I think the Sager NP 98-73 might be the
worst gaming laptop I've ever
encountered what makes me say that you
might ask well for one thing there's
almost nothing about it
that qualifies it to be called a laptop
at all the CPU and the two video cards
in SLI are full performance desktop
parts I mean really it's more like a
portable I mean really it's more like a
portable desktop with a screen attached
to it and the battery and a touchpad and
okay it's a laptop but it's unlike any
laptop I've ever seen let's take a
closer look at it
the be quiet dark BassPro 900s modular
design supports a variety of different
layouts and configurations click on the
link in the video description to learn
more so not everything about the NP
98-73 is actually new it's a very
similar at least externally in many
respects to the Sager NP 98 70 that I
checked out a little while ago here
let's take a quick look it rocks a 17
inch display backed by a relatively
tasteful LED lighting effect in either
1080p 120 Hertz or 4k 60 Hertz g-sync
IPs flavors out of those two I opted for
the 120 Hertz and I'm actually happy
with the extra fluidity though I think a
75 Hertz 1080p g-sync option would be
swell the bottom is basically all
ventilation the reason for that is
pretty obvious if you consider the kind
of heat figuratively and literally that
this baby is packing and IO is pretty
similar looking but with a couple of key
upgrades on the left is dual and three
USB three five gigabit ports and 5.1
audio with a dedicated mic port at the
back is another USB 3 and an HDMI 2.0
port this time around a welcome addition
and on the right to go along with the
last USB 3 SD card reader and dual mini
DP 1.3 ports is to funderbolt 3 USB 3.1
10 gigabit ports this baby is loaded for
bear the keyboard is still decidedly
average though and doesn't seem to have
been modified much it's accurate and
comfortable enough but given this is
nearly a 2 inch thick laptop I don't
think a longer travel distance or a more
tactile feel would have been that much
to ask for and the touchpad works well
enough that it didn't bother me at all
but the fingerprint scanner was pretty
hit or miss for me making Windows hello
more work than just using a pin
alright now then let's crack this puppy
open and no wait there's another outside
change we missed what's he talking about
the NP 98-73 s box is heavy partially
because it contains a
gasps heavy laptop but also because it
contains not one but two 330 watt power
bricks with a dual brick adapter for
those of you wondering the maximum power
draw from the wall that I ever saw with
this beast was 450 watts running our
Crysis 3 skybox test in SLI and I 264 s
floating-point CPU stress test in the
background so I did then try it with
just one of the 330 watt power supplies
and theoretically you could actually use
it that way if you didn't push it too
far
but Sager and therefore me does not
recommend this for safety reasons inside
the device
we're finally getting in there we'll
find the reason for the dual Brix under
the keyboard is the pre-installed killer
wireless 16 gigs of ram from some brand
I've never heard of and a 512 gig 950
Pro nvme SSD with an additional m2 slot
available for another and on the bottom
is why the most beautiful 2 plus pounds
of copper vapor chamber cooling I think
I've ever seen let's take it off look at
those heat pipes with that removed now
we get a much better look at the MXM 3.0
type-b GT X 1080 graphics cards with
eight gigs of gddr5 X that make this by
far the most powerful gaming laptop I
have ever laid my hands on like the
desktop grade 980 before them they're
wider than the m-class cards that
preceded them and while we don't know
their TDP since that's between Nvidia
and the individual system builders we do
know that they're rated at almost the
same speeds as the full desktop parts
although we'll have to see how that
holds up with GPU boosts having a lot of
control over the dynamic clock speeds of
all Pascal based graphics cards also in
here is our core i7 6700 K unlocked quad
core processor and the somewhat anemic
looking cooling solution that
with it though it should be noted it
does manage to keep it under 80 degrees
with very reasonable sound levels even
under a synthetic load and the whole
system is actually very reasonable
acoustically it's nearly silent at idle
fairly quiet under 100 percent CPU load
and even with both GPUs working as you
see right now my mics right here it's
not that bad with that said I did manage
to overwhelm the CPU cooler when I had
both GPUs and the CPU under synthetic
loads under the graphics cards though
they're not populated in my
configuration are two two and a half
inch SSD or hard drive slots nice to
have if you want to order it with a
different configuration or expand your
storage down the road and I guess that
leads us with the big question then how
does cramming two of these in one of
these affect performance well just like
last time around when I compared the
6700 K GTX 980 laptop apples to apples
with a similarly equipped desktop I'm
going to be challenging the NP 98-73 to
beat a dual 1080 founder's Edition
equipped test bench let's see how it
fares and there you have it folks if
there was any doubt in your mind that
the notebook version of the GTX 1080
I gotta say Nvidia is really taking this
whole confusing product naming thing to
a new level here is basically equivalent
to the desktop version you can leave
that behind now you need to reboot to
enable or disable SLI for some reason
but that was the only major difference I
observed the slightly lower base clock
speed doesn't hurt it though it should
be noted that we are comparing two
founders Edition cards rather than a
board partner designed one with a
beefier cooler and this particular Sager
notebook integrates a pretty
unbelievable cooling solution with other
notebooks featuring 1080s potentially
not being capable of boosting as high
which I guess leads us pretty well into
the conclusion I still remember my old
gtx 7800 based gaming lab
the thing was a turd with terrible
battery life and frankly very mediocre
performance compared to desktop GPUs at
the time and while some things never
change don't expect to be gaming for
long at the park with your 12 pound
beast here from a performance standpoint
we've reached a whole new level of it
zero compromises gaming laptops the only
thing really left in my mind is for
manufacturers to commit to providing
upgrade parts for folks who want more
life out of these beasts MSI did try to
take a step in that direction with the
GT 80 Titan though those replacement
kits didn't end up being possible so
we're not there yet but I can see a near
future if we fix that
we're desktops just aren't necessary
anymore
that is to say assuming prices come down
a little did I mention this laptop is
like $4,000 don't you hate it when stuff
you want is expensive
if only there was some way for many
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