AMD's A10-5750M Review, Part 2: The MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook
by Dustin Sklavos on June 29, 2013 12:00 PM ESTDisplay Quality
High dpi displays, even if they're TN panels, tend to perform fairly well, and the 1080p 15.6" panel on the MSI GX60 is at least a healthy one. I feel like at long last we're finally starting to come out of the dark ages of 1366x768 panels; virtually none of the notebooks I've tested recently have had bad or low-resolution panels. With tablets pushing pixel density ever higher and TN panels only showing up on the cheapest of the cheap, the notebook industry has been running out of excuses to fob crappy displays on us. You'll still see them at the lowest and most mainstream price points, but the trickle-down mercifully seems to have begun.
The panel MSI uses for the GX60 isn't exemplary, but the contrast ratio is a far cry from the sub-300 or even occasional sub-200 TN panels of the entry level market. If nothing else, the 1080p display is more than adequate for both gaming and any basic work, and I appreciate that MSI has stuck with the trend in the gaming notebook market of moving towards matte panels. Alienware was the last holdout, but their refreshed line of notebooks doesn't feature glossy displays either.
Battery Life
Unfortunately, perhaps frustratingly, we weren't able to get battery running time results for the original Trinity-based GX60, so MSI's new Richland-based model is stuck in the wilderness. Jarred has also reported continued issues with AMD's Enduro technology, but my experience with it on the GX60 was actually pretty painless. Enduro's interface is still miles behind NVIDIA's Optimus, but I at least have hope now that AMD will be able to compete and level the playing field. As it stands, NVIDIA hardware has been ubiquitous in the notebook space. While that's good for them, consumers need choice and competition.
Compared to the other gaming notebooks tested and even the lone Clevo ultrabook, the MSI GX60 is able to actually produce pretty excellent battery life. If all you're doing is casually surfing the internet, the Richland-based APU powering the GX60 can give you a solid five hours of running time.
Heat
While the larger GT70 Dragon Edition had trouble managing its thermals (hopefully fixed with a BIOS update, more on this to come soon), the GX60's dealing with a much lower thermal load. The Intel Core i7-4700MQ coupled with the GeForce GTX 780M results in a peak power draw of almost 150W between the CPU and GPU, while the GX60 tops out at 110W.
I'm not sure what HWMonitor is reading as the "package" temperature, but I can tell you that's not what the APU is running at. For a better idea of how hot the system is running, take a look at the "THRM" value and the temperature value under the Radeon. The GX60 has no trouble dissipating the heat from the A10-5750M and Radeon HD 7970M.
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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.