MSI GT70 0NC 17.3″ Laptop Review (i7 3610QM / GTX 670M)

MSI supply the GT70 0NC with a large amount software – some of which is needless bloat-ware. The decision to include resource-hogging security software is one that will frustrate many buyers.

A windows score of 7.3 is very respectable. It is disappointing to see that the pair of SanDisk U100 SSDs in RAID 0 configuration scores only 7.6 which is less than the single SSDs in AlienWare's M17x R4 and PC Specialist's Vortex III HD7S.

Intel's 22nm Core i7 3610QM quad core processor which is used in the GT70 utilises 6MB of level 3 cache. MSI uses 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz which operates with timings of 11-11-11-28.

The Core i7 3610QM is clocked at 2.3ghz, with a turbo option to 3.3ghz. More information on the processor is available here.

GPU-Z reports the GTX 670M's default GPU clock speed as 620MHz and shader speed as 1240MHz but these frequencies are only operated when the turbo mode is enabled.

Pressing the ‘Turbo' button engages MSI's turbo mode which increases the GTX 670M's clock speed by 25.2MHz from 594.8MHz. Shader frequency is also increased to 1240MHz from 1195MHz.

The nVidia Control Panel allows you to manually switch between the Intel HD4000 IGP and GTX 670M for use with certain tasks. We found that the tasks were automatically assigned to good effect.

The 128GB SSD configuration leaves plenty of room spare for installing large programs such as Photoshop and some games. A total of 686GB is free on the Western Digital Scorpio Black storage drive.

Unfortunately, MSI leaves the default save location for documents, downloads and the rest of the storage-hogging directories on the SSD rather than moving them to the HDD. The first thing that I would advise you to do is switch some of the save locations to the HDD, otherwise your SSD storage will be depleted within no time at all.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test comparisons):

• Asus G74SX-91013Z (featuring Core i7 2360QM)
• Dell XPS 14z (featuring Core i7 2640M)
• AlienWare M18X (featuring Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition)
• MSI CX640 (featuring Core i5 2410M)
• Intel Core i7 2600k desktop processor
• Intel Core i5 2500k desktop processor

Software:

• 3DMark Vantage
• 3DMark 11
• PCMark 7
• SiSoft Sandra
• Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
• FRAPS Professional
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark
• Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 12
• Cyberlink MediaEspresso
• Battlefield 3
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• Dirt 3

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