the MSI GT80 TITAN SLI.
So you may be wondering, where
does this notebook not hit its stride?
Well it’s not so much as the notebook
not hitting its stride, but instead
the notion that at its core it has
a misunderstanding of its target
audience. It is simple enough to gather
the best components on the market
and combine them within a fixed TDP
and power budget. It is something
else entirely though, to gather the
most appropriate components on the
market for the intention of delivering
a great gaming experience. This is
perhaps why the GS60 Ghost Pro
strikes the right chord with me. The
limitations imposed by its physical
dimensions shoe horn the engineering
efforts in the right direction and as
a byproduct of this, we end up with
incredible gaming notebooks as I’ve
stated before.
For instance, given that this is
supposedly the ultimate portable
gaming machine (which it is without
a doubt), it stands that a 3K or 4K
panel would be the ideal display for
it. Especially given that one of it’s
key if not its key selling point is SLI
graphics and a combined 16GiB of
graphics memory. Instead we end up
with a FullHD display. The issue isn’t
the FullHD as such, but the fact that
a single GTX 970M or even a 965M is
more than capable of handling modern
games at high detail levels at 1080P.
If not, a single GTX 980M with 4GiB
of memory certainly can with MSAA
options as well. As such, literally half
the graphics processing power of the
notebook goes to waste. Consider that
in SLI configurations, NVIDIA Optimus
isn’t supported and one ends up with
a notebook that burns away power at
an alarming rate even when watching
videos on the notebook, hence the
battery live measuring just above one
hour of use (As indicated by PCMark8’s
Creative Suite battery test).
The system CPU suffers a related
fate as well. Even though it has a
maximum turbo frequency of 4GHz,
the notebook never did reach that
frequency throughout the entire
test period with it, which was the
equivalent of several weeks of use.
Even with the GPUs not loaded, using
heavy CPU workloads would cause
the 4980HQ to throttle, to frequencies
as low as 3.3GHz (as illustrated by
HWBOT’s Wprime 1.55 1024M test).
When gaming, where both the CPU
and the GPUs were loaded, both subsystems operated at reduced clock
speeds as to fall within a tolerable
power and thermal envelope. At the
same time, the fans made plenty
of noise, almost equaling that of a
smaller desktop gaming machine.
There are some other examples of
such oversights with theGT80 TITAN
SLI which only serve to take way from
what is otherwise an impressive
machine. The part that moves me the
most are the specs but I do believe
that, specs alone are easily duplicated
by any other vendor and as such do
not lend themselves well to anchoring
the potential buyer of such a notebook
to the MSI brand. Further than the
technical merits, there must be a
more realistic sensitivity to what it is
that makes a notebook in 2015 worth
a high price tag to “gamers” other
than specs alone, especially at this
price where for less than half the
price there’s a GS60 Ghost which for
all intents and purposes provides a
similar gaming experience, barring
the mechanical keyboard.
My concerns aside, the GT80 TITAN
SLI is an obvious progression for
MSI from their previous high end
ultra-enthusiast efforts. As harsh
as one may view my opinions on
the notebook, by virtue of having no
competition on the market it forces its
way through sheer processing power
into my good books. For there just
isn’t any other vendor that is currently
providing such a specification for any
price let alone a notebook that’s in
retail availability across the entire
world. I look forward to seeing what
MSI will produce with their successive
version of this notebook. 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. There’s simply nothing else
on the market that is remotely close in
computing prowess.
[ The Overclocker]
Issue 34 | 2015 The OverClocker 49