Performance – Synthetic GPU, Gaming Benchmarks

Synthetic GPU Benchmarks

Naturally, the primary appeal of the MSI GT60 is its gaming ability. As it turns out, we’ve already performed pretty extensive testing on the machine’s GPU performance with various games. You can find all of the results of our testing in Ryan Shrout’s exhaustive article covering the GTX 780M’s performance (the MSI GT60 was the test platform here). There, you’ll find DiRT 3, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, Bioshock Infinite, and Metro: Last Light benchmarks with a much more intense focus on how the GPU stacks up against AMD’s Radeon HD 7970M.

In the meantime, for this analysis, we’re really more interested in how the MSI GT60 itself compares with other gaming notebooks. Spoiler alert: it’s pretty powerful stuff.

Our first stop, as always, is synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark (2013) is a popular first choice:

3dmark.png

While the Lenovo Y500 turned in a strong performance, it’s easy to see that the GT60 beats it in every way—particularly demolishing its scores in Cloud Gate and Fire Strike. These are some seriously impressive results coming from a mobile platform.

Next, for comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at 3DMark 11:

3dmark11.png

Once again, the GT60 yields blistering results, leaving everyone else in the dust.

Gaming Benchmarks

Before we begin, let me remind you to check out Ryan Shrout’s extensive coverage of the GTX 780M in the MSI GT60. Once you’ve finished digesting those results, return here and we’ll compare to other gaming notebooks we’ve tested.

Future reviews will include a larger selection of gaming benchmarks, but since we’ve already tested this notebook in a number of other popular (and recent) games, the rest of our tests today will focus on what’s been done in the past to help provide context for the GT60’s performance.

First up, it’s Just Cause 2:

justcause2.png

It’s not difficult to spot the GT60 here, as it’s—once again—far in front of the runner-up (which happens to once again be Lenovo’s much more affordable Y500 gaming notebook). But the difference of roughly 19% between the two scores is significant.

Next, a quick look at StarCraft II:

sc2.png

This almost looks like a mistake. Yes, these results are while running at 1080p, Ultra, with Anti-Aliasing on. There’s no dancing around the point: this is one insanely powerful mobile GPU.

And finally, let’s see how Diablo III plays:

diablo3.png

The GT60’s minimum is even greater than the Y500’s maximum, and the average frame rate is 39% higher than we recorded on the Y500. Everyone else is, once again, far behind—though the other scores in our database here are from two much weaker contenders.

Taking into consideration Ryan’s extensive testing of the GTX 780M and our further comparisons with recent contenders here, it’s probably quite obvious that this is the current machine to beat. We have never seen results this strong from a mobile gaming platform to date, and they’re not just better than other recent offerings—they’re leaps and bounds ahead in many cases.

It is true that (as detailed in our previous Cooling section) we witnessed what was presumably TDP-constrained throttling when both CPU and GPU were heavily stressed (near 100%), but to reiterate, these conditions are not likely to manifest themselves under any normal gaming circumstances. We can certainly say with confidence that we were unable to replicate them throughout any of our benchmarks at any rate.

Bottom line: if you want desktop-class gaming performance in a notebook, this is as close as it’s going to get to date.

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