MSI GT80 Titan Gaming Laptop Review

I was a little disappointed to see an install featuring Norton Internet Security and Online Backup, but this is likely personal taste. I would much rather MSI installed only the necessary drivers and gave the end user the option to use the software they wanted. The machine did throw up quite a few initial popups for registration and payment. We deinstalled Norton's completely as it is a resource hog.

System validation is available over HERE. A breakdown of the hardware inside the MSI GT80 Titan. At the heart of the system is the flagship Intel Core i7 4980HQ which runs at 2.8ghz, with a turbo to 4ghz. 32GB of Hyundai DDR3 memory is installed, running at 1600mhz with 11-11-11-28 timings. This is a dual channel configuration.

Installed inside the MSI GT80 Titan are not one, but two Nvidia GTX980m graphics cards. Each card has 1,536 CUDA cores, 64 ROPS and 96 texture units. The core is running at 1,038mhz, with a Boost speed of 1,127mhz. The memory runs at 1,253mhz (5Gbps effective). the 8GB of GDDR5 Hynix memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. They are in fact, two very powerful mobile GPU's. They are actually that capable that we felt it useful to compare them (in SLi) against some leading desktop graphics cards. More details below.

Comparison Mobile Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):

MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE (i7 4710HQ)
MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro (072UK)
MSI GS60 2PE Ghost Pro 15.6 inch (Intel I7-4700HQ).
MSI GT70 2OC (Intel Core i7 4700MQ).
MSI GS70 2OD Stealth (Intel Core i7 4700HQ).
MSI GE40-20C Dragon Eyes (Intel Core i7 4702MQ).
PCSpecialist Inferno 11.6 inch (Intel Core i7 3630QM).
MSI GX60 (AMD A10 4600M).
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (featuring Core i5 3427U).
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 (featuring Core i5 3210M).
PC Specialist Vortex III HD72 (featuring Core i7 3610QM).
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

Comparison Desktop System (for gaming tests).

Detailed specifications over HERE.
Asus GTX980 ROG Matrix Platinum (1,241 mhz core / 1,753mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1,260 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX770 OC (1,137mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire Dual X R9 285 (965 mhz core / 1,400 mhz memory)
XFX R9 280X DD (1,000 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Asus Direct CU II GTX 760 OC (1,006mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
Asus GTX750TI Strix OC Edition (1,124mhz core / 1,350mhz memory)

Software:

3DMark 11
3DMark
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cinebench R15 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley
SiSoft Sandra
CrystalDiskMark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 12
Cyberlink MediaEspresso

Games:

Grid Autosport
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 2014
Total War Rome 2: Emperor Edition.

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

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