MSI GT76 9SG Laptop Review: The Titan of Gaming Laptops

The build quality and the materials of the GT76 9SG are very good (the wrist-rest area and the display lid are made of metal). Nevertheless, we still wish that the display lid was a bit more rigid, because — hello to all other notebooks — it can be twisted pretty badly if you use both hands. However, the chassis is more rigid and therefore exhibits very little flex even when a lot of pressure is applied to it.

Fans of RGB lighting definitely get their money’s worth with the GT76. There are individually addressable LED strips on the front and the sides of the device. These illuminable elements support a wide range of colors. Both hinges do their job well. The laptop can be easily opened with one hand. The maximum opening angle amounts to around 135°.

Ports

As is customary for a desktop replacement notebook, the GT76 offers a wide selection of ports. There are USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and Type-C ports and a Thunderbolt 3 port, which comes in the USB Type-C form-factor. The Thunderbolt 3 port can serve as a full-on DP port. Moreover, users can connect the notebook to an external monitor via a MiniDP port or the HDMI port. The external speakers and headphones can be connected to the device via two audio jacks. The manufacturer does not include any security features such as a Kensington lock. That the laptop-maker provides only a microSD card reader instead of a full-fledged SD card reader is a bit of a shame. 

The positioning of the ports looks rather suboptimal to us. Because the ports are located close to the fan grills, users’ mouse hands are likely to feel the heat once they start gaming. Moreover, the ports are situated very close to the front of the device, which can make cable management somewhat difficult. 

The GT76 comes with the Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650x wireless network adapter, which offers a very high level of performance. When it is 1 m away from our reference-grade router Linksys EA8500, the MSI notebook achieves an average upload speed of 730 Mb/s and an average download speed of 690 Mb/s. These are superb results, which place the GT76 at the top of our comparison chart.

The GT76 comes not with one but two AC adapters, which together weigh more than 1.8 kg. In order to meet the energy demands of the high-end components, the two 230-watt power bricks provide 460 watts of power to the MSI laptop, which is more reminiscent of a desktop PC than a notebook. Our review device weighs quite a bit (4.2 kg) even without the two power bricks, and with them in tow it becomes rather difficult to carry. The GT76 feels truly at home on a desk.

The expansive maintenance and upgrade options belong to the biggest strengths of the MSI notebook. After you undo the six screws on the underside of the device, the bottom cover can be removed with the help of the fingers (tip: You should start at the rear fan grills). 

Once you remove the bottom cover you will have access to almost all internal components such as the battery, the Wi-Fi module, and storage devices (three M.2 slots, one 2.5-inch drive bay). The RAM is partially accessible, because two of the RAM slots are located on the other side of the motherboard (under the keyboard). Just like with the GT75, the cooling system of the GT76 is very powerful. The CPU and the GPU are separated from each other and each has its own heat pipes, which transport the heat to the fans. 

The TouchPad also earns over 80 points. MSI chose to use a classic model with dedicated hardware buttons, which are quite loud and rickety when compared to the keyboard. The TouchPad occupies an area of 11 x 6 cm. The TouchPad registers inputs accurately and its surface is smooth. Gestures (zooming in and out, scrolling) also work flawlessly.

Our review device comes with a 1080p IPS display that has very good viewing angles. 1920x1080 is too low of a resolution for the GeForce RTX 2080. However, it also means that the GPU will be able to hit a frame rate of 144 FPS more often.

The GT76 Titan DT is a high-end device. The octa-core CPU and 64 GB of DDR4 RAM will not become obsolete for a very long time. The GeForce RTX 2080 is also very future-proof; that is, of course, if you intend to game at 1080p. However, the GPU will still have some power reserves even if you decide to use QHD or UHD monitors. 

The Core i9-9900K has a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and a boost frequency of 5.0 GHz. In Cinebench R15, the processor ran at 4.7 GHz in both single-core and multi-core sections. This is a very good result for a laptop.  

As long as you use the shift mode known as "Sport", the performance will not drop even under prolonged load. In the Cinebench loop, the scores of the Core i9-9900K fluctuate between 1944 and 2022 points. The performance of most notebooks drops precipitously after the third or fourth benchmark run. The MSI notebook, however, offers consistent results. The Alienware Area-51m and the Schenker XMG Ultra 17, both of which also have the Core i9-9900K, fall slightly behind the GT76 in terms of CPU power.

