AMD's A10-5750M Review, Part 2: The MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook
by Dustin Sklavos on June 29, 2013 12:00 PM ESTGaming Performance
Given that the AMD Radeon HD 7970M is the fastest mobile GPU that AMD offers, I'd ordinarily eschew including our "Value" benchmark results for the MSI GX60. Under the circumstances, though, those numbers might be enlightening. When a system is heavily CPU-limited, gaming benchmark results will often be flat or show very little performance loss as you move up in resolution and settings. It's reasonable to assume we'll see that kind of phenomenon here.
At our "Value" settings, it's clear Richland is giving the 7970M at least a little more performance headroom, but the gulf is massive compared to the way Ivy lets it stretch its legs. Metro: Last Light seems to be a bit of a bizarre outlier, though. Metro 2033 used to hammer the GPU almost exclusively, but times seem to have changed with the new release.
Mainstream performance actually demonstrates the same kind of weird wash between Trinity and Richland that I experienced testing using the IGP. It's only Tomb Raider that takes a bath with Richland, though, and even then it's still very playable. While our settings here help close the gap between the Alienware M17x R4's 7970M and the MSI GX60's, we're still obviously leaving a lot of performance on the table. Metro: Last Light in particular continues to be unplayable.
In some cases, enthusiast settings allow the GX60's 7970M to come within striking distance of the M17x R4's. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot of performance left on the table, and it's sometimes even the difference between a game being playable and not. In situations where we're severely GPU limited (Tomb Raider with TressFX, for example), the GX60 makes a very strong case for itself. The problem is that in other situations, the GTX 675MX (and by extrapolation, the slightly slower GTX 765M) winds up producing a better experience because the CPU isn't bogging it down.
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Khenglish - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
He ran some synthetic cpu tests of single vs dual. I expect a bigger cpu performance gain in real tests, and since the games tests are almost completely cpu limited, I expect some performance gain.I find synthetic tests not to be very good for comparing how systems perform in real applications, especially futuremark tests.
Just testing a few games is all I ask.
FwFred - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
After this review, I still feel we don't know too much about how good the Richland A10 is as a mobile CPU/iGPU. Why would anyone want an A10 in a high end gaming laptop?TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
i think that what msi should have done, is use a 7870m instead of a 7970m, and put it into a 14 inch frame. and lower the price to 700 or 800 bucks. then, it would be a good deal. at this price, the ge40 is a much better deal, as is the ge60Rontalk - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Yeah, msi gx40 with A10 + 8870M Radeon for $800!TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I would buy that in an instant.CainKorine - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
Well you could try a HP ENVY 15z-j000 ... with 16GB, Full HD 15'' monitor and backlight keyboard will set you back 749$ (lucky USA all over again, because by the time it gets to Europe, Kaveri will be released!). You could find an external review on notebookreview[dot]com forums (for some reason, I'm not allowed to post the link here, but is easy to find with google).hellermercer - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
hybrid gpu is benificial for battery and power saving efficiency if your not making graphics intensive application with this pc the A10 is good with its igpu u can shutdown the descrete one for battery saving purposes and it still the a10 has more frequency power but it lacks performance when two or more threads are being used with each core//..landsome - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
My GT663R with an i7-840QM and a 7970M gives the GX60 a solid thrashing, at least in terms of 3DM11 and 3DM13 scores - halfway between the GX60 and the M17x, and sometimes closer to the latter.erple2 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Sure but this one lasts longer that 60 minutes on battery power idle at the desktop.landsome - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Well, mine lasts 2. Without Enduro and the battery at 80% health and more than 2 years. And the CPU is 4 generations old.