Notebooks
are always a good solution to instead of desktop PCs for most users.
Years
ago I always heard my family or friends said that they want to build up new PCs,
but in recent years, that voice often become which notebook is better for them
to choose.
If users are not demanding on usually upgrade hardware, notebooks
always a better solution with higher mobility and better convenience.
The
main usage of notebooks comes with 2 types, you might need to analysis your
usage before you buy your own laptop.
The first one is business or long time
trip, which will need longer battery life and light weight, performance will not
be in the high priority.
The second usage is to replace PCs, most because of
only have a small room, or long time stay at home or school but need to carry to
different places.
This type is more performance oriented demand; users
will be more focus on features of higher level CPU, graphics performance, bigger
LCD size and high quality speakers.
MSI
already building their business for years and now they have 5 different segment
of their notebook product lines.
This time I would like to share the 2nd type
of notebook, it positioning on Gaming Series, the MSI GT683R.
MSI did have
GT680/GT680R in early 2011, so this GT683R should be the upgrade
version.
Take a
look on the outlooks; GT683R is same as GT680R, built in orange color LED with 7
parts.
The A side cover design is special compare with normal notebooks;
it’s more like Alianware and gives a racing car speedy style.
GT683R
is black based design, built with latest Sandy Bridge platform with higher
performance.
The MSI logo shows white light when boot up, and the silver bar
below the logo will show orange color light as well.
The dimension of GT683R
is 396mm*265mm*55mm
Accessories:
Bundled
gaming mouse in GT683R is good to put your hands on and very sensitive
feedback.
Adaptor
is 150W normal version with bigger size, it will show green light when power on,
and the temperature is not hot when full loading, hands on will only feel
warmer.
The
adaptor was made by DELTA, the well known power/ adaptor brand from Taiwan, so
the quality is good and reliable, it comes with 4 pads for protection to prevent
damage and helpful on reduce
The gaming mouse resolution is 3200DPI, could
switch the DPI with the light below the scroll key, also have the
page-up/page-down key on the left side, and its light with only 50g
weight.
The
bottom of the notebook comes with several pad protection, the battery is on down
left side, other placement parts are CPU, GPU, HDD, DDR3 and thermal
module.
DDR3 comes with 4DIMM design and up to 32GB for users to install,
this GT683R comes with 4GBx4 overall 16GB.
Built in with 2 SATA slot supports
SATA3 and RAID 0, this is unique for higher storage performance.
Used 9
Cell batteries with 7800mAH, could apply more heavy loading usage for longer
time. Remove the battery could see the mechanical detail and Windows
sticker.
C side
design
The whole cover used the glossy painting with honeycomb surface design
and sleek touch feeling.
Regular chiclet keyboard design, use big size
placement and independent number keys section, it’s good for most of gaming
usages.
The design tone is closer to glossy metallic style, if want to have
higher level feeling it might need matted surface treatment with metallic
materials.
The
pad is good on design and touch feeling, very sensitive and easy to handle, 2
keys use brushed looks and feels like metallic, but it’s plastic
material.
The light signal on the bottom from left to right is Bluetooth,
Wireless, Battery, Sleep mode and HDD.
The
shield icon in the middle is power button, will show white light when turn on.
Control panel used touch sensor design, with 8 features to turn on and
off.
Left 2: Turbo is the GPU overclock function, will enhance 3D gaming
performance, for the stability,
MSI will not make overclock range high, but
enable Turbo key will unlock the limitation and users could use software to
overclock as well.
One of
the most important features of gaming is sound effect.
MSI use Sound by
Dynaudio 2.1 channel HD speaker system, it present good sound quality as their
advantage.
The
hinge design is very solid; the open angles almost reach flat 180
degrees.
15.6
inch glossy LED back light panel with 1920x1080 full HD resolutions, MSI adjust
on character size to fit this resolution for users.
Built in HD WebCam comes
with 30fps 1280x720 video recording and 1280x1024 photo resolution.
Left
side:
Start from left, 1x USB2.0\ multi card reader\ 2x USB 3.0\ heat release
holes.
Start
from right, Blu-Ray Combo\1x USB2.0\Line out\ Line in\ Mic in\ Headphone
out
The
back side
Start from left, 1x HDMI\ 1x eSATA\ 1x D-Sub\ 1x RJ-45 LAN\ AC
in
There
is another heat release hole in the back, high performance notebooks really take
it serious on thermal solution.
The
image comes with small subwoofer, this is unusual design, and it really helps on
better low frequency sound quality.
9Cell
battery comes with 481g.
The
weight of GT683R is 3436g with battery, lighter than formal number 3.5kg,
if
we take a look on the version with single 750GB HDD and 2 DIMM DDR3 4GBx2, it
could be lighter around 3.3kg, it’s really not heavy as a gaming laptop.
Special
designed MSI logo, will show white light when turn on power, it increase the
sense of quality.
