Although powerful components have been getting steadily smaller, if you want desktop workstation performance in a mobile platform, it probably won't be in an ultra-portable format. Accordingly, MSI's WT73VR 7RM isn't going to be a notebook you would want to carry around with you all day. However, the components inside do promise capabilities not far off a full tower system, and it's definitely not as big as one of those.
The WT73VR 7RM is very much a workstation. The processor is a mobile Xeon, the E3-1505M v6, with 32GB of DDR4 memory to back it up, accompanied by the mobile version of NVIDIA's Quadro P5000 graphics, which would set you back around £2,000 in desktop form. All this power comes in a decidedly hefty package, however. The chassis uses a 17.3in screen, with Full HD and 4K options, and weighs a portly 4.14kg. You need both hands to pick this system up safely.
The storage allocation is equally high-end. Not one, but two 128GB Toshiba M.2 NVMe solid state disks are supplied for operating system and apps, in a RAID 0 configuration. There's also a 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000 7,200rpm conventional SATA hard disk offering plenty of general data capacity. This is a huge specification and a huge laptop for a huge near-£5,000 price. Let's find out if the mobile workstation performance is equally massive.
MSI WT73VR 7RM Specifications:
- Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6 @ 3GHz
- 32GB DDR4 SDRAM @ 2,133MHz
- 16GB GDDR5 NVIDIA Quadro P5000 Graphics
- 17.3in IPS TFT with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution
- 2 x 128GB Toshiba THNSN5128GPU7 M.2 NVMe SSD in RAID 0 array
- 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000 SATA III 6Gb/s 7,200rpm HDD
- Networking: Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth v4.2
- Ports: LAN, SDXC, 1 x USB 3.1 Type C / Thunderbolt 3, 5 x USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4, headphone / S/PDIF, microphone, line in, line out
- Dimensions (WxDxH): 428 x 287 x 49mm
- Weight: 4.14kg
- Windows 10 Professional 64bit
- 3 Years warranty, including 1 Year Global
Price: £4,798.99 inc VAT (Buy from Scan.co.uk HERE)
The no-nonsense white box doesn't come with much inside it, other than the laptop itself. In fact, you just get the hefty power supply and a standard kettle power lead.
The WS73VR 7RM is absolutely massive. We normally use a pound coin to illustrate the width of a notebook, but this system measures 49mm at its thickest point, so even a 50p piece looks dwarfed in comparison. Design wise, this is a serious slab of matt black plastic and brushed metal. It exudes the serious amounts of workstation power within.
The Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6 is a quad-core mobile professional CPU with a nominal 3GHz frequency. It comes from Intel's Kaby Lake generation, offering a 4GHz Turbo Mode for a single core, 3.8GHz for two cores, and 3.6GHz for four cores, so there's plenty of processing grunt available, particularly with Hyper-Threading on hand to provide eight virtual cores.
The processor is backed by a decidedly healthy 32GB of 2,133MHz DDR4 SDRAM. This will be plenty for most 3D content creation on the move, and this system also supports 64GB if more is needed. There are two SODIMM slots free for upgrade.
The Intel Xeon processor supposedly has Intel HD 630 graphics built in, but this appeared to have been disabled and wasn't showing up, so you won't get the benefit of its much lower power consumption than the discrete graphics.
The only graphics available therefore is the mobile NVIDIA Quadro P5000. This has the same 2,048 CUDA cores as the desktop version, and the same 16GB of GDDR5 memory. However, the core speed is considerably slower – 1,164MHz versus 1,607MHz for the desktop version, and with a 1,506MHz Boost versus 1,733MHz.
So performance won't be the same, but it will be close, and definitely better than any other mobile workstation graphics currently available. Similarly, the 16GB of GDDR5 memory sits on the same 256-bit bus, but operates at 6,006MHz rather than 9,016MHz, so only provides 192GB/sec of bandwidth rather than 288GB/sec, which will have a further impact on performance with large texture sets. But there is a huge amount of frame buffer available.
Since this is a Quadro graphics accelerator, the GPU will be accredited and supported by professional software vendors, too.
There are two options for the 17.3in IPS panel. One has a 4K UHD resolution – 3,840 x 2,160 – and the other Full HD (1,920 x 1,080). Our sample came with the latter, and it's a lovely screen for content creation work. Detail is excellent, colour fidelity is superb, and the viewing angles are wide. This might seem a low resolution for a 17in screen, but we find 4K on a laptop to be hard to use effectively.
There's also a 720p webcam in the middle of the top of the bezel.
Our WT73VR 7RM includes three drives – two 128GB Toshiba THNSN5128GPU7 M.2 NVMe SSDs and a single 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000 7,200rpm conventional SATA hard disk. The two SSDs have been combined together into a RAID 0 array for improved performance, so they appear as a single 256GB drive. The 1TB hard disk will be plenty for carrying your content creation assets with you on the move, and its 7,200rpm rotational speed should provide decent throughput for a 2.5in notebook drive.
The large chassis means plenty of room for a full-sized keyboard with discrete numeric keypad on the right. The action of the chiclet-style keys is comfortable, and there's loads of space for resting your wrists as you type. The keys sport a blue backlit by default, as does the large trackpad. This has discrete buttons, and is placed directly below the spacebar, minimising the chance of accidental pointer movement caused by the heels of your hands brushing it as you type.
Such a huge laptop has plenty of space for ports, and MSI has taken full advantage of the possibilities. On the left we find three USB 3.0 ports and a quartet of audio mini-jacks. The latter provides line in and out, microphone, and a headphone connection that doubles as S/PDIF.
On the rear, next to the sizeable power connection, are full-sized HDMI 1.4, mini DisplayPort 1.2, a Thunderbolt 3 / USB Type-C port offering speeds up to 40Mbits/sec, and Gigabit Ethernet.
Finally, on the right there are two more USB 3.0 ports and a full-sized SDXC memory card adapter.
We put the MSI WT73VR 7RM through a series of workstation benchmarks. For comparison, we pitted it against a Workstation Specialists WS-X143S desktop workstation with a NVIDIA Quadro P4000 graphics card fitted, and MSI's own WS63 7RK, which has NVIDIA Quadro P3000 graphics. The WS-X143S was the closest desktop system we had tests results for to compare. It's a small form factor workstation, but using desktop components rather than mobile ones, so with the same performance as larger systems.
Software:
Cinebench R15
SPECviewperf 12.1.1
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0
Futuremark PC Mark 8 (battery test only)
Workstation Specialists WS-X143S Specifications:
- Intel Core i7-7700K @ 5GHz
- 32GB DDR4 SDRAM @ 2666MHz
- 256GB Samsung SM961 M.2 PCIe x4 SSD
- 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA III 6Gb/s 7,200rpm HDD
- 8GB GDDR5 NVIDIA Quadro P4000 Graphics
- Windows 10 Pro 64bit
MSI W63 7RK Specifications:
- Intel Core i7-7700HQ @ 2.8GHz
- 16GB DDR4 SDRAM @ 2,400MHz
- 6GB GDDR5 NVIDIA Quadro P3000 Graphics
- Intel HD Graphics 630
- 15.6in IPS TFT with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution
- 256GB Toshiba THNSN5256GPU7 M.2 NVMe SSD
- 1TB HGST Travelstar Z5K1000 SATA III 6Gb/s 5,400rpm HDD
- Networking: Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth v4.2
- Ports: LAN, SDXC, 1 x USB 3.1 Type C, 3 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, Mini DisplayPort, HDMI, heaphone / S/PDIF, microphone
- Dimensions (WxDxH): 380 x 249 x 17.7mm
- Weight: 1.8kg
- Windows 10 Professional 64bit
- 3 Years warranty, including 1 Year Global
CINEBENCH 15 is a cross-platform testing suite that measures hardware performance and is the de facto standard benchmarking tool for leading companies and trade journals for conducting real-world hardware performance tests. With Release 15, systems with up to 256 threads can be tested.
CINEBENCH is available for both Windows and OS X and is used by almost all hardware manufacturers and trade journals for comparing CPUs and graphics cards.
The WT73VR 7RM is only 18 percent quicker than the WS63 7RK, but both have quad-core processors, and the WT73VR 7RM is only clocked a few hundred MHz faster, so this is no surprise. The WS-X143S also has a quad-core processor, but runs at 5GHz across all four cores, giving it a major advantage. The latest version of the WS-X143S's CPU, the Core i7-8700K, has six cores, so would have even more of an advantage.
In other words, the WT73VR 7RM is no slouch for rendering, but a notebook still can't compete with a desktop in this area. You can't use processors with as many cores, and you can't overclock them significantly either. So this notebook will be good for the odd test render on the road, but not serious production output.
