I was lucky enough to be on-hand when MSI launched the GT80 Titan at CES. It was a big event for them, and all of the MSI people were quite excited about the unique device they had come out with. Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of traction in the enthusiast market for mechanical keyboards, and MSI decided it was time to put a fully mechanical keyboard into a gaming laptop.

MSI turned to SteelSeries for the keyboard, and wedged one of their Cherry MX Brown keyboards into the GT80 Titan, creating one of the more uniquely designed laptops in quite some time. The keyboard is placed right at the front since a mechanical keyboard requires a lot more vertical depth than traditional notebook keyboards. This poses a slight problem for the standard trackpad placement, so MSI shifted it off to the right side and have made it both a trackpad and number pad. The layout works better than you might suspect, but since this is a desktop replacement, using it with a mouse would likely be the preferred option.

What’s behind the keyboard is equally as important, since this is first and foremost a gaming laptop. Here MSI has not disappointed either. Intel has finally released quad-core Broadwell parts, and MSI has shipped us the just recently updated version sporting the Intel Core i7-5700HQ processor. This is one of the new breed of 47 watt processors on 14 nm, with a base of 2.7 GHz and a turbo of 3.5 GHz. MSI pairs this with 16 GB of memory, and not one but two GTX 980M GPUs in SLI.

This plentiful processing power pushes polygons to a 1920x1080 pixel panel with proportions past the purview of most portable PCs (and try saying that five times fast). Alliteration aside, the display is right at the upper bounds of a notebook computer, with an 18.4-inch diagonal, making this one of the largest laptops around. It seems like the push for high PPI displays has been slow to come to the larger 17-inch panels, and the even rarer 18.4-inch one like in this device likely means sourcing one is even tougher. This display size at 1080p only results in 120 pixels per inch. At a point we hope that MSI might look into a 4K display at this size, although sourcing 18.4-inch 4K displays might be tricky. The device also does not support NVIDIA’s G-SYNC technology, but at least there should be fewer worries about frame rates dropping under the refresh rate of the panel.

MSI GT80 Titan
	As Tested, Core i7-5700HQ, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD + 1TB HDD, 1920x1080 PLS display
Processor	Intel Core i7-5950HQ (4C/8T, 2.9-3.7GHz, 6MB L3, 14nm, 47W) Intel Core i7-5700HQ (4C/8T, 2.7-3.5GHz, 6MB L3, 14nm, 47W)
Memory	16GB-24GB DDR3L-1600 MHz
Graphics	2 x NVIDIA GTX 980M 8GB each 2 x NVIDIA GTX 970M 6GB each 2 x NVIDIA GTX 965M 4GB each
Display	18.4" 1920x1080 PLS Matte
Storage	128GB SSD x 2 (RAID 0) boot drive 1 TB HDD
Networking	Killer e2200 Gigabit Networking Killer N1525 Wireless-AC plus Bluetooth (2x2:2 866 Mbps max)
Audio	Dynaudio Premium Sound Technology Four Speakers plus subwoofer Microphone
Battery	80 Wh Battery 330 Watt A/C Adapter
Right Side	2 x USB 3.0
Left Side	3 x USB 3.0 Ports Headphone Jack Microphone Jack SD Card Reader Blu-Ray Burner Line-in Jack SPDIF
Rear	2 x Mini DisplayPort v1.2 HDMI 1.4 A/C In
Dimensions	456 x 331 x 49.0mm (17.95 x 13.02 x 1.93 inches)
Weight	4.50 kg (9.90 lbs)
Extras	1080p Webcam Backlit Mechanical Keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches
Pricing	$2500-$3800, as tested $3400

There are a couple of different configurations available, with the processor, memory, GPU, and storage options determining price. On the low end, you can get it with SLI GTX 965M GPUs, SLI GTX 970M or just a single GTX 980M card. All of the upper tier models though are SLI GTX 980M. Memory is 16 GB as the base and 24 GB on the top model, but the laptop can support up to 32 GB if you want to add it. Ultimately the versions that end up for sale will be determined by the SIs that decide to stock the device. For our review, we have the Core i7-5700HQ processor, 16 GB of RAM, and GTX 980M SLIs graphics cards.

