MSI now have a larger version of their thin GS66 gaming laptop, this is its bigger 17
inch brother, the all new GS76, so let’s find out what it’s got for us in this review.
My model has Intel’s new 11th gen i7-11800H 8 core CPU, Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, 32 gigs
of memory and a 1080p 240Hz screen, but there are also 360Hz or 4K options too, as well
as higher CPU or GPU.
You can check out other specced configs as well as updated prices with the links down
below.
Like MSI’s other laptops in the GS series, the GS76 has an all 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 2.3kg or 5.2lb, then about 3.1kg or 6.9lb with the 230 watt power
brick and cables.
Along with lighter weight, a smaller footprint is a priority with MSI’s GS series, and
it’s not too thick for a 17” laptop.
Thinner than an Aero 17, but not quite as thin as the Razer Blade Pro 17.
MSI’s Dragon Center software, the control panel for the laptop, gives us the option
to enable or disable optimus, which will offer a speed boost in games, however there’s
no G-Sync.
I think the MSI Dragon Center software I tested will be reskinned as MSI Center, but the core
functionality looks the same.
The 17.3” 1080p screen has ok but not amazing color gamut, contrast was on the lower side,
and brightness isn’t quite getting to 300 nits when at maximum, but this is with the
240Hz panel, expect different results with the others.
The software also gives us the option of enabling or disabling panel overdrive, which should
affect average grey-to-grey screen response time, however I didn’t find it to make a
difference, so 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 240Hz panel either,
hopefully the overdrive mode actually helps in future, as MSI are claiming a 3ms 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 IR for Windows Hello,
which worked fine for me with or without glasses on, but 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 if we set the fan to
full speed.
The keyboard has per key RGB backlighting which can be customized with the included
Steelseries software.
All keys and secondary functions are lit up, and holding 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 3 levels of key brightness, but I thought the keyboard lighting was pretty
dim, especially compared to some of MSI’s previous models.
Typing sounded a little clicky, I had no issues with the keyboard.
The power button is part of the keyboard on the top right, but an accidental mispress
doesn’t do anything.
The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere and works alright, though it feels a little
small.
It’s a bit narrow because the keyboard is pushed more towards the front owing to the
air vents 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 letter keys.
Despite this, I had no problems using it.
My right hand didn’t rest on it while typing, and even if I intentionally moved 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 vent, the power input, 2.5 gigabit
ethernet port facing the preferred way, two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm audio
combo jack.
The right has a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port with DisplayPort support, SD card slot, Type-C
Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, there’s an air exhaust vent on this side too, and a Kensington
lock slot.
Now both of those Type-C ports connect to the Intel integrated graphics.
If you disable optimus and then reboot, you can’t use them, because the integrated graphics
aren’t available anymore, so this means that you can only use DisplayPort via the
integrated graphics.
The HDMI port on the other hand does connect directly to the Nvidia graphics.
This might be an issue for VR users as I think that requires DisplayPort with a direct connection
to the Nvidia graphics, so that’s not possible here as both of the Type-C ports connected
to the integrated graphics.
The Thunderbolt 4 port provides Type-C charging, however when testing with my usual eGPU enclosure
I found that it would keep starting then 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 is possible, 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
only a little force.
The hinge design looks a bit different compared to the GS66, I can’t really comment on long
term use as I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks.
There’s some keyboard flex, but it’s not noticeable during regular use.
Previous GS series laptops from MSI have had more flex at the back over the air vent, but
that section felt pretty solid with the GS76 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 I’d notice the screen move, however I didn’t notice this happen while sitting
there typing on it.
The bottom panel is metal too with plenty of holes for air ventilation towards the back.
Getting inside requires removing 13 Philips head screws of same size, and the panel was
easy enough to pry open using the tools linked in the description.
Inside we get easy access to the two M.2 storage slots and the WiFi 6e 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 are on the left and right corners right down the front.
They sound ok 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 latencymon results weren’t looking
great.
The GS76 has a 4-Cell 99.9Wh battery, the largest size you can get in a laptop.
It lasted for about an hour and a half in a game, but under 5 hours in the YouTube playback
test with optimus enabled, longer than running with optimus dsiabled as the Nvidia discrete
graphics use more power.
It’s not doing that well when compared to others, the next lowest laptop with a similar
battery size, the Gigabyte Aero 15, was doing much better, but Tom from XMG did note to
me a potential battery drain issue with 11th gen graphics, so this may improve over time.
Let’s check out thermals next.
MSI’s Dragon Center software lets us change between different performance profiles, which
from lowest to highest are 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 boost aka max fan here.
You can customize the CPU and GPU fan speed by going to user mode and selecting advanced
fan speed.
The idle 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 bars, was thermal throttling at 94 to 95 degrees Celsius, so
in many of the tests with higher performance modes, though the GPU, shown by the green
bars, wasn’t hitting this limit.
Enabling coolerboost 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
linked below in the description, makes less of a difference.
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 Ryzen laptops passing 4GHz on 8 cores in this test, granted
this is also a thinner machine.
Silent mode wasn’t offering a playable experience here, the GPU was capped too harshly.
The CPU speeds actually drop in balanced mode, apparently because the GPU is now instead
getting that power.
