- [Alex] Oh my God, what are you doing?
- The worst sponsored video I have ever done.
Yeah, it is (beep).
I have never been quite sure, if I am a true gamer.
Thankfully, by the end of this video, sponsored by MSI,
I will know for sure.
They sent over not one, not two,
but three, sick gaming laptops,
and I will, apparently be completing a series of challenges,
to determine, whether I am in fact, a true gamer.
I have literally no idea what's coming,
and I did not even know we were doing challenges,
I thought this was a simple, laptop showcase for MSI.
- [Alex] Do you want to take the first one out of the hat?
- I would like to pick my first challenge
out of the hat, yes, thanks-
There's only one in here.
Challenge number one.
Nice setup, thumbs up, but I'm bad at art.
To make this laptop usable, you must uninstall Norton
and install Chrome, you have 69 seconds.
Note, there has been no balancing done so good luck.
Timer starts when you log into Windows.
(cardboard screeching)
- [Alex] That's a train! (laughs)
- Hold on a second.
(cardboard screeching)
What? - Yeah!
- Our first machine,
is the GE76 Dragon Tiamat, and this thing
is flipping insane.
It's got a Core i9-11980HK, so that is an overclockable SKU.
64 gigs of DDR4 3200 megahertz memory,
an RTX 3080 Mobile
at 165 watts,
a 99.9 watt-hour battery,
and naturally,
a 360 hertz
IPS type display.
And it costs a whopping $4,100.
- [Alex] That is it? - Okay, I am in Windows.
Man, I love high refresh rate displays.
It's freaking sick, wait, what? Hold on.
- [Alex] You are in Windows.
- Well- - [Alex] Are you recording?
- I mean, yeah.
- [Alex] Okay, install Chrome, go.
- Okay, Ninite.com.
Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
Got that two and a half gig ethernet plugged in.
Add/remove programs.
What was it, Norton?
- [Alex] It won't actually uninstall
if you just do it from uninstall.
You need to use the Norton Remove Tool.
- What? You need to download a tool to remove Norton?
- [Alex] All right, 30 seconds left.
- [Crew] You got this, you got this!
- Norton Removal Tool.
Download the, wait, what?
The remove and re-install tool?
You have to, remove and re, wait!
Remove and re-install? No, remove.
Wait, there is no Norton on here.
That is why it wasn't coming up.
- [Alex] You win!
- [Crew] But you didn't install Chrome, did you?
- Yeah, and-
- [Alex] Good job, MSI. (laughs)
- Yeah, exactly.
This thing has freaking everything.
Challenge number two, sweaty gamer.
Using the GE76,
basically the fastest laptop money can buy,
play CS:GO, and blame your deaths on the hardware
every single time.
Also you must use low settings,
and 4:3 aspect ratio.
- [Alex] Ew.
- Do I play on the touchpad or do I get a mouse?
- [Alex] There is a mouse right there.
Oh, which one, should I,
you know what, I will use the wireless one.
Oh my God, it is a modular mouse.
See you later, buddy.
GM30, also a solid mouse. (chuckles)
I feel very panicked.
It's hard for me, okay?
The Norton tool managed to restart the computer,
even though Norton wasn't there.
(all of them laughs)
- [Alex] Are you playing online with, like free for all?
- Oh, you want me to play online?
- [Alex] Yeah, play online, you're a true gamer.
- (sighs) All right.
What do true gamers play?
- [Crew] Mirage.
- Mirage? Oh, why is it CS:GO? I'm so bad at this game.
- [Alex] No Linus, the hardware is bad at this game.
- I don't even know where it is coming from!
I'm flashed! Leg killed, leg kill. Oh, I got one!
Ah, damn it.
I don't know if I can complete this challenge, Alex.
This is a great gaming experience. (laughs)
Like objectively.
Damn it, way to go, monitor.
Oh boy, I picked up a gun while I was trying to fight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just walk around the corner please.
Oh, there he is.
(laughs)
Who goes around the corner
when someone is just taking potshots at it like that?
Oh, whoops, I'm caught.
Bad. It's terrible, terrible, bad computer.
Bang, bang, bang. Oh, come on!
- [Alex] Blame it.
- Come on! Way to go, leg killed.
It's a bad GPU, not enough watts.
I can't believe that guy walked around the corner
for me like that.
What's challenge number three?
The Todd Howard experience.
You have 64 gigs of RAM
but it still shouldn't be too hard to crash Skyrim.
Mods and dev console are allowed.
Um.
Okay.
I have never played Skyrim.
- [Alex] Dude, what?
- All I know is- - An arrow in the knee.
- and Fus Ro Dah, I am sorry, that is it.