The Cinebench OpenGL test is very sensitive to clock speed, so neither of the notebooks fare well against a desktop running at 5GHz. The WT73VR 7RM is only marginally better than its lighter, cheaper, and less powerful WS63 7RK sibling.
SPECviewperf 12.1.1, released by SPEC's Graphics Performance Characterization group (SPECgpc) on August 24, 2016, is the latest version of the worldwide standard for measuring graphics performance based on professional applications. SPECgpc members at the time of release include AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Lenovo, NEC and NVIDIA.
SPECviewperf 12.1.1 measures the 3D graphics performance of systems running under the OpenGL and Direct X application programming interfaces. The benchmark’s test files, called viewsets, represent graphics content and behaviour from actual applications.
The MSI WT73VR 7RM clearly has much more professional graphics power than the WS63 7RK's NVIDIA Quadro P3000 graphics. The 3dsmax-05 score of 133.16 isn't far off the desktop system, and 179.89 in snx-02 is actually 14 percent faster. The medical-01 result of 59.47 is also a touch quicker, as is 12.44 in energy-01.
The score of 143.19 in sw-03 is 39 percent faster than the WS63 7RK. However, whilst you're getting the closest 3D content creation performance we have ever seen to a desktop workstation, you're still seeing a noticeable drop in some key application, despite the hefty graphics. The maya-04 result of 84.74, for example, is 40 per cent slower than the desktop.
Still, this isn't going to be a deal breaker, particularly with 16GB of frame buffer. There won't be much you can't do comfortably on this system that you can on a desktop workstation.
We tested the MSI WT73VR 7RM with Battery Saver turned on and a 50 per cent screen brightness, using the PC Mark 8 Create battery test, which runs a series of productivity tasks until the power runs out. These test scripts stress the graphics performance a little, although not specifically professional 3D. It's supposed to represent a mixture of everyday creative tasks.
We weren't expecting amazing battery life as large, all-powerful laptops never tend to excel in this area. The WT73VR 7RM lasted 11 minutes less than its much more portable WS63 7RK sibling. This isn't the worst battery life we've seen from a laptop, and you could get a bit longer of less intensive work. This also isn't a laptop designed for taking on a train or plane to get some work done in transit. But you could really only expect to be able to take it to a meeting for an hour or two of intensive 3D demonstration.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V6.0.0 x64.
The RAID 0 configuration of the two Toshiba NVMe SSDs is clearly paying dividends. These are already quick SSDs, capable of around 2,400MB/sec reading and 1,100MB/sec writing. But in RAID 0 form, you're getting over 3,300MB/sec reading and over 1,250MB/sec writing, which will make boot times, software loading, and new application installation all as fast as a desktop.
The 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000 hard disk is very quick for a notebook drive, with 147.2MB/sec reading and 133.7MB/sec writing. But the best 7,200rpm SATA desktop drives are still at least a third faster still.
The MSI WT73VR 7RM still isn't quite as capable as a desktop workstation, but that would be asking too much of a device you can actually carry from location to location without needing a van. However, at over 4kg and 49mm thick, you will need a strong bag to carry this device, and most laptop bags won't cut it.
Without question, though, this laptop boasts the most powerful 3D content creation abilities we have ever seen on a portable platform. It even beats a desktop workstation in some areas, although is still behind in some notable applications such as Autodesk's Maya.
You get similarly fast storage, with the RAID 0 boot and application SSD array providing performance as fast as any desktop, and the HDD is only about a third behind desktop equivalents. The 1TB capacity should be enough for most content creation tasks, although it is half what the average desktop workstation is currently including.
Overall, you're not compromising much in performance for portability. However, you are paying a huge premium. At just under £4,800, this laptop is around twice the price of an equivalent desktop system, although that would be without a screen. Nevertheless, if you really need to take near-desktop workstation 3D capabilities on the move, and your business justifies the expense, this is the most powerful professional portable we have ever tested.
Price: £4,798.99 inc VAT (Buy from Scan.co.uk HERE)
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros:
- Near-desktop 3D modelling performance.
- Good rendering for a notebook.
- Desktop-grade primary SSD performance.
- Fast secondary HDD.
- Generous storage.
Cons:
- Very expensive.
- Fat and heavy.
- Mediocre battery life.
KitGuru says: The MSI WT73VR 7RM provides the closest 3D content creation performance to a desktop workstation we have ever seen in a laptop, but you pay a significant premium.
Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here