MSI GT75 Titan review
#gaming #pcgaming #laptops #laptopscreen #desktop
3DMark Sky Diver: 36,309; Fire Strike: 16,750; Time Spy: 6,509
Cinebench CPU: 1020 cb; Graphics: 112 fps
Geekbench 4 Single-Core: 5,488; Multi-Core: 23,029
PCMark 8 Home: 4,217
PCMark 8 Battery Life: 1 hour 39 minutes
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 1 hour 44 minutes
Middle Earth: Shadow of War: 73 fps (2160p, Low): 37 fps (2160p, Ultra); 169 fps (1080p, Low) 100 fps (1080p Ultra)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: 64 fps (2160p, Low); 32 fps (2160p, Ultra); 133 fps (1080p, Low), 88 fps (1080p, Ultra)
The MSI GT75 Titan is a seriously powerful gaming laptop, but does that make the high price, heavy weight and thick body worthwhile? Let’s find out.
Starting with the specs we’ve got some serious hardware, including Intel’s i9-8950HK CPU. Not only does this have a high 4.3ghz all core turbo speed, 400MHz above the i7-8750H,it can also be overclocked.
I’ve got 32GB of DDR4 memory running at 2,666MHz in dual channel, and the 4 slots can support up to64GB, however I think if you go above two sticks you can only run a 2,4000MHz.
For storage there’s two 256GB M.2 NVMe SSDs in a RAID 0 array, which fill two of the three PCIe M.2 slots, and there’s also a 1TB hard drive in the single 2.5 inch drive bay. As for graphics there’s an Nvidia 1080 with 8GB of GDDR5X memory, and this powers the 17.3” 1080p 120Hz TN panel, more on that soon. For network connectivity there’s support for 802.11ac wifi, Bluetooth version 5, and interestingly 10 gigabit ethernet.
The titan has a black brushed metallic lid with some of the interior being the same, while the rest is covered by a plastic wrist rest. Overall the laptop feels extremely solid, as you’d expect at this size. The dimensions of the laptop are 42.8cm in width, 31.4cm in depth, and up to 5.8cm in height, so yeah quite massive. MSI have this beast listed as weighing 4.56kg on their website, which is basically spot on with my own testing, although once you add the two 230 watt power bricks and all required cables for charging that adds an additional 2kg, so around 6 and a half kilos all up.
The 17.3” 120Hz TN panel has a 3ms response time with G-Sync, and it’s also available with a 4K IPS-level panel too, so probably AHVA. If you want 1440p though you’ll need to look at an external monitor. The viewing angles weren’t as bad as I expected for a laptop TN panel, basically fine side to side and but then it changes noticeably from up top or down below, you’ll just need to look at it front on for best the experience. At 100% brightness I measured the panel at 313 nits, so not too bad, definitely bright enough for indoor use.
The display comes colour calibrated, and I’ve measured the current colour gamut using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my results returned 100% of sRGB, 84% of NTSC and 89% of AdobeRGB, so pretty impressive results, some of the best I’ve measured in a laptop and overall I thought the screen looked great as long as you’re looking at it front on. I’ve performed my usual backlight bleed test on the display, which involves having the laptop show a black screen in a dark room to help emphasize any bleeding. I then take a long exposure photo to display any bleed, so this is a worst case scenario test. There was some noticeable bleed around the edges, as is shown in the photo, but I never actually noticed this during normal usage, however this will vary between laptops.
There was only a little screen flex while moving the display, overall it felt quite sturdy owing to the fairly large hinges placed toward the corners, and as you’d expect in a laptop this heavy there’s no problem opening it with one finger. But the weight seemed pretty evenly distributed, if for some reason you want to run it on your lap. Above the display in the center is a 1080p camera. Both the camera and microphone are alright, a little above average, but you'll be able to judge both for yourself.
The Steelseries keyboard is really impressive, not only does it have full individual key RGB backlighting with a lot of customizations, it’s also mechanical, so I guess that’s one advantage for having such a thick laptop. It looks great, types well with 3mm of key travel, 1.5mm of actuation and is hands down the best keyboard I’ve ever used on a laptop. There’s also a plastic wrist rest built in, giving your hands a little elevation. As expected in a mechanical keyboard the keys sound very loud and clicky, here’s a example to give you an idea.
