MSI GX60 Gaming Notebook: Powerful mobile GPU without breaking the bank?

Yup, Clevo based laptop is the way I went, but in the end not with a 7970M, but the benchmarks with that and an i5/7 were far beyond the results of that MSI unit. AMD are stuck with great "APU" products for general use and great GPUs, but not reaping the benefits of the GPUs when pairing them with the APUs.

Arris, can you clarify the statement "not reaping the benefits of the GPUs when pairing them with the APUs"?
I thought amd processors can do hybrid crossfire if paired with amd discrete gpus?

Possibly but even so, desktop CPU/APUs from AMD are shown to perform poorer than Intel i5/7s paired with AMD or Nvidia cards. I wouldn't think that would be any different for mobile processors. Haven't seen any benchmarks of the hybrid crossfire (although crossfire used to run the GPUs at the lower spec GPUs level so if that is still the case I'm not sure how beneficial that would be to a system with a 7970M in it). Might give lesser non gaming focussed models a boost though.

If I remember correctly the highest end card that can be crossfired with the APU's is the 7670m, which also seems to be the only card that most companies put in with the APU's. But Crossfiring a APU with a discrete card is hybrid crossfire and not just normal crossfire, hybrid crossfire is supposed to be asymmetrical so the performance (if drivers are working well) is just supposed to improve, so basically the 7670m uses the APU's graphics to help it but without hurting it's baseline performance.

My laptop doesn't use integrated graphics, it has dedicated and high powered GeForce.

I've had a gx60 for about a month. Mine is the basic model with no SSD. It came preloaded with windows 8, not too happy about that but its ok. Anyway, two things worth mentioning:

As someone pointed out earlier in the thread games don't automatically use the 7970, there is a control panel that lets you set which profile to use. After installing the game and running for the first time the system will probably pick the integrated card. After that the machine has to be told to use 'high performance' for that game.

It is very important to install the latest catalyst drivers for this system. The ones it ships with have serious problems and give very poor performance in games. I feel the numbers in some of the earlier reviews reflect the earlier drivers. New drivers are released regularly (I've upgraded twice in the month I've had it) and have fixed issues such as under-use of the 7970, and problems where the system wouldn't always switch to the 7970 in games.

I am very happy with this machine. I have no major complaints, except perhaps that the thickness of the machine makes it difficult to find a neoprene sleeve that will fit it. The processor is no i7, but I have not encountered a situation where the cpu caused a problem. I should mention that the most modern game I use on it is Skyrim.

"I noticed there is no Windows key to the left side of the spacebar like normal, I imagine to save space and fit the numpad cleanly."

As stated on MSI's website as well, the win key has been purposefully removed to avoid accidental presses while playing.

Actually if you paid closer attention the Windows key is to the right side of the spacebar. This is because a REAL gamer uses WASD and there are other buttons around that area that need to be hit quickly in FPS (Ctrl for crouch). Hitting the Windows key would disconnect us from game or windows us to desktop at a critical moment when we want that frag (kill).

The keyboard on these laptops is made for SteelSeries/MSI and it is for gaming. You people that have to mention a Windows key or lack there of are by no means gamers though.

HORRIBLE! I bought an MSI brand computer, and it was a huge mistake. The specs look nice, but the computers are horrible quality. I've owned my MSI computer for 6 months and already the screen has discolorations and blown pixels (and no, I haven't dropped it or damaged it in anyway), I've been given a battery replacement warning, the keyboard sticks on several letters, and the webcam was broken right out of the box. All this in only 6 months! Not only is their quality completely crap, but when I contacted them for assistance, they completely ignored me. Apparently this is common for them, as they have a 3/10 customer service rating and 55 complaints (with only 3 positive comments): http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/MSI. BUYER BEWARE!

I have the MSI GT780 the model before this one with the nVidia 560M and you needed to have the Star program because it ran this Turboexpress program which overclocked the graphics card and launched it from the special button.

I don't know if the AMD card here has this turbo facility on this model.

The Star program enabled some of the buttons and could be customized. I hated the star on the top of your screen and I made mine start manually.

I haven't noticed any real advantage with Turboexpress.

From memory, the manual fan and CD eject buttons are hardwired, the rest needed the star program. I'm on a different screen to the review because of the registration process and I couldn't remember the exact name of the star program.