During Gamescom 2011, Samsung surprised attendees with the announcement of its new line of Series 7 notebooks designed specifically for gamers. Although the company hasn't released any North American dates, the first model, the 700G7A, is expected to arrive in Germany on September 12 for 1799 euros (about $2,577 USD).
According to a list of specs, the 700G7A sports a quad-core Intel Core i7-2630QM (2.0 – 2.9 GHz) processor, a DirectX 11-capable AMD Radeon HD 6970M GPU with 2 GB of dedicated DDR5 memory, and up to 16 GB of RAM across four slots, depending on your wallet.
The Samsung 700G7A also has a 17.3-inch Full HD SuperBright plus LED backlit display (1920 x 1080) with a brightness of 400nits, and a cool backlit keyboard, perfect for all-night gaming in the basement. The W,A,S, and D keys are highlighted in red, all else is blue.
As for other features, the notebook reportedly offers 10/100/1000 Mbit/s LAN, 802.11 a/b/g/n (2×2 300 Mbps) WLAN, Bluetooth 3.0 + HS, Intel WiDi, a 2MP webcam, a Blu-ray player and DVD SuperMulti optical drive, an HDMI output port, two USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, a 7-in-1 card reader, a 2.1 sound system with subwoofer, Dolby Home Theater, SRS 3D Sound and dual 750 GB HDDs spinning at 7200 RPM (1.5 TB).
An additional report reveals that Samsung's new series will be the first to officially license ExpressCache for use in an OEM system. This is a software layer that allows the user to cache HDD reads/writes with a small SSD, but reportedly doesn't have any specific SSD or chipset requirements.
