With last year’s development of NVIDIA managing to tame the GTX 980 for notebook use, it opened up a lot of possibilities in miniaturizing the technology and making discrete GPU more compact leading to desktop-class performance on notebooks and compact form factors. That said, only the GTX 980Â made its way in this MXM form factor for notebook and it was never mentioned if the company had plans to develop the GTX 970 or GTX 960 for the same form factor. In that regards, NVIDIA was theoretically trying out the waters for these mobile versions of their high-end GPUs and with the release of the new Pascal GeForce cards it was inevitable that the GPU giant would execute a full-pledge plan on this segment given the great efficiency values and thermal performance that the Pascal GeForce cards demonstrate.
As expected, NVIDIA decides to forego the dedicated mobile GPUs and dive directly into the high-end GPU with the new GeForce GTX high-end GPUs make their way into mobile MXM form factor with the new GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 getting compact versions and we have one of the first retail models here for review with the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro gaming notebook.
MSI has been one of the strongest force in the high-performance notebook game, recently announcing their top spot in terms of global sales versus other brands but its their sheer variety that has helped them push out their notebook division to a whole new level, giving gamers from all budget segments and with varying requirements something to choose from. With the new MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro, this series is one of MSI’s high-performance products marrying high-end performance with decent portability and excellent build quality. For this review we have the MSI GT62VR 6RE Dominator Pro model equipped with the latest Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad-core processor and the new NVIDIA GTX 1070 mobile GPU. Read on!
Build and Design
The GT62VR Dominator Pro shares the same chassis as the GT72 Dominator Pro from last-generation with a few distinct differences namely the lack of LED accent lightings in the front lip and the absence of an optical bay but overall its made of the same brushed metal body.
The top shell showcases the brushed aluminum finish with accent trims adorning the middle of the chassis with the MSI Gaming logo in the top.
As mentioned, the MSI GT62VR isn’t the thinnest laptop around having over 2 inches of thickness on just the bottom half alone. Still, this model is lighter by a significant amount than its predecessor thanks to the removal of the optical bay and shrinking of motherboard components. The cooling solution has been improved but remains relatively the same in terms of thermal flow as the hot air is dumped in the back and cool air taken from underneath.
Connectivity in the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro includes a 4-pin power connector in the back which connects to a rather large power brick similar to the GT80 Titan, a LAN port, miniDisplayPort and USB Type-C connector in the back. On one side there are USB3.0 ports and a card reader with the opposite side housing the single USB2.0 slot and the 4-audio ports for multi-channel output. As you can see the audio outputs are gold-plated. A Kensington lock notch is located in this side also.
The GT62VR Dominator Pro monitor flips all the way up to around 170*.
The touchpad on this model is slightly shifted to the left. Tracking is good overall and the buttons have decent tactile feedback but one to note is that the pad easily rubs up against your thumps when typing causing some accidental misclicks due to the touchpad double-tap engaging. This is one of the little nitpicks we have about this kind of placement but wider notebooks tend to go for them as the presence of a number pad does make sense in keeping the touch aligned with the space bar.
As with most MSI gaming notebooks, the keyboard is co-developed by SteelSeries and are your typical chiclet keys. Layout is good and spacing is very decent as I type this review in the model itself, adjusting from my mech to this isn’t to hard but as mentioned the touchpad issue does crop up occasionally. The keyboard features multi-lighting support via SteelSeries software which you can tailor with various effects. Sadly there are no smooth RGB animations as of yet and this one still uses traditional transition for its multi-color transitions.
Shortcut keys for the fan boost revving up the system fans to 100%, a media button which is by default bound to Xsplit Gamecaster which is included in this notebook and the SteelSeries engine key which swaps out the different modes of the keyboard on the fly.
The MSI GT62VR has a built-in subwoofer which as we’ve seen in the past doesn’t really amount to anything powerful but its nice enough to have around for extra power.
No need to explain what this is but its important to note that MSI has an upgrade program so in the case of this model should you want a new GTX 1080 maybe you can just go to your service center or call your local rep and ask about the purchase price and the local MSI dealer can arrange the part for you and install it free-of-charge during the duration of the warranty period.
The bottom intake vents of the unit.
