iBuyPower Battalion M1771 (MSI GS70) Gaming Notebook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on December 30, 2013 2:45 PM ESTWhile synthetics are good for a reality check, the iBuyPower Battalion M1771's reason for being is gaming. The GeForce GTX 765M is capable of producing performance that's at least, in synthetics, not too far removed from last generation's second best, the GTX 675MX.
Since this is a higher end gaming system I'm omitting the Value benchmarks, but you can still find them in Bench for comparison's sake.
Performance is basically where it should be, but it's interesting to see where bottlenecks shift depending on the game. The GTX 765M's primary weakness is its 128-bit memory bus; even with 4GHz GDDR5, the GPU is still somewhat starved for memory bandwidth. So while the 765M can produce a stellar performance in synthetics against the GTX 675MX and GTX 580M, once that memory bandwidth limitation kicks in it starts to tumble.
Probably owing to differences in drivers, performance jumps around the map a bit. For some reason, performance in StarCraft II takes a bath, but everything else is about where it should be. 1080p with AA (or in the case of Tomb Raider, TressFX) is a bit too much for the limited memory bandwidth of the 765M, but if you're willing to kill the AA it should edge performance up into playable territory. That excludes Metro: Last Light, which beats up on the GTX 765M in general.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
xTRICKYxx - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
Is NVIDIA Optimus disabled? The battery life seems unusually bad.InvderSkoodge - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
I can confirm when I got my Battalion-m1771, that the Nvidia card was set to run everything, it is indicated by the power button glowing white when the Nvidia card is not being used, and red/orange when it is.I also wondered why battery was so bad when I got mine, but I fixed the problem, and yesterday got about 4-5 hours of moderate usage, low screen brightness wifi on.
lukedaly - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
It can be fixed. But either way, for a gaming laptop it stands no chance to ASUS ROG G750JM-DS71. /Luke from http://www.consumertop.com/best-laptop-guide/IMMrLame - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
Yes but you can't really compare a backbreaking 4.2kg asus gaming laptop to a featherweight 2.5kg msi gaming laptop that honestly should have fallen under the ultrabook category with almost high-end gaming specs.skiboysteve - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
Xps 15 review in the pipeline?SavingPvtBryan - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
Seriously, are they ever going to review the Dell XPS 15?Try-Catch-Me - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link
Also the 2013 rMBP. It's been way too long. These two devices seem to be very similar, so I want an in-depth comparison.nportelli - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link
I have one and have been playing Batman games and Skyrim at highest detail and it plays great. Mind you I've not played a pc games in years before hand. But size, power and resolution, I have nothing to complain about.jwetmore - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
I've had the MSI version of this notebook for two months and for the most part couldn't be happier.That battery life does seem somewhat short of what I'm able to achieve. Is it possible you were stuck on the 765M while you were doing the battery life calculations? The power button should be amber when on the nVidia chip, and white when on the integrated Intel chip.
On the Intel chip I can get about 4 hours if i lower the brightness a bit and just do light web browsing.
nunomoreira10 - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
The gtx 765m should consume about the same as the i7 yet the cpu is 30º hotter with similar heatsinks.Intel sould also focus on increasing heat transfer efficiency from the cpu to the heatsink, its practically impossible to have the cpu under 80º nowadays, since in reality the heatsink needs to be around 50s