MSI CX410: A Simple Notebook with Quite a Few Surprises

Test Results

Performance

The MSI CX 410 showed good overall performance in our Sysmark 2007 benchmark, for a notebook of its class at least. You should encounter no performance issue when running most productivity programs on this notebook. Its 3D creation score is especially good, thanks to the discrete graphics. We also ran several game tests to see if this notebook has what it takes to handle modern-day titles.

Battery Life

Things get a bit disappointing when it comes to battery life. MobileMark 2007 confirmed that the battery could only last for 158 minutes, which is actually not a surprise given the battery’s small capacity of 4400 mAh. Another key factor in this matter is the discrete Radeon graphics chip, which seems to be consuming more power compared to on-board solutions.

Video Transcoding

The CX 410 is relatively fast in this particular test. So, if you are the kind of person who loves converting movies on-the-go to be viewed on your gadgets, this notebook will get the job done and still leaves you with enough time to enjoy the viewing.

ATI Radeon HD545V Discrete Graphics Performance

The above results were obtained from the 3D Mark 2006 and 3D Mark Vantage benchmarks. The scores may not look like much, but they indicate that the notebook is, to some degree, capable of running today’s games. Let’s see how it performs in real-life scenarios.

Left4Dead

“Good!” That was the first thought to come across our mind as we notice that the notebook has been keeping the frame rate well above 30 FPS in this game. We ran the test at the screen’s native resolution, while graphics details were set to “high”.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 proved to be a bit too much for the CX 410. With the graphics details set to “high” at 1366×768, we couldn’t get the game to run with acceptable frame rate. Lowering the graphics settings to “medium” helped improving the frame count to roughly 30 FPS, while stepping the resolution down a notch to 1280×720 increases the FPS rate a bit more. This game is still largely playable, but you would have to settle with lesser-quality graphics.