NVIDIA Mobile GeForce GTX 10-Series Review: Pascal Notebooks Slay Benchmarks

Battery Eater Pro puts a load on all subsystems in a notebook, including processor, graphics, memory and storage, in its effort to exhaust a battery as soon as possible. We have lots of legacy comparison data on this test, so we have a wider swath of numbers to compare.

Battery Life Testing Heavy-Duty Workload And Light-Duty Battery Life Performance Tests

Due to our limited time with these machines, we still have more battery life testing to do, but we wanted to share our BEP scores nonetheless. We will be following up with full reviews of these notebooks, so this is not the end of the battery life story by any means. Interestingly, the GeForce GTX 1070-powered Asus notebook came out ahead of the 1060-equipped MSI machine (likely due to it's larger 96 Whr battery), and both drop in just below the middle of the pack. This is not surprising, considering both machines have powerful processors and the fastest GPUs available. These are true desktop replacement machines.

A Very Quick Note On NVIDIA Battery Boost Testing: 

Unfortunately, due to the last minute arrival of an updated driver that fixed an issue with NVIDIA's Battery Boost technology, we didn't get much quality time to properly test this feature. In a quick 15 minute test run, however, we made some preliminary, notable observations. After 15 minutes of gaming on a fully charged battery, the Mobile GeForce GTX 1070-equipped ASUS G752 machine was left with 72% battery life when Battery Boost was disabled. With frame rates capped at 30 FPS with Battery Boost on, however, the G752 had 80% left in the tank. This equates to an 8% gain in battery life every 15 minutes; and if we extrapolate that, it equates to a saving of perhaps as much as 32-percent per hour. We have to do some more rigid testing here, but our quick and dirty observation shows clear power savings with Battery Boost enabled.

Acoustics:

Both the ASUS ROG G752 and MSI GE62VR Apache Pro are what they are. These are full-on gaming notebooks that sport a ton of firepower under their respective hoods, and cooling is confined to the tight constraints of their mobile form factors. As a result, when they're pushed under heavy gaming workloads, fans do spin up to audible levels, though we would not classify either machine as offensive. This all depends on your level of tolerance of course, but if you're considering a notebook of this heft and horsepower, you're likely not the type to mind a little fan whine. This was our first experience with the MSI machine, so we don't really have a frame of reference here, but the ASUS G752 definitely wasn't any louder than its predecessors with Maxwell-powered GeForce GPUs on board.