The MSI Gaming Booth Tour with dGPUs in AIOs and Notebooks plus Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on June 29, 2015 3:00 PM ESTFor those in the PC industry, it has been clear to see that MSI’s gaming laptop strategy is quite rigorous. The net is cast far and wide, covering high end and mid-range, but also investing in new technologies which may or may not be part of the future. Brett recently reviewed the 18.4-inch 4.5 kg behemoth in the MSI GT80 Titan, featuring two GTX 980M GPUs in SLI with a Broadwell CPU, which is one such direction that MSI is taking. We saw a few models from MSI at CES, but for Computex the range is expanding. We’ve chosen a few of the most interesting models here.
MSI GS30 Shadow Version 2 – A New Hope Dock
At CES, MSI announced the GS30 Shadow gaming laptop, a seemingly run-of-the-mill 13.3-inch Crystal Well based Haswell with eDRAM, no discrete graphics card, 16GB of DRAM and RAID SSD storage. We reported that it looked half decent as a mobile gaming device, but the interesting element at the time came via the external dock. The external dock allowed the system to run with a full discrete graphics card, supporting up to 450W. The GS30 docked into this directly with PCIe 3.0 x16 from the CPU, allowing a full bandwidth implementation, and the dock would cost around $200 sans GPU. In fact after Computex I visited Singapore, and in the Funan DigitaLife mall there was one retailer who had the GS30 + dock on display. I asked the shop owner about sales, and he said out of the five he received in stock, he had sold three (with the dock) in six weeks which is an interesting number.
There were some issues with the dock that we noted at the time. The dock itself was not particularly user friendly in standard laptop circumstances – due to the shoebox-like shape it meant that the laptop was a good six-plus inches off of the desk and not suitable for typing. The dock was also not hot-swappable, meaning that the system had to be restarted in use. The display of the laptop was also not able to use the discrete card, meaning that the user had to have an external display anyway, making the laptop little more than a mini-PC. A lot of this changes with version 2.
The dock goes angular, allowing for full use at a desk with minimal effort. As we can see on this side, the dock also comes with additional IO ports such as USB, Ethernet and a card reader. This improves the usage of the device considerably, either on or off of the dock. The new design, with a Broadwell-H based Iris Pro GS30, will also allow the display of the laptop to use the graphics power under the hood. This is done more through a video-out from the GPU to a video-in to the laptop rather than directly changing the GPU at the software level from integrated to discrete. Either way, there’s no need to also have an external monitor.
Hot swapping should be as simple as disconnecting the video-in and changing the output monitor via hotkeys, allowing users to seamlessly switch between outputs. The dock will be able to take a GPU up to 330W and the deeper dock might allow for some of the larger AIB manufacturer designs.
Standard specifications apply here – MSI’s SuperRAID and Killer are base add-ins for them at this point, along with Nahimic Audio. As always, MSI is finalizing the design and we should see it on the market in Q3, with exact configurations determined by the retailer. Hopefully MSI hasn’t produced too many of the original versions, because now that this is on the horizon I suspect most review websites will be suggesting to hold out for version 2.
GT72 with Tobii Eye-Tracking
To complement the discrete graphics technology, MSI had a new style of laptop on display in order to gauge opinion. As the sub-title suggests, we have a GT72 laptop with eye tracking technology:
At the hinge we see three red lights which are part of the technology designed by Tobii. The software comes with a quick calibration tool that takes a minute to perform, and thereafter a user can move their eyes to parts of the screen they want to move the mouse to. Note that this function doesn’t click (for example in menus), but the demo provided showed Assassin’s Creed using the technology to adjust where the camera was pointing:
So in this case the WASD keys were for moving the character, and the technology tracked the eyes as to where to look in the game. Even with only 30 seconds playing with the technology, in this environment it seemed a little tough to get to grips with, especially if you looked down at the keyboard or at part of the HUD, but I presume 30 seconds is not enough to get used to it. I did however do the calibration tool, and played the game in the first image which involved moving my eyes to get the grey targets. It was very intuitive, and I scored well at least.
Ultimately I think this is the sort of game where eye-tracking might be more beneficial – indie type games from the Windows Store. These sorts of games would be more preferable to a low-end device rather than a GT72, but ultimately like most manufacturers the goal of new technology is to offer it to the high end first, see uptake, and then filter it down. Depending on the cost, I could see it being brought down to desktop replacement/gaming type models, although something a bit smaller might be a stretch due to added cost.
