MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Review: GTX 980M Reigns Supreme
by Jarred Walton on November 11, 2014 8:00 AM ESTMSI GT72 Dominator Pro Thermals and Noise
The last item to look at is cooling performance and noise levels. I've already mentioned that the cooling appears to be much more capable than on the GT70, thanks to the use of two fans and radiators. This isn't just a case of the notebook generating less noise, as it tends to have lower temperatures as well. There are many factors at play of course, and the MSI GT72 (along with the GT70 before it) has an option for enable more aggressive cooling if desired, which tends to be much louder but keeps temperatures down.
With the GT72, MSI has a feature called "Shift" where you can switch via a keyboard shortcut (Fn+F7) between performance modes. The options are Sport (highest performance), Comfort (balanced), and Green (energy efficient). Each option tunes the fans and potentially other aspects of the notebook slightly differently. It doesn't appear to result in overclocking or anything of that nature, so mostly it's just minor tweaks to performance as far as I can tell. Let's get into the specifics of the thermals and noise, where we have enabled the Sport mode for testing; we also checked and found that the Green mode didn't result in any reduction in the minimum noise from the GT72, though it was less likely to ramp up fan speed in light workloads.
Thermals
To put it simply, thermals on the GT72 are exceptional. Surface temperatures at idle ranged from around 23C to a whopping 26C on the top and bottom of the chassis, so there's nothing at all to say there. In our 100% stress test (running a game while simultaneously loading all CPU cores), the back portion of the system gets hotter, reaching a whopping 40C – and that was only right under the GPU. I've seen many gaming notebooks hit 45C or more on a few hot spots, so the GT72 is really doing exceptionally well. Most of the back portion of the notebook (on the top and bottom of the chassis) gave readings of 30-33C. As for the palm rest and front section, temperatures were mostly unchanged from idle, still registering just 24-28C.
Even flipping over to the internal temperatures, there's nothing alarming going on. During a one hour stress test of the notebook (running a game while loading all the CPU cores), we reached the maximum thermals after about five minutes. At that point the fan speed started ramping up and temperatures actually dropped. At its hottest, the CPU only reported an internal temperature of 71C before leveling off at 66-68C after about 15 minutes. The GPU on the other hand maxed out at 69C in five minutes, but by 15 minutes into our stress testing it had leveled off at 62C.
Ambient temperatures during testing were around 22C (+/- 1C), so of course in hotter conditions things might get a bit warmer but this is still far and away the best result we've seen from a gaming notebook. Of course if the temperatures were contingent on loud fans it would only be a partial victory, so let's quickly discuss noise levels.
System Noise
While the GT72 runs pretty cool, it doesn't generally qualify as a "silent" notebook. At idle and during light loads, the minimum fan noise from about 0.5m registered at 32.8 dB (in a room that had a noise floor of around 28 dB). Light workloads or slightly warmer testing environments could bump fan speeds up a bit, resulting in noise output of 35 dB. In other words, while it's not silent, it's still not very loud.
Putting a load on the system starts to change things a bit, but only if a GPU load is involved. We actually ran a 100% CPU workload for 30 minutes and the fans never had to speed up, with the system staying at 32.8 dB. Apparently having the two fans and radiators helping to cool the CPU really works wonders for pure CPU workloads. Firing up a game on the other hand will eventually result in the fans kicking up to higher speeds (and I'd assume higher ambient temperatures would also result in more noise).
We left a game running for a while to first check the noise levels for pure gaming workloads, and after 15 minutes or so the fans had stabilized at 36.8 dB. That's a pretty amazing result and even after more than an hour the fans just weren't working all that hard. We then fired up a CPU load while running the game, and finally the fans had to do some work, eventually settling in at 43.1 dB.
The MSI GT72 also has a feature where you can tell the system to prefer lower temperatures at the cost of increased fan speed. The third button on the left of the system will engage turbo cooling, and the result is that the fans will ramp up far more quickly. During our gaming tests, engaging turbo cooling quickly resulted in system noise of 45 dB, and our worst-case stress test gave us a maximum noise output of 45.7 dB. That's still not too bad, and it really takes a lot to get the GT72 to reach that point – basically, it only happens when the CPU and GPU are both drawing close to their maximum TDP.
Any Throttling?
Given the stellar noise and temperature results, we of course wondered if there might be some throttling going on. We monitored our 100% stress test for an hour and found that CPU and GPU clocks basically held steady – the CPU was at 3.3GHz while the GPU locked in at 1126MHz. If there's any throttling occurring, it would have to be happening in a way that avoided detection by my clock speed logging tool, and during all of my testing I didn't notice anything suggesting that might be happening. Again, higher ambient temperatures might change things a bit, but I suspect you'd have to be in an environment of more than 38C (100F) before you'd really have any difficulties.
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frodbonzi - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Alienware gives you the same hardware....it's only the 980m that is different...and I'm sure it will be offered soon. Someone on the Alienware 18 owner's thread on a different forum has said it was late November...Anyways, as I posted earlier, once you are going the gaming laptop route, I don't see the reason for going "half way"... Yes, the 18" laptops are heavier - but it's not like you're going to be taking this one with your everywhere either... they're both "portable desktops".
