MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro Review

Performance Analysis

The time of 142 seconds in the PCMark 8 video encoding test isn't lightning fast but it's enough to keep up with many desktop CPUs. It was only 12 seconds adrift of the Core i7-5930K but the Core i7-4790K was way out in front. There was less of a difference in the Photo editing test, although we suspect that a more up-to-date system in terms of OS and updates may have resulted in a slightly more favourable result for the GS70 2QE Stealth Pro here.

If you'll be delving into a lot of multi-threaded applications, then the GS70 2QE Stealth Pro's quad-core hyper-threaded CPU definitely has some serious grunt. It bettered the Intel Core i5-4690K convincingly in Terragen 3 and was noticeably faster in Cinebench R15 too. However, equivalent desktop CPUs such as the Core i7-4790K were considerably faster still and even more so when overclocked.


A pattern emerged in the gaming tests, which was that the GTX 970M plus the GS70 2QE Stealth Pro's other hardware, roughly matched our graphics test system with a GTX 960 desktop GPU installed. They got similar results in Battlefield 4, Crysis 3 and Unigine, so if you're looking for a real world equivalent of the GTX 970M, the GTX 960 is a good bet. However, you'll be pretty disappointed if you were expecting GTX 970 performance - as the Unigine Valley result shows, the desktop version is in a different league entirely.

As we suspected, the storage results were generally excellent, with a fantastic result in the CrystalDiskMark Sequential test - a read speed of 980MB/sec is the best result we've seen from any PC or laptop and only a modern M.2 or PCI-E SSD could do better. The 4K random read result was disappointing, but the rest of the tests were good. As with most gaming laptops, you won't see this performance away from a power adaptor, but the GS70 2QE Stealth Pro did manage to limit the amount of throttling when under heavy loads connected to the mains. It did get pretty toasty underneath, but it managed to keep temperatures in check without making your ears bleed.

Battery life isn't usually a strong point for gaming laptops, and the GS70 2QE Stealth Pro is no exception. You'll be lucky to see an hour of gaming away from power, with our sample dying after just 46 minutes of a Unigine Valley loop. More mundane tasks such as word processing, will see this climb significantly, though, and we saw over three and a half hours using PCMark 8's conventional battery test, which mimics working with office applications and web browsers. Our maximum idle test saw this rise to a little over 4 hours, with all these tests using the Windows 8 power saver profile.

Conclusion

If anything you could consider the MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro to be a slightly strange laptop. It sports a large 17in screen and isn't particularly portable, yet MSI has focussed intently on reducing its profile. If we were making a 17in laptop, we'd probably not consider thickness and weight as important factors - at least not compared to 15in and 14in models. Thankfully, apart from the lack of an optical drive, there have been few sacrifices made to achieve the super-slim chassis and the resulting weight of 2.66kg is certainly manageable if you do need to carry it around with you occasionally.

In terms of performance, few people will be left wanting as both the CPU, GPU and storage all performed well in our benchmarks. You won't be seeing performance to rival a desktop GTX 970
and Core i7-4790K, but you'll be within reach of systems sporting the likes of a Core i5-4690K and GTX 960, at 1080p anyway. The final result of battery life is slightly disappointing for such a large laptop, but if you're creating something that's thin, the first component usually to be cut back is the battery. This isn't too much of an issue with desktop replacements, though, as laptops such as the MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro are primarily designed to be used at home or with a power adaptor. That said, if you need to make a short excursion away, you'll have a few hours of usage time, which should see you through most movies or 3-4 hours of word processing.

Combined with excellent built quality, a reasonable screen and backlit keyboard and a specification that's more than up to 1080p gaming, the MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro is a solid choice for a 17in gaming laptop. One thing to consider, though, is that the Broadwell replacements for the Core i7-4720HQ CPU have landed and MSI has already started employing them in its laptops. Unless you can get the MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro with an older CPU for a lower price, it would make absolute sense to chase down one with a newer Core i7-5000-series 5th Gen CPU instead.