The MSI GT77 TITAN is MSI’s performance flagship and for its 2022 iteration, shows us what peak performance on a laptop is all about. Once again sitting on the edge of laptop and desktop replacement, its thicker body houses a beefier cooling to tame its high-end specs.
In this review MSI gives us a glimpse of their fully maxed out MSI GT77 TITAN featuring a 12th-gen Intel Core i9 mobile CPU and an RTX 3080 Ti fully complimented by 128GB of DDR5 memory but not just that, it also features a low-profile mechanical keyboard as well as 4K Ultra HD 120hz panel.
Coming in at Php325,000, this unit is available in limited quantities so before you decide, read on to find out more about the MSI GT77 TITAN in this review.
Specifications
MSI currently only offers the Core i9-12900HX model in the Philippines for the GT77 TITAN. Our sample is the higher clocked 12950HX but this will not be sold in local stores currently. Adding to that is an RTX 3080 Ti and a whopping 128GB of DDR5-4800 memory out of the box. All of these comes at a hefty Php325,000 but as you will see in our tests, this is more than enough to crush everything we’ve tested so far.
Design and Layout
The MSI GT77 TITAN is a 17″ laptop with a wide footprint. To offset the height requirement that a more powerful cooler would need, MSI just want flat and wide hence the extended area on the back edge of the GT77 TITAN. On the bottom, there’s a large intake vent for airflow.
As the back is reserved for cooling, there are no IO in this area. The IO ports are all on the side of the laptop with the back featuring a large ventilation hole to exhaust heat.
In terms of IO, there’s a rich assortment of connectivity including 2 display output via mini-DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1. More displays can be installed using the pair of Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports which also double as DisplayPort and USB.
On the left edge of the keyboard is the MSI proprietary power input port, two USB-A ports and an SD card slot. There is a 3.5mm combo jack on this side.
The MSI GT77 TITAN features a 4K 120hz panel. MSI doesn’t really talk about the screen except that its a IPS-Level panel and that it features MSI True Color technology.
MSI ships this laptop with a 330W power brick for the internal 99Whr battery.
At 3.3kg, the MSI GT77 TITAN is as hefty as its name suggests but total carry weight is around 5kg as the charger itself also bring a significant amount of weight to it.
Colors are decent but out of the box those who want accurate colors will notice a visibly milky hue to the screen. This is inherent from similar panels but nothing deal breaking but if you are paying this much for a laptop, better color tuning could’ve been done.
Speaking of colors, MSI’s individually lit Cherry MX Ultra low profile keyboard provides a really unique feel and anyone who wants at least a tactile experience on their laptop would appreciate the feel of this unique keyboard.
Battery Life
We start all test off with a battery life test to see how long the battery will last under office usage. We use PCMark 10 Battery Test which loops word processing, email, spreadsheet, and other office applications as well as browsing and teleconferencing over and over again until the laptop cuts off. Depending on your laptop and when power saving kicks in, there may be some battery left once the test cuts off which is anywhere from 10% to 2%.
Performance – Rendering
Cinebench R20 and Cinebench R23 are industry standard for gauging system performance but outside the arbitrary numbers, the performance scores is the mesure of 3D rendering performance of a given system in Maxon’s Cinema4D application. Meanwhile, Blender Benchmark measures the performance of a system within a minute. Higher values means higher performance.
Performance – Office and Productivity
Photo and Video
PugetSystems is a US-based system builder that provides high-performance computers built for workstation solutions. They developed an in-house benchmarking tool for various apps including Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Davinci Resolve and a few others. These benchmarks put a professional-level workload on systems and are scored based on a reference system. The current version PugetBenchmark for Photoshop is scored against a Core i9-9900K system while the Premiere Pro benchmark is scored against a Ryzen 9 5900X. PugetBench is a plugin to the software it is named after and requires actual Adobe software to function. For a detailed description of the benchmark, see here (Ps) and here (Pr).
Office
Potentially the most used desktop software next to Windows OS is Microsoft Office. . This tests the responsiveness and system performance of the system when doing common office-users tasks, such as copying, pasting, cutting, adding images, resizing, saving, etc..
Performance – BAPCo CrossMark
CrossMark is a cross-platform benchmark aimed to provide comparative data for different platforms. It uses application models and gauges system performance and responsiveness to generate a score.
Performance – PCMark 10
PCMark is a global standard in benchmarking PCs to meet organizational as well as consumer requirements. PC Mark 10 is the latest version and provides details for office, multimedia use as well as extended features like battery testing for mobile devices, storage testing and a lot more advanced testing features.
Performance – SPECworkstation
SPECworkstation is part of multiple benchmark suites provided by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) aimed at providing a standard and unified benchmarking system to meet organizational requirements and performance expectations.
Gaming Performance
Value & Conclusion
MSI’s TITAN class laptops have been the company’s top performer for a decade now and while their appearance on MSI’s product stack has been sporadic recently, when MSI does create one, its always bound to be a desktop replacement when it comes to performance.
The 2022 MSI GT77 TITAN has come a long from the original thick TITANs before and that’s given this laptop some sort of portability unlike its older brothers. This means that it makes a better argument now as a portable than ever before although its gigantic power brick will still warrant a large bump in carry weight. This is in exchange for absolute performance as the MSI GT77 TITAN absolutely demolishes our productivity benchmarks as well as our gaming results.
Beating out every other contender in every category we put it thru, the MSI GT77 TITAN is absolutely the true perforamnce king of the HX class of CPUs. Coupled with a large cooler, the MSI GT77 TITAN isn’t crippled by a smaller cooler soaking up heat faster than it can dissipate. This does lead to this laptop being the most audible of all the units we’ve tested. It also means that its also the least battery life we we get from a unit but at just below 2 hours, that’s still plenty of juice to get some work done.
Screen quality is decent but as laptop that begs to be used as a multimedia professional’s desktop replacement, the 4K 120hz screen doesn’t have the best colors which would work against it for those designing for color accurate usage. For anything else, its definitely a usable screen and its resolution allows it to be quite flexible as we scale from 1080p to 1440p and max out at 4K all at 120hz.
As this is an engineering unit, I’m trying to cut back on talking about thermals but I am quite sure this is close to final if not retail ready so the cooling is indeed quite decent but just audible. Another thing worth noting here is the build quality on the body which is good but still not the best plastic when it comes to feel and at this price range, I don’t some sort of smooth plastic housing my laptop.
And as mentioned, there is the matter of price. Php325,000+ or just over $6000. You surely are paying for performance here and you absolutely will get it but depending on how willing yo are to carry that weight around, you’re also paying for a 5KG portable soluiton. While I can lug that around no problem, I’ve seen more petite women carry the GT80 TITAN before because they need the power for work. With many laptops offering nearly 5 times the performance of that older model, the MSI GT77 TITAN’s appeal is easily diminished leaving the MSI GT77 TITAN a very niche solution.
