The design for gaminghas not seen through to completion. While the W, A, S, and D keys are highlighted in red, the left Ctrl key, which is also important for gamers, is not completely left, but right beside the Fn key. Those who like jump and run games won't be pleased by shrunk cursor keys too. If your hands are big, you might have troubles using them.
The mouse pointer can be precisely controlled by the 7.4 x 4.7 cm² touch pad. The vertical scroll area helps browsing through long documents and web sites. Because of the big resolution of its WUXGA panel, the GX700 does not provide a horizontal scroll area ex factory. But, if you need one, you can simply configure the driver for it. Both of the pad's buttons are rather stiff and especially the left one clearly too loud. But, overall they work properly.
The display properties of the reviewed MSI GX700 Extreme differ from most other notebooks of its price class. The high resolution of 1920x1200 pixels (WUXGA) is uncommonly fine and it comes with a matt surface which is totally remarkable considering the GX700 is designed for gaming and multimedia. At the cost of brilliance, the display does at least not reflect.
The display scores average in our tests. Besides the matt surface good viewing angles get obvious at once. Especially horizontal the possible viewing angles are above average. As expected the quality diminishes faster horizontally, but, it stays just alright. The colours are slightly dull, but neural. The contrast seem also somewhat weak.
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Checking games the display showed its real strong side. Even if it is not used in its native resolution, which is very fine, the displayed picture is always alright. The resolution of 1280x800 pixels (WXGA) is brilliantly represented, so, the load on the video card can be reduced when running current games, which often do not reach sufficient frame rates for smoothly running at native display resolutions. Furthermore, after-images are rare when running fast shooters and there is hardly any video noise when watching movies.
On the contrary the measurements are not as good. The average brightness of just 119.9 cd/m² is clearly below-average. Furthermore, if the background is uniform, you'll detect a darkening to the upper corners with the naked eye. As expected with regards to our personal impression, the contrast ratio and the colour representation are below average.
The MSI Megabook GX700 Extreme is based on the most up-to-date technology by Intel, a Core 2 Duo T7500 with a clock-rate of2,2 GHz and 4 MByte L2-Cache. The processor is part of the current Santa Rosamobile technology and is connected to the chip-set via a 800 MHz bus. Furthermore, there are two GByte DDR2-667-RAM available, which is a good choice for Windows Vista.
The choice of the video card is clearly surprising. Although the look of the GX700 Extreme emphasises its gaming character there is only a nVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT with 512 MByte GDDR2-Speicher in its inside. Most other gaming notebooks of the same size are at least equipped with a Geforce 8700M GT. This is probably because its hardly possible to cool a more powerful chip inside the specially slim case - a compromise to the look.
The results in the 3D benchmarks are compared to competitor notebooks surprisingly good though. This might be a result of the good Windows configuration of the notebook we reviewed or of improvements of the video card driverdeveloped during the last few weeks and months. We used the newest Beta-reference driver by nVIDIA, version number 171.16 throughout the review.
The result of the 3DMark06 benchmark run at a resolution of 1280x800 pixels was 3608 points. The PCMark05 resulted in5182 points, which isabove average. The universal Crystalmark2004R2 certify97353 Punkte, Windows Vista displays 4.5 performance points – both are also good results.
The capacity of the built-in hard disk by Western Digital is more than sufficient for a lot of games and multimedia files. As in previous reviews the 250 GByte hard disk of the Scorpio series works always very fast and pleasingly quiet. Noises during access can only be suspected, because the loud CPU fan is much more evident.
| 3DMark 05 Standard | 6511 points |
| 3DMark 06 | 3608 points |
| Doom 3 | |||
| Resolution | Settings | Value | |
| 1024x768 | Ultra, 0xAA, 0xAF | 83.4 fps | |
| 800x600 | High, 0xAA, 0xAF | 106.3 fps | |
| 640x480 | Medium, 0xAA, 0xAF | 126.1 fps | |
| 640x480 | Low, 0xAA, 0xAF | 149.7 fps | |
| F.E.A.R. | |||
| Resolution | Settings | Value | |
| 1024x768 | GPU: max, CPU: max, 0xAA, 0xAF | 36 fps | |
| 800x600 | GPU medium, CPU medium, 0xAA, 0xAF | 114 fps | |
| 640x480 | GPU min, CPU min, 0xAA, 0xAF | 303 fps | |
| Crysis - CPU Benchmark | |||
| Resolution | Settings | Value | |
| 1920x1200 | Medium, 0AA, 0AF | 8.02 fps | |
| 1920x1200 | Low, 0AA, 0AF | 13.67 fps | |
| 1440x900 | Medium, 0xAA, 0xAF | 12.84 fps | |
| 1440x900 | Low, 0xAA, 0xAF | 31.58 fps | |
| 1280x800 | Medium, 0xAA, 0xAF | 15.15 fps | |
| 1280x800 | Low, 0xAA, 0xAF | 35.87 fps | |
| Crysis - GPU Benchmark | |||
| Resolution | Settings | Value | |
| 1920x1200 | Medium, 0AA, 0AF | 5.56 fps | |
| 1920x1200 | Low, 0AA, 0AF | 21.01 fps | |
| 1440x900 | Medium, 0xAA, 0xAF | 13.07 fps | |
| 1440x900 | Low, 0xAA, 0xAF | 35.34 fps | |
| 1280x800 | Medium, 0xAA, 0xAF | 15.59 fps | |
| 1280x800 | Low, 0xAA, 0xAF | 42.38 fps | |
If you are very sensible to noises, you won't be happy with this notebook. Regardless of the load, the fan runs permanently and is thereby clearly audible. We did hardly recognize any hard disk accesse due to a noise level of about 39.0 dbA. When running 3D games the speed of the fan is slowly increased in two further steps. So, the noise reaches 47.3 dbA after some minutes. The sound via the integrated speakers or via the headset is able to compensate the turbine like noise of the fan to some extent. Most other laptops of this class are clearly quieter though.
