To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more

MSI GT70 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £2299
inc VAT

Complete overkill, but this is the most powerful gaming laptop we’ve ever seen

Specifications

17.3 in 1,920×1,080 display, 3.9kg, 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM, 16.00GB RAM, 1,250GB disk, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

http://www.overclockers.co.uk

Gaming laptops often have excessive specifications, and MSI’s latest is no different. The GT70 has some of the fastest components we’ve ever seen crammed into a notebook chassis, including Nvidia’s new GTX 680M mobile graphics chip, but it also costs an eye-watering £2,300.

MSI GT70

Naturally for a 17in gaming laptop, the GT70 is something of a giant. At 3.9kg, it’ll only leave the house when you’re on the way to a LAN party. The chassis is built from an awful lot of plastic considering how much the system costs, with only the lid and wrist rest made of brushed metal. The glowing MSI logo etched into the lid is a nice touch, and the chassis is generally quite restrained for a gaming laptop, even if some of its materials feel a little cheap.

As you would expect from the laptop’s huge size, there are plenty of ports around the edges. Five USB ports, three of which are USB3, three 3.5mm audio jacks for 5.1 surround sound, a multi-format card reader, eSATA, HDMI and VGA outputs mean this laptop can rival some desktop PCs for connectivity. Even the network card has been designed for gaming – it’s a Killer NIC model, which can prioritise gaming traffic over voice communication or internet video.

MSI GT70

When spending over £2000, you should expect some seriously powerful kit, and thankfully the GT70 doesn’t disappoint. The laptop is powered by a quad-core Intel i7-3610QM processor running at 2.3GHz and has a massive 16GB of RAM, so will be able to handle anything you could think to throw at it. MSI clearly didn’t think one 128GB SSD was fast enough, so it has installed two in a RAID 0 configuration for blistering file transfer speeds. There’s also room for a 750GB mechanical hard disk for less speed-sensitive storage.

Our multimedia benchmarks proved no obstacle for the system, and it scored a desktop-matching 100 overall – putting it among the fastest laptops we’ve ever tested. The processor can use Turbo Boost to reach speeds up to 3GHz where the thermal envelope allows, and Hyper-threading to process eight separate threads at once, which made short work of our multi-threaded video encoding tests.

MSI GT70

This alone is impressive, but the dedicated graphics card takes the GT70 to another level of performance. The GTX 680M is the fastest laptop GPU Nvidia has ever produced, coming equipped with 1,366 CUDA cores and 4GB of dedicated video memory. It didn’t even break a sweat in our 1,280 x 720 Dirt 3 test, where it managed an incredible 130.5fps. Even at our standard desktop settings of 1,920×1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra detail, it still managed a silky smooth 70.3fps. Our ultra-demanding Crysis 2 test proved no match either, as the average frame rate of 36.5 at 1080p and Ultra detail shows. You’ll have no trouble running even brand-new titles at the laptop’s native resolution.

This power doesn’t come at the expense of battery life, as the GT70 managed an impressive four hours in our light-use battery test. This is hardly Ultrabook territory, but considering the laptop could loop our Crysis 2 benchmark for almost an hour and a half on battery power alone, you should be able to squeeze in some gaming when away from the mains.

Pages: 1 2

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor Intel Core i7-3610QM
Processor clock speed 2.3GHz
Memory 16.00GB
Memory slots 2
Memory slots free 0
Maximum memory 16GB
Size 55x428x288mm
Weight 3.9kg
Sound Realtek HD Audio
Pointing device touchpad

Display

Viewable size 17.3 in
Native resolution 1,920×1,080
Graphics Processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 680M
Graphics/video ports HDMI, VGA
Graphics Memory 4,096MB

Storage

Total storage capacity 1,250GB
Optical drive type BD-RE + DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Ports and Expansion

USB ports 5
Bluetooth yes
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support 802.11n
PC Card slots none
Supported memory cards SDHC, MMC, Memory Stick Pro/Duo
Other ports 3x minijack audio output, minijack microphone output, 3x USB3, 1x eSATA

Miscellaneous

Carrying case No
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option restore partition
Software included Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition
Optional extras none

Buying Information

Warranty one year RTB
Price £2,299
Details www.msi.com
Supplier http://www.overclockers.co.uk

Read more

Reviews