MSI GT70 Dragon Edition Notebook Review: Haswell and the GTX 780M
by Dustin Sklavos on June 18, 2013 12:01 AM ESTBuild Quality, Heat, and Noise
So the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition was supposed to be our flagship Haswell and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M review. On purely CPU-centric tasks, it didn't disappoint, but whenever the GTX 780M was invoked it started having serious problems. So what happened? Monitoring GPU clocks during testing didn't reveal any issues; in fact, most of the time the 780M was running in the neighborhood of 920MHz. Realistically, it should be pulverizing the outgoing 680M at those speeds.
For comparison's sake, this is what the internal design of the Alienware M17x R4 looks like:
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Now here's the internal design of the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition, and hopefully that should give you all the information you need.
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At this point, the problem is pretty evident: MSI is trying to cool both a high performance mobile CPU and a high performance mobile GPU with a single fan. The cooling system has one fan with a pair of heatsinks around it: cool air comes in through the back of the GT70 and through the GPU's heatsink array, and then the hot air pulled off of that is used to cool the CPU's heatsink array behind the GT70's exhaust.
The result is that a few runs of games and some stress testing pops up with a HWMonitor screen that looks like this:
The CPU is throttling. Noise levels remain reasonable during gaming, but that's because the CPU is essentially cooking itself. And keep in mind that the GPU is getting cooled first, so the GTX 780M's boost has a healthy amount of headroom to play with. Now, MSI does have a "feature" that can be employed to mitigate thermal issues.
All you have to do to get these thermals is push a touch-sensitive button above the keyboard that toggles the system fan to maximum. Of course, in the process the noise levels wind up being obnoxious and well over 50dB, and performance improves minimally. The fact remains: the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition's thermal design simply isn't enough. I've heard stories of this chassis having thermal issues in earlier models, but at least now I can decisively pin it down.
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For a flagship gaming notebook, this is basically inexcusable, and you're really paying for the trio of SSDs in RAID 0 more than anything else. For the same money you can get an Alienware 17 with a GTX 780M. While we haven't tested it yet, it's due in for review soon, and I can tell you that the cooling system is still designed with separate dedicated fans and heatsinks for the CPU and GPU.
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darkhawk1980 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Dustin,I realize that this is straight out of the box, but I highly suggest checking out MSI's own forums. There should be an electronic controller firmware you can flash that removes the throttling problem that is present in these notebooks.
I personally have one of the older GT70 0NE laptops with a GTX680M, and I can safely say that mine will trounce this notebook. This is because once the throttling issue is resolved, it's possible to run the GTX680M core at 950 MHz without any issues.
And while I do find turning on the fan to maximum while gaming, I think you're really putting the noise issue as being too high of a problem. It's not nearly that bad. I actually made a custom cooler for my GT70 simply because I wanted better cooling, and this custom cooling allows me to game at 950MHz without the maximum fan setting.
Honestly, the GT70 is a great notebook for the price with the super raid feature. It's perhaps not as 'nice' as an alienware, but it can compete easily, and for a good bit less money. Keep in mind, you are comparing the last generation hardware in the alienware, to the current/new generation hardware in the MSI. Of course the prices are going to be the same.....Compare the new alienware and realize that the price will now be $500 more than the MSI for the same features, possibly even less. MSI has again, priced it very competitively against the competition. It's the whole reason I bought a GT70 instead of an Alienware.
kogunniyi - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
The author hasn't written "Alienware is better than MSI" or "Alienware provides better value for the money than MSI." Why do you define your MSI against Alienware?MSI is MSI, and Alienware is Alienware. A negative review is not a reason to justify your purchase to anyone else.
huaxshin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
He doesn`t need a new firmware. He need to remove the bad paste job and redo it.All CPUs no matter what model will throttle at 98C.
BobBobson - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
OMG..shut up, please!
If you are happy with your GT70 then great, why dont you go away and just be happy about it cos there are plenty here who aren't.
huaxshin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
"Plenty here who aren't"I see you moved to Anandtech to whine more about your notebook. For those who doesn't know, this is the Only guy from notebookreview who had any problems with his GT70 and cried about it instead of sending it in.
Yes many here who complain about it. Only you just like in NBR.
JBVertexx - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Your ranting is actually making MSI look worse - it's pretty obvious from your rants that you have some sort of personal ax to grind. Really, perhaps you should do as BobBobson suggested.huaxshin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Yes because I work for MSI and represent them.lol
BobBobson - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Yes, you do. And you are paranoid as well. If you don't actually work for MSI, then what the hell are you doing rabidly defending this company as though it were your dear old mom who was getting slighted?mercutiouk - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
As we have a paid shill here, could you possibly get in touch with the european branch of the MSI repairs?Hitachi drive fails, sent back - came back from repair with a different power supply. This didn't fit the socket on the back snugly.
Come a warm summer the arcing between badly fitting power plug and power pin resulted in the socket basically melting. Sent back. "Customer damage". It took threat of forum posts detailing exactly how poor your service treatment in Europe was to get a "ok, we've approved it - this one occasion only".
5 months later... the hard drive fails again. The laptops now got 1 hitachi and 1 WD blue, in a raid-0...
I can well believe the review here. Notebookcheck or no, you screwed up your flagship product. I think more reviews will show this to be true.
mercutiouk - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Didn't make clear but this was on a GX660-R