AMD's Radeon HD 7970M: Ivy Bridge vs. Trinity Video
by Jarred Walton on December 14, 2012 10:50 PM ESTIn one of the most "interesting" moves I've seen in the mobile market, MSI has equipped their GX60 gaming notebook with an HD 7970M...paired with an AMD A10-4600M APU. Curious to see how the combination would stack up against the Intel i7-3720QM + HD 7970M combination used in AVADirect's Clevo P170EM, I ran some quick benchmarks and put together a video of Batman: Arkham City showing the systems running side by side. First, here's the video link:
Not surprisingly, the Ivy Bridge solution walks away from the Trinity laptop when we turn down the details a bit, but at maximum quality the two solutions appear relatively close. The issue is that while average frame rates may be close in some cases, minimum frame rates often tell the real story. There are points in the above video where Trinity falls to sub-30 FPS for a second or two at a time, which can be very noticeable in gameplay.
Anyway, I'm curious: are you interested in more videos like this? It takes a lot more time than a simple reporting of a benchmark number, but if there's enough demand for it I'll be happy to oblige. I should also note that there are some titles where the Trinity and Ivy Bridge notebooks are fairly close in performance (at maximum detail at least), while other titles are even more in favor of a faster CPU (e.g. Skyrim). Regardless, the full review of the MSI GX60 will be forthcoming.
Pricing for the GX60 is the one area where MSI looks to beat Intel HD 7970M offerings. The base model comes with a 750GB hard drive, 8GB RAM, A10-4600M, and of course the HD 7970M. Right now (if it's in stock), you can get that configuration for around $1200. Our particular unit takes yet another odd approach by including a 128GB RAID 0 SSD set for the OS and apps, which might sound appealing until you realize they're using SanDisk U100 drives (not exactly the fastest SSDs around); we're not sure what pricing is for this particular configuration. AVADirect's P170EM by contrast is priced at $1519, with a $100 off coupon available at the time of writing. That will get you an i7-3630QM and the 7970M, so for about $150 to $200 extra, for gaming purposes we recommend most users go that route.
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DanNeely - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
A Camero with aftermarket spinning rims and colored mood lighting in the passenger compartment and on the underbody.Laststop311 - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
r4 eh, I like the m17x but I went with the m18x. I guess it all depends what you use it for. My m18x is basically a LAN box but I got a large laptop instead of a tiny desktop. I dont really use it for on the go or anything, thats what the galaxy note 2 is for.Damn I really like big screens, 65" Panasonic plasma st50 living room, 55" panasonic vt30 bedroom, 2560 rez 27" desktop display, 18.4" laptop, 5.5" smartphone
Flunk - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
Something fairly nice, but not exotic. Like a Lexus or Buick.siberus - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
Any chance u can compare it to gtx660-670's? I see alot of laptops in the same price range equipped with those. I'm interested in seeing what the performance difference is.MrSpadge - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
I skipped the video and just glanced through the summary text in a few seconds - told me all I needed to know. That's why I prefer reading over TV: I can choose my own speed.I'd only want videos if they something text and pictures aren't good at showing. Maybe some fancy mechanism, showing micro stutters, texture flimmering, anti aliasing noise etc.
Alexvrb - Sunday, December 16, 2012 - link
Spadge, you summed it up very nicely. Now, if the video is accompanied by a text blurb that tells me everything the video would have told me, that's fine. I'll just scroll past the video.just4U - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
I like the idea but like spadge I went straight to the writing part and skipped the video all together.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - link
I read all the writing, looked at the picture, and watched the video, plus clicked and examined/read the links, like I always do.Impulses - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
I think that kind of analysis is long overdue at Anandtech, and not just for laptops either. We don't necessarily need a video as proof of your findings each and every time, but I feel like AT's GPU analysis could really benefit from this rather than just having lowest/average fps for a couple of games.fatpugsley - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - link
I think that a bar graph showing time to render/frame during a resource-demanding scene, a la Tech Report, would be a much more useful way to show latency, and probably much easier to automate. Throw a FPS/time graph while you re at it, so we don't rely only on averages for information. Until you're able to write all these in your benchmarking stack, just the addition of the standard deviation of FPS along with the average would be quite informative and cover this case.