MSI Raider GE76-12UHS Review

Laptops that includes high-end 12^th Gen Intel Core CPUs have began exhibiting up in shops in India, and avid gamers can get the primary style of this new {hardware} proper now. With constant competitors from AMD over the previous few years, plus Apple’s shift to its personal in-house M1 Pro and M1 Max processors, Intel has lots to show within the premium laptop computer area. The greatest change with the 12^th Gen lineup is a transfer to a heterogenous structure with a number of CPU core sorts. We’ve already seen how this modifications issues for high-end desktops, and now it is time to discuss our first expertise with a laptop computer powered by certainly one of these CPUs.

MSI is likely one of the first firms to refresh its portfolio of gaming laptops in India with 12^th Gen Core CPUs. The new fashions cowl a variety of value factors with totally different display screen sizes and a number of CPU and GPU choices. While the trade general is shifting in the direction of slimmer and lighter fashions, even within the gaming market, what we’ve got with us at this time is the top-of-the-line MSI Raider GE76-12UHS, a beefy gaming laptop computer with specs that max out nearly each possible parameter, and a value that could be arduous for most individuals to abdomen.

If you want a gaming laptop computer and do not need to compromise even somewhat bit on efficiency, this assessment gives you a style of what a limiteless finances can get you in 2022.

High-end {hardware} requires appreciable cooling, making the Raider GE76 comparatively cumbersome

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS value in India

MSI has introduced a number of variants of the Raider collection with a spread of specs. The Raider GE66 mannequin quantity signifies a 15.6-inch display screen whereas GE76 means you get a 17.3-inch display screen. In India, the MSI Raider GE76 begins with a 12^th Gen Core i7 CPU and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU for Rs. 2,85,990 whereas a Core i9 CPU and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU will push the worth as much as a blistering Rs. 4,81,990.

The Raider GE66 is priced at Rs. 2,79,990 and Rs. 4,47,990 for a similar two variants. These are all official costs and retail listings are available a bit decrease. Clearly, these laptops usually are not for the faint of coronary heart. However, not all permutations and mixtures of {hardware} seem like accessible in India – extra on that in a second.

The Titanium Blue exterior of the MSI Raider GE76 would not match the everyday gamer aesthetic however appears to be like good

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS design

First of all, the Raider GE76 is is likely one of the largest laptops I’ve seen in a very long time. Even as most producers are pushing thin-and-light choices within the gaming market, MSI has gone with a very unapologetic strategy that prioritises top-end parts plus the cooling they’re going to require.

Still, it isn’t as cumbersome and heavy as top-tier gaming laptops was once only a few years in the past, and MSI has used the area properly – for instance, the 17.3-inch display screen spans almost your complete width of the lid; there is not a lot plastic round it making the Raider GE76’s physique any wider than it must be. Despite its look, the Raider GE76 weighs solely 2.9kg (not together with the big energy brick) which is lower than what most on a regular basis 15-inch laptops weighed not too way back. You might truly carry it round day-after-day with out an excessive amount of bother if you wish to.

The lid is steel with an icy silver-blue end that MSI calls Titanium Blue. This is considerably uncommon for a gaming laptop computer, but it surely appears to be like fairly good – the one draw back is that smudges are extremely seen. MSI has averted the apparent “gamer” aesthetic although the hinges and corners are barely pronounced, and there are giant vents on the rear. The MSI dragon badge is somewhat garish however that is the one branding you may see anyplace.

When you flip this laptop computer on, nevertheless, all subtlety goes out the window. MSI has chosen to implement a big RGB LED bar throughout your complete entrance lip of the GE76 Raider. By default it cycles by means of jewel-toned purple, inexperienced, and blue. This could be customised by means of MSI’s software program but it surely unusually is not built-in with the keyboard’s lighting results and there is no technique to flip it off shortly when watching a film, for instance.

MSI has gone all in on lighting results with per-key RGB illumination and an enormous bar on the entrance

The keyboard has per-key RGB LED backlighting, and MSI has gone for a barely muted, frosted tone somewhat than the intense colors you would possibly count on. The impact is eye-catching, and you may swap patterns or flip it off shortly utilizing Fn key shortcuts.

As for keyboard structure, not one of the keyboard keys are too small or cramped. There’s a full-sized quantity pad however no paging block. The Fn shortcut secret’s to the suitable of the spacebar, which could take some getting used to. Shortcuts for quantity and display screen brightness adjustment are on the arrow cluster somewhat than the Fn row. The energy button within the top-right nook is a bit stiffer than the others to make it more durable to press by chance.

