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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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.