MSI announced the latest in their stable today, the GX640. Built around the Intel Core i5 processor and ATI Radeon HD5850, it’s definitely a contender in the gaming notebook arena. In fact, it’s been selected as the notebook of choice by the number one pro-gaming team in North America.

The GX640 comes standard with the previously mentioned Core i5, an ATI Radeon HD5850 with 1GB of DDR5, and 4GB of system memory. It’s packing a 15.4 inch screen, so it’s relatively portable, and the 9-cell battery should help with battery life. The Gx640 is available now at Amazon.com with an MSRP of $1099.

From the press release:

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – April 21, 2010 – MSI Computer Corp., a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is proud to announce the availability of the new 15.4-inch GX640 gaming notebook. The GX640 comes locked and loaded with Intel’s powerful new Core i5 processor and the ATI Radeon HD5850 graphics card with 1 GB DDR5. It is the gaming notebook of choice for Evil Geniuses, the number one ranked professional gaming team in North America.

“When you’re competing at the absolute highest level, your equipment has a huge effect on your performance,” said Alexander Garfield, Executive Director of Evil Geniuses. “Our professional gamers stay on top of the competition with the help of the world’s finest gaming Notebooks from MSI Computer. They give us the edge we need to bring home championship after championship.”

GX640’s new GPU supports DirectX 11 graphics, future-proofing the notebook for the next generation of games and 3D graphics. Its Core i5 processor improves battery life by as much as 15% and features Intel’s new Turbo Boost technology which can increase overall performance by as much as 30%, ensuring smooth gameplay.

The new lightweight notebook is housed in a stylish brushed aluminum case with fire engine red accents The GX640 features a raised chiclet keyboard, for increased accuracy and comfort while typing, and clearly marked W, A, S and D keys for quick response while gaming.

The GX640 ships with a 15.4-inch LCD screen with 1680×1050 resolution, 4 GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB hard drive 7200 rpm, a 9-cell battery, Bluetooth connectivity and Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

The GX640 is priced at $1099.99 and is available now at Amazon and will be available on Newegg later this month.

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is essentially two 5870s slapped together, but underclocked a little bit so as not to melt a hole through your carpet (but will melt a hole through your bank account~!) Asus saw that and was like, “Pfft, wait till you see what we’ve come up with.” It’s called the Asus Ares 5970, a true-to-life dual 5870 solution that doesn’t downclock nothin’ for nobody. Slight problem: it might not actually come out here in the U.S.

This card keeps the two 5870 GPUs running at full speed, which should improve performance more than a little bit, “easily [surpassing]” 3D Mark scores of a standard 5970.

The extra power literally requires extra power, requiring a third auxilary power connector just to keep the thing plucking along. Asus says it still comes in under the magic 300W mark, so no worries there. (A plain ol’ 5970 “officially” clocks in at under 300W, but Asus says it’s more like 260W—more than enough breathing room for its Ares 5970 to operate in.)

You’d probably need an Extreme Edition Core i7, plus the new Rampage motherboard, to most effectively take advanateg of this kind of power. And to what end, so you can play Fallout 3 again, but with 12 extra frames per second?

Meh, who am I kidding, I’d be all over an extra 12 frames per second. Gotta have a hobby!

Last week at PAX East, Nvidia showed off for the first time its GTX 480. Reviews were kind, but noted that the card runs at approximately 8 million degrees, and that the performance isn’t as crazy as you’d expect for the $500 you’re going to pay—an ATI Radeon 5870 is nearly as good, for $100 cheaper. So, make your own decisions! That’s part of the fun of PC gaming: spending weeks on Newegg worrying over motherboard combinations and the like. Anyhow, ATI has a new card on the block today, the Radeon HD 5870 Eyfinitiy 6 Edition.

You already know what Eyefinity is: it allows you to hook up your PC to several monitors using only one GPU. This edition of the card also adds 1GB of memory, bringing it up to a solid 2GB. I think that’s as much memory as my laptop has!

TomsHardware ran the card through its paces, and the general consensus is this: really good card, but Eyefinity isn’t so great for gaming right now. You’d need monitors with incredibly thin bezels, lest good parts of the action be cut off. Samsung has a new monitor en route that will, indeed, be super thinned bezel’d.

I don’t know, speaking as an average gamer, it seems like Nvidia and ATI are grasping at straws trying to come up with ways to make their cards unique. Nvidia has 3D Vision, which I personally don’t think is all that and a bag of chips. Maybe my eyes are broken, I don’t know, but the 3D never seems “real,” you know? And Eyefinity—I barely have enough room on my desk for the one 24-inch monitor I have on it now—six monitors is totally out of the question.

Again, as an average gamer, I’m more than happy to see Nvidia and ATI continue to fight over raw power rather than all these little side things.

As long as both companies are healthy, then I think PC gamers will be fine. The last thing we need is for one company to dominate in such a way that it makes the other guy nothing more than an also-ran.

And now I head back to Newegg, looking to upgrade a few components! The Intel Core i7 930 looks pretty great, but then I’d need a new motherboard! Woo!

Well, it looks like XFX packaging is going to be a little more secure then the stuff that Amazon uses. You’ll have to be careful leaving the store with this stuff, XFX appears to be packaging their version of the ATI HD 5970 in a replica of a H&K P90. Catchy, but hopefully they don’t lose any customers to gunfire.

We don’t know a whole lot about the HD 5970 yet, but if the buzz is true it’ll be the fastest single GPU card available on the market. NVidia holds the current title for the fastest GPU solution. Hopefully the brains at ATI will come up with something to challenge NVidia on that front as well. Of course, the new cards aren’t available for sale yet, but you can pretty much assume they’re going to run about $100 more then the “standard” HD 5970 cards.

[via Tom's Hardware]

Man alive, how great would it be to be rich? You could afford crazy things like, I don’t know, new shoes, healthy food, and six 20-inch monitors to play Modern Warfare 2 with. That’s the dream.

So as you can see, the game scales quite well across all six screens—the only “glitch” occurs when text gets cut off at the bezel of the TV.

ATI’s Eyefinity technology makes this magic possible. The 5800 series of cards (and up, presumably) allow you to span compatible games across several screens. It’s not something you’re going to find at a Best Buy demo area or whatever, so people were freaking out while they passed by.

Pretty neat, I thought.

Man alive, how great would it be to be rich? You could afford crazy things like, I don’t know, new shoes, healthy food, and six 20-inch monitors to play Modern Warfare 2 with. That’s the dream.

So as you can see, the game scales quite well across all six screens—the only “glitch” occurs when text gets cut off at the bezel of the TV.

ATI’s Eyefinity technology makes this magic possible. The 5800 series of cards (and up, presumably) allow you to span compatible games across several screens. It’s not something you’re going to find at a Best Buy demo area or whatever, so people were freaking out while they passed by.

Pretty neat, I thought.