Because this keyboard was designed by SteelSeries, you get the corporate’s GG app which helps you to synchronise RGB settings and shortcuts throughout totally different equipment. Several video games and apps help customized RGB results. You can observe stats comparable to well being, mana, teammates, spawn time, and buff timers in League of Legends, or compass instructions and power sturdiness in Minecraft, for instance. Unfortunately the app pushes you to enroll in an account with a view to seize and share gameplay clips, and there is additionally a lot of undesirable promotion for different Steelseries merchandise.

The trackpad appears tiny on such an enormous physique however is definitely an honest measurement. It’s aligned to the keyboard’s residence keys, not the chassis, which is sweet. I felt somewhat an excessive amount of friction when swiping round. It’s a little bit of a shock that there aren’t any bodily buttons, however the mechanism is okay for informal use. You’ll have a mouse for critical gaming anyway.

The MSI Raider GE76’s keyboard is spacious however has just a few structure quirks

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS specs

MSI lists two choices for Indian consumers, one with a 12^th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU paired with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, and the opposite with a Core i9 CPU and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU. The unit I’ve for assessment was offered by Intel and MSI, and there are some slight variations in comparison with what’s on sale right here, although this should not have an effect on efficiency. The Core i9-12900HK CPU, which is that this technology’s top-end cell half, has six P-cores with Hyper-Threading operating at as much as 5GHz and eight single-threaded E-cores operating at as much as 3.8GHz. The nominal TDP is 45W however this may be pushed means as much as 115W if a laptop computer’s energy and cooling design enable it. It does have built-in graphics capabilities based mostly on Intel’s Iris Xe structure for low-demand utilization.

There are a number of show choices – full-HD at 360Hz, QHD at 240Hz, and 4K at 120Hz. Each possibility represents a tradeoff, and there are after all totally different video games and duties that would profit from both mixture. Considering the 17.3-inch panel measurement, I’d lean in the direction of the upper resolutions to stability productiveness and gaming, however I can see how some twitch-style avid gamers need the quickest refresh fee doable and are not going to push past full-HD in video games anyway. The assessment unit has the 1080p 360Hz panel. All of those are described as “IPS-level” shows.

RAM help goes as much as 64GB of DDR5-4800 and there are two user-accessible slots. There are additionally two M.2 slots fed by PCIe 4.0 lanes so upgrading should not be a lot of an issue. The assessment unit had 32GB of DDR5 RAM and two 1TB Samsung OEM SSDs. Retail models have just one 1TB SSD. There’s Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth 5.2. The 99.9Wh battery was chosen to max out the capability that is allowed on industrial flights, and also you get a hefty 330W charger within the field.

Most of the ports you’d want steadily are on the edges of the MSI GE76 Raider

Ports are positioned on the edges and again of the Raider GE76. Starting with the left, there are USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) Type-A and Type-C ports (the latter of which helps ShowPort 1.4 video output), plus a 3.5mm audio socket. On the suitable are two USB 3.2 Gen1 (5Gbps) Type-A ports and an SD Express card slot. The rear has the DC energy inlet, HDMI 2.1 and Mini-ShowPort 1.4 video outputs, a single Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, and a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet jack. 

There’s a 1080p webcam however no face recognition or perhaps a fingerprint sensor. The Raider GE76 has stereo 2W audio system plus twin 1W woofers designed by Dynaudio. The keyboard has Steelseries branding. MSI has used six heatpipes two followers, one for the CPU and one for the GPU, which it says are bigger than earlier than.

You’ll get Windows 11, which is required to take full benefit of Intel’s Thread Director function which assigns duties to the suitable sort of core. There’s some preloaded software program too – MSI Center allows you to handle on-device noise cancellation, backups, fan profiles, lighting results, and extra. App Player makes use of Bluestacks’ expertise to assist you to play Android video games. There’s additionally a short-term Norton Security subscription.

