GS30 Performance (Notebook only)
It would be crazy to consider the MSI GS30 Shadow's combination of hardware without at least looking at the performance of the notebook alone. How does the GS30, with it's Core i7-4870HQ processor and Iris Pro graphics, compare to some of the other recently released Ultrabooks and thin-and-lights?
Well, clearly, the Core i7-4870HQ is a different kind of beast than the other processors found in the Dell XPS 13. Yes, the 4870HQ is a Haswell based processor, rather than Broadwell that is making the rounds today, but SiSoft Sandra loves the high clock speeds and the quad-core, HyperThreaded capability of this part. That combination results in a 2.2x increase on the integer score and 2.04x increase on the floating point processing score.
Memory performance is higher (~10%), but doesn't see the increase that you saw on the synthetic testing.
CineBench is another test we frequently use to measure raw CPU performance. In the single threaded result, the Core i7-4870HQ is already a solid 25% faster than the Core i5-5200U Broadwell CPU found in the Dell XPS 13. Under a multi-threaded workload, the CPU takes another steep jump, running 94% faster than the Core i5 Broadwell option. That makes sense when we compare the 4870HQ and its four cores to the 5200U and its two cores.
With a score of over 186 FPS, the Handbrake conversion process runs 74% faster on the MSI GS30 than on the Dell XPS 13.
The first bit of graphics testing comes from 3DMark and the Cloud Mark test. The overall result is 65% faster on the Core i7-4870HQ than on the Intel NUC5i5RYK using Broadwell Core i5-5200U. On the graphics specific test, the Iris Pro Graphics 5200 scores >52% higher than two Broadwell systems we are tested.
Finally, just to give us some real-world context to the gaming performance of the GS30 (again, without a docked, discrete graphics card), I ran a few games on it and compared it to the Dell XPS 13. In Bioshock Infinite the Core i7-4870HQ is 61% faster than the Core i5-5200U, Counter-Strike: GO is 38% faster on the GS30 and GRID 2 runs 50% faster. These are impressive numbers, but again, at the cost of heat and noise (and battery life).
Didn’t mention that you’ll
Didn’t mention that you’ll have to use it standing up all the time if you were to dock it.
You will need to have serious flex ability in your legs to be sitting spread eagle all the time to use it.
A Thigh Master is cheaper if your looking for added flex ability.
Why would you have to stand
Why would you have to stand up to use it while it is docked? lol, you obviously did not read nor watch the video!
Actually got one of these
Actually got one of these myself. The only real complaint is that it is indeed loud. Battery life isn’t that important to me, but it is indeed on the low side, with 3-4 hours max under a light load.
I’m thinking of fabricating a small furniture piece to place it under the desk, so I can both free up space and reduce the noise levels that reach my ears. This is a performance beast though. CPU actually holds the maximum turbo clock speeds quite well, even during Blender renders and such, something most HQ CPUs don’t. The fan will be spinning at 6000rpm though, so you can imagine the noise.
I have everything connected on my desk, so that when I reach home, I simply dock the laptop (the power adapter can stay on the bag, the dock charges the laptop). Monitor, mouse and keyboard are already connected, and it’s extremely fast to boot up, so no big issue with needing to turn it off.
I know it isn’t a cheap machine, but I needed a nice quadcore laptop anyway, and since I didn’t want another brick like device (my previous laptop was a 4kg monster), this seemed the best option.
Eh….I think I will continue
Eh….I think I will continue to stick with a desktop. And I sure as hell won’t deal with a noisy lawnmower like that. Its the price you pay, you have to get the heat out, but at the same time they obsess with keeping the laptop thin and light. SO you get to put up with a lawnmower cooling system. I wonder how long the fan will last before it completely dies. For me “gaming” laptops will never work. This reminds me of the silly monster 20″ “laptop” HP had come out with years ago, called the “Dragon.”
It needs to be 15″, have
It needs to be 15″, have proper dissipation, a way to keep the laptop vertical (for even better dissipation), capability of using the iris pro and the discrete gpu at the same time (for that juicy quicksync encoding) and full support for undervolt and underclock for cpu and igpu before I consider it.
Oh, and lower price. With 1600€ i can buy a clevo with a 970m.
I could definitely see the
I could definitely see the use case here since this system would describe quite a few users. Portable laptop for browsing on the couch and a gaming powerhouse at your desk. Why have two completely separate devices? Just more hardware sitting idle when you are using the other. I would have to agree with you, that a Dell XPS13 + Gaming dock would be very compelling.
Though, would the i5-5200U be a limit in gaming? Maybe upgrade it to a i7-5600U? It is kind of hard to find benchmarks showing mobile GPUs paired with desktop graphics. Exception being the Brix GB-BXi7G3-760 but that is still only kind-of…
Any U SKUs is going to be of
Any U SKUs is going to be of use only in the underpowered ultrabooks, the U series will not game well compared to the regular laptop form factor quad core i5s or i7s, and you are going to want a quad core i7 when DX12, and Mantle/Vulkan become the standard. Hopefully there will be a quad core Zen version dual threaded APU and HBM memory laptop derivative of that 16 Core dual threaded AMD HPC APU SKU that AMD is rumored to be developing.
