Review : MSI GX60-3BE – Affordable Gaming Notebook with High-end VGA

GX60 Illustration 2

Almost a year ago, Pemmz reviewed the Trinity version of the MSI GX60. And the welcome was very, very fantastic both from inside and outside Indonesia. This proves that the AMD-based MSI Gaming series is indeed the target of many gamers who want to get options outside the Intel platform. Well, a year later, MSI refreshed the specifications of this GX60 series with a new version of the Processor and VGA. It should be noted, both the CPU and GPU combined on this GX60 are the highest caste on each platform. The CPU is taken from the Richland A10 family which is the highest caste of AMD’s mobile CPUs, while the GPU from the Thames family uses the latest GCN architecture.

Overview

AMD-Richland-vs-Haswell-GPU

When it was first released (read: AMD Releases Successor Trinity – More Powerful, 47% More efficient), what Richland highlighted the most was its power consumption which was claimed to be 47% more efficient (HD video playback test). However, if you look at the notes from the image above, the test was carried out on a barebones notebook with a standard sail with a resolution of 1366x760p. As for the performance itself, AMD does not give much description. Well, this is what we will find out through this MSI GX60-3BE.

Specification

Spec

MSI GX60 if we look at the price, the design is very, very eye-catching for a gaming notebook. Not inferior to other manufacturers who first played in the high-end notebook market. Also from the row of I / O ports that it carries, it gives the impression of a very full performance. pemmZHolics can see the GX60’s connectivity is similar to that of the GT version such as Killer Gaming Network, WiFI N, Bluetooth 4.0 USB 3.0 and HD webcam. Adding more supporting features such as Full programable backlit keyboard by Steelseries and Audio by Sound Blaster Cinema promise a maximum gaming experience. The MSI GX60 also offers excellent upgrade options, especially on the storage side.

Design

The MSI GX60-3BE uses the same barebones model as the other 15.6″ MSI G series. The difference is only in the arrangement of the I / O ports, especially those related to external display out. This is of course to support the Eyefinity feature brought by AMD Radeon HD. Likewise with the supporting features as mentioned above. The layout on the bottom case is also the same including the placement of several components such as the sub-woofer and exhaust holes. For the overall design, pemmZHolics can look at the GX60 video review which we will upload in a few days and can be found at the bottom of this article. In the meantime, pemmZHolics can see the photos provided in this article.

Connectivity

Performance

PCMark7

Overall performance, MSI GX60-3BE with a third generation processor is still fairly unsatisfactory. There are still indications of a serious bottleneck in the Richland and Radeon HD8970M configurations. The capability of the storage unit that we tested was also standard, only equipped with a conventional HDD and not an SSD. But for the business of upgrading the Storage area, this MSI GX60 provides three 2.5″ SATA III slots (one for ODD) that you can configure in RAID. Or you can use the Profile Relocator software like the one Pemmz has reviewed here.

CPU

Sint bench 3D

Richland

Compared to Trinity, Richland is able to provide a performance increase of 10% to 13% in the synthesis benchmark test. What’s a little strange, Richland’s performance on 3DMark 11 is even worse than Trinity. Then when compared to its competitors from the blue camp, the A10-5750M provides performance that is at the level of the Core i3 3110M. As for the percentage, in 3DMark 06 A10 5750M narrowly won (1%), in 3DMark 08 narrowly lost (3%) compared to core i3 3110M.

For a Quad Core CPU, even at a very affordable price, the A10 5750M is not considered to be a good option as the main brain in a Gaming Notebook. For comparison, the Radeon HD7970M which is paired with the 7 series from the blue camp, is able to score a minimum GPU score of 23 thousand in the 3DMark Vantage test.

GPU

HD8000

To The performance of the Radeon HD8970M itself offers a performance increase of about 12% when compared to the HD7970M in the previous version of the GX60. This also can’t be said to be good because it can’t be entered in the category of a significant improvement from AMD’s latest CPU and GPU combination.

In the 3DMark 11 test, which has separated the test per component, the performance of the Radeon HD8970M has increased by about 16% compared to the Radeon HD7970M which is side by side with the i7 Ivy-Bridge. The bottleneck indication is very visible in the 3DMark Vantage test. The HD8970M’s performance on 3DMark Vantage should be able to reach a score of 26,000 to 28,000 if the bottleneck can be minimized.

Cache & Memory Benchmark

New cache bench

The read performance of both the memory and the L1 cache of the GX60 is quite high. Compared to the combined Intel Sandy Bridge configuration which uses 1600MHz RAM as well, the score is about 10% higher. Unfortunately, the write and copy performance can’t beat the 1600MHz RAM performance on the blue platform. CAS Latency is also fairly bad for the size of working with modern class CPUs. This again indicates a case of a bottleneck.

This once again gives us a clear handle that the AMD APU platform is indeed targeted at the mid-stream class. From the analogy that Pemmz has collected, its performance cannot match the Core i series from the blue camp.

In-Games Benchmark

By utilizing internal benchmarks in several games that the Pemmz team has, the gaming performance of the MSI GX60-3BE is already much better than the previous GX60 series. Take for example the RE5 benchmark, its performance increased by about 20%. If you look at outside reviews that pair the Radeon HD8970M with a non-AMD processor, the results are very much different. Once again, the selection of a CPU is very crucial for performance.

Real world Games Benchmark

In direct testing by playing games with the help of Fraps as FPS monitoring software, the numbers are obtained as shown in the table. Here you can see once again the A10-5750M breaks the real capabilities of the Radeon HD8970M which is actually very powerful.

Battery & Temperature

BEPro n Temp MSI GX60 3BE In battery testing using the Battery Eat Pro application with classic mode, the 9 cell battery on the MSI GX60-3BE can only last 66 minutes (71 minutes if calculated to drain). These results are classified as standard considering a Radeon HD8970M installed in it. This result is similar to a middle-class gaming notebook equipped with a 6 cell battery. It can be in theory, the average gaming notebook can only last 1 hour in use in full-load conditions, on average!.

As for temperature, the Pemmz team uses the help of 2 pieces of software, namely HW Monitor and GPU-Z. In the HW-Monitor software, the AMD APU which is a SoC-like solution (System on Chip) is reported to have reached the highest working temperature of up to 93’C. However, the Pemmz team itself is not sure about the accuracy of these results. While GPU-Z the Pemmz team used to record the highest temperature for the Radeon HD8970M on this GX60-3BE, and the result was that the highest VGA in the radeon mobile caste touched 90’C.

Apparently, pemmZHolics requires a notebook cooler to anticipate overheating on this GX60. Which is also quite disturbing, the performance drops very quickly when this 17 million notebook reaches its highest temperature.

Conclusion

Once again, AMD has not been able to satisfy the desires of gamers who have high hopes for their latest platform. If only the performance could be much improved plus a tempting price offer, this third generation APU platform is guaranteed to sell well in the market. Apart from that, for those of you who like to optimize through tweaks that are widely circulating in cyberspace, actually Richland’s abilities have not ended here. Rumors blow that this platform can be maximized, especially to get a much better FPS. The Pemmz team itself is exploring what can be done to make the performance of the GX60-3BE in particular, able to provide maximum gaming performance. So, it’s actually wrong to think that the GX60-3BE is not worth buying. For the most advanced GPU in the Radeon Mobile class, the price of the GX60 is very tempting.

For information, the Radeon HD8970M in some games will be very competitive with the Geforce GTX780M, provided that it uses the same processor. In this case, both will be maximized if paired with a top-level CPU from the blue camp. Really love it

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