New MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop of the Year

MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop 11U now has a larger version of the thin MSI GS66 gaming laptop. This is its biggest 17-inch brother with the old to new MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop.

MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop Specification

MSI GS76 11U model has Intel’s new 11th Generation i7 11800H eight-core CPU in VGA Card NVidia RTX 3060 graphics 32 GB of ram and 240-hertz screen but there are also 360 hertz or 4k options for as well as high as CPU or GPU.

The MSI GS76 11U laptop has an old black metal design making it both look and feel like a sleek device.

The entire thing has a matte black finish and no sharp corners or edges anywhere.

The laptop alone weighs 2.3 kilos or 5.2 pounds then about 3.1 kilos or 6.9 pounds with a 230-watt power brick and cables along with lighter weight.

A smaller footprint is a priority with the MSI GS series and it’s not too thick for a 17-inch laptop in an error 17 but not quite as thin as the Razor blade pro-17.

MSI is dragon center software the control panel for the laptop gives us the option to enable or disable optimists which will offer a speed boost in games.

However, there’s no Jason I think the MSI dragon center software I tested will be rescanned as MSI Santa but the core functionality looks the same the 17.3-inch 1080P screen has okay but not amazing color gamut contrast was on the lower side and brightness isn’t quite getting to 300 nits when at maximum.

This is with the 240-hertz panel expects different results from the others. The software also gives us the option of enabling or disabling pedal overdrive, which should affect average greater gray screen response time.

However, I didn’t find it to make a difference.

I’m not sure if it’s an early software bug. It’s not too bad when compared to others but not amazing for a 240-hertz panel either.

Hopefully, the overdrive mode actually helps them future as MSI claiming a three-millisecond response time backlight bleed was fine only very minor patches that I never noticed but this will vary between panels and laptops.

There’s a 720P camera above the screen in the middle and it’s got I offer Windows Hello which worked fine for me with or without glasses on that my partner set it up with glasses to find it didn’t recognize her without them.

This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like.

This is what it sounds like while I’m typing on the keyboard. And this is what it sounds like we set the band to full speed let’s.

Not the keyboard has perky RGB backlighting, which can be customized with the included steel series software, old keys, and secondary functions have lit up and held the function key instead shows you which functions are available which could make changing brightness a little annoying as you can’t see the result at the same time.

It’s got three levels of key brightness but I thought the keyboard lighting was pretty dim especially compared to some of MSI his previous model’s typing sounds a little click.

I have no issues with the keyboard.

The power button is part of the keyboard on the top right but an accidental mispriced doesn’t do anything.

The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere and works all right though it feels a little small, it’s a bit narrower because the keyboard is pushed more towards the front owing to the events that are found above the keyboard.

The touchpad is also centered with regards to the laptop chassis, instead of being in the correct position which would be centered relative to the leather case.

Despite this, I had no problems using it.

My right hand didn’t rest on it while typing and even if I intentionally move to my right hand over to push down on the touchpad no clicks were triggered while typing on the left from the back there’s an air exhaust found the power input 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port facing the preferred way to USB 3.2 Gen two type-A ports and a 3.5-millimeter audio converter jack the right has a USB 3.2 Gen two Type C port.

With Display Port support SD card slot Type C Thunderbolt four HDMI 2.1 there’s an air exhaust vent on this side too, and a Kensington lock slot now both of those types of boards connect to the Intel integrated graphics if you disable optimist and then reboot, you can’t use them because the integrated graphics aren’t available anymore.

This means that you can early use Display Port via the integrated graphics card the HDMI port on the other hand does connect directly to the NVidia graphics card this might be an issue for V1 users as I think that requires Display Port with a direct connection to the NVidia graphics.

That’s not possible here as both of the type C ports connect to the integrated graphics Thunderbolt four-port provides type C charging however when testing with my usual GPU enclosure, I found that it would keep starting and stopping so not sure if this is a bug or just an issue with my charging source.

Technically the enclosure is Thunderbolt 3 but it still offers 100 watts over type C the back has air exhaust vents towards the corners more on one side than the other while the front is clean with a small indentation in the middle to aid with opening the lid opening with one finger as possible and the lid goes quite far back but not the full 180 degrees.

And while doing this, I noticed that it’s not too difficult for it to slide around with Ernie a little false. The hinge design looks a bit different compared to the MSI GS 66 Gaming Laptop.

There’s some keyboard flex, but it’s not noticeable during regular use previous GS series laptops from MSI had more flex at the backer of the event, but that section felt pretty solid with the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop comparatively light touches show fingerprints pretty easily.

