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The MSI GX60 Laptop is a well priced machine targeting a wide enthusiast audience who don't wish to pay £1,500-£2,000+ for a new high powered gaming laptop. The recommended retail price of £999.99 inc vat is very competitive. The fact that Overclockers are selling it this week for £899.99 inc vat makes for a very tempting proposition.
The MSI GX60 has many strong points worthy of mention. The included Steelseries keyboard is fantastic, offering tactile feedback, well spaced out keys and a full numpad. The only problem is the lack of double height return key, which always causes a problem for me, long term. It isn't backlit either which is slightly disappointing.
The trackpad is also very good, although both buttons feel a little too stiff to me, requiring a lot of force to register. The 1080p LED screen is better than we had expected at this price point. The colours are both vibrant and life like and it is extremely easy to read with fine text, ideal for on the move office workers and designers alike. Viewing angles are also well above average and the matte coating ensures that the screen isn't excessively reflective in a variety of environmental situations.
The onboard THX sound is also quite good, although to get the best out of the system, we would recommend high quality headphones or dedicated external speakers. Still, for on the move duties, there is enough clarity and volume available. Bass is a little lacking, as would be expected.
The GX60 doesn't emit an excessive level of noise, although when gaming there is a noticeable hot spot at the back of the machine, related to the hot running AMD HD7990M graphics card.
For gaming duties, the GX60 certainly won't disappoint, although the AMD A10 4600M won't offer a serious challenge to an Core i5 mobile chip. It is a capable, well priced processor, with onboard 7660G graphics, but when tasked with more demanding programs such as 3D rendering and video editing, it does struggle to finish the tasks in a reasonable time frame. To be fair, a gamer is unlikely to notice this, so we can't fault the machine too much, especially given the low asking price.
We did encounter some issues during game testing however. The AMD switchable graphics would often default to 7660G, requiring manual user intervention to get the best performance from the machine. Battery life was also slightly disappointing considering the 9 cell Lithium ION 87Wh 7800mAh which is shipped with the machine. Expect around 2 hours and 30 minutes under normal situations with screen brightness up high.
The omission of a solid state drive is the biggest performance issue for the GX60. The large 7,200 rpm mechanical drive is about as good as you can get in a 2.5 inch form factor, but it is still limited to around 120 MB/s which can cause the machine to grind at times. If I bought the GX60 I would budget another £130 for a Solid State Drive, then use Acronis software to mirror the drive, swap them out and use the 750GB in an external USB drive enclosure for backup duties.
Pros:
- Great gaming machine.
- very competitive price point.
- 8GB of memory.
- HD7970M is a powerhouse mobile gaming solution.
- screen is very good.
- connectivity is strong.
- Steelseries keyboard.
Cons:
- No solid state drive.
- AMD switchable graphics often defaulted to the onboard 7660G.
- A10 4600m can run out of steam with more demanding tasks.
- can get hot.
- battery life isn't great.
Kitguru says: At the price, we can overlook some of the misgivings.
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 ?