MSI GT80 2QE Titan SLI: The world's most over-the-top gaming notebook

The Overview

Say what you will about MSI, but you can't say they don't try new things. This is the company that brought us the GS30 Shadow notebook and dock after all. But even then, the GS30 Shadow was somewhat conventional. After all, docking stations that mated notebooks with a desktop graphics cards aren't exactly a new idea. The GS30 Shadow, while unexpected, wasn't even a world's first. That's obviously not the case with the GT80 2QE Titan SLI. Can you guess why?

We figured it wasn't that hard to guess. It was in the summary to this article after all. So yes, it's the keyboard. If you're new to the keyboard scene, you might wonder why all the fuss about a mechanical keyboards? After all, aren't all keyboards technically mechanical? To that effect, we point you to this article about what mechanical keyboards are and the pros and cons of using one. To put it very briefly, mechanical keyboards have special switches which are more responsive and give a more satisfying tactile experience when you're typing. So does the inclusion of a mechanical keyboard make the GT80 Titan SLI the best gaming notebook in the world? Let's find out.

The Hardware

The MSI GT80 2QE Titan SLI is the first ever notebook with a mechanical keyboard. At 18.4 inches, the notebook isn't for the faint of heart. Not only is it large and intimidating, it's also heavy. Fully loaded, the notebook weighs a hefty 4.5KG and is 49mm thick. Despite the thickness, MSI claims that the GT80 Titan SLI is the world's thinnest 18.4-inch notebook. Indeed, it is thinner than 18.4-inch notebooks such as the discontinued Alienware 18. Even so, it is still massive. Of course, you get a lot of hardware to go with it. Quite confusingly, MSI offers three SKUs with varying levels of hardware. The entry-level model comes with only a single GPU, whereas the mid and top-of-the-line versions have SLI configurations. Our unit is the highest-end model and to avoid confusion will be referred to as the GT80 Titan SLI.

Our highest spec GT80 Titan SLI comes with one of Intel's most powerful mobile processor, the quad-core Core i7-4980HQ (2.8GHz, 6MB cache). The GT80 Titan SLI also comes with 32GB of RAM and two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M in SLI. The storage system is particularly impressive as it has four M.2 128GB SSDs configured in a RAID 0 array for a total capacity of 512GB. The SSDs in use here are from Kingston and uses Phison PS3108-S8 controllers, the same used in the recently reviewed Silicon Motion S80 SSD, which we found to be unimpressive. We ran a simple test to gauge its performance, and as expected, sequential read and write speeds were very impressive, but results in the other workloads were less so - 4K reads and writes were particular slow. To complement the flash storage, MSI has also equipped the machine with a single 1TB 7200rpm HDD.

The hardware of the machine shares many similarities with MSI previous monster machine, the GT72 Dominator Pro. Like that older machine, the GT80 Titan SLI also has Killer Doubleshot Pro GB LAN and Doubleshot Pro 11ac for WiFi, and supports Smart Teaming. According to the literature we have seen, Smart Teaming allows users to combine both wired and wireless bandwidths together for a maximum theoretical data transfer rate of 1.87Gbps. How useful this would be is doubtful, since it is unlikely one's Internet connection can ever achieve such speeds in the real-world, but still we figure it could be useful if you transfer files across your network often or if you backup to a NAS system in your home network. 

As for audio, the machine is equipped with speakers by Dynaudio and features a 4+1 speaker system (two speakers for each channel) with Audio Boost 2 technology. Creative's Soundblaster Cinema 2 is also supported, which gives users the option of DSP settings, and if you have a surround speaker setup, even multi-channel speaker calibration. The speakers are great, even better than the ones present in the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro, which we thought was already pretty good. But of course they are no match for decent headphones or speakers. As for connectivity options and ports, the GT80 Titan SLI comes with just about everything an enthusiast would need, but there's no D-sub or Thunderbolt ports.

As we mentioned earlier, the GT80 Titan SLI is the first notebook in the world to come with a mechanical keyboard and the inclusion of that means that MSI has to make some compromises with regard to hardware arrangement. Whereas most notebooks arranged the hardware throughout the whole chassis, in the GT80, that's only half true. For you see, the hardware pretty much makes up only the top half of the base.