Design

When you are discussing an 18.4-inch notebook that comes in at ten pounds, discreet is likely not the correct choice of adjectives. There is little to be discreet about with the GT80 Titan. This is a device crafted for a single purpose, and that is to be used as a desktop replacement which can handle practically any gaming you can throw at it. The first thing that hits you when you see the GT80 is the imposing size. Then you open it up and are greeted by the single design decision that really sets this device apart from all others.

The keyboard is really one of the focal points of this design. Going with a mechanical keyboard was a decision that clearly impacted the entire layout. With the depth required for the switches and their movement, really the only place for the keyboard is at the front. This might seem out of place when comparing it to traditional notebook computers, but when you step back and look at the device for what it is, the design makes a lot of sense. When you are sitting at a desktop, you don’t sit with your hands hovering over the table to do your typing. Your keyboard is in front of everything else, as it is on the GT80. The fact that this is a mechanical keyboard is the icing on the cake. Generally when I am reviewing laptops, keyboards range from mushy to good, but with the Steelseries keyboard with Cherry MX Brown keys, the key feel is just so much more tactile. I do the majority of my writing on a desktop computer because I appreciate the much better keyboard experience, and the GT80 Titan captures a lot of that into a gaming notebook. I do find the key noise to be a bit too much (even though these are not audio feedback switches like MX Blues), but considering the extra feel, it is likely something I could easily come to terms with. For those concerned that the front mounted keyboard means there is nowhere to rest your wrists, fret not. MSI includes a wrist rest in the box which mounts on the front.

Moving the trackpad to the right side to create room for the keyboard is another design decision that is interesting. I had no trouble at all adapting to the new placement, and for a lot of what I needed the trackpad for, having it vertical was actually quite handy. There are two physical buttons at the bottom for left and right click, and in the upper left corner is a numlock area on the trackpad. Tap there, and the LED backlighting turns on a touch based number pad. After praising the inclusion of an actual keyboard on the laptop it would seem odd to hear me praise a touch number pad, and I won’t. It would be useful in a pinch but for anyone who does a lot of data entry, a real number pad would be much more useful. I can’t see any alternative here though, since having this as physical keys would leave no room for the trackpad. But again, if we step back and look at the GT80 Titan for what it is, the decision is fine. This is not a device to enter numbers on a spreadsheet. The GT80 Titan is a desktop replacement focused on gaming, and as such, the odds are that it will be used with a mouse. That frees up the number pad to be used for keyboard mappings of commands in games. I think MSI could do more with this, and include custom software to do macros on the numpad as well. The Steelseries keyboard includes software for key mappings and bindings on the keyboard, but it does not extend out to the trackpad. It would be nice to see this utilised more like the Razer SwitchBlade UI.

Stepping back again to take a look at the device as a whole, MSI has used aluminum as a feature of the client facing materials, and kept the underside and sides of the device as plastic. The LCD lid is one of the aluminum pieces, and it is accented by red backlighting and the MSI logo. It has a brushed finish on the top which is a nice touch. The sides and back of the device are dominated by the large cooling vents which are needed to expel the tremendous heat that this notebook can generate when running at 100%. There are actually eight heat pipes inside in order to move all of the heat to a location where it can be removed.

If you are looking to connect peripherals, MSI has you covered there as well. The GT80 Titan has an HDMI 1.4 port on the rear, as well as two mini DisplayPorts, Gigabit Ethernet, and the A/C in. The left side has three USB 3.0 ports, a SD card reader, a SPDIF audio output, and two 3.5 mm jacks for headphones out and microphone in. There is even a Blu-Ray burner on the left side, because when you have this much real estate to work with, you may as well cover every possibility. The right side features another two USB 3.0 ports. With a total of five USB 3.0 ports, the GT80 Titan should be set for whatever devices you want to connect to it.

Opening the display up shows off the MSI dragon logo on an aluminum top plate. Personally I am not a fan of some of these things on gaming systems, but that is personal preference, and MSI has done a fairly understated job of the logo with the dragon being in a shadow relief compared to the glossy black of the rest of the plate. The keyboard backlighting is in red, as is the red light accent stripe which runs along the top edge of the keyboard. Above this stripe on the right side is the power switch, as well as a hardware switch to disable the NVIDIA GPUs and switch to integrated graphics (there’s no Optimus on the GT80 Titan) and a switch which turns the system cooling to 100%. The latter switch is one that I wish all gaming manufacturers would provide, as it gives the end user the choice about cooling rather than a software policy which may or may not keep the components cool enough.

