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The MSI GX60 ships in a thick brown cardboard box with the MSI logo clearly seen on both sides.
Inside is the main box featuring a nicely designed logo. ‘SteelSeries' get a high profile mention top right as they design the keyboard for the GX60.
The bundle is barebones, with the power supply, battery and literature on the product, along with a software disc. A full copy of Windows 7 Home Premium is supplied.
The power supply is a hefty brick, made by DELTA Electronics – model ADP-180HB. It is rated 19V – 9.5A – 100-240V.
The battery is a powerful 9 cell Lithium ION 87Wh 7800mAh model. We will rate life later in the review.
The MSI GX60 ships between two cardboard protective inserts and is wrapped inside protective film.
The GX60 is a plain black ‘gloss' finish although the lid is not smooth but beveled in the middle. The MSI logo is positioned slightly above center and glows when powered on. There are many vents underneath the chassis to help with airflow across the components.
Above, we took some photographs of the lid to highlight the circular raised bevel that MSI have adopted. The dimensions of the laptop are 395 x 267 x 55mm and it weighs 3.5kg with the battery installed.
The left side of the GX60 has two USB 2.0 ports, a multicard reader and a superspeed USB 3.0 port at the front. There is a large vent close to the rear which is used to expel heat.
The right side of the GX60 has another USB port and several headphone, audio and microphone jacks (7.1 THX sound is offered). A DVD optical drive is also available here.
The rear of the GX60 has another very large exhaust vent for cooling support. Next to this is an HDMI port (v1.4), a mini DisplayPort, VGA port, Gigabit Lan connector (Killer E2200) and power connector. The far left side has a position for another vent, although it is sealed. Next to this is a Kensington lock for security.
At the top of the screen is a 720p High Definition Web Camera which offers 30 frames per second at 720p resolution, ideal for chatting with friends and family.
The lower side of the GX60 is crowded with stickers. As this is a review sample we didn't want to remove the main GX60 sticker next to the touchpad, but we would if we owned it. Next to this is a THX audio and Windows 7 sticker.
The trackpad is a reasonable quality unit although I wasn't particularly impressed with the button feedback. It needs a lot of pressure to actuate. Underneath the trackpad are various indicators for Bluetooth, Wireless, battery and hard drive status/activity.
Steelseries make the keyboard for the GX60 and as expected the quality is excellent. I don't think it is quite in the same league as the keyboard found on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 series, but it comes a close second.
The keyboard (102 key) has a numpad situated at the right and delivers fantastic tactile feedback, however I have one huge problem with the design. The return key is only single height and I found myself pressing the # key on a regular basis.
Perhaps not a huge issue for some people, but I would have a serious problem living with this as my main machine. Along the top of the keyboard are several pressure sensitive buttons which eject optical media and turn off and on various settings.
At the edges of the keyboard area are two speakers which produce a reasonable level of sound before distortion occurs. Obviously we would recommend high grade headphones or speakers if you wanted to get the best experience from the THX audio.
The lid is attached to a substantial chrome coloured locking bar which holds the screen tightly in place, regardless of the position.
The screen can be opened to a full 180 degrees which will prove useful in certain situations. Not many mainstream laptop computers have this feature.
The quality of the 15.6 inch LED backlit 1920×1080 panel is definitely very good, with an anti glare coating to ensure legibility even with a strong light behind the user. It is not usable in direct sunlight however.
The colour rendition is very good and panel backlighting is consistent across the full width of the panel. Vertical and Horizontal viewing performance is also well above average.
The underside panel is held in place with 7 screws and easily removed to give access to all the components. A dual heatpipe cooling system is attached to both AMD A10-4600M and HD7970M. At the other end of the rear of the laptop is the 750GB hard drive.
the price is good, however i would opt for the same machine with Core i7 in it, probably £300 more, but well worth it IMO. No need for the A10, as 7970 is in this machine and it seems that AMDs switchable graphics system causes some problems. read about that on forums as well last week. not isolated to this machine.
I thought it was only me who didnt like keyboards with single height return keys. good review. nice machine. good price too
I was actually looking at this machine during the week, seems a very good price for what you get. shame they didnt use a smallish SSD instead however. thats the killer.
