**OcUK EXCLUSIVE - MSI GX60 AMD TRINITY RADEON 7970M HARDCORE GAMING LAPTOP!!**

[Sam]

Thanks, thought that would be the case

 

[Meaker]

Well you could check out the MM for a good deal on an i7 with the 680M to avoid the enduro stuff.

But this model is targetted at those who don't need the CPU power, but care more about the graphics.

It's not really absurd to pair what is a slightly slower 7870 with a moderate CPU.

 

[Richdog]

Okay. So.. 1920x1080 numbers here.

Minor differences in BF3, Crysis 2, SEv2, Nexuiz, Passion Leads Army...
but big differences in Hard Reset, Arkham City, F1 2012, Lost Planet 2, X3, CS:GO, L4D2, Street Fighter 4, and some of Sleeping Dogs.

It still begs the question, why pair these things up. If the laptop is already going to cost a fortune, why not put an i5 in it and charge £100 more or something.

Agree 100%, putting a Trinity in a high-end gaming laptop makes no sense to me whatsoever, and is imo just marketing designed to take advantage of the buzz surrounding the release. The CPU performance on this is WAY below an i5, and light years behind an i7, and it will not be getting the most out of the GPU, and will be hamstrung in normal single-threaded tasks that you would use a high-end laptop for. And like you showed, CPU performance does matter in gaming especially also depending on the type of games you play.

For only £100 (10%) more you can get an i5 Ivy Bridge, and I think it would be silly not to do so.

 

[Gibbo]

Hi there


OK a lot of people have suggested that laptops using the AMD A10-4600M don't possess enough CPU horsepower to play the latest games, I've argued that at True HD resolution (1920x1080) with maximum detail settings. The FPS is far more dependent on the GPU rather than the CPU, yes a CPU will help make things faster still, but in game at such resolutions it is the GPU which matters most.

So I did a simple Heaven Benchmark on the two following laptops which we sell:-


MSI GX60 Gaming Laptop 15.6" LED Full HD AMD A10-4600M 2.30GHz CPU, 8GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, DVD-RW, AMD Radeon HD 7970 2GB GDDR5 Graphics, Win7 Home Premium 64-Bit - Black @ £999.95 inc VAT

The MSI GX60 is powered by an AMD A10-4600M quad-core "Trinity" APU, Radeon HD 7970M discrete graphics processor with 2 GB GDDR5 memory, and up to 16 GB dual-channel DDR3-1600 MHz memory (Model here is 8GB). Its storage components include 750GB 7200rpm hard drive, DVD-RW combo drive. The 15.6-inch anti-glare screen packs 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. Other gaming-grade features include Bigfoot Killer NIC, keyboard made by SteelSeries, and HD webcam.

The MSI GX60 is one of the most powerful yet best value gaming laptops on the market due to the AMD HD 7970M onboard graphics with 2GB GDDR5 memory. Play any game at maximum settings in True HD resolution with smooth fluid frame rates on this awesome MSI GX60 Laptop.

This chassis uses the absolute very latest in technology such as SATA3, USB3.0, Bluetooth, WiFi but the most impressive of all is the fact this system feature an ATi Radeon 7970M with 2GB of GDDR5 dedicated memory for absolutely blistering performance.


Specification:-
- 15.6" Full HD (1920x1080) LED backlight, Anti-glare
- AMD Quad Core A10-4600M 2.30 GHz Processor (Boost 3.20GHz)
- AMD A70M FCH
- 8GB DDR3 (4G*2)
- AMD Radeon HD 7660G Onboard Graphics
- AMD Radeon HD 7970M 2GB GDDR5 Graphics
- 750GB (SATA) 7200rpm
- DVD Super Multi Drive
- 3x USB3.0
- 1x USB2.0
- Card Reader (SD(XC/HC)/MMC)
- 1x HDMI (v1.4)
- 1x Dsub
- 2x Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer
- THX TruStudio Pro
- 7.1 Audio Channels
- Mic-in/Headpphone out 1/1/1(line in)/1(line out)
- SPDIF: Yes
- Wireless LAN (AW-NB100H Combo (b/g/n)
- Bluetooth v4.0
- Gigabit Killer E2200 LAN
- Webcam: HD type (30fps@720p)
- 102 key chocolate non-backlight keyboard
- 9-Cell Li-Ion
(7800mAH)"
- Turbo Battery+
- Dimensions: 395 x 267 x 55mm
- 3.5Kg (w/ Battery)
- 2 year pick-up and return


