MSI's gaming laptop catalog is about to expand with a new
product aimed at the entry-level segment of the market. Inspired by the iconic
Japanese sword, elegant and lethal, the new series of MSI Katana GF66 notebooks
was born from the collaboration with the famous illustrator and character
designer Nagano Tsuyoshi, known for having worked on the videogame saga of
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, whose vision artistic fits perfectly with the
direction taken by the Taiwanese giant.
Equipped with 11th Generation Intel Tiger Lake processors
and the newest NVIDIA RTX GPUsof the 3000 series, this new game machine is
aimed at players who need the right amount of power and a lot of dynamism, with
an eye to professionals. We spent the last few days in the company of the
faithful KATANA and we are ready to tell you about our experience.
Sleek, sharp and deadly
The design of the moves in the wake of what MSI has done in
the last period by proposing essential lines, at times elegant, which leave no
room for superfluous aesthetic elements with which products intended for gaming
are often identified. The new notebook of the Taiwanese house can in fact adapt
to contexts other than that of entertainment and does not look bad on an office
desk, blending perfectly even in a professional environment : an opaque black
monolith, without LEDs, which allows itself the classic logo of the dragon in
bas-relief in the upper part. Beautiful and successful the rear part that under
the honeycomb texture reveals the copper cooling system and part of the
components.
Where to buyThe Katana GF66 is available in various stores,
the complete list is available at this address .
The keyboard backlit in red is characterized by the font
used in other lines of MSI and rests on an aluminum base, while the rest of the
laptop is made of well-made plastic materials that do not reach the quality of
a top of the range but which allow you to keep the price at acceptable levels.
The 15.6-inch screen is surrounded by a frame that becomes
more prominent at the bottom and leaves room for the house logo. With 2.25 kg
of weight, the GF66 is not among the lightest proposals in the category,
however the composite shapes allow for rather easy transport: the laptop fits
perfectly inside bags and backpacks designed for the format.
Finally, the thickness of 24.9 mm allows the positioning of
a rich set of connections: a USB 3.2 Type C port, two USB 3.2 Type A ports, a
USB 2.0 Type A port, an ethernet port, 5.5 mm jack for headphones and
microphone and an HDMI output with support up to 4K and 60Hz.
Specifications and performance
MSI Katana GF66 (11UC) is the first of the three models in
the series and brings as a dowry an Intel Core i7-11800H processor with Tiger
Lake architecture of 11th gen, 8 cores and a peak frequency that reaches 4.6
GHz in dual core, able to support the most disparate workloads in the gaming
and professional fields without problems. The CPU is accompanied by 16 GB of
RAM at 3200 MHz and a 512 GB NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD . The new NVIDIA 3000 series GPU
with Ampere architecture completes the picture: the GF66 is in fact one of the
first gaming laptops to be equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 with 4 GB
GDDR6 of dedicated VRAM. The version we tested has a maximum TGP of 60
W(therefore it falls within the entry-level range of the Californian giant's
proposal) and offers 2,048 CUDA Cores, 64 Tensor Cores and 16 RT Cores with a
maximum frequency of 1,500 MHz in boost.
Of course, all the technologies developed by NVIDIA are
available: the Resizable BAR (active by default after updating the bios) which
allows full access of the CPU to the frame buffer of the GPU, the AI- based
DLSS rendering algorithm , the Dynamic Boost 2.0 which automatically
distributes power between CPU, GPU and memory frame by frame and finally Ray
Tracing .
On the performance front, the Katana GF66 is configured as
an entry-level gaming laptop, designed to give valid moments of fun in 1080p
for a not excessive price. The scores of CINEBENCH R23 (8138 in Multi Core and
1511 in Single Core) confirm the goodness of Intel's proposal which however
needs a good cooling system to calm the hot spirits of the processor: the
exclusive solution chosen by MSI is the Cooler Boost 5with 2 fans and 6 heat
pipes that ensure good temperature control, but going to pour the heat into the
upper part of the keyboard (without causing particular annoyances). The RTX
3050 instead records a score of 4859 points with 3D Mark (Time Spy) and allows
you to play most of the available games in Full HD without too many tricks. We
put it to the test with Resident Evil Village (find our review here ): with
high settings, Capcom's new survival horror easily maintained itself above the
60 fps threshold with some drops in the most excited scenes.
Different speech instead regarding the Ray Tracing: the 4 GB
of VRAM of the laptop represent a limitfor the use of this technology. Although
marginally exploited by the game, the activation of the RT led to a noticeable
decrease in performance with a variable framerate between 30 and 50 fps, with
some drops up to 25 fps.
A special mention deserves the 15.6-inch display, a
well-made TN panel (referred to as IPS-Level) that returns balanced and vibrant
colors with a 144 Hz image refresh that has nothing to envy to the desktop
proposals. The Hi-Res audio system accompanied by Nahimic surround completes
the audio / video sector. Also good is the battery that without working
miracles offers several hours of mixed use and is aligned with other products
designed to make extensive use of the power socket.
The other modelsIn addition to the sample sent to us for
testing, MSI offers two other models of the same series that differ
substantially in the graphics equipment: the Katana GF 66 11UD is in fact
equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti with 4GB of VRAM, while the top
model Katana GF66 11UE sports an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 with 6GB of dedicated
VRAM.
In general, therefore, the new MSI proposal achieves the
objectives for which it was designed: gaming at 1080p without too many
pretensions that still allows access to all the titles available on the market,
excellent performance in the professional field and extended connectivity. The
clean and essential design makes it suitable for all types of environments and
for the most varied users. If you are look for a betting laptop that balances
cost and performance without paying attention to the frills, the MSI Katana
GF66 could be for you at the price of 1399 euros.
technologyies techiescity themarketingpilot technologywebdesign technologytimesnow
