GX720 specifications and in depth look





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MSI has chosen to build the GX720 around the fast Intel Centrino 2 technology. The mainbord is equipped with a PM45 chipset and Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8400 cpu. Under code name Penryn this processor uses 45nm technology and comes with two physical cores running at 2,26GHz. This core speed is obtained by multiplying a 266MHz QDR Front Side Bus with 8.5. The P8400 knows different power states, by using Intel Speedstep technology the CPU can run at 1,6GHz by lowering its multiplier down to 6, MSI added a nice ECO button to their GX series in order to force the CPU to run at lower power states when on battery, decreasing the power requirements noticeably. On top of that there is Turbo button which overclocks the Front Side Bus up to 308MHz resulting in a CPU core clock of 2,6GHz (when connected to a wall socket), combined with the higher memory bandwidth this should yield into some nice performance benefits.

The graphics part rests on the NVIDIA 9600M GT which is based on the 65nm G96M core running at 500MHz. The 32 shaders processors are being put to use at 1250MHz where the 512MB GDDR3 memory runs at 800MHz using a 128bit wide bus. The 9600M GT is far from a desktop 9600 GT, best card to compare it with is the desktop 8600GT which runs its core, shaders and memory at 540/1180/700 MHz respectively and also comes with 32 shader units. Yes, people used to desktop video cards might find this as much as a surprise as it where to me, on first though I'd suspect this video card to perform much closer to the desktop 9600GT which comes with 64 shaders units where the GPU core, shaders and memory are running at 650/1625/900MHz respectively. Marketing got me there...



MSI has made the GX720 a very up to date notebook when it comes down to connectivity. On the left side we find a Modem and Gigabit Ethernet connection and two USB2.0 ports. Next to these there is an Optical Drive bay which can be either equipped with a DVD reader/writer or a Blu-Ray reader. On the right side we find another USB2.0 port, a mini USB port, an eSATA port, a headphone connector, a mic-in connector, line-in/out connectors, and a 4in1 card reader. The back side is less used; there we find a VGA and HDMI output and a DC-in battery charger connector. Also don't forget that there is a 2MP camera housed just above the 17" WXGA display and that this notebook comes with Bluetooth (optional) and an 802.11b/g/n WLAN card.



In size the GX720 is about the same as an ordinary 17" notebook, in thickness it isn't as ultra-flat as some if its competitors but that's not really the point I presume when you're in the gaming/portable desktop marketing segment.



A top down view on the keyboard reveals the touch-sense buttons on top: ECO modes and turbo mode, enable WLAN/Bluetooth, enable webcam, play/pause/ff/ffw multimedia buttons.



On the MSI site you can also find a rotational 3D view of the GX720, here is a smaller version: