MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro: Dominating in nearly every aspect (Updated)

Much ado about the GeForce GTX 980M

Much has been said about NVIDIA’s Maxwell second-gen architecture and of the new GeForce GTX 900M series of mobile GPUs, mostly by NVIDIA themselves. Arguably the most famous claim of them all that's attributed to them is that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M GPUs are about 75% as powerful as its desktop big brother, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980. Now that’s indeed a bold claim to make as previously, mobile graphics were lucky to be even 50% as powerful as their desktop counterparts. Now NVIDIA’s claiming we can expect about a 75% boost for the 980M? We were practically chomping at the bits to get a notebook with a GeForce GTX 980M to verify their claims.

Our previous experience with the Aftershock S15 demo notebook equipped with a GeForce GTX 970M GPU was already very encouraging, so we can't wait to find out what the top brass GPU has in store for us.

To answer that question, we've managed to secure a a MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro notebook for a short test run and find out how it stacks up against previous generation gaming notebooks and its much ballyhooed GeForce GTX 980M mobile GPU.

Looks great, but weighs a ton

With a sleek all black appearance; the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is one sexy looking beast. That sexiness though comes with a heavy price tag, both physically and financially. Weighing in at more than 4kg (around 3.8 if only with the battery) with the charger, it’s definitely not a portable notebook and you wouldn't want to carry it around for extended amounts of time. It’s also a big notebook too, in terms of size. For a 17-inch gaming notebook, it's really thick, measuring around 48mm at its thickest point and this means that some users may have problems fitting it into their regular notebook bags. Luckily, the notebook comes supplied with its own backpack (which is quite sturdy) so if you do need to lug it around, you’re set. Befitting its size, the chassis is very sturdy with good traction.

Inspect the base and you’ll find an all-black keyboard and trackpad area - until you power up the notebook. The keyboard has back lights and with an array of colors splayed across it. If they’re not to your liking, you can simply change them with the included manager program. Its pretty user friendly so you won’t have to look up tutorials and it allows a high degree of customization to your preference. The keys themselves are sufficiently sized (if a bit on the large side) and you’ll get used to them after some extended use. There are also shortcut buttons on the left side of the base. Arguably, the most important one being the one that controls the fan speed. If you’re gaming while the adapter is plugged in, it’s useful to maintain manual control since you don’t need to worry about battery life, especially if you’re running programs that make heavy use of the graphics processor. As for the trackpad, it’s pretty spacious too, although unlike some notebooks, it’s not built into a groove. It's set flush with the rest of the base, with only the sides raised a bit so that your fingers can feel when they come to the edges. Like the keyboard, the trackpad too has back lights even if it’s only around the border.

The GT72 2QE Dominator Pro comes with a Full-HD 1080p display with a matte finish. Considering that the notebook is packed to its gills with top tier gear, it's surprising that's only a 1080p screen. The upside is that the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro also lets you use up to 3 monitors to fulfill your visual needs (dual mini-DisplayPorts and a HDMI port are available for this purpose). Just on top of the screen, you'll find a 1080p capable (at 30FPS) webcam.

Under the hood, the notebook packs some major firepower. It’s powered by a quad-core Intel Core i7-4980HQ processor that runs at 2.80GHz (Turbo Boost up to 4GHz) with a 6MB L3 cache and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. It also features MSI's SUPER RAID 3 storage technology and in this case, our test unit comes with 256GB of flash storage, courtesy of two 128GB M.2 SSDs set in a RAID 0 configuration. Additionally, the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro has also an extra 1TB mechanical HDD rated at 7200 rpm. On the graphics side of things, it’s of course using the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M mobile GPU that comes with a whopping 8GB of GDDR5 framebuffer. For connectivity, the notebook comes with Bluetooth 4.0, Killer Wireshot Pro GB LAN for wired connections and Killer's newest Doubleshot Pro 11ac for wireless ones. As its name suggests, Killer's latest wireless chipset support Wireless-AC.

The GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is also one of the few notebooks that uses MXM graphics modules. A rarity for notebooks, this allows users to upgrade their graphics cards with other like-sized MXM modules in future. This means if you bought the earlier models with an older GPU, you can easily swap it out and get the NVIDIA GeForce 900M series (or future ones) if you so desire as long as they too are MXM compatible. We've added in MSI's official video showing off this feature so if you're wondering, just watch it and all will be made clear.

Play

There’s also a good variety of I/O ports on the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro. All of the USB ports (six of them) are USB 3.0. There are four of them on the left and two more on the right base. Weirdly, the ones on the left aren't in line, two of them are positioned higher than the others. This doesn’t affect performance, but it does look a little strange. There’s also a flash storage card slot meant for SDXC and SDHC cards, the requisite audio in and out jacks (two of each) as well as a Blu-ray/DVD combo drive. On the back of the machine, there are a few more ports - two DisplayPorts (v1.2), a lone HDMI 1.4 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port and the DC-in jack.

As for the battery, we can't give you a shot of it. It's integrated into the base of the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro, which is bad news if it malfunctions down the line or if one runs dry and you want to plug in a spare. Then again, we doubt buyers of the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro will find themselves using the battery much considering the size of this system.

Testing Setup

We’ll be running the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro through our usual battery of tests. These include benchmarking it using PCmark and 3Dmark as well as using native benchmarks, like those built into Tomb Raider. We're also planning to benchmark Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor on the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro but since we don't have any other reference points to compare the results to, it'll be stored for now and be used in future reviews when we have other results from future notebook tests to compare it with, so look forward to that.

Other than that, we're sticking with our usual route:

• PC Mark 8
• 3D Mark 2013
• Crysis 2
• Tomb Raider

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PC Mark 8

PC Mark 8's more of an overall benchmark rather than a GPU intensive one so the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M is not really put to the test here. Instead, it's mainly the processor that's taking the brunt of the workload. In the tests, we see that the processor in the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro (the Intel Core i7- 4980HQ), is surprisingly capable, outpacing the competition, even other Haswell cores like those found in the Aftershock S15. The Core i7-4980HQ is easily double the cost of most other mobile CPUs in this comparison and it shows its worth with speedier performance thanks to higher clock speeds.

3D Mark 2013

Again, there wasn't any surprises. The GT72 2QE Dominator Pro outclassed all of the single GPU notebooks comfortably in every aspect and put up a tremendous fight against the SLI'ed Aftershock Titan. When compared to its younger sibling, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, the 980M posted results nearly 25% better in both categories. The MSI notebook even outperformed the Gigabyte Aorus X7 v2 (equipped with dual GeForce 860M GPUs) quite handily.

Crysis 2

One thing to note: We had issues benchmarking Crysis 2 on the Aftershock S15 for some reason so it's not included in the results, which is a bit disappointing. Other than that, the Crysis 2 benchmark is not telling us anything new that we didn't suspect in the first place. It readily blew away even the SLI'ed Afershock Titan on Very High image quality settings, though the linked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780Ms in the Titan eventually proved hardier when running in Ultra mode. But even then, the difference in framerate is largely unnoticeable to the naked eye.

Tomb Raider

We're using Tomb Raider again for a couple of reasons. One, the other laptops all were benchmarked on it and two, the TressFX tech powering Lara's hair can bring even beefed up notebooks to their knees. Judging from the results, that's exactly what happened to the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro. It's still the best single GPU equipped notebook but compared to the Aftershock Titan's SLI rig, there's no contest. On both normal and high game quality settings, the Titan bested the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro easily.

Temperature

To test for hot spots while gaming on the mobile gaming machine, we let Tomb Raider run for about 30 mins. At the end of that time, we then record the temperature of the laptop across a few key spots. We used an infrared thermometer and recorded temperatures at four main points, the upper left and right corners and the lower left and right corners. The GPU temperature was also recorded at the same by using GPU-Z.

