Before we delve under the lid, let's take a look at the outside of this large notebook. A huge 17.3" display running at 1920 x 1080 is about as big as notebooks get without morphing into desktops. It's a TN panel rather than the sexy new IPS technology that is taking over, yet image quality is above average. The matte finish makes it great for use in areas that would turn glossy displays into expensive mirrors. The SteelSeries keyboard is almost full-sized, and the LED backlighting can be tailored to your interior decor. As expected, it feels nice to use, with minimal flex; if only we could say the same of the shoddy touchpad. Luckily, most PC garners will use a mouse instead. MSI has cut costs by using plastic throughout the case's construction, yet it doesn't feel fragile. At almost 4kg, it's a heavy brute, and battery life while gaming will be around the one hour mark, so don't expect it to entertain you on international flights. Wi-Fi and USB 3.0 are nice inclusions, but the use of a single Bigfoot Killer Ethernet port is not. It's supposed to lower latency for gaming, but we've had major issues getting certain games to run over this "premium" product in the past.
Most laptops these days are packing serious CPU power, and the GT70 is no exception. Intel's i7-3630QM is a potent little critter, running at an energy-conserving 2.4GHz for normal duties but ramping up to 3.4GHz when the going gets tough - it's a HyperThreaded quad-core beast. It comes paired up with a rather silly 16GB of memory, which is total overkill unless you're doing 3D rendering, video editing or building a homebrew nuke. Memory is as cheap as chips though, so this excessive gesture isn't worth getting upset about.
The final element that makes this truly game-friendly is the NVIDIA GTX 670M GPU. Despite the 1/4 name, it shares very little in common with the desktop GTX 670. Its basically a renamed GTX 570M, and uses the slower, hotter Fermi design of the previous generation rather than the Kepler design used in the rest of the GTX 600 series. It's still a decent little performer, running rings around most other gaming laptops and absolutely pummelling the graphics performance seen from integrated GPUs. We recorded highly playable framerates in Dirt 3 with everything on Ultra (63FPS average, 53FPS minimum), while the 3DMark 11 extreme score of 2080 is very respectable for a laptop. Our final benchmark, Battlefield 3, ran very well at Ultra detail, 1920 x 1080 resolution, with an average frame rate of 70fps. During this demo we were impressed by the GT70's built-in speakers, which sounded much better than the tinny crap found in most laptops.
MSI has built a well-rounded machine in the GT70. With a massive display, excellent keyboard and solid hardware specs, it's a laptop that is truly capable of playing today's MA blockbusters with most of the detail on high. For the price, we would have liked to see a slightly more powerful GPU using the latest architecture though, such as the Radeon HD 7970M seen in the slightly more expensive Alienware M18x, but this is a very decent effort.
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