MSI GT627: Bringing Balance to the Force?
by Jarred Walton on April 29, 2009 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Application Workloads: Overclocking FTW
Wrapping things up with our performance testing, we have results from the Futuremark PCMark suites as well as some of our own application benchmarking. When it comes to running your office, multimedia, and Internet tasks, most modern laptops are more than fast enough. What follows are a few of the more strenuous application benchmarks - 3D rendering and video encoding - that put more of an emphasis on high CPU speeds. If you don't do that sort of thing on your computer, you will probably find that just about any current dual-core processor is sufficient.
PCMark Vantage and CINEBENCH have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the test suite available, with performance typically being 10% higher in CINEBENCH and 5% higher in PCMark Vantage. We have pulled the 64-bit results out of the graphs to clean things up, and since this is a 32-bit system we won't bother reporting the 64-bit results. You can find them in our last review, if you're interested. The Alienware m15x using the integrated X3100 is once again shown in gold on the PCMark tests, where the GPU still has an impact.
Stock performance places the GT627 near the bottom of the PCMark Vantage results (though admittedly only 16% behind the Gateway P-7808u), while it does better in the PCMark05 tests. PCMark05 represents a more "typical" usage scenario for most people, while Vantage stresses the system quite a bit more. Also note that the Toshiba X305-Q725 includes an SSD, which improves performance substantially in PCMark Vantage.
In the video encoding and 3D rendering tests, the GT627 places near the middle of the pack in performance, which you would expect from the P8400 processor. Not surprisingly, for all but the most demanding users the MSI GT627 is plenty fast - in fact, if you don't play games it's probably overkill. For CPU intensive tasks, the stock clocked GT627 is 22% to 23% slower in QuickTime and DivX encoding, but a far more substantial 75% slower in x264 encoding (the second pass, which is far more time consuming) and 64% slower in multi-core CINEBENCH.
Where things get interesting is in the overclocked results, where performance scales almost linearly in some applications with the 15% overclock. It's not enough to get the GT627 past quad-core options in highly threaded workloads, but it does surpass all but the fastest dual-core laptops. The P8400 is quite possibly the perfect CPU for such a laptop, coming in at a low price of around $210 for just the CPU but matching the performance of the T9400 when overclocked, a CPU that costs about $340. The final clock speeds and heat output at the overclocked speed of ~2.6GHz also appear to be well within the cooling capabilities of the chassis, as we never experienced any instability when utilizing the Turbo mode.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Anand tested the MacBooks - he's the Mac person around here - and outside of battery life there really aren't any tests we can run on the Macs without installing Vista. As mentioned in the past, MacBooks running Vista also have battery life problems (they get about half the battery life they achieve under OS X). So why are they in where they excel? I thought it would be obvious: we want the Windows vendors to catch up to Apple, whatever it takes. If Apple can do it with a certain set of components, others can do the same thing.There's little point in installing Vista on a MacBook just to run all these tests. Frankly, you can look at the specs of a notebook and generally guess within a few percent how it will perform. A MacBook with a P8400 CPU is going to be about the same as a Vista laptop with the same CPU.
IlllI - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
i like the laptop display quality tests, would it be possible to also test the quality of the macbook display and post the results?JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
If I can get Anand to part with one of his MacBooks for a week or two.... :-D (He's in North Carolina; I'm in Washington. We typically see each other maybe a couple days a year.)Hulk - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I agree with you 100%. We need quality displays on laptops!Thank you for pushing this issue.
andrezunido - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Nice review, seems like a well rounded notebook for the price but I wouldn't mind paying a little extra 100$-200$ for a decent screen I mean its not even LED backlit.I mostly use my laptop for programming work and the screen (apart from battery life - I like the freedom of working anywhere) is a major concern for me, the manufacturers tend to neglect its importance making it a premium/luxury of top of the range laptops (i.e. Apple's macbook pro 15 and 17 - this later being the only with matte option, Asus U2, Dell), all being over the ~2000$ mark.
Anyway, nice, balanced feature set (the overclock button is a nice touch), might consider buying one given its competitive price to do some gaming.
Hrel - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
The Macs start at $2K!!! At least with PC you get choices, and more customization and better compatibility. Also anandtech did a review of a laptop not too long ago with the best laptop screen they'd ever seen; pretty sure it was from dell.niva - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Well I personally think the 32 bit vista is a big no-no at this stage. I don't care if some apps still have problems working under 64 bit vista, I want to use the extra gig of ram and I want to be able to upgrade the RAM and use it w/o having to swipe the OS.Does MS offer a free upgrade of 32 bit vista to 64 bit vista on machines like this one? Or does one have to fork out the cost for the 64 bit OS?
Lord 666 - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I received a free copy of Vista Ultimate last year at a Microsoft "Heros Happen Here" event. Tried to get the 64bit disc for it but was told by MS the SKU I have is not entitled for 64bit media.Judging by that alone, I highly doubt MS will offer 64bit upgrades in the future as they did with XP in 2005. Their 64bit coming out party really is Windows 7.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I had a desktop that came with Vista 32-bit installed, and at some point the installation became corrupted. Just for kicks, I decided to try installing Vista 64-bit instead, using the RTM DVD. That worked fine with the code on the box. I don't know if that would work in other instances, though.IlllI - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
maybe one day you can review one of these http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9050...">http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp...&typ... or http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9173...">http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp...&typ...looks like they are the same except one uses a P7450 and the other a P8400.
either seem to be very similar to the msi, except the asus comes with 512mb on the gs as opposed to 1gb with the msi. also as you can see the asus is a tad cheaper.