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MSI GT72VR 6RE Dominator Pro Tobii: A Gamer’s Desktop Replacement - General Hardware Reviews
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MSI GT72VR 6RE Dominator Pro Tobii: A Gamer’s Desktop Replacement - General Hardware Reviews
With the release of Nvidia’s 1000 line of desktop graphics cards, it was only a matter of time until their Mobility line hit the scene. The time has come and laptop manufacturers are leveraging the power of Pascal to show us just what’s possible in the world of portable PC gaming. I was recently offered the opportunity to spend some time with MSI’s GT72VR 6RE Dominator Pro Tobii.
Comments
It's not just about price, though that it's easy to get a faster desktop for $1000 less surely matters. There's also reliability, as a desktop has no problem with cooling all of that hardware, while as you note, a laptop can be troublesome as dust accumulates. From the weight and depth, it sounds like it has a pretty good cooling system, but it's still not going to be as a desktop. Anything that advertises itself as an ultra thin gaming laptop should be avoided because there's just no way to reliably cool it, but the 1.9" you found sounds good for this class of hardware. And while we're talking about reliability, desktops tend not to get dropped on the ground.
And then there is the form factor. It's big for a laptop monitor, but positively tiny for a desktop monitor. The cheap monitor I bought way back in 1998 was bigger than that. And it's also only one monitor. A keyboard forced to be so close to the monitor is also problematic; you could do that in a desktop, but no one does because it's so awkward. As is only having a trackpad instead of a real, wired, laser mouse. Yes, you can attach external peripherals, but you can attach a lot more to a desktop and more easily, too. In other words, it's a laptop, just like it says it is. But that's precisely why it's not viable as a replacement for desktops.
For the business traveler crowd that wants to play games after work while only staying in a particular hotel for a few days at a time, this laptop or something like it makes a lot of sense. The specs are pretty much what you'd want in a high end gaming laptop, up to perhaps some minor tweaks. But it's a ridiculous product for most gamers.
It's surely a niche product. Most gamers will find a way to use a desktop, but I would get this is a desktop supplement as opposed to a replacement.
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Gaming laptops are, in my opinion, only good for a very specific niche of gamers and outside of the absolute need to be portable on a routine basis, there are simply far too many downsides to that PC form-factor.
As for this machine, yes it is beautiful, fast and it shows. But.. 4,000 dollars? I believe that with half the price one can pick up a less flashy gaming laptop able to play even the most demanding titles with no hiccups at all.
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The point is taking it to your hotel room and plugging it in. Gaming laptop video cards will hardly run if it's not plugged in. They're never about that kind of portability. Just being able to get it from one plug to another easily which you can't do with a desktop.
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A lot depends on what laptop you get. If you get something misleadingly advertised as a gaming laptop that will only put out 30 W under heavy loads, that's an entirely different class of product from the 150 W monster in the review here. Even among higher end laptops that can crank out 100+ W, there's a huge difference between:
a) laptops that prioritize cooling and are fine with being thick and heavy, and
b) laptops that prioritize being thin and light at the expense of having cooling that is barely adequate even when pristine and dustless and only go down hill from there
If you're going to get a high end gaming laptop, you want (a). Period. The laptop of this review is firmly in camp (a), but some gaming laptops aren't. I don't know exactly which laptop you have, but Sager's high end laptops have long been rebranded Clevo laptops that were also in camp (a).
If thick and heavy is a problem because you're going to carry it around a lot, you need to get something that scales power consumption way back, likely by limiting itself to integrated graphics, so that it doesn't need to dissipate so much heat. And then you just have to accept that you'll often have to turn settings way down, though most games will still be playable. And some games just aren't very demanding: when I played Elsword, my Fury X would run at or near the desktop idle clock speed of 300 MHz while still running the game very smoothly.
The latest generation of mobile graphics have almost identical gaming performance to the equivalent desktop cards, so these are very much replacements for current desktops..
I've been using gaming laptops exclusively for almost 10 years now and whereas older Clevo models were hot and noisy, this is no longer the case. The sound under load of modern ASUS and MSI laptops is no more than a general background woosh of air, and due to the energy efficient components used in these laptops they are typically cooler than an equivalently specced desktop.
OK I have to pay a premium for this performance, but as I work away 5 days a week I'd rather pay a premium for a laptop I can use all week rather than saving some cash on a desktop I can only use at weekends