MSI GX660R: The GT660 re-incarnate

NetEssentials sent us this new gaming laptop but after unboxing it, I thought I already reviewed the unit before until I saw what’s inside — this MSI GX660R is like the reincarnate of the MSI GT660.

First off, the body and design is exactly the same as the old one. The main difference between this and the GT660 is the graphics card (a Radeon HD 5870) although the CPU was also bumped up from a base of 1.6GHz to 1.73GHz. And while the RAM is now down from 6GB to 4GB, MSI configured the two 500GB HDD to become a single 1TB drive with Raid 0 which could benefit from faster file reads.

MSI GX660R specs:
15.6″ display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel Core i7 740QM 1.73GHz (4 Cores, 8 Threads, Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 VRAM
1TB SATA HDD (2x500GB on Raid 0)
4GB DDR3 RAM (2 x 2GB Dual Channel)
CD/DVD+RW
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
2 x USB 2.0 ports
2 x USB 3.0 ports
1 x HDMI port
1 x eSATA port
4-in-1 card reader
9-cell Li-Ion battery 7800mAh

PassMark Results:
CPU Compression: 4105.5 KB/s
CPU Encryption: 15.3 MB/s
Find Prime Number: 647.9 operations per second
CPU Integer Math: 1343.5 million operations per second
CPU Floating Point: 1638.3 million operations per second
Graphics 3D Simple: 2361.5 fps (32-bit)
Graphics 3D Medium: 424.4 fps (32-bit)
Graphics 3D Complex: 47.7 fps (32-bit)

CPU Mark: 3785.0
2D Graphics Mark: 251.7
3D Graphics Mark: 1351.7
Memory Mark: 898.4
Disk Mark: 903.9
Passmark Rating: 1400.2

Windows Experience Index showed the system having a base score of 5.9 due to the HDD but gave the CPU a sub-score of 7.1. The Radeon 5870HD also got a pretty high 7.2 scores on Windows Aero and 3D gaming.

To get a good overview of this gaming laptop, read our MSI GT660 review here and then just take note of the benchmark/rating results above. The MSI GX660R has a suggested retail price of Php109,990.