MSI GS73 6RF ‘Stealth Pro’ 4K 006UK Laptop Review

MSI have been producing a fine line of gaming-oriented laptops for the last couple of years and today we look at their latest super slimline 17 inch model which features a Core i7 processor, Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics, and a 4k IPS panel along with Steelseries keyboard and Killer networking. At £1999.99 inc. VAT, the MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' targets the wealthy enthusiast user who places a heavy demand on portability. We have reviewed many of the high-end ultra powerful desktop replacement laptops in recent months, including the latest MSI Titan 18.4 inch monster featuring dual GTX1080 GPUs in SLi (Review HERE). The 'Stealth Pro' caters to the other side of the enthusiast market - the audience who believe that a laptop should in fact be completely portable and even used 'on the lap' when the desire or situation demands. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' has different panel options available - a 120Hz 1080p and a slightly more expensive IPS 4k 60Hz option which we are looking at today. Both of these options actually make sense. Hard core gamers will likely prefer the 120Hz 1080p option while other users will appreciate the fantastic clarity and sublime colour rendition from the 4K IPS panel. Nvidia GTX1060 – Mobile and Desktop Platform Desktop Mobile Codename GP106 GP106 Architecture Pascal Pascal Process 16nm 16nm Transistors (bn) 4.4 4.4 Core Clock (MHz) 1,506 1,404 Boost Clock (MHz) 1,708 1,670 Peak GFLOPS 4,372 4,275 SM units 10 10 Texture Units 80 80 Shaders 1,280 1,280 ROPs 48 48 Memory Size 6GB 6GB Memory Bus 192 bit 192 bit Memory Type GDDR5 GDDR5 Memory clock 8Gbps 8Gbps Memory bandwidth 192 192 The 'mobile' GTX 1060 GPU compares very favourably with the 'full-on' desktop card. While the core clock and boost clock is a tad lower on the mobile part, it maintains the 80 texture units, 10 SM units, 1,280 shaders and 48 ROPS of the desktop card. Both cards are equipped with 6GB of GDDR5 memory - which is plenty for 1080p gaming. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' is a very svelte 17 inch laptop, and it reminded me immediately of the excellent 17 inch Razer Blade Pro which I reviewed last year (review HERE). It weighs 2.43kg, measures 14.9 x 9.8 x 0.69 inches and ships with a 2 year warranty. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' is actually a couple of millimetres thinner than the 17 inch Razer Blade Pro, as can be seen above. At the front of the laptop is a row of icons and LED lights. These show the activity of various states, such as caps lock, Bluetooth, wireless and battery. Along the back of the laptop are two long cooling vents and the words 'STEALTH'. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' has three USB 3.0 ports on the left, alongside a card reader, Kensington Lock, GB LAN, and audio and microphone jacks. On the right side we have a USB 2.0 port (ideal for a mouse), a USB 3.1 Gen 2/DisplayPort/Thunderbolt 3 Type-C port, HDMI 2.0 port (4k support @ 60Hz), Mini Displayport (v1.2) and a power connector. Cooling vents are visible on both sides of the chassis. Full marks for the overwhelming connectivity support - a strong point for MSI this year. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' is a beautiful looking laptop which features a fully RGB backlit Steelseries keyboard. The keyboard offers fairly good tactile feedback although it falls short of the full mechanical keyboard featuring on the flagship Titan laptop. The 4K IPS panel is one of the best laptop screens I have seen in recent years. The colour quality is first class (I measured 110 percent of the sRGB colour gamut) and the clarity of text is fantastic. Viewing angles are also superb, both horizontally and vertically. The only real negative I could mention would be in regards to brightness - I would have liked an additional couple of levels, as viewing in bright daylight can be difficult. I measured around 240 nits which is lower than I would like to see. Onboard audio is quite weak (at the bottom of the laptop), with very little bass at all to speak about. Volume levels are decent however, so for casual duties it is acceptable. A pair of dedicated speakers or headphones would be recommended to get the most from the system. The dedicated 'Hi-Fi' headphone connector worked very well with the demanding Sennheiser HD800S headphones (Review HERE). We ran into some issues with the Nahimic 2 software when outputting sound via the HDMI port to a television. In games such as Battlefield 1, the audio would not work in game. I looked into this further and found quite a few support threads on the MSI forums regarding Nahimic 2 issues. Deinstalling it cured all my sound problems so I left it running with the Realtek drivers. The large trackpad is perfectly serviceable, although I would recommend a proper gaming mouse for anything serious. Cooling vents run across the top of the chassis, close to the power button, which is positioned top right. The power button is unusual, in that it is part of the chassis design, rather than a dedicated button. It actually has a light behind it which signifies the graphics mode - if it's Red, the integrated Intel graphics is in operation. Orange means the Nvidia GTX1060 is powered up. Unlike the MSI Titan laptop - the MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' power brick is very modest. The power delivery is rated around 180 watts maximum. We are pleased to see that the power connection on this power supply is a more traditional header which holds in place well. I did not want to repeat