But the smooth surface isn’t difficult to clean with a microfiber cloth, the panel felt a bit wobbly despite it being metal while carrying the laptop around or moving it, however, I didn’t notice this happen while sitting there typing on the bottom panel is a metal term with plenty of holes for air ventilation towards the back.

Getting inside requires removing 13 Phillips head screws of the same size and the panel was easy enough to play.

Inside we get easy access to the two ml two storage slots and the Wi-Fi 6 card the motherboard is reversed here so getting to the ram for a memory upgrade is a more involved process as you need to disconnect.

And take out the motherboard the front-facing speakers on the left and right corner is right down the front they sound okay with minor bass but not great even at half volume there was noticeable palm rest vibration which you can hear as some distortion they can get quite loud at maximum volume and the latency motor results weren’t looking great.

 MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop Battery

The MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop has a full sell 99.9-watt-hour battery the largest size you can get in a laptop.

It lasted for about an hour and a half in a game that under five hours in the YouTube playback test.

With Optimus enabled longer than running with Optimus disabled as the NVidia discrete graphics use more power.

It’s not doing that well when compared to others the next lowest laptop with similar battery size, the gigabyte error 15 was doing much better, but Tom from x MJ didn’t know to be a potential battery drain issue with 11th Gen graphics so this may improve over time.

Let’s check out thermals. Next, MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is dragon center software that lets us change between different performance profiles which from lowest to highest to silent, balanced and extreme performance.

Extreme performance lets us overclock the GPU core or memory clock, but no overclocking was done by default.

And we can also enable cooler burst aka max fan here you can customize the CPU and GPU fan speed by going to user mode and selecting advanced fan speed.

The auto results down the bottom were a little warm, but no problem. I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst-case as well as playing an actual game.

The CPU shown by the blue balls was thermal throttling at 94 to 95 degrees Celsius.

So, in many of the tests with high-performance smarts, though the GPU as shown by the green balls wasn’t hitting this limit, enabling a cool boost to max out the fans lowers the GPU temperature a fair bit, but it’s not enough to affect the CPU temperature.

And the cooling pad I test with which is good work on the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop.

Now, this is my first time testing an i7 11800H system. So, I’m not sure what to expect here.

But I might be spoiled by seeing a rise in laptops passing four gigahertz on eight cores in this test.

Granted, this is also a thinner machine silent Merton wasn’t offering a playable experience here the GPU was capped too harshly the CPU speeds actually dropping balanced mark apparently because the GPU is now instead of getting that power.

Despite extreme modes of thermal throttling on the CPU, we can see the cola boost, and then the cooling pad is still able to offer performance improvements.

As the level of throttling is reduced silent mode appears to cap the CPU to 30 watts. For some reason, dynamic burst seems to have left the CPU limit the same in balanced mode and instead boosted the GPU to its maximum of 95 watts, but only in the stress test and not the game. Otherwise, the GPU was maxed out at 80 watts in the other tests, it’s good to see that the CPU isn’t being kept to 45 watts.

Sure, this is probably the reason we’re seeing higher temperatures and thermal throttling, but personally, I prefer performance by default. But you could, of course, customize this in the BIOS.

Now it’s worth noting that regardless of which MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop you get weather that’s RT x 3060 graphics, or up to 3080, they all have the same 95-watt maximum power limit with a dynamic burst or up to 80 watts if the processor is loaded up to which is to be expected in a thin laptop like this high-power limit equal more heat and there’s just not a whole lot of space for cooling here.

If you want higher power limits or better performance, then you might need to consider a thicker machine. Here’s how an actual game performs with these different modes in use.

Balanced mode varied between 75 and 90 FPS This is just the average of multiple runs not sure why there was so much variance that is how the different mode’s performance cine bench all 23 slow super battery definitely restricts things as you’d expect for battery life.

however, the multi col score is being beaten by a last-gen 4800 h in the Legion 5 just above it again the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is a thinner laptop, so I’d hold off judging 11th Gen until I get more laptops more performance was lost than expected when running on battery power in the same highest extreme performance mode.

Most of the laptops don’t dip below 1000 for a single call. The keyboard gets to the mid-30s when idling and it felt a little warm to the touch but that’s probably because the metal exterior absorbs heat.

It’s one with the stress test running again because of the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop metal body and there’s not too much difference between silent and balanced mode as the fans get louder.

Extreme mode is a little cooler with the fan center order speed than it’s similar with cola boost enabled there as we saw earlier, this helped boost CPU performance thanks to the increased fans.