Screen Quality
As we haven’t receive the official production specs for this model yet, MSI hasn’t made available the specs details on this model yet including what panel it’s using. That said, as you can see from the image above the viewing angles are very good with crisp colors so it could be a IPS panel we’re looking at here.
MSI’s True Color technology is a real-time color setting tool that tweaks the display to various profiles which allows the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro users to adjust to various scenarios. We tested with 100% maximum brightness along with sRGB setting and colors are vibrant and clear.
Text display test for clarity.
Look Inside
Removing the bottom cover is easy and only a few screws hold it in place. However warranty restrictions apply and you may not be able to service your own notebook without voiding the warranty.
In the image above we can see the roomy layout inside the underbelly of the MSI GT62VR. Â Here’s a comparison shot with the GT72 Dominator Pro from last-generation which uses the same body design:
Notice the denser layout of the GT72 versus the GT62VR. This particular GT72 doesn’t even feature an optical bay but still uses way more board space than the new GT62VR. The roomier underbelly allows a more efficient airflow to cool the internal components and allow MSI to equip this model with a relatively similar cooler.
Here’s the GTX 1070 graphics card in the MXM form factor. Heatpipe cooling suck the heat away from the GPU straight to the fin array in the blowers.
A 256GB M.2 SSD from Toshiba ships with this model along with a 1TB HDD.
The 6RE model has 16GB of DDR4 memory preinstalled but you expand that with another two sticks. The preinstalled modules are in the other side of the board and require disassembly to replace.
[section label=”Performance Testing”]Performance Testing
We’re going to be building up a new database of benchmarks so for this one we’ll be sharing raw data for now.
CPU
The MSI GT62VR 6RE Dominator Pro features a quad-core Hyperthreaded Core i7-6700HQ running at a maximum turbo clock of 3.5Ghz with a base clock of 2.6Ghz. 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM is  installed running in dual-channel with 17-17-17-39 timings and command rate of T2.
SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
We use PCMark8 from FutureMark to benchmark our system and generate a baseline on the expected performance various workloads. The benchmark features an accelerated and conventional test which adds hardware acceleration to speed up tasks.
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!GPU
The highlight of this release is definitely the GPU and as we’ve seen from the GTX 980 for notebook before, the desktop version is still faster but only in clock speeds as the mobile version sports pretty much everything that the desktop one save for shader count. As you can see below a GPUZ screenshot of the GTX 1070 for mobile and a GTX 1070 MSI GAMING card for desktop:
Both cards sport 8GB of GDDR5 VRAM which run at 10,000Mhz effective. The main difference really lies in the shader counts, like the GTX 980 before it, the GTX 1070 has 2048 shaders which is more than the 1920 shaders found in the desktop 1070. Mobile GPUs are also tightly selected with the ones yielding lower consumption being chosen for this specific application.
Another benefit we get here is the ability to overclock our GPU. While we’re set back by a few hundred Mhz in clock rate, overclocking our GPU via MSI Afterburner allows us to tweak the system and get better GPU performance than its stock configuration.
We were able to bump our GPU to 1643Mhz base clock with a boost clock of 1845Mhz and 2189Mhz on the memory. That’s a decent bump from the stock GPU as you can see in this comparison of the stock 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra vs the OC results.
Storage
This particular configuration uses a simple M.2 SSD plus a HDD configuration to provide a fast OS+program drive and a bulk storage drive. A 256GB Toshiba M.2 SSD is the primary storage for apps and OS while the 1TB HDD handles bulk storage media duties. The SSD is quite excellent maxing out at around 530MB/s read and 490MB/s write. This tells us this is a SATA M.2 drive and we need to confirm with MSI if it does take in PCI-e drives for faster storage. The traditional 2.5″ HDD on the hand does around 130MB/s which is quite average but nothing spectacular in terms of performance.
[section label=”Gaming Performance”]Gaming
For our gaming benchmarks please see our benchmark methodology for our choice of games and benchmark method. While the GTX 1070 is capable in both 1440p and some 4K scenario, with the native display of the MSI GT62VR 6RE Dominator Pro only a 1080p display, we decided to forego the higher resolutions in favor of dedicated monitor performance.
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!It can be inferred that this model can easily do higher resolutions given a few tweaks but we’ll leave that for a separate test. As mentioned, we’d like to focus on the built-in display for this model review first.
[section label=”Temperatures, Noise and Battery Life”]Temperatures
We use 3DMark stress test of 20 loops of 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra to stress the GPU and record the peak temperatures we get from normal operation. For the unified system load, we use AIDA64 system stability test. We record whichever temps clock in higher as peak. For idle temps, we leave the notebook in a 25*C ambient room and record the lowest idle temps with the system just idling in desktop but not in standby.
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!While the numbers do seem high, its good to note that MSI does indeed have a superior cooling in-place here with the blower design venting air in the back and with the space below keep the bottom of the notebook cooler than it would normally be on denser models.
Here’s a thermal image of the model under load which highlights the GPU area showing a peak temperature or 51*C on its heatsink. The blowers are around upper 40’s which is really just warm and not blazing hot.
The top part of the case under load, we can see only a portion of the display is heating up and the keyboard area near the vents clock in the warmer temps.
The exhaust area of the MSI GT62VR.
Noise
We use a simple sound level meter to capture the noise profile of the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro. The idle ambient temp of our small 3×3 room with concrete walls is 39.1dBA which is dead quiet. We point the sound level meter towards the unit 3ft away and record a maximum peak noise level 49.9dBA with the fans cranked up 100%. Its fairly audible but nothing you’d consider noisy.
Battery Life
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!The MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro is packing some serious power under the hood and so a relatively good battery pack is needed to keep that power running. The efficiency of the Pascal architecture shines through as the notebook runs up to 2 hours of heavy work and games mix. In purely work scenarios with browsing included we clock in a bit longer at 3 hours. In a pure gaming session, we clock the MSI GT62VR at around just above an hour in heavy gaming but titles like DOTA2 extend a bit longer.
[section label=”Conclusion”]Conclusion
The MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro ushers in the new generation of high-performance gaming notebooks which are by and large already mobile desktop replacements. MSI fans who don’t want to bother with thickness but just want the portability of a notebook model with the performance level of the desktop will find the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro satisfying in both GPU and CPU performance and while its easily a thicker than its competition, the obvious advantage here is the cooling performance and weight of the model which is largely lighter than the ROG G752, GX700 and Aorus X7 despite these models’ slimmer profiles.
Performance is clearly a winner in this segment and with the potential of a GTX 1080 added into the mix, there’s clearly room to grow here in terms of GPU power hence the name as the model is clearly intended for VR applications without being tethered to a desktop system. The overall design of the system can still be maxed out and MSI may offer a more powerful version in another SKU, but in the case of the MSI GT62VR 6RE, its plenty enough for most gaming scenarios.
Expandability looks good but you may need to consult with MSI first before adding in new RAMs or SSDs.
Price is still TBA on this model but if we were to consider the prices of the previous GT72S Dominator Pro G, we have a rough estimate of around $3000 for the price of this model given the removal of G-SYNC but these are all rough estimates as the GTX 1080 may display the GTX 1080 in its pricing and drop this model to a lower margin of around $2700 or so.
Overall, the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro is one powerful model, easily outperforming anything before it including the GTX 980 models but offering a cooler and more efficient platform to serve as a gaming and workstation. MSI has clearly stuck with an effective chassis design choosing to maintain the Dominator Pro design but losing the tacky accent lights in the front to conserve power and simplify PCB layout.
MSI backs the GT62VR Dominator Pro with a solid 2-year warranty. We give it our B2G Silver Award and B2G Performance Award!
[section label=”Awards”]
Awesome review, something I cannot afford for now XD
0
Cee pag yumaman tayo, makakabili tayo ng maraming ganyan. Haha
0
Needs to have the 6820HK overclockable CPU as an option..
0
BTW, your SuperPi 32M result is VERY SLOW. I should be under 10 minutes for that processor. That is barely any faster than the low voltage Haswell mobile 4210u CPU I have in a laptop, runs at 2.3GHZ or so! Did the 32M SuperPi in 12 minutes 25 seconds. So your result is very messed up.
0
You’re right, I’m expecting 9minutes on this thing so I’ll give it another run after a reformat.
0