Not only are they only using a single channel, they're using DDR3-1600. The 5750M is unique in AMD's mobile lineup in that it supports DDR3-1866 out of the box - none of the Trinity mobile chips (or lesser Richland models) can claim this. Now granted, when relying on the discrete graphics this isn't going to make as big of a difference. But there will be some improvement running dual channel 1866. I also have to wonder if Enduro is causing issues as well.
I know they're trying to keep costs down, but I can't help but wonder if they'd be better off with a significantly cheaper model using a slower discrete GPU, perhaps even dual graphics.
actually that depends where you buy it from. The one i bought has 2x4GB besides that i must say while alot of people are bashing this pc, i love it. Design of the case, ease of access to all parts, heat management are best i have ever seen in any laptop. Performance is bottlenecked by the cpu ofc but not as much as everyone are saying. My friend bought i5+nvidia 7xx series card, not sure which exactly and performance in most games is very similar, while he paid 150€ more for his.
I think benchmarks are also heavily influenced by drivers and switchable graphics compatibility.
I did read the article. I was baffled by the poor results and went back to the front to see if I missed something and I saw " 1x8GB A-Data DDR3-1600 ". Thats when it immediately realized a problem. If this laptop only has one slot for DDR3 then this design was hampered from the beginning and ready to limp to the starting lines.
Latest APUs have been given a boost to support up to 1866mhz. Because the GPU IS discrete it heavily depends on the RAM as there is no "dedicated memory" for the GPU. I'll wait to buy a laptop, and get one when AMD lightning bolt is released and I can buy a laptop with a richland APU and 1866mhz memory.
That's incorrect. The 7970M has 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory interface. So the single channel memory is dedicated to the CPU only, and shouldn't hurt the 7970M performance.
Still, I don't really understand the point of pairing an APU with discrete graphics. I think as a combination of CPU + low end GPU, AMD's APUs are a great value. It makes a lot of sense in a laptop where you don't want the extra heat and power requirements of a discrete GPU to trade a little CPU performance for superior integrated graphics. But if you add a 7970M, then it makes sense to prioritize the CPU over the integrated graphics. Save Richland for where you need the integrated graphics.
"Because the GPU IS discrete it heavily depends on the RAM as there is no "dedicated memory" for the GPU." Discrete GPU means that there is an extra GPU connected with the mainboard that has its own RAM supply, like a normal, PCIe desktop graphics card (dGPU). Integrated GPU (iGPU) means there is a GPU on the same package or die as the CPU (it used to mean that there is a GPU on the motherboard, but not anymore since a few years). That GPU has to use the system memory (RAM) in order to operate. You seem to be confusing the two.
The 1866 RAM really helps the iGPU in AMD APUs. The performance bump adding it to this specific machine is going to be less than we would hope. The reality is that if I were purchasing it I would be adding an SSD and RAM. I would go for the 1866 because the CPU supports is, but I wouldn't expect it to compete with Intel. I would just be hoping to eliminate those odd cases where the Trinity version was beating it.
There are two SO-DIMM slots on the GX60; only one is populated on this particular model, but as shown the benefits of dual-channel RAM (especially with DDR3-1600 memory) are almost entirely targeted at iGPU usage.
This laptop supports 4 DDR3 slots for a total of 32GB and the A10-5705M supports 1866 RAM. In looking at the part 1 article numbers, they opted to put two sticks in and performance was better in relation to the previous Trinity generation. I believe including a total of two or four sticks of 1866 RAM should give this machine a boost. That is a question for the customer as the model they received ships with only 1 stick of 8GB @ 1600.
The concept of this whole notebook is to ship something the end user can upgrade; like the RAM and storage.
Is it possible that cpu issues will be mitigated by the fact than both next generation consoles use 8 relatively slow cores? The Achilles' heel of the apu is single thread performance and since new console games will be optimized to run on more slower cores, the cpu part of the apu could finally be used to it's full potential.
