MSI GX740-079US
Specifications

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Average of 4 scores (from 4 reviews)
Reviews for the MSI GX740-079US
Source: Trusted Reviews

MSI provides an awesome specification at an awesome price in an outdated chassis. If you're willing to put up with its somewhat garish looks, terrible battery life and a few other foibles, nothing for even close to the same money can touch this GX740 laptop when it comes to sheer gaming performance.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 10/19/2010
Rating: Total score: 80% price: 100% performance: 90% features: 80% mobility: 30%
Source: CNet

What on Earth is going on here? A gaming laptop available for under £900? My, how times change. This is the MSI GX740, a 17.3-inch behemoth that wants to be our gaming buddy.
The 17.3-inch MSI GX740 is a peculiar laptop with some curious design flaws. It may not be particularly slick, but it offers astonishing performance for the price.
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 09/27/2010
Rating: Total score: 80%
Source: Stuff TV

Outstanding value for a high-performance games machine, made possible by some sensible spec compromises
Single Review, online available, Very Short, Date: 08/12/2010
Rating: Total score: 100%
Source: Comp Reviews

The MSI GX740-079US is a 17-inch laptop that is designed for gamers on the go and it does this job quite well. Graphics and performance are both very strong and should handle gaming just fine. There are some quirks that may put off some buyers though including the keyboard layout and the battery pack placement. Still, for $1400, it does an excellent job of blancing gaming and more general purpose computing.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 07/13/2010
Rating: Total score: 80%
Comment
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870:
High-end DirectX 11 graphics card based on a desktop HD5770. Models with GDDR5 are ideal but there may be a bottleneck due to the 128 Bit memory bus.
Modern games should be playable with these graphics cards at low settings and resolutions. Casual gamers may be happy with these cards.
» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.
Intel Core i7: The Intel Core i7 for laptops is based on the LG1156 Core i5/i7 CPU for desktops. The base clock speed of the CPUs is relatively low, but because of a huge Turbo mode, the cores can dynamically overclock to up to 3.2 GHz (920XM). Therefore, the CPU can be as fast as high clocked dual-core CPUs (using single threaded applications) but still offer the advantage of 4 cores. Because of the large TDP of 45 W / 55 W, the CPU is only intended for large laptops.
720QM: The Core i7-720QM is the slowes Core i7 Quad Core in 2009 and clocks between 1.6 and 2.8 GHz (due to the Turbo Mode). Therefore, it combines the advantages of a slow quad core CPU with a fast single core one. Compared to the faster Core i7 mobile CPUs, the 720QM only features 6MB L3 Cache.» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.
17.00":
This range for display formats was and is a rarity. It is larger than the general standard of 15 inches, but not yet in the range of large workstations. One usually has higher screen resolutions available, but portability suffers from that.
» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.3.2 kg:
A laptop with this weight is comparatively heavy and less designed for mobility than for use at the desk. Therefore, the devices tend to shine less with battery life than with a large screen and higher performance.
MSI: Micro-Star International (MSI) was founded in 1986 in Taiwan. MSI is especially known as a manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards for PCs, but also offers computer accessories, complete systems, motherboards, graphics cards, laptops, desktop PCs, monitors and other components. However, the Microstar brand name in Germany belongs to the Medion company. MSI is known for its gaming products and has developed a wide range of gaming laptops and desktop PCs. The company is also active in workstations, servers and industrial automation. MSI has offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
85%: This rating is slightly above average, there are somewhat more devices with worse ratings. However, clear purchase recommendations look different.
» Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.