The numpad is a little narrow which seems strange given the ample space, and we’ve got five buttons to the right of it which do things like open MSI’s dragon center software, max out the fan, or change the keyboard lighting effects. There was almost no flex on the keyboard area while pushing down fairly hard, overall it was really solid.
The touchpad uses synaptics drivers and was very smooth to the touch. The touchpad itself doesn’t physically click down but you’ve got separate left and right click keys too, which of course also have their own RGB lighting because why not? No issues using the touchpad in my testing, it worked well. For the IO starting out on the left after the massive air exhaust vent we’ve got three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports, followed by four 3.5mm audio jacks for line in and out, microphone input and headphone output.
On the right there are two more USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports, an SD card slot, and passed the air exhaust vent there’s a kensington lock, although I think having your laptop this heavy might be enough security.
There’s more on the back, including the 10 gigabit ethernet port, mini DisplayPort 1.2 output, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C which also supports Thunderbolt 3 with 4 lanes and DisplayPort, HDMI port, and the power input. In addition to the rear I/O there are also massive air exhaust vents in the corners. MSI note that you can run upto three 4K external displays, however as I don’t have that many I haven’t tested that. The Type-C port also lets you charge an external device at 5 volts 3 amps.
The front just has three status LEDs in the center,on the back of the metallic lid there’s the MSI logo in the center which lights up white, and it’s covered by Gorilla glass, so it sticks out from the lid a little. Fingerprints show up fairly easily on both the lid and interior, they’re easy to wipe away inside from the plastic wrist rest but it’s a bit more difficult to clean dirt from the metal grooves.
Underneath there's some rubber feet that stop it sliding around while in use, although it’s heavy enough for that to not really be an issue. There’s also heaps of intake vents, and It’s worth noting that the air holes are quite large, so no problems for airflow but dust build up may be a problem long term. The two two watt speakers and single five watt subwoofer are found underneath towards the front left and right corners. As you might expect in a huge laptop the speakers are pretty good, they get really loud, have some bass, and still sound fairly clear even at high volume.
The laptop can be opened up easily with a phillips head screwdriver. Inside there’s a lot going on, lots of heatpipes with massive fans, two additional memory slots in the center, the other two with our memory installed are on the other side of the board, followed by the WiFi card. The large heatsink towards the front covers the three M.2 slots, including the two we’ve got in RAID 0 as the boot drive, and the 2.5 inch drive bay is under here. The graphics also appears to use the MXM standard, so in theory it can be replaced but I’m not sure if upgrades are supported.
Powering the laptop appears to be a 75 Watt hour battery, at least that’s what I found when opening it up. MSI’s website notes that it has an 8 cell 90 watt hour battery, however that doesn’t match what I saw in my unit, hardware info also reported the same 75 watt hour battery, so I’m not sure if there’s another one under there or something or it’s just a mistake.
With a full charge and just watching YouTube videos with the screen on half brightness, keyboard lighting off and background apps disabled, I was able to use it for 2 hours and 42 minutes, longer than I expected thanks to the larger than usual battery. The laptop was also using the Nvidia 1080 graphics for this whole test, I wasn’t able to use the Intel integrated graphics even after disabling G-Sync, apparently this can be done though but requires a reboot to apply, however I wasn’t able to test it in the time I had, so it may be possible to get better battery life outside of games.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS the battery lasted for 1 hour and 24 minutes, but dropped down to 15 FPS when it had 25% charge remaining, so I guess it wasn’t enough to power the hardware at that level. Overall the battery life isn’t too terrible when you consider the specs inside, but given the ample space we saw I would have thought a larger battery would have been possible. Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 18 degrees celsius, it’s cold here at the moment as it’s winter in Australia, so expect warmer temperatures in a warmer environment.
At idle the CPU and GPU were both running on the cooler side in the 30s, as shown down the bottom in light blue. Working our way up the graph in dark blue while playing Watchdogs 2 at stock out of the box settings the temperatures rise quite a bit, but still acceptable. Going up again to the green bar I’ve manually maxed out the fan, so it’s a fair bit louder as you’ll hear soon, but it does give us a 10 degree improvement.