The Alienware 18, even with "only" dual 880m, will beat this laptop (and any other single GPU laptop) handily... the benchmarks Jarred included were from dual 780m... and they STILL beat the 980m! Alienware can give you an IPS screen and 4 SSDs (although I prefer 3 SSDs and a blu-ray drive myself) for just a bit more cash...
Lastly, I have to say that once you are in this price range, cost ceases to be a large factor. Yes, when buying a $500 laptop, an extra $200 is a big deal... But when buying a $3000+ laptop, a few hundred dollars no longer really matters...
CrazyElf - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
We're not talking about a small difference in price here though. The Alienware 18 is a couple of thousand dollars more if you max it out. Price I'd argue still matters.I have no doubt that the top end Alienware and Clevo laptops will beat this thing, especially if they are running 980M SLI (when that comes out). The top end Clevo probably will run a desktop grade CPU, so it's even more potent in this regard. I believe Clevo P570WM3 is the 6 core Ivy Bridge E model. Not sure if they are coming with a Haswell E laptop that can support 8 core Haswell though.
The only other benefit I can see is this thing can support 4x M.2. Not sure how many the Alienware 18 can support, although they are probably using 2.5" SATA 3 drives. It's not a huge advantage though, as M.2 is faster, but not something you'd notice for gaming.
Agree on the Blu-Ray drive.
@Jarred Walton
Would it be possible to get the IPS GT72 tested out when it comes out? It should have a better quality screen overall.
frodbonzi - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
If you don't mind refurbished, we're only talking about $200-$300.... and Alienware 18s have 1 M.2, and 3 SATA slots (some models give u 3 hard drives and an optical drive, others give all 4 hard drives).As a point of pricing:
My Alienware 18 (purchased 2 months ago) has 32GB of RAM, dual 880m, and the i7 4940mx. I'm not a fan of RAID 0, so the "fast" M.2 is my boot drive (256gb) and the other 2 drives are 256gb sata SDDs... I replaced the DVD drive with a $50 Blu-Ray writer off of ebay (Panasonic UJ265)...
Cost: $3200 --> I've seen the same on ebay ranging from $3000 to $4000...
Aikouka - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
I ended up picking up one of these a few weeks ago, and it's a nice laptop. I went with the "budget" 980M version that only has a single SSD, and I purchased a separate 512GB SSD to use in non-RAID. It works great as I leave the original SSD for the OS and use the other one for more important games/applications. That's the same approach that I take on my desktop as well.I also had the same problem with the bottom of the laptop. Honestly, I was afraid that I was going to break it! MSI uses a *ton* of tabs in addition to the screws to hold the bottom panel on, and it requires a bit of yanking to get it off. I also found it to be a bit more difficult than desired to put it back on.
I'm not the biggest fan of the trackpad though. I find that even at higher sensitivity, it just isn't all that sensitive and requires a lot more movement than some of my other laptops. The problem is that when making scrolling gestures and such, I really have to push down on it or else it doesn't register the gesture.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the Killer Wi-Fi card. I use Intel 7260-AC cards in my two NUCs, and honestly... they're downright awful. If they do connect, it will only last for a few days until it drops to unusable levels of performance, and I've never had one connect at full AC speed. My laptop connects to my router at full 2x AC speed.
As for the noise, I do wish that the laptop was a bit quieter during low usage, but I'm also the type that builds very quiet PCs. I highly doubt that any normal user would mind the noise.
jabber - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Nice hardware...shame it looks like a tacky toy.utferris - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
I am a computer scientist, I just do not understand the design.4x128GB RAID 0, seriously? The failure rate will be incredibly high with RAID0 of four storages of any kind, though they can get some speed up.
I can understand gamers buy monsters, but I donot understand why they will pay for such stupid design.
DanNeely - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Agree, 1st thing I'd do would be to RAID10 it; but every time someone at Anandtech or elsewhere sends a "RAID0, WTF!" email to a gaming laptop representative, the answer they get back is some version of "Our customers are demanding RAID0." Assuming their market research is valid, there're a lot of idiots buying gaming laptops with no clue beyond benchmark numbers. I'm somewhat skeptical though because you don't see the same thing in pre built gaming desktops. I suspect that what happened was that they went RAID0 in the HDD era to try and compensate for the crapitude of 2.5" HDDs; and haven't checked to see if it's still a valid customer requirement.What surprises me is that they don't offer an alternative model with a single 2.5" SSD. The price premium on M.2 drives is high enough that they could still charge a large markup on it while being substantially less than the M.2 RAID0 model.
jabber - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I know a few friends that have bought such machines in the past. The truth is they spend more time going back for repairs/fixes than actually on the users desk. More trouble than they are worth in the long run.IgenIgen - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
The new ASUS G751JT/JY actually use a redesigned chassis compared to the G750. It also comes with an IPS display as standard (at least in Europe).JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Is it a radical overhaul of the design, or just incremental tweaks of the previous iterations of the G7xx series? Judging by images, it's the latter:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Compared that with the GT70 vs. GT72 and it's a massive change. That's what I'm trying to get at.