Another day, another gaming notebook. Or
if MSI is to be believed, another weapon
to save mankind. I mean, really, MSI,
really? Wow. For you, the viewer, I'm
not recommending that you go watch that video. Although it is kind of hard to
look away from cuz if you're that into cringe, you guys should probably be
dropping a like on this video to let us know if you're excited for the
conclusion of Scrapyard Wars 2, which is coming this weekend with probably more
cringe than the MSI promotional video.
Kingston KC 310 series businessgrade SSDs feature firmwarebased power loss
protection. Massive capacities and performance to spare. In fact, we're
using them for our new production server. Click right here to learn more
about them. Let's start as always with specs because
a gaming laptop could have as many RGB keyboards as it wants, but if it can't
back it up with raw horsepower, I'm not going to recommend you buy it. At its
heart, the GT72 2QE features an Intel
Core i7 5700HQ. Yes, that is a Broadwell
quadcore mobile CPU, which means about a 10% improvement over the last generation
equivalent, 4720HQ. 16 gigs of DDR3L memory, and a GTX 980M
graphics card, the best mobile GPU available, and only a stones throw from
a desktop GTX 970 in terms of performance. So, lots of raw horsepower
under the hood. looks good, too, with two massive cooling fans, a metric butt
ton of heat pipes, and expandability galore with four M.2 SSD slots, a 2 and
1/2 in drive slot, and four DIM slots available for upgraders to throw in up
to four 8 gig sticks for a total of 32 gigs. I actually did try my 16 gig DDR3
modules in the bottom slots. And while the BIOS and Windows picked up 48 gigs
of RAM, which was sick, unfortunately, Windows only reported 32 as usable. So,
who knows if that support will come in the future. Can you imagine 64 gigs of
RAM? Anyway, withdrawing to the outside, the industrial design screams MSI with a
gamey black and red color scheme. The screen backing is an aggressively
sculpted brushed aluminum with an illuminated MSI Gaming Series logo. The
bottom has tall rubber feet to allow ample air flow through the red grills to
the bottom components. Oh, and there's a subwoofer port down there as well. A
feature I usually ignore, but this laptop, perhaps actually more thanks to
its large internal volume and that massive speaker on the inside, actually
has a surprisingly potent sound system. On the back for IO, we find power in for
the large included power brick. Gigabit Ethernet powered by a Killer E2200
chipset to go along with the Killer 1525
AC wireless inside. Two mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports and an HDMI 1.4A port for
easy display expansion. On the right side, a Blu-ray burner, something I was
surprised was missing from the last 17-in gaming notebook I checked out and
yet something I didn't touch throughout my entire time with this one. As well as
two USB 3 ports. Then on the left, we've got an SD card reader, audio ports, and
four more USB3 ports, but you might have noticed, Lis, why didn't you
specifically say USB 3.0? You always do that. Well, they're not. Two of them are
USB 3.1 suckers. That means 10 gigabit
max rated speeds on supported devices. And you can check out this video by
clicking the little eye in the top right corner to learn the full dates of USB
3.1. Cracking open the device, we'll start
with the that huge speaker grill with the Dine Audio branding. Sounds
surprisingly good. And then we'll follow up with one of MSI's characteristically
solid Steeler co-branded keyboards. The layout is standard in all the good ways,
including a full number pad and properly laid out arrow keys. Take notes, Razer.
And in spite of its size, MSI has done a good job of keeping overall flex to a
minimum. But if I was to complain about something, and I'm pretty sure that's my
job, the keys have nice long travels, but are a little stiff at the top. Oh,
and the function arrows. Function up and
down are page up and down. Function left and right are home and end. Everyone
needs to quit screwing this up, especially when it's the one damn thing
about an otherwise fully programmable macro compatible keyboard that can't be
changed. The touchpad is above average. It tracks well. It's responsive. It's a
nice size and it has the usual gesture support, but this is going to be a love
it or hate it thing. It's seamlessly integrated into the plastic wrist rest
surface that's separate from the rest of the metal bottom under the keyboard.
Personally, I like it cuz it'll keep crumbs out of the edges of my trackpad,
but it does make it harder to find the edge without looking down and you can
accidentally run out of trackpad unexpectedly. But that's not even my
biggest complaint about the trackpad. And there's always one, isn't there?
It's again a stiffness related one. The clicky buttons, which I like normally,
are quite difficult to press down, and I'd like to see that dialed back a bit.
Now, let's move on to the screen. Like the Seagar NP 9773 that we checked out
recently, the 1080 IPS display in the
GT72 features NVIDIA G-Sync. So, unlike
on the desktop, notebook G-Sync works by having the GPU communicate directly with
the panel. And instead of NVIDIA creating a scaler, they're just
selecting G-Sync certified panels according to good behavior with variable
refresh, solid color reproduction, and pixel responsiveness. And there's a
couple of new features, although they're not limited to notebooks. G-Sync now
allows the behavior beyond the max panel refresh rate to be modified to either
VSYNC or no VSYNC, just like AMD's Freync. And it allows games to be run in
windowed full screen mode. Now, very cool. But while variable refresh is
undeniably a better gaming experience than the alternative, it's not all rosy.
G-Sync doesn't work with Optimus right now. So, if you want to use the onboard
graphics to save battery, you'll actually need to press this button,
which will prompt you to reboot to switch. Bummer. The good news is that
Maxwell's idle power consumption is much better than previous mobile graphics
cards, so it's not as much of a kick in the teeth as it would be. So, let's talk
temps and performance now. Then, I put it up against the NP9773 and the Razer
Blade 14205 to see how it fared. In IDA
64 CPU test, the GT72 walked away with
it. This is going to be due to the fact that it's literally over twice the
thickness of the only other one of these notebooks also using a mobile CPU and a
last generation one at that. GPU is a
bit of a tighter race here. We have to look not only at temperatures of our GTX
980 or 970M graphics cores, but also at
GPU boost turbo speeds. Again, MSI is
looking really good here with solid boost clock speeds in Crisis 3. So then
what about the gaming experience here? MSI delivers almost the whole package.
The GTX 980M rocks and the new generation Broadwell CPU bridges the gap
nicely between last gen mobile flagships
and a full board desktop CPU. But for
some reason, while I really appreciate the astonishing viewing angles of this
particular IPS panel and the nonoversaturated default color profile,
MSI opted for a 60 Hz panel, while competitors like Seager and ASUS are
coming to the table with 75 Hz panels that from my experience can sometimes
even overclock to a 100 hertz, making
for a great mobile gaming experience. My
GT72 managed a mere 70 Hz once
overclocked. Which isn't to say that if
we look past the hilariously stupid promotional video, this isn't a butt
kicker of a laptop. I just have some reservations at this kind of price. I
expect no compromises. And while I accept that I'm trading thin and light
for cool and quiet in this case, I mean, it's gaming right now. You can hardly
hear the thing. I don't think the 128 gig SSD and one
TBTE hard drive are particularly competitive with other $3,000 machines.
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Free trial. So, I think that's pretty much it.
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doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next. So, click
that little button in the top right corner, the little eye, to check out our
Radeon R9 Fury X video, which hope
you've probably actually already watched if you're into this kind of stuff, but it's a pretty sick graphics card. Got
like water cooling on it. Good stuff. Go watch that or something else of ours or
someone else's video, I guess. Just
I don't know what to say anymore.
I'm wearing an Apple Watch. Do I look cooler yet?