MSI GX640: $1100 for a Speedy DX11 Laptop
by Jarred Walton on June 13, 2010 3:05 PM ESTFast Laptop + Big Battery = Mediocre Battery Life
Unlike the Clevo W860CU/W870CU, MSI takes a different approach with their battery. The GX640 sports a large 9-cell 85Wh battery—over twice the capacity of the paltry 4-cell units in the W860CU. The combination of a larger battery with a less power hungry CPU and a slightly slower GPU results in a decent boost to battery life. Where the Clevo units struggled to break one hour, the GX640 can achieve three or four hours of mobility.
Clocking in at just under three hours in our heavy Internet surfing benchmark isn't too bad, all things considered. It's not going to touch the laptops with integrated graphics or lower end GPUs, of course, but it will get you through shorter flights (and their accompanying airport time). Light usage, represented by our idle battery life test, doesn't do much better for some reason, lasting three hours as well. It looks like the combination of high performance components just doesn't let the GX640 hit low idle power levels—minimum power draw bottoms out at around 28W. Crank up the processing requirements with some x264 video playback and battery life drops down to just shy of two and a half hours—enough for most movies if you skip the previews.
It's worth noting that our initial battery life results were far worse than what you see here. We had some issues with the latest ATI 10.5 drivers and hibernate/resume functionality, and MSI gave us the necessary updates in the form of a new VBIOS and system BIOS. After the firmware update, we retested battery life and found that it had jumped nearly an hour in our Internet test, so we checked the other areas and they improved as well. It appears that the original firmware wasn't optimized for power use, particularly in terms of the GPU. Given the Idle and Internet scores are within 4% of each other, there may be a bit more room for improvement, but all of the notebooks with high-end graphics are in a similar situation.
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SpeedyVV - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
As an owner of a GX640, I would say that this review is completely fair and bang on.Starting with the keyboard. Man it is really bad. it feels like those fake computer keyboards. It works, but really.
Performance, is awsome for the price. Gaming is very enjoyable on this lappy.
Really like the screen for both gaming and web and office work. Yes this is a work laptop for me too :)
VBIOS and BIOS is a bigger problem than the article gives mention to.
Is there a location that owners can get those updates?
Even with these problems, I am happy with this laptop. I am not a touch typist so I can live with the keyboard, and hopefully those VBIOS and BIOS Anandtech got will be released.
JarredWalton - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
AFAIK, the BIOS/VBIOS/EC firmware MSI sent me is currently available on their site -- the 1656 release. Send me an email if you want the bootable CD ISO that MSI sent me, though, and you can try that. It flashes VBIOS and BIOS "automatically" (after booting from the CD, of course). jarred.walton AT anandtech.comsh_kamalh - Sunday, June 20, 2010 - link
I am facing the same problem with a brand new gx640 that I just purchased yesterday. I wonder if you can send me the CD ISO to flash the BIOS.jim1447 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
Could you email me a CD ISO. I have this laptop coming today.Thanks a lot, BTW great review.
Jim Campbell
DaveGirard - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
that thing looks like the 386 that I took to Taiwan and left there because I didn't want it anymore. The keyboard is just plain nasty.strikeback03 - Monday, June 14, 2010 - link
Too bad the keyboard feel is so bad, layout looks pretty nice, they have the fn/ctrl keys the way I like and aren't missing a column off the number pad like somekapute - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - link
Do these 5850 laptop graphic cards support three display's like the desktop versions do (eyefinity or whatever they call it)? ie, can you plug a monitor into the vga, hdmi, and have all three going at once?Hrel - Thursday, June 24, 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. - Brian