High-end AMD powered laptop announced for PC gamers by MSI
Posted on 30. Sep, 2012 by Albert Madison in Laptops, Laptops
The MSI GX60 features a 15.6-inch Full HD display that has an anti-glare coating for better viewing in bright conditions. Image: MSI
This week computer maker MSI made a new high-powered laptop computer official. The 15.6-inch MSI GX60 is the name of the new notebook laptop computer and PC gaming is what the GX60 is designed for.
PC gaming notebooks is a market that MSI has been really focused on in recent years. MSI has made it a mission to offer more than just the right internal specifications for their machines to be considered gaming notebooks, the design of MSI branded gaming notebooks fit with what gamers need.
The GX60′s Gaming Features
Processor + GPU
The MSI GX60 offers the best performance of any other AMD based gaming notebook offered currently by MSI, according to MSI. The combination of a AMD Quad-Core A10-series accelerated processor and the high-end AMD Radeon HD 7970M 2GB GDDR5 discrete GPU help the GX60 offer great performance.
In benchmark data provided by MSI the new GX60 outperforms their other high-end gaming notebooks that used the now-old AMD Radeon HD 6990M discrete GPU. MSI credits the 7970M, DirectX 11, PowerTune Technology, and Enduro display switching technology for the improved performance.
Game with multiple displays
MSI has included support for up to triple screen gaming (not counting the 15.6-inch 1080p anti-glare display the notebook uses). MSI is able to offer that with the help of AMD’s Eyefinity technology that the high-end AMD Radeon HD 7970M supports.
All your AMD Eyefinity fun starts at the back of the MSI GX60 where all the video output connectors are located. Image: MSI
To game on three screens all you need to do is connect three displays to the three video output ports (HDMI, VGA and Mini DisplayPort) on the back of the MSI GX60 and then use the pre-installed Eyefinity software to calibrate the monitors for triple screen gaming. The best part of the AMD Eyefinity technology is that it doesn’t require you only use your three screens for one tas kat a time, you can have three different things going on each screen if you want.
Achieve unrivaled online gaming performance
Online gaming is a must for most any PC gamer, but reliability from the internal network adapter can hold some gamers back. MSI is hoping no GX60 owners have to deal with lag during online gameplay. The GX60 comes equipped with the Killer™ E2200 gaming network adapter which MSI claims offers between 1.5 and 2 times better latency and ping time performance than standard network adapters you find in some gaming notebooks. In their video streaming benchmark MSI claims the E2200 clad GX60 notebook offers 16x the online video streaming and online video game performance than the standard networking options.
World’s first Super RAID SSD equipped notebook
You may or may not know this yet but MSI has introduced the worlds first Super RAID SSD powered notebook with the new GX60. The Super RAID SSD setup offers users two mSATA SSD’s in RAID 0. Right now MSI says buyers will be able to get the GX60 equipped with either two 64GB mSATA SSD’s or two 128GB models. However with either option you’re promised considerable performance gains over the usual HDD+SSD combo or standalone HDD RAID setup.
MSI reports that their Super RAID setups offer up to 1000Mb/s read speeds with the dual 128GB SSD option. As for data writing speeds the dual 128GB Super RAID setup is said to achieve nearly 800 Mb/s speeds. As for the dual 64GB SSD option MSI says you can expect a max. read speed of slightly over 800Mb/s and for write speeds about 400Mb/s is what users should expect.
Keyboard
Just a few years ago MSI reached out to SteelSeries, a major player in the PC accessory market for gamers, to come up with a keyboard that meets the needs of most PC gamers. What MSI and SteelSeries came up with is a special keyboard key layout that puts the keys gamers use most often (A, W, S, D, Ctrl, and Space) in an alignment that allows for a more ergonomic (comfortable) gaming experience. The special key alignment was nicknamed Golden Triangle when it was initially announced in 2011.
Other details
Ports aren’t in short supply for the MSI GX60. Image: MSI
The features just mentioned are just the main features there are other things about the GX60 you should know about. For instance you can have up to 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM installed inside the GX60. Also the notebook has stereo sound and custom audio software from THX. For HD movie buffs the GX60 will have a Blu-ray disc player and burner, and don’t worry the optical drive does also burn CD’s and DVD’s.
Some other features include a 9-cell battery, Windows 7, three USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports, one USB 2.0 port, a headphone and microphone jack, a card slot that reads SD/SDXC/SDHC/MMC cards, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and 10/100/1000MBps LAN, and finally there is a HD Webcam that records 720p video at 30fps.
As far as dimensions are concerned the MSI GX60 is a hefty machine weighing in at nearly 8 pounds (~7.71618 lbs. or 3.5kg to be exact) and it’s not especially thin either with a thickness of 2.1-inches. However this is par for the course when you’re talking about high-performance gaming notebooks.
Availability and Price
Unfortunately there is no price available right now for me to report. MSI has also neglected to mention any firm release date for the GX60. However I suspect that you will be seeing the GX60 soon on Newegg.com or other online retailers for PC’s.