Was [£1099.99] Inc. VAT

Only £999.95 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW
















MSI GT70 0NE-467UK ONE Gaming Laptop 17.3" LED Full HD Intel I7 Gen3 CPU, 16GB DDR3, Dual 128GB SSD, 750GB HDD, Bluray Writer, NVIDIA GTX 680M 4GB GDDR5 Graphics, Win7 Home Premium 64-Bit - Black @ £2,099.99 inc VAT

The nVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M leverages NVIDIA's revolutionary new architecture to deliver extreme performance than the previous generation. Turn on lightning-fast antialiasing in a huge variety of games automatically. Get maximum playability with NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync, which adjusts VSync to current frame rates. Feel the difference with NVIDIA PhysX® technology , bringing games to life with dynamic, interactive environments.

The first Super RAID design—one notebook with two mSATA SSD RAID 0 (128GB or 256GB) units, is yet another world first courtesy of MSI. Two mSATA SSDs and one HDD can be installed in the same laptop without the need to expand the size of the laptop, increasing read, write, and saving speeds.

MSI Turbo Drive Engine (TDE) technology brings more calculating speed to enhance the system performance. It benefits the video decoding/encoding, 3D gaming and art work designing. With MSI TDE Technology, you can experience faster response time and efficient real-time data processing.

The GT60 0NE/GT70 0NE represent the first time that MSI has incorporated Killer™ E2200 Intelligent Networking into its notebooks, endowing them awesome online speeds. The Advanced Game Detect™ technology recognizes online game data packs and processes them first, accelerating them in the process. The best weapon against stuttering characters, freeze-ups, and lagging, it vastly improves the prowess of online gamers. Now, whether FPS or MMO gaming is your cup of tea, you’ll have that extra edge you need to be victorious.

For hard-core gamers who demand extreme audio performance, the GT60 0NE/GT70 0NE is the best and only choice!

In the other hand, the MSI Audio Boost design enhances sound output by 30%. The gold flash audio jack provides stable sound transmission (reduced obstruction) and works in conjunction with the optimized AMP (Audio Power Amplifier) design, characterized by low noise and low distortion, to greatly enhance headphone performance and faithfully reproduce each acoustic detail.


Features:-
- Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
- The latest 3rd generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor
- 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) anti-glare LCD panel in LED backlight
- High-end NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 680M discrete graphics card (with GDDR5 4GB VRAM) provides great detail images quality
- Super RAID with 2 SSD RAID0 gives you over 1000MB/s storage speed!!(option)
- Killer Gaming Networking for priority online gaming
- A Keyboard made just for gamers by SteelSeries
- Exclusive TDE technology to speed up the performance easily
- Exclusive Audio boost design for crystal clear audio fidelity
- Sound by Dynaudio for extreme audio performance

Specification:-
- Processor: Intel Ivybridge I7-3630QM 2.40GHz
- Chipset: Intel HM77 Chipset
- Memory: 16GB DDR3 1600MHz, 4 slots, Max: 32GB
- LCD Size: 17.3" Anti glare full HD 1920x1080 LED backlight
- Graphics: nVIDIA Geforce GTX680M 3D Graphic Card
- Graphics VRAM: GDDR5 4GB
- HDD (GB) 2*128GB SSD in RAID 0 + 750GB 7200RPM SATA
- Optical Drive: BD Writer / Blu-ray
- Audio: Audio Boost, 2 Speakers, 1 subwoofer
- Webcam: HD Webcam(30fps@720p)
- Card Reader: SD(XC/HC)/MMC/MS(PRO)/xD
- LAN: 10/100/1000 Bigfoot Killer E2200 series
- Wireless: LAN 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0
- D-Sub: (VGA) 1
- HDMI: 1(v1.4)
- USB 2.0: port 2
- USB 3.0: port 3
- eSATA: 1
- eSATA/USB Combo: 1
- Mic-in/Headphone-out: 1/1
- Line-in: 1
- Sensor N/A
- Express Card N/A
- Modem port N/A
- AC Adapter 180W
- Battery 9 cells
- Power Management MSI execlusive ECO engine
- Dimension 428 x 288 x 55mm
- Weight (KG) 3.9