Since the GT80 Titan SLI has a mechanical keyboard, that means the space underneath the keyboard has to house the mechanical switches. As a result, there could be nothing underneath the keyboard if MSI wanted to keep the machine at a respectable thickness and size. Their solution, as you can see, was to shift all the hardware up into the upper part of the machine.

Removing the top panel to access the components within was a simple task that involves removing just two screws from the underside of the machine. Our only gripe was that the symbols used to denote which specific screws to remove could have been made bigger and clearer. Once we got the two screws off though, it was just a simple matter of sliding off the cover.

One thing we liked about the setup was how everything is much easily accessible and upgradeable. Apart from the RAM modules (two more slots at the back), the rest of the components are right at your fingertips and clearly labelled. The only thing we didn't like was how the HDD just sat there with nothing to really secure it in place apart from some sponge lining the HDD compartment. Even though MSI's implementation worked well enough (we didn't hear any rattling), we would have preferred an HDD caddy of some sort to provide more security.

As for the display, going for an 18.4 inch notebook meant that MSI was severely restricted on what displays they could use on the GT80 Titan SLI. MSI has opted to use a Full-HD matte display. While it is a waste to see the powerful hardware contained in our machine paired with with just a 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution screen, we recognize the fact that there is currently no higher resolution display option available for notebook manufactures. If you need a high resolution 4K or QHD display, you will have to look at smaller 15 or 13-inch notebooks. Nevertheless, the display offered exceptional vertical and horizontal viewing angles, but colors looked too washed out to our eyes.

Finally, we come to the GT80 Titan SLI's raison d'être, its mechanical keyboard. The mechanical keyboard comes from SteelSeries and is outfitted with Cherry MX Brown keys as they provide the best balance between gaming and regular typing. It goes without saying then this is by far the best keyboard we have used on any notebook. The tactility offered by mechanical keys are unmatched and they are a real joy to use. MSI also provides gold cap keys which do nothing but look gaudy. We really don't know what they were thinking with this. As a side note, the keys are opaque, so if you're playing in the dark and use the gold caps, expect your WASD and ESC keys to be a black spot.

To the right of the keyboard sits the trackpad/numpad combo. You can easily toggle between its two modes by press the Numlock key. If it's on, the area becomes a Numpad, if it's off, it's a trackpad. Tracking is very accurate and responsive, though we think most users would need some time to get used to the layout as most trackpads in notebooks are usually positioned to the bottom of the keyboard.

To make the GT80 Titan SLI an attractive purchase, MSI also bundles in some goodies. While purchasers of the GT72 Dominator Pro got a rather cool SteelSeries headset and mouse, those who buy the GT80 Titan SLI get a whole new set of gifts, though it's debatable on whether they have the same usefulness as the items bundled with the GT72 Dominator Pro.

This covers the specifications and our handling of the machine, what about its hardware and performance? Does it live up to its potential? To find that out, you'll need to continue on to the next few sections.

 Testing Setup

If you're an avid reader, you should know what's going to happen here but for the new folks, we'll recap. Basically, in the testing setup, we'll be putting the machine we're reviewing through a handful of benchmarks. In this case, the MSI GT80 Titan SLI will be benchmarked on PC Mark 8 and 3D Mark 2013. PC Mark 8's a general hardware test, which covers all aspects of the machine, from storage to processors while 3D Mark 2013 is a benchmark designed to put graphics cards to the test. We'll also be throwing in Tomb Raider and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor in as well, to gauge performance in a real world setting.

To summarize, here are our benchmarks:

• PC Mark 8
• 3D Mark 2013
• Tomb Raider
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor 

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Note, while the specs listed for the GT80 Titan in the table are for the base set. Ours is a souped up version, with the key differences being the processor (Intel Core i7-4980HQ), storage (512GB) and RAM (32GB). We'll note it whenever we think it makes a difference.

