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
Let the Games Begin
Our gaming suite is the most comprehensive set of gaming benchmarks you’re likely to find if you’re wondering how your shiny new laptop stacks up to the competition. As both of the notebooks we’re reviewing today are reasonably high-end, we’ll run through our Medium, High, and Ultra quality presets on each title. I’ve also added a couple new games to the list, Civilization V and Total War: Shogun 2, but I won’t include the graphs yet since we only have a few results. We’re also not fully decided on if we’ll keep these two benchmarks, so let us know what you think; in the meantime, you can find the scores in Mobile Bench. (We might also need to revamp the TWS2 test once the DX11 patch hits, which might be just in time to start testing Crysis 2 with DX11.)
We’ll focus our commentary on the High and Ultra results, but the Medium charts do a good job at showing the gulf between the midrange and high-end mobile GPUs. Something else to look at in the gaming benchmarks are the results for the original MSI GT680R; we’re including them mostly to see if anything has changed with the latest NVIDIA driver updates (and potentially firmware/BIOS tweaks from MSI), as the hardware remains the same; results for the earlier GT680R are in dark green.
Medium Quality Gaming Results
High Quality Gaming Results
Ultra Quality Gaming Results
Say what you will about the GT680R’s GPU overclock, if nothing else it’s at least consistently a few percent faster than the competition. We wouldn’t pay extra for the feature, and we aren’t recommending other manufacturers follow a similar path, but it’s there if you want it. Outside of that little performance bonus, the other GTX 460M notebooks (including the older ASUS G73JW with a Clarksfield CPU) are all clumped together. It appears NVIDIA’s 270 series driver also provides a consistent if small increase in performance.
As for other options, we currently have three faster mobile GPUs that we've benchmarked (though there are others). 480M SLI (and 485M SLI) come at the top of the pecking order, but you can only get those GPUs right now with a desktop CPU in the form of the Clevo X7200. A single GTX 485M is also a sizeable jump in performance relative to 460M, but don't forget the HD 6970M, which is nipping at the heels of 485M for quite a bit less money. GTX 470M and HD 6950M will also outperform the 460M, as would any CrossFire 5800M or 6900M setup.
Of course, if you want a reasonably priced notebook that can run current games at high detail settings (but generally not with antialiasing), the GTX 460M is a great place to start. Faster mobile GPUs certainly exist, but the price premium to get those is quite high.
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Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
Made by CompalLarries - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
How about the HP Envy with 6850M? Is that any good for gaming?Thanks.
Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
6850M should be better than the GTX460, so yeah, it's good for gaming.JarredWalton - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
I disagree. The 6870M would probably be close, but remember that the 6870M is actually slightly slower than the 5870M, and there are plenty of cases where the GTX 460M already beats the 5870M. (Note: yes, I know 5870M isn't the official name.) The 6850M will probably be similar to the 5850M in performance, which we have results on several of the gaming tests using the Envy 17. The HD 6950M would be the better chip compared to 460M, but I don't know of anyone using it yet.aguilpa1 - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link
my kingdom for a real gaming laptop that sports a 6970m or equal.. I just looked at the new Alienware 18" and it used to be that brand had choices of GPU now you only get one, the tired old 460m, whatever, like a fighting bull with no balls.Rumpelstiltstein - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
Just get rid of the damn glossy bezel and 10-key and you actually have something.littlemaddystar - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
um, wel, i kinda have no clue about what you guys are talking about, but Anand was in my teasting booklet. I read about him. And I had to awnser questions. I have to say that his company, (if that's what you want to call it,) is very impressive. And I just wanted to say something. :) sorry to bother your techy conversation. continue as if I never said anything.Zoolookuk - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link
What a fugly laptop!toschek - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
I've been using one of these (Sager branded) since late Feb. and I really love it.I don't give 2 solid shits about the speakers since I use this as my music production workstation and everything goes through an external audio card, but I can see how you might ding it for that. What's more annoying to me is the soft-touch rubbery trackpad and overall the finish seems to get pet hair stuck to it quite easily.
Overall for a desktop replacement it's working out great for me and all the complaints I have are extremely minor.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link
Wait, so you got a P151HM and it has the soft-touch plastic coating? Because the P150HM I tested had that but the P151HM is straight up ABS plastic with no coating whatsoever. I suppose there are probably P150HM with the all-plastic shell and P151HM with the soft-coating, then.