 3,228 with the turbo feature enabled.
Graphics performance was lacklustre, too. With the turbo feature disabled, the laptop recorded a 3DMark06 score of 3,724. With turbo enabled, it scored 4,216. Games are certainly playable, particularly in turbo mode, but calling the GX723 a gaming laptop would be an overstatement.
Battery life wasn't particularly impressive. The GX723 lasted just 1 hour and 13 minutes in Battery Eater's intensive Classic test, but that's hardly surprising, given that the laptop isn't intended to stray too far from a power supply.
Conclusion
The MSI GX725 is a pretty average piece of kit. It has run-of-the-mill looks, mediocre performance and so-so features. Its instant overclocking feature is a good idea in principle, but, in reality, you'll be better off with rivals such as the Dell Studio XPS 16.
Edited by Charles Kloet
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