MSI GT77

[1610ftw]

6 hours ago, ringoffire said:

 

Yes I think the liquid cooling with the tongfang clones this cycle is a huge unappreciated game changer.  It is going to give simply unbeatable performance for a notebook replacement and offers essentially no disadvantage when not available other than having to drain the laptop before taking it anywhere.  The rest of the manufacturers need to catch up quick and offer liquid options.  That and chopping fan noise in half make it a no brainer.  Surprisingly the 'knock off' company has overtaken the established masters.

Yep, that is one smart design and the cooling station seems so affordable that one could get a second one if one is for example using this one at work and at home - very interesting. The only thing that I am not sure about is reliability but so far the Tongfang / Uniwill laptops seem to have a good track record.

 

In separate instances I have both read that Tongfang wanted to build a socketed DTR style laptop and also recently that they wanted to increase power for the current 3080 Ti mobile but no support for either of these projects apparently as just about everybody seems to be happy to be in that safe area where they can all wallow in mediocrity.

 

Going back to the GT77 somebody on the MSI forum got over 14500 in Time Spy by now and he has yet to upgrade his firmware. So there is a good chance that the GT77 will get closer to the Eluktronics but without liquid cooling and Prema goodness it may only fight for second place.

 

 

 

[VEGGIM]

 

[VEGGIM]

This is the most suprising part of the gt77. this dtr actually has a good battery. wot. That's something unseen. Probably because its a laptop cpu so its p-states are different and made for mobile.

[electrosoft]

I was watching the review a few minutes from Jarrod. 24k CB23 for single run before throttling. Sustained runs = ~20k. Plenty of GPU power (relatively speaking) and Timespy = 14k+.

 

It definitely is a powerful machine. No doubt about that.

 

It is also insanely loud under load but 4 fans will do that for ya but the fact it can sustain 4.3ghz all core under stress tests is very nice!

 

No way I'd pay $4k to $5k for a laptop.....ever.

 

 

[1610ftw]

23 hours ago, electrosoft said:

I was watching the review a few minutes from Jarrod. 24k CB23 for single run before throttling. Sustained runs = ~20k. Plenty of GPU power (relatively speaking) and Timespy = 14k+.

 

It definitely is a powerful machine. No doubt about that.

 

It is also insanely loud under load but 4 fans will do that for ya but the fact it can sustain 4.3ghz all core under stress tests is very nice!

 

No way I'd pay $4k to $5k for a laptop.....ever.

 

 

You can probably get a similar CB23 result from the smaller version that retails for 3.2K with a sub 3k street price to follow soon. I would also expect for it to achieve an up to 14.5k graphics score with Timespy as the GE76 can do that, too:

https://www.3dmark.com/search#advanced?test=spy P&cpuId=&gpuId=1434&gpuCount=0&gpuType=ALL&deviceType=ALL&storageModel=ALL&memoryChannels=0&country=&scoreType=graphicsScore&hofMode=true&showInvalidResults=false&freeParams=&minGpuCoreClock=&maxGpuCoreClock=&minGpuMemClock=&maxGpuMemClock=&minCpuClock=&maxCpuClock=

 

Goes to show that paying the premium for the 12900HX and 3080 Ti is mostly a waste due to the thermal and noise constraints of the design.

And it also shows that no matter how much power a system can use manufacturers almost always like to underspec the power envelope and cooling even when total power consumption has gone down a lot compared to previous designs.

 

And before somebody says that total power will almost always be lower in games or real world applications there is also something to be said for running a system that does not always have to be at the limit - cruising at 80% or less is much more relaxing and less loud and hot plus it lets the laptop live longer.

 

As for its fan and cooling design it looks to me like there are too many fans and too little cooling surface / heatpipes. I would wager a guess that especially with this compromised (ultrathin) form factor three fans and a vapor chamber would have resulted in better cooling and less noise - maybe for the next model.

 

 

 

 

[electrosoft]

7 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

You can probably get a similar CB23 result from the smaller version that retails for 3.2K with a sub 3k street price to follow soon. I would also expect for it to achieve an up to 14.5k graphics score with Timespy as the GE76 can do that, too:

https://www.3dmark.com/search#advanced?test=spy P&cpuId=&gpuId=1434&gpuCount=0&gpuType=ALL&deviceType=ALL&storageModel=ALL&memoryChannels=0&country=&scoreType=graphicsScore&hofMode=true&showInvalidResults=false&freeParams=&minGpuCoreClock=&maxGpuCoreClock=&minGpuMemClock=&maxGpuMemClock=&minCpuClock=&maxCpuClock=

 

Goes to show that paying the premium for the 12900HX and 3080 Ti is mostly a waste due to the thermal and noise constraints of the design.

