MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Review: GTX 980M Reigns Supreme
by Jarred Walton on November 11, 2014 8:00 AM ESTMSI GT72 Dominator Pro LCD: Still TN (on Most Models)
Unlike the GS60 with its High DPI 3K display, or even the GE60 with its 1080p IPS panel, most of the GT72 continues to use a TN LCD. It’s a decent quality TN panel, but out of the box the colors are very far from accurate, with very noticeable blue shifts (even if you don’t know what to look for). In fact, the overblown blues combined with underpowered reds mean that if you want to calibrate for 200 nits you have to run the LCD at close to 100% brightness. Which I do most of the time when I’m plugged in anyway, but it doesn’t help battery life. The one saving grace is that the panel is anti-glare, and other than the usual TN problems with viewing the display from above or below, the LCD works well enough.
I’d love to see MSI put a higher quality IPS panel into the entire GT72 line, but either the price of the IPS panel used in the Dominator Pro-444/445 is really high or perhaps supply is limited right now. Of course, MSI put a lot of money into the SSD array, so spending an extra $100-$200 on a quality IPS panel shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. Anyway, we'll see if it's possible to get one of the IPS models for some additional testing, but we have to test what we receive.
It’s unfortunate that most of the High DPI (and thus IPS) panels are targeting 15.6" and smaller laptops, as the GTX 980M could actually drive a QHD or perhaps even 3K/4K at native resolution and still have enough performance for gaming, so hopefully one of the LCD manufacturers can cater to this market. The end of TN continues to creep ever closer, and as far as I’m concerned it can’t come soon enough.
Uncalibrated, the maximum white level of 286 cd/m2 is lower than we typically see, which is again unfortunate. The black level of 0.288 nits at max brightness does result in a 1000:1 contrast ratio however, which is good for an anti-glare notebook display. The average CCT is actually almost laughable; the ideal is 6504K, but uncalibrated the GT72 LCD measures over twice that at 13279K. That brings us to the full uncalibrated results:
There’s really not much to say about the uncalibrated colors other than that they’re quite bad and at times border on terrible. Greyscale has an average Delta E 2000 of 12, gamut is at 5, saturations are 6, and Gretag Macbeth is back up to more than 11. The errors in color accuracy are quite noticeable if you look for them, though for many people it probably doesn’t matter much.
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The good news is that post-calibration most of the errors are gone, or at least at the point where only the most critical eye will see them. Greyscale Delta E is down to 0.9, which is essentially perfect. The gamut and saturations are at 1.7, and the GMB is down to 1.6 overall. The largest errors are in shades of blue and orange, and even those are below 4.0 so there’s not much to complain about. We still have a few minor issues with the gamma curve not being quite flat, but if you’re okay with a TN panel this is about as good as you’ll find in a consumer notebook (post-calibration at least).
While using a camera to take a picture of an LCD is a less than perfect solution, the following images should give you an idea of how dramatic the shift in colors is with calibration. I set my camera to manual controls with "cloudy" white balance to mitigate the auto white balance trying to correct for the colors, and you can see quite clearly the blue shift with the uncalibrated colors:
Uncalibrated on the left, calibrated on the right.
That said, as a gaming notebook, I don’t find the colors to be all that problematic -- you're mostly going to be worried about the game play and whether the LCD is too blue doesn't really matter. On the other hand, if you're looking for something that's more of a mobile workstation (but you don't need/want a Quadro GPU), you'll almost certainly want an IPS panel.
Again, XoticPC and other resellers have the Dominator Pro-444 and Dominator Pro-445 with IPS panels, and Amazon sells the Pro-444 and Pro-445 as well, but they're both very expensive. But if you're already eyeing the Pro-208 that we're reviewing, the extra $400 gets you a faster CPU along with the LCD upgrade, so it might be worth a shot. Or you could just buy an external IPS panel for when you're "docked" for about half the price of the upgrade and call it a day.
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frodbonzi - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Alienware gives you the same hardware....it's only the 980m that is different...and I'm sure it will be offered soon. Someone on the Alienware 18 owner's thread on a different forum has said it was late November...Anyways, as I posted earlier, once you are going the gaming laptop route, I don't see the reason for going "half way"... Yes, the 18" laptops are heavier - but it's not like you're going to be taking this one with your everywhere either... they're both "portable desktops".
The Alienware 18, even with "only" dual 880m, will beat this laptop (and any other single GPU laptop) handily... the benchmarks Jarred included were from dual 780m... and they STILL beat the 980m! Alienware can give you an IPS screen and 4 SSDs (although I prefer 3 SSDs and a blu-ray drive myself) for just a bit more cash...
Lastly, I have to say that once you are in this price range, cost ceases to be a large factor. Yes, when buying a $500 laptop, an extra $200 is a big deal... But when buying a $3000+ laptop, a few hundred dollars no longer really matters...
CrazyElf - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
We're not talking about a small difference in price here though. The Alienware 18 is a couple of thousand dollars more if you max it out. Price I'd argue still matters.I have no doubt that the top end Alienware and Clevo laptops will beat this thing, especially if they are running 980M SLI (when that comes out). The top end Clevo probably will run a desktop grade CPU, so it's even more potent in this regard. I believe Clevo P570WM3 is the 6 core Ivy Bridge E model. Not sure if they are coming with a Haswell E laptop that can support 8 core Haswell though.
The only other benefit I can see is this thing can support 4x M.2. Not sure how many the Alienware 18 can support, although they are probably using 2.5" SATA 3 drives. It's not a huge advantage though, as M.2 is faster, but not something you'd notice for gaming.
Agree on the Blu-Ray drive.
@Jarred Walton
Would it be possible to get the IPS GT72 tested out when it comes out? It should have a better quality screen overall.
frodbonzi - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
If you don't mind refurbished, we're only talking about $200-$300.... and Alienware 18s have 1 M.2, and 3 SATA slots (some models give u 3 hard drives and an optical drive, others give all 4 hard drives).As a point of pricing:
My Alienware 18 (purchased 2 months ago) has 32GB of RAM, dual 880m, and the i7 4940mx. I'm not a fan of RAID 0, so the "fast" M.2 is my boot drive (256gb) and the other 2 drives are 256gb sata SDDs... I replaced the DVD drive with a $50 Blu-Ray writer off of ebay (Panasonic UJ265)...
Cost: $3200 --> I've seen the same on ebay ranging from $3000 to $4000...
Aikouka - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
I ended up picking up one of these a few weeks ago, and it's a nice laptop. I went with the "budget" 980M version that only has a single SSD, and I purchased a separate 512GB SSD to use in non-RAID. It works great as I leave the original SSD for the OS and use the other one for more important games/applications. That's the same approach that I take on my desktop as well.I also had the same problem with the bottom of the laptop. Honestly, I was afraid that I was going to break it! MSI uses a *ton* of tabs in addition to the screws to hold the bottom panel on, and it requires a bit of yanking to get it off. I also found it to be a bit more difficult than desired to put it back on.
I'm not the biggest fan of the trackpad though. I find that even at higher sensitivity, it just isn't all that sensitive and requires a lot more movement than some of my other laptops. The problem is that when making scrolling gestures and such, I really have to push down on it or else it doesn't register the gesture.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the Killer Wi-Fi card. I use Intel 7260-AC cards in my two NUCs, and honestly... they're downright awful. If they do connect, it will only last for a few days until it drops to unusable levels of performance, and I've never had one connect at full AC speed. My laptop connects to my router at full 2x AC speed.
As for the noise, I do wish that the laptop was a bit quieter during low usage, but I'm also the type that builds very quiet PCs. I highly doubt that any normal user would mind the noise.
jabber - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Nice hardware...shame it looks like a tacky toy.utferris - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
I am a computer scientist, I just do not understand the design.4x128GB RAID 0, seriously? The failure rate will be incredibly high with RAID0 of four storages of any kind, though they can get some speed up.
I can understand gamers buy monsters, but I donot understand why they will pay for such stupid design.
DanNeely - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Agree, 1st thing I'd do would be to RAID10 it; but every time someone at Anandtech or elsewhere sends a "RAID0, WTF!" email to a gaming laptop representative, the answer they get back is some version of "Our customers are demanding RAID0." Assuming their market research is valid, there're a lot of idiots buying gaming laptops with no clue beyond benchmark numbers. I'm somewhat skeptical though because you don't see the same thing in pre built gaming desktops. I suspect that what happened was that they went RAID0 in the HDD era to try and compensate for the crapitude of 2.5" HDDs; and haven't checked to see if it's still a valid customer requirement.What surprises me is that they don't offer an alternative model with a single 2.5" SSD. The price premium on M.2 drives is high enough that they could still charge a large markup on it while being substantially less than the M.2 RAID0 model.
jabber - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I know a few friends that have bought such machines in the past. The truth is they spend more time going back for repairs/fixes than actually on the users desk. More trouble than they are worth in the long run.IgenIgen - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
The new ASUS G751JT/JY actually use a redesigned chassis compared to the G750. It also comes with an IPS display as standard (at least in Europe).JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Is it a radical overhaul of the design, or just incremental tweaks of the previous iterations of the G7xx series? Judging by images, it's the latter:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Compared that with the GT70 vs. GT72 and it's a massive change. That's what I'm trying to get at.