![]() PCMark 8 Home measures low ambition gaming and general CPU performance in typical home (yawn) tasks.Ī more strenuous workload is our Handbrake encode test. It’s a fairly easy test that any machine can do, but it favors the higher clock speeds like the desktop chips in our zero-point testbed and the Origin PC EON15-X. It’s a synthetic benchmark designed to measure typical usage in a “home” environment and includes browsing, video editing, photo editing, word processing and light-duty gaming. The first test is PCMark 8 Home Conventional. People who buy these honking big laptops also tend to edit video, photos, or do other content creation-oriented tasks. We all know gaming laptops do more than play. The MSI GT72S Dragon performance in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is also top notch. ![]() ![]() I have a somewhat smaller set of comparison numbers here, but the GeForce GTX 980 easily schools the GeForce GTX 980M chips. I also threw Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor with the 4K texture pack and Ultra-quality setting enabled. Here’s how the MSI GT72S Dragon stacks up in a real game. I unfortunately don’t have our Zero Point at the lower resolution handy, but the only laptop that we’ve seen with more performance from is one with two GeForce GTX 980M cards in SLI. To see how the part stacks up in a real game, I also ran Tomb Raider set to Ultimate quality and at 1920×1080 resolution. Gordon Mah Ungĭoes the laptop GeForce GTX 980 stackup to a desktop GeForce GTX 980? Yup. The result? The Dragon is actually slightly faster than our desktop system. I ran 3DMark Firestrike Extreme on the GT72S Dragon and compared it to some beefy laptops plus our PCWorld Zero point desktop system with a GeForce GTX 980. ![]() None of the fancy Dragon stuff matters if the laptop doesn’t deliver, and it does. G-sync also brings anti-ghosting and even works in a window, but the truth is it’s hard to drag down a GeForce GTX 980 even at 1080p gaming. It’s not quite to the level of a 120Hz or 144Hz panel, but it’s better than 60Hz. There are benefits: For example, the G-sync panel is rated for 75Hz, so you’ll get a slightly smoother feel in gaming and even scrolling or moving windows around. The problem, of course, is that with the 17.3-inch 1920×1080 IPS screen and the GeForce GTX 980, it’s going to be really hard to get frame rates to drop to the 30 and 40 fps range where G-sync is the most effective. The GT72S Dragon features a G-sync certified panel. By excessive I mean few people really need 32GB-but hey, why not go all in right? G-Sync display for smoother gaming The BIOS in the MSI GT72S Dragon pales in comparison to a good motherboard’s, but it’s at least functional and let us easily dial up a 4GHz overclock on the Skylake chip.īecause it’s Skylake, MSI pairs the CPU up with an excessive amount of DDR4/2133 RAM using four DIMM slots. Overall, I’d say fan noise on the GT72S was kept to a minimum. Only under a stress test do the fans get up and go. Even with the 4GHz overclock, the CPU fan speeds didn’t get obtrusive. I’d expect this to improve if overclocking of laptops actually turns into a thing.įor my tests I dialed up a quick overclock to 4GHz from its stock speed of 3.2GHz. There’s no mouse control, no print screen option and nothing to walk you through your overclocking attempts. Rather than the fancy whiz-bang UI that desktop motherboards get, the GT72S Dragon’s BIOS looks like it was lifted from a motherboard from 2001. The keyboard uses standard dome keys-if you want mechanical keys, you’ll have to pony up for the GT80 Titan SLI. Those keys, unfortunately are still just zone-lit-MSI officials cited the cost and power consumption of a per-key RGB setup. MSI’s GT72S Dominator Pro G Dragon features a, well, red dragon on its aluminum lid with an eye that glows when on.Ī redesigned keyboard makes the keys brighter. ![]() It’s a big upgrade over the rather sedate, black lid of the older GT72 Dominator. There’s one big difference on the outside: The dragon on the lid of the laptop casts a glowing eye when the laptop is powered on. It might seem like just a reissue of the older GT72 Dominator. With the confusingly named GeForce GTX 980 mobile chip, it’s true desktop performance at last.īefore we dive into performance, more on this striking Dragon. Sure, we’ve been able to get GeForce GTX 980M graphics chips all year long, but that part has only 75 percent of its desktop counterpart’s power. ![]()
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