Large vents exhaust sizzling air out the rear, and extra ports are positioned right here too

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS efficiency

Let’s first discuss on a regular basis utilization. The show on my assessment unit was non-reflective and usually nice to work with. Content on display screen wasn’t particularly sharp, contemplating the 1920×1080 decision at 17.3 inches, and I’ve seen higher. Colours are pretty punchy and watching movies was fulfilling sufficient. HDR is not on the spec sheet however this panel can get fairly vivid. The audio system fireplace upwards and sideways, creating a large soundstage. They can get loud sufficient to fill a small room, and you may simply watch movies with a pal or two at a substantial distance from the display screen. Sound is obvious, particularly voices, however could be a bit shrill at excessive quantity.

The keyboard is a bit spongy however the keys do have good journey. The structure takes some getting used to, particularly having the Fn key to the suitable of the spacebar. One neat contact is that whenever you maintain the Fn key down, your backlight impact is paused and all accessible combo keys gentle up in purple. The trackpad is fortunately centred to the keyboard. It works properly sufficient and its click on mechanism feels crisp.

Now it is lastly time to check Intel’s newest and best, within the type of the MSI Raider GE76 gaming laptop computer. Of course, we begin with PCMark 10, which measures efficiency throughout a number of real-world use circumstances. The normal run produced a rating of seven,172 whereas the Extended run managed 9,948. The new UL Procyon take a look at is extra specialised – its Office Productivity suite confirmed a results of 7,278 whereas the Photo Editing benchmark rating was 8,198. Compared to the not too long ago examined Asus ProArtwork StudioBook 16 OLED, which is predicated on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, the 12^th Gen Intel Core i9 confirmed important positive aspects.

The browser-based WebXprt 3 and Basemark checks produced 344 and 1,247.37 factors respectively. Cinebench R20’s single-core and multi-core scores had been 634 and 5,614. POVRay’s default benchmark scene was rendered in 49s whereas V-Ray confirmed CPU and GPU render scores of 16,226 and 554 respectively. The Blender 3D benchmark took 2 minutes, 56 seconds to finish the acquainted BMW render, 7 minutes 54 seconds for the Classroom take a look at, and seven minutes, 58 seconds for the Barcelona Pavilion scene.

Available shortcuts are highlighted whenever you maintain the Fn key down

In real-world checks, the MSI Raider GE76 was capable of compress a 3.24GB of varied information utilizing 7zip in 1 minute, 12 seconds, whereas Handbrake took 36 seconds to transcode a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265. In this latter take a look at, the Ryzen-based laptop computer had an enormous benefit because of its increased variety of highly effective cores working in parallel. CrystalDiskMark measured sequential reads and writes for the first SSD at 7,031MBps and 5,116.7MBps respectively, whereas random reads and writes got here in at 2,827.6MBps and 1,381.3MBps.

Coming to graphics and gaming efficiency, which is what everybody needs to find out about, we once more begin with artificial checks. 3DMark’s DX12 Time Spy Extreme take a look at rating was 5,881, whereas the Port Royal take a look at with ray tracing managed 7,940 factors. The Nvidia DLSS function take a look at confirmed scores of 36.86fps with DLSS off and 85.63fps with it enabled. Unigine’s Superposition benchmark was restricted to 1920×1080, however with pushing high quality as much as the Extreme preset, the typical efficiency was 46.32fps.

We begin our in-game checks with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which averaged 134fps at 1920×1080 on the Highest high quality preset. Surprisingly, with shadow ray tracing enabled and DLSS set to Balanced mode, the body fee stayed just about the identical. Metro: Exodus additionally helps each options. At its Ultra preset, the sport’s benchmark instrument reported a 90.72fps common. With ray tracing set to High, that dropped to 76.72fps, however with DLSS enabled, the typical bouced again to 83.98fps.

Far Cry 5 averaged 125fps and there was no want to check at something under its Ultra preset. Assasin’s Creed: Odyssey put up a rating of 80fps at its Ultra High settings. Middle Earth: Shadow of War had no bother hitting 150fps at Ultra high quality, and Gears Tactics averaged 143.2fps at its personal Ultra setting.

I noticed extraordinarily fluid efficiency when manually operating by means of some video games. Doom Eternal, which has little bother even with mid-range {hardware}, comfortably hit 250fps even at its Ultra Nightmare high quality setting, however that dropped fairly a bit in heavy combat scenes. With ray tracing turned on and DLSS set to balanced, I noticed the body fee fluctuate between 170fps and 220fps utilizing the in-game overlay. I then fired up Control with its high quality set to High. Without any results, I noticed efficiency as much as 120fps utilizing Nvidia’s efficiency overlay. That dropped to round 75fps with ray tracing on, and about 100fps with DLSS set to Balanced mode to compensate.