I'd like to believe that. however, this part is only quad core, and the mobile i7s are quad core with eight thread...they might benefit more. what amd really needs to do is release a 45w part. intel's quad cores are all 45 watt, with the exception of the 3612m. if amd upped the tdp, they could push the cpu clock to something like 3.0/3.9 GHz, which might help make up the distance. or better yet, release the 45 watt model with the a4's gpu, since it would probably only be used in laptops like this. that would give the cpu even more power to work with.
Dustin how about putting in another memory stick and seeing how much of an improvement there is? This thing needs more CPU power and an extra $35 on memory might make the laptop acceptable.
He ran some synthetic cpu tests of single vs dual. I expect a bigger cpu performance gain in real tests, and since the games tests are almost completely cpu limited, I expect some performance gain.
I find synthetic tests not to be very good for comparing how systems perform in real applications, especially futuremark tests.
After this review, I still feel we don't know too much about how good the Richland A10 is as a mobile CPU/iGPU. Why would anyone want an A10 in a high end gaming laptop?
i think that what msi should have done, is use a 7870m instead of a 7970m, and put it into a 14 inch frame. and lower the price to 700 or 800 bucks. then, it would be a good deal. at this price, the ge40 is a much better deal, as is the ge60
Well you could try a HP ENVY 15z-j000 ... with 16GB, Full HD 15'' monitor and backlight keyboard will set you back 749$ (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).
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//..
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.
Thank you for including SC2 gaming benchmarks! As I am trying to decide on an ideal system for SC2 (without being overkill), your results are very helpful to me in determining how important CPU performance is versus GPU performance. Thanks again :-)
The Intel Haswell announcement at the beginning month had me thinking it's out any day, but so far there are only i7s and U series CPUs, and no real info anywhere on the i5 Ms.
I expect we won't see the dual-core standard voltage Haswell chips for at least another month or two -- same thing happened with Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge, except we got SV before we got ULV. Now Intel is pushing ULV hard, so they launched those chips at the same time as the QC SV and desktop QC parts.
I'd argue that Haswell is far more important in the mobile arena than it ever would be on the desktop. Still, is the difference actually that dramatic?
It's a big difference if you need, say, 8-10 hours of battery life instead of 6-8. Otherwise, it's not that big of a deal. I rarely go unplugged for more than a few hours, so I can easily live with the lower battery life of IVB.
HD 4600 is no 5xxx, but still a noticeable update from 4000. And battery time does matter to me. I suppose it'll also go easier on the battery recharge cycles.
My testing suggests otherwise. Despite having 20 EUs vs. 16 EUs, HD 4400 and HD 4600 are generally about the same performance as HD 4000. I've even got a quad-core standard voltage i7-4700MQ system (MSI GE40), and surprisingly there are several games where the HD 4600 iGPU fails to be a significant upgrade to an ULV HD 4000 in and i5-3317U. I'm not sure if Intel somehow changed each EU so that the Haswell EUs are less powerful relative to IVB, but outside of driver optimizations (it's still early in the game for Haswell) I have no good reason for the lack of performance I'm getting from HD 4600.
The i7-4500U review showed not much of a difference at times, and even slightly lower performance, but +20% in other cases. i7-4770 vs i7-3770 shows more improvement. I'm guessing the improvement in a 37W CPU would be more like the desktop parts rather than the 15W CPU. But, well, all theoretical anyway.
its a little problematic, i think. they are ultrabook cpus, and bga to boot. it's cheaper to make laptops with rpga connectors than soldering the cpu to the motherboard. until rpga models appear (not likely) we might not see that many. they are also $100 more expensive than ultrabook models from last year, so a lot of maufacturers are still using ivy. toshiba just brought out 3 new laptops, two are ultrabooks, all which use ivy instead of haswell.
The SV dual cores are actually Q4, so its quite a few bit left. They are planning on phasing it out in favor of U chips, where it Broadwell it disappears entirely.
Mainstream CPUs have used a dual channel memory controllers for so long that simply disabling access to one channel can have (as we've seen in this case) a not insignificant effect on benchmarks that do not directly stress the GPU portion of the chip. CPUs have had uses for more memory bandwidth before there were on-chip GPUs, afterall.