MSI has also designed the GT80 to be end user serviceable. The top plate can be removed with just two screws, so you can get access to extra memory slots and the storage which features two M.2 SSDs in RAID 0 as well as a 7200rpm 1 TB drive from the factory. The bottom is removable as well to get access to more memory, as well as the MXM graphics cards for future updates. At the moment, there’s no upgrade path from the GTX 980Ms that it has now, but in a year or two users will be able to source new MXM cards with newer GPUs, and they will also come with the correct cooling solution. I think that’s a nice touch when you consider the large investment in a device like this.

With total dimensions of 18” x 13” x almost 2” thick, the GT80 Titan lives up to its Titan name. But it is easy to get caught up in the size, and not look at the total package which is pretty smartly done. This is the first gaming laptop to feature a mechanical keyboard, and the implementation of it was risky but in my opinion has paid off very well.

System Performance

Intel’s Broadwell rollout has been fairly drawn out, with the first chip made on the 14nm process being Core M way back in October 2014. At CES, Intel launched the Broadwell-U processors which were 15-28 watt TDPs, but all dual-core. With Intel trying to make a bigger push into mobile, even the Atom processor got moved to 14nm before the quad-core Core parts, but finally as of June 2^nd, Intel launched some quad-core laptop parts and a couple of desktop parts.

MSI sent along the latest update to the GT80 Titan which is powered by the Intel Core i7-5700HQ processor. As with any CPU update, Intel has made a few tweaks to the architecture which will gain a few percentage points in IPC, however this is in essence a die shrink on Haswell, so we have to keep expectations in check. What we have seen on the Broadwell-U line is better battery life, and a nice boost in performance by the processor being able to maintain higher turbo frequencies while keeping within its thermal envelope.

With a TDP of 47 watts, the i7-5700HQ, it will be interesting to compare how the Broadwell quad-core parts compare to Haswell. The i7-5700HQ has a base frequency of 2.7 GHz and a turbo of 3.5 GHz. There is not a perfectly comparable Haswell part that we have tested however the i7-4720HQ has been in several devices this year and has a slightly lower base of 2.6 GHz and a slightly higher turbo of 3.6 GHz which should make an interesting comparison.

I have put the GT80 Titan through our standard laptop workload, and picked some comparative devices. Take note that the Clevo P750ZM actually has an 88 watt desktop CPU inside. The MSI GT72 Dominator Pro has a 47 watt TDP and the same 3.5 GHz turbo frequency so it should be a great comparison for Haswell versus Broadwell. If you want to compare the GT80 Titan to any other laptop we have tested, please use our Notebook Bench.

PCMark

PCMark tries to simulate some real life workloads, with several different subtests for different sets of tests. It is not a pure CPU test, and also factors in memory, storage, and even display resolution. The GT80 does not outright win these tests however it is competitive. The two SSDs in RAID 0 help boost it to one of the higher storage scores, and for the target market the extra cost and loss of battery life of RAID 0 is fine. One thing to note is that the Creative test on PCMark 8 would fail to run on this device, so there was no score recorded for that test.

Cinebench

Cinebench is more of a pure CPU test, and it favors high frequencies and IPC. Here we get a better feel for Broadwell and the i7-5700HQ performs very well. It outperforms all of the other 47 watt processors we have tested despite not having the highest turbo frequency.

x264

Once again, the i7-5700HQ outperforms all other 47 watt parts although it can’t compete with the 88 watt P750ZM. The move to 14nm clearly opens up some additional headroom to keep the turbo frequencies up.

Web Tests

Our web tests continue the trend that has already been set. Once again the GT80 Titan sets the standard, and is only trumped by a notebook with a desktop processor.

Broadwell may just be a die shrink of Haswell, but the 14nm process is very effective. Despite having a maximum frequency of just 3.5 GHz, the i7-5700HQ outperforms Haswell parts that can turbo up a few hundred megahertz more, which is pretty impressive.