Things look a little different in system benchmarks. Here, the laptops from Alienware and Schenker are ahead by a few percentage points, which is why the GT76 is "only" good enough for third place. 6599 points is a very good result in PCMark 10. Laptops with such high scores are very responsive, which means that the system boots up fast, loading times are short, and applications launch quickly.

Because 512 GB is not a lot of storage space, the GT76 also features a 2.5-inch HDD from Western Digital that spins at 5400 RPM and has a capacity of 1 TB. Positive: Those who would like to expand the storage capacity even further can do so by installing an additional M.2 drive in the empty slot. 

The GeForce RTX 2080 is the highest-end gaming-laptop graphics card at the moment. The Turing-based GPU is produced using the 12-nm manufacturing process, supports ray tracing, and it has 2944 shading units and 8 GB of RAM (256-bit-wide bus).

Analogous to the Core i9-9900K, the Turbo boost of the RTX 2080 functions without any problems. The GPU frequency of about 1740 MHz in the 60-minute stress test with The Witcher 3 earns a lot of respect from us, as does the core clock of 1800 MHz after Unigine’s Heaven benchmark 4.0. For comparison, GPU-Z puts the base clock of the GPU at 1575 MHz. Speaking of The Witcher 3: Both the CPU and the GPU can maintain their performance over an extended of period of time in this title, as can be easily seen from the graph below.

In our suite of benchmarks, the GT76 is, unsurprisingly, on the same level as other notebooks with the RTX 2080. We observed stuttering only in the extremely demanding Port Royal real-time ray tracing benchmark. The MSI laptop features Nvidia’s Optimus technology, which helps improve battery life. This technology allows automatic switching between the integrated graphics adapter (UHD Graphics 630) and the discrete GeForce GPU.

The RTX 2080 is the "It" GPU of the moment. The DirectX 12-capable high-end video card can run every modern title at 1080p without breaking a sweat.

It can also run most games smoothly at 1440p. Things do not look that good when it comes to 4K, though. Here, 60 FPS is an exception rather than the rule.

This level of fan noise might have something to do with the fact that this is a pre-production model (fan control and BIOS settings have not yet been finalized). That being said, the predecessor was also louder than most competitors. However, the GT76 is not that loud when idle. Here, the fan noise amounts to 33 to 34 dB(A), although sometimes the fans ramp up, which leads to a sound pressure level of 44 dB(A). This is good enough for a spot in the middle of our comparison chart.

The case gets warm in the area near the screen, which is not unusual at all. The surface temperatures reach up to 51 °C (123.8 °F) at the top and 57 °C (134.6 °F) at the bottom. These temperatures are quite similar to those of the Alienware Area-51m. When the GT76 is not taxed, the surface temperatures stay below the 30 °C (86 °F) mark.

While most notebooks get skewered when it comes to the question of the sound quality, the GT76 escapes unscathed. Sure, the lows and the mids could have been a little clearer and a little more balanced, and yes, the audio sounds a bit muffled. However, all in all, the 2.1 Dynaudio system cuts a very fine figure. This is not only because of a high maximum volume of 90 dB(A), though. According to our automatically generated audio analysis (see the graph below), only a few competitors can give the GT76 a run for its money in terms of sound quality. 

Thanks to Nvidia’s Optimus technology, the 17-inch notebook is very energy-efficient when idle. 14 to 23 watts is a lot lower than what other 9900K-based devices, which do not feature Nvidia’s Optimus technology, consume. The desktop processor certainly makes its presence known when running 3D applications. The MSI laptop draws 283 watts in The Witcher 3 and 443 watts in the stress test. These are the kind of values that speak for themselves. Other RTX 2080-based notebooks with a mobile CPU usually require a single 330-watt power adapter. 

Despite its focus on achieving the highest performance possible, MSI still uses a lot of internal space for a powerful battery. The mixture of the Optimus technology and a 90-Wh battery provides users with reasonable battery runtimes, which we did not expect to see at all. The GT76 lasts seven hours when idle (brightness set to minimum) and five hours in our Wi-Fi test (brightness set to about 150 cd/m²). These are exemplary results for a high-end gaming notebook.