If you read our MSI PC2008 story then you'll already be aware that MSI was planning to release a range of gaming laptops. Well, it seems like MSI had a few more surprises to come as the GX610 was recently announced and it's not a Centrino Duo machine, instead it's powered by an AMD Turion64 X2 processor. The most interesting feature of this particular notebook is the graphics chip, as this is one of the first machines to have one of the new AMD Mbility Radeon HD 2600 graphics chip in it. MSI has fitted 256MB of GDDR3 graphics RAM and thanks to AMD's Hyper Memory technology, the HD 2600 GPU can access the system memory if it needs more.

The GX610 also has a 15.4-inch display with 1,280x800 resolution. The chipset also comes from AMD in the shape of the RX690 northbridge and the SB600 southbridge. Further features consists of up to 4GB of RAM, a 5-in-1 card reader, HDMI and a total weight of 2.6kg with the 6 cell battery. The W, A, S, D keys have been highlighted on the keyboard to make it easier to find the keys for gamers and the GX610 also offers 5.1-channel headphone output. MSI didn't specify the processor speed, but two different SKU's will be available, the GX610 Extreme Edition and the GX610 Professional Edition, where the Extreme Edition is the top of the range model and it should ship with 4GB of RAM as standard.
A 17-inch widescreen model - the GX710 - with otherwise identical specs will also be released, although the screen will offer a higher resolution of 1,440x900.