Furthermore, in scientific terms, due to the author changing two variables in this experiment (var1a: iGPU. var 1b: dual channel. var2a: dGPU. var2b: single channel.) to compare the iGPU to the dGPU, we cannot be certain that the subtraction of the second channel of memory has a non-zero effect on dGPU performance.
If the author's intention was merely reviewing the out-of-the-box performance of this hardware configuration of the MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook, this would be fine. Instead, the article is titled: "AMD's A10-5750M Review: ..."
I'm not trying to be unnecessarily harsh. And the subject of this review could very easily apply to my interest. (I *just* purchased a laptop for a family member with an AMD A8-5550M.) But if the author is going to test the processor's gaming performance: don't change more than one variable.
People can talk about how games don't need powerful CPUs all they want, but the fact is, there IS a minimum requirement, and some games DO make use of the top end CPUs available. The more powerful your GPU, the more powerful the CPU needs to be to allow it room to work.
This MSI notebook is built using one of the reasons I don't buy pre-built desktops, cutting corners on one part to spend money on another. It's bad design, it doesn't work (at least when the corners are cut to this degree), it makes for a system that is built cheap and shows it in its performance. Shame on MSI, they know better (or at least some of them do - maybe those people aren't in the notebook division).
"Balance" is the key to computer design, just as it is with many things in life.
For a while it was true, games by and large didn't really need powerful CPUs. Over about the past year or two that changed and changed *dramatically.* You're getting games that have a tremendous amount of complexity to them; graphics are practically the least of Skyrim's engine's worries, Crysis 3 has an incredibly rich and vibrant environment (despite being kind of crappy), and Tomb Raider is no different. It looks like TressFX takes its pound of flesh out of the CPU *and* the GPU.
Skyrim, Crysis3 and Tomb Raider run all maxed out on the GX60 except for 4*MSAA. Only Games not running smooth on this system are MMOs where the CPU is needed for all characters on-screen.
Being a GX60 owner myself I can totally recommend it, except you wanna play GW2 or similar stuff.
I know that on optimus systems that the dGPU will still draw a little bit of power even when off. The motherboard still keeps the Vin line active, although the GPU core and memory VR's shut down. I tested this with a multimeter. The fact that the card is still visible to on the pci bus means it's still drawing a little power.
It's probably only like half a watt, but it's something.
Last I heard from AMD and NVIDIA, it's not even half a watt -- more like 100mW or something in that range. But until we get a system that only has a Richland APU with no dGPU, we can't really test what battery life is like. The GX60 is also a large system relatively speaking, so I'd expect a less performance oriented laptop to get much better battery life with Richland -- same goes for Haswell and IVB laptops.
There's something else that needs to be addressed, if at all possible...
The first GX60 had exceptionally poor CPU performance as evidenced by your article eleven days back. From your conclusions, you didn't think that it could have all been down to the CPU (perhaps Enduro was to blame?). So, have MSI fixed that with the second gen GX60, or are we just seeing a (pardon me) turd with go-faster stripes? One or two of the part 1 tests actually underperformed the Trinity prototype which was interesting.
A comparison between both GX60s would be an eye opener.
I'm ready for another page: GAMING PERFORMANCE PART 2
Add (or replace) the HDD with an SSD and replace the memory with 2x4GB 1866MHz RAM. Rerun all tests and compare the incremental cost to the more expensive Alienware models. I would argue that the best memory and a good SSD with greatly improve the lags in CPU performance and free the dGPU to perform closer to an i7. Definitely not going to catch it, but closer...
This continues to be an intersting system. I wish AMD would put out a higher end mobile CPU. Since their A series is roughly 50/50 CPU/GPU, there's no reason they couldn't dump the GPU portion and replace it with another 4(ish) cores, and/or clock things higher with a 45 watt TDP.
Great APU if you want to do 768p gaming on a budget. Great GPU if you want to get a cheap gaming laptop. Horrible combination. :D I wonder how a beefy i3 with a 7970 would stack up to this notebook. On the desktop side, I can get an A10-6800K for 125€ and I can get an i3-3250 for 125€. Should be similar on the laptop side, no? Wonder how much of this is the single threaded and how much is the multi threaded performance.
