14 DAY TRIAL // As the day of the official Trinity launch is getting closer, AMD has partnered with MSI to announce what is likely the most powerful Trinity-based notebook to date. The new unit features a 15.6” FullHD LED backlit anti-glare screen and comes with a powerful GPU.
The A10-4600M is AMD’s top-performing Fusion mobile part and it works at a base frequency of 2300 MHz.
The processor can Turbo up to 3200 MHz and is packaged in a 722-pin micro-PGA socket, called FS1 (FS1r2).
The processing cores are constantly fed with data by 4 MB of level 2 cache. That’s 512 KB of level 2 cache for each core.
Unlike AMD’s FX processor line, there is no level 3 cache, but being a Fusion processor, AMD’s A10-4600M comes with an integrated graphics processing unit (iGPU) that runs at a default 497 MHz, with the option to Turbo up to 686 MHz when all the 384 shaders are subjected to a heavy 3D task.
All of this is done with a maximum heat dissipation of 35 watts and, using a graphics switching technology, it will help save energy when less demanding graphics tasks are sent up for processing.
MSI’s GX60 has a very powerful APU inside. It’s powerful enough to surpass discrete graphics solutions such as Nvidia’s GT 620M and GT 630M and can keep up with GT 640 in a number of scenarios.
Still, the Taiwanese company is used to build very powerful mobile gaming systems and doesn’t seem to be willing to leave any room for the competition.
Therefore, MSI has selected AMD’s Radeon HD 7970M mobile GPU to improve GX60’s gaming capabilities.
On that note, you should know that the Radeon HD 7970M has a little bit less 3D power than AMD’s desktop Radeon HD 7870 GPU.
Basically, the HD 7970M is a Pitcairn GPU that has a frequency of only 850 MHz versus the 1 GHz frequency of its desktop brother.
It comes with 1,280 shaders and 80 texture units all using GDDR 5 memory running at 4800 MHZ effective speed.
We’re eager to see the 17” version and we’re certainly hoping MSI will build one.
The laptop comes with many of the features found in the GT70 top gaming solution from MSI.
The Steelseries keyboard and high-quality speakers are there, as are the performance enhancing features such as the Qualcomm Atheros Killer NIC chip for reduced networking latency during gaming sessions and the special storage system.
The thing is that the keyboard is Steelseries, but not the same with the one used on the GT70 and nor are the speakers.
We would like you to pay close attention to MSI’s storage solution for the company’s gaming notebook series as this is a unique solution in the mobile gaming world and it’s currently the fastest.
This SSD-based RAID 0 hybrid storage system consists of two mSATA SSD drives that are part of a RAID 0 matrix and a separate 7200 RPM mobile hard disk drive, with up to 750GB storage capacity, but a dual HDD configuration is also possible with double 750 GB HDD or double 500 GB HDD versions.
The RAID 0 system reaches speeds well over 1000 MB/s, while the HDD offers enough capacity for your games and files.
MSI’s mobile storage solution is absolutely unique and provides performance never before seen in a gaming laptop.
The GX60 uses AMD’s A70M FCH and it will be able to drive three external screens and this is what AMD calls Eyefinity technology for the mobile sector.
The three screens are made possible by a VGA connector, an HDMI one and a mini DisplayPort.
MSI’s GX60 comes with rich connectivity options besides the external display combination we’ve described above.
Therefore, the notebook features three USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit LAN RJ45 port powered by the impressive Killer E2200 series, Bluetooth 4.0, a multi-format card reader and the two HD audio jacks.
The pictures display a total of four audio jacks, but the official specifications fail to mention them all so maybe MSI will clarify on that.
One other feature that got lost when going from the Intel-based GT70 to the AMD-based GX60 is the eSATA port that we consider to be very useful and we certainly hope that MSI will bring it back at least in some GX60 version.
The charger is an impressive power guzzler, being rated at 180W.
There is no mention on pricing or availability, but we still hope a full featured 17” version will make it to the market.
