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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Turbinz - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Where is the Radeon Fury X review??? This site is a day late and a dollar short.Morawka - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
AMD is a sponsor so they are probably giving amd time to optimize a driver that reduces image quality to increase benchmark scores.DanNeely - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
As has been stated somewhere on the site almost daily (today on the twitter feed sidebar); it's been delayed because Ryan Smith has been ill. He's currently hoping to have it finished tomorrow.For the impatient (and to disspell silly conspiracy theories), scores were posted in bench several days ago.
Here is the Fury X (OCed version) vs the GTX 980 Ti.
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1514?vs=1496
D. Lister - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
"it's been delayed because Ryan Smith has been ill."It is sad that a site as big as AT cannot afford more than a single writer. But then again I suppose it was "just" a flagship product from a tech giant, it is not like this was important or eagerly awaited by a lot of enthusiasts or anything. :)
Ryan Smith - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
The reality is that we're a very thin operation. This allows us to be nimble, but also allows us to publish those articles that we're genuinely interested in rather than having to succumb to clickbait to make ends meet. It's not perfect (no system is), but it's better than the alternative.chizow - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Idk Ryan, normally I'd agree with you but missing Fury X launch was pretty bad. 960 launch was obviously less high profile but still a pretty glaring hole in the midrange. And that review still isn't published.Anyways, at this point you probably did AMD a solid lol, Fury X was certainly a forgettable launch from AMD's perspective given the amount of hype leading up to it. Do you still think they launched it "exactly the way they wanted to?"
grrrgrrr - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Missing a launch where reviews just raise doubts is not a bad thing. A genuine review (and also GPU) is worth a thousand quick ones.Byte - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
I've switched to AMD (because of mining and have over a dozen cards) and the Fury really isn't impressing me and might jump back to Geforce, but really hope we can get AMD to stay in business so we can have some nice competition and innovation. Hopefully Ryan can give AMD some light they really need!Samus - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Yeah these days mining on AMD GPU's is completely dead, and that was the only relevant reason to buy them over the last few years. nVidia has been killing it since the 600 series dollar-for-dollar in "most" games.nightbringer57 - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Not really.Until Maxwell, AMD cards still were very competitive, even if they were aging.
My Tahiti LE 7870/7950 hybrid was a steal for less than 200€ and may be the card that lasted me the most for its value. And even with the less-than-impressive Fury launch and the big gap in power consumption, AMD cards are still giving at least overall slightly better bang for your bucks in raw performance.