MSI GT70 Dragon Edition Notebook Review: Haswell and the GTX 780M
by Dustin Sklavos on June 18, 2013 12:01 AM ESTSystem Performance
The new benchmark suite has left us in a bit of disarray, but thankfully we did have the CyberPowerPC Fangbook in recently. The Fangbook sports an Ivy Bridge CPU with exactly the same clocks as the i7-4700MQ powering the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition, and that gives us an excellent baseline for comparison.
I'd also like to personally thank NVIDIA for furnishing us with an Alienware M17x R4 equipped with a GTX 680M at the eleventh hour so we can get proper comparative results. Unfortunately, as you'll see the 780M in the GT70 Dragon Edition gets hamstrung by the CPU (more on this later) when tested playing games that hit the GPU and the CPU especially hard.
Haswell is certainly faster clock for clock, but obviously owners of Ivy Bridge-based notebooks shouldn't be chucking their old kit. Under most circumstances, the i7-4700MQ is less than 10% faster than the i7-3630QM.
Pop on over to the 3DMarks and the 780M looks good, but unusually, not quite as good as it ought to. It has a commanding lead over the GTX 580M, and it should, but on Cloud Gate and Ice Storm it should also be blowing right past the 7970M. You'll get a better idea of what I'm talking about on the next page, when we look at actual gaming performance.
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ickibar1234 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
That single fan is enough. Notice that it keeps the CPU in the low 80s at full utilization and the GPU in the 70s Celsius. That is perfectly fine. Yes, you need to press the Cooler boost button to bring the fan to full speed but it is adequate.The fan is a different beast compared to normal laptop fans; It is 12 Volts! Yes, 12 Volts.
brand/model/amperage; NSTECH PABD19735BM -N153 0.65 Amps @ 12V. That is over 6 watts of cooling power in a laptop.
There have been some reports of bad paste jobs during assembly. Re-paste and temperatures should be very good especially with Cooler Boost on.
Nocturnal32GB - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
If you really knew anything about mobile gaming you would never buy a laptop from MSI, Asus or Dell / Alienware in the first place. Those machines are cheap junk to begin with, you can purchase a gaming laptop from M-Tech with better features and way better cooling for less money. Even sager is a better way to go than throwing your money out the window on proprietary garbage like MSI Alienware and the like.MDX - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Sager / Clevo laptops are fat, hideous, and bulky. At least Alienware does bulky with style, and they're definitely not low quality (mine's lasted 6 years so far, and I beat the crap out of my laptops). I'm not spending thousands to get something with a hideous clevo case, regardless of the internals.MDX - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I trust you guys over Tom's Hardware, but why does they seem to think the cooling system is just fine and not seem to have an issue with heat?MDX - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Can't edit comments >< http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gt70-dragon-ed...It almost seems like MSI updated the fan or something?