MSI GT680 Gaming Laptop Review (SSD/Bluray/i7/Nvidia)

1. Introduction2. MSI GT680 (Bundle)3. MSI GT680 (The Machine /1 )4. MSI GT680 (The Machine /2 )5. Installed Software, Testing Methodology and Bios6. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: PcMark Vantage10. Synthetic: PCMark 711. Synthetic: Cinbench R11.5 64 bit12. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra13. Synthetic: Hard Drive & SSD Performance14. Real World: BluRay Playback With PowerDVD15. Real World: Flash HD Playback Performance16. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink MediaEspresso17. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.018. Gaming: Total War Shogun 219. Gaming: Dirt 320. Gaming: Dead Space 221. Gaming: Alien V Predator22. Technical: Battery Life23. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Screen Quality25. Technical: Power Consumption26. Technical: Acoustics Performance27. Closing Thoughts28. View All Pages

There is certainly no shortage of high powered gaming laptops available on the market today, but it takes something really special to stand out in such a crowded marketplace. MSI have sent us their GT680 gaming laptop for review which features a dual drive configuration (with SSD), powerful Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia GTX460M graphics.

Is this an ideal laptop for all your mobile gaming demands?

Specifications Overview

• The latest 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
• Exclusive TDE Technology
• Exclusive DDR3 SO-DIMM x 4 slot Design
• Sound by Dynaudio
• THX TruStudio Pro Provides Excellent Surround Sound Effect
• High-end NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 460M discrete graphics card
• Latest & fastest Data Transfer Technology USB 3.0

The MSI GT680 arrives in a heavy, colourful box with an image of the machine on the front and a list of specifications down the side panels.

Our machine had a custom MSI carrying bag included which has the name of the company on the front and a plethora of pockets for transporting various items.

The bundle is extensive, there is literature on the product, a user manual, software discs, an MSI branded optical mouse and a free copy of Assassins Creed II.

The power supply is a Delta Electronics model, rated at 19.5V – 7.7A. It is self switching and can be used around the globe on your travels.

The battery supplied is the BTY-M6D which is a 7800 mAh, 87Wh model.

The machine itself is a rather unusually styled beast with angular curves reminiscent of an earlier Alienware product.

The logo is embossed into the middle of the lid, with a honeycomb effect accented around it. This lights up when turned on.

The screen is a glossy 15.6 inch model running at a native resolution of 1920×1080 (1080P), ideal for high definition media playback, supported by the internal BluRay drive.

When the lid is opened, the design is certainly eye catching. Two speakers are situated at the top left and top right of the lower chassis area, these are accented with a red/pink colouring around the grills, to match the lines of the machine.

The onboard sound is supported by THX TruStudio PRO processing and there are four DynAudio branded speakers built into the chassis with a subwoofer for good measure. The sound is significantly better than the majority of laptops we have tested in the last year, although it certainly won't be replacing a dedicated set of speakers at home. The bass response in particular is impressive for the limited physical dimensions, although if pushed high there is some noticeable clipping and distortion, which we would expect anyway.

The WASD keys are marked in red lettering, signifying the gaming credentials immediately. The keyboard is chiclet design, and is full sized. It is reasonably responsive and should appeal to a fairly wide audience. I personally prefer a keyboard with an old style IBM' click' feel but this style is popular in 2011.

The keyboard has a reasonable amount of flex in the middle, as can be seen in the video above. In this particular case it isn't a cause for concern as the GT680 feels as if it could withstand some abuse.

Connectivity is good. Video can be delivered over VGA and HDMI 1.4 out which supports resolutions up to 2560×1600 if you have a 30 inch screen handy. Full stereoscopic 3D is supported thanks to the Nvidia solution. There are four 3.5mm audio connectors with full 7.1 surround capabilities. On the front of the machine there is a card reader which supports MMC and SD/HC. There are also two USB 2.0 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA II connector for complete support for hard drives and HD video cameras. Gigabit ethernet, wireless and Bluetooth are also included and can be accessed by touch sensitive buttons under the screen.

Our particular review sample was also supplied with a Bluray drive for all high definition media demands.

The webcam is a new HD version, supporting 720p at up to 30 frames per second, very nice indeed and a perfect partner for the latest Skype.

The screen is supported by a chrome style style support bar which seems very strong, and while it isn't immediately discernible, the side panels have a lighted strip, which pairs up well with the front and side glowing sections. The lower half of the screen sides also have a lighted strip.

The offset trackpad is very good, and while we tend to avoid them when possible, this particular model would be fine for light use when traveling. The chrome style surround might not appeal to everyone, but we liked it. The inclusion of some handy LED's at the bottom is an inspired design decision.

Removing the rear panel is straightforward and we are exposed to the internals, a few minutes later. The chassis has room for a dual drive configuration, ideal for RAID 0 or an SSD & storage setup. There is an Intel 120GB SSD used in this build as the OS boot drive alongside a 500GB 2.5 inch mechanical drive which can be used for storage. Our review system also had a bluray optical drive installed.

