The GT70's chiclet keyboard glows with a rainbow of LED lights, softly illuminating the keycaps with a subtle dash of color. Maybe MSI figured that NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780M wouldn't need the extra help. The previous model's fan-accelerating "cooler boost" mode is here as well, but its one-touch overclocking "Turbo" mode has been perplexingly replaced by a media button. This layout, too, is mostly identical to the standard GT70's quick buttons, offering screen and brightness controls, a WiFi toggle and a shortcut to a system control manager offering many of the same functions. A Mini DisplayPort stands out as the only change, replacing the original's eSATA socket.Ĭrowding the edge of the laptop's hinge are a touch-sensitive control bar and a physical power button. The laptop's rear rounds out its connectivity options with an AC plug, VGA and an HDMI port. Peer along the frame's edges and you'll notice it mirrors the original GT70 exactly: three USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader and four audio jacks for line-in, line-out, a microphone and headphones on the left and a pair of lesser USB 2.0 ports and an optical drive on the right. Visually, little else has changed since the previous generation. This says, "I am a hardcore gaming machine." Subtle it's not, but it isn't incredibly loud either it finds a nice middle ground where all that flair is just noticeable enough to make clear this is a special edition machine. "I am a hardcore gaming machine," it declares. This separates the revision from its plainly designed predecessor, and obviously demands a little more attention. An aggressive red streak bleeds through the machine's brushed-aluminum palm rest and lid, decorated with a stylized dragon tattoo. The Dragon's 8.6-pound, 16.85 x 11.34 x 2.17-inch frame is a dead ringer for its predecessor, differentiating itself with only a handful of tweaks and a new color scheme. It's hard to avoid comparisons to MSI's original GT70 while handling the Dragon Edition - after all, the two machines are built on the same chassis. Let's dive in and see if MSI's encore deserves a standing ovation.%Gallery-189467% NVIDIA's latest mobile GPU is here too, not to mention notable OS upgrades, port tweaks and a mystical new motif. It's actually the second GT70 to adopt the Dragon moniker, but the first to pack Intel's fourth-generation Core processors. Meet the GT70 Dragon Edition: a Haswell-toting, 17-inch gaming laptop with all the trappings of its predecessor. It was a darn good machine, so it's no surprise that MSI is hoping for a repeat performance. Like all machines of its type, it was huge, oversized and ridiculously heavy - but it trumped many of the category's biggest faults by being superbly crafted, surprisingly long-lasting and by boasting the bleeding edge of tech: an Ivy Bridge CPU. One of the strongest gaming laptops of 2012 had to be the MSI GT70. ![]()
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