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
A Tale of Two LCDs
Clevo P151HM / CyberPower X6-9300 Gamut
MSI GT680R Gamut
As mentioned earlier, the LCD on the MSI laptop is noticeably inferior. The sad thing is that both the MSI and Clevo use the same AU Optronics B156HW01 LCD panel, but Clevo uses v1 while MSI uses v5. Presumably the v5 panel is a lot cheaper—at least it better be, judging by the results shown above!
On the other hand, the P151HM has what is very likely the best laptop LCD I’ve used in most areas. An 800:1 contrast ratio is great for a matte LCD, color accuracy is reasonable, and color gamut is close to ideal for the sRGB space. If you’re after a high gamut panel, there are better options, but most people feel high gamut panels just end up looking oversaturated. I really wish we could draw a line in the sand and have the P151HM panel set the minimum quality level that laptop displays should reach, but instead we have a race to the lowest priced LCD notebook manufacturers can find, which is why we see so many 1366x768 laptops.
Not only does the Clevo notebook offer superior contrast, but it also offers better viewing angles. We’re still dealing with TN panels either way, which is unfortunate but difficult to avoid, but the P151HM has a much wider sweet spot for viewing.
Noise and Temperatures
Clevo P151HM / CyberPower X6-9300
MSI GT680R
CPU temperatures are about 5C lower on the Clevo when the system is under a heavy load for a long time, but the GPU runs reasonably cool in both notebooks. The catch is that the Clevo only manages this by ramping up fan speeds much earlier than MSI.
At idle, the MSI GT680R maintains a constant 34.5dB output (for around 12”); in contrast, the Clevo oscillates between 31.9dB and 35.6dB. What’s truly unfortunate is that the Clevo is the more annoying under light workloads because you notice the frequently changing noise level more than you would a steady drone. Under load, the noise situation falls even more heavily in MSI’s favor. After looping 3DMark06 at 1080p for over 30 minutes, the MSI still maintained a reasonable output of 39.1dB, and it would even drop to 36-37dB at times. The P151HM on the other hand quickly ramped up fan speed to what appears to be the maximum RPM, putting out a loud 44.3dB. Under our worst-case load (4-thread Cinebench with 3DMark06 looping), the MSI also had to increase fan speed to 44.0dB and the Clevo maintained the same 44.3dB output, but most users likely won’t be putting a 100% load on all CPU cores while loading the GPU at the same time.
Looking at the cooling arrangement, MSI actually does something quite useful. The chassis at first appears to have a rear and side vent, but it turns out the rear vent is actually an air intake. Instead of trying to pull air through the bottom of the chassis like most notebooks, the fan gets easy access to fresh air at from the back, and vents it out the left side. ASUS’ G73 chassis is still the quietest gaming notebook we’ve encountered (though we’re not sure if that translates well to the smaller G53 chassis), but the MSI cooling arrangement tends to work well. It would be nice if they could reduce idle noise levels a bit more, but a steady 34dB is better than hearing the fan spin up and then slow down ever 10-20 seconds.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Yeah, the price is the big sticking point, plus I'd still rather have a GeForce 460M + Optimus instead of the Quadro 2000M. I'm not sure why NVIDIA doesn't use GDDR5 for the Quadro 2000M, since that's the only major bottleneck it has. Maybe VRAM bandwidth isn't that critical for Quadro's normal use cases?chrnochime - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
You can't have everything on your laundry list of requirements and still want them to charge the same amount of money as these ones you're offering. Pony up the money or put up with the compromises.chrnochime - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Dammit I mean "these ones you're reviewing."JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Take the P151HM, which you can get as configured for about $1300. Now add in Optimus and spend $200 improving the keyboard and chassis. Are you saying that's not possible? Because $200 would go a long way towards fixing the few complaints I had with that design -- I figure $50 for a new keyboard layout with backlighting, and the remaining $150 can be put towards a magnesium alloy chassis. Add in maybe $25 extra to do Optimus (there's no additional hardware required, just enable the feature in the BIOS AFAIK) and you'd have my $1500 "dream" laptop.The fact that Lenovo's W520 can be purchased on sale for $1500 with nearly everything in my list proves it can be done--and Lenovo would still make money if they sold every W520 at that price, but they want to make more money.