The energy brick you get with the MSI Raider GE76 is large and heavy

These are all very excessive body charges, however I’d have most popular to have been capable of take a look at all these video games at increased resolutions. It is not doubtless that anybody would spend a lot on an enormous laptop computer with a 17.3-inch 360Hz panel after which use an exterior monitor as a substitute, in order that was not a take a look at state of affairs for this assessment. Of course a decision of 1920×1080 will enable video games to run very properly.

That mentioned, the 360Hz refresh fee plus the efficiency of the CPU and GPU on this laptop computer made video games look unbelievable. Microstuttering was just about a non-issue. I noticed no tearing in any respect, even in benchmark scenes that sometimes run poorly. It’s arduous to quantify whether or not 360Hz is that a lot better than, say 240Hz and even 144Hz for most individuals. Sure, there are some varieties of video games that can profit from this mixture of decision and refresh fee, however others will discover 1080p a bit too restrictive. I’d have most popular both of MSI’s different choices; QHD at 240Hz and 4K at 120Hz.

When operating video games and checks, the followers of the MSI Raider GE76 spin up inside just a few seconds and may get fairly loud – not distracting, however positively noticeable. Hot air is pushed out the again and sides, and I needed to pull my mouse ahead to keep away from discomfort. The keyboard will get heat however that is tolerable across the WASD space. However, the steel space above and close to the higher sides of the keyboard tray can turn out to be too sizzling to the touch for greater than a second or two.

When it involves a 17.3-inch gaming laptop computer with flagship specs, battery life most likely is not excessive on consumers’ lists of priorities. Intel does declare energy effectivity enhancements for the Alder Lake structure, partly because of the E-cores and partly to its ‘Intel 7′ manufacturing course of. Even so, MSI has gone with the best capability that can be allowed by means of airport safety – 99.9Wh.

Don’t count on to play high-end video games whereas operating on battery energy. I ran just a few checks to see whether or not we’re at a degree the place that is doable, but it surely is not. 3DMark’s Port Royal and Time Spy Extreme scores crashed to 1,650 and 1,355 respectively, and Middle Earth: Shadow of War managed solely 38fps on the similar settings as earlier than.

I observed that the Raider GE76’s followers would typically turn out to be audible even when performing mundane duties, indicating spikes in energy consumption. With common on a regular basis use, involving some video streaming and plenty of browser-based work, I did not get greater than six hours on a single cost (the LED results and refresh fee had been at their default settings). The intensive Battery Eater Pro take a look at ran for 1 hour, 43 minutes with LEDs disabled and our common take a look at situations enforced. It charged to about 78 % in two hours, which is alright.

The MSI Raider GE76 might be referred to as a “desktop replacement” but it surely is not too heavy to hold round day-after-day

Verdict

Intel’s top-end 12^th Gen ‘Alder Lake’ cell CPU, the Core i9-12900HK, is a beast. It reached new heights in a number of benchmarks and units a excessive bar for AMD to match with its upcoming Ryzen 6000 collection. The mixture of this CPU, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU, the 360Hz display screen, and all the opposite top-end {hardware} within the Raider GE76 made for an exceptional gaming expertise. Once you get used to enjoying at properly over 100fps in a number of high-end titles at their highest doable settings, it is arduous to return. I’m nonetheless not satisfied that the 360Hz refresh fee is price dropping to 1080p for, however that is why a number of choices can be found.

Of course this sort of laptop computer is not for everybody. Not solely is the MSI Raider GE76 cumbersome by at this time’s requirements, but it surely additionally runs sizzling and is ludicrously costly. This type of cash might purchase you a reasonably succesful small automobile, model new, and it is fairly sure that one thing considerably higher will come alongside in a yr or much less. A laptop computer of this calibre is an opulent indulgence, and whereas it ought to work nice for a few years, it will not be top-of-the-line for lengthy.

Let’s additionally discuss in regards to the creator laptop computer market. Many individuals who want critical efficiency for content material creation work comparable to 3D modelling, high-res video manufacturing, animation, and even data-heavy workloads typically purchase gaming laptops for his or her {hardware}. Performance in our benchmarks exhibits that if time is cash, an funding of this magnitude would possibly make sense for lots of pros. There are positive to be a number of laptops out there quickly extra tailor-made to this market, but it surely’s good to have choices that serve for work in addition to play.