THE PREVIOUSFEW MSI laptops we’ve
reviewed have been pretty decent
but were generally located around
the budget to mid-range sector of the
market. However, this offering from
MSI is quite the opposite. With the GE76
Raider, everything is on the larger side,
including its price tag of over $3000. The
17-inch format doesn’t exactly make for
the most nimble of devices either. Though
it’s aimed at a fairly specific gamer target
market, a laptop of this size loses the
benefit of portability. So then, is this
machine worth your time and money, and
could you use it as a desktop?
Compared with the most recent MSI
laptops, you get a feel of why this beast is
almost double the price of those models.
This is a large and solid bit of kit with no
screen wobble thanks to its weight. Even
if you have a rucksack that can fit this in,
you better have the energy and strength
to carry it around. It’s a big old thing, but
not quite as brutish as Gigabyte’s Aorus
17 we looked at earlier this year.
The titanium blue lid gives it a nice
premium color and with MSI’s crest
sitting in the middle, it’s far from an
eyesore. There’s a funky RGB light bar
to the bottom of the laptop, which adds a
nice touch to your setup. It’s not a typical
LED strip, more a block of RGB that fits
the shape of the laptop. When the lid is
down or the RGB is turned off, you can’t
even tell that it’s there. The flip side is
that it’s not exactly the best thing for the
battery life. Though the GE76 Raider 11UH
has a huge 9 9. 9 Whr battery, with this
much power and a 1 7-inch screen, our
advice is to keep it plugged in.Strong, sharp, and bulky. This is no shy beast.MSI GE 76 Raider
9
VERDICT MSI GE 76 Raider 11 UHTOMB RAIDER Blistering
performance, solid build, super
nippy 360 Hz display, decent keyboard,
loud speakers..TOMB RAIDED 360 Hz only offered at
108 0p, loud fans, pricey, poor portability.
$3,399, http://www.msi.comSPECIFICATIONS
CPU Intel i9-11980HK
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
GDDR6 16GB
RAM 64GB DDR4 3200MHzScreen 17”^ 1080p^ @^360 Hz
Storage 2TB NVME M.2 SSD
Ports
2x Type-A USB 3.2 Gen1,
1x Type-A USB 3.2 Gen2,
1x Type-C USB 3.2 Gen2,
1x Type-C (USB/DP/
Thunderbolt 4), 1x RJ45
Ethernet, 1x SD Express,
1x Mini-DisplayPort,
1x (8K @ 60 Hz / 4K @
120Hz) HDMI
Connectivity
Killer ax Wi-Fi 6E +
Bluetooth v5.2, Killer Gb
LAN (Up to 2 .5G)
Weight 6.3Ibs
Size 1 x 1 1.1 x 15.6 inchesContinuing with the hardware side, it
hosts a 1 7.3-inch 3 60Hz panel at 108 0p
resolution. Other variations offer a higher
resolution screen but the compromise is
that you can’t get a 3 60Hz refresh rate
on those displays. The variation we have
here is all about performance— 108 0p
gaming on a screen of this size is pretty
good, especially with that nippy 3 60Hz.
Sure, this FHD display isn’t the crispest
nor the brightest, but it still delivers
a good performance. If you are more
interested in pixels than frames, your
best bet is probably the UHD 38 40x21 60
model, which still runs at a solid 120 Hz.
The keyboard on this laptop is pretty
decent, despite featuring MSI’s font. The
keys are soft but still tactile enough to
give you good feedback, and they have a
nice deep travel too. Of course, they are
individually backlit to match the RGB light
bar at the front. This is all controlled in
the SteelSeries GG application.
The mechanical keyboard on the
Gigabyte Aorus still is the best we
have used on a 1 7-inch laptop and,
unfortunately, this isn’t quite on that level.
The trackpad isn’t the greatest either, but
it’s decent enough for procrastination.
However, we feel that for the size of this
laptop it could have been a bit larger. It’s
a bit off-centered too, which is good for
right-handed people as you have plenty of
space to rest your wrist. Of course, that’s
not so good for the lefties out there.
Where this laptop really shines is in
its performance. The unlocked Intel i9-
119 80HK is a monster chip, being one of
the fastest laptop chips around, especially
working in conjunction with the RTX3080 inside. It blitzed our benchmarking
scores and you won’t be disappointed
with gaming on this laptop. With 6 4GB of
RAM too, you can chuck almost anything
at it. For a desk or table setup, it’s a great
size too but if you wanted, you can easily
hook it up to a monitor and still get very
impressive frames. This is one behemoth
machine, there is no denying that.
With its 17-inch screen, this MSI model
has more of a niche target market than
many other gaming laptops. If you don’t
have a desktop PC, and still want to game
to a high quality and take it around with
you on occasion, you can connect it to a
monitor and still have some degree of
portability. It has plenty of connectivity
and ports too, a snappy display, and
an almighty lighting performance for
productivity and gaming. However, you’ll
have to put up with the noise of the fans
when gaming, the heftiness of it when
carrying it around, and the poor battery
life when on the go. – SAM LEWISOur gaming laptop zero-point is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15, with an AMD Ryzen 9 59 00HS, Nvidia GeForce RTX
3080 and 32GB of DDR4-3200. All game tests are performed at 1080p at the highest graphical profile.GAMING LAPTOPSBENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT
Cinebench R15 Multi (Index) 2,1 37 1,4 15 (-34%)
CrystalDisk QD32T1
Sequential Read (MB/s) 3,595 6,78^1 (89%)
CrystalDisk QD32T1
Sequential Write (MB/s) 3,1^07 4,9^68 (60%)
3DMark: Fire Strike (Index) 20,529 22,591 (10%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 107 158 (48%)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps) 62 122 (47%)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon:
Wildlands (fps)^61 77 (26%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%100%in the lab