And it also shows that no matter how much power a system can use manufacturers almost always like to underspec the power envelope and cooling even when total power consumption has gone down a lot compared to previous designs.

 

And before somebody says that total power will almost always be lower in games or real world applications there is also something to be said for running a system that does not always have to be at the limit - cruising at 80% or less is much more relaxing and less loud and hot plus it lets the laptop live longer.

 

As for its fan and cooling design it looks to me like there are too many fans and too little cooling. I would wager a guess that especially with this compromised (ultrathin) form factor three fans and a vapor chamber would have resulted in better cooling and less noise - maybe for the next model.

 

 

 

 

 

Agreed, the actual performance for GPU is extremely close to the 12900h and that noise under load is insane.

 

I think the idea was to dissipate the heat at a much higher rate to compensate for the thin and light heatsink design. It does work to a degree but again that thing under load is ridiculously loud.

 

It was usable in silent mode but the fps did take a major hit.

 

One thing I do like about MSI is their almost desktop level BIOS on their laptops once you open it up with the command sequence. They do this on all their models and the only thing that holds anything back is the CPU or chipset limitations. I wish other manufacturers did this with their laptops.

 

I still can't get over those fans....

 

Are there any comparisons to their phase change thermal pad and stock tims/lm for comparison anywhere?

 

 

[electrosoft]

GenTech doing a complete overview, benchmarks, breakdown and a look inside:

 

 

[1610ftw]

A few coming up now but nothing out of the ordinary so far with regard to scores. Here is another guy just doing a bunch of games and benchmarks with the 12800HX/3080Ti version:

 

 

And a good comparison of thinness compared to the already quite thin GE/Vector/GP chassis:

 

Taken from this video:

 

In the meantime Time Spy scores are creeping up with the GT77 in 5th place in graphics score and in the first two places in CPU scores with the 12900HX / 3080 Ti combo.

Combined that is enough for second, forth and fifth place as the lead in graphics scores is making up for lesser GPU performance.

 

Ironically both the GE76 and the HP Omen 17 sport slightly better graphics scores and of course the premafied Eluktronics Prometheus still has a substantial lead:

 

 

[steelersnut86]

I was a previous very early (1st month of release) owner of an Alienware Area 51m R1, and now I own the Titan GT77. In reality, both a 51m and the GT77 are both non CPU and GPU upgradable, since Dell scrapped plans to provide upgrades to the 51m. This fact doesn't really bother me, since I usually buy the top model and hold onto it for years. I will say that the GT77 is still more upgradable than the 51m ever was due to the additional DIMM and NVME slots, and the Gen 5 nvme slot on the GT77 is also a nice touch that has upgrade potential. The GT77 is also lighter and uses only on power brick. I have used the GT77 for about a month now, and I have to admit it is better in every way than the 51m was I am new to MSI laptops, so I am figuring things out as far as tuning goes. The BIOS on the GT77 is infinitely more configurable than the 51m ever was, which for a new MSI owner is fun to figure out. I didn't get throttling on the 51m because I stayed on an old BIOS, and I have yet to get any throttling on the GT77 with games cranked up to high or ultra on 4k.

[1610ftw]

I know what you mean about no upgrades for laptops even though in theory it should be possible. I have the X170KM-G and it is the end of the road so far for that one with regard to both the maximum CPU and GPU it can take. Still keeps repair prices down but upgradability is only a thing if you do not get the biggest and baddest parts right out of the gate.

 

Nice to hear you are happy with the GT77.

How are noise levels in everyday use - do the fans run at a stable level or are they fluctuating a lot?

The noise spikes in a GE76 I tested were rather annoying with the fans getting pretty load from time to time just because I was opening another program for example.

 

From what I heard the Area 51 could be pretty quiet so it would be interesting how you feel about noise levels when comparing these two.

[steelersnut86]

The noise on the A51m R1 could get fairly loud, depending on the game or when doing video encoding. I will say that the GT77 fans get louder than the A51m R1, but I have as of yet to see any noticeable throttling on the GT77. I'll take louder fan noise over throttling any day. Frankly, the fan noise on the GT77 doesn't bother me, as I have the laptop tucked in under my TV and connected to the soundbar. I game in my living room on my OLED and soundbar, so I can turn up the volume if needed.

 

I have the fan on auto, so they will ramp up and down as needed, and I find that they do a good job of anticipating when to go up or down. But, if I wasn't gaming on my TV and soundbar, I'd use a good set of earbuds or headphones, because don't think the volume of the laptop speakers would be enough to drown out the fans.