As an owner of this machine i can only say that this review is quite well balanced. I have got a SSD in mine now (optional extra) and its so so fast.
The keyboard keys are quite a change from my alienware laptop and need pressing quite hard to get a response – no light touch here. I assume its to protection the keys for the keyboard mashers out there.
The graphics switching is actually OK. When you first start an application / game it will some time default to the wrong GPU, but upon exiting the application it does prompt you to check the settings.
I have the 12.9 beta drivers installed and they are a lot better than the 12.7’s installed onto the machine by default.
It would appear the 12.11 drivers are going to give it yet more boosts against nvidia gaming laptops
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/374799-15-catalyst-drivers-great-performance-gains
Hey Zardon and others. I am in need of some help from owners of this machine, as I personally bought one over the weekend. Now the problem is whatever I do, my rig just can’t seem to pick up the 7970M.
My MSi Kombustor numbers, and the MSi Afterburner all seem to pick up only the 7660G as the GPU. Worse still after being initially prompted to pick profiles for apps, that screen just doesn’t pop up anymore to select High Performance in the Power menu. Do you have any solutions? All help will be greatly appreciated. – A grumpy gamer
PS – While every single driver is current, I haven’t yet reinstalled them clean.
Did you run a 3dMark 11 score to see if the 7970 is active and if CCC is selecting the ‘performance’ mode? Did you buy the same machine as our review model or another variation?
EDIT: Ok you say it seems to have vanished. What did you do just before the panel stopped working? Did you install a new driver on the system?
Hey Zardon,
Thanks for the super quick reply. I forgot to say this in the last post, but great and comprehensive review, made even better by all the screenshots and practical images.
Now back to the issue – I think I might have done a driver install after. The way things stand Afterburner gives me this info (http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/msi/86163d1350819074-offical-msi-gx60-owners-lounge-pic1.jpg) and the AMD Vision Engine Center Power has only these options )http://imageshack.us/f/854/pic2rt.jpg/). I am currently on the Catalyst 12-9.
At no point have I actually seen the 7970 detected with every detection software recognizing only the 7660G. I can’t run 3D Mark right now as it’s down. But won’t be surprised to see it do the same.
Ya, just ran the 3D Mark 11 Basic Test and as thought it gives me the lower results (http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4724952)
Hi Varun,
Have you tried recovering the unit to it’s out of the box settings? press F3 at POST.
As I found during some testing, there are a numbe of driver packages available that are not meant to be installed onto a unit with switchable graphics. Installing these will mess with or even remove the switchable graphics function completely.
Hey ScottiB
Thanks for the tip. I will try that reset this evening, but I really doubt it’d work. I have already asked it for a recollection. This is a great machine (when not unlucky) so hopefully other gamers out there, find the joy I did not.
Cheers,
Varun
Hey guys
I think this is a very good machine for this price and perfect for somebody who wants to play everywhere… Do somebody know where can I buy it in US?
Cheers,
Chongee
how many ram slots are there 2 or 4
The MSI website mentions the possibility of a RAID solution with 2 SSDs. isnt it possible than to have both the 750 Gb drive with an SSD drive?
Nice Review, so Msi GX60 come out on mid october.. 21, same day i order my M14xR2.. (i73630QM, Gt650M,purchase with Dell coupon£960.04 11%discount) wow GX60 like the Radeon7970… dislike CPU on GX60… but still i Envy those owner of this GX60.. 🙂 got good deal under£1000.00, if i did my full research on gaming notebook extended to other brands.. i may be owner of this GX60.. too bad.. haha but hey Msi Superb HardwarE for gamer..:)
Do we know that the HD7970 was being used in all of the benches??? Even the CPU related ones, if everything is using the HD7970, the APU can allocate more TDP to the CPU with the 7660G at idle. Additionally, newer BIOS updates for the HP systems seems to enable better turbo mode from the CPU, so it actually hits 3.2Ghz more often and longer.
The one thing I dont understand is why you stopped the comparisons? How do the gaming scores compare to those machines you had compared to earlier?
Hi guys I wanted to ask (particularly Phillip Brown) how to install the extra SSD because even by detaching the screw I still can take off the base protection as if it was somehow sticked. How did you manage to add you ssd ? Is there any specific movement to make to take off the plastic back ?