GPU Performance

With the GT80 Titan packing in not one but two GTX 980M GPUs, and with each GPU having 8 GB of memory, MSI has the most potent combination available today. We just saw that the processor choice is potent in its own right, being able to outperform faster clocked Haswell parts, but will it be enough to feed two GPUs?

For 2015, we’ve continued to update our gaming notebook workloads, and cycled out some of the older tests and added a few new ones to the mix. Since we don’t have a back-inventory of gaming laptops, the new tests only have limited results, but as you will see the result is pretty clear. We have kept a couple of the older benchmarks as well in order to have more devices for comparison. As always you can turn to our Notebook Bench to compare this against any other notebook we have tested.

3DMark

Starting out with some synthetics, we have FutureMark’s 3DMark benchmarks. The Fire Strike is the most demanding one in our test (they have since added a couple of new Fire Strike tests that are even more demanding) and already we can see the huge lead that the GT80 Titan has over any other laptop we have tested. The GT80 Titan is almost 60% faster than the GT72 with a single GPU. As the tests get less demanding on the GPU with the Sky Diver and Cloud Gate scores, you can see that the Clevo P750ZM narrows the gap with its much quicker CPU, but not enough to catch up or even really come close.

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock is getting a bit long in the tooth, but it is such a great game that it is difficult to see it go. As our first true game benchmark, you can see that the GT80 Titan moves the yardstick quite a bit out.

Tomb Raider

With the Tomb Raider sequel coming out later this year, this is another of our older benchmarks that we have kept around to keep a good mix of comparisons. While other laptops still struggle to keep around 60 fps in this game with everything enabled (TressFX included) the GT80 Titan destroys single GPU devices in this test.

Civilization: Beyond Earth

Civ: BE is the latest in the Civilization franchise of turn-based strategy games. The GT80 Titan once again wins this round.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Up next is the latest Dragon Age RPG. We use a custom benchmark here with FRAPS because the built in benchmark is far too short. The Razer Blade was the first device tested with the new benchmark and for some reason, it scored higher than all of the other single GPU devices despite the slower GTX 970M GPU. It is possible it was driver updates or something, but it was consistent across all of the runs. I no longer have the Blade to re-test on so I have removed its scores from the results until they can be re-tested. The GT80 Titan continues its run at the top though.

GRID Autosport

Autosport is the latest version of the GRID series. We finally have a game that needs a really strong CPU to bring out its full potential, with the Clevo squeaking past the GT80 Titan in this test.

Shadow of Mordor

Our final benchmark brings us back to where we started. The GT80 Titan is pretty much the fastest gaming laptop around when you pack it with two GTX 980M graphics cards.

I think the numbers kind of speak for themselves. This laptop can handle anything you want to throw at it. MSI has said that they will be offering GPU upgrades for this device in the future, but in the present there is literally no need. It can easily run any game we threw at it well over 60 fps, and it is somewhat helped by its 1080p panel here too. It will be some time before this laptop has any issues pushing enough polygons for 1080p. It is really a shame that no one seems to be producing higher resolution large laptop panels yet since this is one of the first devices around that can likely handle that.

Display

MSI has turned to Samsung to supply the 18.4-inch display panel, and it is a SDC4C48 model, which is a Plane to Line Switching (PLS) model, which in operation is very similar in characteristics to In-Plane Switching (IPS) panels. The GT80 Titan has great viewing angles, and surprisingly for such a large display, quite even light distribution. We’ll get into the display calibration in a second.

At just 1920x1080, the massive (for a notebook) display comes in at just around 120 pixels per inch, so it is far from high DPI. This can have some advantages though since you never have to deal with anything other than 100% scaling, and gaming is still one area where high DPI can cause issues with menu and loading screens. Still, considering the power packed into this notebook, it is a bit of a shame that no one can supply a high DPI panel this large. Perhaps next year.

The other notable feature missing from this display is G-SYNC support. I asked MSI about this and they said they have no plans to offer it in this model at this time, however as with all things, that may change in the future. The lucky thing is that the GT80 is plenty fast, so perhaps they feel that the added cost of G-SYNC would not offer as much value as it would on a device with less graphical prowess.

