MSI GX60 Review: Radeon HD 7970M In A $1,200 Notebook!

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

whyso

Distinguished
Jan 15, 2012
689
0
19,060
One of the stupidest configurations I've seen. Such a horrible cpu bottleneck. The price is nice but compared to similarily priced notebooks (lenovo y500 with dual 750m [stronger than a 660m]) it gets demolished. Its not that it doesn't peform well its just that certain games are unplayable no matter what you do. Hitman simply can't be played on the notebook, same with games such as GW2. BF3 MP is also going to suck. I'd rather have a notebook that plays all games ok than one that plays some great and some not at all.
 

KarlSHO

Honorable
Apr 1, 2013
3
0
10,510
MSI builds a great product but anyone who is looking to buy something like this should also consider the Lenovo Ideapad Y500. I bought a new gaming laptop at the beginning of the year and I looked at all of them trying to find the best price to performance ratio and it was the Y500. You can get the Y500 SLI version for about $1000, it has a 1TB drive and an open msata 6 slot to put your own SSD in. Then get a 256gb SSD for about $200. That $1200 combo will put you just a few ticks behind the M18x used in the review. I went ahead and swapped out the hard drive for a second SSD and put the HDD in an external usb 3.0 enclosure and swapped in CAS 9 ram while I was at it. I'm a systems admin and we have multiple engineering laptops at my company and my Y500 is easily the fastest laptop I have ever worked with.
 

sjc1017

Distinguished
May 4, 2011
69
0
18,630
can someone explain to me why they don't make this configuraton in a 17.3 or 18.4 machine? I have really wondered why manufacturers don't make AMD based gaming laptops because generall the most important component is the GPU. If you have a mediocre processor and a good GPU then you can game perfectly well. So, why don't more manufacturers offer this configuration? Or even a core i3 processor with a high-end GPU in a laptop? Is it just to ensure you have to spend £1000 to get a gaming laptop? Also, I hate these single-button trackpads because when I am not gaming I am editing and I need to right-click all day long. So why do so many manufacturers go for these single-button trackpads where you have to click at one side instead of the centre where you thumb naturally falls?
 
Thick is good, tired of seeing flaky "thin" laptops showing up at the shop that usually end up needing new boards and other extensive repairs due to the high thermals. MSI could have went with an i5 instead of an apu but oh well looks good.

More copper please..
 


they dont put amd processors inside their laptops since they dont perform that great. if you threw a i7 in this chassis with the rest being the same, it would perform at least 50% in games. not to mention intel chips do tend to draw a little less power
 

tgoods44

Distinguished
Feb 23, 2010
15
0
18,510
I own a similar variant of this laptop (with intel and nvidia graphics). I absolutely love the thing. It is more function over form, but still beautiful and does absolutely everything I need it to do. Had this option been available (probably similar performance for less money with the AMD parts) I would've purchased this, and my next labtop will probably be what msi puts out.
 

Niva

Distinguished
Jul 20, 2006
383
1
18,785
My now 8 year old MSI lappy is still going strong though. One of the hinges for the monitor did develop a crack though in the last year, so I'm guessing at some point in the next few months I might need a new machine. I've been real happy with MSI's hardware though, good company that doesn't get enough credit.
 

danwat1234

Distinguished
Jun 13, 2008
1,395
0
19,310
Hmm, you void the warranty by just taking off the bottom cover to upgrade the RAM or hard drive? Not cool.

I like the design of the cooling system. Much better than a Asus G50VT, which also uses a single fan, but only 1 output vent, so the CPU heatsink fins are first, then after that the GPU fins. So, if you are just loading the CPU, the GPU rises in temperature.

The power consumption results;; The HWinfo program isn't showing the proper wattage that the laptop is taking. The AC adapter isn't so inefficient that the total power consumption of the unit with the AC adapter is around 171W when the entire computer only takes about 80W, supposedly, though I know it takes more than 80W at full loads.
I know they may be accounting for the battery charging at the same time, but as you can see, the battery charges very slowly when the machine is fully loaded, so this means that the AC adapter is at it's limit of 180W output. So the HWinfo data is wrong.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Oh man... no backlit keyboard eats at my soul! Otherwise I would get this right this instant!
 

odoketa

Distinguished
Mar 30, 2007
16
0
18,510
I may have missed it, but did it mention anywhere what the noise levels were? Considering the card in this thing, I'd be afraid it would sound like a jet taking off the whole time I was playing.
 

fonzieguy

Honorable
May 26, 2012
46
0
10,560
1200 for a very processor bound laptop is interesting but I believe this article is useless unless you compare it with this laptop here : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312441
1199, and should offer simliar if not better performance. If the purpose of this article is to show a good gaming laptop at 1200, you can't ignore this one from lenovo as well. I would love to see if the i7 and the 650m SLI do better.
 

zeratul600

Honorable
Mar 11, 2012
138
0
10,680
May i Ask why do they have to cut the keyboard lights? and why use an APU with a system that has a ultra powerful video? they should add more crapware in order to bring the prices down and use an FX cpu or a cheap i5
 

bokeh

Honorable
Dec 13, 2012
17
0
10,510


AC measurements were taken with a Kill A Watt AC power meter.

 

bokeh

Honorable
Dec 13, 2012
17
0
10,510


The fan button near the power button switches the fan between full speed and quiet modes. In full speed mode, you can hear the fan. In quiet mode, the fan remains as quiet as possible while maintaining cpu and gpu temps. Most of the time you will not hear the fan in quiet mode because it is large enough to move a decent amount of air at low rpms.

The thick build and large fan give you cooling that is quieter than most gaming notebooks.
 

danwat1234

Distinguished
Jun 13, 2008
1,395
0
19,310
[citation][nom]zeratul600[/nom]May i Ask why do they have to cut the keyboard lights? and why use an APU with a system that has a ultra powerful video? they should add more crapware in order to bring the prices down and use an FX cpu or a cheap i5[/citation]
Having an integrated APU lets you cut power to the high end video card when you don't want it, saving a lot of power. Having a high end video card go into power saving mode still takes power compared to completely sleeping it.
 

oj88

Honorable
May 23, 2012
91
0
10,630
[citation][nom]Tee-Kheang Ng[/nom]There's is a GX60 with a10-5750m richland APU...Which the improvement is modestly 10-15% CPU powers, it should alleviate some of the CPU bottleneck...[/citation]
It is not explained by the author in the "Interior: Teardown Images And Components" that the a10-4600m can be removed and replaced by an a10-5750m under the heatsink. Also the keboard can be replaced by a backlit keyboard. All these upgradabilities make GX60 attractive to mobile gamers.
 

Eric Sugiarto

Honorable
May 1, 2013
1
0
10,510
Everywhere i looked the spec of MSI GX 60 is different from what's listed here, almost all the ones I found have no SSD which is one of the bigger feature of this model and came with windows 8 instead of windows 7. Only one seller in Amazon have the item that this review specified, but the price is $1400, $200 more than what's suggested. I can only guess MSI realized that they should have charged more so they removed the SSDs, and vendors that was lucky enough to have gotten the original feature starts overcharging them... grrr...
 

mscim

Honorable
May 1, 2013
2
0
10,510
Neither Amazon nor Newegg indicates that this laptop includes SSDs or a 2 year warranty at this price point. Am I missing something?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.