MSI Targeting Indian Game Enthusiasts Through CX420 Date:   Thursday , May 06, 2010 If you are a game enthusiast then you should know that Battlefield Bad Company 2 is no doubt the best game of this year so far. So you can understand my frustration when I got this game but it refused to run on my computer (maybe, it is time to upgrade). Hence, I was curious to see if it worked on MSI CX420, as the company claims that CX420 will satisfy the game enthusiasts. The game worked smoothly on the MSI CX420 on standard setting and I decided to go further and check how it would be of worth to an enterprise customer as well. CX420 has a good balance between HD viewing as well as gaming. It provides high visuals for gamers through its built-in ATi Radeon HD5470 discrete graphics card with 1GB DDR3 memory. ATi Radeon HD5470 supports Direct X 11 and is capable of running almost any game. To support the graphic, CX420 has DDRIII 1066/800 MHz, SO-DIMM slot x 2 (up to 4GB memory), but the one I reviewed had 2GB of Ram. CX420 has 14” LED-backlit display with 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio. As compared to many other laptops, the screen area in CX420 is larger by 14 percent. CX420 runs on Windows 7 Home Premium versin and has the storage options of 2.5” 250/ 320/ 500GB SATA HDD. The laptop is powered by the new Intel i3-330M 2.13-GHz processor and HM55 chipset. It also features a four-in-one (XD MS SD) memory card. For wireless connection, it supports 802.11 b/g/ draft N and Bluetooth V2.1. The laptop uses MSI’s proprietary scratch-resistant Cross-Hatch Color Film Print patterning, which covers the entire interior of the laptop, along with the touch pad. The weight of the laptop is around 2.2 kg. Special attention has been given to the keyboard as CX420 features Chiclet keyboard and well-spaced keypad buttons. MSI has used its exclusive GPU Boost technology to keep a balance between audio-visual performance and battery life. If a user is using an application that requires high graphic usage, then just a press of a button (or option on desktop properties) will switch CX420 to the high-performance external display mode. The laptop has a 1.3 megapixels webcam. Also, the sound of CX420 is quite good and it has two speakers grooving on Dolby digital. The Annoying Factors * The 3D switch button and the battery mode button lack the same finishing as the keyboard. The buttons are very rigid and are hard to press. * The ventilation system provided for the laptop is not smartly placed, as you can feel hot wind blowing out of the right side panel. It is difficult to keep a mouse beside the laptop as over a period of time you get irritated by the heat. * As I mentioned earlier, Battlefield Bad Company 2 runs well on standard graphic properties but lags if you increase the graphic quality to high even at the lowest resolution available (1024 by 768). 2GB Ram is insufficient to play the latest games, especially when you are using Windows 7. * At the price tag of Rs. 45,000 the biggest competitor to MSI CX420 is Dell Studio 15. Even though the graphic card used in both the laptops is the same, Dell Studio 15 has 3GB of ram and 15.6” screen, which gives it a distinct advantage over MSI CX420.