MSI Titan GT77 4K Laptop Flexes 250W Of 12900HX And RTX 3080 Ti Gaming Muscle
MSI is busting out the heavy artillery for the return of its Titan GT gaming laptop. Technically, the new Titan GT77 is not a desktop replacement in the strictest definition, as it's outfitted with mobile parts. But technicalities are for lawyers, not gamers, who will appreciate that the Titan GT77 serves up more gaming muscle than a lot of desktop PCs.
We'll get to that in a moment, but first let's go over the display. The Titan GT77 rocks a 17.3-inch IPS screen with a 3840x2160 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. As such, it's for gamers who, like myself, still prefer a bigger form factor.
That doesn't mean the Titan GT77 is particularly bulky. It measures 15.63 x 12.99 x 0.91 inches, so it has a relatively thin waistline. It's a bit on the heavy side, though—around 7.28 pounds, according to MSI.
Justifying that heft is a killer configuration from top to bottom. It starts with a 12th Gen Core i9-12900HX processor, which is stamped from Intel's newly minted Alder Lake-HX lineup. This is where the lines between what qualifies as a desktop replacement versus a high-end laptop get blurred. With Alder Lake-HX, Intel essentially wedged its desktop Alder Lake processors into a physically bigger mobile package than Alder Lake-H, with more power and features.
The Core i9-12900HX is an 16-core/24-thread chip comprised of 8 P-cores and 8-E cores, with P-core clocks ramping to 5GHz. It also wields 30MB of L3 cache.
For graphics, MSI tapped NVIDIA's mobile lineup, with users being able to choose a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti with a 150W of max graphics power and a 1,535MHz boost clock, or a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 175W of max graphics power and a 1,640MHz boost clock.
MSI isn't holding back here. Those who opt for the latter GPU option will have 250W of combined CPU and GPU power at their disposal (GPU=175W with Dynamic Boost 2.0, CPU=75W), with MSI's OverBoost technology providing an extra nudge. Heat is obviously a concern when pushing the power envelope, though in addition to a bigger laptop form factor, the Cooler Boost Titan system employed here boasts four fans, seven heat pipes, and six exhaust vents.
We can't say how well it works until when and if we have a chance to test it out. That said, it at least looks and sounds like a burly cooling solution.
Other specs include four memory slots supporting up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, one M.2 SSD slot supporting PCIe Gen 5 and three more supporting PCIe Gen 4, a Cherry MX keyboard, Killer Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 for wireless connectivity, Killer 2.5G LAN for wired networking, four 2W speakers (two speakers and two woofers), and an assortment of ports including 2x Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort and USB-C), 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x SD memory card reader, 1x mini DisplayPort, and 1x HDMI (8K60 and 4K120).
While not everyone is interested in spending the requisite dough on a gaming laptop that goes all-out, MSI also unveiled a few other offerings based around Alder Lake-HX, including the Radier GE77 HX and GE67 HX, the latter of which boasts the first QHD OLED display with a 240Hz refresh rate, and the Vector GP76 HX and GP66 HX.
The Titan GT77 will be available soon starting at $3,199 and landing at $4,949 for a fully configured model. The Raider GH77 HX and GE67 HX will start at $2,599 and $2,499, respectively. It's not yet clear how much the Vector configs will command.
