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).
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
44 Comments
View All Comments
Hrel - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - link
So, you want a GT555M? Me too! Check this out: SAGER NP5165 (Clevo W150HR)JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - link
No, I want at least the performance level of GTX 460M, but with Optimus enabled. :-)zappb - Saturday, May 21, 2011 - link
Jarred - great review as usual - thank you, appreciate your work.I've been looking for a new work machine for awhile with a good screen being the priority - After reading your review, I called the Cyberpower people in the UK - http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/ and am looking to order the X6 - 9300 shortly.
The guy in Cyberpower said that the model has refreshed in the UK with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M 2GB GDDR5 instead of the 460. I'm still not sure if it has Optimus enabled, but it should be fairly efficient even without it. I'm hoping this model will also have a lower fan noise because of the slower gfx card.
Apart from the look of the bezel - Assuming the fan noise isn't so bad - then the only real problem in my eyes is the very poor keyboard (which is a problem, but the screen compensates a good deal) - For the price you get a good panel, probably not that far away from a HP Dreamcolour, the 95% FHD display of the W510 / W520 or the Dell M4600 IPS (which is a 400 euro upgrade).
So would the keyboard drive you mad long term?
I was also waiting to see a review of the new M4600 - Have you got your hands on the precision M4600 yet? Insterested in that screen (And the precision will probably have a fantastic keyboard as well) but the price is the problem - probably a net 1k difference in both laptops (of course very different target market and build quality.)
I know it's very strange to bring up the x6 - 9300 vs the Dell M4600 - but I am also so fed up with the quality of laptop screens over the last 6 years, I just want a laptop with a great screen above everything else, followed by price. I will do very little gaming on the x6 - 9300.
Thanks again,
Paul.
JarredWalton - Monday, May 23, 2011 - link
I can live with the Clevo keyboard; I just have to "remap" my brain to using the number keypad for the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys. I'm pretty sure the notebook model you're looking at is the Clevo W150HRQ (seen here: http://www.avadirect.com/gaming-laptop-configurato... so it supports Optimus, which means better battery life. The only real question is what LCD they're using -- AVADirect says "glossy", where the P150/P151HM that I've tested both had matte LCDs (neither one from AVADirect, though). If it's the same matte LCD as the P151HM (X6-9300) reviewed here, I'd probably go for it. It's a little slower on the GPU, but better battery life and presumably a slightly lower price.