MSI GT70-2PE ‘Dominator Pro’ Gaming Notebook Review

Power Consumption

Powermark

The purpose of the workloads is to simulate realistic usage scenarios of portable computing devices. Short test scenarios are looped until the per-iteration run time (five minutes by default) is reached or the battery charge end condition is met. The workloads selected for the benchmark are run in order, each workload once per iteration. Iterations are run until the battery charge has dropped to the desired level or the benchmark is cancelled. Once the battery charge end condition has been met Powermark generates a result based on the time elapsed and battery charge consumed by the workloads. In order to maintain the specified workload weighting the results of the final iteration (during which the battery charge fell to the desired level) is ignored.

Word Processing

The word processing workload is a text editor look-a-like application. It is implemented using RichTextBox control in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Typing in the editor is simulated and throttled to match the typing speed of a user. The workload content is based on a Wikipedia article on batteries.

Web browsing

The web browsing workload opens Internet Explorer and serves content from a local custom-made web server. The content is a modified version of Peacekeeper 1.0 Community site test. The computational load is mostly JavaScript based and performs following tasks:

• Encryption
• XML parsing
• Data filtering
• String sorting
• Window scrolling
• Word processing workload

The word processing workload is a text editor look-a-like application. It is implemented using RichTextBox control in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Typing in the editor is simulated and throttled to match typing speed of a user. The workload content is based on a Wikipedia article on batteries.

Video playback

The video workload simulates watching movies on a portable device.

Clip details:

• Codec: H.264
• Duration: 8:43
• Resolution: 1280 x 720
• Frame rate: 25 frames per second
• Bitrate: approx. 5000 kbps.

Gaming

The gaming workload renders a DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0 scene to simulate the graphics workload of a mainstream game. The scene features cascaded shadow maps and high-resolution shadow mapped point lights.

Productivity

The productivity test includes the web browsing and word processing workloads, simulating a typical work use scenario.

Entertainment

The entertainment test includes the video and gaming workloads, simulating a typical recreational use scenario.

Balanced

The balanced test uses an even split between the web browsing, word processing, video and gaming workloads.

Systems Comparison

PCMark 8 Battery Performance

PCMark 8 improves on previous versions by including new battery life testing tools. The Home, Creative, Work and Applications benchmarks can be used for battery life testing. Choose Battery Life mode to loop the benchmark until the battery is almost empty to accurately measure battery life under real-world conditions. PCMark 8 even supports external instrumentation with 3rd party power measurement equipment.

Power Draw

To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment.