AMD's A10-5750M Review, Part 2: The MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook
by Dustin Sklavos on June 29, 2013 12:00 PM ESTGaming Performance
Given that the AMD Radeon HD 7970M is the fastest mobile GPU that AMD offers, I'd ordinarily eschew including our "Value" benchmark results for the MSI GX60. Under the circumstances, though, those numbers might be enlightening. When a system is heavily CPU-limited, gaming benchmark results will often be flat or show very little performance loss as you move up in resolution and settings. It's reasonable to assume we'll see that kind of phenomenon here.
At our "Value" settings, it's clear Richland is giving the 7970M at least a little more performance headroom, but the gulf is massive compared to the way Ivy lets it stretch its legs. Metro: Last Light seems to be a bit of a bizarre outlier, though. Metro 2033 used to hammer the GPU almost exclusively, but times seem to have changed with the new release.
Mainstream performance actually demonstrates the same kind of weird wash between Trinity and Richland that I experienced testing using the IGP. It's only Tomb Raider that takes a bath with Richland, though, and even then it's still very playable. While our settings here help close the gap between the Alienware M17x R4's 7970M and the MSI GX60's, we're still obviously leaving a lot of performance on the table. Metro: Last Light in particular continues to be unplayable.
In some cases, enthusiast settings allow the GX60's 7970M to come within striking distance of the M17x R4's. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot of performance left on the table, and it's sometimes even the difference between a game being playable and not. In situations where we're severely GPU limited (Tomb Raider with TressFX, for example), the GX60 makes a very strong case for itself. The problem is that in other situations, the GTX 675MX (and by extrapolation, the slightly slower GTX 765M) winds up producing a better experience because the CPU isn't bogging it down.
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
"Because the GPU IS discrete it heavily depends on the RAM as there is no "dedicated memory" for the GPU."Discrete GPU means that there is an extra GPU connected with the mainboard that has its own RAM supply, like a normal, PCIe desktop graphics card (dGPU). Integrated GPU (iGPU) means there is a GPU on the same package or die as the CPU (it used to mean that there is a GPU on the motherboard, but not anymore since a few years). That GPU has to use the system memory (RAM) in order to operate. You seem to be confusing the two.
eanazag - Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - link
The 1866 RAM really helps the iGPU in AMD APUs. The performance bump adding it to this specific machine is going to be less than we would hope. The reality is that if I were purchasing it I would be adding an SSD and RAM. I would go for the 1866 because the CPU supports is, but I wouldn't expect it to compete with Intel. I would just be hoping to eliminate those odd cases where the Trinity version was beating it.CNP-Keythai - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
Thats right. Its surprising to see only one slot for RAM. Also the PC can take only 8 GB, I afraid. None of these make any sense to me.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
There are two SO-DIMM slots on the GX60; only one is populated on this particular model, but as shown the benefits of dual-channel RAM (especially with DDR3-1600 memory) are almost entirely targeted at iGPU usage.eanazag - Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - link
This laptop supports 4 DDR3 slots for a total of 32GB and the A10-5705M supports 1866 RAM. In looking at the part 1 article numbers, they opted to put two sticks in and performance was better in relation to the previous Trinity generation. I believe including a total of two or four sticks of 1866 RAM should give this machine a boost. That is a question for the customer as the model they received ships with only 1 stick of 8GB @ 1600.The concept of this whole notebook is to ship something the end user can upgrade; like the RAM and storage.
Specs from MSI:
http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GX60-Hitman-Edition....
tincmulc - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Is it possible that cpu issues will be mitigated by the fact than both next generation consoles use 8 relatively slow cores? The Achilles' heel of the apu is single thread performance and since new console games will be optimized to run on more slower cores, the cpu part of the apu could finally be used to it's full potential.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I'd like to believe that. however, this part is only quad core, and the mobile i7s are quad core with eight thread...they might benefit more. what amd really needs to do is release a 45w part. intel's quad cores are all 45 watt, with the exception of the 3612m. if amd upped the tdp, they could push the cpu clock to something like 3.0/3.9 GHz, which might help make up the distance. or better yet, release the 45 watt model with the a4's gpu, since it would probably only be used in laptops like this. that would give the cpu even more power to work with.Rontalk - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Yes, future games will run better with slow CPU cores but fast GPU. 1-2 years and MSI GX60 gonna be good gaming machine.Khenglish - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Dustin how about putting in another memory stick and seeing how much of an improvement there is? This thing needs more CPU power and an extra $35 on memory might make the laptop acceptable.JMC2000 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
The results with dual-channel mode are in the article, sadly, it doesn't help much.