GT72 with G-Sync
Just before Computex it was announced by NVIDIA that G-Sync on mobile devices was now supported, and that allowed the laptop manufacturers to show off their designs. Naturally MSI was in this mix, and similar to the Tobii model, we get a GT72 variant showing Mobile G-Sync:
What became interesting was the discussion around G-Sync, because as it turns out Optimus (the ability to adjust from discrete graphics to integrated graphics dynamically) will not work with G-Sync at this time. In order to counter this, MSI has added a GPU button to the GT72 in use:
This allows the GPU to switch from integrated to discrete and vice versa, though if I remember correctly the system requires a restart in-between. G-Sync should still work in both modes, but turning off the discrete card should aid battery life significantly when in remote locations. For gaming there is also a turbo mode for the fans, exchanging noise for cooling. With these devices, especially on location, most gaming is performed with headphones anyway so having this option helps keep those temperatures down.
Red GS60
Part of MSI’s Computex event was done in collaboration with Square Enix for the PC release of Final Fantasy Type-0. As an avid Final Fantasy fan it was perhaps a bit of a shock to see Square Enix and MSI collaborate on a joint launch, but along with the game MSI was showing off a full-red GS60 (as well as a silver GS70).
Given the vast array of black laptops we see (or blue ones from HP and color choice ones from Dell), it was good to see something a little different in a premium chassis with the gaming vernacular. Due to most gaming keyboard backlights being red, MSI takes a different tack here and we get a white/blue-ish result. Personally I think it looks better than average, although perhaps something to rival the Dell XPS13 for bezel design would be preferable. That being said, I can’t wait for Type-0 to get to Steam – I never played the PSP version, and I’m currently going through the older ones on Steam 10-15 years after I first completed them with higher resolution texture packs. Final Fantasy 8’s story finally makes sense now, because it certainly didn’t when I was 14!
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Ian Cutress - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
I should point out that if you go beyond page 1 (yes shock, there's more than one page) there's a selection of AIOs, laptops and others.just4U - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - link
"The site died when Anand left.."------
I've been coming to Anandtech since day one.. and it certainly hasn't died. No where close. Nor has it gone down hill. It's always retained that certain something that keeps many of us coming back.
barleyguy - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - link
I've also been here since day one. I still think the site is top notch, but the advertising has been getting way more intrusive lately. The fake menu ad in the upper right and the popup on entry are examples.I really hate intrusive advertising, to the point where I use ComSkip to watch TV, and pay Pandora to have ad-free radio. I don't run adblock in my browser though, because I want sites to survive. But if the ads get so intrusive that I don't enjoy coming here, my visiting habits will change.
</rant off>
chizow - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Oh geez it looks like MSI gave their interns free reign on the 3D printers and Papier-mâché kits this summer.Some of that stuff is really tacky though, "Godlike" and I guess we also see why dated SLI bridges are never going to go away. They've just become a new accessory for Nvidia and AIBs to cash in on.
