The MSI CX640 uses Intel’s notorious Sandy Bridge Core i5 and NVIDIA GT520M combining portability with performance. Will it be hit or miss?
Product on Review: CX640 Notebook
Manufacturer: MSI
Street Price: £550 inc. VAT
We know MSI well for their excellence in the motherboard and graphics card sector but that isn’t their only focus. MSI provide products found in many other different departments – one such department is Notebooks. Behind this product-range MSI have many achievements under their belt including: world’s first overclocking notebook, world’s first 10” netbook and are still in pursuit of bringing innovation to this sector. MSI have firm partnerships with pro gaming teams such as Fnatic and Nirvana and have developed some top-end gaming notebooks that deliver cutting edge performance for those on the move and so it’s fairly evident that MSI will continue to innovate within this category.
Today we will be taking a look at a mid-range Notebook that utilises the latest 2nd Generation Core i5 Processor, 4GB DDR3 and a 1GB GPU. All this for under £600 makes it a very competitive buy. So let’s waste no further time and begin our technical analysis.
The CX640
The MSI CX640 combines portability with performance; if you want the best of both worlds then take a look! Razor thin but packed with the power of Intels latest Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor. – This laptop has a little bit of everything. – The CX640 is easy-to-carry with a classic cross hatch design and also sports a 15.6″ screen and a NVIDIA GeForce GT520M graphics card for crystal clear viewing!
About MSI Notebooks
MSI is able to provide consumers with high performance and high quality products through worldwide sales of its exclusive Turbo Drive Engine (TDE) overclocking technology. In the past, MSI has not only released the world’s first overclocking notebook computer, but in 2008, the company was also the first in the world to release a 10″ netbook. In 2010, MSI spend millions in cooperation with high end acoustic products firm Dynaudio to develop its own Premium Sound Technology to provide consumers with the ultimate standard in high quality audio enjoyment. With powerful R & D and manufacturing teams, a deep-rooted product management style, and service centers located in over 80 countries, over the years MSI has received the support and admiration of millions of consumers worldwide. Choosing MSI is like choosing guaranteed quality!
Features & Specifications
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
• The Latest 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processor
• nVIDIA Geforce GT520M graphic card
• 15.6 LCD monitor
• Refined design
• Time stamp automatically backs up and restores information
• Rock-solid hard drive protection
• Smart brightness adjustment for optimal lighting
Specifications
CPU
– 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i3 / i5 / i7 Processor
OS
– Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
Chipset
– Intel® HM65
Memory
– DDR3 1066, Max: 4GB
LCD Size
– 15.6″ HD 1366×768 (16:9)
Graphics
– nVIDIA Geforce GT520M 1GB Graphic Card
HDD
– (GB) 320G/500G/640GB SATA
Optical Drive
– Super-Multi / Blu-Ray
Audio
– SRS 2 Speakers
Webcam
– 1.3M Webcam
Card Reader
– MMC/SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/MS Pro/HG
LAN
– 10/100/1000
Wireless LAN
– 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth
– Bluetooth 3.0 (Optional)
D-Sub (VGA)
HDMI
USB 2.0 port
– 2
USB 3.0 port
– 2 (optional)
Headphone/Microphone Jack
AC Adapter
– 90W
Battery
– 6 cells / 8 cells
Dimension
– 380mm x 260mm x 27.1~34mm
Weight (KG)
– 2.6
Packaging & Bundle
MSI present the CX640 in a large black box. There is shadowed imagery of the Notebook showing off its illuminated start button and a series of significant features that all come as standard with the CX640:
• Light Sensor: Auto Brightness Adjustment
• Function Smart: 1 Key Enable – all the function you need
• HDD Protection: 1.5X Protect
• Time Stamp: Backup all your data in one key press
• 2x Fast Boot: Fast boot to desktop
The packaging graphics/design on the other side is identical.
The packaging for CX640
Opening the box up – inside the Notebook is protected within a foam pouch and held in place via 2x cardboard pillars. Included with the CX640 are the following bundle items:
• AC Charger + Cable
• Quick Start Guide
• Drivers + Utilities + User Manual CD
• CE Compliance Booklet
• MSI Limited Warranty Card
CX640’s accessories bundle
Now let’s move onto the Notebook itself – over the page.
Externals
Though the CX640 has a 15.6” LCD screen the overall width of this Notebook appears to be quite big. The outer shell is plastic but has a brushed metal appearance to it and the MSI insignia has been softly placed toward one side of the Notebook lid. The CX640 is available in two colour options – black or silver. Today we will be taking a look at the black version.
A sleek and professional look whilst closed
On side of the CX640 there are various connectivity ports and options to take advantage of. On the one side there are:
• Audio Jacks: headphone + microphone
• 2x USB 2.0 ports
• DVD RW
• ‘Start’ Power Button
• Security Lock
The right side of CX640
Whilst on the other side we have the following ports and slots available.
• Power connection point
• Gigabit LAN (RJ45)
• VGA port
• HDMI port
• Heat extraction point
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
The majority of commonly used ports are found on the left side of the Notebook to avoid any obstruction with mouse usage.
CX640 has 2x USB 3.0 ports
Spinning the Notebook over we can see that the underside has various ventilation outlets to allow the components underneath to cool down. On the underside, as is common with Notebooks we have the serial number label and Windows 7 authenticity label. There are 4x rubber mounts to stop the CX640 from slipping when on shiny/smooth surfaces.
The battery within CX640 has a locking mechanism to keep it fixed to the Notebook. Removing this battery we discover that this battery is 4400mAh with a +10.8V rating. MSI give the consumer the option of having either 6 cells / 8 cells. MSI claim:
The batteries in the CX640 recharge 1.5 times faster than those in traditional laptops, getting you up and mobile again that much faster.
The underside of CX640
MSI branded battery – 4400mAh / +10.8v
Underneath the Lid
Opening the lid up on the CX640 requires no latch to be switched. The lid simply pulls up to reveal a well laid out, stylish looking layout. The screen on the CX640 is 15.6″ HD 1366×768 (16:9) this screen automatically adjusts brightness and power expended in accordance with the lighting in the surroundings. The idea with this is it makes using the Notebook easier on your eyes, while reducing power used to extend battery life.
The CX640 measures in at 380mm x 260mm x 27.1~34mm whilst weighing 2.6KG.
A rather nice looking Notebook
The keyboard design may be different to what some consumers are used to. The keys sit on a glossy backdrop rather like a telephone. MSI have done a great job in placing the keys in a compact manner whilst still giving full access to all options. The arrow keys as you can see from the photo below are smaller than usual and are placed beneath the right shift key.
At the very top of the keyboard we have a time-stamp button that allows for a 10 second backup of all data. It takes a snapshot of the entire drive and stores it within a file.
Another thing to recognise is the SRS speakers that are integrated at the top of the keyboard. MSI integrate SRS premium speakers into a number of their Notebooks, more notably the high-end offerings. I will report back on the audio performance a little later in the conclusion.
The keyboard layout and SRS Premium Speakers
As is customary on the palm-rest there is a specifications listing label detailing all of the key components/hardware within CX640.
Our MSI CX640 features the Intel Core i5 2410M – Intel’s 2nd Generation Mobile Processor. This CPU has 3M Cache, is dual-core and operates at 2.30 GHz with 4 threads.
Other important components include DDR3 – 4GB (2x2GB) running at 1066MHz. A 500GB SATA 2 HDD and an NVIDIA GeForce GT520M Graphic Card. The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M is an entry level dedicated laptop graphics card presented which first appeared in 2010. GT 520M is based on the GF119 of GF108 core both are related to Fermi architecture. Our graphics card comes with the following specifications:
• Core Speed 740 / 600 MHz
• Shader Speed 1480 / 1200 MHz
• Memory Speed 800 / 900 MHz
• Memory 1536 MB DDR3
Other things not mentioned on this label are Intel® HM65 chipset that motherboard uses and an integrated 1.3M Webcam.
The specifications label on CX640
The touchpad on CX640 has a shimmer effect for super-smooth navigation and the entire palm rest has an improved heat dissipation design underneath – this basically means that it shouldn’t get too hot whilst being used.
The shimmering touchpad
And finally the ‘START’ power button illuminates an NVIDIA green colour when the Notebook is switched on. MSI claim:
The CX640 boot up twice as fast as traditional notebooks, cutting in half the amount of time you need to wait to actually start using your computer.
We’ll find out if this is true a little later!
The START power button illuminates
Testing Methodologies
MSI CX640 Notebook
CPU Intel Core i5 2410 (Dual Core 2.3GHz)
Memory 4GB DDR3 1066MHz
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT520M
HDD 500GB SATA 2
Custom PC – Intel Core i5 2500K, ASUS P8P67
CPU Intel Core i5 2500K (Quad-Core 3.3GHz)
Motherboards ASUS P8P67
Memory 4GB Kingston HyperX Genesis CL9 1600MHz
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-D14
Graphics ZOTAC GTX 460
HDD Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA 2
PSU OCZ Fatal1ty 750W
Benchmarks
Windows 7 Boot Time – Measuring with digital stopclock
CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 – Convert 640MB MPEG4 to MP4
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
Flash Memory Toolkit USB 3 – Using Kingston DT Ultimate 32GB USB 3.0 stick
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46 – 1024 Read/Write
CrystalDiskMark 3 – Sequential Read/Write
Cinebench 11.5 – CPU Score
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
SiSoftware SANDRA 2011 – CPU benchmarks
3DMark 11 – Performance and Extreme preset
Gaming – UT3, DIRT 3 (Average FPS)
The above benchmarks will be run on both systems and compared. Being the first Notebook review we will be testing against our Sandy Bridge test system. This system delivers mid-range power and whilst it may not offer like for like – ‘apples for apples’ testing it gives you an idea for how a typical up-to-date desktop system compares to an entry level/mid-range/high-end Notebook going forward in our reviews.
