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Complete Test Results
Because Lenovo’s Y50-70 Touch 59420895 has both a slower processor and graphics module compared to MSI’s GT60 2PC Dominator, we expect it to fall behind in most benchmarks. Lenovo buyers get a lower price, a touch-enabled display and a slimmer/lighter chassis for increased portability to offset those deficits, however. What we really want to see from a gaming notebook is gaming competence.
Synthetic Benchmarks
Though 3DMark shows the expected results with both notebooks plugged in, Lenovo’s weaker CPU and GPU fare far better in PCMark. Lenovo also appears to use a more aggressive power scheme, which could tremendously boost the runtime of its tiny battery.
Battery mode has a much larger impact on the Y50-70’s Sandra Arithmetic scores. On the other hand, both notebooks owe poor memory bandwidth to the manufacturer’s choice of a single memory module.
3D Games
Nvidia Battery Boost acts as a frame rate limiter, forcing the GPU to run at the clock rates necessary to maintain a defined level of performance, but no more. We left both notebooks at the default 30 FPS setting, which should allow these to spend more time at lower frequencies to extend battery life.
Grid 2’s built-in benchmark doesn’t give us framerate over time, but it does show what we observed while playing the game: the GeForce GTX 860M is powerful enough to run Ultra Quality and 8x AA at the panel’s native 1920x1080 resolution, even unplugged.
The GeForce GTX 870M is slighting more than adequate to run a 1920x1080 resolution at Battlefield 4’s Ultra settings, but Lenovo’s GTX 860M is impressively close when plugged in. The 860M falters when you unplug it, requiring a drop to lower quality settings (or a lower resolution) to retain a smooth output.
Both notebooks play smoothly through Arma 3’s standard preset. The 870M-equipped machine gets a little choppy when driving the game’s Ultra quality preset from battery power, and the 860M can’t even use this setting effectively plugged in.
Neither the GeForce GTX 870M or 860M are sufficiently fast at Far Cry 3’s Ultra-quality preset, but both are completely playable in the same title’s High-quality test. Due to a few extended frame times, we’d recommend reducing the output resolution on either machine for a battery-powered gaming session.
Non-Gaming Applications
Lenovo’s Core i7-4700HQ appears fairly powerful when it's running at full speed, but none of us would expect it to do any heavy lifting on battery power. We’ll leave our heavier apps at the office and do word processing/light photo editing on the road.
Battery Life And Efficiency
The Y50-70’s small battery doesn’t last long under heavy loads, but it should be fine for normal on-the-road work like as word processing and Web browsing.
Average performance for the Core i7-4700HQ- and GTX 860M-enabled Y50-70 Touch is down by around 22% compared to the larger MSI notebook, but once again we remind ourselves that Lenovo’s is a cheaper, thinner, lighter alternative.
The Y50-70 reduces power consumption by over 40% compared to the thicker/heavier GT60 2PC Dominator, which should set us up for some efficiency surprises.
The Y50-70’s moderately lower performance is offset by drastically-reduced power consumption in the efficiency chart. This is the one place where Lenvo’s thin-and-light notebook beats MSI’s full-performance version by 26%.