DanNeely - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
I heard about them a few years ago with the 1st generation MSI wind netbooks. The reason they have the retarded tap the corner to scroll instead of the more common swipe the edge behavior is that Synaptics has a patent on the latter. I don't know if they refuse to license it or if Sentelic is just too cheap; although the fact that Synaptic has a stranglehold on the touchpad market makes me suspect the former.yyrkoon - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Jarred, I am very glad you seemed to take to heart one of the points I made in my last bitch session of a laptop review. Well, at least you seemed to mirror one of my beliefs( in text ).Still, I think you would do very well, to educate your readers further. At first, I thought about Anand's comprehensive SSD write up in this context, but I am not sure how that might work in this case. On another semi related point. I still see no mention of driver support. This is very important.
Passed that, I think most readers understand how you feel about certain aspect of different laptops. Personally though, I would rather not read two or more sentences about how you feel about black glossy plastic. In my case, it is a waste of your time to elaborate any further passed " it has a black glossy shell" or whatever. I do not like black glossy plastic either. but guess what ? My own personal laptop is gloss black . . . We never get exactly what we want.
A companies case build policies to me, is something you should be taking up with them, and not us. Not to mention that this kind of "thought" in a review can be construed as being biased against the company. Whether truly fact, or not. Now, if the case felt flimsy, or like the screen might snap off in a short period of time of use . . .then sure thats something we should know.
I can say that my personal use case for a laptop is completely different from yours most of the time. Which in of its self is something to consider. For you, and myself both. This is to say, several of the things that are important to you, are not important to me. Maybe there is some way to format different aspects in a way, where readers can easily take notice, and just skip altogether ? Just a thought. E.g. keyboard, and trackpad functionality are nearly irrelevant. For me, if they work, that is good enough. If I need to do any serious typing, or have need for accurate cursor placement, I *will* use external input devices. No mater where I am, or where I am going with my laptop.
Anyhow, I felt like this was a decent review, although I care about neither product. I have always liked your reviews Jarred, because for the most part I feel when you review a product you are mostly thorough. Take my niggles for what they're worth, but do please seriously consider adding in driver support/stability comments. I am sure many readers of yours would appreciate that.
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Driver support is generally fine on any NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel graphics card these days. The reference drivers from all three companies work with the vast majority of notebooks. If there's a problem (e.g. Toshiba opting out of AMD's mobile driver program), I'll make a note of it, but otherwise I haven't seen anything with respect to drivers that concerns me. Granted, if you want to be able to go to, say, MSI and grab all the latest drivers, that might be a bigger problem. I usually go directly to the component manufacturer, so NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Realtek, etc. sites are where I check. Not sure if that answers your question -- is there something specific you want me to comment on? Stability, incidentally, was top notch on both notebooks, with no crashes or unexpected reboots.bhima - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Well balanced review overall. I decided to pick up a clevo based laptop as well, but one with Optimus. The main reason I picked a clevo over the Dell was because I could configure the clevo with a 96% RGB color gamut matte screen (the exact same one that is offered as an upgrade to the W series ThinkPads). Dell glossy screens have a habit of being really "glossy" and I just can't take it anymore. Just like glossy plastic is going out of style, I hope glossy screens for laptops do as well.Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
I agree with your summation. The Clevo seems like the best of the offerings but has flaws I don't want to live with. I really really wish you could get the G53SW in for review, as as long as the screen is good I'd take it. I agree with your wish for a laptop that doesn't exist too; except I don't care much about the speakers. I'd rather the price not get over 1200 than have uber speakers inside my laptop. If I really care I'll use headsets or external speakers or Logitech's clip on speaker. I could live with the 555M GPU as well, as long as it doesn't cost more than 1200. Laptop guys, DO NOT include Blu Ray; that's literally worth nothing to me. Discs are so last decade.Since I'm wishing, Asus, or whoever, put your chassis on cyberpower.com as a whitebox or at the very least with the option to not include the OS. I have my own thanks.
Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
Id like to see a review of the gt540 1080p laptop cyberpower has now.