Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: msi, gaming, notebook, gx630 | Themes: Laptops and Notebooks, Digital Entertainment
Usually mobile gaming comes at a hefty price-tag. However, MSI has announced its new GX630-028US gaming notebook with a surprisingly low price of US$799.00
For such a low price claim on a gaming notebook though, what would one expect in terms of specifications? According to MSI, you get an AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core, a Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, a 250 GB SATA hard drive, 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, a Super Multi optical drive, Bluetooth & WiFi, and a 2 megapixel web cam. MSI also throws in its Turbo Drive technology, which allows you to overclock the notebook by as much as 15 percent.
In terms of the design, the new MSI notebook is largely generic in its appearance. Although it’s nothing to write home about, the unit doesn’t try to be more than it is. Aside from its looks (see pictures below), you get HDMI output for use on large TVs, one E-SATA connector and a 6-cell battery.
Given that the 15.4-inch widescreen display resolution is only 1280 x 800 with the GeForce 9600 GT pushing the pixels behind it, you should be able to play most games at an enjoyable frame rate with pretty good visuals. Just don’t expect top-notch performance in resource hungry games such as Crysis, Far Cry 2 or S.T.A.L.K.E.R on this one — those types of heavy games are still better experienced on a high end desktop.
If you’re in the market for a cheap and decent laptop, the new MSI gaming notebook may serve you right. The price point is good, and you do get decent hardware. You would be hard pressed to find anything that plays games decently at a lower price point.
| LCD | 15.4 WXGA (1280 x 800) |
| VIDEO | NVIDIA 9600 GT / 512MB |
| CHIPSET | NVIDIA MCP77 |
| CPU | AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core |
| MEMORY | 2GB x 2 (DDR2) |
| STORAGE | 250GB (SATA) |
| OPTICAL | Super Multi |
| WLAN | 802.11 b/g/n |
| BlueTooth | YES |
| HDMI | YES |
| WedCam | 2.0M |
| E-SATA | YES |
| Battery | 6-cell |
| OS | Vista Home Premium |
More information on the GX630 can be found on the MSI Web site.
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I would consider getting this laptop. The price is good, your not going to get desktop gaming but decent enough to play your average games wow ect. It would also serve as a laptop for college
Yeah except if you google the laptop, it is selling for around $1050 right now.
Oh man, I just got a Dell Inspiron 1420 with an underpowered Gefoce 8400m gs which can't even run CUDA and now i'm beginning to see so many cheaper and more powerful alternatives to that. They're mainly from Asus, MSI or Acer, but i'd hit that in a jiffy, although the popular opinion is that their laptops lack in quality. I saw some Asuses and they look just right
Not bad at all. Although battery life will be very short due processor and screen size.
I would consider getting this laptop. The price is good, your not going to get desktop gaming but decent enough to play your average games wow ect. It would also serve as a laptop for college
$800 laptops have been able to play Wow really well for years...
dude what are you talking about? it's at newegg for only $799.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] &Tpk=gx630
This is similiarly priced with ASUS notebooks of similiar specs. Which makes sense considering both run the same type of business.
Its not that it can run WoW, its that it doesn't have a crippled 8400 or 8600, its running a 9600 which would only be slightly worse then the HD3870 considering its a notebook 9600. Also the turbo switch when you are plugged into AC makes sense.
Yeah, but someone mentioned that it cold wow, as if that were some kind of ultimate achievement.
Who decided that that keyboard layout was a good idea?
Why would you ever need TWO backslash keys?
It only serves to make the right-hand shift key super tiny and that much harder to hit. Useless. Plus, why would you have the track pad biased to the left? Wouldn't it be better to distance it from the ASDW keys for use in FPS's?
And is it [i]that[i] important that the arrow keys be full sized if you traditionally use ASDW for gaming? Why not just half-sized like some other notebooks?
Who cares where the track pad is? Who uses a track pad for gaming? USB mouse FTW!
This is similiarly priced with ASUS notebooks of similiar specs. Which makes sense considering both run the same type of business.Its not that it can run WoW, its that it doesn't have a crippled 8400 or 8600, its running a 9600 which would only be slightly worse then the HD3870 considering its a notebook 9600. Also the turbo switch when you are plugged into AC makes sense.
Yeah but a 9600M GT sounds a little weak, even at the 1200*800 resolution, it has only 32 Stream processors compared to double it's desktop counterpart. I know Ati/Nvidia have always done this to their mobile GPU's but I still don't like the sound of it...
It might just be enough for most games at that screen's max. resolution, but I wish they would work harder giving consumers a more powerful mobile gpu solution for a decent price.
All in all this is not bad and would be great for 95% of the niche market that it serves. So I might just have to look into the mobile gpu benchmarks sometime.
We're going to start listing laptops with shit slow CPUs and class 2 GPUs as "gaming laptops"? Pfft. No.
This is as much of a gaming machine as a HP Dv5t, or Asus N80Vn. The ability to play warcraft does NOT make a laptop a "gaming" laptop. A high end GPU does. The laptop does not have a high end GPU, it has a performance class GPU, like most multimedia laptops.... only most multimedia laptops carry more high end features, and a superior screen.
Try again MSI. Where are your laptops with 55nm 9800m GS and mobility 4850 chips? Its like MSI just announces crap just for giggles, and availability is some kind of afterthought.
I have the GX 610, mine was $850 with a HD 2600 and TL-60. Still an awesome laptop for the money.
Hey fulle, not everyone has $3000 laying around, or needs to run Crysis at highest settings.
Entry level gaming laptops cost 1k right now. Not 3k. But anything with less than a 8700m has no business calling itself a gaming laptop. Do you have any idea how many mainstream laptops have a 9600m GT or 8600m GT GPU? Competitors are dropping 9650m GTs into 14.1" laptops. Wake up.
The 8700m is less than 5% more powerful than the 9600m GT.
Fulle, the difference between 9600m, 9650m, 8700m's are marginal... and anyways, a 9600m overclocks far higher than 8700m can ever hope for and achieve higher performance.
"Try again MSI. Where are your laptops with 55nm 9800m GS and mobility 4850 chips? Its like MSI just announces crap just for giggles, and availability is some kind of afterthought."
Yes, your ass was talking about high-end mobile gpu's referring to 9800m GS and above. As I mentioned, 9600 and 9700 mobiles pump out relatively similar performance, anything above that and you're talking about 256-bit bus cards. Yes, you WILL be paying 2k+ for them at the cheapest.