MSI GE76231 GE76 Raider (Testing + Comparison)

The MSI GE76231 GE76 Raider seems to be a vanishing breed of gaming laptop. More and more, especially at the high end, tiny and light gaming devices are replacing the giant, thick gaming behemoths that push the best performance at the expense of everything else.

And that makes sense. Why choose a gaming laptop when the most extraordinary gaming PCs are also becoming smaller enough for people who don’t have room for a large tower? The Asus TUF Gaming F15 is also a powerful laptop to buy!

A gaming system that’s small enough to go to a friend’s house without being so light can’t be upgraded, and overheats are ideal. Therefore, the query is: Will the MSI GE76 Raider still be relevant in 2022?

The price of this gaming laptop, which includes an RTX 3080 graphics card and a 10th-generation Core i7 processor, starts at a stagger. That’s a lot to ask, mainly since you can purchase a Razer Blade 15 with identical specifications for the same price but with a slightly slower 240Hz display.

However, you will get better performance for your money with this laptop because of its huge cooling area, and when you’re powering a 300Hz display, you want as many frames as you can get out of your GPU.

MSI GE76231 GE76 Raider

The workplace laptop MSI GE76 Raider has an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU with eight cores and sixteen threads. We ran benchmarks and discovered that it was roughly 7% quicker than the i7-10750H found in the ThinkPad and about 5% faster than the i7-10870H seen in the model. Nevertheless, we discovered that it performed nearly the same while running DAW with comparable workloads.

In our tests, the GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q on the ThinkPad performed almost 1.5 times better than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 with 6GB GDDR6 VRAM included with the MSI. The RTX 3060 is capable of handling any graphically demanding application. Even flagship desktop-grade GPUs from the previous two generations were similar to it, according to our tests.

To accommodate various user types, MSI has multiple performance settings. This powerful laptop performs best when it is set on Extreme Performance, but we found the computer to be rather loud even when you aren’t doing a live recording. We preferred utilizing the Balance settings because there was hardly any performance loss, and the fans were much quieter.

Altering your settings to Silent mode can altogether remove fan noise while drastically lowering performance. This should only be done when living to record because, when compared to balanced mode, the performance hit isn’t worth the noise reduction.

The MSI GE76 Raider has the same 32GB DDR4 RAM and 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD configuration as the ThinkPad so you can expect the same responsive performance and enjoyable multitasking. Even if you can save all of your programs and RAW data on 1 TB of storage at first, it can be exhausted after a few years. At that point, you may want to think about using cloud storage or an external storage device.

The 17.3′′ Thin Bezel FHD 1080p IPS-Level 144Hz screen that came with the GE76 is the same as the one that came with the model before. The main distinction is that this one covers 94 percent of sRGB, which makes it far more color correct and, thus, aesthetically pleasing.

The high refresh rate of this display, which makes the conventional laptop user experience smoother, gives it a significant advantage over the other two laptops. This display’s 290 nits of brightness are its only flaw, making it challenging to operate in intense sunlight. Even so, it functions flawlessly in indoor and well-lit settings.

The MSI has an excellent port selection because it has all the required ports. It has two Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, one Thunderbolt 4 USB 4 port, one Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, one HDMI port, one Mini DisplayPort 1.4 connector, one RJ45 Ethernet port, one SD Card Reader, and a headphone jack.

It should be noted that several connections, such as Thunderbolt and HDMI, are found on the laptop’s rear, which is advantageous if you plan to replace your desktop with a computer because it facilitates wire management.

The MSI GE76 has many features, including a full-sized RGB backlit keyboard, RGB light strips on the laptop’s corners, and a good webcam. This device’s RGB lights are highly aesthetically pleasant, and they will blend in beautifully with your bedroom or dorm’s technological setup.

The MSI GE76, a 17-inch workstation laptop, measures 15.63 x 10.57 x 1.08 inches and weighs 6.39 pounds. It is a vast and hefty device. You should consider your bag’s size before buying this laptop because we discovered it challenging to fit in most conventional backpacks. Don’t expect to carry it about your campus for the whole day, although moving around in our backpacks for short periods was okay.