The bios is well laid out, although it is pretty basic and doesn't allow for many fine tuning options.

A basic overview of the main panels within the GT680 bios.

When the system is first started, user intervention is required, to fine tune the software installation, as can be seen above.

With a complete software installation, the image above shows all the programs that are installed ‘out of the box'. Not a bad install, but a little bloated for our particular tastes.

Thanks to the use of the Intel SSD, the overall score is very high, not being limited to a mechanical drive.

System validation is available over here

Our review system is based around the Intel i7-2630QM processor which is a 4 physical & 4 logical core design running at 2ghz with a maximum turbo frequency of 2.9ghz. It has a 6MB cache and is built on 32nm lithography with a maximum TDP of 45W. There is 8GB of DDR3 memory installed in this machine, running at 1333mhz, but it can accept up to 16GB of memory, if your pockets are deep enough. The Nvidia GTX460M is a capable ‘mid range' mobile graphics solution and it is Direct X 11 capable.

Various configurations are being sold on Scan – our review system costs £1,547 inc vat.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
ASRock Ion3D – Atom D525 @ 1.8ghz
MSI FX600 – Intel Core i3 330M
MSI FX623 – Intel Core i5 460M

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark Vantage
PCMark 11
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HD Tach
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2
Alien V Predator
Total War Shogun 2
Dead Space 2
Dirt 3

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter
Nikon D300S SLR with R1C1 Kit.
Panasonic Lumix TZ10

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

The GTX460M delivers fairly good frame rates at these settings, indicating reasonable gaming performance on tap.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. We are using the Entry preset.

We used the ‘Performance’ settings for our 3D Mark Vantage testing today.

The Intel Core i7 2630QM is a powerful mobile chip, scoring almost 36,000 points in 3DMark Vantage. The score indicates good overall performance, achieving almost 8,500 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance.

Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Scoring 1808 points in 3DMark 11 at the default resolution and settings is a good achievement for a laptop.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

A strong showing in PCMark Vantage, with an impressive overall scoring of 14,183 points.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

Again, a score of just under 4,000 points is a very positive score for a laptop system and one of the best we have recorded to date.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

When comparing against the Core i5/i3 and ATOM processors, the differences from the Core i7 powered MSI GT680 laptop are noticeable, scoring 4,73 points. This would be an ideal ‘casual' rendering system, when on the move.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The power of the Core i7 2630QM processor is evident from these results, able to distance itself significantly from the Core i5 and Core i3 machines being used for comparison. Memory bandwidth is also a particularly strong result for the MSI GT680 system.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance so we used two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate both the solid state and mechanical drives inside this system.

A good set of results from the Intel Solid State Drive, showing the potential gains to be had from using one as a boot drive.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of TRON LEGACY.

The additional power of the Core i7 helps lower the processing overhead, dropping to 7 percent and leaving plenty of free cycles for multitasking, if needed.

We then recorded the CPU demand over a specific set of time to get a ‘real world’ rolling scale of activity. The Core i7 processor is easily capable of delivering a fantastic High Definition media experience.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

The Core i7 processor maintains CPU usage between 4 percent and 16 percent, averaging 9 percent overall. No problems at all with the HD YouTube experience.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2hr 12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are disabling, then enabling hardware acceleration – showing any gains from Nvidia's CUDA.

When hardware acceleration is enabled, the encoding time drops by over 10 minutes, which is a huge gain in this specific test. If we opted for the quality encoding setting with hardware acceleration disabled, the differential would be even greater.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evaluate motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on BluRay. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content, so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

We connected the MSI GT680 to an external LaCie 730 monitor for image quality testing.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	MSI GT680
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	3
Bridge Traffic	3
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	3
Roller Coaster	3
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	2
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	179

The nVidia 460m is capable of delivering a very high level of image quality.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We are testing at 1080p and 720p in Direct X 11 mode.

At 1080p this Direct X 11 engine proves to be too much for the modest Nvidia GTX460m solution, giving an average of 12 frames per second. Lowering the resolution to 720p however ensures that the engine is playable, with an average frame rate over 35 fps.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

Dirt 3 is a great game and it is perfectly playable at the native 1080p resolution. Not the most demanding engine but a good indication that the MSI GT680 is a capable gaming machine.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

Dead Space 2 doesn't have a demanding engine and the MSI GT680 laptop powers through this without a problem, even at native panel resolution.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

This Direct X 11 engine is demanding and the MSI GT680/GTX460m struggles to power it at 1920×1080. The resolution would need to be lowered to make this game perfectly playable.

To test the battery today we put the machine through three sets of real world situations. One as a media movie lover on the move, a person wanting to watch HD media on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness (any less and quality suffers). Secondly as a business man, using the machine for productivity with wireless enabled and balanced power settings with a mid way (around half) brightness setting. Thirdly as a gamer on the move, with the nVidia solution fully active and screen brightness up high.

