Hi fellas, So I was excited for the 2080 series of laptops and went ahead and ordered the GS75 Stealth as I love that design of laptop, I've tried one with the 1070 Maxq and whilst I was impressed I felt I wanted a little more performance.
I've since been looking at benchmarks and it's looking like the 20xx series almost if not has no performance increase what so ever over the 10 series which has me worried, as I've spent £3200 on the GS75 Stealth 2080 MaxQ. I've no real interest in RTX as if I want that I'd use my desktop for that if i chose to upgrade from the 1080ti however I have no plans to in the near future.
My question is should I drop the GS75 stealth with the 2080MaxQ in it and go ahead and buy a 1080 series laptop? I Love the sleak design and thin bezel of the MSI GS laptops so ideally I'd love to stick to that sort of design but I'm not worried about swapping to another brand. I have around £3k budget but a lower price is always better but that's what I'm aiming to spend max. Can anyone give me some advice on what to do? I was told by OCUK the 2080MaxQ benches 10% faster than a desktop GTX1080 GPU hence the reason behind ordering the GS75. This here also shows the 2080 MaxQ is quite a significant boost over the 1070MaxQ
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...Nvidia-GTX-1070-Mobile-Max-Q/m704710vsm301524
*UPDATE* So people have been asking me what my opinion on this laptop is, the MSI GS75 2080 Max Q. By no means am I an expert reviewer this is just my take and my opinion on this specific laptop.
Build Quality: First of all, the build quality for the asking price of £3400 with 32GB of ram is just not there for that amount of money, it's a plastic chassis but a very flexible and weak one at that, it does make it lighter however given a drop test I've no doubt in my mind it would easily break the plastic and possible break the system. It flexes beyond my comfort zone of such an expensive device should do. The plastic only has a weak layer of paint which given over the time would wear down. Should you sit it at a desk and never move it, you'll have no problems however you are paying a premium for the weight, thinness and portability, which begs the question, why not just get a desktop for half the price in that case?
Performance: Now the performance is actually very good given the size of the laptop chassis and what they've managed to squeeze into such a small chassis, however from various bench marking and testing it proved a very small upgrade over the 1070 Max Q GS65 STEALTH.
Heaven Benchmark itself only proved to be 400 over the 1070 Max Q and only 200 more than a 1070 MaxP now this isn't an RTX test but testing a non RTX vs an RTX is pointless. The frame rates during the test of Heaven Benchmark were within a range of 10 fps difference, not that big of a deal.
I did try overclocking the 2080 Max Q to achieve the utmost performance I could squeeze out of it but it just wouldn't play ball, I'd get a small OC and run into problems not 10-20 mins into gaming. This would be down to a power limit.
Thermals: CPU Wise, on 100% CPU fan speed (which even with noise cancelling headphones) I could still hear it and it would still thermal throttle even after an underclock down to 3.6ghz and an undervolt of 150mv and -50 on cache. I had to knock it down to 3.2ghz to achieve an under 88 Degrees on games like Apex - World of Warcraft - Anthem - Hitman 2 - Battlefield V. sometimes even with these underclocking and volts it would still go over 91 occassionally. I did notice whilst gaming my left palm would get hot after a 2+ hour gaming session, it did make it uncomfortable sometimes, but with the size and the power, it's to be expected. A hoodie sleeve on my palm negated it.
GPU Wise, never saw it over heat, at 70% fan it wouldn't ever thermal throttle.
Screen: No complaints about the 144hz thin bezel screen, the colours are wonderful, fantastic 3ms response time, aside from the build quality again, it's an impressive screen.
Noise: With cooler boost on it was unbearable, absolutely horrific noise wise, it whined a bit and out right even with headphones on low music playing in the background of games it was still extremely noticeable. Now the problem I personally had was MSI have (not saying this is strictly MSI only) However the BIOS itself would override any settings you put on the dragon center, no matter how quiet I wanted it even when it wasn't under heavy load it would just override them settings I assume to avoid damage, now that in itself sounds good right? Wrong, even when just browsing youtube or the internet it would spike up and down and the fans would go mental to compensate, it wouldn't calm down and settle, if I left it doing nothing at all it would be silent, and even watching a movie for example would spiral the CPU fans to go hectic. GPU Noise levels were more than adequate and not relatively annoying at all.
Up-gradable: The GS75 comes with 3 M.2 slots mine came with 1TB of storage (2 raid 0 512gb drives) and one slot spare for an additional drive, plenty of drive space for a laptop and more adequate than a lot of laptops I have tried. It does not have a 2.5 drive bay however given it has 3 M.2 slots, I'd say that's a fair compromise and it does in fact give the laptop itself more battery life as it's capable of a larger battery.
