MSI raised a few eyebrows when it released the world’s first laptop fitted with a full-sized mechanical keyboard, but the GT80 Titan SLI proved successful enough for the Taiwanese gaming company to release a sequel.
As it turns out, the new GT83 Titan SLI is no mere refresh. MSI retained the look of the behemoth of a laptop, but did some major work within to achieve the 2016 buzzword “VR Ready” – a status that means the product is capable of delivering a great gaming experience in virtual reality.
While the display remains an 18.4-inch Full HD IPS screen, and the expected upgrade to Intel’s 6th-generation Core i7 chips, the biggest change to the GT83 Titan SLI is the introduction of Nvidia’s desktop-grade GeForce 980 in SLI – a huge jump considering the previous model used mobile versions of the GPU.
We’re told that the keyboard has been enhanced, too, where it now supports multi-colour backlighting by the keyboard maker, Steelseries. They still use Cherry MX Brown switches, offering a balance between a good typing experience and fast actuations for gaming.
You can now fit up to 64GB of RAM inside the GT83 Titan SLI, while storage options see MSI introduce Super RAID 4 technology. With top transfer speeds hitting 3,300MB/s, three storage bays (2x NVMe M.2 SSD up to 512GB each, and 1TB HDD) ensure fast storage is never an issue.
With desktop-level graphics, MSI also had to rejig the cooling system in the GT83 Titan SLI. The GT80 Titan’s Cooler Boost 3 thermal management is now upgraded to “Cooler Boost Titan”, a system exclusive to this machine only to handle even the toughest of VR gaming.
The MSI GT83 Titan SLI will be available in selected markets globally from August 2016, in multiple hardware configurations (likely to be RAM and storage only) from $4,500 (about RM18,500).
