MSI GT780R Available Soon

It’s been a while since the GT780 was first announced, but now MSI has started to show up for pre-order on eBay and elsewhere. The 780R is the version with dual hard drives in RAID 0 (or SSD/HDD combinaitons,) and the one that seems to become available first. MSI has previously launched the GT683R–a 15.6-inch variant with similar specs–and the GT780R is, not surprisingly, a 17-inch gaming laptop but with a different design.

The base components are nevertheless the same: a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor from the latest Sandy Bridge batch clocked at 2.0GHz that normally goes to 2.9GHz with Turbo Boost. MSI is however using its proprietary Turbo Drive Engine (TDE) technology that takes the standard overclocking feature even further. Up to 30% further to be more precise (there’s a video explaining TDE in the GT683R post linked to above). All this overclocking is of course bound to generate some extra heat, but judging from past experiences it is really not as bad as it sounds. The bigger 17-inch model should also be better equipped to handle excess heat as opposed to the comparatively small (considering the high-end hardware) GT683.

SteelSeries Keyboard and Custom Backlighting

Unlike its 15-inch counterpart, the GT780 is also inspired by the Alienware lineup in that it comes with customizable LED backlighting for various parts of the keyboard. Said keyboard, by the way, is a component that MSI wants us to focus our attention on. It is designed by the gaming apparel manufacturer SteelSeries, which is supposedly more rugged than average and comes with larger CTRL and ALT button as well as a repositioned Windows key.

GT780 keyboard

The CTRL + W, A, S, D buttons are also selectively backlit in gaming mode instead of highlighted in red like previous models, which does indeed sound like a great feature in a gaming laptop. As for the rest of the exterior, it was “inspired by design concepts found in space ship” (from the press release). The press release doesn’t go into specifics as to what particular spaceship it was inspired by, but it should be emphasized that it was a spaceship and not a stealth bomber. Spaceships and stealth bombers aside, it looks like a clever keyboard and some extra thought has obviously gone into its creation.

Specifications

Other than the aforementioned processor, the GT780R has room for dual drives, which can be configured in RAID o for better performance, or for better performance still: with a fast SSD for combined with a hard drive for storage. The graphics card is the new GTX 560M from Nvidia with 1.5GB of GDDR5 and hopefully the version that hasn’t been somewhat crippled by a 128-bit memory bus instead of 192-bit, which the card is capable of (thanks, Chatmort for providing this important detail about the GTX 560M).

Furthermore, the laptop can house up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM (most likely spread over 4 slots). It is also generously equipped with 2 USB 3.0 ports, 3 USB 2.0, VGA, HDMI, Gigabit LAN and Bluetooth. The weight including a 9-cell battery is 3.9kg/8.6 pounds, which is more than OK for a laptop in this size category.

Here’s an unboxing/presentation by MSI:

Jesper Berg
Jesper Berg

Gaming hardware enthusiast since the 80286 era.

7 Comments
  1. Ah cool, thanks for the update! Sounds promising that the 570M will finally find a home, even if it’s under a new name..

  2. Oh and a little thing about the card, this one is the one with 192-Bit, for it to be 128-bit it must be 2go, 1go or .5go I think, for 192-bit is must be 1.5go, 3 go and another one. I can’t remember what it was. And I can’t find the post back on notebookreview.com :/

  3. I’ve heard the new MSI with the 570M will be called GT780DXR and will be available around august, end-july with luck. These are not yet confirmed but still.

  4. @Gameyb: Yeah, the unboxing phenomenon is a piece of “geek porn” that I’ve never quite understood either… But there’s not much of substance available yet on this machine. Better than nothing, I figured.

  5. It looks like you’re right (again)! Now I’ll have to revise the GPU post I just penned 🙂 (I’m guessing you meant ‘not quite the 580M’?) notebookcheck has it listed among the 570M candidates, but I can’t see it up for pre-order or for sale anywhere yet. The only alternative is the cheaper GX780 with the GT 555M.

    Interesting comparison of the heat. I’d take a bit more noise over a hot palm rest any day, but fortunately for the G74sx the heat looks confined to the upper part of the keyboard. At least when idle.

  6. You forgot something Berg, The GT780R will have the gtx560M, and there will be the option to put the GTX570M in it, not quite the GTX570M but it’s better than the default option. The MSI model runs cooler than the G74SX too ( http://i52.tinypic.com/amqjx2.jpg ) The one on top is the G74SX and the one below is an MSI. The MSI is a little louder but not much according to some people.

  7. I’m gonna sound like a jerk, but who cares about the box and the peripheral package. Jump right to the laptop and don’t start with the customer service number. Major buzz kill.

    That said, looks cool 🙂

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