AMD's A10-5750M Review, Part 2: The MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook
by Dustin Sklavos on June 29, 2013 12:00 PM ESTConclusion: The Value of Balance
On paper, the AMD-powered MSI GX60 had to seem like a good idea, and I'm not even convinced it actually isn't one. Using a less expensive CPU to force the price tag down and going whole hog on the GPU isn't that uncommon among custom built desktop PCs, so as long as the gaming performance is there in a notebook, it's certainly worth a shot. The A10-5750M is nowhere near as powerful as an Ivy Bridge quad core, let alone a Haswell, but if it doesn't need to be, that's not an issue. Of course, it does need to be, but we'll get to that.
I feel like I've reviewed this chassis a hundred times by now, but at least shrinking it down to a 15.6" gives me both a better perspective and feels different. Knowing what I know now about how MSI seems to be designing and building their gaming notebooks, I can't under any circumstances recommend their 17.3" notebooks. The only reasons to buy one are if you somehow find a better deal than on its 15.6" equivalent, or if you just really want that larger display. You're not getting more pixels or better thermals, you're just getting two more pounds of bulk. But the hardware is almost identical.
There's the sweet and the sour. The chassis is bulky but at least reasonably tough, and the SteelSeries licensed keyboard really is very comfortable to type on if you can get used to MSI's goofy layout. They're able to cram a healthy amount of power and cooling potential into a 15.6" chassis as well, and you still get two 2.5" bays.
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The AMD model of the GX60 is cute in concept, but in practice has problems. The single biggest reason not to buy it is that for the same price, MSI will sell you a Haswell-based system with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M. While that GPU is most definitely slower than the AMD Radeon HD 7970M, the brakes the A10-5750M APU puts on the 7970M keep it from hitting its true performance potential, and as a result I suspect the more well-rounded GE60 will ultimately make a lot of end users much happier. While $1,199 is a fantastic deal for an AMD Radeon HD 7970M, you're not really getting one. Looks fantastic in marketing material, though, no doubt.
What the GX60 really needs to be is a $999-or-less gaming notebook. That potentially means cutting the 7970M, but we need a more balanced combination of CPU and GPU anyhow. The 7970M is far too powerful for the A10, but a Radeon HD 7870M/8870M would be a more appropriate companion. Ideally AMD would release a mobile Bonaire GPU, which would be perfect for the A10-5750M. At that point the value proposition kicks in hard. GPU performance won't hit those outside highs, but under most circumstances neither part should hold the other back too much, and the end user doesn't wind up wasting money on more GPU than they could ever hope to use.
As for the A10, it's not a bad chip, but Intel has been driving prices down hard in the mobile space and AMD doesn't have much latitude to work in. I can see an all-AMD gaming notebook potentially working if Kaveri lives up to expectations. In the meantime, the GX60 is a cute idea in theory, but the inescapable fact is that as I said before, you're not really getting an AMD Radeon HD 7970M for $1,199. The GPU is there, but it's leashed. There are better alternatives.
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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.