A new year means better game engines, prettier graphics and more pressure on your hardware than the previous year. To keep your framerates up, you need new gaming gear, and MSI has a notebook that will maintain and even improve game performance in a way that you’ll wonder why you ever thought desktop systems were naturally superior.

The GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G (which we reviewed here) is a behemoth of a machine, weighing in at 3.78KG but still compact enough to fit in a backpack. It’ll keep you gaming at the leading edge as you hop from destination to destination.

Backing up that promise is the ability to configure two PCI-E Gen 3.0 x4 SSD’s in Super RAID 4, MSI’s signature RAID 0 storage configuration. As this setup lets the laptop read data from each drive simultaneously, the 6QE can achieve super fast read speeds of up to 3 300MB/s.

For gamers, this blistering read speed means less waiting time staring at loading screens as everything loads incredibly fast, from games to applications to the operating system itself.

The obsession with speed doesn’t end there. The MSI GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G supports up to 64GB of DDR4 memory at a speed of 2 133MHz; you can even add or remove memory as required.

Of course, a game loading quickly means nothing if it doesn’t look good; inside the GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G, MSI has fitted its fastest single graphics chip, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M, and paired it with a G-SYNC ready, 17.3inch IPS display.

Any gamer knows that while vertical sync can eliminate screen tearing, it can also lead to input lag. The latest G-SYNC technology eliminates screen tearing altogether by synchronising the frame rate your GPU is pushing with the frame rate your monitor is using, continually adapting it to the card’s performance.

To handle CPU duties, MSI has equipped the GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G with Intel’s latest Skylake family of processors. There is a choice of an Intel Core i7-6700HQ or a 6820HK; if it’s easy overclocking potential you’re looking for, the 6820HK is the CPU for you, because when it needs an extra boost, MSI SHIFT Technology can deliver a 30% performance increase at the touch of a button.

All of this performance means temperatures and system fan noise naturally increase, but it’s something neither gamers nor MSI want. To make it a non-issue, the latest Cooler Boost 3 technology uses six heat pipes and dual fans to keep things cool by actively pushing heat away from the processor and GPU.

For anybody looking to start the new year off with a refreshed gaming rig, why not consider something a bit more portable? The GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G offers everything a desktop system can, but in a package you can put in a bag and sling over your shoulder.