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 players 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 Professional and M1 Max processors, Intel has rather a lot to show within the premium laptop computer house. The most important change with the 12^th Gen lineup is a transfer to a heterogenous structure with a number of CPU core sorts. We have already seen how this adjustments issues for high-end desktops, and now it is time to speak about our first expertise with a laptop computer powered by one in all these CPUs.

MSI is without doubt one of the first corporations to refresh its portfolio of gaming laptops in India with 12^th Gen Core CPUs. The brand new fashions cowl a variety of worth factors with totally different display sizes and a number of CPU and GPU choices. Whereas the trade general is shifting in direction of slimmer and lighter fashions, even within the gaming market, what we now have 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 worth that may be exhausting for most individuals to abdomen.

In the event you want a gaming laptop computer and do not need to compromise even slightly bit on efficiency, this assessment provides you with a style of what an infinite finances can get you in 2022.

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

 

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS worth in India

MSI has introduced a number of variants of the Raider sequence with a spread of specs. The Raider GE66 mannequin quantity signifies a 15.6-inch display whereas GE76 means you get a 17.3-inch display. 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 should not for the faint of coronary heart. Nonetheless, not all permutations and mixtures of {hardware} look like out there 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 seems good

 

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS design

To start with, the Raider GE76 is is without doubt one of the largest laptops I’ve seen in a very long time. At the same time as most producers are pushing thin-and-light choices within the gaming market, MSI has gone with a very unapologetic method that prioritises top-end elements plus the cooling they’re going to require.

Nonetheless, it is not as cumbersome and heavy as top-tier gaming laptops was just some years in the past, and MSI has used the house effectively – for instance, the 17.3-inch display spans practically 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. Regardless of 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 possibly can truly carry it round day by day with out an excessive amount of bother if you wish to.

The lid is metallic with an icy silver-blue end that MSI calls Titanium Blue. That is considerably uncommon for a gaming laptop computer, nevertheless it seems fairly good – the one draw back is that smudges are extremely seen. MSI has prevented the plain “gamer” aesthetic although the hinges and corners are barely pronounced, and there are massive vents on the rear. The MSI dragon badge is slightly garish however that is the one branding you may see wherever.

Once you flip this laptop computer on, nonetheless, 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 via jewel-toned pink, inexperienced, and blue. This may be customised via MSI’s software program nevertheless it unusually is not built-in with the keyboard’s lighting results and there is not any 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 quite than the brilliant colors you would possibly count on. The impact is eye-catching, and you’ll change 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 is a full-sized quantity pad however no paging block. The Fn shortcut secret’s to the correct of the spacebar, which could take some getting used to. Shortcuts for quantity and display brightness adjustment are on the arrow cluster quite than the Fn row. The ability button within the top-right nook is a bit stiffer than the others to make it tougher to press by accident.

As a result of 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. A number of video games and apps help customized RGB results. You possibly can observe stats reminiscent of well being, mana, teammates, spawn time, and buff timers in League of Legends, or compass instructions and power sturdiness in Minecraft, for instance. Sadly the app pushes you to enroll in an account with a purpose to seize and share gameplay clips, and there is additionally a number of undesirable promotion for different Steelseries merchandise.

The trackpad appears tiny on such an enormous physique however is definitely an honest measurement. It is aligned to the keyboard’s residence keys, not the chassis, which is nice. I felt slightly an excessive amount of friction when swiping round. It is a bit of a shock that there aren’t any bodily buttons, however the mechanism is okay for informal use. You will have a mouse for severe 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 patrons, 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 supplied 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 working at as much as 5GHz and eight single-threaded E-cores working at as much as 3.8GHz. The nominal TDP is 45W however this may be pushed method as much as 115W if a laptop computer’s energy and cooling design permit it. It does have built-in graphics capabilities primarily based 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. Every choice represents a tradeoff, and there are in fact totally different video games and duties that would profit from both mixture. Contemplating the 17.3-inch panel measurement, I would lean in direction of the upper resolutions to steadiness productiveness and gaming, however I can see how some twitch-style players need the quickest refresh fee potential 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 items 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 business flights, and also you get a hefty 330W charger within the field.

Many of the ports you’d want continuously are on the edges of the MSI GE76 Raider

 

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

There is 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 will get Home windows 11, which is required to take full benefit of Intel’s Thread Director characteristic which assigns duties to the suitable kind of core. There’s some preloaded software program too – MSI Heart allows you to handle on-device noise cancellation, backups, fan profiles, lighting results, and extra. App Participant makes use of Bluestacks’ know-how to can help you play Android video games. There’s additionally a short-term Norton Safety subscription.