The only way an Ultrabook would ever be able to game well is if AMD developed a PCI card based complete gaming APU, and that rumored HPC APU could provide the standard with which a full PCIe card based complete gaming system on a card could be derived. You would the be able to dock a weak laptop based U series, or any other weak SKU based laptop that came with a 16x PCIe connector in the back to the dock, and the dock with a gaming APU on a PCI card in its PICe slot would be a complete PC in its own right, able to run that game while the laptop provided the control input for the game. It would not be hard to stream the game right back to the laptops screen, wired, or wirelessly.
That Rumored AMD HPC APU fits the bill for a revolution in gaming, and we all know that that is where the consumer SKUs are derived from, so AMD could take that HPC Zen APU, and derive a PC/Laptop line of APUs for gaming, it could even go to the next level with a complete gaming system on a PCIe card and allow PC users to add CPU power, along with GPU power and merge the discrete GPU with some CPU cores, and the motherboard CPU would be almost relegated to a service role, as the real gaming would be done on the PCI based Gaming APU, with its HBM, and ability to host the game, gaming engine, and Gaming OS on the PICe card.
Just imagine having a complete gaming APU on a PCIe card, and have the ability to plug one or more of the cards into a PC’s available PCIe slots, you would have essentially a gaming/computing cluster with each card, or additional card adding more CPU cores to your gaming cluster, or a dock like device as in this article for laptops able to host one or more gaming APUs and doing all the gaming work, while the laptop’s CPU does not even factor into the gaming equation, hell you would not even need a full PCIe x16 slot, you could just connect up with a cable and have the laptop control the gaming APU/system through a PCI-SIG PCI Express® External cable, or thunderbolt/other.
Most OSs would already be able to plug and play PCI Card based APUs, or CPUs. There is not much difference between having only a GPU on a PCI card, and having an APU on a PCIe card, as log as the motherboard’s BIOS/UEFI, and OS had the proper settings for multi processing/multi OS set. there is really very little difference driver wise, and PCI standards wise, to having a CPU on a PCIe card, APU, or a discrete GPU, the signaling and Bus mastering protocols are the same. You just need to look at the PCIe based SSDs and see that the controller for the SSD is a complete CPU, running an embedded OS, and it’s using the PICe and bus Mastering control lines to communicate with the motherboard’s CPU/SOC with the help of its installed drivers.
LOL what the hell hahahaahaha
LOL what the hell hahahaahaha some people really WILL do anything to game on a laptop.
Why is this even being
Why is this even being compared to any ultrabook SKUs, what is the reasoning. This is a specialized gaming laptop/external discrete GPU combo, why not compare it with a competing product. Hell at least throw in one regular form factor laptop, like an HP probook with quad core i7, and even at that, this reviewed system offers a 16x PCIe connection. If the next iteration comes with a expansion box that sits behind the laptop that would be better for desktop use. I’m wondering just why the laptop portion has to sit on top of the expansion box, it just seams like a kludge of a design. Certainly this type of arrangement has its uses, and maybe some way could be found to get a video signal back into the laptop portion and to the laptop part’s built-in display. The lack of engineering on this is definitely evident. This concept if carried a little further, and offering PCIe external GPU a PCIe pathway to output to the laptop portion’s display, this inability to send the output back to the laptop’s display appears to be a driver issue, or lack of properly written drivers to achieve this. There certainly is enough bandwidth over that PCIe x16 slot to do this.
MSI should work on a portable workstation laptop/external GPU expansion device like this, and supply the laptop with a Xeon SKU, and ECC memory, and let the users choose their brand of pro graphics card, as long as the system is able to send the GPU output back to the laptop’s screen the engineers would be all over an SKU like that for on the road work that required a bit more than mobile GPU power. That expansion box needs to be made to sit behind the laptop portion not under it.
Is the dock compatible with
Is the dock compatible with the titan Z since its a dual gpu card.
I think the biggest limiting
I think the biggest limiting factor of all of this is the proprietary connection. If it was a standard the prices would go down and adoption rate would go up.
Really! It’s a PCIe standard
Really! It’s a PCIe standard connection you can’t get any more hardware open standards than PCIe!
You need to do some research, you have really made and egregious error with your post!
look at the way it is
look at the way it is implemented perhaps? just because it is using PCIe doesn’t mean it is a standard way of implementing it. Alienware is doing something similar, but they use a cable that implements a PCIe connection.
Two different implementations of PCIe and neither are interchangeable.
What we all want, including you, is for a standard connection implementation that I can hook up any laptop I want to any external gfx box I want.
That is because the
That is because the Alienware’s cable/plug is propitary, not so for the MSI, the MSI is a straight up bog standard PICe x16 connector that would slot right into a motherboard’s PCI slot, is the space was made available. If They were to use the PIC-SIGs standard external PCIe specification cable standard instead of a proprietary connecter that Alienware chose things would be different. For that matter there is no stopping any aftermarket company for developing a 16x PCIe cable for the MSI device, or any other external box, it would be just a matter of MSI whitelisting the drivers, and external hardware. Hell Thunderbolt would be fine for most, but Intel, Apple and the laptop OEMs put the Kibosh on that, except for a few modders using windows on their Apple Macbooks, and some driver/configuration magic!
Good point. The connection is
Good point. The connection is a standard PCIe connector, but try and find a PCIe to something you can plug into a laptop adapter cable. If the connection was over Thunderbolt the base station could be used on any thunderbolt equipped laptop.