PC World - USA (2020-04)

68 PCWorld APRIL 2020

REVIEWS MSI PRESTIGE 14

squeaks by the 2,000-score threshold for

acceptable performance. For reference, it’s a

little faster than the 1,717 score eked out by

an Atom X7-z8700 CPU in a Surface 3. We

can tell you that Surface 3 was painfully slow

to use, too.

GPU PERFORMANCE

MSI has reiterated many times that although it

includes a GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q in the

laptop, it didn’t do that for gaming. Still, a

discrete GPU should open the door to some

play. Using the 3DMark Sky Diver benchmark,

the Prestige 14 easily sweeps away all of the

older Intel integrated graphics laptops, as

well as those based on Intel’s newer Ice Lake

10th-gen Core i7-1065G7. It also easily

dispatches Nvidia’s GeForce MX150 laptops,

and AMD’s current Ryzen APUs.

For reference, we also include the

performance of the GeForce GTX 1650 inside

of Dell’s larger and heavier XPS 15 7590. As

you can see, you do give up a hefty chunk of

performance going with the Max-Q GPU—

but you save on weight and size, too.

Overall, gaming should mostly be fine if

your expectations are moderate.

CPU VS. GPU VS. IGP

If the GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q isn’t for

gaming, then why have it? Well, one reason

MSI likely picked it over the more practical

GeForce MX250 is its capability in

encoding. With its newer Turing chip, the

GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q supports

Nvidia’s NVENC hardware encoder and

decoder. The older Pascal-based MX250

GPU doesn’t.

With hardware support for NVENC, the

Prestige 14 gives you a lot more flexibility than

a laptop with an MX250 GPU. To see the

Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-9980HK

MPerformSI Prestige 14 ance

Core i7-10710U

MDefaultSI Prestige 14

Core i7-10710U

Dell XPS 2-in-1 7390 Perf Mode

Core i7-1065G7

Dell Inspiron 15 7000

Core i7-8565U

HP Spectre x360 13 5th gen

Core i7-1065G7

HuawX Proei MateBook

Core i7-8550U

Dell XPS 13 7390Core i7-10710U

Dell XPS 13 9380Core i7-8565U

HP Spectre x360 13 2019

Core i7-8565U

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

25,564

9,4 08

17,4 0 6

8,382

18,050

9,287

10,103

3DMarkSky Diver 1.0

Overall

Demo mode off

4,421

4,963

5,015

Although not pitched as a gaming laptop, the

performance of the GTX 1650 Max-Q is a huge

step over that of a GeForce MX150, and both

Intel’s and AMD’s best integrated graphics chips.