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MSI's GT680 gaming laptop reviewed: potent at 720p, some battery life too
MSI is calling this GT680R the world's fastest gaming laptop. Spoiler alert -- it's not -- but if you drop $1,650 to nab one starting this week, you'll certainly be getting some bang for those bucks. Trusted Reviews and Hot Hardware recently got their hands on the first Sandy Bridge-equipped portable monster of a gaming rig, and found the experience quite satisfying on the whole. Though Hot Hardware discovered that the 2.0GHz Core i7-2630QM chip and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics weren't quite capable of playable framerates in the most demanding DX11 titles at native 1080p, lowering the resolution to 720 lines usually did the trick, and when it came to raw CPU benchmarks that Core i7 held its own against even last-gen desktop processors with little trouble to speak of. What's more, equipped with a nine-cell battery Trusted Reviews managed to eke out three hours of life in a basic productivity test, practically unheard of for a laptop of this class, though we suppose you're not likely to be carrying around this 7.7 pound beast for the sake of portable spreadsheets, eh? Hit up our source links for more details.
MSI fords the sands, announces sixteen laptops with Intel Core 2011 chips (update: all-in-ones, too)
We'd heard MSI was seriously considering a pair of Sandy Bridge all-in-one PCs, but when it comes to laptops the company's definitely going whole-hog -- it just announced no fewer than sixteen new laptops with those fancy new Intel second-generation Core processors. The chunky G-series will sport those new quad-core Core i7 chips, with the 17.3-inch GT780 and 15.6-inch GT680 delivering Dynaudio speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 500 and 400-series graphics and dual SSDs, while the GR620 and GE620 are left to fend with lower specs of some sort. The F-series retains the Core i7 chips, but swaps in switchable NVIDIA GT 500-series graphics, excepting the 14-inch FX420 which makes do with Core i5 and loses the dedicated number pad. Finally, the C-series will shoot for eight hours of battery life. MSI's not dropping terribly detailed specs at this point (though you'll find a few in the gallery below) but if you're aiming high, you won't have long to wait for a rig -- that GT680's hitting later this month for $1,500, and the top-tier GT780 in Q2 of this year. PR after the break. Update: Guess what we saw when the press conference ended, and we stood up to leave? Those Sandy Bridge all-in-one PCs. Find pictures (and specs!) in gallery number three. %Gallery-112594%%Gallery-112600%%Gallery-112611%
