Gaming Allure.

When looking for a compact gaming notebook, given the often restricted graphics card performance in the 15" market, there is a big risk of just giving up. The fact that the Geforce 9600M GT so commonly provided can be outdone, even in this mid range of machines, is proved by MSI with its GT627. Equipped with a Geforce 9800M GS graphics card, this compact laptop can handle even the most recent gaming titles with ease.

The MSI GT627 is one of the few notebooks in 15.4 inch format to offer a separate number pad. The question of having a separate number pad or not is really quite a difficult one, benefiting from a more spacious layout and larger keys when without, while greatly aiding the input of numeric material when present. To what degree this is actually useful on a gaming notebook is however more doubtful.

Be that as it may, through the red imprinting on both the arrows keys and the number pad as well as on the usual, although in the case of the MSI 627, heavily, miniaturised arrow keys as well as in the area of the AWSD keys, MSI has attempted to highlight the notebook's intended gaming use.

Speaking of gaming use... the positioning of the FN key in Thinkpad style at the very bottom left corner of the keyboard was somewhat questionable, although  when used in combination with Ctrl - ^ will bring up the console in many games [when using a German keyboard layout]. This means the MSI GT627 keyboard may take some time to get used to.
The typing feel can be described as rather soft yet requiring deep key presses. Since the keyboard unit tends to give way marginally in certain areas, pressing hard on the keys makes them seem to spring a bit more than usual. This takes some getting used to when typing documents however for gaming use its role should generally be much less significant.

The special function keys have also been made visually appealing in their touch-sensitive type zones with corresponding illumination above the keyboard. The less appealing feature of this is its shiny surface which very quickly collects unattractive fingerprints.

The touchpad provides an extermely comfortable and appropriately slippery surface with one scroll zone on the right hand side which is however not marked visually. We had nothing bad to say about the pad's touch response either. On the other hand, of the two provided, the touchpad's right click button could unfortunately only be depressed with a relatively heavy click. This lead to some serious tiring of the thumbs with repeated use and hence we found it most comfortable to press the button using both hands.

For a notebook specifically designed for games, one extremely important component is its graphics card. In this machine MSI has included the Geforce 9800M GS, a graphics card from the top performance class in our comparison of mobile graphics solutions that is usually only included in larger 17" models.
Technically the Geforce 9800M GS corresponds to the 9600M GT desktop core with a higher clock speed.

With its Intel P8600 CPU, MSI hasn't really chosen a gaming-level CPU for its Megabook GT627. The chip's key features are as follows: 2.4 GHz, 3MB L2-Cache, 1066 MHz frontside bus, 25W TDP. This Penryn dual-core chip from Intel is manufactured in a 45 nm process corresponding to the current standard. The main feature of the Pxxxx models is above all their low power consumption and heat dissipation. For this reason these chips can be used in extremely compact devices where sufficient cooling could otherwise be an issue.

This is most probably the reason why MSI is holding onto the Intel P-variants, and why they are not currently offering any other CPU options for the GT627. To date, as shown in our extensive Quad-Core comparison, it's still the MHz that count in the current games, rather than the number of cores - only with GTA IV do the quad-cores gain a large performance advantage. MSI uses this fact to its favour, integrating an easy-access overclocking function into the GT627.

The Turbo Button above the keyboard raises the CPU clock to 2.77 GHz; an increase of about 15%. Since the higher clock speed hugely increases not only the chip's energy usage but also its heat output, activating Turbo mode under load very soon leads to an increase in fan speed.

The Turbo function enables a power saving mode when not under load along with the related benefits of reduced emissions while at the same time providing a considerable performance boost on demand when needed. The price of the CPU also remains quite low when compared to more powerful CPUs. Quite an interesting and promising solution for a compact gaming notebook!

How effect is the Turbo function for various uses though? In the 3D Mark 2006 benchmark test, the MSI GT627 at regular clock speed achieved a good 8313 points and 2175 in the CPU score. With Turbo mode activated the result improved a meagre 3% to 8586 points. The CPU score however increased by almost 16% to 2521 points.

