Everyone’s version of the ideal mobile gaming platform is different.
According to my wife, a smartphone running Frozen Free Fall is all she
needs (to drive me insane). My four-year-old’s tastes are more refined;
he loves Nvidia’s Shield for its gamepad controller. Meanwhile, I’m
spoiled by years of enthusiast-class PC hardware. I need native
resolution and maxed-out details, else I’m just not interested.
Apparently, MSI built its GT72 2QE Dominator Pro notebook for power users like me. There’s just one caveat: at over eight pounds and armed with a 17” screen, the GT72’s mobility is debatable. This is a desktop replacement in the truest sense. Then again, it does pack an impressive list of specifications.
You get Intel’s Core i7-4710HQ host processor operating at a relatively conservative 2.5 GHz base clock, which jumps as high as 3.5 GHz with just a single core active. That’s fine by me—most games aren’t CPU-bound anyway. And for those that are, four Hyper-Threaded Haswell cores deftly alleviate bottlenecks.
Graphics processing is the real determinant of gaming performance, and MSI arms you with the fastest solution available outside of a CrossFire or SLI configuration, Nvidia’s flagship GeForce GTX 980M. Its GM204 GPU is the same one that powers the desktop GeForce GTX 980. Only, in mobile trim, some of the chip’s resources are disabled to cut power consumption. The discrete module also packs 8GB of GDDR5 memory. That’s frankly overkill for a natively 1920x1080 panel. Now, there’s always the option to drive external displays using built-in mini-DisplayPort outputs or an HDMI connector. Conceivably, you could “dock” the GT72 at home and have your serious play time on a higher-res display. Even then, though, 4GB is ample.
On the topic of gratuitousness, our GT72 2QE Dominator Pro sample came configured from XOTIC PC with 32GB of DDR3-1600 in four 8GB DIMMs. Stepping down to 16GB would have saved us close to $160. And performance wouldn’t have suffered for it, either.
But storage is where XOTIC PC really went all-out. MSI has this feature called Super RAID 3 whereby as many as four SSDs can be configured in a striped array. There’s also room for a 2.5” hard drive. So, we ended up with four 256GB SSDs as a big 1TB pool, along with a separate 1TB disk. That’s simultaneously awesome and terrifying. On one hand, you’ll see sequential write performance in excess of 1GB/s. If any one drive fails, though, you lose the entire array’s information. Just be disciplined about moving your important stuff to the cloud or onto a NAS appliance.
All of those components, taken together, draw quite a bit of power and dissipate significant thermal energy. A nine-cell 83 Wh battery sounds beefy, but if you plan to spend your time gaming, make sure that bundled 230W AC adapter is close by. It’ll keep your session from getting cut short and guarantee maximum performance—our testing showed graphics memory clocks dropped from 1250 to 800 MHz away from the wall. AC power is also a requisite of MSI’s SHIFT technology, a manual switch of sorts that lets you flip between three profiles of varying performance to control temperature.
http://www.pcgamer.com/msi-gt72-2qe-dominator-pro-review/
Apparently, MSI built its GT72 2QE Dominator Pro notebook for power users like me. There’s just one caveat: at over eight pounds and armed with a 17” screen, the GT72’s mobility is debatable. This is a desktop replacement in the truest sense. Then again, it does pack an impressive list of specifications.
You get Intel’s Core i7-4710HQ host processor operating at a relatively conservative 2.5 GHz base clock, which jumps as high as 3.5 GHz with just a single core active. That’s fine by me—most games aren’t CPU-bound anyway. And for those that are, four Hyper-Threaded Haswell cores deftly alleviate bottlenecks.
Graphics processing is the real determinant of gaming performance, and MSI arms you with the fastest solution available outside of a CrossFire or SLI configuration, Nvidia’s flagship GeForce GTX 980M. Its GM204 GPU is the same one that powers the desktop GeForce GTX 980. Only, in mobile trim, some of the chip’s resources are disabled to cut power consumption. The discrete module also packs 8GB of GDDR5 memory. That’s frankly overkill for a natively 1920x1080 panel. Now, there’s always the option to drive external displays using built-in mini-DisplayPort outputs or an HDMI connector. Conceivably, you could “dock” the GT72 at home and have your serious play time on a higher-res display. Even then, though, 4GB is ample.
On the topic of gratuitousness, our GT72 2QE Dominator Pro sample came configured from XOTIC PC with 32GB of DDR3-1600 in four 8GB DIMMs. Stepping down to 16GB would have saved us close to $160. And performance wouldn’t have suffered for it, either.
But storage is where XOTIC PC really went all-out. MSI has this feature called Super RAID 3 whereby as many as four SSDs can be configured in a striped array. There’s also room for a 2.5” hard drive. So, we ended up with four 256GB SSDs as a big 1TB pool, along with a separate 1TB disk. That’s simultaneously awesome and terrifying. On one hand, you’ll see sequential write performance in excess of 1GB/s. If any one drive fails, though, you lose the entire array’s information. Just be disciplined about moving your important stuff to the cloud or onto a NAS appliance.
All of those components, taken together, draw quite a bit of power and dissipate significant thermal energy. A nine-cell 83 Wh battery sounds beefy, but if you plan to spend your time gaming, make sure that bundled 230W AC adapter is close by. It’ll keep your session from getting cut short and guarantee maximum performance—our testing showed graphics memory clocks dropped from 1250 to 800 MHz away from the wall. AC power is also a requisite of MSI’s SHIFT technology, a manual switch of sorts that lets you flip between three profiles of varying performance to control temperature.
PlatFrom : Notebook Gaming
Processor Type : Intel Core i7
Processor Onboard : Intel Core i7-4710HQ Processor (up to 3.50 GHz, 6M Cache)
Memory Standart : 32GB DDR3 (4x 8GB)
Tipe Grafis : Nvidia Geforce GTX980M 8GB
Ukuran Layar : 17.3" Full HD
Reolusi Layar : 1920x1080
Tipe Layar : Anti-Glare Display
Audio : Integrated
Audio : Boost
Speaker : Integrated
Sound Blaster : Cinema
Kapasitas Penyimpanan : 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD
Optical Drive Type : Blu-Ray
Networking : Integrated
>Killer Gaming LAN
Wireless Bluetooth : Integrated
>Bluetooth 4.0
Keyboard : Keyboard By Steelseries
Ragam Input Device : Touch Pad
Baterai : 9 cell
Sistem Operasi : Microsoft Windows 8.1
Dimensi (PTL) : 428 x 294 x 48 mm
http://www.pcgamer.com/msi-gt72-2qe-dominator-pro-review/