The MSi Alpha 15 gaming laptop announced, the first on the market with an AMD RX 5500M

Robert Sole October 7, 2019

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MSI's Alpha 15 laptop will be the first to integrate the new AMD RX 5500M and therefore the first to have a 7nm mobile graphics.

Today the RX 5500 and RX 5500M from AMD were introduced. The second is the first 7nm gaming graphics card for the gaming laptop market. The first manufacturer to implement this graphics card in one of their systems is MSI. The company today unveiled the Alpha 15 laptop wearing a RX 5500M. A very compact solution for a constantly growing market.

According to IDC the sale of gaming laptops is up 12.7% in Q2 2019 compared to the same period of the previous year. A figure that indicates that the laptop market is rising with great force. As the first manufacturer to launch a laptop with 7nm graphics, MSI's position in this market is consolidated.

MSI Alpha 15 gaming laptop announced, the first on the market with an AMD RX 5500M

MSI announces Alpha 15 gaming laptop with RX 5500M

The new line of gaming laptops has dimensions of 357.7x248x27.5mm and a total weight of 2.3 kilograms. For a gaming laptop, the dimensions and weight are excellent. This comes with a 15.6-inch screen and a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels with a refresh rate of 120Hz or 144Hz depending on the model and based on FreeSync.

This processor has the Ryzen 7 3750H with four cores and eight threads working at a frequency of 2.3GHz and that arrives in Boost mode at 4.0GHz. This processor also implements a Vega 10. This processor has a TDP of 35W and the RX 5500M has a TDP of 85W. According to MSI, this laptop has a consumption of less than 150W.

During the presentation we attended at the end of last month, the gaming performance of this notebook is above the NVIDIA GTX 1660 Mobile. This is because, as they explained, the processor iGPU would support the RX 5500M and offer extra performance. They are basically on CrossFire or a similar technology that AMD has not specified.

Regarding connectivity, this laptop has three USB 3.0, a USB 3.0 Type-C, a mini-DisplayPort, an HDMI, an RJ45, an SD card reader and two 3.5mm jacks for sound input and output. Regarding wireless connectivity, it has WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 support. Internally it has an M.2 2280 slot and a 2.5-inch bay for storage.

The amount of DDR4 and its frequency have not been indicated. The laptop is priceless yet, but it would be around 1 - 000 euros. There is also no departure date, but it will be before the end of the year.