How does this stack up against the PS4? I have a chance to get one this month for about $800. It has 1 upgrade which is that the memory was boosted to 16gb.
I don't want to get it if it ends up lacking the CPU power to play next gen games on at least medium.
This computer all what it need is an 3.6GHz Richland A8-5550M 2185_A1 ES processor. How about re-done the tests with a processor like that? That would have been awesome to see the improvements and stupidity of AMD, lacking out the unlocked CPU multipliers from retail APU.
the apu still lacks dedicated memory and is not a good choice and it should have been an ssd for gaming with no L3 cache launching games may be slower.
DDR RAM won't make a lick of difference when it comes to dedicated GPU performance. Just try it yourself. Run a few benchmarks, remove a stick of RAM, and try again. Same result within a few % at least. I did this a while back with the AMD Llano APU's and it made zero difference when it came to the dedicated GPU.
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY
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Darksurf - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I can already see one reason why you had poor benchmarks. You are only using one stick of DDR3?! WHY? AMD APUs depend heavily upon dual channel.Bull Dog - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Clearly, you didn't read the article.Samus - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Darksurf, even if they ran the tests with one DIMM, why would discrete graphics be impacted by a single memory channel?popej - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
As I understand, video data form discrete GPU is transferred over PCIe to internal video buffer of APU, eating some memory bandwidth.Pity there is no comparison with dual channels configuration.
Alexvrb - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link
Not only are they only using a single channel, they're using DDR3-1600. The 5750M is unique in AMD's mobile lineup in that it supports DDR3-1866 out of the box - none of the Trinity mobile chips (or lesser Richland models) can claim this. Now granted, when relying on the discrete graphics this isn't going to make as big of a difference. But there will be some improvement running dual channel 1866. I also have to wonder if Enduro is causing issues as well.I know they're trying to keep costs down, but I can't help but wonder if they'd be better off with a significantly cheaper model using a slower discrete GPU, perhaps even dual graphics.
thesavvymage - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
this laptop only HAS one slot for ddr3. Read the article before commentingthesavvymage - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
edit: has one ddr3 in it by stockperse - Thursday, January 23, 2014 - link
actually that depends where you buy it from. The one i bought has 2x4GB besides that i must say while alot of people are bashing this pc, i love it. Design of the case, ease of access to all parts, heat management are best i have ever seen in any laptop. Performance is bottlenecked by the cpu ofc but not as much as everyone are saying. My friend bought i5+nvidia 7xx series card, not sure which exactly and performance in most games is very similar, while he paid 150€ more for his.I think benchmarks are also heavily influenced by drivers and switchable graphics compatibility.
Darksurf - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link
I did read the article. I was baffled by the poor results and went back to the front to see if I missed something and I saw " 1x8GB A-Data DDR3-1600 ". Thats when it immediately realized a problem. If this laptop only has one slot for DDR3 then this design was hampered from the beginning and ready to limp to the starting lines.Latest APUs have been given a boost to support up to 1866mhz. Because the GPU IS discrete it heavily depends on the RAM as there is no "dedicated memory" for the GPU. I'll wait to buy a laptop, and get one when AMD lightning bolt is released and I can buy a laptop with a richland APU and 1866mhz memory.
relztes - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link
That's incorrect. The 7970M has 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory interface. So the single channel memory is dedicated to the CPU only, and shouldn't hurt the 7970M performance.Still, I don't really understand the point of pairing an APU with discrete graphics. I think as a combination of CPU + low end GPU, AMD's APUs are a great value. It makes a lot of sense in a laptop where you don't want the extra heat and power requirements of a discrete GPU to trade a little CPU performance for superior integrated graphics. But if you add a 7970M, then it makes sense to prioritize the CPU over the integrated graphics. Save Richland for where you need the integrated graphics.
Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
"Because the GPU IS discrete it heavily depends on the RAM as there is no "dedicated memory" for the GPU."Discrete GPU means that there is an extra GPU connected with the mainboard that has its own RAM supply, like a normal, PCIe desktop graphics card (dGPU). Integrated GPU (iGPU) means there is a GPU on the same package or die as the CPU (it used to mean that there is a GPU on the motherboard, but not anymore since a few years). That GPU has to use the system memory (RAM) in order to operate. You seem to be confusing the two.
eanazag - Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - link
The 1866 RAM really helps the iGPU in AMD APUs. The performance bump adding it to this specific machine is going to be less than we would hope. The reality is that if I were purchasing it I would be adding an SSD and RAM. I would go for the 1866 because the CPU supports is, but I wouldn't expect it to compete with Intel. I would just be hoping to eliminate those odd cases where the Trinity version was beating it.CNP-Keythai - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
Thats right. Its surprising to see only one slot for RAM. Also the PC can take only 8 GB, I afraid. None of these make any sense to me.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
There are two SO-DIMM slots on the GX60; only one is populated on this particular model, but as shown the benefits of dual-channel RAM (especially with DDR3-1600 memory) are almost entirely targeted at iGPU usage.eanazag - Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - link
This laptop supports 4 DDR3 slots for a total of 32GB and the A10-5705M supports 1866 RAM. In looking at the part 1 article numbers, they opted to put two sticks in and performance was better in relation to the previous Trinity generation. I believe including a total of two or four sticks of 1866 RAM should give this machine a boost. That is a question for the customer as the model they received ships with only 1 stick of 8GB @ 1600.The concept of this whole notebook is to ship something the end user can upgrade; like the RAM and storage.
Specs from MSI:
http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GX60-Hitman-Edition....
tincmulc - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Is it possible that cpu issues will be mitigated by the fact than both next generation consoles use 8 relatively slow cores? The Achilles' heel of the apu is single thread performance and since new console games will be optimized to run on more slower cores, the cpu part of the apu could finally be used to it's full potential.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I'd like to believe that. however, this part is only quad core, and the mobile i7s are quad core with eight thread...they might benefit more. what amd really needs to do is release a 45w part. intel's quad cores are all 45 watt, with the exception of the 3612m. if amd upped the tdp, they could push the cpu clock to something like 3.0/3.9 GHz, which might help make up the distance. or better yet, release the 45 watt model with the a4's gpu, since it would probably only be used in laptops like this. that would give the cpu even more power to work with.Rontalk - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Yes, future games will run better with slow CPU cores but fast GPU. 1-2 years and MSI GX60 gonna be good gaming machine.Khenglish - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Dustin how about putting in another memory stick and seeing how much of an improvement there is? This thing needs more CPU power and an extra $35 on memory might make the laptop acceptable.JMC2000 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
The results with dual-channel mode are in the article, sadly, it doesn't help much.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.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
2 minutes? pretty good for that generationcoolhardware - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Thank you for including SC2 gaming benchmarks! As I am trying to decide on an ideal system for SC2 (without being overkill), your results are very helpful to me in determining how important CPU performance is versus GPU performance. Thanks again :-)sheh - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
When will i5-4xxxM start coming the market?The Intel Haswell announcement at the beginning month had me thinking it's out any day, but so far there are only i7s and U series CPUs, and no real info anywhere on the i5 Ms.