Despite extreme modes thermal throttling on the CPU, we can see that cooler boost and
then the cooling pad are 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 boost 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 capped 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, more on that later.
Now it’s worth noting that regardless of which GS76 you get whether that’s RTX 3060
graphics or up to 3080, they all have the same 95 watt maximum power limit with dynamic
boost, or up to 80 watts if the processor is loaded up too, which is to be expected
in a thinner laptop like this.
Higher power limits 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 there.
Here’s how the different modes perform in Cinebench R23, so super battery definitely
restricts things as you’d expect for battery life, otherwise single core scores weren’t
too different in the higher modes, multi core sees the largest boost as we step up to higher
profiles.
This is the first 11th gen result I’ve got, the single core performance is looking quite
good and definitely competitive with AMD’s Ryzen 5000 options, however the multicore
score is being beaten by a last gen 4800H in the Legion 5 just above it.
Again the GS76 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 single core.
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 warm with the stress tests running, again because of the 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 fans set to auto speed, then it’s similar with
coolerboost enabled, though as we saw earlier this helped boost CPU performance thanks to
the increased fans, let’s have a listen.
I couldn’t hear it when idling.
The differences between balanced and extreme performance modes weren’t that much, but
then it gets significantly louder with coolerboost enabled.
Personally I think this is an advantage because we can customize the fan speed, I’d rather
there be fan headroom available for those that might want to use it rather than being
arbitrarily capped lower just to keep things quieter, user choice is always best.
Now let’s find out how well this configuration of GS76 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 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the GS76 is highlighted
in red.
This 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,
though the 1% low is up substantially compared to most others, perhaps as a result of the
11800H.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest
setting preset, and the GS76 is still sitting in a similar position.
The 3070 in the Omen 15 just above it was reaching 8% higher average FPS, though it
has a lower power limit too and no option of disabling optimus, and the GS76 is coming
out ahead of the 2070 Super with full power limit in the Scar 15.
Far Cry 5 was also tested with the games benchmark tool at max settings, and the GS76 is up a
lot here.
This test generally seems to favor Intel systems, so I’m guessing that’s why the new i7-11800H
is doing so well compared to other laptops with lower tier GPUs.
I’ve also tested the GS76 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 3DMark for those that find them useful.
Now for some creator tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark.
Again this is my first time comparing both an 11th gen CPU and 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 GS76 is doing
very well here, again likely due to the 11th gen processor as Tigerlake 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 2080 Max-Q
laptops.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The 512 gig drive in my unit wasn’t doing that well, but specific drives will likely
vary by region, and MSI does note they offer PCIe 4 options.
The GS76 supports one PCIe 4 M.2 drive, and the GPU has 16 lanes of PCIe 4, so that’s
all 20 lanes used up, meaning the 2nd M.2 slot must therefore be PCIe 3.
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 laptop.
As is the case with all of MSI’s gaming laptops, 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 Linux support.
Out of the box the touchpad and wifi didn’t work, but keyboard, ethernet, sound, screen
brightness and keyboard brightness worked fine.
Now let’s discuss pricing.
This will change over time, so refer to the links down in the description for updated
prices.
At the time of recording, Newegg in the US only has the higher RTX 3080 models listed,
$3100 USD for this one with 360Hz screen, while the 4K model with higher tier CPU and
then memory and storage further doubled again is $4000, so definitely not cheap, but I’d
expect the lower tier 3060 model I’ve tested to be substantially cheaper than these examples,
again you’ll have to refer to the links below as pricing isn’t currently available
for me to discuss.
Alright so with all of that in mind let’s consider both the good and the bad parts of
the GS76 to help you decide if this is a laptop worth considering.
As is the case with other laptops in 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” laptop so it’s going to take up some space either way, and more weight might
allow for things like higher power limits and more performance and better cooling.
Often a lighter laptop means less materials and a weaker machine, but the GS76 feels fairly
solid all things considered, with the exception of the lid which as previously mentioned does
wobble a bit.
The 1080p 240Hz screen wasn’t great, it’s not as bright as I’d like to see, colors
are fine but not impressive, and response time isn’t ideal let alone close to the
3ms advertised, though as discussed that could be a bug with the overdrive mode, so hopefully
if it is it gets fixed, if it’s not well there are also other faster 300 and even 360Hz
displays.
I liked that we’ve got the option of disabling optimus for a speed boost in games, but the
inclusion of G-Sync would have been icing on the cake.
I thought the keyboard lighting was a bit dim and the touchpad a bit small, but both
work just fine.
I thought the I/O selection was great, no older USB 3.2 Gen1 at all.
Temperatures are on the warmer side internally, and the exterior felt a bit warm because the
metal chassis conducts heat, but it never actually felt hot to me while actually using
it.
The only other thing I wasn’t personally 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 thin, but other brands
like Razer seem to have gotten around that.
Unfortunately the GS76 has to go back to MSI tomorrow, so I won’t have time to test out
the i7-11800H, but I’ve got other laptops with that processor that I’ll use to compare
against AMD’s Ryzen 5000 soon, so make sure you’re subscribed for those upcoming comparisons.
Come and join the community in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting
the channel on Patreon, and check out this one if you want to see how well the GS76 performs
in 13 different games at all setting levels - I’ll see you over in that one next.