Benchmarks: Gaming
Now onto the important bit, how potent are the dual GTX 980s? Despite the imperfect PCIe configuration, the duo come together to nudge ahead of comparison systems outfitted with an overclocked GeForce GTX 980 Ti.
Could experienced users put together a quicker gaming PC for £3,000? Absolutely, but the trick here is to pack high-end performance into a 6.5-litre cylinder, which MSI does quite well. And in case you're wondering, overclocking the Vortex G65's Core i7 CPU to a maximum of 4.6GHz using the Dragon Center software sees the 3DMark score increase to 17,656.
The synthetic 3DMark result helps compare the Vortex G65 against other systems, but how do the dual GTX 980s fare with regards to real-world gameplay? To find out, we've run a trio of modern titles at FHD, QHD and 4K UHD resolutions, with high or maximum image quality settings.
Gaming at 1,920x1,080 is easy and the system manages to keep above the desired 60 frames per second at 2,560x1,440. Moving up to 4K, however, is one step too far and the games do become juddery at this taxing resolution. It's also worth noting that while the CPU doesn't throttle, the GPUs inevitably will. Our logs reveal that peak GeForce core speed fell from 1,202MHz to 1,088MHz after 10 minutes of gaming.
