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

Gaming Performance – Synthetic and Real-World

Synthetic GPU Benchmarks

Now for some fun and games! The Kepler-based NVIDIA GTX 880M in the GT70 is deemed to be the fastest single-GPU option currently available for mobile computing. The particular variant of this adapter in the GT70 2PE carries 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM, which is the most offered.

Our own Ryan Shrout wrote up a pretty good introduction to it here based on the initial announcements—and now, we get to see how well it actually performs in the GT70.

3DMark

Naturally, what we’re most interested in here is Fire Strike, as it’s the benchmark tailored specifically to these types of machines. It comes as no surprise, then, that in this test, the GT70’s score of 5542 manages to beat both the GT60 (5007) and the rest of the field (below 3400) by a wide margin.

3DMark 11

3DMark 11’s findings are congruent, scoring the GT70 8464, which is 14.7% above the GT60’s 7380. The ASUS G750JX’s GTX 770M isn’t even in the same ballpark here, receiving just 5202 in comparison (62.7% lower).

Gaming Benchmarks

Finally, it’s on to some real game benchmarks. Things are going to be a bit different this time around as we found it impossible to launch Just Cause 2 on the GT70 despite our best efforts (none of the available hacks seemed to work—we’ll update this if that changes), and Diablo III and StarCraft II’s results have been lowered across the board due to what is likely an engine update. Nevertheless, we’ve included benchmarks of those games primarily for practical purposes (to judge how well they actually run, rather than to compare their results). But let’s start with what’s most applicable.

Metro 2033

The venerable Metro 2033 benchmark still works like a charm, and it’s as taxing as ever at 1080p on Ultra settings. That being said, the GT70 makes it looks as easy as possible with a 40.7 fps result. The closest competitor we have on record is the ASUS G750JX with just 25.5 fps (we didn’t perform this benchmark on the GT60).

Bioshock Infinite

Another one of our newer benchmarks, Bioshock Infinite is even no problem for the GTX 880M, which spits out an 83.08 fps average at 1080p with all settings at their highest. Once again, the most pertinent comparison is the ASUS G750JX, which is much closer this time at 79.63 fps.

World of Tanks

Considering our struggles with JC2 and the loss of comparative relevancy of DIII and SC2’s results, we decided to toss WoT into the mix, seeing as it’s become such a popular free-to-play choice. We don’t yet have any comparisons for this particular benchmark as it’s our first ever run, but we recorded a score of 75.5 fps while running at 1080p on all settings at their highest—nothing to sneeze at when you consider how few cards can pull off fluid gameplay under such circumstances.

Diablo III and StarCraft 2

For sake of completeness, we benchmarked Diablo III and StarCraft 2 as well, in spite of the fact that (as we mentioned previously) some sort of update has resulted in lower frame rates across the board on all models. Nevertheless, it’s good to know if the machine can handle them at the highest settings and resolution, and it most certainly can. In Diablo III, we recorded 81.505 fps average, while StarCraft 2 saw 59.3 fps. Here’s how it looks:

This is the new most powerful gaming notebook we’ve had the pleasure of reviewing to date.