At CES 2015, MSI updated their range of gaming laptops in the GE series, but the most interesting part of the launch was the use of Nvidia’s new upper-midrange GeForce GTX 965M, which is based on the energy-efficient Maxwell architecture and has a lot in common with the desktop GTX 960.
The Taiwanese manufacturer MSI launched two newcomers with Nvidia’s brand new graphics chip GeForce GTX 965M, which by all accounts is a mobile equivalent of the upcoming GeForce GTX 960. The laptops in question are the 17-inch MSI GE72 and the 15-inch MSI GE62.
MSI’s GE62 Apache measures 15.6 inches and comes with a 1920 x 1080 panel. It replaces both predecessors GE60 and the more expensive GT60 in the same size category. Inside you’ll find an Intel Core i7-4720HQ (2.6GHz, 3.2GHz Turbo), up to 12 GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The larger GE72 Apache with a 17.3-inch screen comes with more or less identical specifications.
The main attraction, however, is the new graphics card GeForce GTX 965M with 1024 CUDA cores running at 944 MHz plus Boost, 2 GB of memory at an effective 5 GHz clock speed (GDDR5) and a 128-bit memory bus. This closely matches the specs of the brand new GTX 960 for desktops, which is rather unusual. Normally, laptop chips are considerably down-scaled compared to their desktop counterparts.
The transition to theMaxwell architecture helps keep the power consumption and heat generation to a minimum, which should extend the battery life up to 6 hours under lighter loads – an excellent figure for a gaming laptop. MSI has also trimmed the profiles of the new models.
Other gaming features include a keyboard from SteelSeries with multi-colored backlighting, a revised cooling solution with two fans, a network card from Killer NIC and sound via the Sound Blaster Cinema 2. MSI has not seen fit to drop the optical drive however, but the wireless network modules are now 802.11ac using an Intel chip, Bluetooth 4.0, two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, HDMI 1.4 ports and an SD card reader.
The new models should hit store shelves in January and sell for roughly the same prices as their predecessors.
