MSI Raider GE76, analysis and opinion

MSI is one of those companies that has a wide range of devices for both gaming (where they are best known for laptops like the Pulse) and work, a segment in which they also have impressive teams like the Creators.

And exactly, if we are talking about teams that attract attention, we should talk about the one that we have enjoyed in recent weeks. And that’s what MSI Raider GE76 is a real beast with the latest components.

We played a lot, a lot with him, and I will give my opinion in this analysis. But first, as always, here is the stratospheric table of characteristics of the analyzed model:

MSI Raider GE76 Partition Analysis:

• Design: aluminum and plastic for a huge laptop that shimmers in many colors
• Screen: Good 4K panel for video games
• Performance: The most powerful laptop we’ve ever tested.
• Keyboard and touchpad: A great and colorful keyboard, but the touchpad isn’t very convincing.
• Conclusion: A performance beast that can’t be moved too far from the desktop.

Aluminum and plastic for a huge laptop that shimmers in different colors

If you start with the design, the photos may not convey it to you, but this is a large laptop, quite large. In addition, he weighs his 3 kg, so moving it from one place to another seems complicated.

To be honest, in the weeks that I tested it, I did not go out of the house much with it and yes, I once took it to the office, but this is not the most suitable laptop for this, because, in addition to other things that you carry in a backpack, it must go into a huge power supply.

Without it, the laptop won’t last long on its own, but you could already get the idea.

But hey, now yes, let’s get into design. It’s made of aluminum and plastic and I think it’s a pretty good laptop..

MSI also seems to be dropping the craze of making extremely aggressive gaming laptops, and here we have a dragon logo lid (there’s minimal fingerprints on the lid) and a bit more.

Open it up, it’s even sleeker and doesn’t look like a gaming laptop until you look up front and see a huge RGB LED strip.

It’s a detail I don’t like, it can be adjusted and give some atmosphere, but I’d rather have it on the back to light up a wall for example.

But of course that would be impossible, because one of the best things about this MSI, besides the power and the panel, is that they did not stint on ports and it is behind us that we have very interesting.

There we find Mini DisplayPort 1.4, Thunderbolt 4, RJ45, HDMI 2.1 and a power port. I like that the ports that often use cables that stick out a bit (power and ethernet) are on the back.

On the right and left side we have another good portion of ports. for example, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, one USB-C Gen 2, a headphone port, and a full-size card reader.

The latter is ideal if you want to edit photos or videos directly from the camera, rather than the microSD card readers you see on many other laptops. So, good for this step, MSI.

And generally speaking, This is a complete station for both games and work. it’s not easy to transport like I said, but it brings together everything you need to get the job done.

Good 4K panel for video games

If you buy this laptop, you will have several panel options. There’s FullHD at 360Hz, two QHDs at 165Hz and 240Hz, and then the variant we analyzed, the one with the 4K panel at 120Hz.

This is an IPS-level panelwhich usually means it’s a VA or IPS panel which is not made by LG, the owner of the “IPS” acronym (yes, we’re in that place…), and it doesn’t mean that the quality is worse towards “True IPS”

There are many laptops with IPS-Level panels that have proven to be some of the best IPS panels on the market, and this one is one of the best.

The pixel density of those 17.3″ is excellentBrightness is on top, viewing angles are also good.

For viewing everyday content, videos, movies and, above all, video games, this is an excellent panel.

It may not be the most color-perfect for professional photography and video work, but for certain levels and, again, gaming… it’s a very good panel.

It has a matte finish, which allows reflections not to be at a party, but when you put it next to a strong light source (a window, for example).

It is clear that we do not have the thinnest screen bezels, but in the end this is a gaming laptop in which this is secondary and, at a minimum, there is a place for a webcam, which, hey, is not bad at all.

It has 1080p resolution and will give you a good experience of remote work or group work using the camera. The microphones are also good, and the speakers, surprisingly for a laptop, offer an impressive experience..

