The MSI GT80 Titan Review: The Broadwell Gaming Laptop Your Desktop Envies
by Brett Howse on June 26, 2015 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
Normally on a notebook review, I would consider battery life to be one of the key aspects of the experience. However the GT80 Titan is not a typical notebook. This is really a device designed to sit on a desk and be used in lieu of a desktop computer. But if you ever feel the need to pick up this 10 pound laptop and lug it to the coffee shop, I suppose we should see what kind of battery life you can expect.
The GT80 Titan lacks NVIDIA’s Optimus technology, so it can’t switch from the discrete graphics to integrated graphics on the fly. MSI has included a hardware switch to change to integrated graphics, but it does require a reboot in between. Just to see how much of a difference this makes, I ran the light test first with the GTX 980Ms active, and then again leveraging Intel’s integrated GPU.
Our light test is light web browsing with the display set at 200 nits. The 80 Wh battery inside the GT80 Titan is really no match for the hunger of the SLI graphics cards, and with those enabled the battery life is a mere two hours and twenty minutes. However once you disable the GPUs and switch to the integrated GPU, the result is actually a pretty respectable four hours and nine minutes. Considering the size of the display and the power underneath the covers, I was actually shocked it was that high.
The heavy test ramps up the amount of pages browsed, adds in a 1 MB/s file download, and a movie is played back using the Windows 8 Video app. On most devices, the light test result is often dictated by the display power, and the heavy test shifts that balance over to the CPU and I/O. However with the power hungry components in the GT80, the difference between the light and heavy tests results is less than normal with it getting just about an hour less overall. Even though it is just three hours fifteen minutes, it actually ties the Sony Vaio Haswell based Ultrabook in this test, but it does have over double the battery capacity of that much smaller notebook.
Looking at the normalized graphs, the GT80 shows just how much energy is needed to power the CPU and large display. Once you turn on the GPUs though, the power usage really gets ugly and the light result with the GPUs enabled is one of the worst we have seen. Even though NVIDIA has been improving power efficiency and idle draw of their GPUs, they still are not in the same league as the 14nm Intel GPU when discussing minimum power draw.
Charge Time
In order to provide enough power for the two GPUs plus the quad-core CPU, MSI ships the GT80 Titan with a massive 330 watt A/C adapter. This power brick alone weighs more than some notebooks, but it is necessary to keep up with the insane power requirements of this notebook. With that much power available, MSI could have chosen to reduce the charge time pretty substantially.
Looking at the time though, the GT80 charges in roughly the same time as most notebooks. Even though they could have provided more power to the battery, this may have required beefed up circuitry, and even if that is there, it can be hard on the battery due to the heat generated. MSI was fairly conservative here but the end result is a fine 2.5 hours.
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Laststop311 - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
Man imagine if they would of put a 120 or 144hz panel on this thing. That woulda just rly took it to another level considering it's easily hitting 120 fps+ on games.dali71 - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link
I'm considering getting a Eurocom X8 for exactly that reason. It's ridiculous to give a laptop that much GPU power, only to cripple it with a 60Hz display.meacupla - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
"MSI includes a wrist rest in the box which mounts on the front."Are there any pictures of said wrist rest being attached to the laptop?
I mean, I know it's an accessory and all, but if it's a laptop that comes with external accessories, it'd be nice to see the size of all accessories that come with the retail box the laptop came in.
For example, the power brick that came with the initial Xbox 360 was MASSIVE and that added a lot of bulk to the entire package, especially if you wanted to take it over to a friend's house.
JKflipflop98 - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
I think the power numbers are quite misleading. Why don't you try doing what this laptop is built for and see how long the battery lasts? I didn't see any charts with battery life while actually using those two Titans. I'd wager you get 20 minutes of battery life before you need to plug in again.Notmyusualid - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link
Having had a string of DTR machines to my name, I can say that gaming tends around the 60 minute mark on battery.The battery ends up being a UPS to most of the machines I've had, but the M18xR2 I have has HD4000 graphics, and I can run for hours using that, but annoyingly, it requires a reboot to activate, and thus gets little real world use.
bennyg - Sunday, June 28, 2015 - link
Most gaming notebooks downclock on battery, too much current draw will overheat the battery. You just do not bother gaming on battery. The strength of this is that you're not tethered to your desk. Though... while not less hassle, it is probably a lot cheaper to just buy 2 desktops of similar power :oSirGCal - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
If this had G-Sync to the monitor and an M2 PCIe slot for faster still performance storage, I'd buy it in a second... So close though!Laststop311 - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
Does this laptop use pci-e ssd's? I have a feeling it doesn't since the 2 gpu's will be eating up 16 pci-e lanes. We have to wait for skylake for the 4 extra pci-e lanes from the cpu before we can have sli graphics and pci-e ssd's.Even so I am extremely impressed with this laptop. I truly hope MSI keeps this design going when skylake is released. If MSI releases this exact laptop with skylake and uses the extra pci-e lanes from skylake for pci-e ssd's I will be buying this to replace my m18x. Nothing beats a large 18 inch laptop for portable lan gaming. With this laptop since the keyboard is so nice you don't even need to pack a keyboard and monitor with you when you go. I currently have to carry a keyboard and 24 inch monitor with me as well as the notebook and mouse. With this design all I need is the notebook and mouse.
My wish is they keep this exact same design when skylake comes out and add the option of a XM overclockable skylake flagship mobile cpu so I can overclock it to a solid 4.3-4.5ghz similar to how i overclock the 2960xm to 4.2ghz in my alienware. And use the 4 extra pci-e lanes to make one of the m2 slots a pci-e 3.0 x4 slot and the other one a normal sata slot. If they make this simple tweak I will be buying on day 1.
dominiqueovalle - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link
when will the anandtech review for the 1080p razer blade come out? if everMamiyaOtaru - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link
would have preferred a physical numpad. What about cursor control? eh, trackpoint maybe? I'd expect an external mouse to be in use most of the time, and a trackpoint would be fine for backup