MSI GT72 Dominator Pro: Performance Preview
by Jarred Walton on October 8, 2014 9:00 AM ESTInitial Thoughts
NVIDIA made some big promises with the GTX 980M, and in general they delivered. While the gap between the desktop GTX 980 and mobile the GTX 980M may end up being more than 25% in many cases, that's probably going to be more a case of CPU performance helping desktops than it is a lack of GPU performance. Overall, the GTX 980M bests the previous generation GTX 880M by over 30%, and in some cases it's as much as 45-50% faster, e.g. in Metro: Last Light Redux. Considering that's one of the most demanding games around, when the GPU is really pushed to its limits we'll likely see an even bigger margin of victory over previous generations of GPUs. And that's without even testing new features like DX12 support, VXGI, etc.
Of course, by the time we see games implement VXGI NVIDIA will likely have the next generation of mobile and desktop GPUs available. If you're already running a high-end gaming notebook, this is also a tough sell as 30-50% is certainly an improvement, but most gamers would be willing to drop a few settings in order to achieve high frame rates on anything from GTX 680M to GTX 880M. It's really a question of what you currently have and what level of performance you're willing to pay for. Gamers with GTX 680M and earlier will certainly be tempted, and the 980M should offer basically twice the performance of a GTX 680M. Notebooks also tend to wear out faster than desktops, so a three year old notebook is getting close to being due for an upgrade regardless.
Obviously we're still missing information on other elements like battery life, how well BatteryBoost works, and general application performance. I don't think that last one is really a concern, though – with three SSDs in RAID 0 and a quad-core Haswell CPU, the MSI GT72 is more than fast enough for mundane office tasks. Considering battery life has been rather hit and miss with MSI over the past couple of years, that's a bit more of a wild card, but the fact that NVIDIA has been using the GT72 as their demo notebook for BatteryBoost suggests it will make a better showing than the GT70 with 880M. Or perhaps not….
One interesting tidbit is that the GT72 doesn't actually implement NVIDIA's Optimus Technology. This will cause some controversy I'm sure, as a reboot cycle is now required to switch between the Intel HD 4600 and the GTX 980M, and many users will likely just leave the GTX 980M enabled and forget about the Intel Processor Graphics. (There's a button to the left of the keyboard that switches between GPUs.) I don't know (yet) what the end result will be in terms of battery life, but there are a few users out there that really dislike Optimus for a variety of reasons (e.g. it doesn't play well at times with things like the Oculus Rift, apparently). If NVIDIA can get power use of the GTX 980M low enough at idle that it doesn't impact battery life too much, though, this could be the best solution for gaming notebooks.
Right now, I have to say that I'm really impressed with the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro. I'd still love to see a slightly higher resolution display, and anything other than a TN panel would be preferable. 2560x1440 would be ideal in my opinion – 3K and 4K are too much right now, but 2560x1440 should be just about right for the 980M. Outside of that complaint and some concerns over the lack of Optimus support, there are really no other flaws with the GT72. It looks so much better than the previous generation GT70 that I suspect it may become difficult for retailers to move any unsold inventory. I've liked the changes that MSI made to the GE and GS lines, and it's great to see the GT series finally get a much needed overhaul. All we need now is a GT62, which could very well be in the works. I'll be back next week with the complete review, but if you can't wait that long this is looking like the gaming notebook to beat.
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Flunk - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
On the topic of Optimus support, maybe Nvidia's new "batteryboost" technology is so magically delicious that they don't need it in order to have good battery life anymore. I have an Optimus-equipped laptop and it's mildly annoying sometimes so I can see the appeal of no Optimus on a gaming laptop. Optimus does reduce performance a bit too.MrSpadge - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
On the desktop you're hard-pressed to get any big GPU consume less than 10 W. That's more than the idle power consumption of an entire modern laptop...JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
There are pros and cons; I'd like to see an idle mobile GPU at no more than 1-2W before I'd say it's a reasonable alternative to Optimus, and I don't think NVIDIA is there yet. Keep in mind however that their mobile GPUs typically have much lower idle clocks than their desktop parts. Anyway, it's something I'll look at in the full review.Meaker10 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
No optimus means you can overclock the display refresh rate ;)flemeister - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Happily using manual graphics switching on my Alienware M11x R1 (GMA 4500H + GT 335M). I like being able to lock it to one or the other as needed. Most of the time I'm using the laptop for basic tasks, and would prefer that the Nvidia graphics stay off (and not turn on unnecessarily). Switching between GPU's doesn't require a reboot either. Just need to close any programs that use the GPU. For me this involves Firefox, f.lux and Steam. Not a big deal.Just wish that I could use a more recent driver version. Stuck on this custom 263.08 version, and modified drivers (to get Optimus working) don't properly disable the Nvidia GPU, resulting in poor battery life (same as if using the Nvidia graphics). With light usage I get 6+ hours with GMA 4500HD, but only 3.5 hours with the GT 335M.
I wonder if the GT72 would have longer battery life (on Intel graphics) with manual switching, compared to if they used Optimus?
Icehawk - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
I don't really get the specs on this laptops - 4xSSD RAID and 32gb of RAM? What on earth does that do for you besides drive the price up and *maybe* (it won't) offer a tiny percentage of performance upgrade. If this was some kind of render machine that setup might actually be of use but as a gamer I'd much rather see more CPU, larger storage, etc.Spoelie - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
You forgot the 8GB vram on the GPU.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
I understand the sentiment on the RAID 0 SSDs. Still, I will say that some operations are super fast. For example, after copying over all my Steam files (185GB or so), quite a few games need to have files "validated" -- something doesn't quite get transferred over right. On an HDD and a large game, this can take as long as 5-10 minutes. On a fast SSD, it might take a minute or so. With the GT72, the validation process was the fastest I've ever experienced, probably no more than 15-20 seconds. Is that worth the price premium over a single SSD? Probably not.zepi - Sunday, October 12, 2014 - link
What is the likelihood of one of four SSD controllers breaking down instead of one? How about wear leveling algorithms of 4x128GB drives instead of one 512GB SSD? I'd guess that at least the later suffers since the controllers can only shuffle data around their own small turf.Are the performance benefits really worth this tradeoff when a single fast M.2 Drive should reach over 700MB/s sustained transfer...
wetwareinterface - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
this isn't the laptop for you. as a gamer you'd be better off buying the base model with 980m and just adding your own m.2 drive and calling it a day. there are 4 different versions of the dominator pro this one being the top specced version. this one is for the ballers and professionals who need the storage system to be fast (think video editing ) and the video ram to be high.