Modern gaming laptops are lighter, thinner and more powerful than ever before. But how did we get from clunky portable gaming pioneers to today’s slim and stylish kits with AAA performance?
Gaming has changed dramatically over the past two decades, and new releases continue to challenge the recurring belief that graphics are the best ever. In 20 years we have seen a leap forward Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas arrive Cyberpunk 2077from Halo 2 arrive Black Myth: Wukongand countless other examples.
While software and art developers continue to refine their craft to make realistic games like the ones we have today, so do hardware and system manufacturers. The evolution of laptops is an archaeological fossil of the gaming world, showing how form, weight, volume, and performance evolved over time, with each milestone bringing huge advancements to mobile gaming.
Today’s laptops can compete with their desktop counterparts thanks to a combination of increasingly efficient graphics cards that leverage AI-enhanced technology to increase performance and visual clarity, coupled with well-designed, lightweight chassis and internal cooling system. As a prime example of this advancement, MSI’s RTX 40 Series laptops benefit from sleek, lightweight portability and powerful gaming performance, powered by performance-enhancing technologies like NVIDIA DLSS.
With the holidays approaching, many powerful machines are on sale here, A variety of options to suit every budget. Hot new releases like Indiana Jones and the Circle The recently released MSI RTX 40 series powered laptops are the perfect choice for those looking to experience cutting-edge gaming technology. With all the progress we’ve made this year, we’re going to look back at history to understand exactly how we got here.
Get ready for gamer fun
The story begins in 2007 with the MSI GX600, the world’s first overclockable laptop to feature MSI’s exclusive Turbo Drive engine technology; this allowed gamers to choose longer battery life or just push a button. Additional performance is available. The system comes equipped with a GeForce GT8600M, which is housed in a boxy, bulky chassis with an all-powerful red decal symbolizing that the laptop is primed and ready for gaming.
A demon in its prime—it was, after all, the world’s first overclockable gaming laptop—this old soul no longer enjoys the same reputation today. Its once-powerful GPU is arguably a little dated, and the 32mm-thick body weighs a hefty 2.8kg, making it definitely not the first choice for travel. Of course, it’s no surprise that a laptop released nearly 20 years ago would struggle with the latest AAA games, but it still holds a place in our hearts.
Play games with ghosts
Fast forward a few years, and the performance of both CPUs and GPUs is steadily improving in the early 2010s. The MSI GS60 2PE definitely marked this moment when it was released in 2014. Performance is the only option when relying on raw rasters.
The Ghost Pro is both powerful and portable thanks to some very clever design: it’s the lightest NVIDIA 800 series laptop on the market, weighing in at just 1.96kg, and despite its power, it’s not bulky; in fact, it’s as powerful as many professional laptops. As light as the top ultrabooks built for thin and light form factors. Considering it’s also only 19.9mm thick, this is a gaming wolf in stylish clothing, about as good as a modern gaming laptop could get in 2010.
Hidden in plain sight
In 2017, MSI pushes boundaries again with the launch of the MSI GE62 7RE Camo Squad Limited Edition. Taking its name from the very unique, world-first camo finish on the casing, MSI has once again accomplished the daunting challenge of packing high-end components into a portable laptop. While a decent contender at the time, the 2.4kg and 29mm thickness wasn’t exactly a star by today’s standards. However, with the choice of a 15.6-inch FHD or UHD display, an optional M.2 SSD, and a built-in GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, it offers an affordable and stylish option for the next generation of NVIDIA GPU systems.
Camo Squad’s secret power isn’t just its display, however, as the GTX 1050 Ti is the first GPU series to support NVIDIA Reflex, a latency-reducing setup that will have a significant impact on gaming and esports for years to come. . This new architecture is a true upgrade that breaks records for performance and efficiency, delivering the best experience yet available in a top-tier version, especially as VR continues to grow.
battle titans
In 2020, MSI launched the MSI GT76 Titan and the amazing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER. There’s no camo this time around, but the Titan looks super invisible in its sleek black shell—or at least it does until you turn on the lights and see its RGB keyboard and trim. Made with a streamlined aluminum lid and carbon fiber-themed bodywork, it’s absolutely stunning, albeit at a price.
Packing the powerful RTX 2080 SUPER into this system requires some compromises, most notably its 4.2kg weight and 42mm size. While it certainly makes a great first impression and benefits from a solid feel, it’s not an ideal system to take around with you.
Despite this, Titan’s performance is still quite powerful, with a built-in i9 10900K with 20 threads and 10 cores. Single-core overclocking can reach 5.3GHz, and all-core overclocking can reach 5.0GHz. Paired with the GeForce RTX 2080SUPER, the first RTX series graphics card, it also provides powerful graphics processing capabilities. This generation of products is a milestone in notebook gaming, introducing artificial intelligence-driven game enhancement technologies such as DLSS to increase frame rates without affecting image quality. RTX 2080 SUPER uses a dedicated Tensor core, which is the beginning of current game development. The challenge with all this power is keeping it cool, and MSI comes with an extreme cooling system that utilizes four fans and 11 heat pipes to provide 2.25 times more airflow than previous cooling systems. This allows it to deliver massive performance without being hampered by pesky thermal throttling.
evolution of all things
Those years of development and revolution have brought us to where we are today, where MSI and NVIDIA have combined all the lessons learned over the past two decades to create a laptop that’s sleek, lightweight and extremely powerful – the MSI Stealth 14 AI Studio.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Stealth 14 AI Studio is the striking two-tone design of pure white or star blue. Behind the colors is an ultra-light and ultra-strong magnesium alloy chassis, a premium material that helps MSI keep the weight down to just 1.7kg and the case thickness to just 19mm. That’s more than a kilogram lighter than the 2007 MSI GX600, and almost half the weight – a considerable improvement.
Don’t let the thin and light chassis fool you: There’s a powerful engine room inside, with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, supplemented by a powerful NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 4060. Next-generation AI-enhanced DLSS 3 technology, which introduces frame generation to supported games, further increasing performance by more than 2x the frame rate compared to native processing.
This performance wouldn’t be sustainable without MSI’s expertise in cutting-edge CPU and GPU cooling. Stealth 14 AI Studio is designed with dedicated vapor chamber coolers on the CPU and GPU to manage heat flow and maximize performance. Greater thermal capacity reduces noise and temperatures, keeping performance stable even under unusually high demand.
Modern laptops sometimes weigh less than half as much as previous models, take up less space, are significantly smaller, and have GPUs that are up to five times more powerful than their predecessors in some games. PC gaming has never been better.
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