MSI X610: Supersizing the Netbook?
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2009 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
X610 Application Performance
You can read about our testing setup and the other laptops used in our previous GIGABYTE M1022 review. As an amalgamation of netbook and notebook designs, the MSI X610 straddles the fence between those two markets. Considering the suggested price of €500, the X610 is going to compete more against entry-level notebooks (i.e. Gateway's NV52/NV58 models) than it will against netbooks, although certainly there are users that will be interested in a multimedia netbook that doesn't weigh a lot and the X610 fits that niche nicely.
We will start our performance comparison with general application testing, including PCMark, CINEBENCH, and video encoding tests. Since MSI ships the X610 with Windows Vista (32-bit), we are also able to run PCMark Vantage this time around. As we have discussed elsewhere, PCMark05 has some odd results under XP in some of the tests that skew the overall score. We will include detailed PCMark05/PCMark Vantage results where applicable so you can see the individual test scores.
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The general application performance results establish a trend that we will see repeated in many areas. Compared to netbooks, the MSI X610 is faster than any current Intel Atom offering. That's not likely to change until Pineview/Pine Trail at the very earliest, and even that isn't a guarantee that Intel Atom will surpass a reasonably fast single-core Athlon (or Core 2) processor. On the other hand, the Gateway NV52 with its QL-64 processor easily beats the X610, and the NV58 is anywhere from 2-3.5X as fast. You might say that's not a fair comparison, but keep in mind that the Gateway NV58 is a $600 laptop, the NV52 is a $500 laptop, and X610 is currently targeting a €500 price tag. It weighs less, but it's also substantially slower.
Turning to the detailed PCMark results, outside of a few tests that clearly favor Windows Vista, the general pattern remains the same. The two Gateway laptops are usually first and second place in the MSI is third, followed by the various netbooks. There are individual cases where that doesn't hold true, but most of the time that's related to hard drive performance. Only two tests have the MSI X610 clearly in the lead, and it should come as no surprise that both tests involve graphics. In PCMark05, the 3D Pixel Shaders and 2D 64 Line Redraw tests have the X610 leading by 200% and 50%, respectively. It's also interesting to note that PCMark Vantage Gaming suite still has the X610 trailing the Gateway laptops by a significant margin.
All of the above tests focus primarily on CPU performance, and they take advantage of multi-core processors. That definitely puts the Neo MV-40 at a disadvantage, and we will see if the discrete graphics can turn the tables in other benchmarks. It looks as though the HD 4330 GPU in the X610 potentially offers three times the performance of the HD 3200 in the NV52. However, games also require CPU performance at times, so depending on the game engine we may or may not see the HD 4330 flex its muscles.
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araczynski - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
big screen and low resolution = yuck, well, unless of course you wear glasses.Mugur - Friday, October 9, 2009 - link
Old 690 chipset? With integrated video disabled and discrete video card? And a weak cpu? Target for this: low power=fail, long battery life=fail, performance=fail (unless compared with an Atom).I have an MSI S420 with 14", 1280x800, CeleronM 1.73 Ghz and Radeon Xpress 200m chipset/integrated video. It has only 1.9 kg without the charger (with 3 cell battery - 2h). I can see no difference :-)... I bought it for ~ 400 Euros.
Equ1n0x - Friday, October 9, 2009 - link
Why are manufacturers still making these things with these big screens? Put this in a 12.1" or even better an 11.6" factor with these specs, and it will sell. People aren't going to buy big laptops with lower end specs no matter how light they are - if you are in the market for a large screen PC, you most likely want something performance oriented.The 11.6 and 12.1 market desperately needs some PC's with decent hardware (read, decent graphics chips). The last thing we need on the market is another Atom/GMA950 and the last thing we need is a large, slow laptop. We need small and decent for a change, without paying an arm and a leg.
qwertymac93 - Friday, October 9, 2009 - link
you mean something like the msi u210?i do believe i just blew your mind.
JarredWalton - Friday, October 9, 2009 - link
The MSI U210 has the same MV-40 CPU, but it uses the RS690E IGP, which is an X1270 (or X1250). Needless to say, GPU power is quite a bit lower than the HD 4330, but it's probably a better match for the MV-40. Battery life is reported as around 4 hours - nowhere near the Atom netbook level, but probably 50-100% better performance.Mugur - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Not to mention the lack of 1080p video acceleration (just 720p is working and not always).Also the drivers for 690 platforms are not updated anymore at AMD...
It should have a 780 chipset.
Mugur - Friday, October 9, 2009 - link
...bought it 4 years ago.vlado08 - Thursday, October 8, 2009 - link
Hi Jarred,I'm glad that you've mentioned the POST times.
For me it just does not make any sense. To have such fast SSDs made form flash chips and OS to load faster than the POST which is a small program written also on a flash chip.
Something should be done here. I hope that Intel is going again to lead the way and probably every body else will follow. If they want Moblin to load for less than 10 seconds.
But until then you should ask these questions again and again - Why so slow? How are you going to make people buy?
And if you give information to us which system has faster POST we will make our choice (our vote)!
juampavalverde - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
This people still dont get that OLD CHIPSETS + DEDICATED VIDEO eat more power than NEW CHIPSETS (780/785g or lower speed variants)... This kind of garbage could be an easier sell on a nettop, but a netbook is about low power and mobility, if they can get good enough performance with less power, why keep choosing this kind of junk?JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
My personal thought is that MSI made the X600 and people said, "cool but it costs $800 and that's too much." So they took the design and said, "let's do it with an AMD CPU instead to cut costs." What they needed to do was go with an AMD CPU and IGP and ditch the HD 4330. Even then, I'm not sure if they could keep it close to 5+ hours of battery, which is what you really want if you're going for this sort of thin and light design.