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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skiboysteve - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I got excited at your comment but I looked, there is nothing. Not a single laptop from Lenovo, Dell, or HP with Haswell and no discrete graphics.peterfares - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Haswell JUST came out. Give it a month or two. Business machines usually take a little longer than the consumer ones to refresh.ZeDestructor - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Ane one might argue for good reason too.... I have yet to see a proper ThinkPad, Latitude or Precision machine overheat...TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
system 67 has a laptop with the 4750hq and iris pro graphics.SirGCal - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
This would be a laptop I would enjoy. Something I could take with me to my trips to the hospital crossed country when I have to go, but still let me game in the evenings. Granted have to be plugged in for any length of time but... My problem is just the costs. For that type of money I can build one hell of another desktop or even lanbox... I really wish that the 'build your own laptops' would take off to make that market more price competitive instead of this 'gotcha' market it is now...SirGCal - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Well, that would be in theory ofcorse... if it could keep itself cool...TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
check out rjtech. plenty of choices therealexvoda - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I would like if someone at Anandtech could test the Gigabyte P27Khttp://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?...
AFAIK it is the only notebook that has one feature I like very much: the combo USB3.0/eSATAp port.
Bob Todd - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review. Any chance there are some new 14" gaming laptop reviews in the pipeline? Specifically the Alienware 14 and Razer Blade 14? I've been travelling quite a bit lately and am contemplating something like one of those to help pass the time on the long international flights. Hell I'm even curious to see if the new 13" MBA can play some current games at 900p or 800p @ medium settings with GT3 graphics.Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Trying to secure them. Thankfully we have pretty good relationships with both vendors, so it shouldn't be a question of "if," but "when."