JarredWalton - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I expect we won't see the dual-core standard voltage Haswell chips for at least another month or two -- same thing happened with Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge, except we got SV before we got ULV. Now Intel is pushing ULV hard, so they launched those chips at the same time as the QC SV and desktop QC parts.sheh - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Thanks. Well, that's a crying shame. Looks I'll have to settle for an Ivy Bridge.Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
No shame in that, Ivy is still a damn fine chip. Haswell is incremental.FwFred - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
Incremental for laptops? Do you carry your power cord everywhere?silverblue - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
I'd argue that Haswell is far more important in the mobile arena than it ever would be on the desktop. Still, is the difference actually that dramatic?JarredWalton - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
It's a big difference if you need, say, 8-10 hours of battery life instead of 6-8. Otherwise, it's not that big of a deal. I rarely go unplugged for more than a few hours, so I can easily live with the lower battery life of IVB.sheh - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
HD 4600 is no 5xxx, but still a noticeable update from 4000. And battery time does matter to me. I suppose it'll also go easier on the battery recharge cycles.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
My testing suggests otherwise. Despite having 20 EUs vs. 16 EUs, HD 4400 and HD 4600 are generally about the same performance as HD 4000. I've even got a quad-core standard voltage i7-4700MQ system (MSI GE40), and surprisingly there are several games where the HD 4600 iGPU fails to be a significant upgrade to an ULV HD 4000 in and i5-3317U. I'm not sure if Intel somehow changed each EU so that the Haswell EUs are less powerful relative to IVB, but outside of driver optimizations (it's still early in the game for Haswell) I have no good reason for the lack of performance I'm getting from HD 4600.sheh - Monday, July 1, 2013 - link
The i7-4500U review showed not much of a difference at times, and even slightly lower performance, but +20% in other cases. i7-4770 vs i7-3770 shows more improvement. I'm guessing the improvement in a 37W CPU would be more like the desktop parts rather than the 15W CPU. But, well, all theoretical anyway.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
its a little problematic, i think. they are ultrabook cpus, and bga to boot. it's cheaper to make laptops with rpga connectors than soldering the cpu to the motherboard. until rpga models appear (not likely) we might not see that many. they are also $100 more expensive than ultrabook models from last year, so a lot of maufacturers are still using ivy. toshiba just brought out 3 new laptops, two are ultrabooks, all which use ivy instead of haswell.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
never mind, just found list that included socketed models. guess the oems are just slowIntelUser2000 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
The SV dual cores are actually Q4, so its quite a few bit left. They are planning on phasing it out in favor of U chips, where it Broadwell it disappears entirely.sheh - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
On the forum you said Q4 is rumors, any more concrete info since then?arthur449 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I wouldn't sell or buy a laptop if it didn't have all its available memory channels populated. This entire review is pointless to me.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Because buying an extra 8GB DIMM for $75 or whatever is too hard? And it will only help with iGPU performance?arthur449 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
Mainstream CPUs have used a dual channel memory controllers for so long that simply disabling access to one channel can have (as we've seen in this case) a not insignificant effect on benchmarks that do not directly stress the GPU portion of the chip. CPUs have had uses for more memory bandwidth before there were on-chip GPUs, afterall.Furthermore, in scientific terms, due to the author changing two variables in this experiment (var1a: iGPU. var 1b: dual channel. var2a: dGPU. var2b: single channel.) to compare the iGPU to the dGPU, we cannot be certain that the subtraction of the second channel of memory has a non-zero effect on dGPU performance.
If the author's intention was merely reviewing the out-of-the-box performance of this hardware configuration of the MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook, this would be fine. Instead, the article is titled: "AMD's A10-5750M Review: ..."
I'm not trying to be unnecessarily harsh. And the subject of this review could very easily apply to my interest. (I *just* purchased a laptop for a family member with an AMD A8-5550M.) But if the author is going to test the processor's gaming performance: don't change more than one variable.
TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
the single channel ram should be fine in this case, since its not used for video at all. at least its 1600mhzSabresiberian - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
People can talk about how games don't need powerful CPUs all they want, but the fact is, there IS a minimum requirement, and some games DO make use of the top end CPUs available. The more powerful your GPU, the more powerful the CPU needs to be to allow it room to work.This MSI notebook is built using one of the reasons I don't buy pre-built desktops, cutting corners on one part to spend money on another. It's bad design, it doesn't work (at least when the corners are cut to this degree), it makes for a system that is built cheap and shows it in its performance. Shame on MSI, they know better (or at least some of them do - maybe those people aren't in the notebook division).
"Balance" is the key to computer design, just as it is with many things in life.
Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
For a while it was true, games by and large didn't really need powerful CPUs. Over about the past year or two that changed and changed *dramatically.* You're getting games that have a tremendous amount of complexity to them; graphics are practically the least of Skyrim's engine's worries, Crysis 3 has an incredibly rich and vibrant environment (despite being kind of crappy), and Tomb Raider is no different. It looks like TressFX takes its pound of flesh out of the CPU *and* the GPU.j_kut - Saturday, July 6, 2013 - link
Skyrim, Crysis3 and Tomb Raider run all maxed out on the GX60 except for 4*MSAA.Only Games not running smooth on this system are MMOs where the CPU is needed for all characters on-screen.
