MSI X610: Supersizing the Netbook?
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2009 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
MSI X610: A Compromising Solution
MSI's X610 is a truly eclectic mix of hardware. Normally, we would expect a company to either pursue the long battery life target offered by netbooks, or provide higher performance with a balanced solution. Unfortunately, to date it doesn't seem like many companies are interested in providing MacBook levels of battery life -- and certainly there are many people that don't want to spend $1300+ on a new laptop. If you're interested in a Windows laptop that offers long battery life, netbooks still reign supreme and are very affordable. Acer also makes the Timeline and claims eight hours of battery life, although without testing the laptop we're hesitant to recommend it.
MSI's chosen hardware for the X610 is a strange combination of low-power parts with relatively high-power parts. We understand why users might want a Radeon Mobility HD 4330, especially if you're using an Intel platform where Intel's integrated graphics are the lowest common denominator among GPUs. From that standpoint, the MSI X600 made sense, though the $800 price tag was hard to swallow. The X610 should be a less expensive alternative, but considering the HD 4330 isn't substantially faster than the HD 3200, at least when handicapped by a single-core 1.6 GHz CPU, the design isn't going to be a runaway success. If MSI could get the price close to $500 (yes, that's cheaper than the current €500 MSRP), keep the weight under 5 pounds, and boost battery life up to five hours or more we think it would be a much more interesting system.
Compared to netbooks with Intel Atom CPUs, the AMD Neo MV-40 offers better performance with power requirements that are 2~3 times as high, so a smaller netbook based on AMD's Neo could be competitive. It would certainly offer better performance than Atom netbooks, in both the CPU and GPU departments assuming it uses an ATI IGP. We're certainly interested in seeing more of AMD Neo and perhaps getting a better package for the low power CPU.
If you happen to live in the UK (or possibly Europe), the MSI X610 is a solution for people looking for a reasonably lightweight laptop to function as a multimedia and light gaming system. You'll have to decide if the slower CPU with faster GPU is a better fit than something that uses a dual-core CPU up with integrated graphics. Either way you should get roughly the same battery life, but certain applications/games will favor dual core CPUs while others will prefer discrete graphics. The MSI X610 won't be the perfect solution for everyone, but there's a niche market that it just might satisfy. If you don't mind slightly faster than netbook performance (with significantly faster graphics performance) with less battery life and you want a bigger laptop that doesn't weigh a ton, the MSI X610 could be exactly what you're after.
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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.