We didn't have a record of the temperature for the MSI GS60 2PE comparison notebook so we decided to omit it. Other than that, of the six notebooks, the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro came in third in GPU-Z. While its temperature isn't the coolest, it's still cooler than Aftershock S15 and just two degrees hotter than the Aftershock Titan. Still, the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro has a noticeably warmer chassis. In every corner, the temperature was the highest of all the tested laptops. This might be a side effect of using a more powerful CPU and GPU than the usual.

Battery Life & Power Consumption

The GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is a gaming powerhouse but the trade-off to that is that it drains the battery rapidly. It's definitely not as bad as some of the other notebooks, but it seriously lags behind the Aftershock S15, which uses a set of components one notch below it. Before you go crying foul, remember that the Aftershock S15 is a 15-inch notebook while the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is a 17-inch notebook. Two inches may not seem like much physically but it does make a difference in energy consumption - larger displays require considerably more power. The MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro's processor is also rated at a higher TDP, which also contributed to its high power consumption in addition the difference in GPU.

Backing the fact that the Aftershock S15 lasts longer is our Power Consumption chart. The Aftershock S15 consumes a measly 17.35 watts while the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro guzzles nearly twice the amount of juice at 30.55 watts. However, let's put the figure into better perspective by comparing a similar class notebook like the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2, which is also a 17-inch gaming notebook that uses the best previous generation single mobile GPU. Comparatively, the power consumption figures of the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is better. It might have fared better if MSI didn't stuff the newcomer with such a top-end CPU from Intel.

That doesn't mean that performance suffers when the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is unplugged, despite it needing a sizeable amount of power. In fact, owing to NVIDIA's new tech, graphical performance stays pretty much constant, with or without it being plugged in. True, there are some instances where the framerate tends to chug along but compared to previous GPUs, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX980M still manages to perform admirably well. We don't have hard numbers for this test, but we tested it while the battery (without NVIDIA's Battery Boost enabled) was about 80% capacity and played Shadow of Mordor on Ultra and it still managed to last an hour or so (before the low battery warnings popped up and we stopped) with comparable gameplay performance to when it was plugged in to the power outlet. If it was fully charged and with NVIDIA's Battery Boost enabled, we wager that the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro could last much longer. Unfortunately, the GT72 2QE Domoniator Pro only had a limited time in our lab before it needed to be returned to MSI. We'll revisit this topic at a future date with a dedicated article.

Portability Index

Our Portability Index factors in battery life, weight and volume so you can see which notebook is the most worthwhile to carry around. Thanks to the chart we can see that while the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro did not fare too badly against other notebooks similar to it. However, it's clearly beaten by smaller and lighter notebooks . Note that this doesn't mean the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro isn't up to snuff, rather it's just not worth to carry it around and use it on the go when it's this large and bulky - and the same can be said of most other high performance 17-inch notebooks or larger.

Hail to the king

After some hands-on time with the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro, it’s hard not to be impressed with the machine. It packs a tremendous amount of power, easily rivaling that of a desktop. Still one wonders why MSI didn’t use a better quality display. The display's brightness left us wanting for a much brighter screen. It's not that dim by any stretch of the imagination, but for us, it could be a notch or two brighter to be ideal. Of course, personal preferences vary so if you're interested in getting a GT72 2QE Dominator Pro, do try out the screen's brightness and see if you're alright with it. Fortunately, it uses a matte screen and that means it has less issues related to screen glare.

The built-in speakers are decent but the sound quality could do with some improvement, especially considering the price the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is going for. While the sound doesn't distort at higher volumes, the subwoofer doesn't seem useful. Of course, if you use a gaming headset (like the included SteelSeries Siberia V2 headset) or your own speakers, you can easily ignore this complaint.

If you look past those concerns, the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro is an awesome notebook. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M GPU clearly has the oomph to run today’s (and the foreseeable future’s) games comfortably and the 16GB of RAM packed in is just icing on the cake. While we’re still not sold on Windows 8.1 (or Windows 8 in general) as a competent gaming platform when compared to Windows 7, the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro makes a good case for users to upgrade to Microsoft’s latest. Besides, if Windows 10 is all Microsoft claims it will be, then the free upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 10 will be more than worth it.

The Intel Core i7-4980HQ processor that the MSI GT72 2QE Domintor Pro comes with is amazingly capable, as evidenced by the results we got from benchmarks, even when compared to the Aftershock S15, a gaming notebook with a Core i7-4710HQ processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M. We also quite like the copious amount of storage include with the notebook. While we don't think a 1TB HDD and a 256GB SSD will be enough for any gamer, it will definitely tide them over while the mull potential upgrade options. We're also really impressed by the performance of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980M. It is hands down the fastest mobile GPU in the market right now.

Performance capabilities aside, there are many other things we like about the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro such as the customizable keyboard back lights and especially how the machine can output to three monitors simultaneously. The numerous amounts of USB ports also delighted us, as we can pretty much plug in anything we can think of and still have a few ports left over.

In case you need even more convincing, the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro also comes with its own accessories, a SteelSeries Kinzu V2 mouse, a SteelSeries Siberia V2 headset and a backpack. While the Kinzu V2 has been replaced by the V3, it's nonetheless a pretty decent mouse. It's not the greatest or the latest, but it's free and you could do much worse. The Siberia V2 headset is also another quality freebie. Again, it's not the newest or greatest (the Siberia V3 units should be out by now) but the V2 was largely critically acclaimed when it was released.

While the prohibitive size might not make it the perfect system to carry around with you (even with the backpack), the undeniable horsepower underneath the hood more than makes up for it. Don’t think of the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro as a gaming notebook, think of it as a portable desktop because in most aspects, it pretty much is. It just comes with an integrated screen and battery.

** Updated on 20th Jan 2015 **

We'd like to take this time to address the fact that we've amended some details of the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro review. As some of our more eagle eyed readers (or even if nobody noticed, we felt it was best to be up front about any changes we make) have noticed,  the specifications (namely the processor and the optical drive) for the GT72 2QE Dominator Pro have changed.

Previously, we erroneously reported that the notebook had an Intel Core i7-4980HQ processor in the unit. We have since found out that it was only our test unit that came with such a configuration, which is an available upgrade option. The MSI GT72 2QE base unit instead originally comes with an Intel Core i7-4710HQ, though a recent refresh by MSI has since changed the processor to the Intel Core i7-4720HQ. The new processor boasts a faster base clock speed (2.6GHz), as well as higher turbo boosted speed (3.6GHz). Compared to the original processor, both the base clock and the turbo boosted speeds see an increase of 100MHz. Despite the upgrade, the Core i7-4720HQ is still an inferior processor when compared to the Core i7-4890HQ.

MSI's refresh has also upgraded the display for machine to one with a wider view angle. We've not reviewed a revised version of the notebook with the new display and so we've no comments on it. If it's an improvement over the original display (which was already pretty decent in our eyes), it can only be a good thing.

These revisions to the base unit have also inched up the notebook's price, which now starts from S$4,399 - a S$100 increase. As such, we've also updated the price of the notebook in the product price listing. Meanwhile, if you're curious of our fully specced out configuration with the Core i7-4890HQ, it costs a whopping S$5,499. This is why the tested notebook seemed to ace ahead of all other compared models across the respective test suites. Had it been configured as base model, we would likely see non-gaming results matching the competitors.

Finally, we amended the optical drive details. We originally had it listed as "BD Reader/ BD Writer/ DVD Multi" under that section but we've since clarified with MSI and found that the Singapore configurations come with a a Blu-ray Writer as a standard. The other two options are not available locally.

Due to these changes, we've amended the final ratings for the machine to reflect its rightful rating. It's still a quality gaming notebook, but it drops a notch due to us revising our review. This is mainly due to the fact that we believed that the machine featured a higher specced configuration as the base hardware, when in fact the souped up configuration actually costs a S$1,100 more! Even given the base configuration's price and its expected performance, it's actually quite expensive. Witth the mismatch in expectactions, we've we felt it warranted a revision of our ratings. Performance sub-rating has been revised down half a point whereas the value sub-rating has been revised down two points; the resultant rating is now an 8.0 overall (as opposed to an 8.5 in our earlier assessment).

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