junky77 - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
GT72 with GSync is already here.. GT72 2QD with GSync is already sellingMeaker10 - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
The original GS30 dock with a bios update in the notebook supports optimus through the internal display so without any wonky cables you get the full gaming experience, it works flawlessly with the Titan-xKateH - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
So, I'm a pretty big fan of this AiO with dGPU slot. I'll wait until there's a 24" 2160P panel option available before I seriously consider a purchase, but with the right panel and a mid-tier FirePro / Quadra GPU, this could be a seriously potent compact workstation for a lot less $$$ than the 5K iMac. With all my primary Adobe tools (Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and Première) now GPU-accelerated I don't think the mobile i7 would be a big bottleneck and the whole thing would sure put out a lot less heat than my current workstation (OC'd FX8350 & 290X)TheJian - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
5 days and still no Fury X review? How hard is it for an AMD portal site to get a card? Still no 300 series reviews at all and those are two weeks old. The benchmarks are already everywhere else so what gives? I guess I get it, since it seems pretty tough to get some benchmarks they win in. 5 days later only 4 reviews on amazon (on hates it, none of them VERIFIED purchases) and a single review at newegg (a 2nd admits he doesn't have it...ROFL) and not VERIFIED either. Maximum PC could only get one card for a very short time for 4 sister sites, tomshardware getting their own card since they didn't even have a whole day with it, among others saying very short time with one. But if you read enough sites you get enough games and points of view to see it wasn't worth the wait and HBM (as I suspected) had no bearing on things even at 4K. I mean at 8.9B transistors (a billion more than 980ti) and a LOT more bandwidth I expect a 4K sweep especially using more watts too. Heck with AMD's slide showing a dozen games with fury x beating 980ti I expected a sweep at all resolutions. Advertising a 500w water cooler when everyone has trouble hitting 10% (and techpowerup among others show you only get 5% for that 10% and most couldn't hit the 10% anyway, IE extremetech failed to hit 4.7% OC) is another problem. Using 66w playing a bluray at techpower vs. 14w for 980ti sounds like Nvidia shield tv vs. xbox1/ps4 for this task.Hexus, techreport, hardocp, legitreviews (check here for OC FuryX vs. OC 980ti -WOW that's ugly), pcper, hardwarecanucks, hothardware, maximumpc, hardwareheaven, techpowerup etc, shows it's pretty tough to write a pro AMD article without looking kind of silly on this part. Good luck Ryan ;) People are claiming they have whining cards in the wild too (amazon), so is it really fixed for retail? Note no review yet is VERIFIED so not even sure they've shipped at amazon or newegg though the amazon xfx card is showing 1-3 months before shipping (and it's the only reviewed card, with 4, one hating it), so maybe they shipped a few in that brand. Sapphire the only maker having a $650 price and not in stock anywhere. AMD supposedly claimed to some sites it would sell for $509 in europe but I can't see how. Are they not aware at AMD that euro to dollar is far closer today? Is that british pound and not euro? That's about $800 usd. In euro it's $571 (Either way kind of weird but I think brits pay more for NV too so maybe not so strange). It looks like they can barely get enough out the door for a few hours of reviewing and many stores seem to be waiting for their first shipments for multiple brands. No DVI or HDMI 2.0. Multiple sites reporting pump whine and coil noise from the cooling system. I could go on but you can all read the benchmarks yourselves (and I advise you do before buying!). This card is not what was hyped IMHO.
http://wccftech.com/amd-20nm-gpus-horizon-tsmc-ram...
Heck I 1/2 thought this chip was 20nm with all the bragging they did.
“20nm is an important node for us. We will be shipping products in 20nm next year and as we move forward […],” said Lisa Su"
She goes on to say 20nm plays a part in all of their businesses (pro graphics too). Well when? 390 turned into a rebadge and fiji turned into not enough and 28nm.
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-fury-x-reportedly-s...
Is the whine gone or not? Will the nano come with a 2.0 HDMI port for living room TV's?
There is only a few more sites I read (for major parts anyway that I am actually pondering purchasing) so you guys are almost last. Ouch. Not impressed with anandtech here, OR FuryX.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2015/06/...
One more review. Yet another review showing 10% of less (8%) and netting far less than the OC in actual results. Most seem to get half of the OC, while NV will give you 20% basically straight up for 20% (see legitreviews for example or any 980ti card with Ocing included). From Bit-tech:
"The overclocking results are rather disappointing; we only managed to squeeze between 2 and 5 percent more from the card. This is in comparison to our GTX 980 Ti, where we saw gains of around 20 percent"
Wccftech says AMD has admitted it shipped production units with the whine and it should be fixed on future units (ok, so some unlucky users WILL hear this? Surely they RMA so how long before you play with your card?). Just noticed they updated the article saying early production units HAVE it. Normally wouldn't quote those guys but it explains the amazon guy I guess and AMD's own words from Su and the other AMD guy so not exactly rumors here. Again, good luck to Ryan explaining all of this stuff. I have ultimate faith he's whipping up his best spin ;) It's not a bad card, but the problem for AMD is the competition is NOT radeon 290x as most seem to end up comparing it to end the end after seeing their benchmarks (well, it's a massive leap over 290x...Whatever). You need to beat the OTHER guys stuff, not just your own.
Gigaplex - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Ryan has explained it multiple times already. They've run the benchmarks, you can see the numbers now in Bench. The article is missing because Ryan is ill.yefi - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
In the original UT, Godlike is the highest accolade, there is no "wicked sick". This also seems to assume the being wicked is more impressive than being a God, hmm...