MSI Wind U230: One Last Hurrah for the AMD Athlon Neo X2 Congo
by Dustin Sklavos on August 4, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- MSI
- U230
- Athlon Neo X2
MSI chose to outfit the Wind U230 with the typical glossy 1366x768 screen found on other 12.1" portables, but mercifully it's a pretty good screen from cursory inspection. The hinge doesn't tilt the screen back very far, but the limit is actually about where the ideal angle is going to be. Viewing angles and uniformity, at least from first glance, are solid.
Solid relative to the competition, at least. The results sit right in the middle of our charts, but the fact of the matter is that outside of the high contrast LCD on the ASUS 1001P (and the older 1005HA), all of the LCDs look similar. The higher resolution of the U230 display is a real selling point over standard Atom netbooks, but there's not much else to recommend it.
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maniac5999 - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
Its interesting that your U230 didn't have powersaving options. Mine was probably one of the first US models to come out of the factory (purchased the week it went on sale) and it had them. Did you cycle through the power 'modes' that you can choose with the Fn + FX (I forget what number) command on the keyboard? Mine came with about 6 options. By default it would jump between 1.6ghz/0.925v and 800mhz/0.8v on everything but max performance, and even had a setting to lock it at 800mhz/0.8v.I wasn't quite as lucky with undervolting as you were however. I still get 0.825v at 1.6ghz but still need .775v to do 800mhz. What I realy wish I could find is a way to overclock it, but the clock generator seems to be totally locked down. I'd imagine that it could easily do 2ghz at about 0.9v, at which point it'd easily be more powerful than anything it's size, and since the battery life already stinks, making it a bit worse wouldn't be much of a big deal.
frozentundra123456 - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
Seems like the worst of all worlds to me. Mediocre battery life and so/so performance at a high price for the components included in the package. I would either buy a low end Intel notebook and get better performance or a true netbook or ULV platform for long battery life.As another poster said, I would agree that at 300.00 this might sell. At the listed price, I see no place for it.
Note to AMD: If you have inferior technology (except for the graphics), you have to sell at a reduced price. And is there any point to 4gb of ram?? Can this processor really run enough programs at once to use that much ram?
Lolimaster - Sunday, August 8, 2010 - link
Blame MSI dude. All major players have already Athlon II / Turion II Neo and they compete on equal terms wil CULV cpus.The best ultraportable/netbooks right now are the AMD powered machines. From the single core V105 to the K665 1.7Ghz dual core.
Single core
V105 1.2Ghz 9w
K125 1.7Ghz 12w
Dual core
K325 1.3Ghz 15w
K625 1.5Ghz 15w
K665 1.7Ghz 15w
All of them with the HD4200. A tweaked HD3200 with updated UVD/DX10.1 and lower TDP's. Next, Fusion with even better GPU's.
niva - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
Has this been tested to be fully compatible with linux flavors such as Ubuntu?As much as I like ATI cards in windows I always cringe at their terrible performance in linux when compared to the nvidia cards.
This is a nice little machine and a definite alternative to the intel chips.
wiak - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
but the U230 is old, its from 2009http://www.netbookreviews.net/msi/wind-u230/
swaaye - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
Athlon Neo X2 arrived less than a year old, I believe. Why bother with K10 at this point as it's pretty retro too. :)matt b - Thursday, August 5, 2010 - link
Apparently, the Turion flavor of Congo, the L625, has better voltage management and thus battery life. Multiple reviews have shown that the Lenovo Thinkpad x100e with the K625 dual core processor has superior battery life to the MV-40 single core. Both are Congo chips with the same GPU, as well as the L325/335 processors, yet the higher clocked L625 with more cache appears the most power efficient.One complaint/issue that I would raise with battery life comparisions in these tests: Two of the four tests use the GPU to a greater extent. Unsuprisingly, with a superior performing GPU, AMD suffers in those battery test. How about non-flash heavy web browsing? Most of my websites are not flash intensive, and I never watch movie on my laptop (have a 50 incher at home for that). I know some people do and I think that the movie test is a good one, though I imagine it favors a weaker GPU. I work on flights, not watch movies. I think that a test that uses word processors, and some non-flash heavy browsing is probably the most realistic for most users.
Cal123 - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
This weeks review is a k8, what's in store for next week, pentium D review? Try to review up to date stuff, k10.5 and i series have been out for months now.Dustin Sklavos - Friday, August 6, 2010 - link
We can really only review what they send us. This one was actually a matter of some internal debate, but we decided to go ahead anyhow. There's no real reason NOT to review the thing.Of course, that said we like to think we're at least a little ahead of the curve. Pentium D for is old news, next week we're going to be posting our impressions of Intel's new Core 2 Duo E6600 and how well it pairs up with the GeForce 7800 GTX.
danacee - Saturday, August 7, 2010 - link
I just picked up a K325 equipped toshiba for the $450 mark at newegg. They are hardly just trickling onto the market and I could not think of a reason anyone would look at MSI's line considering how god awful their wind series has been from the start.