MSI
GT683R based on Intel Sandy Bridge platform, use Core i7-2630QM, frequency is
100x20 = 2GHz, L2 = 6MB, 4 Cores with HT technology.
TurboBoost 2.0
technology could increase the frequency up to 2.9GHz, built with HM67
chipset.
Compare with last generation Core i platform, it comes with better
performance and newer technologies.
Performance test
Built in with
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit version OS
This version of GT683R is high level
version; some region might be selling with lower spec. combination.
HDD is
500GB x2 by RAID 0, 4GB x4 overall 16GB DDR3 and Blu-Ray Combo drive.
Already
installed with MSI software, the desk image shows GT683R is great on
performance.
System
performance tests
Super PI 32M => 22m 31.850s
CPUMARK99 =>
439
Nuclearus
Multi Core => 17201
Fritz Chess Benchmark => 20.03/9614
CrystalMark
2004R3 => 227107
CINEBENCH
11.5
OpenGL 40.03 fps
CPU 4.82 pts
CPU (Single Core) 1.10 pts
PCMark
Vantage => 9297
Windows7
benchmark
GT683
built in with Core i7-2630QM, the performance almost 2x of i5-2410M which I did
share the benchmark in one of my other review last time.
The performance of
Core i7 is really excellent on single or multi tasks, also the only Quad Core
CPU segment of Intel platform.
Normally Core i7-2630QM is 2GHz, but through
TurboBoost 2.0 technology, it will mostly run at 2.4~2.6GHz, this performance
level already great enough for a gaming notebook.
SATA performance
tests
HDD used WD5000BPKT black label with RAID 0. Format is 2.5” SATA3; seek
time 12.0ms, 16MB buffer
HD Tune Pro 4.61 Benchmark
Read - Average 162.0
MB/s Access Time 16.0ms
CrystalDiskMark Seq - 173.3 MB/s Write - 184.3
MB/s
HD
Tune Pro 4.61 Benchmark
File Benchmark highest write in speed close to
175MB/s
ATTO DISK Benchmark will reach 197/3MB/s reading speed when over 64k
data tests, and writing speed is 200.3MB/s
BootRacer
Time
to Logon 18 seconds
Time to Desktop 34 seconds
Because
of dual SATA3 design, a great advantage of 15.6” GT683R, normally we only see
dual HDD design on 17” or higher size notebooks.
If users what bigger
capacities and higher performance at same time, use 2 same capacity HDD become
RAID 0 is good solution.
It will make HDD performance up to 2x speed and
also with 2x HDD capacities. MSI already built in some software and present fast
boot up into Windows7 quickly.
2 SATA3 port is very flexible for HDD or
SSD combination, I take over the bottom cover to take a look the inside
design.
2 WD HDD is on up left and down right side, only with 2 DIMM slot,
guess another 2 DIMM is under keyboard.
Here
comes with big size thermal module design for whole system
Used 2 heatpipes
for CPU to pass the heat from Intel Core i7 2630QM, nVIDIA GeForce GTX560M used
3 heatpipes to pass the heat.
The
MXM VGA card is nVIDIA GeForce GTX560M under the heatsink, if the MXM card comes
with same format and size, it seems still have some room for upgrade?
The
highest temperature of whole system is GTX560M, after burning test, I use hand
to touch CPU heatsink could stay over 5sec,
but to touch the heatsink on GPU
I cannot stay over 3sec, temperature always a priority topic from nVIDIA and
needs to make some improvement.
The
second way to improve the performance is to use 1 SSD become system disk and
keep 1 HDD as data disk.
CORSAIR Force GT series support SATA3, with much
higher performance than SATA2 SSDs.
Formal
data shows this SSD could reach 555MB/s reading speed, 515MB/s of writing speed
(Used ATTO DISK Benchmark).
CORSAIR Force GT Series used red shield looks;
MTBF is 150k hours, 3 years warranty.
Installed
the Force GT SSD into GT683R, this combines greater performance and still keep
most capacities.
HD
Tune Pro 4.61 Benchmark
Read - Average 429.1 MB/s Access Time
0.221ms
CrystalDiskMark Seq
<All 0x00, 0Fill> 471.1 MB/s Write -
450.1 MB/s
<All 0xFF, 1Fill> 472.5 MB/s Write - 448.7 MB/s
HD
Tune Pro 4.61 Benchmark
File Benchmark highest reading performance over
520MB/s
ATTO DISK Benchmark test will over 554.1MB/s reading speed when test
data over 256k, and highest writing speed over 510MB/s.
BootRacer
Time
to Logon 8 seconds
Time to Desktop 15 seconds
After
installed SSD with SATA3 interface, it totally presents great performance of
native SATA3 on Sandy Bridge platform. It’s over 2x faster than HDD RAID 0.
If users want extreme speed, could try to use 2x SSD RAID 0 to reach the
top.
Most of the test items comes with 450~470MB/s speed, ATTO DISK test is
very close to formal data speed, boot up speed is much faster with shorter time,
SSD is indeed the fastest weapon to increase system access
performance.
