As part of the update to Skylake, MSI is bringing the new CPUs from Intel to five of its gaming-series laptops. At press time, not all the information is available, but MSI did send us some information telling us what we can expect to see from the notebooks.
The notebooks in question are the GT72 Dominator Pro G, the GS70 Stealth, the GS60 Ghost Series, the GE62 Apache Pro Series, and the GE72 Apache Pro Series. All of these notebooks will come with Intel Core i7 6700HQ CPUs, except the GT72 Dominator Pro G, which comes with an additional i7-6820HK option – an unlocked Skylake processor on which you can use the CPU multiplier to overclock.
The GT72 Dominator Pro G will have the most powerful graphics options, allowing you to choose from a GTX 980M and a GTX 970M. The display panel will feature mobile Nvidia G-Sync support, and the graphic card will be upgradeable because it uses the standardized MXM format.
The remainder of the notebooks will come packed with either a GTX 970M or a GTX 960M.
On the storage front, all of the notebooks will come with DDR4 memory, and all will have PCI-Express SSDs capable of accessing the system through four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes for 32 Gb/s of bandwidth. Additionally, the top-of-the-line GT 72 Dominator Pro G will have two of these NMVe capable SSDs, which can be configured in a RAID 0 array for some serious data throughput – MSI claimed "over 3300 MB/s."
| GT72 Dominator Pro G | GS70 Stealth/GS60 Ghost Series | GE62/72 Apache Pro Series |
|---|---|---|
| Cooler Boost 3 | Cooler Boost 3 | Cooler Boost 3 |
| Super Port | Super Port | - |
| Silver Lining Print | Silver Lining Print | Silver Lining Print |
| Keyboard by SteelSeries | Keyboard by SteelSeries | Keyboard by SteelSeries |
| SteelSeries Engine 3 | SteelSeries Engine 3 | SteelSeries Engine 3 |
| ESS SABRE HiFi Audio DAC | ESS SABRE HiFi Audio DAC | - |
| Nahimic Audio Enhancer | Nahimic Audio Enhancer | Nahimic Audio Enhancer |
| SOUND by DYNAUDIO | SOUND by DYNAUDIO | SOUND by DYNAUDIO |
| True Color Technology | True Color Technology | True Color Technology |
| Killer DoubleShot Pro | Killer DoubleShot Pro | Killer Gaming Lan |
| Killer Shield | Killer Shield | Killer Shield |
| XSplit Gamecaster | XSplit Gamecaster | XSplit Gamecaster |
As far as nitty-gritty specifications go, that's all the information we have at this time, but MSI also detailed some of its own unique features: All the notebooks will come with SteelSeries RGB-backlit keyboards, a Nahimic Audio enhancer, sound by Dynaudio, Killer networking, Killer Shield, and support for XSplit Gamecaster, all of which you can see in the table above.
Finally, MSI mentioned that the GT72 Dominator Pro G, GS70 Stealth and GS60 Ghost series notebooks will come with a "Super Port," which, based on the description provided, we can only assume is a USB Type-C port. Even so, that doesn't tell us much about what the port can do; Type-C is capable of multiple speeds and supports numerous protocols, including DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3, depending on the Alt Mode implementation.
At this time, MSI isn't shipping the notebooks yet. The entire feature set hasn't been finalized, and a couple of changes may still be made before the units ship. MSI expects to start selling the gaming laptops with the new Skylake CPUs starting September 27. Until that time, stay tuned for more details.
Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
