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Gigabyte's dual GPU Aorus gaming laptop is less than an inch thick
To impress us with a gaming laptop these days requires more than just spec-bombing, but Gigabyte's Aorus has grabbed our attention. For starters, the 17.3-inch model is a mere 0.9 inch thick and weighs 6.4 pounds, rather insane numbers considering that it packs a pair of NVIDIA GTX 765M chips in an SLI configuration. In comparison, the 17-inch Razer Blade Pro is almost exactly the same size with a single GPU. To achieve that, Gigabyte made the case out of solid aluminum with a sculpted look only a gamer could love, while packing copious vents and ports to duct away the hot air. The rest of the specs are also top-tier: a 17.3-inch 1080p display, Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU, up to 32GB of RAM, three USB 3.0 slots, 500GB of mSATA SSD storage max and up to 1TB of 2.5-inch HDD storage. Gigabyte calls it a "powerplant on your lap," and it'll arrive around March for $2,099 - $2,799 depending on options. If you're interested, some heat-proof pants might also be in order.
Origin PC lineup makes the leap to Haswell, GeForce GTX 700M
Origin PC makes a point of embracing game-friendly technology as soon as it arrives, and you'd better believe it's welcoming Haswell-based processors with open arms: virtually all of its computer line is making the jump to the faster Intel hardware. The raw CPU power is the main highlight for the Chronos, Genesis and Millennium desktops, while those buying the larger EON15-S and EON17-S laptops get a few additional treats. Origin PC is adopting NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 765M, 770M and 780M graphics for the portables' mainstream editions. It's also letting the truly storage-addicted run two simultaneous RAID configurations if their laptop has four drives. The Haswell upgrades bump EON15S-S and EON17-S prices by about two Benjamins to $1,722 and $1,784 respectively, but players who just have to stay current can pay the premium today.
Razer reveals the Blade Pro and 14-inch Blade gaming laptops (update: $999 Pro for indie game devs)
Razer promised it was aiming to iterate its Blade gaming laptop on a yearly basis, and despite the company's recent focus on tablets, it appears to be keeping its word. Today, a mere eight months after releasing the second-gen Blade, Razer unveiled two new members of the Blade family: the 17-inch Blade Pro and its 14-inch sibling. As you might expect, the Pro tops its elders with new silicon and storage options. It's exchanging third-gen Intel Ivy Bridge silicon for a fourth-gen Haswell chip and upgrading from an NVIDIA GTX 660M to a GTX 765M GPU. Oh, and Razer's nixed the HDD options from the big Blade's menu -- the Pro packs a 128GB SSD standard, with optional upgrades to 256 or 512GB. That new hardware is evidently smaller than what it's replacing: though the Pro shares the same size chassis as its predecessor, it packs a 74Wh battery (the older Blade has a 60Wh cell). Other than that, the Blade Pro comes with Razer's Switchblade interface, a trio of USB 3.0 ports, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a 1920 x 1080 display, just like the prior Blade. Meanwhile, the new 14-inch Blade will come with mostly the same hardware as the Pro, meaning it's got a Haswell chip and GTX 765M graphics along with a buffet of SSD choices. Those components are stuffed inside a chassis that measures 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.66 inches, and weighs 4.13 pounds. Naturally, given its smaller size, it lacks the Switchblade LCD and buttons, has a 1.3 megapixel webcam (as opposed to the Pro's 2 megapixel unit) and a 14-inch 1600 x 900 display. And, despite its relatively svelte dimensions (for a portable gaming rig), the baby Blade still has a 70Wh battery inside. The Pro starts at $2,299, or $200 less than prior Blades and the 14-inch model will set you back a minimum of $1,799. Each will be available in North America in Q2, with a worldwide rollout of the Pro coming sometime later this year. Update: Good news, Indie game developers! Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan just announced that those devs with a successfully funded Kickstarter can get a new Blade Pro for just $999. %Gallery-189699%
NVIDIA reveals GeForce GTX 700M series GPUs for notebooks, we go eyes-on
We've already seen a couple of new desktop GTX cards from NVIDIA this month, and if the mysterious spec sheet for MSI's GT70 Dragon Edition 2 laptop wasn't enough of a hint, the company's got some notebook variants to let loose, too. The GeForce GTX 700M series, officially announced today, is a quartet of chips built on the Kepler architecture. At the top of the stack is the GTX 780M, which NVIDIA claims is the "world's fastest notebook GPU," taking the title from AMD's Radeon HD 8970M. For fans of the hard numbers, the 780M has 1,536 CUDA cores, an 823MHz base clock speed and memory configs of up to 4GB of 256-bit GDDR5 -- in other words, not a world apart from a desktop card. Whereas the 780M's clear focus is performance, trade-offs for portability and affordability are made as you go down through the 770M, 765M and 760M. Nevertheless, the 760M is said to be 30 percent faster than its predecessor, and the 770M 55 percent faster. All of the chips feature NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 and Optimus technologies, and work with the GeForce Experience game auto-settings utility. The 700M series should start showing up in a host of laptops soon, and a bunch of OEMs have already pledged their allegiance. Check out a video with NVIDIA's Mark Avermann after the break, where he shows off a range of laptops packing 700M GPUs, and helps us answer the most important question of all: can it run Crysis? (Or, in this case, Crysis 3.) %Gallery-189806%
