14 DAY TRIAL // It was not long ago that Micro-Star International unveiled the GE620DX gaming notebook, but this meant nothing in its decision to go ahead and release yet another one, dubbed GT683DX.
The past half a year saw quite a few CPUs with integrated graphics reaching the market, placing quite a pressure on NVIDIA on the low-end and even, to some extent, the mid range.
Not only did Intel's CPU integrated GMA get better than those of the previous generation, but AMD released Fusion APUs (accelerated processing units), some of which (Llano) have mainstream-level and DirectX 11 capabilities.
Nonetheless, NVIDIA is pushing ahead on the higher tiers, its 500 series of desktop and notebook graphics scoring design wins wherever the opportunity arises.
It so happens that a certain, fairly powerful 500M laptop solution, the GeForce GTX 570M to be more precise, has found a home inside MSI's latest gaming notebook.
Dubbed GT683DX, it is powered by an Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU, whose base clock speed is of 2.0 GHz.
4 GB of DDR3 RAM (random access memory) are present, as is a hard disk drive whose own capacity is of 500 GB.
Furthermore, MSI allows for the configurations to, naturally, be customized, with up to two 750 GB HDD being implementable. More RAM should also be possible to put in. Users that are so inclined may even go for a 120 GB SSD and use a HDD as a secondary drive.
Other specifications include an ODD (optical disk drive), which can be a DVD writer or Blu-ray, while the connectivity and I/O range is made up for Bluetooth 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, USB (2.0 and 3.0), audio ports, etc.
Finally, the 15.6-inch LED backlit display has a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and, to complete the ensemble, MSI threw in a Dynaudio 2.1 channel sound system and a HD webcam.
Stores are said to already offer the notebooks (4GB RAM, 500GB storage and DVD) for 1,265 Euro, though MSI itself gave no pricing scheme.