MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE Review (Gold w/ GTX970m)

1. Introduction2. MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE (Packing & Accessories)3. MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE4. MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE (High Res Gallery)5. Testing Methodology & Configuration6. SiSoft Sandra7. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit8. Cinebench R159. 3DMark Vantage10. 3DMark 1111. 3DMark12. SSD & HDD Performance13. USB 3.0 Bandwidth Testing14. Media Testing15. Tomb Raider16. Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor17. Thermal Dynamics18. Acoustics Performance19. Battery Performance20. Closing Thoughts21. View All Pages

The install is pretty messy, especially for a default configuration. Granted many of them are drivers and software related to the GS60 Ghost Pro 3K, but I do loathe seeing a complete security suite like Norton's installed on a trial basis ‘out of the box'.

Click the image above to go to the Validation page.

An overview of the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE in CPUz. The 16GB of DDR3 memory is running at 1,600mhz with 11-11-11-28 1T timings.

The first time we have looked at a mobile Maxwell GPU. The GTX970M is clocked at 924mhz, and the 3GB of Samsung GDDR5 memory is connected via a 192 bit memory interface. The GTX970M has 24 ROPS, 106 Texture Units and 1,280 Cuda Cores. On paper it is certainly a powerful mobile discrete solution.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro (072UK)
MSI GS60 2PE Ghost Pro 15.6 inch (Intel I7-4700HQ).
MSI GT70 2OC (Intel Core i7 4700MQ).
MSI GS70 2OD Stealth (Intel Core i7 4700HQ).
MSI GE40-20C Dragon Eyes (Intel Core i7 4702MQ).
PCSpecialist Inferno 11.6 inch (Intel Core i7 3630QM).
MSI GX60 (AMD A10 4600M).
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (featuring Core i5 3427U).
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 (featuring Core i5 3210M).
PC Specialist Vortex III HD72 (featuring Core i7 3610QM).
Asus G74SX-91013Z (featuring Core i7 2360QM).
Dell XPS 14z (featuring Core i7 2640M).
AlienWare M18X (featuring Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition).
MSI CX640 (featuring Core i5 2410M).
Intel Core i7 2600k desktop processor.
Intel Core i5 2500k desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cinebench R15 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley
SiSoft Sandra
CrystalDiskMark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 12
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
GRID AutoSport (Direct X 11)
Tomb Raider (Direct X 11)
Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor (Direct X 11)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Fuji XT-1 with 18-50mm lens and Sony RX100.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

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