The differences between balanced and extreme performance modes weren’t that much, but then it gets significantly louder with cooler boost enabled.

Personally, I think this is an advantage because we can customize the fan speed, I’d rather than the fan headroom available for those that might want to use it rather than being arbitrarily capital lower just to keep things quiet all user choice is always best.

Now let’s find out how well this configuration of MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop compares against other laptops in games, but use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times with different drivers.

I’ve tested battlefield five in campaign mode ultra-settings and the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is highlighted in red.

MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is the first time I’ve had a laptop with RTX 3060 graphics but it’s also 11th Gen so two new things appearing in the comparison graph for the first time it seems to be performing close to 2070 and 2080 max q machines with similar power limits.

Perhaps as a result of the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop shadow the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest selling price and the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is still sitting in a similar position the 3070 in the urban 15 just above it was reaching 8% higher average FPS though it has a lower power limiter and narrow option of disabling optimists and the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is coming out ahead of the 3070 Super with full power limit in the Asus Scar 15 was also tested with the games benchmark tool at max settings and the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is up a lot here.

This test generally seems to favor Intel systems.

I’m guessing that’s why the new i7 11 800H is doing so well compared to other laptops with local GPUs.

I’ve also tested the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop in 13 different games in this video here if you want to get a better idea of how well it performs.

Here are the results from 3d mock for those that find them useful.

Now for some creative tests in the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop, Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget systems benchmark again, this is my first time comparing both an 11th Gen CPU and RTX 3060 graphics it seems to be around other 3070 laptops, so the new processor might be giving it an edge Adobe Photoshop generally depends more on processor performance and the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop is doing very well here again, likely due to the 11th Gen processor as Tiger lake is offering nice improvements to single-threaded workloads.

DaVinci Resolve is more GPU-heavy, so it’s down a bit on the list with the same laptops, especially given its lower power limit.

But hey, it’s still right alongside 20 at max q laptops.

I’ve also tested spec view perf which tests out various professional 3d workloads.

The 512 GB SSD drive in MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop wasn’t doing that well, but specific drives will likely vary by region and MSI does not they offer PCI four options the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop supports one PCI four M2 Drive and the GPU is using 16 lanes of PCI four so that’s all 20 lanes used up meaning the second m dot two slots must therefore be PCI three, the SD card slot is performing very nicely basically maxing out my V90 card and the card clicks in and sits most of the way into the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop.

As is the case with all MSI Gaming laptops.

MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop BIOS

There are tons of BIOS options available once you enter the epic cheat code to access the advanced BIOS.

You can modify thermals; power limits and all sorts of tuning options just only change what you understand to avoid breaking things.

I booted an Ubuntu 21 Live CD to test winning support out of the box the touchpad and Wi-Fi didn’t work the keyboard to Ethernet sound screen brightness and keyboard brightness worked fine.

MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop Pricing

At the time of writing on the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop, you were in the US only have the higher RTX 3080 models listed 3100 US dollars for the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop one with the 360-hertz screen while the 4k model with higher tier CPU and then memory and storage further doubled again is $4,000.

Again, you’ll have to refer to the links below as pricing isn’t currently available for me to discuss.

So definitely not cheap.

But I’d expect the lower tier 3060 MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop I’ve tested to be substantially cheaper than these examples.

Alright, so with all of that in mind, let’s consider both the good and the bad parts of the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop to help you decide if this is a laptop worth considering. As is the case with other laptops and MSI s GS series.

The priority is clearly on a thinner and lighter machine personally I don’t think I would mind it being a little thicker.

I mean it’s already a 17-inch laptop, it’s going to take up some space either way or more weight might allow for things like high power limits and more performance, when often a lighter laptop means fewer materials and a weaker machine but the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop feels fairly.

I like we’ve got the option of disabling optimist for a speed boost in games but the inclusion of Jason would have been icing on the cake.

I thought the keyboard lighting was a bit dim and the touchpad a bit small but worth works just fine.

I thought that Iris selection was great and our older USB 3.2 Gen one at all temperatures is on the warmer side internally and the exterior felt a bit warm because the metal chassis conducts heat that had never actually felt hot to me while actually using it.

The only other thing I personally wasn’t a fan of was the upside-down motherboard as it makes upgrades to the memory more difficult.

Perhaps that’s a requirement for MSI to get the laptop this then but other brands like Ryzen to have gotten around that, unfortunately, this MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop has to go back to MSI.

if you want to see how well the MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop performs in 13 different games at all starting levels. I’ll see you over in that one next article.