MSI GT70 2PE Dominator Pro Gaming Notebook Review: Appropriately named

Performance – Processor, General, Storage Devices

The real question is how much better we can expect the GT70 to perform versus the 15.6” version we reviewed last year. The GT60 was already an impressive piece of tech, able to handle pretty much anything we threw its way.

To recap, the major differences between this model and the 15.6” GT60—apart from the obvious screen size and casing variances—are the 32 GB of RAM (versus the GT60’s 16 GB), the 880M (GT60: 780M), and the 384 GB triple-SSD RAID 0 (GT60: 128 GB single SSD). How well this translates to actual gaming and system performance premiums is a different question. Let’s dig in.

Performance – Stress Test

Our stress testing reveals some degree of compromise under pressure, which is a bit unfortunate considering the massive case and cooling capacity of the GT70. We use FurMark to simulate both CPU and GPU load during our stress testing, independently and simultaneously.

Under CPU load (using FurMark’s built-in CPU Burner), the machine buckles just a bit. We see full Turbo Boost rates of 3.2 GHz per core (close to the four-core design maximum of 3.5 GHz), as well as a CPU temperature maximum of 89°C, which is good. Activating Cooler Boost 2 does nothing to improve these values, indicating that they are a limitation of TDP rather than temperature. Exchanging that for GPU load instead, we found a consistent frequency of 800 MHz; that’s below the base frequency of the GTX 880M (954 MHz), which officially qualifies as throttling. The temperature maximum of the GPU under these circumstances was 90°C.

Finally, while both CPU and GPU were stressed, we saw CPU core frequencies mostly consistent at 3.1 to 3.2 GHz, whereas the GPU frequency stayed put at its base frequency of 954 MHz. However, GPU performance was greatly hamstrung by the massive simultaneous load on the CPU, dropping the reported frame rate in FurMark from 80 FPS down to roughly 48 FPS. Temperatures also reached a maximum of 95°C, which is very close to the 100°C maximum design temperature of the CPU. With Cooler Boost 2 enabled, both GPU and CPU experienced slightly stabler performance, with CPU frequencies rising back to a solid 3.2 GHz and the GPU remaining at 954 MHz under simultaneous load.

It is worth emphasizing that these limitations under extreme conditions don’t appear to affect the machine materially in terms of real-world performance. Our benchmarks on the coming pages will be proof enough of that.

Performance – Processor

The GT70’s i7-4800MQ is actually only slightly faster than the i7-4700MQ we saw in the GT60; its specifications are almost identical. Since integrated graphics don’t really apply to the GT70, the only actual difference between the two CPUs is in fact their operating frequencies: i7-4700MQ ranges from 2.4 GHz to 3.4 / 3.3 / 3.2 GHz single-, dual-, and quad-core Turbo operation, whereas the i7-4800MQ runs at 2.7 GHz to 3.7 / 3.6 / 3.5 GHz. That’s a bump of 300 MHz across the board, which will be useful in processor-intensive scenarios, but not necessarily in most gaming circumstances. TDP for both CPUs remains at 47 W, and max operating temperature is still 100°C (the GT70 appears to be averse to most anything above 90°C before aggressive cooling and reduced operating frequency kicks in—see our previous Cooling section).

SiSoft Sandra Processor Benchmark

In Sandra, we see incremental gains we from the small boost to clock speeds provided by the i7-4800MQ. The difference in Dhrystone is negligible, but Whetstone shows a 4.8% improvement over the MSI GT60 (and slightly more over the ASUS G750JX)—versus the roughly 9.4% boost in quad-core clock rates.

Cinebench R11.5

In terms of CPU performance, our Cinebench results are just as we would have predicted. Whereas the ASUS G750JX and MSI GT60 are neck-and-neck (a product of their identical CPU specifications), the GT70 is a tick above in both multi- and single-core performance, with scores of 7.35 / 1.6 versus an average of 6.875 / 1.485 between the i7-4700M/HQ machines. That translates to a 6.9% / 7.7% improvement respectively.

7-Zip Compression/Decompression:

Again, good results; even though we don’t have any on hand for the GT60, we can assume they should be very similar to those of the G750JX.

General System Performance

PCMark 7

PCMark 7’s assessment of the GT70’s performance places it at the top of our all-time list, beating out both the ASUS G750JX-DB71 and the MSI GT60 by a small margin. That small margin, by the way, while not necessarily indicative of the real-world implications of the GT70’s hardware configuration, does speak to the diminishing returns which take hold once your drive transfer speeds exceed the 400-500 MB/s mark. It’s glamorous and it’s incredibly fast, yes, but odds are you are unlikely to notice a massive speed improvement in typical day-to-day activities.

Beyond PCMark’s synthetic judgment of the machine’s performance, however, suffice it to say that we found absolutely no situation in which it felt slow or inadequate to us. Every aspect of its performance was swift and impressive.

Performance – Storage Devices

We’ve seen the hype; now it’s time to corroborate our predictions with some numerical measurements of the GT70 triple-SSD RAID 0 array’s performance.

A quick note before we get started, however: MSI rather confusingly refers to this drive setup as “Super RAID 2”, which would seem to suggest that it is an adaptation of the now-defunct RAID 2 bit-level striping approach. It’s not; it’s merely RAID 0 with 3 drives. Merely. Behold:

AS SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmarks (SSD and HDD)

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 (SSD and HDD)

HD Tune

Clearly, not much needs to be said here. The GT70’s storage solution is one of the fastest we’ve encountered in a mobile computing device, and it literally blows away the rest of the competition.  Yes, indeed, if you purchase this PC, you can rest assured that your storage benchmarks will always be nothing short of fantastic, probably until the very moment you cease to use the machine some years down the road. It is the least likely bottleneck in the system.

It should be said, however, that such performance gains do not come without their unique set of compromises. Much like the (now extinct) Sony Vaio Z and its renowned RAID 0 SSD configurations (one of which was quad-SSD RAID), the GT70’s setup technically multiplies its vulnerability to drive failure, since if any one of the three SSDs begins to falter, all data in that particular region will be lost (there is no redundancy in a RAID 0 configuration). Keep that in mind and always be sure to have a backup handy—something which everyone should have regardless of their hardware choices.