So with those remarks out of the way, let’s turn our attention to the display characteristics. We measure the display brightness and contrast using an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter, and the color accuracy and grayscale with the X-Rite i1Pro spectrophotometer. On the software side, we leverage SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 suite with a custom workflow.

The GT80 Titan comes with some custom software to allow you to choose from several color points. I’ll dig into that software later in the review, but for the color testing I chose the sRGB setting since that is the target we are after with our testing suite.

Brightness and Contrast

The GT80 Titan gets off to a great start, with a display that can get to almost 400 nits brightness. This is plenty for almost any environment that the notebook would be expected to be used in. The good black levels contribute to an overall contrast ratio of over 1100:1, which is also a great result.

Grayscale and White Point

Using the built in software and choosing sRGB gives us a grayscale result that is one of the most accurate we have seen. At 1.8, the GT80 Titan is well under the 3.0 level where inaccuracies can be seen. Unfortunately the white point is a bit high at 8000 due to a lack of reds in the white images.

Saturation

The saturation scores are also excellent coming in at 1.88. This is again well under the 3.0 level where inaccuracies can be seen. Magenta is a bit too blue, and the reds and greens are slightly off target, but only a bit. According to CalMAN the display covers 93% of the sRGB color space.

GMB

The GMB score is the most comprehensive test and here the display does not do quite as well, although an overall score of 3.6 is still pretty decent. The colors with the most issues were the flesh tones and some of the teals, which had a dE score over 8. Still, the overall display is excellent and the built in software has done a great job at targeting sRGB.

Normally I would also do a calibrated result, but since the Titan comes with its own software to choose the sRGB space, and the fact that the grayscale is so good, there is little need. MSI has done a great job with the display as far as accuracy.

Display Software

MSI includes their True Color software package which lets you choose from, and adjust, several pre-loaded modes intended for different purposes. I have just shown how good of a job the sRGB mode provides, but there is also a couple of other modes which are interesting.

First is the gaming mode. This mode lets you adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma settings on the display which can help bring out detail especially in some of the really dark games out there where it can be difficult to see where you are going. It is nice that this is a setting you can toggle on and off, so that you don’t have to break your display characteristics for the rest of your day.

Another interesting mode is the Anti-Blue mode, and you can customize how much blue is on the display. I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know if blue light really can lead to eye strain, but for those that appreciate it this is a nice setting they can toggle on when needed.

The software also has movie, designer, and office modes, which all offer up some amount of customization. I have never been a fan of bloat-ware, but when a company offers up something useful like this it is appreciated. Being able to select sRGB and have it almost perfectly spot on is an impressive feat, and the ease of use means that more people will have access to an accurate display.

Battery Life

Normally on a notebook review, I would consider battery life to be one of the key aspects of the experience. However the GT80 Titan is not a typical notebook. This is really a device designed to sit on a desk and be used in lieu of a desktop computer. But if you ever feel the need to pick up this 10 pound laptop and lug it to the coffee shop, I suppose we should see what kind of battery life you can expect.

The GT80 Titan lacks NVIDIA’s Optimus technology, so it can’t switch from the discrete graphics to integrated graphics on the fly. MSI has included a hardware switch to change to integrated graphics, but it does require a reboot in between. Just to see how much of a difference this makes, I ran the light test first with the GTX 980Ms active, and then again leveraging Intel’s integrated GPU.

Our light test is light web browsing with the display set at 200 nits. The 80 Wh battery inside the GT80 Titan is really no match for the hunger of the SLI graphics cards, and with those enabled the battery life is a mere two hours and twenty minutes. However once you disable the GPUs and switch to the integrated GPU, the result is actually a pretty respectable four hours and nine minutes. Considering the size of the display and the power underneath the covers, I was actually shocked it was that high.

The heavy test ramps up the amount of pages browsed, adds in a 1 MB/s file download, and a movie is played back using the Windows 8 Video app. On most devices, the light test result is often dictated by the display power, and the heavy test shifts that balance over to the CPU and I/O. However with the power hungry components in the GT80, the difference between the light and heavy tests results is less than normal with it getting just about an hour less overall. Even though it is just three hours fifteen minutes, it actually ties the Sony Vaio Haswell based Ultrabook in this test, but it does have over double the battery capacity of that much smaller notebook.

