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
Great APU if you want to do 768p gaming on a budget. Great GPU if you want to get a cheap gaming laptop. Horrible combination. :D I wonder how a beefy i3 with a 7970 would stack up to this notebook. On the desktop side, I can get an A10-6800K for 125€ and I can get an i3-3250 for 125€. Should be similar on the laptop side, no? Wonder how much of this is the single threaded and how much is the multi threaded performance.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
multithreaded, the a10 is near identical to mobile i3 chips. any i5 or i7 would handily outperform it though.chadwickhhs - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
How does this stack up against the PS4? I have a chance to get one this month for about $800. It has 1 upgrade which is that the memory was boosted to 16gb.I don't want to get it if it ends up lacking the CPU power to play next gen games on at least medium.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
you cant upgrade the ps4 to 16gb of memory. what you are looking at is a scam, especially since the ps4 is going for $399, not $800Rontalk - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
This computer all what it need is an 3.6GHz Richland A8-5550M 2185_A1 ES processor. How about re-done the tests with a processor like that? That would have been awesome to see the improvements and stupidity of AMD, lacking out the unlocked CPU multipliers from retail APU.hellermercer - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
the apu still lacks dedicated memory and is not a good choice and it should have been an ssd for gaming with no L3 cache launching games may be slower.htwingnut - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
DDR RAM won't make a lick of difference when it comes to dedicated GPU performance. Just try it yourself. Run a few benchmarks, remove a stick of RAM, and try again. Same result within a few % at least. I did this a while back with the AMD Llano APU's and it made zero difference when it came to the dedicated GPU.htwingnut - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I meant Dual Channel not DDR.... d'oh!Drittz121 - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY