Gadgetory

welcome back to hadron box today we're checking out the msi gs70 5 stealth 8 sg-1 of a number of new r-tx powered gaming laptops from msi as this beast fits into their stealth phone is designed to be a slim and light portable gaming system with Gio 75 branding indicating it's fair 17-inch model previously I reviewed the GS 65 and really liked it so I was definitely keen to check out the large model equipped with a new RT X GPU MSI has a number of GS 75 models on the market each with different suffixes I'm checking out the 8 SG model here which is the highest end unit equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce r-tx 2080 max-q GPU there are also models available with the RT X 2070 max Q and the RT X 2060 each variant of this laptop with a different GPU is then available with different RAM and storage configurations in my case I received 32 gigabytes of dual channel memory and a dual 512 gigabyte SSD setup in raid 0 the rest of the hardware is the same among the configurations you get an Intel Core i7 8750 H processor the standard for gaming laptops there's also a 17.3 inch 1080p 144 Hertz IPS level display and an 82 watt hour battery the design of the new GS 75 is pretty much unchanged from MSI's previous versions and that's a good thing it means we're still getting the excellent metal new unibody built with beautiful copper gold highlights this really is one of the best-looking gaming laptops on the market so wholesale changes really aren't required it's a sleek laptop with a nice minimalist style we're still getting Emma sized version of a slim bezel laptop even at 17 inches with the tiny webcam positioned above the display it's not the slimmest bezels available on any laptop but it certainly feels like the display is taking up most of the room available to it and it keeps the laptop compact overall in fact it just 19 millimeters thick and 2.25 kilograms heavy it's a very portable chassis for a 17 inch Beast come in slimmer and lighter than your typical 15-inch system the keyboard used here is the same SteelSeries unit as previous msi laptops personally it's not one of my favorites the tactile response is spongy and not particularly satisfying although a travel distance is fine it does come with a full numpad as I'd expect for a 17 inch laptop although the inclusion of full-size arrow case has truncated the right shift key which may annoy some users the good news is you do get perky RGB backlighting which is becoming more widespread among high-end gaming laptops you also get a sizable trackpad with excellent responsiveness IO is the usual affair here 3 USB 3.1 gen2 type-c ports two USB seaports one is Thunderbolt 3 and the other USB 3.1 gen2 on there's Ethernet a micro SD card slot and HDMI as well as dual 3.5 mill or your jacks my only concern here is the amount of ports on the right side of the laptop such as HDMI which makes it a little awkward to have a mouse there several things that are plugged in let's talk about performance now and as a quick reminder everything he is based on my experience with the RT X 28 Emacs qmo with that said I do have comprehensive benchmark reviews of the RT X 2070 max Q + RT X 2060 that should apply to this laptops other GPU configurations as with many gaming laptops there are several performance modes and fan profiles to choose from throughout this review I found the top turbo performance mode to perform the best because it overclocks the GPU by 100 megahertz compared to the default sport mode I also found that while there are 4 fan modes the auto mode performs just as well as the other performance oriented modes with very little change in fan speeds while gaming this is great to see because auto also quietens the fans significantly during less intensive tasks like web browsing throughout this review i've used the combination of the turbo mode and auto fan mode the laptop comes with one of intel 6 core core a 78758 processors which is widely used across gaming laptops particularly in this form factor I've dusted the CPU many times before so I'm not going to rehash a ton of benchmarks for this laptop in particular if you're interested go back and check out my original review of this mobile CPU in terms of CPU performance all I'm looking for here is to see whether the msi gs70 v stealth performs especially well or especially poorly compared to the average results from all the core 78758 laptops we've tested so far it depend on the workload but the Geo 75 is a little slower on average especially in longer workloads like handbrake and x264 encoding where it's about 6% behind with that said it's a little faster in shorter tasks like 7-zip in MATLAB so this isn't a bad result overall it just can't sustain as high performance for as long as some of the beefier laptops we've tested if you are coming from a quad-core laptop something using a core i7 7700 HQ for example you can expect the GS 75 to deliver pretty sizable gains 40% in workloads like x2 64 encoding and over 50% in 7-zip with the handy 10% improvement in single threaded tasks as well chopping up to 6 cores is a good move especially if you have a lot of multi-threaded work and it can help alleviate a few bottlenecks in some games I'm sure most of you watching this review will be more interested in gaming performance though given this that's me the key selling point of getting a unit with a GPU as fast as the r-tx 2018 max cube if you're after a detailed performance breakdown of this GPU please check out my full review that focuses on the RT x 2080 max Q we will see