NOTE: CX640 uses a dual-core 2.3GHz CPU whilst the Custom PC uses a quad-core 3.3GHz.
Real World Performance – Windows 7 Boot Time
Synthetic testing is valuable in the examination of systems, but some of the tests may not mean all that much to some readers so this real world test will show the Windows 7 boot time. A digital stopclock is used to record time duration.
Real World Performance – CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5
MediaEspresso is a blazingly fast media universal converter that can transcode your videos, photos and music files and out put them to a huge range of portable devices including mobile phones, portable media players and even game consoles. With technologies like Smart Detect, Direct Sync and CyberLink’s TrueTheater™ video enhancements, you can not only forget about complicated format, resolution and output settings, but your converted file will come out the other side looking better than when it went in! For this test a 640MB MPEG4 file was converted to MP4 – both source and target files are 720p.
Real World Performance – x264 HD 4.0
Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.
x264 HD gives results for 2 passes when compressing an MPEG-2 clip into x264. It presents 4 separate results for each pass giving a total of 8 – all results are given in FPS. For each pass I have averaged out the results.
USB 3.0 Performance – Flash Memory Toolkit
The Flash Memory Toolkit measures the real-world performance by checking how long it takes to read and write files with different lengths. For this file benchmark test we have recorded the 5MB file benchmark using a USB 3.0 Kingston DT Ultimate 32GB Stick.
HDD Performance – ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
HDD Performance – CrystalDiskMark 3
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful. Sequential read/write performance is monitored.
CPU Performance – Cinebench 11.5
CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor. CPU score is monitored.
CPU Performance – AIDA64
AIDA64 is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning AIDA64 Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems.
CPU Performance – SiSoftware SANDRA 2011
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
3D Performance – 3DMark 11
Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
3DMark 11 was released at the end of last year and needs little introduction. For the test settings both Performance and Extreme presets are run with ‘benchmark only’ being selected. This provides good analysis. Many will only test the performance preset, using the extreme mode we can examine the board under much more severe stressing.
3D Performance – UT3, DIRT 3
It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because it allows us to test the 3D performance. So here we have some popular titles, critically acclaimed and action-packed. FPS were captured using benchmark tools
Conclusion
For under £600 does the CX640 deliver for a mid-range Notebook? We think it does.
Taking into consideration all of the performance benchmarks we can clearly see that the CX640 gives good results for a Notebook. Our comparison may have revealed some big differences but it’s important to keep in mind that the test comparison is a mid-high end Sandy Bridge Desktop setup and although the performance gap between Notebook and Desktop is closing, there is still quite a gulf between them in some aspects.
Watching movies and listening to music is enjoyable thanks to the SRS speakers. Whilst they do lack some bass during higher volume levels they still offer great clarity. Compared to other Notebooks there is a distinct advantage to using SRS. The screen is also vibrant making the CX640 a good all-round mobile entertainment system.
Battery life on the CX640 is great. Expect around 5 hours of usage before needing to connect the AC adapter. This means that to a certainty you will be able to use the CX640 on long journeys and short journeys whilst commuting. The auto brightness adjustment also helps to extend battery life in this regard and is just one of the many positive features with the CX640.
The only criticism I have is the buttons on the touchpad. They require a stronger push in order to depress them. Aside from this the CX640 is an excellent Notebook for the price – at just £550 inc. VAT you are getting a mid-range offering with USB 3.0, great performance and a pleasing battery life.
The bottom line is: MSI’s CX640 ticks all the right boxes. It has a fast boot into Windows, comes with USB 3.0, fast backup protection via time stamp, has countless other features and delivers pleasing results in a number of benchmarks.
Pros
+ Great entertainment mobile system
+ Good battery life – up to 5 hours
+ USB 3.0
+ Layout accommodates workspace
+ Backup features
+ Good colour representation
Cons
– Touchpad buttons are stiffer than normal
+ Great entertainment mobile system
+ Good battery life – up to 5 hours
+ USB 3.0
+ Layout accommodates workspace
+ Backup features
+ Good colour representation
Cons
– Touchpad buttons are stiffer than normal
