Eurocom Monster 4 14-inch Gaming Notebook Review

Last spring, I took a look at ASUS’ G751 gaming notebook, which featured NVIDIA’s second-from-the-top GeForce GTX 980M. In that evaluation, I discovered that the card could handle 1440p gaming without issue, so I decided to test gaming out on an external monitor in addition to the internal one. Since the 970M is right up there on the performance scale, I’ve done the same here.

What’s changed this time around is the game selection. Some titles have been dropped and others have been added. As always, we try to cover all of the important bases with our performance testing here, so there are not only high-end games here, but some aging ones as well.

As with most of our GPU-related content, the ultimate goal when testing the Monster 4 was to find the Best Playable settings from each game. Ideally, we want the framerate to be 60, but we can sometimes ignore that rule at our discretion if it makes sense to (and we’ll explain why on a game-by-game basis).

Games tested include Rise of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry Primal, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dying Light, Grand Theft Auto V, Crysis 3, GRID Autosport, Borderlands 2, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Framerates were captured with Fraps; our manual playthroughs can last between 1 and 2 minutes.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

RotTR is a game that I underestimated graphically – it’s simply stunning. It’s also incredibly demanding on a system, with us being forced to run with “Medium” settings in certain cases even at 1080p. The game looks great despite that, especially on a small 14″ monitor.

Far Cry Primal

Far Cry Primal also happens to be graphically demanding. Since I haven’t had a chance to start a campaign here, I just used the built-in benchmark to test. 51 FPS isn’t quite the 60 we want to see, but the game looked great and still felt very smooth during gameplay testing.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I am not sure I could ever get bored looking at The Witcher 3‘s world, and thankfully, I don’t think I’ll have to give it up soon given the game takes great advantage of high-end GPUs. In the Monster 4’s case, its 970M enabled me to run very high detail levels overall and peak at just over 60 FPS. Notably, ambient occlusion was disabled, and shadow quality was set to medium.

Dying Light

Dying Light didn’t require too much tweaking to get running well, but it’s an interesting game where one detail setting change can drastically impact performance. I found this particular blend of settings to be ideal versus increasing anything, as I’d end up dipping below 60 FPS with no major IQ difference to be seen.

Grand Theft Auto V

GTA V might be a console port, but it’s a damn good one where graphics are concerned. On this notebook, the 970M could handle the game at great detail (minus AO and TXAA) at 1080p with the minimum framerate settling at around 60 FPS.

Crysis 3

Can the Monster 4 run Crysis 3? Of course it can, and as the table above highlights, it can do so largely at “Very High” detail levels.

GRID Autosport

As great as games in the GRID series look, they’re not incredibly demanding on graphics hardware. It’s no surprise, then, that the 970M was able to handle this game just fine at 1080p with max detail levels – even 8xMSAA.

Borderlands 2

Following in the footsteps of GRID Autosport, Borderlands 2 runs smoother than butter on this notebook at max detail. If not for the fact that PhysX was cranked to High, the average framerate would be even higher.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

Sleeping Dogs might have come out over three-and-a-half years ago, but it and its Definitive Edition still look downright incredible. With max detail levels, and “High” anti-aliasing, this notebook hits 57 FPS on average in this game. If you want a further boost in performance at almost no sacrifice to image quality, I’d recommend dropping anti-aliasing down to “Normal”.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist

Helping us wrap 1080p testing is Blacklist, which as with some other games in this lineup, runs at max detail with great framerates. That even includes the performance-hitting AO modes.

Since the GTX 970M is such a powerful GPU, I performed 1440p testing in addition to the 1080p testing above. In case you haven’t guessed it, those results are on the next page, so let’s move on.