When applying a 4.8GHz all core overclock to the CPU and 200MHz overclock to the GPU in yellow the temperatures of the CPU rise up quite a bit with the fan back at stock speed. Applying a -0.150v CPU undervolt in orange above this only just slightly dropped the temperature with the overclock applied. Going up to the lighter red bar the temperature drops a bit with the fan also maxed out.
Now for the stress tests, this was done running Aida64 and the Heaven benchmark at the same time to try and utilize both the CPU and graphics. At stock settings in dark red it was running alright, but by maxing out the fan in pink the temperatures dropped a fair bit. In purple the same configuration was run, but I’ve raised the power limit which is why the temperature shoots up, and it was actually thermal throttling at this point.
By default the turbo boost power max value was set to a 45 watt TDP, however it was possible to raise this using Intel XTU, so we’re also getting much better performance now but that also results in higher temperatures, boosting the power limit allowed it to reach an 88 watt TDP in this workload. If we apply the -0.150v CPU undervolt though the temperatures drop back quite a bit as shown in dark blue because it removes the thermal throttling and the TDP drops back to 64, but once we add on the CPU and GPU overclocks again in black the thermal throttling is hit again, even with the fan maxed out and we reach an
86 watt TDP.
These are the average clock speeds while running the tests for the temperatures just shown, so you might need to pause and refer back to the previous graph to get a full picture of how performance was affected.
While gaming at stock speeds down the bottom in blue and green we can see the default 4.3GHz all core turbo speed of the 8950HK is being hit while playing, no throttling there in this title. When we apply the CPU and GPU overclocks in yellow the average clock speeds for both rise respectively, however some power limit throttling was now taking place due to the previously mentioned 45 watt TDP limit, which was the default. By undervolting the CPU in orange this was essentially removed, and no real change to the performance in light red as thermal throttling wasn’t a problem here.
As for the stress tests the power limit throttling was hitting hard at stock speeds in dark red and pink, but once the power limit was boosted in purple we’re getting the expected 4.3GHz, so full stock turbo speed, and then finally with the overclock applied in black we’re getting a boost but there was still thermal throttling preventing us reaching the full 4.8GHz even with the fan maxed out, still really good results though, much better than say the Dell G7 which can’t even sustain its stock boost clocks, let alone overclocking.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any GPU load, and at complete default stock settings the power limit throttling from the 45 watt TDP limit was capping us in blue. After raising the power limit in Intel XTU it was possible to reach the full 4.3GHz turbo boost speed, and then in both overclocked results in green and yellow I went for a 4.9GHz all core overclock. Thermal throttling became the enemy with the yellow bar, and we were running at a 120 watt TDP at this point. With the -0.150v undervolt applied we can finally reach the full potential of the 4.9GHz overclock on all 6 cores with a 112 watt TDP now with much less frequent thermal throttling, although there was still some present, so quite close to maxing it out in this workload but still very impressive results.
Similarly here are the average clock speeds of the 1080 graphics while only running the Heaven benchmark, with the 200MHz overclock applied we’re getting around a 170MHz boost, getting us to just over 2000MHz, pretty nice! The external temperatures of the laptop where you’ll actually be putting your hands were running very cool regardless of the test. Even with the power limit boosted, CPU and GPU overclocked without increasing the fan the keyboard and wrist rest area never really rose above the high 30s, so it was perfectly cool and comfortable at all times. As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these tests.
At idle it was still audible, and then basically any other time it was quite loud as expected. While gaming with the fans at default speeds it was louder than many other gaming laptops maxed out, and then when we max the fans out here it sounds like a jet taking off. I didn’t notice any coil whine in my unit, although you’d be unlikely to hear it through the fans anyway.
Finally let’s take a look at some benchmarks. The games were tested with both the 1080 graphics and i9 CPU overclocked. The graphics had a 200MHz core overclock and 100MHz memory overclock applied, while the i9 only had a small boost to 5GHz in single core, the rest of the cores were left default, and the CPU was also undervolted by -0.150v.
I wanted to test best performance because I think if you’re looking at a powerful laptop like this that’s how you’ll be running it. I intended to run with a higher CPU overclock, but long story short I completed a days worth of benchmarking after discovering my settings in XTU were overridden by MSI’s dragon center software which loaded up after I set them, so in theory you could overclock all cores, as that’s what I did for my temperature testing, I was able to get mine to 4.9GHz on all 6 cores stable in games and this should help a little in improving the performance, but in the few games I retested to check I wasn’t actually seeing a difference, so I didn’t waste another day redoing all of the tests.