Compare CORSAIR Force GT performance on PC desktop, most
performance is 10% faster than GT683R.
This happened on many notebooks of
SATA3 performance, since SATA3 still new, hope MSI could enhance their BIOS to
raise the SATA3 performance.
Most notebooks in the market only come with
GT540M, a friendly price on standard notebooks.
GT683R equipped with GeForce
GTX560M graphics from nVIDIA, and built in 1.5GB DDR5 with higher
performance.
GPU 813/GDDR5 1250 MHz
3DMark Vantage - P10090
StreetFighter
IV Benchmark
1024 X 720 => 220.70 FPS
1920
X 1080 => 128.96 FPS
DEVIL
MAY CRY4
DX10 1920 X 1080 => 104.66/86.98/111.92/73.50 fps
FINAL
FANTASY XIV
1920 X 1080 => 1921
Monster
Hunter Frontier 1920 X 1080 => 5081
Built
in GTX560M graphics present great performance on 3D benchmark, of course the 3D
and gaming performance is the key benefit of a gaming notebook.
Under
1920x1080 resolution, most games run smoothly, even with highest detail still
could run most heavy games over 24~30fps.
These benchmark was tested on AC
mode with adaptor, MSI designed with ECO mode and GTX560M also have power saving
feature,
so the performance will drop a lot when on battery mode to save
more power.
Touch the Turbo key on top of keyboard will unlock the GPU
frequency limitation, and will overclock GPU around 5% to make 3D Mark Vantage
over P10400 score.
GTX560M overclock to 870MHz/1625MHz test
Turn on
Turbo function and use MSI Afterburner software to overclock.
3DMark
Vantage - P11639
StreetFighter
IV Benchmark
1920 X 1080 => 149.32 FPS
FINAL
FANTASY XIV
1920 X 1080 => 2181
After
overclocked, it will get around 15% gaming performance increase, P11639 score is
really high of notebook platform.
If you sense the GPU is hot after
overclock, you could press the fan icon on left side of the control panel;
this will increase the fan speed to 110% and reduce some system
temperatures.
MSI GT683R apply unique Turbo feature, actually the GTX560M
already got high performance for a notebook,
enable Turbo and use
Afterburner software to adjust the frequency, it’s great help on 3D gaming
performance.
DDR3 performance tests
DDR3 1330.6 CL9 9-9-24
1T
ADIA64 Memory Read - 15235 MB/s
Sandra Memory Bandwidth - 17017
MB/s
MaXXMEM Memory-Copy - 16038MB/s
DRAM
bandwidth is an advantage on Sandy Bridge platform, it’s around 20% higher than
last generation Core I platform, and 2x faster than Core 2 Duo
platform.
Because of 4DIMM of DDR3 slot, once used with 16GB, it’s really
good enough to use for recent years.
Temperature (Room temp. around
25℃)
System idle – 42~45℃
CPU
full speed – 85~88℃
Intel Burn Test v2.4，Stress Level Maximum
The
idle mode temperature is same as other notebooks with i5-2410M, this is
good.
Full loading temperature close to 90℃, the fan is not too noise, and
not high frequency noise as well.
GT683R designed with bigger size thermal
module and fan, when used for 4 Core 8 Treat Core i7 and high power GTX560M,
this kind of temperature is acceptable.
Enable Cooler Boost to boost fan
speed.
Idle mode – 42~43℃
CPU
full loading – 80~82℃
Intel Burn Test v2.4，Stress Level Maximum
If we
let fan runs with 110% speed, the fan will become louder than auto control.
Idle mode could reduce 1~2℃ and full loading mode could reduce 5~6℃, it’s
really good effect when on full loading usage.
This is also a good feature
with value to reduce system temperature, users could try this if
needed.
Power watts tests
Get into OS only and not running any
program. – 28W
CPU
full loading – 91W
Intel Burn Test v2.4，Stress Level Maximum
CPU
and GPU all full loading – 158W
OCCT Power Supply tests
Above
3 power watts benchmark data runs with AC adaptor mode, CPU/GPU could runs with
full speed at full loading.
The power consumption of idle mode is close to
normal notebooks, Core i7 full speed is also acceptable.
If used CPU/GPU with
full loading, it’s much higher than normal Core i5/GT540M notebooks
platform.
But if we compare with PC desktop, compare the power consumption
and performance ratio, 158W is really great.
Battery life test
9Cell
batteries, runs BatteryEaterPro
Full speed – 1:11:15
Idle
mode – 3:54:30
Consider
9Cell battery supports this high performance notebook; it’s good on both idle
and full loading battery life.
If full speed could use over 2 hours will be
better, but for high level gaming notebooks this is closer to mission
impossible, especially it comes under 3.5kg.
Use GT683R to make HD video
playback, it could used around 3 hours; it’s enough for normally carry out
usages.
Consider on bigger size and higher performance notebook products, the
battery life already better than old models, 32nm CPU is
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