Msi gt80s 6qf titan sli review

Users usually have to choose whether they want power and comfort with a desktop, or manageability with a laptop. MSI wants to break with that policy with the MSI GT80s 6QF Titan SLI series, which are real beasts that include a mechanical keyboard for the first time in a laptop, accompanied of course by top-of-the-range components.

In this case in an 18.4-inch model, it will delight traveling gamers, or partys lovers who don't want to carry a tower.

Technical Features MSI GT80s 6QF Titan SLI

The list of components does not disappoint, in the case of the analyzed model we have an i7-6920HQ, 32 GB of RAM memory, a 2 nVidia GTX 980 SLI, Killer Double Shot Pro wireless network card, backlit steelseries keyboard with MX Red switches, a RAID 0 of 2 NVMe M.2 SSDs that make a total of 512GB, accompanied by a 1 TB mechanical disk for data, 4 speakers plus Dynaudio subwoofer and BluRay reader.

Unboxing MSI GT80s 6QF Titan SLI

The laptop arrives in a large cardboard box with a predominance of black.

This specific model does not include any accessories apart from the equipment itself, the documentation, a drivers CD and its 330W power supply. You really don't need any extras to stand out either. The laptop comes in a cloth bag to avoid scratches (the aluminum is delicate, and very dirty in terms of fingerprints), in line with other MSI models:

MSI GT80s 6QF Titan SLI: Design

The MSI GT80s 6QF Titan SLI, a fairly large model with 18.4 inches and FullHD resolution, is a very suitable IPS screen to replace a monitor in movies and games. It is an ideal team if you are not going to move too much but we want performance and comfort.

The laptop is well designed, it is a fairly thick model with 4.5 cm in the back, but in return the air vents are generous and the number of ports very generous with a USB 3.1-Type-C, five USB3.0, two miniDP and an HDMI 1.4, along with the typical card reader and the network port, very well located in the back

The bottom features red and black grille in the style of the rest of the notebook and contributing to very good cooling. The top does not detract from anything either, with very good details such as the MSI logo illuminated by the screen's own backlight, along with two also illuminated bands.

The lid is aluminum and the main body box is plastic. The surface at the top of the keyboard is also metal and features the famous MSI dragon. Although the robustness and aesthetics of this area are good, there is a lot of wasted space that could have been used with some programmable buttons for example.

Detail of the three buttons, whose functions are respectively to set the fans to maximum, switch between dedicated and integrated GPUs, and turn the equipment on / off. As for the speakers, this laptop has 4 + 1 speakers manufactured by Dynaudio to achieve remarkable sound quality for what is common in laptops.

Equipment detail from the sides

The mechanical keyboard has an unbeatable feel with the same Cherry MX Red switches as most high-end gaming keyboards. It is made by steelseries with a red backlight, and quality is appreciated everywhere. The place of the numerical keyboard is occupied by the trackpad, which if we press the numerical lock key becomes a complete numerical keyboard, in its natural position. In addition, nothing is noticeable to the touch when used in trackpad mode, it is really achieved, although unfortunately for users who use the numeric keyboard a lot, it forces to change modes all the time.

Hardware and performance

As for the processor, we find one of the smallest of Intel's really powerful processors, an i7 6920HQ, with 4 cores and 8 threads, and Skylake architecture at a base frequency of 2.9 GHz and a turbo frequency of 3.8 GHz with a TDP of 45W. The suffix -HQ means that it is a FCBGA 1440 socket processor, which indicates that it is soldered to the board and not on the socket, a rather strange decision in a laptop of this size, and that unfortunately prevents us from changing it for a higher model.

In RAM memory they have opted for a 32GB kit in dual channel, a very generous amount to go over several years and nothing out of the ordinary in these ranges. They are DDR4L (1.2V) modules as required by Skylake for greater energy efficiency and superb performance.

The laptop is very agile in terms of startup and use, with just twelve seconds between pressing the button and arriving at the desktop, and it is not for less, since MSI has chosen to mount two NVMe 256 GB disks in RAID 0, achieving a performance in sequential read / write that reaches up to 2, 600MB / s as we will see in the test.

