Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsThe most amazing computer I have ever owned
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2014
I'll start with saying DON'T FORGET YOUR NVIDIA "PICK YOUR PATH" FREE GAME! The seller should send you a code that you can use on nVidia's site, it will walk you through the steps to get a free game (Farcry 4, AC Unity, or The Crew).
The most amazing computer I have ever owned. My review is very technical as I am a computer enthusiast, experienced IT professional, and soon-to-be Computer Scientist; so if you have any questions, I will respond when I get the chance. I strongly urge you to ask away though, I can assist with anything.
Pros:
1. Amazing cooling. The GTX 980 did not get passed 70 degrees Celsius when I maxed out the fans during a Unigen Heaven Benchmark (1080p, 8x AA); same with a 3DMark11 FireStrike Benchmark... I even overclocked the cores by 135 MHz and it did not get beyond 75 degrees C. Arguably the coolest cooling on the market right now for a mobile platform; it is said to beat ASUS cooling in both noise level and temperature. (Benchmark with +200 MHz Memory Speed and +135 Core Speed: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5031608 )
2. The graphics card plays literally anything I've tried in 45 FPS+ at 1080p resolution during any scene. Most of the time it's hanging at 60 FPS, some benchmarks (like Passmark) were performing at 400+ FPS, I laughed. Heaven handled me at an average of 45 FPS, 51 Overclocked. The Maxwell Architecture really makes it future proof for some time because it supports DirectX 12 which is set to release come next year with Windows 10 (Microsoft is skipping 9).
3. The build quality is terrific, does not feel at all fragile (but it's still a $2300 laptop, so I do NOT treat it like anything less).
4. The SOUND OMG!! The sound system in this thing is unreal. I've watched Netflix on here, played some video games; and the sound system... I swear it sounds like it's surround sound. It's almost like those sound bars for TV's that sound like true surround sound -- but not quite there -- but still amazing nonetheless. It's just spectacular. It's CLEAR, LOUD, and ENVELOPS YOU.
5. The networking is GREAT, I love that you can double bandwidth by adding the ethernet cable; not that I've ever really needed it yet, but I imagine using it in the years to come. I haven't had any problems, but if you get problems then just make sure you have the base Qualcomm Atheros drivers; I heard that a common problem with these wireless adapters was simply the Killer drivers in them, I believe Qualcomm got rid of those drivers, and just kept the Killer name in the adapters; but just be aware.
6. Haven't got to play with RAID 0 yet, I'm waiting a little bit to purchase some storage upgrades. The fact that there are four M.2 slots is great, allows for definite longevity, M.2 is new and will lower in price soon enough; the 1 TB HDD should be fast enough for anyone. I only have a compiler on the SSD, along with Windows 8.1, and it's been smooth as butter. The longest part about booting up is arguably just typing in my login. I went through a full reboot (logged back in and pulled up Facebook again) in less than 45 seconds. Lag is not something this computer understands.
7. The extra vRAM is great and nobody else offers it (except Clevo perhaps, if you're building your own laptop, but you won't get this awesome cooling system if you do that). If you're big into using several displays, that's going to really help you.
This computer is just... Amazing. I love it. I use it for everything. (VMWare at 3 nodes, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Maya, Photoshop, Gaming, I could use it as a server too, I just don't want to leave it on so much.)
Cons:
1. The viewing angles are still really great for a TN display, but it's not an IPS display. So you can't compare it to an ASUS in that regard.
2. (Just me probably) The keyboard is great, but there is one thing about it that REALLY annoys me (I think I just got a bad computer in the batch, but I don't want to send it back just yet) my Backspace key squeaks EVERY TIME I TAP IT. It sucks.
3. HDMI-Out gave me some trouble at first.. Here's the story, I hooked up my laptop to my 46" 1080p Seiki TV using a basic HDMI male-male cable and changed the settings on my TV to "Just Scan" meaning that it had a 1:1 ratio (You want a 1:1 ratio for a TV that is being used as a monitor because this means that it is taking the signal "as is" from your Graphics Card on your PC. So my GTX 980 sends it out as 1080p, the TV should display it as 1920x1080 pixels.. Lined up perfectly). So there was nothing wrong with how I set it up, but on the TV everything looked "zoomed" the edges of the screen matched up appropriately, but everything looked really huge, and I had a PC hooked up before to my TV with no problems.
- It basically looked like the image was 720p (or lower) and just stretched across my 1080p screen, so it looked horrible. I made sure the graphics card drivers were updated, I made sure of a lot of different factors.. However, it "fixed itself" a day later or so. I think it was after I installed my DirectX 9c drivers. Make sure you install DirectX 9 drivers, as some games will give you a headache of problems when you try to play them without these drivers. It took me a minute to figure out how to play Ryse on the PC, it just wasn't working. However, when I figured it all out, the graphics were just AMAZING. Flawless Ultra gameplay, beautiful. So beautiful. It worked flawlessly on my TV as well. Weird, but whatever I guess. So if you get problems, just look into those drivers before taking a sledge hammer to MSI's or nVidia's Headquarters.
4. Linux does NOT play well with UEFI (The replacement for BIOS). I mean, Ubuntu might, I haven't tried it out yet; but Kali Linux does not play well at all. I mean at all. I had to jump through hoops to get Linux running on this thing outside of VMWare, and I still don't think I've got it down (was frustrated so I stopped playing with it for a bit lol). If you want to install Linux on this machine, you're going to need to go into UEFI (by pressing the Del key at the MSI screen over and over upon start up), and changing it from AHCI to Legacy (aka IDE), turning off FastBoot, and turning off Security. Your system will be able to boot into Linux now using a CD or USB Drive; but it's still a pain in the butt to figure out Dual Boot.. It sucks because I really gotta figure this out so I can do PenTesting. Computer Science, Computational Physics, and Penetration Testing were the 3 main reasons why I got this laptop; Gaming being the fourth (because gaming is awesome).
5. The track pad is made of a weird material. Some people have complaints about it, I have none about the material. I do, however, have complaints about how well the track pad works... Granted I'm using a gaming mouse 90% of the time, I still occasionally like to pick up the laptop and bring it to the room or something. The multi-touch features are disabled by default; you have to go into your cPanel and activate them. The multi-touch features such as scrolling and zooming are a bit finicky with their default drivers. The updated ones on MSI's site (Found here: "http://us.msi.com/support/nb/GT72-Dominator-Pro-GTX-980M.html#down-driver&Win8.1 64") are a little better, but I still expected the track pad to be a bit nicer considering it's a $2300 laptop. The sensitivity was also improved upon with the new drivers.
6. Your girlfriend/boyfriend will complain that you don't give them enough attention. Lol.
Overall, still an amazing laptop. Don't let these few cons take away from the fact I still gave it a 5/5.