CyberPower's X6-9300 and MSI's GT680R: Fighting for Your Mobile Gaming Dollar
by Jarred Walton on May 13, 2011 10:59 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- MSI
- Clevo
- Sandy Bridge
- CyberPowerPC
- NVIDIA
Battery Life and Power
The battery life results again fall right where expected. Without Optimus Technology, the GTX 460M puts a major dent on battery life, so even with 75Wh and larger capacities the best such notebooks can manage is just under four hours of mobility. In reasonable workloads like surfing the Internet, that drops down to about 3.5 hours (give or take), and H.264 decoding will last through most movies but not much more. MSI did make some changes to their power management, apparently, as our initial testing of the GT680R a few months back did worse than the P151HM and G73SW even though the battery capacity is 13% greater. The MSI also gets slightly less relative battery life, but that’s easily explained by the presence of a second hard drive.
We also ran some additional battery life tests, for those who want to do something like play a game while on battery power. The GT680R managed 100 to 125 minutes while looping 3DMark 03/06, and the P151HM lasted 130 to 140 minutes in similar testing. Recharging time on the MSI was 183 minutes (with the laptop powered on but sitting at the Windows desktop), and 143 minutes for the Clevo. Note that the Clevo battery consistently reported 0% wear while the MSI battery wear ranged from 6% to 9%, so that could also affect the battery life as well as charging time. Finally, idle battery life with the LCD at maximum brightness is 190 on the Clevo and 213 on the MSI. That represents an additional power draw of 3.2W for both the Clevo and MSI notebooks, but the interesting thing is that the P151HM manages nearly 330nits compared to just 230nits for the MSI at maximum brightness. We’ll get into the LCD differences in a moment, but it appears that the low contrast on the MSI is a result of the same backlight intensity letting though more light when it’s supposed to show black and less light when showing white—a double whammy with no benefit to the end user (other than cost).
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Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
Made by CompalLarries - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
How about the HP Envy with 6850M? Is that any good for gaming?Thanks.
Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
6850M should be better than the GTX460, so yeah, it's good for gaming.JarredWalton - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
I disagree. The 6870M would probably be close, but remember that the 6870M is actually slightly slower than the 5870M, and there are plenty of cases where the GTX 460M already beats the 5870M. (Note: yes, I know 5870M isn't the official name.) The 6850M will probably be similar to the 5850M in performance, which we have results on several of the gaming tests using the Envy 17. The HD 6950M would be the better chip compared to 460M, but I don't know of anyone using it yet.aguilpa1 - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
my kingdom for a real gaming laptop that sports a 6970m or equal.. I just looked at the new Alienware 18" and it used to be that brand had choices of GPU now you only get one, the tired old 460m, whatever, like a fighting bull with no balls.Rumpelstiltstein - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
Just get rid of the damn glossy bezel and 10-key and you actually have something.littlemaddystar - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
um, wel, i kinda have no clue about what you guys are talking about, but Anand was in my teasting booklet. I read about him. And I had to awnser questions. I have to say that his company, (if that's what you want to call it,) is very impressive. And I just wanted to say something. :) sorry to bother your techy conversation. continue as if I never said anything.Zoolookuk - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
What a fugly laptop!toschek - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
I've been using one of these (Sager branded) since late Feb. and I really love it.I don't give 2 solid shits about the speakers since I use this as my music production workstation and everything goes through an external audio card, but I can see how you might ding it for that. What's more annoying to me is the soft-touch rubbery trackpad and overall the finish seems to get pet hair stuck to it quite easily.
Overall for a desktop replacement it's working out great for me and all the complaints I have are extremely minor.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
Wait, so you got a P151HM and it has the soft-touch plastic coating? Because the P150HM I tested had that but the P151HM is straight up ABS plastic with no coating whatsoever. I suppose there are probably P150HM with the all-plastic shell and P151HM with the soft-coating, then.