Looking at the normalized graphs, the GT80 shows just how much energy is needed to power the CPU and large display. Once you turn on the GPUs though, the power usage really gets ugly and the light result with the GPUs enabled is one of the worst we have seen. Even though NVIDIA has been improving power efficiency and idle draw of their GPUs, they still are not in the same league as the 14nm Intel GPU when discussing minimum power draw.

Charge Time

In order to provide enough power for the two GPUs plus the quad-core CPU, MSI ships the GT80 Titan with a massive 330 watt A/C adapter. This power brick alone weighs more than some notebooks, but it is necessary to keep up with the insane power requirements of this notebook. With that much power available, MSI could have chosen to reduce the charge time pretty substantially.

Looking at the time though, the GT80 charges in roughly the same time as most notebooks. Even though they could have provided more power to the battery, this may have required beefed up circuitry, and even if that is there, it can be hard on the battery due to the heat generated. MSI was fairly conservative here but the end result is a fine 2.5 hours.

Wireless

For networking, MSI has turned to Rivet Network’s Killer branded solutions, with the GT80 Titan featuring a Killer Wireless-AC 1525 adapter for wireless connections, and the Killer e2200 Gigabit Ethernet controller to handle the wired connections. It also supports the Killer Double Shot Pro which lets the networking load balance between the wireless and wired connections. This theoretically allows for 1.867 Gbps of usable network bandwidth, but in the average home where both would be hooked to the same router it is going to have limited appeal.

This adapter has worked well for me, and I did not have any issues with connection or wake from sleep.

The Killer networking card performs quite well. It is not quite as quick as Broadcom’s 802.11ac solution but it is fairly close. There is also an array of Killer software utilities to set up and monitor your network adapters.

The software may be overkill for some, but since this device is targeted at the enthusiast crowd you can be sure there will be people who like to check out their stats and see how much downloading they have done.

Audio and Noise

MSI includes Dynaudio Premium Speakers with a Subwoofer on the GT80. The power output is not listed, however the setup gets very loud. Listening to some music I was able to measure 93 dB(A) from this setup which makes it one of the loudest I have measured. Let’s take a look at the frequency response from the setup.

The subwoofer does help out a bit, with the GT80 Titan having reasonable response at the low end of the curve but it is not amazing. However once you get past the low end, the frequency response was pretty flat over most of the range which is a good result. Idealy the ultimate response would be a flat line but that would take some pretty amazing speakers. I would have liked to see a bit better out of the Titan due to its size, but still it is a good result. You really can’t beat a good set of headphones though.

Noise and Cooling

When a device ships with a 330 watt A/C adapter, it is going to need some serious cooling capabilities to move all of that heat, and MSI has included just that. There are several fan profiles you can select from to choose how much you want them to ramp up. At idle, the fans are running but are only a couple of dB over the noise floor. In my not very quiet room, I measured around 40 dB at idle with a room that is around 36 dB with the laptop off. It’s not silent but it’s not overpowering. If you start to work the laptop, it will slowly ramp up the fans to 43-44 dB. If you are gaming, it can easily hit 48-53 dB. MSI has also included a fan switch which sets the fans to maximum speed, and this can move a lot of air. The noise is quite loud though at 63 dB. When I was doing gaming benchmarks, the maximum fan speed was good for 5-10 more frames per second, which is a nice boost however when you are already well over 100 frames per second it is likely fine to leave the fans on auto and save your hearing.

On the cooling side, at idle the GPUs are around 34°C, and the CPU sits around 44°C. Power draw, according to MSI’s utility, is around 40-50 watts at idle. To test gaming performance, I looped the Tomb Raider benchmark on Ultimate for an hour or so. GPU and CPU temperatures were only 75°C and the fans were running about 50%, and this is with the GPU running at 85% usage. Power draw was 180-200 watts. If you prefer noise to temperatures though, just hit the max fan button. At maximum cooling, the GPU temperature drops to an amazing 57°C and the CPU drops to just 61°C in the same test.

Software

Normally when I talk about software on a laptop, it is about the extra bloat that always finds its way on there. MSI is not perfect here, with some Norton trialware and the like, but overall the trialware is pretty light. There are a lot of utilities installed which should appeal to the target enthusiast market though so let’s go over some of them.