 

For me, it is finally nice to have a system that handles everything I throw at it with room to spare. Another thing that bothered me about the A51m R1 is that Dell put in a I9-9900K and a GTX 2080, but capped the RAM speed at 2400Mhz. You could buy faster RAM, but it would clock down to 2400Mhz. That RAM speed was unacceptable even for the time when the laptop was released. The A51m R1 was designed and developed with almost no room for thermals, so I guess they figured they could give some thermal headroom by clocking down the RAM. This was even more obvious when they started dropping BIOS updates that purposely throttled at ridiculous levels. And folks that bought the A51m R1 after they started BIOS throttling were in for a big surprise, since Dell didn't disclose this throttling when selling the laptop. They knew they had a problem...

[1610ftw]

Oh I forgot about the infamous bios blunders with the A51 and from what I have gathered in the past MSI does not do these things - they don't have to as they have the loudest fans in the market in their Titan series 😄

 

It would be interesting to see how fast the GT77 could be without going up to deafening noise levels - probably not that fast given the fact that it is now very slim compared to previous iterations of the Titan lineage.

 

 

[steelersnut86]

Coming from the A51m that was running an i9-9900k and 2080 GPU, everything about the GT77 is faster. The fact that the GT77 hasn't throttled and is lighter and slimer while also not requiring 2 power bricks makes it a good upgrade for me.

[1610ftw]

On 9/13/2022 at 8:52 PM, steelersnut86 said:

Coming from the A51m that was running an i9-9900k and 2080 GPU, everything about the GT77 is faster. The fact that the GT77 hasn't throttled and is lighter and slimer while also not requiring 2 power bricks makes it a good upgrade for me.

 

Yep, quite impressive what it can do despite some thermal limitations - the new chips are excellent and MSI favors the GPU over the CPU which helps gamers.

[Quark]

On 8/27/2022 at 2:09 AM, 1610ftw said:

I know what you mean about no upgrades for laptops even though in theory it should be possible. I have the X170KM-G and it is the end of the road so far for that one with regard to both the maximum CPU and GPU it can take. Still keeps repair prices down but upgradability is only a thing if you do not get the biggest and baddest parts right out of the gate.

 

I have been considering making new purchase right now of X170KM-G or Titan GT77 i9-12900HX and have yet to feel completely good about either choice where it is between "end of the road" or slimmer design (and I don't like thinner if it means hotter, throttled, etc.)  As someone who already has X170KM-G would you feel comfortable to make a comparison between the two or maybe would you say not to buy anything for right now?

[Sniffy]

I purchased the top end GT77 last week and the GT76 is now on server duty, as it was heavily discounted along with every other MSI gaming laptop. Not sure if this means Raptor Lake laptops are on their way. I need more than 32GB RAM but moreso needed the VRAM which was constantly maxed out on my 2080. So I was looking at 16GB 3080's or 3080Ti's.

 

Anyway I was also eyeing the X170KM-G as well but the issues I saw were 1) Alder Lake is a lot faster than Rocket Lake. 2) The KM-G platform seems really unstable. It is easy to find complaints about it and it seems to be Intel's fault. 3) I also don't have access to Prema BIOS here, and the MSI BIOs is better than the stock Clevo one. The 3080 is about as fast as the 3080Ti in the GT77 so that didn't bother me.

 

The above points, plus the discount (it was literally 25% off) made the the choice easy for me.

 

On 9/14/2022 at 4:52 AM, steelersnut86 said:

Coming from the A51m that was running an i9-9900k and 2080 GPU, everything about the GT77 is faster. The fact that the GT77 hasn't throttled and is lighter and slimer while also not requiring 2 power bricks makes it a good upgrade for me.

 

What BIOS are you on and have you updated? I'm on 107 and MSI Center at least had the decency to let me not install. I haven't noticed any weird behavior so wasn't keen.

[1610ftw]

On 9/20/2022 at 1:26 AM, Sniffy said:

I purchased the top end GT77 last week and the GT76 is now on server duty, as it was heavily discounted along with every other MSI gaming laptop. Not sure if this means Raptor Lake laptops are on their way. I need more than 32GB RAM but moreso needed the VRAM which was constantly maxed out on my 2080. So I was looking at 16GB 3080's or 3080Ti's.

 

Anyway I was also eyeing the X170KM-G as well but the issues I saw were 1) Alder Lake is a lot faster than Rocket Lake. 2) The KM-G platform seems really unstable. It is easy to find complaints about it and it seems to be Intel's fault. 3) I also don't have access to Prema BIOS here, and the MSI BIOs is better than the stock Clevo one. The 3080 is about as fast as the 3080Ti in the GT77 so that didn't bother me.