| Idle | 38.6 / 39 / 39 dB(A) |
| HDD | 39.1 dB(A) |
| DVD | 44.1 / 48.6 dB(A) |
| Load | 41.5 / 47.3 dB(A) |
30 dB silent 50 dB(A) loud |
Despite a loud fan the temperature increase of the MSI Megabook GX700 Extreme was above-average during our tests. The maximum was 38.4°C at the top side, which is already rather uncomfortable. At some parts the bottom side gets as hot as 52°C. We won't recommend running one of the current 3D games lap top.
When running standard office applications the temperatures stay alright. We measured up to 30°C at the top side and up to 31°C at the bottom side.
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| Maximum: 38.8 °C = 102 F Average: 31.8 °C = 89 F |
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| Maximum: 52.6 °C = 127 F Average: 37.8 °C = 100 F |
This MSI notebook is equipped with four stereo speakers and a small sub-woofer. Their sound is surprisingly good in computer games: Explosions and noises of weapons of the Egoshooter Crysis sound considering they are notebook speakers surprisingly full although the speakers are only recognized as standard stereo system by Windows.
However, this 4.1 system is not so fit for movies. Typical for this notebook class the speakers frequently omit smaller details. So, overall the sound is somewhat blurred. The sub-woofer is not able to compensate the weaknesses regarding middle and high tones of the four stereo speakers. Nonetheless, the sound system is sufficient for listening to background music.
A 9-cell battery with nearly 800 Wh capacity provides energy, if the notebook is unplugged. The battery weighs about 470 g and protrudes the back side of the notebook by about one and a half centimetre. In return, its runtime is good. Up to four hours are possible, under full load still nearly one and a half hours. When running standard applications like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint the runtime is about three to three and a half hours - laudable.
| Off / Standby | 0 / 0 Watt |
| Idle | 22.9 / 33 / 34.5 Watt |
| Load | 70.4 / 87.8 Watt |
| Idle (without WLAN, min brightness) | 4h 07min |
| WiFi Surfing | 2h 57min |
| DVD | 2h 08min |
| Load (maximum brightness) | 1h 29min |
Overall the MSI Megabook GX700 Extreme is a successful desktop replacement. Due to striking design it should be able to attract its target group, but put others off. The provided mouse, the headset, and the knapsack will surely attract attention at the next LAN party, whereas the knapsack makes it easier to get there.
Inside this 17 inch notebook there are a fast Core 2 Duo processor with 2.2 GHz by Intel, two GB RAM, and a fast 250 GB hard disk which ensure good performance in all fields of operation. The built-in nVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT video chip is generally no bad choice. Nonetheless, a more powerful chip would have been desirable for a gaming notebook of this size. Nevertheless, all current games can be played smoothly with the MSI Megabook GX700 Extreme.
Being comprehensively equipped, this MSI notebook stands out of the crowd. HDMI and VGA out, an analogue and an optical 5.1 audio out and finally a HD DVD drive are seldom provided in a bundle. The high resolution WUXGA display is somewhat dark and its colours are weak. Nonetheless, the desktop size is enormous and its interpolation properties are brilliant. However, a reflecting LCD with brilliant colours would probably better match the multimedia character of this notebook.
Although battery runtime is not a crucial aspect for 17 inch notebook, this MSI notebook scores alright here. This 3.5 kg light notebook needed to be recharged only after a maximum runtime of four hours.
During our test we found hardly weaknesses of the MSI Megabook GX700 Extreme. These are a not ideally designed and clattering keyboard and the high noise and temperature emissions. The display could be brighter too.
The MSI Megabook GX700 Extreme with the reviewed equipment will cost nearly 1400 Euro, but is not available yet. This laptop is about 150 Euro cheaper without HD-DVD drive. The 'Performance' model, which looks that striking, is available for about 1050 Euro and more.