I have already discussed the True Color utility on the display page, and that is a wonderful utility mostly because when you set the display to sRGB it actually is a very accurate sRGB profile.

But there is a lot more than that. Likely the most useful is the Dragon Gaming Center which allows you to monitor the CPU and GPU load and temperature, fan speed, disk, and network utilization. It is a nice one-stop shop. It even shows the active power consumption (FYI at idle it states it is around 40-50 watts) and you can also change a few gaming settings here as well such as disabling the Windows key. It is a nice utility and it fits in well with both the theme of the laptop as well as the target demographics.

MSI also has a System Control Manager which is a full-screen overlay that lets you set common settings. You can enable or disable Bluetooth for example, or shut off the display.

For audio, MSI leverages software from Nahimic. There are the standard audio effects available to be turned on or off, such as reverb, simulated surround sound, as well as frequency leveling and bass boost. On the microphone side, you can set up the levels and such. It is a nice utility and the layout is very easy to get around.

Since the Titan comes with a Steelseries keyboard, there is also some software for that to customize the keyboard and adjust the backlighting.

Final Words

When I first saw the GT80 I was intrigued that they managed to stick a mechanical keyboard onto a gaming laptop, but I thought it was a bit large and unwieldy. But when I go into a review I try to set those preconceptions at the door. Am I ever glad I did. MSI has designed a pretty amazing piece of kit here, which is well built, nice to use, and buckle up fast.

It really all starts with the keyboard, which is obviously the focal point. No one else has yet managed to squeeze a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches into a laptop, and the end result is something so unique, but yet so nice to use. Perhaps I am old school but I have always preferred using a desktop computer over anything, and the GT80 Titan with its desktop keyboard smack on the front just works so well.

The trackpad is almost an afterthought but by combining it with the number pad, it is at least in a spot where it is easy to use, and not over top of the keyboard which would make it very awkward. The vertical rotation of it takes a bit of getting used to, but it does work pretty well. Unfortunately it is less useful as a number pad because it is touch based, but it is there when needed. The GT80 Titan is pretty much designed to be used with a mouse though, so the trackpad is really just there when you need it.

The display is massive at 18.4-inches, and as our results show it is a nice accurate display when set to sRGB mode. I appreciate the effort MSI put in to the device to offer an accurate mode as well as some other modes which can be easily switched to depending on the application. The pedestrian resolution is a bit of a letdown, mostly because the Titan is fast enough that it could game at a higher resolution than 1080p pretty easily. The lack of G-SYNC is also disappointing since MSI does offer it on the GT72 now. Most of the time though you are never really near the refresh rate anyway, but since this is one of the most expensive gaming laptops around, it really should be offered with G-SYNC.

Broadwell has been slow to arrive in its quad-core form, but I have to say I am impressed. Intel only says it is a couple percentage points quicker than Haswell in IPC, but the new processes opens up the processor to be able to maintain its Turbo frequencies longer, and it ends up outperforming Haswell parts that are up to 500 MHz faster in our benchmarks. It’s almost too bad Broadwell will be so short lived, but we shall see what the rollout of Skylake is.

The GTX 980M is undoubtedly the fastest mobile graphics card around, and once you add a second one in SLI you are talking about some serious compute power. This is first and foremost a gaming laptop, and it is heads and tails faster at gaming than any laptop we have ever seen. It’s not even close. It is also great to see MSI offering upgradability on this laptop both now, and in the future, by leveraging MXM graphics cards which can be swapped out at a later date if the GTX 980Ms start to show their age. And that’s doubly good because the people purchasing the GT80 Titan are really making a big investment.

Pricing is pretty steep on the GT80 Titan. I can buy a good Ultrabook for $1000-$1500. The GT80 Titan starts at $2500, and can go all the way up to $3800. The one we received would be at the higher end of that range at around $3400. It’s a big investment, and for that money you get not only the laptop, but some nice perks too like a backpack to carry it in (which is good because it’s so big most backpacks won’t be able to) as well as a mousepad, palm rest, keychain, and some gold key caps you can switch into the keyboard. You of course also get one of the fastest laptops around, and the only one around with a mechanical keyboard. If you are OK with a laptop that really is meant as a desktop replacement, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not checking out the GT80 Titan.