Fortnite was running really well at all setting levels, even at epic settings I was seeing 140 FPS averages with the 1% lows still quite high, but keep in mind the results will vary based on what’s going on in game. Overwatch was tested playing with the bots, and it was running extremely well. It’s got a 300 FPS cap and the averages at most of the setting levels are close to that, and epic settings played perfectly well. PUBG was tested using the replay feature, and once again it ran really well even at ultra settings, which usually isn’t the case as the game doesn’t seem to be that well optimized, but no problems at all here.
CS:GO was tested with the ulletical benchmark and these are the best results I’ve ever seen in a laptop, really great frame rates at all setting levels. Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and again really good results, even the 1% lows at ultra settings are well above the 120Hz refresh rate of the display. I’ve tested Farcry 5 again with the built in benchmark, and yet again really great results at max settings, over 100 FPS at ultra. Assassin’s Creed Origins was also tested with the built in benchmark, and again easily playable at all setting levels with no issues.
Dota 2 was tested using a fairly intensive replay, so this should be a worst case scenario, realistically you’ll probably get better results than this while actually playing, and even in this intensive test the averages are quite high for this test on a laptop. Testing Battlefield 1 in the first campaign mission ran perfectly well at ultra settings, even the 1% lows are above 100 and I didn’t notice any dips while playing. Rise of the tomb raider was tested with the built in benchmark, yet again great results with average frame rates at ultra setting above the refresh rate of the panel. Watchdogs 2 doesn’t usually run at high frame rates on most laptops, but it was running extremely well even at ultra settings.
Ghost recon is another fairly resource intensive game but it was still playable at max settings, but much better results at the lower levels. The Witcher 3 usually doesn’t run quite well at ultra settings, but here it was again running perfectly fine maxed out, granted with hairworks off. Ashes of the Singularity was tested as a more CPU demanding title to get an idea of how the i9 goes, and again probably the best results I’ve seen in this game in a laptop lately. Now onto the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine, as well as Firestrike, Timespy, and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want a detailed look at these results.
This is the first laptop I’ve ever had with the Nvidia 1080 in it, and combined with the i9 CPU in a laptop that can actually run it at high clock speeds we’re getting extremely high results in all games, all the games tested ran perfectly fine maxed out at 1080p, and it should run pretty decent at higher resolutions too if you connect an external monitor. For raw CPU performance I’ve run a few Cinebench benchmarks with the i9 at varying settings. At stock it’s performing a little less than a reference 8750H, but once we raise the default
45 watt power limit in XTU, undervolt the CPU and start overclocking we get some serious power for a laptop chip.
In Crystal Disk Mark the two 256GB M.2 NVMe SSDs in the RAID 0 array was performing well, although for NVMe drives in RAID 0 I expected better considering these speeds are possible without RAID. Each of the 256gb NVMe SSDs is listed with a 2800MB/s read and 1100MB/s write, so combined we are getting better than this, but it could probably be improved much more with better SSDs.
The 1TB 7,200RPM hard drive was getting 111MB/s in both sequential reads and writes, while the SD card slot was tested with a V90 rated card, so the card shouldn’t be a bottleneck. The results are alright, although on the lower side compared to say the UHS2 SD reader of the Aero 15x.
As for the price here in Australia it’s going for around $5,900 AUD at the time of recording, or $3,900 USD in the US, so yeah quite expensive. You can check the links in the description for updated pricing or to see the different configurations available. So what did you guys think of the MSI GT75 Titan gaming laptop, or as I like to call it, the tank. Obviously this isn’t for everyone, in fact it seems to be a pretty niche product. Yes it has serious gaming power and just about every feature you could want in a laptop, but all of that comes with many drawbacks, namely a high cost, running quite loud and form factor that is quite heavy and thick for something that’s meant to be portable, especially if you need to take those two power bricks with you. Personally I’d probably look at spending the money on a full gaming PC and still get a decent laptop for the same price, but that’s just me, otherwise the titan is definitely offering an amazing gaming experience for a laptop.
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