There was a similar story for the PC Mark 2006 benchmark test. Here the already good result of 6481 points increased with the help of the Turbo function to an extremely good 7384 points. That's an improvement of 14%.

The influence of the Turbo mode on the Cinebench R10 benchmark was also extremely interesting. In single core rendering it provided a performance boost of 17% and in multi core rendering an advantage of 16%. The results on the OpenGL shading test, were as surprising as they were impressive. Reaching 4636 points, the MSI GT627 gained an entire 25% of performance in Turbo mode.

With its Nvidia Geforce 9800M GS graphics card, MSI has provided quite a solid basis for current games. In the tests carried out, it became quite evident that the the Turbo function, with its 15% increase of CPU clock speed, had an important impact on the notebook's performance.

Call of Duty IV - Modern Warefare

One title in the standard repertoire of tests was the newly released yet ever  extremely popular shooter Call of Duty 4. As usual, three configuration modes were tested: minimum settings (800x600, everything on low/off, 0xAA), medium settings (1024x768, everything on/medium, 0xAA) and high quality (1280x1024, everything on/high, 4xAA).

On minimum settings, the benchmark test showed extremely good performance, with an average of 187.5 fps playing through the first single player mission. By activating the Turbo function, this performance can be increased even further (215.2 fps); an increase of around 15%.
The results for the medium settings were obviously more restricted but still easily very playable. The performance here averaged 83.9 fps, a result that could be only increased with the Turbo option to 84.9 fps. That corresponds to a performance increase of just over 1%.
Things weren't much different using the high quality settings. Here an average of 46.0 / 47.7 fps was achieved. The increase using the Turbo option here was around just 4%.

In all modes tested, Call of Duty IV - Modern Warfare remained quite playable. The influence of the Turbo function however was only noticeable using lowest detail settings. It seems then that, as usual, the graphics card was the limiting factor on high detail settings.

Crysis

High details: can or can't? That is the most common question asked in testing of strong performing systems with the shooter Crysis. This of course also applies then for the MSI Megabook GT627. The game-integrated benchmark test confirms the results of Call of Duty IV. The influence of the overclocked CPU decreases along with corresponding increases in graphics detail.
While the GPU benchmark on low details did show an increase of around 17% with the Turbo function, this increase sank to about 5% using medium settings, and on high details the effect was negligible. At a resolution of 1024x768 pixels on high detail the obtained result of 30.01 fps should technically still allow fluent gaming, however in practical gameplay things can and do get jerky at times. The increased performance demands of various visual effects can lead to temporary but visible drops in frame rate making the gameplay lag.

The biggest drawing card for the MSI GT627 is definitely its excellent price/performance ratio. Starting new from a price of 1100 euro, you get a compact gaming notebook with an efficient Intel CPU and a powerful Geforce 9800M GS graphics card. Thanks to the overclocking function, the processor can gain a lot of ground on more powerful, yet also much more expensive chips.

The GT627 only runs into problems with brand-new and extremely GPU and CPU intensive games, such as GTA IV. To be fair, it must be said that almost all  current - even performance-strong - mobile systems have their fair share of the same issues.

Upon close inspection, the case does indeed reveal its price-class, nevertheless MSI delivers a quite acceptable package, that for the most part remains blunder free overall. It was only the battery life that, hardly surprisingly, suffered under the load of the performance strong components included.

Also welcome were the results of the laptop's emission measurements; above all the restrained noise output performing office tasks, easily allowing "civil" use of the gaming notebook.
The display was also impressive thanks to its generous WSXGA resolution, however showed its weaknesses in terms of its illumination and viewing angle stability.

All in all the MSI Megabook GT627 is definitely to be recommended for the thrifty gamer. For its attractive price/performance ratio, certain minor cuts in quality need to be expected now and then, however for gaming use this probably takes the back seat somehow anyway.