The MSI Gaming Booth Tour with dGPUs in AIOs and Notebooks plus Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on June 29, 2015 3:00 PM ESTI’m always a fan of a workstation, although the reality of mobile workstations is not one I run into that often. Users wanting to process work on the go tend to log in to a system over the internet, or upload ideas for processing at a later date. The benefit here lies in the ability for people to work on the move (when internet is patchy) or for businesses to perform mobile presentations of CAD/Quadro accelerated work. As a result of the requirements, and the budgets of these users, mobile workstations tend to be larger than ultrabooks but smaller than desktop replacements, as a full workstation/dock might await them back in the office.
Nevertheless, MSI still pursues this space. This is achieved mostly through retrofitting their consumer designs with enterprise level hardware, and dialing back the styling to remain office-neutral. This means a generic black color scheme, potentially using aluminium/magnesium to save weight (rather than plastic to save cost), a full keyboard and high resolution calibrated displays. This is where devices such as the WS60 fit in:
Along with the 4K display and thin design profile, the 15.6-inch WS60 here had dual SSDs in RAID, a semi-customizable keyboard for shortcuts, Thunderbolt 2.0 and ISV certification. Under the hood was a mobile based Haswell i7 with optional vPro and a Quadro K2100M.
Users wanting more are pointed to the WT72, the workstation equivalent of the GT72. Storage moves up to four drives in RAID 0 and Quadro cards up to K4100M. This model above only has a 1080p display, and its design ultimately necessitates a desk environment for efficient working rather than say a lap or a tray table in an aircraft. On this size of a device, USB 3.1 and an ODD pretty much come as standard.
Interceptor Mouse and Mousepad
One common theme with gaming oriented PC hardware manufacturers is that they have all invested time and resources into peripherals. All of MSI’s major competition mice, keyboards, backpacks and other trinkets, although for the most part it is hard to tell if these are OEM or pre-purchased designs with agreements to use specific wording and logos. Previously MSI has released a couple of mice and a mouse mat, so at Computex we get updates to both.
The aluminium based mousepad that we saw at CES was quite large, measuring almost two feet in width. Based on feedback from the community, a smaller one will be made to allow for use on standard sized desks and for transporting to events.
The Interceptor mouse also gets a small update, with the focus on the show being a stereotypical smörgåsbord of statistics:
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Samus - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
The site has multiple "writers" but they specialize in certain areas of technology.TheJian - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
I don't read twitter (and block everything from them...LOL, heck I'd be fired for having an account) and just 4K with some obviously not playable and 95% of us playing other resolutions. Sorry not enough.I get sick and I can't run some benchmarks and write an article for 5 days for a major product launch? Bah. Maybe if I had major surgery and was on morphine drip ;) I hope he has more benchmarks than that as 95% of us run 1440p or less. Since he gives the min for shadow (and avg) I'm assuming the others are avg so I would not want to play much on either card having to turn stuff down, though on 980ti maybe as it adds another 20% from OC that FuryX just can't touch. This is shown in other reviews anyway and I really don't even want to be near 30fps min let alone under it or having to turn stuff down the dev meant for me to see. Between all the other sites you see how many games are really NOT 4K-able.
Considering everyone else had the card for HOURS, pretty impressive Ryan manages to keep it for 5-6 days+ no? Nothing fishy there I guess...So either AMD loves this place or Ryan has magical power no other review site can muster (tomshardware buying their own card to get more time, extremetech, maximumpc, etc etc). Almost every review mentions short time etc. Ran all the benchmarks in one day but writing takes 5? Ok...Not sure I need to read it anyway after the other dozen I already read, but it still makes me LOL. What's the excuse for 300's reviews? Sick for 2 weeks? Open heart surgery? ;) I jest, I jest, honest... :)
D. Lister - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
What is the point of all these "professional" reviews anyway?Almost every site that has reviewed the Fury X, seems content with the conclusion that beloved little AMD has equalled "big bad Nvidia", disregarding the Fury's need for a CLC to come close to an air-cooled gpu, the fact that HBM ended up being little more than a marketing gimmick, incredibly poor OC potential, absence of HDMI 2.0, limited DX12 features, and the 4GB limit on a $650 GPU circa 2015. All that, PLUS the added baggage of all the older issues that brought AMD's financial position to where it is today.
But hey forget all that - let's just celebrate occasional raw frame-rate parity like David equalling Goliath, sidelining the fact that the guy who built Nvidia from ground up is an ex AMD employee, and AMD is small only because it has never been good enough to be big.
chizow - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - link
Great points, fully agree.chizow - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - link
Eh, while its disappointing to see no review, still, from Anandtech, I wouldn't go as far as to question Ryan's integrity on matters of health. Hope he gets better, I do believe he was sick for a prolonged period before that caused him to miss a deadline in the past as well. At the end of the day, it is just video cards we are talking about here. :)squngy - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1496?vs=1514fixed the link for you
eriri-el - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
You guys did get a product with Nahimic in it, but I don't see any "going through the details" kind of thing in the said review. Was looking forward to see what they are bringing to the audio table instead of those useless Creative Software.waldoh - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Thanks for the late report on these msi boards. There isn't about 100 youtube videos of tech news reporters who actually give a shit.This site died when Anand left. The management really needs to be fired, its pathetic.
Thank god for the forums, ananadtechs one savior.
waldoh - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Also, these pictures look like screen grabs, so not even original content.Ian Cutress - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Certainly not screen grabs. If the exif data has been retained, it'll show my name and the Pentax I used to take the images.Ananadtech ? Steve, is that you?