Gigabyte Aurus X7 revealed as the slimmest dual GPU laptop in the world

You won't have heard of Aurus before CES this week - parent company Gigabyte used the show to reveal its new gaming brand with a range of mice, keyboards and headsets, but it was the Aurus X7 laptop that stole the show. It's the world's thinnest notebook with dual dedicated graphics cards.

Sculpted from aluminium, weighing 2.9kg and just 23mm thick, the Aurus X7 is incredibly compact for a 17in gaming laptop. It's even thinner than the original Razer Blade, which was one of the first gaming laptops that could rival Ultrabooks for thin dimensions.

Despite its size, the X7 still has room inside for a 4th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, up to 32GB of RAM, twin mSATA SSDs and a 1TB mechanical hard disk - and that's before you take the twin graphics cards into consideration. Two Nvidia GeForce GTX 765m GPUs, each with 2GB of video memory, run in SLI for performance that rivals larger laptops with a single GTX 780m graphics chip - that means silky smooth gaming at 1080p.

In order to keep those components cool, the laptop has four large vents behind the screen hinge, paired with two internal fans and five heatpipes to dissipate as much heat as possible without cooking your lap when gaming. Apparently Aurus has moved as many components towards the rear as possible, so the wrist rest beneath the keyboard doesn't get hot - even after hours of use.

The 17.3in display has a Full HD 1,920x1,080 resolution, which is a sensible match for the twin graphics cards. As much as we're impressed by the ultra high resolutions of laptops like the Retina MacBook Pro and Samsung Ativ Book 9 , we would much rather have playable frame rates at native resolution in a gaming laptop. The screen has a low 8 millisecond response time which should be perfect for twitch fps gaming, and a 72% NTSC colour gamut.

The keyboard is fully backlit, with every key having an anti-ghosting function to avoid accidental key presses when gaming. The X7 also has a set of dedicated macro keys to the side of the QWERTY keyboard, which can be configured to activate in-game abilities or launch specific apps. Other gaming features include a KillerNIC network card that reduces game ping times by prioritising network traffic, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

The only thing not mentioned is battery life; with no indication of battery size it's impossible to know how long the X7 will last away from the mains, but with two graphics cards on board we're guessing not long if you're planning to game on the move.

The Aurus X7 is set to arrive in the US from March onwards, with prices starting at $2,099 (around £1,280) and reaching $2,799 (£1,700) depending on upgrades. No official UK price or availability has been confirmed, but we've seen plenty of Gigabyte laptops in the past so there's a good chance its new gaming brand will eventually arrive on this side of the Atlantic.