 

The above points, plus the discount (it was literally 25% off) made the the choice easy for me.

 

Where was the GT77 discounted so heavily? 

 

You will probably get a 30 to 50% higher single run multicore bench in CB23 and if you are multi-tasking it is possible that you will see an even bigger improvement going from a maximum of 10 to 16 cores on the GT77. Are there specific reasons why you went with the GT77 instead of the GE77HX? Possible memory and/or storage expansion?

[Sniffy]

21 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

 

Where was the GT77 discounted so heavily? 

 

You will probably get a 30 to 50% higher single run multicore bench in CB23 and if you are multi-tasking it is possible that you will see an even bigger improvement going from a maximum of 10 to 16 cores on the GT77. Are there specific reasons why you went with the GT77 instead of the GE77HX? Possible memory and/or storage expansion?

 

Here. GT77 and some others are no longer available, it was priced at $AU6299, while 32GB models are still $AU7899. Other MSI laptops heavily discounted as well.

 

The main reason was better cooling but more potential for future storage and memory expansion were nice. The premium on the GT77 may not be worth paying for most though which is fair.

 

I was a bit worried about it being slimmer than the GT76 but I actually find the GT76 to be louder, and the GPU temperatures on the GT76 are worse. It does amazing job cooling the 9900K though. Overall the GT77 is way faster, it is very noticeable. The only thing I don't like is the 75W CPU power cap when the 3080 Ti is in use which limits the P-cores to 4.4-4.5GHz from what I can tell. It is still easily outperforming my old 9900K though. 

[1610ftw]

 

8 hours ago, Sniffy said:

 

Here. GT77 and some others are no longer available, it was priced at $AU6299, while 32GB models are still $AU7899. Other MSI laptops heavily discounted as well.

 

The main reason was better cooling but more potential for future storage and memory expansion were nice. The premium on the GT77 may not be worth paying for most though which is fair.

 

I was a bit worried about it being slimmer than the GT76 but I actually find the GT76 to be louder, and the GPU temperatures on the GT76 are worse. It does amazing job cooling the 9900K though. Overall the GT77 is way faster, it is very noticeable. The only thing I don't like is the 75W CPU power cap when the 3080 Ti is in use which limits the P-cores to 4.4-4.5GHz from what I can tell. It is still easily outperforming my old 9900K though. 

 

The GT76 had a higher power envelope and if they had kept this for the GT77 you could probably run the CPU at 150 instead of 75W.

But as you say everything has gotten quite a bit more efficient over the years so without the ability to upgrade the flagships of yesterday just cannot keep up anymore.

 

And yes, the new CPU is so much more efficient that at 75 Watt you will still be outperforming the 9900K by quite some margin - enjoy!

 

 

 

[1610ftw]

Had a GT77 to play with. In stock condition sustained power delivery was only about 125W but for single runs results could be quite extraordinary even without a cooling pad or running benchmarks in an artificially cold environment.

 

 

This was only to get a baseline for comparison to a 12900HX so memory timings were left untouched.

 

I would assume that a 12900HX will go beyond 27K as it should be better binned - this CPU could hardly get to 5 GHz for any amount of time and the single core score was 1930 at most vs. more than 2000 that I have seen for the 12900/12950HX.

[Kataphract]

Did anyone swapped display on this thing? I own version that features FullHD display and I would like to change to at least 2.5K with better brightness. There are no OEM panels on eBay/else directly for this model but it's generic 40-pin 17,3 screen to me.

[1610ftw]

3 hours ago, Kataphract said:

Did anyone swapped display on this thing? I own version that features FullHD display and I would like to change to at least 2.5K with better brightness. There are no OEM panels on eBay/else directly for this model but it's generic 40-pin 17,3 screen to me.

 

Here is a bunch of QHD 165 Hz screens:

 

https://www.panelook.com/modelsearch.php?op=advancedsearch&order=panel_id&inch_low=1730&inch_high=1730&resolution_pixels=8380&vertical_frequency=165

 

You can also filter for 240 Hz.

 

Forum member @JeanLegi successfully made the switch to QHD with one of the above screens:

 

 

 

 

[Kataphract]

Thanks for the forum link! Good to see that, I'll dive into that. Not happy to see that flimsy adapter that was necessary :- )

[JeanLegi]

Yep and if you don't do it correct the display frame will not hold at this area of the display..-.-

Maybe i need to rework this area with double-sided tape 🥸

[1610ftw]

Another successful screen upgrade on a GE76: