MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Review: GTX 980M Reigns Supreme
by Jarred Walton on November 11, 2014 8:00 AM ESTMSI GT72 Dominator Pro General Performance
General performance isn’t nearly so exciting, as mostly we’re gated by the performance of the CPU and/or SSD. The GT72 is still plenty fast, but there haven’t been any major jumps in CPU performance for quite some time, especially when speaking of notebooks. Perhaps Broadwell will shake things up a bit next year, but for now the Haswell Core i7 processors continue to be plenty fast for all but the most demanding of users. Here’s a quick look at our standard CPU and system benchmarks, along with 3DMark for reference. Also note that we have WiFi performance at the bottom of the page.
Starting with PCMark, I ran the GT72 with both the GTX 980M and the HD 4600 Graphics. With Optimus laptops, you generally get the best of both worlds in that some tests use the discrete GPU while others use the Intel GPU (and the Computation and to a lesser extent Creativity subtests in PCMark 7 benefit greatly from Quick Sync). What's interesting is that where Intel's Processor Graphics were typically more than sufficient to post good results in PCMark 7, with PCMark 8 and the support of OpenCL acceleration the difference between the two GPUs suddenly becomes far more apparent.
The quad SSD RAID 0 array does prove potent as well, pushing our PCMark results about as high as we’ve ever seen on a notebook, but again it’s a case of diminishing returns. While PCMark 7's Storage test showed more of a difference between the various SSDs, in PCMark 8 all of the SSD-equipped laptops are basically tied.
There are no real surprises in our CPU tests: the GT72 with a Core i7-4710HQ is fast, though there are times where other notebooks with faster CPUs take the lead. The upgraded model with i7-4980HQ should improve performance by another 12-15%, but I’m not sure it would be worth the additional cost. Interestingly, the GT72 places at the top of the x264 HD second pass; it's possible the storage subsystem is a contributing factor, but the GT70 only has a hard drive so whatever the cause MSI 17.3" gaming notebooks do well in that test.
As for wireless performance, the dual-band Killer 1525 802.11ac solution worked well during testing. I didn’t notice any unusual drops or loss of connectivity, which is actually better than what I’ve experienced with many laptops using Intel’s 802.11ac solutions. (Many of those laptops need to have WiFi disabled/enabled every week or so in order to stay on a 5GHz connection, at least in my experience.) I can’t say much as to WiFi performance in crowded wireless locations, though; all I can report is that within the confines of my home and a few trips to public WiFi access didn’t create any issues. The raw throughput is also higher than any other WiFi solution we’ve tested in recent times, though as always there’s plenty of variance between runs.
As a side note, the GT72 also supports Killer Double Shot Pro with Smart Teaming (TM!), which basically allows the system to load balance between two connections. One example given is using the Gigabit Ethernet for gaming while you stream the video via Twitch over WiFi (or vice versa).
As for 3DMark, I include these charts mostly as a point of reference; it's far more useful to look at the performance of games you actually care about, but the results from 3DMark are more or less in agreement with our gaming scores.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Sadly, we haven't had a high-end AMD mobile GPU in for testing since the 7970M a couple years back, which was tested on an older gaming suite. You can check results in Bench, though:http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1378?vs=833
Spigsy - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Thanks for the link Jarred! I logged just in time to see you'd already done the work for me. Truly appreciated.From what I can see the 980m would offer me anywhere from a 30% to over 100% boost in gaming, which is seriously impressive. I've always been a fan of bang for buck (thus the 7970m) but I have to say I'm seriously impressed with what Nvidia have achieved this generation, particularly considering we're still on 28nm here.
DILLIGAFF - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
good review, this part is not right:"Second, the RAM has two SO-DIMM slots in the main area under the laptop, but there are two more that are accessed after removing the keyboard and top portion of the chassis; I didn't want to hassle with that as it's not really necessary for the review"
i have the 211 sku, and you cant remove the lid and the keyboard from the top on the gt72. To get to those ram slots you have to disassemble most of the laptop through the back cover on this model. should not be a big deal- the cheapest sku they offer comes with 16gb already populated into those slots. so the only people who will deal with those slots are people who want lower cas ram or people doing repairs if the ram goes bad.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Text edited, thanks. As noted, I didn't actually disassemble the system to check the battery and other RAM slots, so all I could say for certain was that they were on the opposite side of the motherboard.DILLIGAFF - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Thanks dude!as far as that second unused 2.5" bay- there is a sku (non usa sku as of today afaik) that comes with no SSD, so instead of a bracket to hold m.2 drives, there is a bracket that has connectors for both 2.5" bays- at least one is sata 6. this is sort of relevant because in the sku's that come with the m.2 bracket/ssd, there is no sata 3 port for a 2.5" drive.
RaistlinZ - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Unfortunately, these things become expensive paper weights after 2 years. They just don't hold much of their value over time. You can probably get 80% of the performance of this laptop while spending only $1,500.00 or so.JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Yes and no. A desktop with similar performance will cost between $1400 and $1500 (with 32GB RAM and a 512GB SSD), but that doesn't include the display, speakers, or keyboard/mouse... and what it really doesn't include is portability. No matter how much people want to try and say otherwise, there are users that want a portable gaming system like this. And in two years, while there will be faster GPUs available, that hardly makes an older system obsolete -- a three year old gaming notebook can easily handle most games today, just not at maximum settings.CrazyElf - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
One advantage that this laptop has is that the GPU is upgradeable.Asus G series is not. Alienware, some models are. Many of the Clevo models are.
CPUs don't seem to improve much every year, so it's not as big a deal.
DanNeely - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Have MxM cards actually become available at sane prices? The last time I looked the premium on them was so large it was cheaper to dump the old laptop on ebay and buy a new one.Also, is cooling still a concern with MxM swapping? IIRC something about early generation ones had problems with the heatsink connectors changing between generations making the upgrades nearly impossible in practice.
CrazyElf - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Pretty good gaming laptop all things considered. For the money, you get better hardware than what a comparable Alienware offers.The only thing I wish for is that the battery was user replaceable. Gaming laptops don't have good battery life times, and this one is decent with the integrated, but still I'd like to be able to hot-swap on the go.
The are already IPS GT72s coming in, which should fix the only real flaw of this laptop, which is the poor color accuracy of the TN display. You will no doubt have to pay extra though for the IPS display.
I believe that the GPU can also be upgraded, leaving future potential upgrades available. Unfortunately, the CPU has been soldered, which has become standard among all gaming laptops.
Otherwise a solid laptop.