MSI Prestige 16 B1MG laptop review: From Core i7 Xe to Core Ultra 7 Arc

[A]

soldered RAM

Shorter traces.

Continues the careless of some laptop manufacturers with noise or simple use: video playing, websurfing, listening to music. Noise should be zero.

Of course, it's Turbo Boosting to 100W before you've even started doing anything and in the best Intel tradition probably doing that on every webpage load. Has to dissipate that.

[Starjack]

I dont think these laptops are for gamers. Its great for productivity and as a office laptop. Great to see terrific wifi battery life and that and streaming(youtube/netflix) are most important metrics for a laptop.

Of course they're not for gamers, but you got to admit, even business devices are catching up bit by bit every year. With AMD yes, but Intel slowly but surely getting there.

Why do these 16inch laptops have soldered RAM? All that space left empty, should have had soldered RAM and may be if space left add an SSD slot. Try to make use of the space instead of trying to focus on profiting. At 16Inch you cannot be having soldered RAM in an IGPU only system. 

I might think manufacturers are trying to save cost on changing the motherboard design. By having one that would handle a processor chip with GPU chip or just the processor chip alone in either case. RAM slots may or may not be available depending on the requirements. Not to mention, laptops these days are getting slimmer and lighter without things like CD driver, HDD driver, VGA and Ethernet ports.

[Sharath Naik]

soldered RAM

Shorter traces.

Why is shorter traces important? soldered LPDDR5 has nothing to do with DDR5 unlike the name suggests. DDR5 is significantly faster, which is even more important for an IGPU. These laptops are meant for productivity and that means user chooses the amount and speed of ram.

[A]

Why is shorter traces important?

Physical trace length limit is rapidly getting lower as frequency rises.
Plus shorter traces = less crosstalk = lower power consumption = higher achievable frequency = ability to use wider bus.
As an added bonus for manufacturer - easier to design and produce PCBs, less hussle with supporting all the different DIMMs in the market (especially 5600 ones that may or may not display all kinds of funky behavior).
The drawback is you can't get a dirt cheap config and throw in some RAM anymore.

DDR5 is significantly faster

At the same frequency* - which is not the case.
 

DDR5 is significantly faster

"Faster" isn't just a chip metric, it's more like RAM controller metric. Make bus wider, get "faster".

[mixed bag]

I'll buy the MSI prestige ai 16 IPS ( no PWM eye strain). It looks great.

My major concern is all that software pre install : MSI center, MSI optimization, continuous id...  Can it  removed flawlessly ? 

Then minor concerns are disappointing  webcam (2mp but ir and AI could help a lot),
Fan noise (when tasks like compiling), glaring screen ( could use a filter ?), lefty and spongy trackpad ( maybe not so big deal ..).

I expect that MSI laptop will be a huge  improvement from my 3 years old zenbook overall.
 
My usage is code,web, video call, movies & YouTube procrastinating :)

[Sharath Naik]

quote author=Sharath Naik link=msg=568269 date=1703998724 DDR5 is significantly faster
At the same frequency* - which is not the case.
 
quote author=Sharath Naik link=msg=568269 dDDR5 is significantly faster
"Faster" isn't just a chip metric, it's more like RAM controller metric. Make bus wider, get "faster".

DDR5 at the same freq is much faster than lpddr5. as I said these are not related to each other in any way. You can look up IGPU scores when using DDR5 vs LPDDR5 as the same freq. Getting a 6400 ddr5 is the best way to go. AMD IGPUs benefit a lot from this.

[Hotz]

DDR5 at the same freq is much faster than lpddr5. as I said these are not related to each other in any way. You can look up IGPU scores when using DDR5 vs LPDDR5 as the same freq. Getting a 6400 ddr5 is the best way to go. AMD IGPUs benefit a lot from this.

I made similar observations, in that the same frequency on LPDDR5 improves nothing over DDR5.

However I've been told there is no (Notebook-) SODIMM DDR5 RAM higher than 5600. Every such RAM claiming a speed of 6400 is only "overclockable up to this point", but not set at this point by default. Which is a bummer. Furthermore it also depends on the BIOS if you can overlock it or not (which is not guaranteed at all with notebooks).

Thus a soldered LPDDR5 with 7000-8000 by default could achieve significantly higher performance than current DDR5 modules. But I don't get why mainboards support LPDDR5 with 7000+ Mhz, but not support SODIMM DDR5 RAM with the same speed...???

[ArsLoginName]

Come on Allen, this is obviously a biased piece of reporting on the processor performance compared to both 13700H and AMD 7840U. You can run HWInfo and report on the power consumption during these tests. It's free and easy to use.

1 - This new Core Ultra 7 155H processor turbos to 100 W for a few seconds before setting to what power consumption? If it is as in the stress test, that would be 44 W.

2 - If it is running CB R15/R23 at 44 W, then how can you make the statement of "Our Core Ultra 7 155H holds a comfortable 20 to 25 percent lead over the Core i7-1360P and AMD's fastest Zen 4 U-series option the Ryzen 7 7840U" when the Core Ultra 7 155H is only 18.9% faster (2289 CB R15/1925 CB R15) than the 7840U running at 25 W in the HP EliteBook 845 G10. Less than 20% faster for 76% more power. That is being biased and hiding the truth. Those 2 power consumptions (44 W and 25 W) aren't even in the same processor classes.

3 - Further, comparing this new Core Ultra 7 155H to the 13700H in the Dell Inspiron Plus 16 which has a boost to 89 W and a long term power consumption of 50 W under the stress test implies the new processor is only consuming 12% less power (6 W total) with an 11.7% gain in performance (2289 CB R15 pts/2049 CB R15 pts). Where is the 20-25% you are referring to?

[ArsLoginName]

Oh and I almost forgot, when comparing battery life this MSI laptop looks impressive with 1100 minutes of Wi-Fi time from a 99.9 Whr battery = 11.01 min/Whr. The 7840U in either the HP 845 G10 has a tested Wi-Fi time of 779 min from a much smaller 51 Whr battery = 15.27 min/Whr. AMD is 38.7% more efficient.

[Tori]

I Have returned mine.
Way Too noisy, flimsy despite the 'magliminium'
Ultra Bright screen : barely usable for productivity even inside home if any direct light.

Windows effects didn't use the AI chip at all.

Meteor lake seems..... I had hoped,  Intel  tried optimize like video decoder on low power chip and. in the end it's not there at all. Maybe the GPU is any good, idk, I don't use that.

Overall, an unfinished product from both MSI and Intel.