MSI brought a trio of mid-range notebooks to the US on Wednesday, all touting Intel Sandy Bridge chips. The FX420 leads the group as a rare, relatively fast system in the 14-inch field. A 2.3GHz Core i5, 6GB of RAM, and a dedicated Radeon HD 6470M for graphics give it enough speed for moderate gaming and HD video.
Prices will start at $750 for a model with a Core i3, though the only configuration MSI has so far starts at $850 with the Core i5, a 500GB hard drive, and a DVD burner.
The FR720 and FX720 are both 17-inch desktop replacements that parallel their smaller counterpart. Details of the two are few, but the FR720 is a budget model that uses Intel graphics and either a 2.1GHz Core i3 or a 2GHz quad Core i7. Gamers are steered to the FX720, which uses a middling 2.3GHz Core i5 but gets much faster GeForce GT 520M video.
MSI prices the FR720 at $710 for the Core i3 variant and $900 for the quad Core i7. The FX720 sits in between at $850.
