sequential speeds as you can imagine
are remarkable with read speeds
measured at 1619MiB/s and writes at
979.1MiB/s. In addition to this storage
there’s a 1TiB 7200rpm drive that has
respectable sequential speeds as well
of 147 and 140MB/s respectively. So as
you can imagine the system is snappy
and waiting for ay program to load
is perhaps a result of the software
rather than the hardware not being
able to provide the data fast enough.
If all that doesn’t move you, the
GT80 TITAN packs 32GiB of DDR3
1600MHz memory in dual channel
mode, courtesy of Hynix and finally,
the CPU of choice is the high end
4980HQ with a Turbo frequency as
high as 4GHz. Truly the specification
here is remarkable by any stretch
of the imagination. In fact, so
powerful is the GT80 that many high
end desktop systems will not be
able to match in several synthetic
benchmarks, especially ones where
GPU processing capabilities are
concerned. Which is just fine by me,
because this is a gaming notebook
primarily and its GPU capabilities
should be second to none.
The rest of the notebook is not to be
sneered at either and perhaps this is
where MSI has truly innovated over
the competition. For the first time on
any notebook, we find a mechanical
keyboard, courtesy of Steelseries
as you’ve probably guessed. This
mechanical keyboard makes use
of red LEDs and Cherry MX-Brown
switches. In addition to this, there’s
MSI has chosen to forgo the traditional
touch pad in favor of a hybrid numerickeypad touch panel on the right side
of the keyboard. It has dual functions
of course and can at will be turned
off completely. Initially I was worried
about sensitivity, but it was excellent
much like many of the other trackpads on MSI gaming notebooks. If the
specifications weren’t a clear enough
indication for you on in what this
notebook’s sole purpose was, then
the keyboard would no doubt convince
you. For gaming on the go, in the most
powerful way possible, there’s no
other choice for you than the GT80
TITAN SLI.
Specs alone however, do not a
notebook make. When you make
such a massive monetary invest in a
machine, you want it to last as long
as possible and this is where MSI
has again, done something a little
different in making the GT80 TITAN
SLI user upgradable. Both GPUs
are in MXM format, so when NVIDIA
releases the next set of mobile GPUs
invariably, you may upgrade the
GT80 with those GPUs. Where one
would buy these MXM upgrade kits is
unclear, but MSI will certainly assist
I that regard I would imagine. This
user upgradability isn’t limited to the
GPUs alone, but to the system RAM
of course storage. You may need a
firmware update throughout the life
of the notebook to support larger
capacities and newer devices, but
for the most part you are covered for
years on end and this notebook will
continue to pay for itself long after
you’ve gotten over the extraordinarily
high access price attached to it.
The overall build quality of the
notebook is what I come to next. I have
always felt and still believe that MSI
“For those of you who want
unparalleled mobile computing
power, you have little to no choice but
to go with the MSI GT80 TITAN SLI.”
Issue 34 | 2015 The OverClocker 47