Hardware Overview

At that place are a ton of configuration options available for the GT72VR encompassing price ranges from $ii,100 to above $3,500. There are far too many to sensibly list in this article, then I've highlighted some choice configurations that indicate what yous tin can get for various prices.

  • GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD, 1080p display - $2,078
  • GTX 1080, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD, 1080p display - $2,599
  • GTX 1070 SLI, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD, 1080p display - $2,769
  • GTX 1080, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 1TB HDD, 1080p brandish - $3,099 – Reviewed!
  • GTX 1080, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 1TB HDD, 4K display - $three,749

Upgrading to the GTX 1080 from the GTX 1070 base model will cost yous $500, while upgrading to two GTX 1070s in SLI costs but under $700 (plus you also become double the RAM and SSD space). Going from a 1080p 120Hz display to a 4K display costs $200.

If you lot're looking at RAM and SSD upgrades, these vary in price quite a flake, and options similar 64GB of RAM actually aren't worth the money in a gaming organisation. It'due south too important to keep in mind that the GT73VR is hands user upgradeable, and there are plenty of actress slots available for boosted SSDs. It may be cheaper to simply upgrade this laptop yourself, although doing so volition void the warranty.

All GT73VRs come equipped with Intel's Core i7-6820HK, a 4-core, eight-thread Skylake CPU with a base clock of 2.vii GHz and a unmarried-core boost clock of three.vi GHz. Compared to the popular Core i7-6700HQ, the 6820HK is 100 MHz faster in all clock speed ranges, and packs 8MB of L3 enshroud rather than 6MB. The 6820HK also has the benefit of beingness a Thousand-series processor, pregnant it is unlocked for easy overclocking.

My GT73VR review unit is also equipped with 32GB of DDR4 RAM clocked at two,400 MHz, and a 512GB SSD that's really two Samsung 256GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs in RAID0. The Wi-Fi 802.11ac solution is provided through a Killer 1535 scrap, which produced decent performance in my limited testing.

The main piece of hardware in this unit, though, is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. This is my first fourth dimension testing the GTX 1080 in a laptop form factor, and it's clearly the most powerful unmarried-GPU setup you tin can get right now. Using the same 16nm Pascal GP104 GPU as the desktop equivalent card, the GTX 1080 for laptops has a huge TDP of 150W, which is slightly higher than last generation'south flagship mobile chip, the GTX 980.

Like all of Nvidia's GeForce 10 series cards, the GTX 1080 in laptops is evenly matched with the desktop GTX 1080. Both GPUs pack 2560 CUDA cores with 160 TMUs and 64 ROPs, with a base of operations clock of 1556 MHz and a rated boost speed of 1733 MHz. This rated boost clock is the same as the desktop card, although the cadre clock is slightly lower. Thank you to GPU Boost 3.0, though, the notebook carte du jour does heave above 1733 MHz in many situations.

The GTX 1080 is besides equipped with 8GB of GDDR5X at 10 GHz on a 256-fleck omnibus, providing 320 GB/south of bandwidth. Once more, this is the same as the desktop card.

The GT73VR packs a bombardment too, which doesn't take upwardly a whole lot of space inside this massive unit, despite clocking in at 74 Wh. For such a large brandish and powerful hardware, this battery is merely a token inclusion so that y'all tin utilize information technology for a short time away from a power signal. Not only is performance reduced when not plugged in, but also this device doesn't last very long fifty-fifty when performing basic tasks like web browsing.