Was [£2,399.99] Inc. VAT

Only £2,099.99 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW
















As you can see the Intel based laptop is more than double the price, but it does sport one of Intel's latest Quad Core processors and NVIDIA's flagship 4GB GTX 680M.

So surely a laptop at half its price based on AMD's new platform has no chance featuring the A10-4600M APU and ATI 7970M graphics?

Its irrelevent to myself or OcUK which you buy, as we sell them both, yes the more expensive unit is larger and has more features, but its really not much better at gaming if any at all.

So there you have it, the new AMD platform really is a superb option on mobile computing whether your a hardcore gamer, the new platform can handle it.

 

[Richdog]

Heaven is wholly GPU dependant, many games are not. That test proves nothing other than the CPU was barely used while running a specific synthetic benchmark. I imagine a full set of games tests would yield somewhat different results.

 

[Snubber]

Heaven is wholly GPU dependant, many games are not. That test proves nothing other than the CPU was barely used while running a specific synthetic benchmark. I imagine a full set of games tests would yield somewhat different results.

Totally agree – full suite of real life gaming benchmarks required.

 

[MOOGLEYS]

Can I add an SSD to this machine and run it as a boot drive with the 750GB ?

 

[Helios1234]

Heaven is wholly GPU dependant, many games are not. That test proves nothing other than the CPU was barely used while running a specific synthetic benchmark. I imagine a full set of games tests would yield somewhat different results.

Agreed. It's still strange seeing those results though as the GTX680 is much closer to its desktop counterpart than the HD7990 is which makes me question the results. But the only thing I can see to dispute is the first rig apparently running windows NT. Is that a known bug on Heaven or is there some underlying problem there?

That said, Notebookcheck results suggest that the GTX680 does suck in Heaven compared to the AMD card. Still, excellent price for that AMD based MSI.

 

[oweneades]

Agreed. It's still strange seeing those results though as the GTX680 is much closer to its desktop counterpart than the HD7990 is which makes me question the results. But the only thing I can see to dispute is the first rig apparently running windows NT. Is that a known bug on Heaven or is there some underlying problem there?

That said, Notebookcheck results suggest that the GTX680 does suck in Heaven compared to the AMD card. Still, excellent price for that AMD based MSI.

The main issue the GTX680m has is its crippled memory bandwidth compared to its desktop counterpart (670). It is running at a relatively pathetic 3600Mhz vs the desktops 6000Mhz, or to put its another way it has 115GB/s bandwidth vs 192GB/s. The core is also heavily underclocked and is lacking turbo.

The HD7970m is literally just a HD7870 with a core speed reduction (850Mhz vs 1000Mhz).

The utilization issue is a major detractor for the Clevo/HD7970m combo at the moment. I can only assume that the MSI Trinity notebook (above) has additional hardware mux's (like the Alienware range) to allow it to bypass this issue completely.

 

[Meaker]

No, because it's an AMD CPU + chipset + GPU the drivers simply don't have the bottleneck as they have designed it from the ground up to be that way.

Performance is title to title dependant, for those games relying on high single threaded performance then they suffer, for better threaded games or just completely graphics dependant titles then the impact is much smaller.

What surprises me Gibbo is that this notebook is not included in the free games offer, it is the first true high end AMD CPU based notebook in almost a decade!

 

[Martini1991]

No, because it's an AMD CPU + chipset + GPU the drivers simply don't have the bottleneck as they have designed it from the ground up to be that way.

Performance is title to title dependant, for those games relying on high single threaded performance then they suffer, for better threaded games or just completely graphics dependant titles then the impact is much smaller.

What surprises me Gibbo is that this notebook is not included in the free games offer, it is the first true high end AMD CPU based notebook in almost a decade!

And I take it AMD decided to keep this from their desktop CPU's/Chipsets/GPU's?

I couldn't resist replying to that.

 

[Meaker]

Trinity was designed for mobile first so there are features that the desktop wont use. Also i more meant the enduro software platform.

 

[drakioned]

Performance is title to title dependant, for those games relying on high single threaded performance then they suffer, for better threaded games or just completely graphics dependant titles then the impact is much smaller.

Performance is title to title dependant, but this is precisely the performance we're interested in, because we buy these things to play titles, not to run Heaven...

 

[Helios1234]

Trinity was designed for mobile first so there are features that the desktop wont use. Also i more meant the enduro software platform.

Enduro doesn't get over the fact that the CPU itself isn't that powerful and therefore a bottleneck.

 

[judmann]

so everyone is saying stay away from amd and stick with intel?

 

[Martini1991]

so everyone is saying stay away from amd and stick with intel?

No.
I certainly wouldn't pay the extra 1000 for the 680M and Intel.
But at the same time I wouldn't put down 1000 pound for a Trinity.

 

[judmann]

No.
I certainly wouldn't pay the extra 1000 for the 680M and Intel.
But at the same time I wouldn't put down 1000 pound for a Trinity.

thats what i was trying to say,intel vs amd cpu,i wasnt compairing the laptops.

Amd trinity that bad then?

 

[Gibbo]

No.
I certainly wouldn't pay the extra 1000 for the 680M and Intel.
But at the same time I wouldn't put down 1000 pound for a Trinity.

Why not?

So you'd rather say get a 660M laptop with I7 3630QM or an older GTX 570M based laptop which will all get a severe ass kicking by the all AMD laptop with 7970M in games.

I think a lof of you are under-estimating the power of AMD.

As such were arranging to get a few of the GX60's sent of for review purposes at review sites used to testing these kind of things in games, as thats our issue we don't have games here to test with, only synthetic benchmarks which show that the 7970M is very close to the 680M in graphics performance.

Also bear in mind these new AMD laptops are using the new Piledriver cores, which are more efficient than previous Bulldozer design.

thats what i was trying to say,intel vs amd cpu,i wasnt compairing the laptops.

Amd trinity that bad then?

Nope its bloody superb actually, people are just bad mouthing something they've not even tried.


Tell you guys what, name me one game that is more CPU intensive that has a built in benchmark and I shall run it on these two laptops. JUST ONE GAME though and it shall be done, then you will see how good this AMD setup really this.

 

[Martini1991]

Why not?

So you'd rather say get a 660M laptop with I7 3630QM or an older GTX 570M based laptop which will all get a severe ass kicking by the all AMD laptop with 7970M in games.

No, I wouldn't get any.
Trinity isn't a 1000 pound system kind of chip.

Trinity is very good at being an APU, it however isn't the kind of chip that I'd consider for a high end gaming CPU, given ultimately its actual CPU performance still lies in with AMD's 2009 release of Phenom II.
This laptop may indeed be a very good performer, and outclass other laptops, but that doesn't mean I think they, or this are worth buying myself, nor does it change how Trinity's CPU side is.
If anything it proves AMD's prowess with their GPU's, which I buy exclusively.

thats what i was trying to say,intel vs amd cpu,i wasnt compairing the laptops.

Amd trinity that bad then?

Trinity isn't bad, not in the slightest for its intended use, an all in one solution, it's well ahead of Intel.
But I'd never put down 1000 pound on one.
CPU wise there's still a gulf between it and the Intel offerings, however in the cases where the AMD CPU & GPU work together in rendering, they'd be very potent, but the software support just isn't 100% there yet.

That said, perhaps Enduro has the IGP (In turn, processing for the CPU, "feeding" to the GPU) preventing the CPU bottleneck, I've never used this laptop, so I can't say for sure, then again, why leave that out of your desktop parts?

 

[judmann]

is F1 2012 Cpu intensive ?