They are located on both sides of the keyboard, which I really appreciate, and the sound is not only high quality, but also quite loud. Now, while playing, you won’t be able to enjoy them because the fan is blowing. And it blows greedily.

The most powerful laptop we’ve ever tested.

And it is normal that there is noise if we take into account the equipment that we have. Processor – Intel Core i9-12900HK.a beast of 14 cores, of which 6 are high-performance at a maximum frequency of 5 GHz, and the remaining 8 are efficient at a maximum frequency of 3.8 GHz.

Accompanied (in our model) 32GB DDR5 @ 4800MHz RTX 3080 Ti (one of the few that has this powerful GPU) and we have 1TB of PCIe4 storage.

Wow, there is nothing left in the list of next generation components that can be included in a laptop. I leave you with a few benchmarks if you want the numbers and we’ll compare them to this year’s Blade 17:

It comes with Windows 11, and performance in applications like DaVinci Resolve or Capture One is impressive not only because of the CPU and GPU power, but also because of the speed of extracting and importing files.

The SSD has a read speed of 6757.45MB/s and a write speed of 4776.33MB/s.. But here we come to play and, as always, we used some of the most demanding games, or with features we like, to run tests.

We have another avalanche of games to test ahead of our next review, but I think this is still a good sample to see how well the PC performs.

As always, when we could, we laid them out to the maximum in graphics functions, but also with ray tracing in ultra and DLSS in maximum quality modeif the game supports it, of course.

These were our results:

As you see, the results are in line with what we could expect from this equipment and the most demanding, Cyberpunk 2077, supports over 30 frames per second on average. Now I do not recommend you to play this game with this configuration.

I would play Cyberpunk at 1440p with ray tracing a step below ultra, or even play with various DLSS quality modes to find a higher average FPS.

But hey, we have to keep in mind that we’re playing in 4K, and games like Control, for example, are ideal at an average of over 50fps. And just like that, if you want to beat 60 FPS with a little play with the video settings, you will achieve this with almost no loss in quality.

What will be difficult is to take advantage of the 120Hz panel.. There you will have to lower the resolution to QHD and play around with the graphics settings.

This is my recommendation, because if you lower the frequency to 120Hz, in addition to losing quality, you will definitely find the bottleneck of the RTX 3080 Ti, as it is not designed to be played at such a low resolution.

And, as you understand, living away from an outlet with such power is very difficult, if not impossible. The battery is capable of delivering 99.9 Wh of power, which is nothing, and the charger is pretty big too..

That’s why I told you at the beginning that it’s hard to travel with this laptop. But hey, that’s the price you have to pay to play and I tell you, the experience is amazing.

Excellent and colorful keyboard, but not a very convincing touchpad

Last but not least, I want to talk about both the keyboard and the touchpad. In a laptop, they are very, very important elements and touchpad…sorry, not up to the rest of the equipment.

Even when it comes to sensitivity, it seems to me that it is far from what MSI itself has recently offered. And yes, it’s not a big problem because you were going to plug in a yes or yes mouse, but hey, you know it’s not a shiny element.

The keyboard, on the other hand, I liked. Each key is RGB, so you should be able to adjust colors from within the MSI software without any problems, but the important thing is that both touch, stroke, and sound are very, very good.

This is a keyboard that, again with MSI, signed by SteelSeries and how to play and write for hours, I really liked it. Plus, there’s plenty of room to include a number pad.

A performance monster you can’t move too far from your desktop

And I think a little more. This is a laptop that is easy to analyze because, in essence,we have some of the best components on the market in a team whose only concession is… size.

If you want an RTX 3080 Ti, that processor, a 17.3-inch 4K panel, and a good dissipation system, the price is thickness, size, and battery consumption.

I like to refer to this type of hardware as “desktop laptops” because it’s hard for them to survive for long periods of time without an outlet, but if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be happy.

The speakers are good, the screen is more than adequate and the hardware is impressive, as is the price of the analyzed device: 4400 euros.

It’s expensive, very expensive, but then again, if that’s what you need and are looking for, this is the price to pay for the latest components.