The 7800 mAh/87Wh, 9 cell battery is capable of keeping the machine alive for many hours under normal conditions, although when gaming you can expect the battery to be about to give up around the 1 hr and 30 minutes mark.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together.

Under extended load the CPU temperatures peak at 82c, with the fan generating a lot of air to keep it under control.

We also attached 5 diodes to the rear of the machine to measure the load temperatures of various parts of the chassis. These were measured after 1 hour of intensive work.

Warm air is forced out the side of the machine, although the zones marked with 1/2 can get noticeably warmer than the middle and lower parts of the chassis as the CPU and GPU cooling heatpipes are in this area.

We tested the MSI panel with a range of 1080p movies, bluray discs and games. We also used a La Cie measurement gun for some of the reading analysis.

The panel with this particular laptop is very good and it shows a particular strength with high definition 1080p. The colour image and grayscale testing highlighted a great detail response, even able to display some subtle changes with media saturation and colour. Banding as expected can be noticeable but is better than many panels we have tested recently. It is on a par with the Alienware M17x R3 screen which we tested earlier this year. Focusing quality is also high but we noticed some backlighting inconsistencies at the edges of the panel, and in the corners. Many people might not notice this, but it is there and our measurement tool was able to record some minor fluctuation. Text is clear and sharp, right down to a very small size.

Offset viewing is very good although with the gloss finish on the screen, backlight glare is noticeable and may annoy some of the prospective audience. It can be distracting, with a light behind the viewer, although we all expect this with a glossy style screen finish anyway. It is a compromise for bright, rich and vibrant media. There was no noticeable artifacting or ghosting when playing games such as Dirt 3 or Shogun 2 or when watching bluray discs such as Batman and Avatar.

We used Displaymate to analyse the panel and found the overall image quality to be well above average for this specific market. The Gamut range in Gamutvision was also impressive, much as we expected with our visual tests beforehand. Colour reproduction is also strong although we noticed a very minor blue shift to neutral gray, we were able to tune this out with software settings.

White purity shows a minor shift between 5% and 18% across the full area of the screen with a little more pronouncement at the lower corners. This is a good result and generally the images look clean and pure when watching high definition media. Before calibration we noticed a minor amount of blue corruption with the white purity tests, but hardly noticeable under real world conditions.

Black definition is good, although there is noticeable leak at the corners which degrades a little from the overall result. It does look worse in the technical image above however under real world conditions it is only noticeable with a very dark image, such as a few scenes in Batman. There is a leak also from the bottom of the screen, which trails upwards by around 10-15%. It is a good result however.

To test power consumption today we are using a Kill A Watt power meter. We loaded the system with some games and measured results at full load, when watching a movie and when idle.

A good set of figures particularly when we compare against a desktop system with similar components.

We measure from a distance of around 2 foot from the chassis with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When under normal conditions, the laptop is reasonably quiet, although it can generally be heard, regardless of load. At full load however the fan noise is easily noticeable and is a side effect of having such a powerful mobile processor inside it.

MSI has created a fantastic laptop, with an overall emphasis on balanced all round capabilities. While it is marketed as a ‘gaming machine' there is no doubt in my mind that it can be comfortably put to use as an all round workhorse and even as a mobile rendering station thanks to Intel's powerful Core i7 2630QM processor. This is one of the finest processors available on the market today and is a huge step up from the Core i3 and i5 models we have tested in the past.

The build quality of the GT680 is excellent and while the looks will not appeal to everyone it certainly is borrowing some ideas from the Alienware camp – the lit edges and glowing corners are eye catching and will attract an audience who like a ‘blinged' out machine. The keyboard and trackpad are both comfortable to use for many hours a day, although we noticed a fair amount of flex in the middle of the board. Not a major concern, but very noticeable.

Battery life is quite good, and being able to use a powerhouse laptop for over 3 hours under general conditions is a selling point, thanks to the high power output battery MSI have included.

Gaming performance is strong, although the GTX460M is no powerhouse when compared against today's leading solutions. Some of the latest Direct X 11 engines put quite a toll on the Nvidia hardware and settings or resolutions would need to be dropped in order to maintain playable frame rates. This is a common problem with a laptop under £1,500 and you will need to spend more if you want state of the art gaming performance.

MSI are selling three models of this machine right now on Scan, and the one we received was the top of the pile, featuring 8GB of ram, a Bluray drive and an Intel SSD configured as the boot drive. You can check out the configurations over here. We would have loved an option for an orange backlit keyboard as it really would have improved the overall appearance.

Pros:

• great all round performance
• striking looks
• good screen quality
• full sized keyboard
• competitively priced

Cons:

• graphics power is limited when dealing with the latest Direct X 11 engines
• can get a little loud under load
• no backlit keyboard

KitGuru says: A very fine laptop from MSI and worth looking into, especially if you are limited to £1,500 or less.

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