The MSI has a poor battery life because of its several power-hungry components. When we used it in balanced mode, we discovered that it lasted about 5 hours. We don’t advise carrying this laptop around all day because of how heavy it is; instead, we suggest utilizing it as a desktop replacement.

Software And Features

The MSI GE76 Raider is loaded with MSI software, but it’s fortunately not overly intrusive, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The MSI Dragon Center software is the program you’ll use the most to manage the laptop, even though you’ll have a few other programs like MSI True Color and Nahimic in your start menu.

Although the user interface could be a little more intuitive, you can use this to monitor temperatures and system usage. You can also navigate the General Settings tab and swap between a few performance presets.

Like any software of this type, the pre-configured settings range from a silent mode to one branded “Extreme Performance” that puts all the fans to full speed and sounds like a jet engine. There’s also an option to design a custom performance profile, although there’s not much you can genuinely adjust.

MSI has also incorporated the SteelSeries Engine 3 software to perform cosmetic customization. This is great! Even though the software occasionally lags, it is much more logical than Dragon Center. Though, we wish it was a bit more precise than Dragon Center can’t manage the RGB lighting since we spent an hour scrolling through all the pages repeatedly, sure that we had missed the lighting settings somehow.

Editors Rating

3.8 Out Of 5 Stars

Product Testing

The MSI GE76231 GE76 Raider, stuffed with an Intel Core i7-10870H and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, is an absolute machine of a gaming laptop. No matter what game you play on this machine, you can maximize it at a high framerate especially if you’re keeping to the built-in 1080p display.

We’re able to get Metro Exodus operating at 80 fps on Ultra settings, which implies there’s more than sufficient headroom there to enable ray tracing in that game without making it into a slideshow.

We’re playing with many Final Fantasy XII these days, and this laptop sleeps during the game, effortlessly providing a high refresh rate without having to work exceptionally hard. Due to its enormous RAM capacity and exceptional CPU performance, the MSI GE76 Raider would perform admirably as a mobile workstation.

The laptop scores a whopping 9,550 points in Cinebench R23, making it one of the fastest laptops we’ve tested. This laptop currently outperforms all other new devices, largely because of its 150-155 W RTX 3080 Laptop GPU (for anyone curious, it performs as a 3060ti desktop or just below a 3070 desktop).

Before, a gaming laptop as large and bulky as the MSI GE76 Raider would die after only a couple of hours of use, but that is not the case now. It’s not enough to last all day, but it’ll get you through a few hours of work without needing to be recharged. The laptop lasts 5 hours and 31 minutes in the PC Mark ten battery test.

Not Ultrabook-worthy, but still long enough to get you through a short flight. The laptop performs similarly in our video playback test, lasting roughly 5 hours and 58 minutes. Not world-shaking, but to get you through a little Netflix binge. 

Product Comparison

But besides the somewhat slim profile, the 17-inch MSI GE76231 GE76 Raider laptop is still equipped with advanced components. MSI uses the newest GeForce RTX 3080 Ti flagship mobile GPU, which boasts 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM to attract customers.

Then there is the brand-new, lightning-quick Intel Alder Lake Core i9-12900HK, a 14-core processor that can run up to 20 threads concurrently. Our sample, which is a pre-production unit (pre-sample), also sports 32 GB DDR5-4800 RAM (2x 16 GB dual-channel) and two 2 TB NVMe SSDs. The screen resolution is limited to 1080p, but it is a fast panel with a 360 Hz refresh rate.

Asus’s 2022 edition of the ROG Zephyrus G14 has two versions. In our lab, we also discover a Radeon RX 6800S for the first time in addition to AMD’s most recent Ryzen 9 6900HS. On our review unit, this 8-core CPU coupled with AMD’s latest high-end GPU has recourse to 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1 TB NVMe SSD, a 16:10 QHD display operating at 2560 x 1600 and 120 Hz with purportedly 100 % DCI P3 coverage.

Conclusion

The MSI GE76231 GE76 Raider is a compelling gaming laptop, and you will be able to plow through everything users throw at it utterly. Both the keyboard and the laptop chassis are furnished with a ton of RGB lighting, trying to make the MSI GE76 Raider a must-have for RGB fanatics.

Frequently Asked Questions