Samsung Series 7 Gamer Laptop Arriving in April
Samsung Series 7
The Samsung Series 7 Gamer laptop that was on display at this year’s CES is expected to be available in North America in April 2012. The device, which has been available in Europe since last spring, has been updated and will put Samsung in a position to compete in the competitive gaming market. The Samsung Series 7 is a purpose-built device. From the ground up it was designed with one thing in mind: hardcore gaming.
Samsung did not cut any corners when designing and building this laptop. Evidence of their focus starts from the motherboard itself, which has 8 GB of flash storage built in. That is more than just a nice add-on. It means that you can load an entire operating system directly on the motherboard itself, improving boot speed and overall stability and performance. System performance in any computer is closely tied to the amount of RAM onboard. Gamers will be pleased to know that the motherboard will support up to 16 GB. The most important factors in a gaming system though are undoubtedly your CPU and GPU. In these two areas the upcoming Samsung Series 7 shines.
Let’s start with the CPU. When the Series 7 launched in Europe, it came with the then impressive second generation Core i7 processor. Samsung has decided to sweeten the deal and has upgraded the processor. The US model will come with a third generation quad core Core i7 CPU. That quad core brute is capable of running the latest games at full speed without lags—that is, if it has a GPU to match.
For the true hardcore gamer their video card is perhaps even more important than their CPU. Samsung seems to understand that fact and has decided to also upgrade its GPU. Gone is the Radeon HD 6970M. In its place will be a new card by NVIDIA, the GeForce GTX 670M. This combination of CPU and GPU promises to not only run any game at full speed, it also promises to do so with the settings maxed out. That’s impressive.
The one aspect where the U.S. release of the Samsung Series 7will take a step down of sorts will be the display. The 3D display that is on the European version will not be available when the device ships stateside. There will, however, be a DisplayPort Jack that will give users an additional display option outside of the standard set of VGA, HDMI DVI, etc.
The Series 7 may be designed for gaming, but it does not mean that you cannot use the 17-inch laptop in more traditional scenarios. With that in mind, Samsung included a physical switch that will let you change power modes. You will be able to dial down the power when using the device for, say, watching movies off the included Blu-ray player or when simply browsing the web. When you are ready to get into some serious gaming, crank it up to turbo and the CPU will be clocked up and the keyboard will be optimized for gaming.
In hands-on tests, the laptop’s performance was impressive. When running a top-tier FPS (first-person shooter), it ran at full speed with no lags at max settings. When configured with 2 TB of storage, it is expected to cost around $1799 at launch.
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