Giant vents exhaust scorching air out the rear, and extra ports are positioned right here too

 

MSI Raider GE76-12UHS efficiency

Let’s first speak about on a regular basis utilization. The show on my assessment unit was non-reflective and customarily nice to work with. Content material on display wasn’t particularly sharp, contemplating the 1920×1080 decision at 17.3 inches, and I’ve seen higher. Colors are pretty punchy and watching movies was pleasant sufficient. HDR is not on the spec sheet however this panel can get fairly shiny. The audio system fireplace upwards and sideways, creating a large soundstage. They’ll get loud sufficient to fill a small room, and you might simply watch movies with a buddy or two at a substantial distance from the display. Sound is evident, 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 correct of the spacebar. One neat contact is that whenever you maintain the Fn key down, your backlight impact is paused and all out there combo keys gentle up in pink. The trackpad is fortunately centred to the keyboard. It really works effectively sufficient and its click on mechanism feels crisp.

Now it is lastly time to check Intel’s newest and biggest, within the type of the MSI Raider GE76 gaming laptop computer. In fact, we begin with PCMark 10, which measures efficiency throughout a number of real-world use instances. The usual run produced a rating of seven,172 whereas the Prolonged run managed 9,948. The brand new UL Procyon check is extra specialised – its Workplace Productiveness suite confirmed a results of 7,278 whereas the Picture Enhancing benchmark rating was 8,198. In comparison with the lately examined Asus ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED, which is predicated on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, the 12^th Gen Intel Core i9 confirmed vital beneficial properties.

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 have 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 check, and seven minutes, 58 seconds for the Barcelona Pavilion scene.

Out there 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. On this latter check, the Ryzen-based laptop computer had an enormous benefit because of its larger 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 desires to find out about, we once more begin with artificial checks. 3DMark’s DX12 Time Spy Excessive check rating was 5,881, whereas the Port Royal check with ray tracing managed 7,940 factors. The Nvidia DLSS characteristic check 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 Excessive preset, the common 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 Extremely preset, the sport’s benchmark software reported a 90.72fps common. With ray tracing set to Excessive, that dropped to 76.72fps, however with DLSS enabled, the common bouced again to 83.98fps.

Far Cry 5 averaged 125fps and there was no want to check at something beneath its Extremely preset. Assasin’s Creed: Odyssey put up a rating of 80fps at its Extremely Excessive settings. Center Earth: Shadow of Warfare had no bother hitting 150fps at Extremely high quality, and Gears Techniques averaged 143.2fps at its personal Extremely setting.

I noticed extraordinarily fluid efficiency when manually working via some video games. Doom Everlasting, which has little bother even with mid-range {hardware}, comfortably hit 250fps even at its Extremely Nightmare high quality setting, however that dropped fairly a bit in heavy battle scenes. With ray tracing turned on and DLSS set to balanced, I noticed the body fee range between 170fps and 220fps utilizing the in-game overlay. I then fired up Management with its high quality set to Excessive. With none 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 ability brick you get with the MSI Raider GE76 is massive and heavy

 

These are all very excessive body charges, however I’d have most popular to have been capable of check all these video games at larger 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 an alternative, in order that was not a check situation for this assessment. In fact a decision of 1920×1080 will permit video games to run very effectively.

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 way, even in benchmark scenes that usually run poorly. It is exhausting to quantify whether or not 360Hz is that a lot better than, say 240Hz and even 144Hz for most individuals. Certain, there are some forms of video games that may 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 working video games and checks, the followers of the MSI Raider GE76 spin up inside just a few seconds and might get fairly loud – not distracting, however undoubtedly noticeable. Scorching 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. Nonetheless, the metallic space above and close to the higher sides of the keyboard tray can develop into too scorching to the touch for greater than a second or two.

In terms of a 17.3-inch gaming laptop computer with flagship specs, battery life most likely is not excessive on patrons’ 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 very best capability that might be allowed via airport safety – 99.9Wh.

Do not count on to play high-end video games whereas working on battery energy. I ran just a few checks to see whether or not we’re at a degree the place that is potential, nevertheless it is not. 3DMark’s Port Royal and Time Spy Excessive scores crashed to 1,650 and 1,355 respectively, and Center Earth: Shadow of Warfare managed solely 38fps on the similar settings as earlier than.

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

The MSI Raider GE76 might be known as a “desktop alternative” nevertheless it is not too heavy to hold round day by 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 sequence. The mix of this CPU, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU, the 360Hz display, and all the opposite top-end {hardware} within the Raider GE76 made for an exceptional gaming expertise. When you get used to enjoying at effectively over 100fps in a number of high-end titles at their highest potential settings, it is exhausting to return. I am 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.

In fact this type of laptop computer is not for everybody. Not solely is the MSI Raider GE76 cumbersome by at this time’s requirements, nevertheless it additionally runs scorching and is ludicrously costly. This type of cash may purchase you a reasonably succesful small automotive, model new, and it is fairly sure that one thing considerably higher will come alongside in a 12 months 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 speak in regards to the creator laptop computer market. Many individuals who want severe efficiency for content material creation work reminiscent of 3D modelling, high-res video manufacturing, animation, and even data-heavy workloads typically purchase gaming laptops for his or her {hardware}. Efficiency 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, nevertheless it’s good to have choices that serve for work in addition to play.