Unlike it's predecessor the GS65 it is not upside down inside so you can just take the bottom off, and upgrade your drives as you require without needing to take the whole thing apart, you can also access the GPU and CPU fans and thermal paste this way, highly advisable as MSI's paste hasn't been deemed worthy and there are hundreds of posts on various sites showing the thermal drops with higher quality paste.
Battery Life: Extremely better than a few gaming laptops I have tested, however I put this down to no 2.5 bay, and the lack of GSync not draining the battery. I got a little over 5 hours from full to empty watching movies and browsing.
Verdict: Overall would I recommend the GS75? Well that's a 2 part answer. Yes and No.
Yes: The performance is fantastic for such a small thin laptop, it weighs a little over 4.9lbs and is extremely portable, it's got great gaming potential and it played everything I through at it at about 70 fps, including some of the latest titles. It's sleek, beautifully designed, and the fact they packed so much into such a small thin chassis is nothing but impressive.
No: £3,400 - I cannot stress this enough, 3 thousand 4 hundred GBP for this laptop, it's nothing special over any other 2080 gaming laptops currently, it has a much weaker Max Q Variant of the 2080 and even for the thinness it doesn't warrant that price vs performance. The GE75 has a full size 2080 in it and is about an inch thick total.
If you're in the market for a RTX gaming laptop this 2080 Max Q Will not give you the performance you desire with RTX, now yes bare in mine this isn't a desktop and the drivers aren't optimized, however the non Max Q version performs quite a bit better and a much, much lower cost, around £1,000. I have read there will be as much as 15% increase from the 20XX Series with time to optimize drivers better, this is still not enough to net you 60fps stable with RTX on, I did not notice much performance difference between low and ultra on RTX, around 10-12FPS. Battlefield V Would give about 47 FPS average up to 60 with not much going on and not much loaded.
I did not keep mine and I sent mine back for an RMA refund, I instead opted for the Alienware Area 51M with a 2080 and an I9 9900k and a full size 2080 and it worked out cheaper, not much but it was about £200 cheaper. However this will rather heavy and may not be suitable for some, I personally would recommend the GE75 if you want to stay with MSI, you get a full size 2080 - much better thermals, lower noise and it's only about an inch thick with the lid closed.
I stress this is my personal opinion, my review of the GS75 stealth as an avid gamer for 25 years, and an IT Technician for 10 years. If you would require anymore information and would like to ask feel free and I shall give the best answer I can.
I've since been looking at benchmarks and it's looking like the 20xx series almost if not has no performance increase what so ever over the 10 series which has me worried, as I've spent £3200 on the GS75 Stealth 2080 MaxQ. I've no real interest in RTX as if I want that I'd use my desktop for that if i chose to upgrade from the 1080ti however I have no plans to in the near future.
My question is should I drop the GS75 stealth with the 2080MaxQ in it and go ahead and buy a 1080 series laptop? I Love the sleak design and thin bezel of the MSI GS laptops so ideally I'd love to stick to that sort of design but I'm not worried about swapping to another brand. I have around £3k budget but a lower price is always better but that's what I'm aiming to spend max. Can anyone give me some advice on what to do? I was told by OCUK the 2080MaxQ benches 10% faster than a desktop GTX1080 GPU hence the reason behind ordering the GS75. This here also shows the 2080 MaxQ is quite a significant boost over the 1070MaxQ
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compa...Nvidia-GTX-1070-Mobile-Max-Q/m704710vsm301524
*UPDATE* So people have been asking me what my opinion on this laptop is, the MSI GS75 2080 Max Q. By no means am I an expert reviewer this is just my take and my opinion on this specific laptop.
Build Quality: First of all, the build quality for the asking price of £3400 with 32GB of ram is just not there for that amount of money, it's a plastic chassis but a very flexible and weak one at that, it does make it lighter however given a drop test I've no doubt in my mind it would easily break the plastic and possible break the system. It flexes beyond my comfort zone of such an expensive device should do. The plastic only has a weak layer of paint which given over the time would wear down. Should you sit it at a desk and never move it, you'll have no problems however you are paying a premium for the weight, thinness and portability, which begs the question, why not just get a desktop for half the price in that case?
Performance: Now the performance is actually very good given the size of the laptop chassis and what they've managed to squeeze into such a small chassis, however from various bench marking and testing it proved a very small upgrade over the 1070 Max Q GS65 STEALTH.
Heaven Benchmark itself only proved to be 400 over the 1070 Max Q and only 200 more than a 1070 MaxP now this isn't an RTX test but testing a non RTX vs an RTX is pointless. The frame rates during the test of Heaven Benchmark were within a range of 10 fps difference, not that big of a deal.
