MSI GX640: $1100 for a Speedy DX11 Laptop
by Jarred Walton on June 13, 2010 3:05 PM ESTMSI GX640: A Great Package with a Few Blemishes
The MSI GX640 is a very interesting laptop, continuing the trend started by Gateway's FX series by putting a lot of performance into a reasonably priced package, and building on the MSI GT627—literally! If you take the GT627, swap out the mobo/CPU/GPU for updated parts, and use a better LCD you have the GX640. That means our complaints with regards to the GT627 design still hold true, unfortunately, but the other upgrades help quite a bit. If you're not particularly concerned with some of the lacking design elements and care more about bang for the buck mobile performance, the GX640 warrants serious consideration. There aren't many other options unless you spend more money or cut back performance and features. Acer's 5740G is in a similar situation: great performance for the price, but with some compromises that you may or may not be willing to live with. Let's start with the good aspects.
First, AMD's HD 5850 is a great compromise between price and performance. It's at roughly the same level as the GTX 280M—just slightly behind the GTX 285M—but it has DX11 support. As long as you don't require antialiasing (and are willing to run Crysis at Mainstream settings instead of Gamer or Enthusiast), the 5850 ran every title at the native resolution without dropping below 30FPS. The CPU is a good match for the 5850, providing more than enough performance for gaming or other everyday tasks. Adding in a spacious 500GB 7200RPM hard drive and 4GB DDR3-1333 memory means you're ready anything short of serious content creation (where adding a quad-core CPU would definitely help). MSI provides all the major peripheral ports including eSATA, FireWire, and an ExpressCard slot; most people don't need them, but for those that do the GX640 is ready. Finally, the standard 3-year warranty (in the US at least) is another great feature; laptops just don't seem to last as long as desktops, even if you're careful, so having the warranty as a fallback helps. Hopefully you'll never need it.
Some other areas aren't specifically good or bad, but they might sway your decision. Heat and noise levels fall into the "average" category. We've used hotter and noisier laptops, but compared to the ASUS G73Jh the GX640 is a lot more noticeable. A lot of that has to do with cramming everything into a 15.4", 1.2" thick chassis, so there are tradeoffs both ways. The LCD is a bit of a mixed bag; it has a good contrast ratio, but it's not quite as bright as we'd like. The 16:10 aspect ratio is a plus in our book—despite all the marketing hype with "Full HD" and the plethora of 16:9 LCDs. Battery life is decent for a gaming notebook, but we're surprised that the combination of i5-430M with an 85Wh battery wasn't able to last four hours or more in our idle battery life test. Here's a case where NVIDIA's Optimus Technology could have really made a difference; obviously AMD doesn't have an Optimus equivalent (yet), and old-style switchable graphics causes issues with updating drivers. Still, the HD 5850 is likely eating up ~18W of power even when the laptop is idle, and it's a shame the i5 IGP can't be put to good use. The non-NVIDIA GPU also means no PhysX and CUDA support, though PhysX on GTX 260M and lower tends to drop performance too much for our tastes (i.e. Batman at 30FPS instead of 60FPS).
As for the bad, the biggest complaint we have is the keyboard. It's not the worst keyboard we've ever used, but for $1050 it really shouldn't be hard to fix this problem. The keyboard as it stands has as much flex as an old Schwarzenegger film. You'll also want to get the latest firmware and BIOS updates from MSI (1656 is what we used), as they substantially improve battery life and fix problems with hibernate/sleep failing to resume/wake with the latest Catalyst 10.5 drivers. The base design is also lacking in refinement in a few areas, specifically the large battery jutting out the back looks clunky; we'd just as soon have a slightly larger chassis with the battery fitting flush with the casing. You can certainly live with these blemishes though.
In terms of competition, besides less expensive (and slower gaming—the HD 5650 and 5730 are about half as fast as the HD 5850) laptops like the Acer 5740G or the Lenovo Y560, the only other laptops that can compete for your gaming dollar will need GTX 260M/HD 5830 or faster GPUs. That whittles down the list of potential candidates substantially. The HP Envy 15 has a 5830 and better build quality, but unless you can find it on sale or are willing to shop on eBay you're looking at $1300+ (and more like $1450 with the 1080p LCD and a few other extras). You can also find the Clevo W860CU starting at around $1300 with a dual-core i5 processor. GTX 260M laptops with Core 2 Duo processors will do fine for gaming if you don't mind the older CPU technology, in which case we'd suggest looking at the ASUS G51Vx—you can even find them for $700 or less if you're willing to buy a refurbished unit. The ASUS G51J goes the opposite direction and pairs GTX 260M with a quad-core i7-720QM processor for about $100 more than the GX640. 17" notebooks like the MSI GX740 (HD 5870) or the ASUS G73Jh are also an option, though now we're getting into the upper midrange/lower high-end segment. So put in that context, the GX640 is a great buy for mobile gamers.
As far as DX11 laptops go, this is the least expensive option right now where you can still enable DX11 features and high detail without killing performance. As such, it definitely belongs near the top of any list of budget gaming laptops. The flaws are potentially big enough that you really should try one out in person if possible, as some people are going to really hate the keyboard, which is enough for us to withhold an Editors' Choice award. Fix that one aspect and this moves up into Bronze territory. Right now, the only other compelling options in the same price range involve lower GPU performance with added battery life. Certainly such laptops are a better fit for non-gamers, but the GX640 might be the perfect companion for your next LAN party.