some individual game breakdowns and discussion it's safe to say this GPU is very capable of gaming at 1080p at high frame rates which makes use of the laptops 144 Hertz display the key thing to note here is the GS 75 stealth uses the regular 80 watt configuration of the RT x 28mm XQ not the faster 90 watt version so the data to look at in my past review is for this standard configuration but that data only refers to how this laptop performs in a default sport performance mode if you enable the turbo mode the GPU gets a 100 megahertz factory overclock of sorts which improves performance over the standard RT X 20 80 max Q configuration I'm sure most gamers will want the best performance straight away so this factory OC mode is something you should use to get the most out of the laptop as far as thermals and noise are concerned the Tobler mode didn't impact either significantly so I don't see a reason not to use it for gaming the best reason to use the turbo mode is it improves gaming performance by 3% on average it's not enough to get the r-tx 20 80 max Q in its standard any wot config to reach the performance levels of the 90 watt version but it's a handy boost over stock performance that you can easily access with a single click and depending on the game you play you could see up to a 10% improvement which is pretty impressive how does this turbo performance stack up to other GPUs well let's take a look as I mentioned we're sitting about 3% behind the 90 watt configuration of the architect's 20 80 max Q not a massive gap the laptops that do include the higher TDP variant deliver better performance unfortunately there's no easy way to tell which laptops are 90 watt models thanks Nvidia for that one we're getting 12% more performance from the GS 75 then a standard RT X 2070 max Q laptop without any factory overclocking some games are heavily constrained by the CPU or other hardware like hitman 2 while other games such as Metro Exodus deliver 17% more performance you're not getting desktop like margins here but low double-digit gains from the same cooler design certainly isn't bad how does 27% more performance than the gtx 1070 max q sound that's again a very healthy improvement that's assisted by the small factory overclock provided by the GS 75 we're not comparing the same price bracket here but I suspect some people with the gtx 1070 mask you up top might be considering spending a bit more cash on their next upgrade you also get 18% more performance than an RT ex 2060 laptop this is another GPU that's available in the msi gs70 5 so which GPU is best might come down to the pricing you can get for each of variants the ITX 2080 max q is a decent amount faster though and finally a comparison to the pascal gtx 1070 for laptops which wasn't usually found in laptops of this size and weight but still is irrelevant in comparison the RT x 2080 max q is only providing 9% more performance on average and doesn't win in every title though in some titles it is significantly faster it's not a bad upgrade but it's not near the performance gain you can expect moving from a desktop gtx 1070 to a desktop RTX 2018 MSI's current generation triple fan cooling solution is very good it's definitely one of the better designs I've seen for this sort of portable gaming system even when using the overclock turbo mode the GS 75 is quieter than your average gaming laptop at 45 dB hey and it does this while keeping the GPU around 75 degrees Celsius which is cooling performance you'd normally expect from a chunkier laptop life roj Strix ska - not a swim system like this in fact the GS 75 is significantly better in this regard than the GS 65 with the GTX 1070 max Q although it is slightly louder it's also a larger system so there's more room for heat dissipation and the GPU is different more impressively it's quieter and cooler than the gigabyte era 15 X 9 which uses the slower RTX 2070 max Q however this does come at the cost of CPU cooling which is right at its limit hitting 91 degrees Celsius under a gaming load so there's really not much room to move on CPU temperatures surface temperatures as well were manageable the laptop gets quite hot above the keyboard where there is some ventilation however the keyboard area and wrist rests were comfortable to use during an extended gaming session just make sure you don't place anything that melts around the back or sides of this laptop because the extensive venting holes do push out a fair volume of hot air looking at storage performance the GS 75 I received with one terabyte of SSD space was configured with two samsung PCIe nvme drives in raid 0 so naturally it delivered extremely good sequential speeds random performances at the limit of these drives but it's still excellent for a gaming laptop and it's safe to say this SSD is much faster than what you need for game loading when removing the bottom cover you get easy access to the 2 loaded SSDs as well as an additional third MDOT 2 slot which was free in my unit so there's further room to upgrade the storage in the future this is also a better internal design than the last gen GS 65 I looked at which had no access to storage without further deconstruction however there are a few disappointing aspects the internal layout here because MSI is still using a flip motherboard you can't access the RAM without taking the entire motherboard out which is tricky and time-consuming hopefully the morals that come with 16 gigabytes of RAM included in a dual channel configuration for the best performance because if it's single