Product Listing

MSI GX600 Gaming Notebook (Intel Santa Rosa)

By Vincent Chang - 8 Nov 2007

Performance Benchmarks

Performance Benchmarks

When it comes to evaluating notebooks, we almost never get the ideal scenario where all the notebooks being compared are similarly configured. Instead, there are usually differences, more so for notebooks like the MSI GX600, which targets a specialized segment of the market. Therefore, once again, we have a few notebooks that are somewhat similar in certain aspects that we feel would be appropriate to stack the GX600 against.

Notebook Comparison Table
Specifications/ Notebook MSI GX600 Dell XPS M1330 BenQ Joybook S41 HP Pavilion HDX
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7300 (2.0GHz, 4MB L2 cache) Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7700 (2.4GHz, 4MB L2 cache) Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7100 (1.8GHz, 2MB L2 cache) Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7700 (2.4GHz, 4MB L2 cache)
Chipset Intel PM965 Intel PM965 Intel PM965 Intel PM965
FSB 800MHz 800MHz 800MHz 800MHz
Memory 2 x 1GB DDR2 2 x 1GB DDR2 1 x 1GB DDR2 2 x 1GB DDR2
Hard Drive 1 x Western Digital 250GB SATA (WD2500BEVS-22UST0) - 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer 1 x Seagate 160GB SATA (ST9160823AS) - 7200RPM / 8MB Buffer 1 x Hitachi 120GB SATA (HTS541612J9SA00) - 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer
  • 1 x Seagate 160GB SATA (ST9160821AS) - 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer
  • 1 x Toshiba 160GB SATA (Mk1637GSX) - 5400RPM / 8MB Buffer
Video NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT

Although we'll be showing all the results for all the notebooks in the table above, from a CPU and system's perspective, the Dell XPS and the HP Pavilion HDX should pose the stiffest challenge to the GX600, as they both have superior processors unless Turbo mode is enabled. Meanwhile, the HP Pavilion HDX and the BenQ Joybook are direct competitors of the GX600 in terms of their graphics chipset, with the Joybook's GeForce 8600M GS slightly inferior to the GT version on the GX600. Finally, with the exception of the Dell notebook, all the other notebooks were using slower 5400RPM hard drives. For evaluation purposes, we installed the relevant drivers from MSI and the GX600 was running Windows Vista Ultimate.


System Benchmarks

We did try our latest copy of MobileMark 2007 on the MSI GX600 but ran into some issues during installation and had to abandon it in favor of PCMark05, which had been the only synthetic system benchmark that is supported in Vista. We first ran the GX600 in its default setting and then tried its Turbo mode. This brought along a jump in performance as these graphs illustrate. Both the Dell and HP were clearly faster than the MSI GX600 in its normal state, though all three produced very close scores once Turbo was enabled. Having a 7200RPM hard drive was also a significant boost for the Dell and more than anything suggested by these scores, it will probably have the most visible impact on user experience.

Graphics Benchmarks

Since the GX600 is first and foremost a gaming notebook, we have included a couple of games along with the standard 3DMark benchmark. Even without Turbo, the GX600 is already among the leaders in our graphs, with the HP Pavilion HDX the closest challenger due to its mid-range Radeon HD 2600 XT GPU. As seen from the Quake 4 scores, Turbo did produce a few more frames though the newer benchmark here, the beta version of Unreal Tournament 3 showed that increasing the CPU speed may not work all the time, suggesting that new games will lean more heavily on the GPU. In a roundabout way, it does give the GX600 an edge, since it's graphics chipset is definitely one of the better ones currently.

Nevertheless, the overall gaming experience on the GX600 has been mostly positive, not only from these scores, but from actual gameplay. Complemented by its keyboard, the games we tried were smooth and lag free and we were actually able to forget it's a notebook for a while. However, long term use could be another issue, since unlike a proper keyboard, there's no gradient for the keys on the notebook and that could spell repetitive stress disorders.

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