Review : MSI GS73VR GTX 1060 GOES MOBILE

The promise of gaming notebooks has long been the ability to experience desktop gaming on the go. While there have been a few select instances where we came close, in general the best we've been able to do is around a 30 percent deficit for similar hardware names—i.e., GTX 970M vs. desktop GTX 970, or HD 7970M vs. desktop HD 7970. Nvidia's new GeForce 10-series graphics chips for notebooks takes that old way of doing things and kicks it to the curb, giving us notebook parts that are very nearly the equal of the desktop chips. Clockspeeds may be slightly slower, but power draw is also lower and the net result is that this year's 10-series notebooks are as close as we've ever come to having legitimate desktop replacement notebooks at mainstream prices.

MSI's GS73VR is the first 10-series notebook we've received for testing, but more are on the way. (MSI's GT83VR arrived a few days after the GS73VR, but that's a different beast.) This is something of an entry level gaming notebook, since it uses the lowest of the mobile 10-series GPUs. But the GTX 1060 is no gaming slouch, with performance on the desktop that surpasses the GTX 970 and comes close to matching the GTX 980. The question is, how close does the mobile GTX 1060 come to the desktop part?

AT A GLANCE

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700HQ
RAM: 2x8GB DDR4-2400
GPU: GTX 1060 6GB
Display: 17.3-inch 1080p 120Hz matte IPS
Storage: 256GB M.2 NVMe + 1TB HDD
Connectivity: Killer 802.11ac wifi, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C / Thunderbolt 3, 3x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, SD card, HDMI, mini-DP
Dimensions: 16.22" x 11.22" x 0.77"
(412mm x 285mm x 19.6mm)
Weight: 2.43kg (5.35 lbs.)
Price: $1,800 / £1,849

The rest of the specs are equally impressive—16GB RAM, i7-6700HQ processor, 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD, and the usual slate of USB ports and video outputs. The keyboard comes with full RGB backlighting and has decent action, along with macro key support thanks to MSI's SteelSeries partnership. The touchpad is a bit finicky at times but nothing too bad, and you'll want a separate mouse for gaming regardless.

The notebook includes a 120Hz 1920x1080 IPS display, which is an interesting choice. It's not a G-Sync panel, but the higher refresh rate largely negates that deficit, and in some ways it's preferable to a 75Hz G-Sync display. I'd be curious to know the difference in price—is this 120Hz panel more expensive or less expensive than a G-Sync panel?—but either way it's better than a bog standard 60Hz display. That's on other GS73VR models, along with the option for a 60Hz 4K. What you won't find is a G-Sync option.

While Nvidia has technically abandoned the GTX M-series parts for notebooks, they didn't magically make notebook GPUs faster without some compromises. The new GTX 1060 appears to use roughly the same amount of power as the previous generation GTX 970M (it was about 5-10W, though the two notebooks aren't identical), and quite a bit more power than the GTX 960M. This also isn't the first time Nvidia has done this, with last years GTX 980 for Notebooks sporting a fully enabled GM104 chip with similar performance to the desktop part.

Other than the new graphics chip, the new GS73VR is largely the same design as last year's GS72 Stealth Pro. It's a slim notebook with a large display, using a nice looking aluminum chassis that unfortunately can be a bit of a fingerprint magnet. The name also gives away one of MSI's selling points for their new 10-series notebooks, that they're all VR ready. The importance of that aspect is a matter of debate, and you still need all the other VR peripheral equipment (sensor and HMD for Oculus, or the HMD and lighthouses for the Vive). I haven't seen any killer VR games or apps yet, but the option is there if you want it.

The 3-cell battery might look a bit small, but it keeps the size and weight down. There was a time when 3-cell and 4-cell batteries were pretty dismal (around 30Wh), but the GS73VR has a 65Wh battery capacity, which means battery life shouldn't be too bad. When you're not gaming, Nvidia's Optimus Technology also shuts off the discrete graphics. I measured a bit less than 3.5 hours of 1080p video playback, which is nearly an hour longer than the Asus G752Vt managed in the same test.

Showcase showdown :

For performance, there are several different aspects of a laptop to discuss. The graphics card is still the most important component when it comes to gaming, but CPU and storage performance are still factors as well. The i7-6700HQ is a good processor, particularly for a laptop, but how does it fare against desktop CPUs? I decided to find out, and used the same test suite as I run on desktop processors.

Clock speeds are quite a bit lower than on a desktop i7-6700K, by 700MHz to as much as 1400MHz, depending on the workload. The result is performance just slightly lower than a stock clocked i5-6600K, with Hyper-Threading helping to close the distance in multi-threaded tests. The 45W TDP (Thermal Design Power) causes at least one test (y-cruncher) to drop CPU clocks down to 2.6GHz for example, giving the desktop i5-6600K a 25 percent lead, but overall it's only about a five percent advantage.

For graphics testing, I wanted to start by comparing the mobile GTX 1060 to desktop parts. I've also included results for a GTX 970M, which is currently the only other mobile GPU where I've run a full suite of gaming benchmarks at 1080p.

Virtually every game is well above the 60fps mark (Ashes being the one exception, falling a couple of fps short), though >120fps is only achieved in five of the 16 games. Running games at high quality should basically split the difference between these two charts, giving some flexibility if you want to tweak a few settings. Overall, both the GTX 1060 and the MSI GS73VR deliver an impressive showing, and people looking for a good gaming notebook should give the GS73VR serious consideration.

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