The data hard drive is a 1TB, 7200rpm mechanical drive. No surprise in this part, it is a capable and spacious disk to store our data. The performance is quite remarkable, without of course reaching the heights of an SSD, we find 145MB / s of reading and 135MB / s of sequential writing.

The graphic section is undoubtedly its strong point, in case the above seemed little. It mounts the most powerful configuration that can be found right now in a laptop, a GTX980 SLI with Maxwell architecture, it is a really efficient chip, with much less power consumption than the 880M and better performance and overall overclock margin. This graph has 2, 048 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5 memory mounted on a 256 - bit bus. Although 8GB of graphics memory may seem exaggerated, it is certainly a very good choice in a computer of this range, since being one of the few laptops with power to move the heaviest games in 4K resolution would be a pity that it could not for lack of VRAM. Luckily, this is not the case, and we have a laptop to move all the games a few years. We see below the information of the GPU-Z.

The laptop includes a button to switch between the dedicated and the integrated graphics, a great functionality, although unfortunately we will have to restart to apply the change. Consumption is slightly reduced with this practice, although the Nvidia Optimus system also does its job. We have had some problems with the battery of our sample, so I would not dare to advance autonomy. Luckily, it seems like a problem solved in business models.

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The results in games are outstanding, leaving our test team behind with a desktop gtx 980, surpassing even current high-end graphics thanks to its SLI. We have tested Ryse: Son of Rome and The Witcher 3 games in ultra configuration obtaining excellent performance.

This laptop mounts some of the best components available today, so it should not surprise us that the benchmarks give scores much higher than most desktops on the market, even counting high-end.

Refrigeration

The laptop is fairly quiet at low and medium load for the usual, well-designed and perfectly compliant cooling is appreciated, thanks in part to the thickness of the base and the size of the laptop. However, when we demand a lot from the fans, they accelerate a lot and the noise generated can even be annoying.

The laptop is big and quite heavy, but in exchange the cooling is very good. Idle temperatures are maintained at 36ºC on the CPU and 34ºC / 43ºC on both GPUs respectively. However, under very high load situations such as gaming, temperatures rise quite a bit to reach 75ºC in the CPU and 77ºC / 83ºC in both GPUs respectively

Final words and conclusion

We are facing a laptop with unsurpassed performance, not in vain it has two GTX 980 graphics cards and an Intel Core i7 6920HQ processor. We can be sure that it will move any game to the highest level of detail. A very remarkable element is the incorporation of a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Red switches, which transmits similar feelings to the mechanical keyboards of the most prestigious brands.

As expected, a laptop of these characteristics has a very high price, let's not forget that the cheapest laptops riding the GTX980 exceed € 2, 000, and in this case we do not have one of these graphics but two. The prices of this model start at around € 5, 400 for the basic model, which has little to say about basic .

Likewise, given the quality of this laptop, the price seems very justifiable. The screen has 18.4 inches and IPS technology for maximum color fidelity and excellent viewing angles, we will not miss an external monitor.

It is not lazy in the details that are less often looked at, with two Killer network cards, one wireless AC and another for cable connection, Blu-Ray reader, and 5 US3.0 ports, one USB 3.1 Type-C port. Without a doubt, it is a luxury laptop for users who want the best.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ EXCEPTIONAL GRAPHIC PERFORMANCE. COMPETENT PROCESSOR AND 16GB OF RAM	- PRICE ONLY WITHIN THE REACH OF A FEW, EVEN THOUGH IT IS WORTH IT
+ RAID 0 OF 2 SSD NVMe + HDD TB DISK	- LOTS OF WASTE SPACE ON TOP OF KEYBOARD
+ MECHANICAL KEYBOARD	- LOUD WITH FULL LOAD
+ VERY EFFECTIVE COOLING
+ IMPECCABLE AESTHETICS
+ RED INALÁMBRICA AC