recent experiences with the MSI Titan power adapter, which kept falling out. The back is relatively easy to remove, but once inside you need to be very careful as all the components are packed into a small space. Removing the 2.5 inch drive for instance is possible, but you need to be extra careful with the thin ribbon cables which are over the drive itself as they could be damaged. The default MSI install is a little bloated. We are never happy to see Norton's or McAfee antivirus or security suites installed by default. There are much less intrusive, lower overhead packages available online, so the choice should be up to the end user entirely. We also noticed some performance issues with the Windows 10 ‘Defender’ software after the Anniversary update was installed – it would randomly hog up to 30% CPU time. I found it problematic getting accurate CPU results with this software running at all, so we permanently disabled it using a REG file – you can read more HERE. The system is running a 6700HQ processor (details HERE), with 16GB of DDR4 memory. This is a locked processor and it can't be overclocked. The 16GB of Kingston DDR4 memory is running at 2,400MHz with 17-17-17-39 2T timings. I like the fact that the latest Pascal mobile hardware does not require a dedicated mobile driver to operate - simply install the latest relevant desktop driver for the GTX1060 from the Nvidia website and you are ready to play. To test games in this review, we run various new game engines at 1080p with high image quality and then at 4k with the image quality settings reduced. The GTX 1060 is not designed for 4K gaming, but we want to see if it is possible at all. We wanted to test at 1440p as well, but we found that the system we had for review only offers 2560x1600 (see image above). Sadly this looks slightly distorted on the MSI panel. We reinstalled the OS and installed different drivers to test - but 1440p never showed up. We sent an email to MSI about this to get confirmation that 1440p is supported but as yet we have not heard back. In case it is an issue with our specific system, we tested 2560x1440 with an external monitor attached. Comparison Mobile Systems (for specific synthetic test comparisons): MSI GS60 6QE (Ghost Pro 4K) (6700HQ) Razer Blade Pro (2015) (4720HQ) MSI GT80 Titan (i7 4980HQ) Razer Blade 14 Inch (2015) (i7 4720HQ) MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE (i7 4710HQ) 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. Comparison Desktop System (for some gaming tests). Detailed specifications over HERE. Asus GTX980 ROG Matrix Platinum (1,241 mhz core / 1,753mhz memory) Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1,260 mhz memory) Gigabyte GTX770 OC (1,137mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory) Sapphire Dual X R9 285 (965 mhz core / 1,400 mhz memory) XFX R9 280X DD (1,000 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory) Asus Direct CU II GTX 760 OC (1,006mhz core / 1,502mhz memory) Asus GTX750TI Strix OC Edition (1,124mhz core / 1,350mhz memory) Software: 3DMark 11 3DMark Cinebench R11.5 64 bit Cinebench R15 64 bit FRAPS Professional Unigine Heaven Benchmark SiSoft Sandra CrystalDiskMark Steam VR Benchmark Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6 Games: Gears Of War 4 Grand Theft Auto 5 Hitman Rise Of The Tomb Raider Ashes Of The Singularity Metro Last Light Redux The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Total War: Warhammer Deus Ex: ManKind Divided Other Hardware: Fluke IR Thermal Imaging Camera Fuji XT2 Camera. Sennheiser HD800S Headphones (Review HERE). Razer Mamba 16,000 dpi mouse. All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page. Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia. The latest MSI laptops have a ‘VR’ suffix in their name, to signify that they offer full support for the latest Virtual Reality equipment. KitGuru has covered VR performance and hardware in great detail with previous editorials thanks to our resident VR expert Jon Martindale. You can read some of his work HERE. We test today with the free STEAM VR Performance benchmark. Ideally we want the system to target the green slider on the right side of the chart. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' 4K scores 7.4 points (9,436 frames) which is classed as 'high'. Regular readers will remember that the MSI GT83VR 6RF Titan with dual GTX1080s scored 11 points (very high) - with a total of 14,741 frames. The Nvidia GTX1060 is clearly up to the task of holding VR frame rates above 90 at all times - which is positive to see. Heaven Benchmark 4.0 immerses a user into a magical steampunk world of shiny brass, wood and gears. Nested on flying islands, a tiny village with its cozy, sun-heated cobblestone streets, an elaborately crafted dirigible above the expanse of fluffy clouds, and a majestic dragon on the central square gives a true sense of adventure. An interactive experience with fly-by and walk-through modes allows for exploring all corners of this world powered by the cutting-edge UNIGINE Engine that leverages the most advanced capabilities of graphics APIs and turns this benchmark into a visual masterpiece. We test at 1080p in Direct X 11 with the quality setting on High, Tessellation on 'Normal', Anti Aliasing on 2x. Performance at 1080p is very good with this tessellation heavy benchmark. The system averages 85 frames per second. We did notice a little micro stuttering close to the end of the benchmark, which dragged down the minimum frame rates to single digits, but it only happened a few times. SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc. Native ports for all major operating systems are available: Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86) Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64) Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64) Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01) Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02) All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of: SMP – Multi-Processor MC – Multi-Core SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86 IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit Performance from the Core i7 6700HQ and 2,400MHz DDR4 memory is just as we would expect, close to the top of our performance charts. CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free. As we explained earlier in the review, we had to disable the latest version of Windows Defender with a registry edit as it was often demanding between 5-20% CPU time, indicated by the fans in the GT83VR 6RF spinning up and down. The i7 6700HQ scores well, close to top of the chart, behind the 4980HQ and 6920HQ. No problems using this laptop for smaller 3D rendering projects and other more 'serious' duties as well as gaming. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page. Synthetic gaming engine performance is fairly positive, with the GTX1060 scoring well in both 3DMark 11 and the latest 3DMark. 4K is not what the GTX1060 was designed to handle, however, as the scores indicate. On this page we test the drives that MSI have installed. The installed 2TB hard drive is painfully slow, with a maximum sustained transfer speed under 80MB/s. The installed SSD performance is, however, excellent - with sequential speeds showing between 1500MB/s and 2000MB/s. We took the back off the MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' and removed the slow 2.5 inch mechancial drive - replacing it with a Samsung 850 2TB drive. The results above show that the drive is almost able to saturate the SATA 3 interface, achieving well over 500 MB/s. To test USB 3.0 performance we need a drive that is capable of completely saturating the bus. Until recently we used the Corsair Voyager GTX drive, one of the fastest pen drives on the market. We have recently switched to using a 500GB Brinell Drive, available on Amazon for around £225 inc vat. Inside is a 500GB SAMSUNG EVO 840 SSD, a product all our readers are familiar with. USB 3 performance is solid, achieving almost 400 MB/s in the sequential read test. The Gears Of War 4 game’s plot is set 25 years after Gears of War 3 and focuses on JD Fenix, the son of Marcus Fenix. Gears of War is a third-person shooter game, with its core concepts being derived from Resident Evil 4‘s “over the shoulder” perspective, Kill Switch‘s cover system, and Bionic Commando‘s swinging action akin to moving between points of cover. (Wikipedia). We test with the 'HIGH' image profile settings at 1080p / 1440p and with the 'MEDIUM' image profile settings at Ultra HD 4k. This is a very demanding engine, however the game experience at 1080p is excellent. At 1440p some image quality settings would need dialled down a little. At Ultra HD 4K the card is running out of bandwidth, even when we drop down the image quality settings. Grand Theft Auto V is played from either a third-person or first-person view and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Players control the three lead protagonists throughout the single-player mode, switching between them both during and outside of missions. The story is centred on the heist sequences, and many of the missions involve shooting and driving gameplay. Players who commit crimes may incite a response from law enforcement agencies, measured by a “wanted” system that governs the aggression of their response. (Wikipedia). We test at 1080p / 1440p with all the image quality settings maxed. Anti Aliasing is disabled however. At Ultra HD 4k, we reduce settings from Ultra to Very High/High, Soft Shadows are set at 'Softer' not 'softest'. At 1080p, the hardware delivers a solid gaming experience, averaging over 60 frames per second. At 1440p the game still runs well, although there are a few dips close to 40 fps. At Ultra HD 4K we had to reduce a lot of the image quality settings to get the game playable, and even then the frame rate would often drop to just below 30 fps from time to time. Hitman (2016) is a third-person stealth video game in which players take control of Agent 47, a genetically enhanced, superhuman assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. As in other games in the Hitman series, players are given a large amount of room for creativity in approaching their assassinations. The game is being released in stages, which hasn’t proved too popular with a large audience. We tested with image quality at the levels above. We experienced some issues getting this game to run with any texture quality setting higher than low and couldn't find any workaround. At 1080p the game runs quite well, holding close to 50-60fps at all times. Ultra HD 4k is, however, not a good experience at all. Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013’s Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story. It uses a Direct X 12 capable engine. We test at 1080p and 1440p with the 'very high' preset. At Ultra HD 4k we reduce the preset to 'high'. At 1080p the hardware is well up to the task, generating solid 60+ frame rates. At 1440p the performance drops a little, although we would still class it as playable. At Ultra HD 4k, even though we reduced the image quality settings, the frame rates are unplayable. Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the future where descendants of humans (called Post- Humans) and a powerful artificial intelligence (called the Substrate) fight a war for control of a resource known as Turinium. Players will engage in massive-scale land/air battles by commanding entire armies of their own design. Each game takes place on one area of a planet, with each player starting with a home base (known as a Nexus) and a single construction unit. We test at 1080p and 1440p with 'high' settings. We test at Ultra HD 4k with 'standard' settings. At 1080p the game plays well powered by the GTX1060. At 1440p, performance drops a little. Even though we lower image quality settings to 'standard' at 4k, the frame rates are a little juddery during some intense battles. Just like the original game Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above ground. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones (this happens regardless of your actions in the first game). Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. We test with the following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-on, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-on. At Ultra HD 4k resolution we drop Quality to 'high' and disable SSAA and Advanced Physx. At 1080p the MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' delivers a great gaming experience, smooth frame rates close to, or in excess of 60 at all times. At 1440p the performance drops to between 40 and 50 frames per second, which is playable for most people. Even by disabling some image quality settings the performance is a little lower than we would like to see and would class this as unplayable. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, whose story to date has been covered in the previous titles.[3] Continuing from The Witcher 2, Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission while the world order itself is coming to a change. (Wikipedia). We test at various resolutions with the HIGH quality presets. At 1080p, the system scores well, averaging over 60 frames per second. At 1440p, the frame rates are still quite high, and likely perfectly playable for a wide audience. Ultra HD 4k is a different story, frame rates are almost dropping into single digits. Total War: Warhammer is a turn-based strategy game with real-time tactical battles between armies. While previous Total War games feature historical settings, Warhammer introduces a fantasy setting as well as characters from the Warhammer universe. These characters, which include monsters, warriors, and heroes, can be controlled by the player. (Wikipedia) We test in the Direct X 12 (BETA) mode with the game set to the ULTRA profile at 1080p and 1440p and with the MEDIUM profile at Ultra HD 4k. Again we see that 1080p delivers a good, solid, super smooth gaming experience. 1440p forces a modest hit to frame rates, although it could be considered perfectly playable. Ultra HD 4K proves too much of demand for the modest GTX1060. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is set in the year 2029, two years after the events of Human Revolution and the “Aug Incident”—an event in which mechanically augmented humans became uncontrollable and lethally violent. Unbeknownst to the public, the affected augmented received implanted technology designed to control them by the shadowy Illuminati, which is abused by a rogue member of the group to discredit augmentations completely. (Wikipedia). At 1080p and 1440p resolutions we test at the 'high' preset. At Ultra HD 4k we test at the 'medium' preset. This is a demanding engine and even at 1080p we would like to see slightly higher frame rates. Image quality settings would need to be reduced further. At Ultra HD 4k you really need a more expensive, powerful graphics solution to achieve smooth frame rates. The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23°C – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Tomb Raider for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. All fan settings were left on automatic. The cooling system is up to the task and the underside of the laptop never gets roasting either. Just warm. Above the keyboard we measure a hotspot around 44°C. Most of the heat is actually above the keyboard area, although the top row of keys definitely get warmer than the other keys underneath. Most of the hot air is pumped out the sides of the chassis, with the right vent generally producing a warmer flow of air, than the left side. Still, this is no monster heat producing laptop and while it can get quite warm while running on your lap, it is perfectly usable on the move. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the laptop to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA – High Quality Computer fan 40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA – Normal Conversation 60dBA – Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA – Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' is a low noise laptop most of the time. Even when gaming we only noticed a little fan noise from the sides of the chassis. It helps that you can adjust and tweak the fan settings within the MSI Dragon Software, so if you want lower temperatures you can compensate by adjusting the sliders. To test today, we are putting the machine through a variety of ‘real world’ situations, mirroring the real world usage of a potential customer. One as a media movie lover on the move (wearing headphones), a person wanting to watch high definition media on a train journey or bus with screen brightness two notches from maximum. Second as a businessman, with screen brightness around half way. Wireless was enabled. A mixture of checking, answering emails using Microsoft Office and editing pictures in Adobe Photoshop. Battery life is not the best we have documented in recent years. If you are working on the move checking email and using Microsoft Word for instance while surfing the internet, expect to see close to 3 hours before a recharge is needed. Charging from almost flat to full capacity will take almost 3 hours. We measure power demand at the socket with a calibrated meter. We measure under four test states. Idle – resting in Windows with 0% CPU and GPU load. Media – watching 4K videos on YouTube. Gaming – playing Rise Of The Tomb Raider at 1080p with all the settings maxed. Synthetic load – stressed in Furmark and Cinebench R15. The system consumes a modest 40 watts when watching 4k movies, and this rises to 120 watts when gaming. Under purely synthetic load this rises to 165 watts. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' is partially overclockable. The Intel Core i7 6700HQ is locked so you can't enhance clock speeds, however the Nvidia GTX1060 can be adjusted in either the MSI software, or with a dedicated GPU tweaking program such as MSI Afterburner. We managed to push the core to 1,555MHz (1,719MHz boost) and the memory to 2,152MHz before artifacting would occur. We found that by modestly increasing the last two states of the GPU fan that the GTX1060 would hold a higher real world boost clock speed. We increased state 5 from 80% to 90% fan speed and state 6 from 80% to 110%. This increases noise a little, but it's not too bad. A small increase to the CPU fan speeds in state 5 and 6 also helped reduce temperatures a little under load. The core and memory increase pushes the graphics score from 11,306 to 11,875 points. With this clock increase many game engines were running 3-4 frames per second faster at 1080p. The MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' is an impressive laptop catering to the enthusiast audience who place an importance on portability as much as performance. It really does look positively diminutive after reviewing the monster MSI GT83VR 6RF desktop replacement (review HERE) a couple of weeks ago. The MSI GS73 6RF is a better built system than the earlier MSI 'Stealth' models I reviewed - there is less flex and the corners and edges exhibit less engineering variances. Not only is it thinner than previous models but it runs quieter and produces less heat which is always something we like to record. I have to credit Nvidia Pascal for many of the related improvements with this latest, svelte design. The GTX1060 is delivering GTX980m-beating performance, while offering additional overclocking headroom which results in tangible performance benefits. Gaming performance at 1080p is fantastic and while 1440p gaming would be a possibility, our particular panel didn't seem to open up a native 2560x1440 option, replaced instead with a 16:10 2560x1600. The quad core Intel Core i7 6700HQ is a fast mobile processor and an ideal pairing for the GTX1060. It is powerful enough to handle even modest 3D rendering loads on the move and more than up to the task of 4K video playback and Adobe Photoshop and Premier duties. On a more negative note, MSI really do need to work on their default software installation. I really do loathe when Norton or McAfee are installed without the user being involved. I don't know anyone who uses either package, as they are bloated, resource-heavy offerings. I also experienced some issues with the Nahimic 2 software install and losing sound over HDMI when playing games such as Battlefield 1. This software really should be uninstalled immediately as it causes more issues while actually degrading the sound quality. You can read more if you want over HERE and HERE, On a performance level, the quad core Core i7 6700HQ and GTX 1060 deliver plenty of performance although this has a negative impact on battery performance. You are really going to be struggling to get much more than 3 hours out of the GS73 6RF before a recharge is required. I was disappointed with the battery life. Under normal working conditions you will be lucky to get much more than 3 hours out of the GS73 6RF before a recharge is required. The choice of Ultra HD 4k panel will be a talking point for many. There is no doubt that the GTX 1060 is not up to the task of smooth gaming at this resolution. However, 1080p scaling is perfectly acceptable and this is one of the finest 17 inch panels I have used for photo editing and 4k movies. It is worth pointing out that MSI do offer a 1080p 120Hz panel as well in this range - suiting the audience who want to primarily focus on just gaming. You can buy the MSI GS73 6RF 'Stealth Pro' 4K 006UK from Overclockers UK for £1999.99 inc vat HERE. If you want a versatile, portable all-round machine that can handle a myriad of tasks, including super smooth 1080p gaming, then this should be right at the top of your shortlist. Discuss on our Facebook page HERE. Pros: Fantastic IPS 4K panel. Very thin design - this is a very portable 17 inch laptop. Good keyboard. Handles 1080p gaming at the highest quality settings. Not too loud under load. Overclocking headroom on the GTX1060. Fully customisable RGB backlit keyboard. Superb connectivity options. Cons: Battery life is quite weak. Locked i7 processor. Not the easiest machine to upgrade. On-board speakers produce no bass at all. Default software install is a little bloated. 2TB storage drive is very slow (<80MB/s). Kitguru says: A thoroughly stellar gaming laptop from MSI. It is powerful enough to play the leading games at 1080p and it doesn't make a lot of noise or generate a tonne of heat either. One of the thinnest 17 inch laptops available and very portable.