Being a GX60 owner myself I can totally recommend it, except you wanna play GW2 or similar stuff.
YukaKun - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
Where's the battery test with just the iGPU like you guys did with the i7?We need those numbers for bragging rights :P
Cheers!
JarredWalton - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
Battery testing is done with the dGPU inactive via Enduro, so these are the "best-case" battery life results for this particular notebook.Khenglish - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
I know that on optimus systems that the dGPU will still draw a little bit of power even when off. The motherboard still keeps the Vin line active, although the GPU core and memory VR's shut down. I tested this with a multimeter. The fact that the card is still visible to on the pci bus means it's still drawing a little power.It's probably only like half a watt, but it's something.
JarredWalton - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
Last I heard from AMD and NVIDIA, it's not even half a watt -- more like 100mW or something in that range. But until we get a system that only has a Richland APU with no dGPU, we can't really test what battery life is like. The GX60 is also a large system relatively speaking, so I'd expect a less performance oriented laptop to get much better battery life with Richland -- same goes for Haswell and IVB laptops.silverblue - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
There's something else that needs to be addressed, if at all possible...The first GX60 had exceptionally poor CPU performance as evidenced by your article eleven days back. From your conclusions, you didn't think that it could have all been down to the CPU (perhaps Enduro was to blame?). So, have MSI fixed that with the second gen GX60, or are we just seeing a (pardon me) turd with go-faster stripes? One or two of the part 1 tests actually underperformed the Trinity prototype which was interesting.
A comparison between both GX60s would be an eye opener.
kwrzesien - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
I'm ready for another page: GAMING PERFORMANCE PART 2Add (or replace) the HDD with an SSD and replace the memory with 2x4GB 1866MHz RAM. Rerun all tests and compare the incremental cost to the more expensive Alienware models. I would argue that the best memory and a good SSD with greatly improve the lags in CPU performance and free the dGPU to perform closer to an i7. Definitely not going to catch it, but closer...
Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
This continues to be an intersting system. I wish AMD would put out a higher end mobile CPU. Since their A series is roughly 50/50 CPU/GPU, there's no reason they couldn't dump the GPU portion and replace it with another 4(ish) cores, and/or clock things higher with a 45 watt TDP.Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 2, 2013 - link
Great APU if you want to do 768p gaming on a budget. Great GPU if you want to get a cheap gaming laptop. Horrible combination. :D I wonder how a beefy i3 with a 7970 would stack up to this notebook. On the desktop side, I can get an A10-6800K for 125€ and I can get an i3-3250 for 125€. Should be similar on the laptop side, no? Wonder how much of this is the single threaded and how much is the multi threaded performance.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
multithreaded, the a10 is near identical to mobile i3 chips. any i5 or i7 would handily outperform it though.chadwickhhs - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
How does this stack up against the PS4? I have a chance to get one this month for about $800. It has 1 upgrade which is that the memory was boosted to 16gb.I don't want to get it if it ends up lacking the CPU power to play next gen games on at least medium.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
you cant upgrade the ps4 to 16gb of memory. what you are looking at is a scam, especially since the ps4 is going for $399, not $800Rontalk - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
This computer all what it need is an 3.6GHz Richland A8-5550M 2185_A1 ES processor. How about re-done the tests with a processor like that? That would have been awesome to see the improvements and stupidity of AMD, lacking out the unlocked CPU multipliers from retail APU.hellermercer - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
the apu still lacks dedicated memory and is not a good choice and it should have been an ssd for gaming with no L3 cache launching games may be slower.htwingnut - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
DDR RAM won't make a lick of difference when it comes to dedicated GPU performance. Just try it yourself. Run a few benchmarks, remove a stick of RAM, and try again. Same result within a few % at least. I did this a while back with the AMD Llano APU's and it made zero difference when it came to the dedicated GPU.htwingnut - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
I meant Dual Channel not DDR.... d'oh!Drittz121 - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY