MSI X610: Supersizing the Netbook?
by Jarred Walton on October 6, 2009 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Battery Life Comparison
We run many scenarios for our battery life tests. Since most netbooks don't include optical drives, we previously ripped our standard test DVD to a hard drive and copied those files over. Ultimately, performance was similar to what we found with playing back HD DivX files, so we have instead chosen to focus on DivX HD, x264 HD, Internet, and idle battery life.
Video playback is one area where the HD 4330 is definitely a nice bonus, since it has no difficulty accelerating decoding on x264 and other codecs. Then again, the HD 3200 provides similar functionality and consumes less power; battery life likely would have been improved quite a bit by using an integrated solution instead of the 4330. What's truly ironic is that the X610 chipset actually includes integrated graphics, but they are disabled. An option to switch between integrated/discrete graphics in order to improve battery life would have been great.
Battery life on the X610 is another mixed bag. Despite having a dramatically slower CPU compared to the NV52 and NV58 along with a slightly higher capacity battery, it only matches the NV58 in Internet and x264 playback. It does manage to beat the NV52 (except in idle battery life where the HD 4330 consumes more power than an IGP), but realistically we're still talking about 2.5 to 3 hours of battery life in most cases. Remember at the beginning where we discussed how the X610 is part MacBook Air? Sadly, one part of the MacBook Air where MSI completely missed the boat is battery life. When you consider that you can get a Core 2 Duo processor in the MacBook Air that substantially faster than the MV-40, battery life and general performance definitely aren't reasons to get the MSI X610.
Power Requirements
As a corollary to the battery life tests, we also performed measurements of power requirements using the AC adapters and a Kill-A-Watt device. These numbers are only accurate to the nearest Watt, so a difference of 1W (i.e. from rounding) could obscure up to a 12% actual difference in power requirements. Also note that power requirements change when you switch to DC power, and power supply (power brick) efficiency comes into play when using the AC adapter, so the battery life tests are a better indication of true power requirements.
If you thought that perhaps the Neo MV-40 CPU wasn't doing a good job at saving power, at least relative to the QL-64 it clearly has a lower worst-case power requirement. It's all of the other equipment in the MSI X610 that consumes power, with idle power draw of 22W easily eclipsing the NV52's 14W. Place a significant load on just the CPU, however, and the X610 only increases its power draw by 11W whereas the NV52 jumps up 21W. Yes, the single-core AMD CPU is capable of using relatively little power. Unfortunately, it appears that the HD 4330 graphics chip is using at least 10W when idle, and 15~20W under load. The result is that the less power hungry CPU combined with a discrete GPU isn't a great low-power solution.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
Yeah, but often the prices are about the same in Euros and USD because of taxes and such... at least, that's been my experience. Anyway, without the product in the US it's pretty much a moot point, but I'd like to see it at $500 or less.samspqr - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
you can't use the exchange rate to convert hardware priceshere in europe we have higher direct taxes (around 18% por this kind of goods), and some other legislation that makes this stuff more expensive (like a mandatory 2 years warranty by the seller), plus quite often we just get ripped off
the X600 is selling for $800 in amazon.com and 720eur in amazon.de, so for the X610 those 500eur should mean something like $560
samspqr - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
(sorry, I meant indirect taxes)max347 - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
With such a low speed cpu, I wouldnt really see the point in a dedicated card. I would rather have either- stronger cpu/dedicated, or igp/better battery life.Mint - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
At a given pricepoint, I would have the ability to play somes games with AA, AF, and full shaders than have a strong CPU with a weak GPU that can play all games at 640x480.A 1.3 GHz C2D isn't going to be that much faster for games, but it's the best you can get in a reasonably priced lightweight notebook. I would totally go for this notebook if they engineered the power saving properly and got 5+ hours of battery life, and a Neo X2 option would be icing on the cake. Instead I'm pleading for the substantially more expensive 3810TG to eventually arrive in NA.
LarsAlereon - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
It needed a discrete GPU because the IGP (X1250) isn't good enough for basic usage. Ideally you'd use an IGP in value systems, and only use a discrete GPU if you want gaming capabilties. In this case they were forced to use a discrete GPU, but the unit wasn't positioned somewhere that needed gaming performance. Is there a reason they couldn't have used the RS780E (HD 3300) instead? I look forward to seeing an IGP based on the R5000-series architecture at some point.Mint - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
15.6 inches in a 4.5 lb chassis for that price is fantastic, especially when you get better-than-atom performance and HD 4330 graphics. Too bad battery life is so mediocre. You'd think that ATI's hybrid power technology would be able to shut down the discrete graphics when idling.Still, have you considered reviewing Acer's Timeline 3810TG? That can be equipped with a Core 2 Duo (albeit low clock speed), 4330 graphics that can be shut off, and claims to have 7-9 hours of battery life. Unfortunately, this particular Timeline is also unavailable in the US...
bjacobson - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
I think I'm going to start defining netbook by weight and battery life nothing else.IMO it needs to be at or below ~3lbs and have a 7-8 hour charge.
Size never mattered to me, it was all about weight and battery life.
At 7h I can safely consistently leave the charger at home if I have a full charge. Needs vary but I haven't had to worry about it once this semester, and that's with 8 hour days of classes and I still usually have 15-20% battery life left.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
Yeah, unfortunately the part of the netbook this laptop used was the "low performance CPU". It's rather disappointing to me that a CPU that's only ~50% faster than Atom can use 3X as much power. They also took the MacBook Air part that consisted of "thin" without worrying about providing great battery life and reasonable performance.JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
I've been trying to get any Timeline for review... hopefully some day soon Acer will send me one. I'm still a little confused as to why the X610 has an IGP and discrete graphics with no apparent way to use the IGP (unless I'm just totally missing it).