MSI GT70 Dragon Edition Notebook Review: Haswell and the GTX 780M
by Dustin Sklavos on June 18, 2013 12:01 AM ESTGaming Performance
I had been hoping the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition would be an able demonstration of the performance of Intel's Haswell and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780M. While we can isolate the CPU performance easily enough, isolating GPU performance is much trickier. NVIDIA is using boost clocks on the GTX 780M, which means it's able to turbo up depending on thermal and power headroom, and there's actually a healthy enough variation in clocks that different chassis will be able to produce different levels of performance.
There's also the cooling system of the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition, which either doesn't have or just barely has the capacity to handle a combined 150W of heat.
Entry-level gaming results are in Bench, but suffice to say the GTX 780M is more than adequate for those settings, and so for the review I'm going to stick to Mainstream and Enthusiast level benchmarks.
In situations where the CPU is not a limiting factor, the 780M is able to boast a healthy lead on the 680M. But you'll notice that the GT70 Dragon is actually underperforming in certain cases; the CPU is getting throttled due to heat. The superior cooling system of the Alienware M17x is able to dissipate far more heat than the GT70's is.
Situations that stress the GPU more exclusively can result in healthy gains over the 680M, but overall stress on the CPU stemming from processor-intensive games like Skyrim and StarCraft II, as well as the hit from TressFX in Tomb Raider, effectively keeps the 780M from really stretching its legs.
Remember that on paper, at stock clocks, the 780M has at least 22% more shader power than the 680M and 39% more memory bandwidth. That means that, bare minimum, the 780M should be roughly 15%-20% faster than its predecessor. We're getting that in the traditionally GPU intensive Sleeping Dogs and Metro: Last Light, and most of it in BioShock: Infinite. But other games see lower gains, or are even slower on the GT70 Dragon Edition despite it having directly superior hardware.
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huaxshin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
And how is this relevant? A) you can find the most reliable notebook and still find people with problems. B) GX-660 is an old model. OEMs tend to progress with quality as the gain more experiencehuaxshin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Just read your post now.How is it MSI fault that someone else hardware fails?
And how is it MSI fault that you continued to use a PSU with power connector for a different product even though you noticed yourself they didnt fit like it should?
ZeDestructor - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Said PSU was sent back by MSI. Therefore THEY should have checked that they were sending correct parts back. Plenty of small changes happen during manufacturing silently. This could be one of them., More QC fails.. No thanks, so many other companies do much, much better...fanofanand - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I've been reading this site for over 5 years and have never been compelled to register until I read these comments. Dustin has done an admirable job with this review and huaxshin is clearly a paid shill. Never have I seen someone so adamantly defend something they didn't have a vested interest in, and I have no doubt that this case is no exception. People complain that Anand is too cozy with Intel, too nice to Nvidia, too hard on AMD etc. Readers here are CONSTANTLY looking for bias and here comes an honest open review and Dustin has been slandered repeatedly claiming the review is bogus etc.Why on earth should Dustin have to modify the laptop to review it??? A reviewer should NEVER alter a product during the course of a review. A buyer shouldn't be expected to do so, in fact it would void the warranty. If this is how MSI is shipping their product, then that's exactly what should be reviewed. Huaxshin you need to get out of here with your trash and go back to Tom's Hardware where reviews are regularly bought. Anand has higher standards and has been a positive force of change within the industry.
Dustin I applaud your honesty and candor with this review, it's refreshing to see somebody call out a company that has poor QC or in this case, bad design. Kudos!
huaxshin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Its not about modifying anything. Its about giving your partners, who send you a free sample, a chance to respond or resend a proper unit, before posting it online.Not spitting in their face first, then using a towel to clean up after MSI have discovered the fault.
I would have understood it if it was a different error like keyboard malfunction, or any other poor designed part of the notebook. But not a clearly faulty notebook not functioning like it should.
Which is clearly the case here because there is no chance MSI designed this system to run at 98C, which not only is too hot for comfort, but will also cause the CPU to throttle and not perform like it should.
MSI is not this stupid, to push out a system like that. It doesnt make any sense
JBVertexx - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
You're wrong - this is typical MSI - pure garbage, cheap, gaudy, cheesy junk. I made the mistake of buying an MSI motherboard, once, before I started paying attention to substantial reviews such as this. MSIs style is to pack product full of feature-set bullet points that they hope to appeal those ignorant consumers in the market, but in reality, turn out to have zero substantial value to the overall product.MSI - pure trailer-park-trash junk.
JBVertexx - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
And huaxshin, you are only adding to that trailer-park-trash image by evidence of your ignorant rants throughout this forum.JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Let me just chime in by saying I have an MSI GX60 with A10-4600M. I know it's a different laptop, but it warrants mention simply for the fact that it too appears to have performance issues. A10-4600M is no i7, certainly, but in many cases I'm getting performance that's closer to what I'd expect from the integrated HD 7660G rather than a high-end HD 7970M. I've tried to get better performance, so far to no avail. I thought the problem might be with AMD's Enduro or their drivers in general, but now I'm wondering if the APU is simply getting so hot that it's running at lower CPU speeds.I have no idea (well, I *do* have suspicions though) why haxshin is so adamant that Dustin did something wrong with this review, but the fact is the system is underperforming, and it appears to be throttling quite severely. Getting to the CPU to replace the TIM with something better is not something I have ever had to do in the course of a laptop review, and I know this review from Dustin is a couple weeks late. I would assume he at least mentioned some of the concerns to MSI, but if they sent out a lemon laptop to a major review site, what does that say about the potential for retail notebooks? Ugh.
huaxshin - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Are you guys really this uninformed? Not you too Jarred :/The reason why you get lower performance with a AMD APU + 7970M (any high end really) is because the CPU part of the APU is bottlenecking the GPU. Its too weak to drive the 7970M. Notebookcheck did an extensive test on the GX60 and found out that the APU cause the overall result over 18 games, to fall down to GTX 660M with i7.
Its that bad.
Temperatures is not the culprint there at all. Just weak APU used. The A10-4600M is a 35W TDP, its one of the most cool running CPUs out there. Since it use the exact same chassis as the GT60 with a cooling system built for 45W i7s.
Running Prime95 caused the A10-4600M to max out at 71C, which in no way will cause throttle.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/p...
I stand on my opinion that you should contact MSI to make a solution with a replacement than putting out a review that cause both benchmarks and temperature measurements to be wrong. MSI is at fault here for not doing better quality check, no doubt about that. I just hope Dustin thought this through before posting the review.
DeltaActual - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Can admin please ban this lamer?