BENCHMARKS
Catzilla 1.3 1080p: 4469
3DMark Firestrike: 2842
PCMark 8 Creativity Suit: 4329
Battery test (PCMark8):
112min44sec
GAMING GEAR
AWARD
MSI GS60 GHOST Gaming Notebook
RRP: $2,199 | Website: www.msi.com
L
ast issue I looked at the GT70
Dominator Gaming notebook
from MSI. If you didn’t read
that review you can check it out
here. This issue, I had the pleasure
of putting the GS60 Ghost through
its paces. The Ghost is certainly the
lesser of the two notebooks in many
ways, but one that I would take over
the GT70 in a heartbeat.
I’ll get to why that is, but first
let me run you through the
specifications of the model I had
and why that can get a little tricky
when reviewing such a notebook.
The price that I received here is an
average estimated selling price.
That isn’t an issue as that’s normal
but the problem is depending on
the specification; this price can be
$500 lower. So the value proposition
of the GS60 is hard to quantify. It
could either be too expensive or just
priced correctly, you can’t really
know until you check out the specific
unit you may be thinking of buying.
52 The OverClocker Issue 30 | 2014
It’s possibly the worst thing about
this particular notebook I have come
across. You can never tell what
you’re going to pay for it and as such
can’t even budget for it. If I did do
any kind of numeric scoring I would
probably take off points for that
alone.
So be advised that this
price is for the highest end “nonPro” model, with 2x128GB mSATA
drives in RAID 0, 1TB secondary
storage drive, Intel Core i7 4710
and the NVIDIA GTX 860M graphics
card with 2GB of RAM. As usual
with Gaming notebooks, solid
state storage is highly desirable,
especially compared to just how
slow regular 2.5” mechanical drives
are on these. If for some reason
you end up with a version that only
has a mechanical drive, I would
suggest you invest in a standard
2.5” SSD as they tend to be cheaper
than the equivalent sized mSATA
drive and for the most part have
better performance. That aside, this
specific model had MSI’s Super RAID
2 configuration which is essentially
just two drives in RAID 0 as opposed
to Super RAID 3, which - as you
guessed - is three drives in RAID.
The synthetic numbers do show a
difference, but in everyday usage
there’ll be no difference at all.
CPU performance has never
been a concern of mine on gaming
notebooks, and I think it’s not an
issue these days unless you’re
looking at a desktop replacement
machine or a workstation class
portable. Other than that it’s really a
search for the most power efficient
model available within reason so
you can get maximum battery life
from it. In this case, MSI went with
the 4710MQ CPU which is identical to
the 4700MQ apart from the fact that
it comes in at a 100MHz higher CPU
clock, for both nominal and turbo
frequencies. The TDP however is the
same at 47W. Thus the CPU part is