MSI GT780R Gaming Notebook Review - Taking the battlefield on the road

[siopao1984]

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MSI GT780R Gaming Notebook Review - Taking the battlefield on the road by VR-Zone.com

The MSI GT780R was first seen at Computex 2011, and is a 17-inch full HD gaming powerhouse, equipped with Intel Sandy Bridge Quad Core, Nvidia GTX560M for graphics, impressive 1.5 terabytes of speedy RAID-0 storage and multi-colour LED backlighted SteelSeries keyboard. We check out the firepower of this mobile tank and take it for a spin in Battlefield 3!

Unboxing / Exterior

Front of Box



Laptop Specifications



Manuals, Warranty and Driver CD



7600mAh, 87Wh Lithum Ion Battery



150W Power Adapter by Delta Electronics




Exterior of the MSI GT780R

17-inch 1920x1080 (16:9) LED Display



Brushed Metal Cover



LED indicators for charging, harddisk activity and others





2 USB 2.0 on the Right Side. Our review unit came with a DVD Super Multi drive



From left to right: Kensington lock, Charger Hole, Gigabit Ethernet Port, Analog VGA, eSATA and HDMI port



From left to right: a large vent for cooling, 2 USB 3.0 ports, Card Reader, 1 USB 2.0 port and 7.1 channel audio ports



30fps@720p Camera with a Array Mic



Excellent Dynaudio Speakers on both sides, Hotkeys and a Large Power Button





Obligatory Stickers



Shortened Right-Shift Key mashed together with the arrow keys - don't like this. We'd rather they do away with the numpad and have larger keys



With the Usual WASD/Space/Ctrl/Shift keyboard game assignment, the touchpad can get accidentally actuated by the user's hand. Fortunately, MSI has included a nifty touchpad disable button





Provided Software to change keyboard lighting colors and intensity.

[siopao1984]

Internals and Hardware

Underneath view



Battery Compartment Bay



A gratuitous warranty sticker prevents the end user from opening up the internals without breaking it.



Internal Layout. We see heatpipe coolers covering the GPU and CPU with a single blower fan to exhaust the heat



2 x WD Scorpio Black 750GB - one of the best mechanical 2.5-inch drives around



Bog standard Elixir 4GB DDR3-1333 9-9-9-24 modules - Should have used higher frequency/low latency modules



CPU Cache and Memory Numbers - quite comparable to the desktop Sandy Bridge processors, which is a good thing



GPU specs - this is akin to a entry level desktop GTS450, which already foreshadows how the GPU heavy benchmarks will turn out in the next page



Audio is handled by a Realtek ALC892 (7.1+2 Channel, 95dB SNR) - better than most laptop designs



A Intel Wireless N adapter is used for wireless - 1X1, single-band (2.4 GHz) 150Mbps , 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth* adapter



LAN connectivity is from a RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC



RAID-0 Array Configuration

[siopao1984]

Synthetic Benchmarks

Windows Experience Index



Cinebench 11.529



Pretty decent performance here - the CPU bested a desktop Core i7-860

CrystalDiskMark



Very good storage performance - almost SSD-like but with lots of capacity to spare (1.5tB)

PCMark 7



This is as good as most desktop systems today

3DMark 11 Performance and Xtreme Presets





Unfortunately the GTX560M (which is closer to the desktop GTS450) starts to show its lack of pixel pushing power here.

Game Benchmarks

Game benchmarks provide a more realistic indicator of real world gaming performance. Here is a chart to help our readers interpret FPS results (Vsync off):

[IMG][/IMG]

Street Fighter 4 (DX9)



In older DX9 games, the GTX560M should do just fine.

Battlefield 3



Battlefield 3 FRAPS Runthrough for Benchmarking

We used the second level of the single player campaign and started a fraps sequence from the start of the level till when the first bullet gets fired by the insurgents.

[siopao1984]

Cooling System

To find out if the cooling system could cope with long hours of gameplay, we used an (unrealistic) scenario of Prime 95 Blend + Furmark to simulate full GPU loads. Heres how it went:

MSI GT780R Gaming Laptop Cooling System Torture Test

Top marks for MSI here as the cooling system handled the loads well and the keyboard surface remained cool.

Battery Life

For obvious reasons (this is a 17-inch quad core laptop afterall), we didn't bother to formally test battery life. However it did manage a 1-hour session of Battlefield 3 on full charge and around 1.5 hours of casual web surfing.

Don't leave home without the power adapter.



Conclusion

The MSI GT780R is a fine notebook overall with a bright and responsive screen, fast quad core CPU and RAID-0 storage. Sadly it gets caught short by its anemic GTX560M (closer to the desktop GTS450) and could not really handle 1080p DX11 gameplay. Newer games like Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 will be more enjoyable on the MSI GT780R with moderate 720p graphic settings. Considering that it has a bulky 17-inch chassis and weighs almost 4KG (including the power adapter) to carry around, we can't help but feel slightly disappointed it couldn't be better.

Strangely enough, some so-called gaming laptops have lower specifications than the GT780R especially in the graphics department (we've seen some come with Dual Core CPUs and much lower end GPUs) - says a lot about how suitable they are for DX11 gaming.

Hopefully with Intel Ivy Bridge Ultrabook designs and new mobile graphics solutions from Nvidia and AMD coming up next year, we will get to see thinner, lighter, longer lasting and more powerful laptops which we can take on the road and still get on the battlefield.

[akomao]

ka nice, haha kung ma abot na ni sa price range na ideal nko. kini jd akong pick hehehe

[box2joe]

pila kaha price ani diri sa pinas.. choi ni na lappy dha.. hopefully dili sad kaayo ni mahal like sa ROG series na ang presyo pwede na ikapalit ug secondhand older model cars.

[akomao]

k2 akong amigo naa cyay in.ani pero ATI mn to iyang Vcard nya dli pd HD ang screen.. tag 48k. kita pd ko ug HD screen and i think ubos2 ani nga specs did2 sa sm.. i didnt check jd.. bsta tag 54k cash mn to hehe

[street_of_no_return]

kabug.at ani ug dah dah oe.