I did try overclocking the 2080 Max Q to achieve the utmost performance I could squeeze out of it but it just wouldn't play ball, I'd get a small OC and run into problems not 10-20 mins into gaming. This would be down to a power limit.
Thermals: CPU Wise, on 100% CPU fan speed (which even with noise cancelling headphones) I could still hear it and it would still thermal throttle even after an underclock down to 3.6ghz and an undervolt of 150mv and -50 on cache. I had to knock it down to 3.2ghz to achieve an under 88 Degrees on games like Apex - World of Warcraft - Anthem - Hitman 2 - Battlefield V. sometimes even with these underclocking and volts it would still go over 91 occassionally. I did notice whilst gaming my left palm would get hot after a 2+ hour gaming session, it did make it uncomfortable sometimes, but with the size and the power, it's to be expected. A hoodie sleeve on my palm negated it.
GPU Wise, never saw it over heat, at 70% fan it wouldn't ever thermal throttle.
Screen: No complaints about the 144hz thin bezel screen, the colours are wonderful, fantastic 3ms response time, aside from the build quality again, it's an impressive screen.
Noise: With cooler boost on it was unbearable, absolutely horrific noise wise, it whined a bit and out right even with headphones on low music playing in the background of games it was still extremely noticeable. Now the problem I personally had was MSI have (not saying this is strictly MSI only) However the BIOS itself would override any settings you put on the dragon center, no matter how quiet I wanted it even when it wasn't under heavy load it would just override them settings I assume to avoid damage, now that in itself sounds good right? Wrong, even when just browsing youtube or the internet it would spike up and down and the fans would go mental to compensate, it wouldn't calm down and settle, if I left it doing nothing at all it would be silent, and even watching a movie for example would spiral the CPU fans to go hectic. GPU Noise levels were more than adequate and not relatively annoying at all.
Up-gradable: The GS75 comes with 3 M.2 slots mine came with 1TB of storage (2 raid 0 512gb drives) and one slot spare for an additional drive, plenty of drive space for a laptop and more adequate than a lot of laptops I have tried. It does not have a 2.5 drive bay however given it has 3 M.2 slots, I'd say that's a fair compromise and it does in fact give the laptop itself more battery life as it's capable of a larger battery.
Unlike it's predecessor the GS65 it is not upside down inside so you can just take the bottom off, and upgrade your drives as you require without needing to take the whole thing apart, you can also access the GPU and CPU fans and thermal paste this way, highly advisable as MSI's paste hasn't been deemed worthy and there are hundreds of posts on various sites showing the thermal drops with higher quality paste.
Battery Life: Extremely better than a few gaming laptops I have tested, however I put this down to no 2.5 bay, and the lack of GSync not draining the battery. I got a little over 5 hours from full to empty watching movies and browsing.
Verdict: Overall would I recommend the GS75? Well that's a 2 part answer. Yes and No.
Yes: The performance is fantastic for such a small thin laptop, it weighs a little over 4.9lbs and is extremely portable, it's got great gaming potential and it played everything I through at it at about 70 fps, including some of the latest titles. It's sleek, beautifully designed, and the fact they packed so much into such a small thin chassis is nothing but impressive.
No: £3,400 - I cannot stress this enough, 3 thousand 4 hundred GBP for this laptop, it's nothing special over any other 2080 gaming laptops currently, it has a much weaker Max Q Variant of the 2080 and even for the thinness it doesn't warrant that price vs performance. The GE75 has a full size 2080 in it and is about an inch thick total.
If you're in the market for a RTX gaming laptop this 2080 Max Q Will not give you the performance you desire with RTX, now yes bare in mine this isn't a desktop and the drivers aren't optimized, however the non Max Q version performs quite a bit better and a much, much lower cost, around £1,000. I have read there will be as much as 15% increase from the 20XX Series with time to optimize drivers better, this is still not enough to net you 60fps stable with RTX on, I did not notice much performance difference between low and ultra on RTX, around 10-12FPS. Battlefield V Would give about 47 FPS average up to 60 with not much going on and not much loaded.
I did not keep mine and I sent mine back for an RMA refund, I instead opted for the Alienware Area 51M with a 2080 and an I9 9900k and a full size 2080 and it worked out cheaper, not much but it was about £200 cheaper. However this will rather heavy and may not be suitable for some, I personally would recommend the GE75 if you want to stay with MSI, you get a full size 2080 - much better thermals, lower noise and it's only about an inch thick with the lid closed.
I stress this is my personal opinion, my review of the GS75 stealth as an avid gamer for 25 years, and an IT Technician for 10 years. If you would require anymore information and would like to ask feel free and I shall give the best answer I can.
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