A new Star on the gaming horizon: MSI goes Gaming

Munich, the 26^th of April. On a sunny Thursday evening MSI Germany has invited the press to have a glance at their Gaming Notebooks. If you wonder why I got there: Well MSI also has invited 2 facebookfans to join that event and I was a chosen one. The event took place in a restaurant in eastern munich and alongside with spicy food there was spicy Hardware to look at. MSI briefed about their upcoming 17,3 and 15,6 inch Gaming Laptops: The GE and the GT series.

Dinning with MSI gave you delicious Tortillas

 The GE series is aimed for the midbudgetgamer and comes with two 15,6 and two 17,3 inch notebooks. Prices should in Germany should range from 799€ to 1099€ and shall be available mid of Mai to June. The 17,3 Inch models and the 15,6 inch series share the following features: 17,3/15,6 inch Full HD Anti-Glare Display (1920*1080), Original Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit, Steelseries Gaming-Keaboard, four speakers with THX TruStudioPRO™, Cooler Boost, Audio Boost, USB 3.0, MSI Turbo Drive Engine, nVidias GT650M Kepler chip with a total of 2GB GDDR5, DVD-Super Multidrive. The only differences are: Intel Core i5 Processor (VS. Intel Core i7-3610QM); 4GB of DDR 3 (VS. 8 GB DDR 3 ); 500GB HDD (VS. 750GB HDD) and of course the price:  For the 17,3 inch models: 899€ (VS. 1099€), and for the 15,6 inch models: 799€ (VS. 999€). So MSI is offering you a quite portable mobile Gaming solution there. As of the design those notebooks look quite decent and are willing to compete against the Big Gaming Notebooks: Asus and Alienware.

When it comes to the High-end enthusiast notebooks, MSI will offer you the GT series of Notebooks, also coming in 15,6 and 17,3 inch flavors ranging from 1299€ to 2199€. Common features:  17,3/15,6 inch Full HD, Anti-Glare (1920*1080), Original Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit, backlight Steelseries Gaming-keaboard featuring a custom coloring, Dynaudio Sound, Aluminium-Case, Killer E2200 Networkcard, Intel Wireless Display 2.0, Cooler Boost, Audio Boost, USB 3.0, MSI Turbo Drive Engine, enlighted MSI Logo on the backlid. Except for the 17,3 inch model priced at 1299€, all feature an Intel Core i7-3610QM CPU , at least 8GB Dualchannel DDR3 Memory and a minimum of 750GB HDD with 7.200 RPM. For More details check out the Table.

With so many unique features at a really good Price point MSI will start off quite well into the Gamingnotebookmarket. And if you feel like upgrading your new MSI Notebook, you will be able to do so: The GT Series features a total of 4 Memory slots, so you might be able o have up to 32 GB of mermoy, adding either another SSD or HDD via a second HDD bay available. You are even allowed to setup your very own raidsetup with two drives then via the BIOS, which is not that much blocked compared to others. Of course being a notebook you cannot manually overclock it, but MSI is offering you a Turboboost function.

Top of the line 2199€ GT70 Notebook

Windows 7 Experience Index

Dxdiag

Partition C is with SuperRaid Technology which features two 64GB mSATA SSDs with speeds up to 900MB/s

Either 750GB Hitachi HDD with 7200RPM

...or a WD Scorpio Black with 7200RPM

Talking about Performance again, I have tried to run 3D Mark 11 on one of the GE notebooks which is not yet the final design nor specs, but it already came with a Kepler Chip. Well the Xtreme test did not run with 30+ FPS, instead you have had 3-5 FPS. Sadly it didn’t complete the Benchmark you I cannot give any scoring.

Kepler for Notebooks, the GT650M

Fighting the 3D Mark 11 Benchmark with Xtreme Preset

The main Focus was on the new Notebooks, but they have also shown a Desktop rig with their new GTX 680 Twin Frozr running Battlefield 3 Demo with more than 72 FPS showing on Fraps. Hardwarewise it featured a Watercooled Core i7 3770K overclocked to 4,4 Ghz paired with 32GB of Memory on their new Z77 boards. So Overall a state of the Art System.

Highend System