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NecessaryEvil-BC - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
Agreed, the 5730 is a substantial downgrade, as is the plastic, the lower resolution LCD, etc. It's still a rather potent gaming system for the $900 mark.While I realize that a current Quad won't have integrated graphics capability, if it used the HM55 instead of the PM55, is there anything the system would really lose? Switchable could be disabled for Quad i7s, and enabled for i3, i5, Arrandale i7's. I haven't found anything saying specifically that HM55's don't support i7 Quads..
JarredWalton - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
The GX640 supports quad-core i7 chips, so what that means is the discrete GPU is required. That being the case, you have to have traces going from the GPU to the LVDS, VGA, and HDMI outputs. If you do old-style switchable graphics, you put a mux on each of those (actually two per video I think), so you add probably $10 to the cost of the mobo just in hardware, and there's a ton of validation stuff that you need to do. Then there's the other drawback: switchable graphics in this manner requires two drivers (one IGP and one discrete) with knowledge of each other, so you can't just update one driver very easily. The old Alienware M11x and ASUS ULx0Vt laptops use a single driver package from NVIDIA that has both NVIDIA and Intel drivers combined, and NVIDIA has to get permission to include the Intel drivers each time. The same holds for AMD/ATI with switchable graphics, so there's often few if any driver updates.Optimus uses just the IGP connected to the video ports, which means no hardware muxes and no extra validation. You just have to keep the GPU cool -- "easy". But then you need an IGP connected to the video or you can't use an Optimus GPU. So it's sort of no-win unless you decide to stick with IGP processors like Arrandale, or go the more expensive route of muxes and switches with the driver limitations. Sort of a Catch 22, until we get 32nm quad-core.
anactoraaron - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
My understanding is that HM-55 only supports the integrated graphics in an arrandale chip. PM55 allows discrete graphics and RAID. That's how it was with PM45. So if you were to use a quad in the HM55 I'm quessing discrete graphics would be lost. Which would also a mean pre-Arrandale i7 on a HM55 laptop would be sold without an lcd...DanNeely - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
The text at the start says a 5850, the table immediately below lists a 5870.JarredWalton - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Fixed... the 5870 runs at 750/4000MHz core/RAM compared to 625 core on the 5850. So I had the right clocks but missed updating the GPU name on that table. Sorry.Hrel - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
If someone could do a review on the laptop that I currently suspect is the best "bang for your buck" out there. It's made by compal, and available on Cyberpower.com who's machines you've reviewed before. If you'd like it configured like I did, which I think is the best bang for buck, do this: Go to the website. mouse over 15.6" Laptops and click on the $999 Xplorer X6-8500. It has a 1080p screen. (I'm not sure why the people who run this site do this, but even though the other configurations use the same chassis when personalized they come out to cost more than this one; annoying since it makes me configure all 3 or 4 machines built on the same base chassis to figure out which one is cheapest/best for me.) Then I configured it with the Core i7-620M CPU. (to get it over 1K so I can take advantage of the 5% off.) 4GB 0DDR3-1333, hopefully 7-7-7-21, probably not, but hopefully. ATI MR HD5650 1GB GDDR3 320GB 7200rpm HDD (I did this cause I'm gonna take that HDD out and use the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB, thanks for that review!!) Everything else on that page I left untouched. The only thing I did on page 2 was switch to Intel wifi with bluetooth; Though I'm curious if the MSI option is equal/better; 17 bucks isn't nothing. It has HDMI out and a fingerprint reader. This page says 3 USB ports, the specs sheet says 4USB ports; not sure which is true. (I do wish they were USB 3.0 ports, but I was hoping you guys would test some stuff and tell me if that even matters for use with an external hard drive, mechanical disk 7200rpm. Transferring large files like movies and games mostly.) On page 3 I select "none, format only" for the OS. And select "LCD perfect assurance" cause even 1 dead pixel is unacceptable to me. This brings the total to $1008.90 after 5% off, or $992.75 if you get the MSI network card. So yeah, I really hope you guys can get a hold of one of these for review; as a loner or given as a review unit or maybe someone will just buy one and review it cause it's really tempting me right now... like a lot! If you're review is good I'm gonna start saving up and hopefully be able to buy it around Christmas. Thanks guys! A loyal reader. - BrianJarredWalton - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
I'll see if we can get one, though I think you need to put the comparison in perspective. Removing the OS to reduce the cost is not something most people would do, and unless you really need the extra CPU performance, as a gaming setup you'd be far better off with HD 5850 in this GX640. The 5650 is the same as the Acer 5740G in GPU performance, but the 1080p LCD means native resolution gaming is going to be rough -- like you'd need to run medium or low detail at 1080p to get acceptable performance. Anyway, I can't imagine the Compal keyboard could be *worse* than the GX640 keyboard, and the display resolution is a nice extra. Hopefully we can get one sent our way....Hrel - Sunday, June 13, 2010 - link
I keep reading reviews, I love the reviews on this site SO much, you guys all really do a good job breaking things down in detail. I really really really really really really want a review on that Compal unit from cyberpower.com. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review it!bennyg - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
I don't think I saw anything about temperatures in this review. In all high-performance laptops temperatures is a huge issue - espeically ones with subpar cooling systems like this G51J.I'm partcularly interested to see whether the G51J has been knocked off it's perch as king of the fireballs - one review suggested the GPU in this MSI lappy topped 100C.
numberoneoppa - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
I don't think it has enough stickers.