That was an era of gaming, during which
I was founding a business and having children.
How do I install a mod? (chuckles)
Okay, it is set to ultra high quality,
and it is installing 47 mods.
Did you pre-setup mods?
- [Alex] No, why is it installing 47 mods? (laughs)
- How do I? - This is
going to be your first Skyrim crash. (chuckles)
- Hello?
Oh, all right.
- What? - Did not take long. (laughs)
It's a lot quieter in the not helicopter takeoff mode.
Challenge 3.69, video pickup so we get paid.
What the (bleep) is this video? Colton.
MSI wasn't super happy that two of the challenges
with the GE76 showed it failing in old games.
So we are going to play Doom Eternal with raytracing
to show just how well this laptop runs,
and make sure that we get paid for our sponsored video,
but can it run Doom Eternal, with raytracing?
I think we all know the answer is, yes,
'cause we are at a whomping, 180, 190 frames per second.
It's ridonculous.
- [Crew] That's with raytracing?
- Yeah. - [Crew] Wow.
- I mean it is a 1080, right?
Like, this thing is a beast.
- [Alex] Also, it is only $3,400.
We got the price wrong.
- It is only 3,400 bucks. All right.
- [Alex] Yeah. - That is pretty expensive.
- Yeah, it's a lot. (chuckles)
- Boom! See ya later demon.
Oh no, I just...
I'm out of ammo.
(exclaims)
So, to answer your question,
yes, it runs Doom Eternal, with raytracing,
anywhere from around 130 to 180 FPS.
It's butter smooth.
- [Alex] Not even with DLSS. (chuckles)
- [Linus] Okay, what's next?
- [Alex] Just open it.
- Challenge number four, an actual tech tip.
The MSI Sword is a good budget laptop,
but with a couple simple mods, it could be better.
You must upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM and add liquid metal.
Is there RAM in here by any chance?
Okay, all right.
Whoa! Okay.
That is a lot of wide open ventilation on the bottom, eh?
- [Alex] Yeah.
- That's pretty sweet. That's MSI.
They are into their mesh bottoms.
(upbeat music)
I can just, maybe I can get this one, oh, there.
Okay.
Inside here, we find a Core i7-11800H,
a 3050 Ti,
8 gigs of RAM, hence the upgrade to 16 gigs.
AX WiFi, as well as 512 gigs of NVMe storage,
and a 53 watt-hour battery.
It comes in at $1,100.
So let's go ahead.
Get our memory upgrade going.
- [Alex] That memory is $89.
- So it puts us at 1200 after we have completed our upgrade.
And you want liquid metal on it, huh?
- [Alex] Yeah. - Really?
- [Alex] I honestly don't know if it will make a difference.
It might be power limited, but we will see.
- Oh God, how much do I have to,
do I have to pull the whole heat pipe assembly out of here?
- [Alex] Yeah, probably.
(upbeat music) (screwdriver turning)
- Oh shoot, which ones did these go on?
(upbeat music) (screwdriver turning)
- Okay, here you go.
Okay.
You want liquid metal?
I will give you liquid metal.
Was this designed to make me stressed out this video?
Did MSI like, okayed this concept at all?
- [Alex] No, they just told us to showcase three laptops.
- Oh, okay, cool.
It's liquid metal time.
Some of us have, the steady hand of a snake.
Oh, flicked some over there.
Oh no, oh, I ruined this mouse pad.
No, we don't have many of the LTT mouse pads.
Oh, crap.
Oh, I am getting liquid metal on everything. (chuckles)
Never rush a liquid metal application.
- [Alex] Oh my God, what are you doing?
- I am getting it all out.
Now, we are going to suck the liquid metal back up.
That was not my finest work. (Alex chuckles)
We made sure this worked before I started, eh?
- [Alex] It is pre-tested and everything.
- Okay.
All right. Here we go.
There is liquid metal all over my hands
and I touched the white laptop.
- [Alex] The number one thing to mention is
the refined white chassis.
- I don't think MSI is ever going to work with us again.
I got to wash my hands. (chuckles)
(water running)
What's my next challenge?
- [Alex] Well, we just need to see if it worked.
- What do you mean if it worked? It did work.
- [Alex] Send the bench score. You need to be at 46, 68.
- Okay.
Yeah, it is (bleep). It's thermal throttling.
- [Alex] Yeah, it was going faster than that before.
We made it way worse with our
shoddy- - What do you mean, "our"?
- Well, I guess I failed that challenge.
Challenge 4.20.
From the factory, it was good...
I can't believe you broke it.
Colton, who had to send this to MSI.
Yeah, that was probably a little awkward.
Oh no, you broke the Sword 15.
Fortunately, Alex benchmarked it before,
so we can show the shot (chuckles) Rainbow Six Siege,
and Shadow Of The Tomb Raider benchmarks.
So people know how fast it should have been.
Yes, those are the numbers from before.
We cannot rerun those numbers,
because it is yes, in fact broken now.
- [Alex] Yeah, but play the game.
- Okay, here it goes, yup.
It's supposed to be like this, but like, wow,
20% faster or so.
That's tres unfortunate.
- [Alex] 175 FPS, not bad.
- I mean, the fact that it's still over,
like, around 150 FPS when it's broken,
and it's a lot worse.
- [Alex] It was good though.
It was.
It was solid.
Next up, we have got the MSI Pulse GL66.
It's got a very similar bottom, that you can see,
we've actually got an extra heat pipe,
and that's because we've also got some extra hardware.
This has a Core i7-11800H, 16 gigs of RAM,
and RTX 3070 this time around, 512 gigs of storage,
a 15.6 inch, 144 hertz display,
and a 53 watt-hour battery, for 1499.
And, challenge number five is apparently,
to hop on the hype train.
Battlefield 2042 loves sick...
looks sick,
so you want to get good for launch.
Using the MSI Pulse GL66, you must, not do that.
Battlefield 5 is installed.
You cannot play it.
Instead, you will play Battlefield 4.
The challenge is to find a good Battlefield 4 server.
Seriously, good luck.
I'm going to turn down the fan again.
- [Alex] But cooler boost.
- But I'm trying to make a video here.
- [Alex] You can unleash the complete cooling power.
- Okay, you know what? You want cooler boost on?
(exhales excessively) (frost breath sound)
That's pretty cool.
Apparently this design is laser-etched
on the metal backing of the display.
Feels good.
- [Alex] Yeah.
- All right, server browser.
(upbeat music)
I mean, there are servers with some pretty,
full-looking games going.
They're all either completely full, or completely empty.
- [Alex] Player account spoofing is a thing in this game.
- I am apparently 13th in queue
for this server though, Alex.
- [Alex] Oh, damn.
- Yeah.
- [Alex] Wow, did you actually just get in?
- Yeah.
- [Alex] I did this like, a couple weeks ago,
and it was terrible.
- I don't know how to play this game
because it also took place during the era of gaming
I did not participate in but
I am just going to find someone and
kill whoever kills them.
- [Alex] Yeah, just go assault or whatever it is.
- No, we are playing gun game.
- [Alex] Then you don't even have to worry
about your loadout, that's perfect.
- Oh, wow, I just killed someone.
That was kind of cool.
Oh, and I am dead.
Oh, wow.
Enough of this, then.
Let us play something a little more chill.
(controllers clattering)
- [Alex] Where's the gold X-Box controller?
(man shouting) (ambient dramatic music)
(controllers clattering)
- Oh, thank you.
What a tremendous choice of controller, Alex.
Man, this game looks good.
And the auto-optimization is just like, yep.
You know, you will like that smooth, 70 or so FPS.
You did not like this subs? That's lost.
- [Alex] Yeah, it is fine.
And like, you want it cranked?
Uh, sure. Yeah, no problem.
I mean, I can't drive worth a damn,
but that is a whole separate thing.
See you later, sheep.
Oh, I am good.
This is definitely how the physics would work in real world.
Now it is time for our final challenge with the Pulse GL66.
MSI wants you to play Battlefield 5 instead.
Play Battlefield 5 to prove the GL66 Pulse will be fine
when Battlefield 2042 comes up.
Thanks, we now can get paid.
All right, Battlefield 5 time, here we go,
ladies and gentlemen.
(Linus makes game sounds)
Did I get one?
I'm pretty sure I hit him a couple times though.
Oh, it was running great.
Wow, good driving, dog.
Oh Lordy.
Okay.
- [Alex] This guy's really bad.
- [Linus] What is he doing?
What is happening?
We are sitting ducks here.
So what, I'm in charge of the horn?
I'm out of here.
Just run, faster idiot.
- [Crew] Almost had him that time.
- (laughs) Okay, and I think we are done here.
So that is it.
MSI has got you covered pretty much,
whatever your price point is for a gaming laptop these days,
whether you want something that's
of more on the value side, more on the extreme side,
or more on the bang for the buck side,
like our last one, the Pulse GL66.
Thank you MSI for sponsoring this video.
Thanking you guys for watching.
If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe check out-
- [Alex] The lucky unboxing.
- Check out my unboxing of the giant Dragon
that I got from MSI.
They did not really sponsor it
but they did send me a Dragon. (Alex laughs)