PC Mark 8

As we mentioned earlier, PC Mark 8 is mainly a general hardware test. It's not a surprise that the MSI GT80 Titan SLI posted high scores in nearly every category. The superior processor in the GT80 Titan SLI simply left all the others behind. That meant the machine blazed through the other two processor intensive benchmarks (Creative and Work). Of course, the extraordinarily high score in Creative could also be due to the SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980Ms present in the machine, as the Aftershock TItan V2.1, also posted similarly improved scores with similar hardware (though with a weaker processor).

3D Mark 2013

The 3D Mark 2013 test produced very surprising numbers, with the GT80 Titan SLI outperforming everybody in the category. That's not the surprise though. The surprise instead comes from its incredibly low score in Fire Strike, the most GPU intensive test on 3D Mark 2013. In that test, the machine barely performs better than the SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970Ms in the Aorus X7 Pro. We did the test twice (the second time getting 13354, which is even lower) so it definitely wasn't a fluke. After much discussion, we settled on theory that the temperature might be the reason the GT80 is not delivering. NVIDIA has a feature called GPU Boost that takes temperature into account as well as available power when overclocking the GPU. As the GT80 Titan SLI is running slightly hotter (as we would see later), this could be a reason why the GT80 Titan SLI was underperforming. We noticed that the same thing happened in 2013, when we did our gaming notebook shootout. 

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider proved that that there might be something wrong with the GT80 Titan SLI during the Fire Strike test. Even thoughs the numbers we got from Tomb Raider's benchmark had it performing markedly better than the Aorus X7 Pro, though it still lags behind Aftershock Titan V2.1, on both Normal (by about 5.9%) and High resolutions (by about 4.81%).

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

We saw less of a performance gap here between the two SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M machines. Both there Aftershock and MSI machines are neck and neck, with around 11 FPS or 7% difference between them on High. Ultra sees the MSI GT80 Titan SLI pulling ahead, though the negligible difference (5 FPS or about 3.6%) doesn't make much of a difference.

Temperature

Despite having a higher GPU temperature recorded by GPU-Z, the MSI GT80 Titan SLI has the coolest temperature overall. In fact, it's the only notebook on the chart that has temperatures below 30 degrees on the bottom half of the machine. That's not surprising considering that the lower part of MSI's notebook is solely dedicated to the mechanical keyboard and its innards.

Now that we've seen how the machines performed, we'll move on to their longevity and portability (hint: most of them aren't portable at all) in the next section.

 Battery Life and Power Consumption
 

To say that the MSI GT80 Titan SLI is a power guzzling hog is an understatement. You can combine the consumption of both the GT72 and the X7 Pro and just barely exceed what the GT80 Titan SLI consumes. That is a lot of power, which is why the machine barely lasts past an hour, as seen in the first graph. To be fair, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M draws a fair amount of power, more so in SLI. Then you have to take into account that while the other notebooks are all 17 inches, the MSI GT80 2QE Titan SLI is a bit bigger at 18 inches. That does make a difference in power consumption too. Since the GT80 Titan SLI has an SLI configuration, NVIDIA Optimus technology is not supported, so that means there is no graphics switching, which also contributes to its high power consumption figure.

The Aftershock V2.1 comes closest but its power consumption figure of 43.87W is over 30% lower and the two have very comparable hardware and even almost the same battery capacity (88Wh in the GT80 Titan SLI vs. 89Wh in the Titan V.2.1). Clearly, the GT80 Titan SLI is not as well optimized.

Portability Index

Is it any wonder than that the GT80 Titan SLI comes in dead last in our portability index? It doesn't last long and is huge and heavy. We can accept one or the other, but both is asking way too much. But then again, realistically speaking, we don't foresee anybody buying the either of the machines (other than the Aorus X7 Pro) and carrying it around the majority of the time.

So there you have it, the hard facts and stats. Is it worth it getting a GT80 Titan SLI over the other machines? Find out in the final part of our review.

The OTT Gaming Machine

In the end, we find ourselves at an impasse. The GT80 Titan SLI is a wondrous machine, and we found ourselves liking it a whole lot (as there is a lot of things about it we really do like), there is still a bit of a lingering disappointment that the machine doesn't perform as well as it should (which is likely due to cooling issues). It performs admirably well against similarly outfitted rivals like the Aftershock Titan V2.1 and the Gigabyte Aorus X7 Pro, though there is definitely room for improvement.

Despite having a faster processor and more RAM, the GT80 Titan SLI still lags behind (sometimes significantly) the Aftershock Titan V2.1 in performance. While there were instances where the GT80 Titan SLI outperformed the Titan V2.1, those times were rare and the difference in score was negligible (like the 113 FPS to 109 FPS in Shadow of Mordor). We were really expecting the GT80 Titan SLI to perform better than it did. Make no mistake though, the machine does deserve its name. It really is a monster with tremendous performance, it's just that performance is a tad inadequate for what we were expecting.

Our issues with the hardware aside, we have nothing but good things to say about the notebook's SteelSeries keyboard. If you've harbored any doubts regarding whether or not a tacked on mechanical keyboard is the same as a standalone mechanical one, you can put them to rest. The answer is yes. The Cherry MX Brown keys are as responsive as the 'normal' ones on standalone mechanical keyboards. While we'd still prefer the hybrid stems of the CoolerMaster NovaTouch TKL, the Cherry MX Brown keys used in the MSI GT80 Titan SLI is an acceptable and worthy substitute. 

The nature of the keyboard means that unless MSI is willing to extend the length of the machine and make it even larger, there's not going to be room for a wrist rest. Some people won't mind, but we reckon a lot will. The alternative is to include kickstands near the rear of the bottom, but that could add to the notebook's thickness and weight. Typing for long periods can get very uncomfortable, especially for those with wrist problems. You're basically hanging your hands every time you're using the keyboard. MSI gives a free wrist rest with every notebook, but honestly, it feels like more like an afterthought.

As we mentioned earlier, there are actually three variants of the MSI GT80 Titan and we've created a table to detail the various versions of the machine there are, which should help clear things up. Remember, the model we tested is the highest-end model with all the bells and whistles.

At $6599, the model we reviewed is one of the priciest gaming notebooks we have reviewed and also one of the most expensive gaming notebooks in the market today. Undoubtedly, much of the money  towards recovering the R&D costs of developing this notebook. And on that note, we must say that it is commendable for MSI to embark on such a project and how they have managed to integrate a mechanical keyboard into a notebook and still keep it at a decent size (relatively speaking, of course), while packing it with some really fantastic hardware (for the highest-end model, at least).

To say our souped-up unit is extravagant is an understatement, but we would have no qualms recommending the system if the hardware performed to snuff. Sadly, it doesn't quite. Despite being superior to most notebooks (if not all of them), the performance barely offers any significant improvements over other SLI machines, like Aftershock's Titan V2.1 or even Gigabyte Aorus X7 Pro. It just doesn't make monetary sense to be forking out so much money for the barely discernible difference in performance. The only thing it has going for it, is its fantastic keyboard, but even that has its limitations since it is not that comfortable to use. In the end, considering the difference in price between the GT80 Titan SLI and other systems, one could easily get a premium mechanical keyboard (and games, and an external display or two) and still have plenty of spare change - the aforementioned Aftershock and Gigabyte machines are both are over S$2000 less expensive!

In our opinion, if you have absolutely must have a notebook with an integrated mechanical keyboard, our advice to get a the entry-level GT80 Titan with just a single GeForce GTX 980M. The reason being the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M is more than capable of playing games at maximum settings at Full-HD resolution for the next few years anyway. And at S$4699, it puts less of a strain on your pocket.

While we admire MSI's guts to go against the flow and offer consumers something new, we feel that GT80 Titan still needs tweaking before the idea can truly flourish. As it is, it is a really niche product for a very select group of enthusiasts with fat pockets who want to play games exclusively on a notebook and want a mechanical keyboard to go with it. Performance needs to be improved slightly and prices need to come down drastically if the GT80 Titan is to appeal to a wider group of audience.

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