channel it will be hard to fix there's also no 2.5 inch drive base you're stuck with just MDOT 2 slots for storage upgrades perhaps not the biggest deal given this is a high-end laptop and there's a generous three and got two slots but it would have been nice given this is a 17 inch notebook batch life is pretty good from the 82 watt hour battery despite the use of a 17 inch high refresh display in our video playback test it performed around the same mark as other 15-inch laptops of this size which I'd say is a good result the display used here is also very good it's 17.3 inches in size if that's a 1080p resolution and it has a 144 Hertz refresh rate you don't get adaptive sync which is a trade-off to allow better battery life through GPU switching but the quality of this panel is great and the high refresh rate is a perfect poem for this GPU that often pushes frame rates above 100 FPS at 1080p with ultra settings brightness is very good at over 400 nits while the contrast ratio of 1000:1 is typical for a laptop IPS and because it's like PS you get great viewing angles with acceptable response times but what I feel is the best aspect of this display is Emma sized color calibration when using the srgb mode available through msi true color you're getting an accurate white point around 6500 K plus strong Delta II averages in our saturation and color checker tests where the display falls under 2.0 it's not perfect you do a grayscale Delta II average a little above 2.0 but otherwise this is an excellent result for a gaming laptop display overall the gr 75 stealth 8 SG is another excellent portable gaming laptop from MSI there's not a lot to complain about in regards to the hardware package I absolutely love the metal chassis the 15 inch display is very good it's cooler and quieter than an average gaming laptop despite the size and powerful hardware inside and there's good IO it's even better from a performance perspective sure I have criticized the ITX 28 Emacs Q for a number of issues like the naming confusion how it stacks up the desktop parts and so on but purely looking at its standalone performance it's impressive when it can do in this sort of form factor it's great for 1080 P high refresh gaming and very solid for higher resolutions using external displays in the latest games ultra settings the choir 78758 is also perfect for productivity tasks on the go like video editing right now this is the fastest Hardware you can get in this form factor most of my criticisms of this laptop feel like minor nitpicks relative to the overall quality of the system the keyboard is a little spongy the IO layout isn't the best and the 8750 H is a little slower than average in longer workloads but overall looking at just the hardware there's no doubt this is a great gaming laptop and one that I could recommend unfortunately this hardware comes at a price and it's a high one to get top-end performance in this size you're going to need to fork out $2,800 and that's just for the chair 75 with a 256 gig SSD and 16 gigabytes of RAM for the configuration I reviewed with one terabyte of SSD space and 32 gig of ram you're looking at more like three thousand US dollars or a huge 4,800 ozzie it's really hard to justify spending that sort of money on the r-tx 20 80 max cube because you're paying a massive premium to get this flagship level performance the ITX 20 70 max cube version of this laptop is four hundred dollars cheaper meaning it delivers about 10 percent less performance for a 14% lower price the ITX 360 model is even better relative value at $2,100 so 25 percent cheaper for 14 percent less performance of the current generation artex GPUs there's no doubting the r-tx 2060 is the best value but at the same time price premiums for the best hardware are commonplace whether spending an extra $700 is worth it to get 10 to 20 fps more will be up to you and your budget the value situation is further muddied by Pascal laptops which admittedly are getting harder to find a stock clears out right now you can get a gtx 1070 max Q system like the seuss ROG Zephyrus s for around $1,800 which is slightly better value than the RT X 2060 GSF I've given the tensor v-max q is also slower than that GPU it's an interesting market because for regular laptops so not the slim and light variants we've been talking about so far I wouldn't recommend a more expensive RT x 2060 laptop over a cheaper gtx 1070 laptop right now but for slim and light systems the gtx 1070 max q and r TX 2060 are fairly priced given their performance differences what is the better option we'll be down to your budget personally I would pick the newer RT x 360 gr 75 because I love this MSI design and it's 17 inches and it does end up performing better and you know what they say bigger is better the final consideration to make is whether you really need the slim and light capabilities of this laptop you can save two to $300 opting for a regular size system like the msi ge70 5 or the ROG Strix hero 2 for the same artex 2016 performance and that saving only increases as you jump up performance tears if design and weight are super important to you the GS 75 is a great option otherwise a regular mid tier system might be a better choice that's it for this review of the msi gs70 5 a really solid system if you choose the r-tx 2060 model and a less good value choice if you want the artex 2080 max q subscribe for more laptop reviews you know that you're behind now you can also support us on patreon to help us out if you want to I'll catch you in the next one