MSI Titan GT77 HX review: Intel’s most powerful laptop chip, tested

Okay, now that’s just ridiculous.

For those of you who just tuned in, Intel announced an absolutely monstrous mobile processor in January – the Core i9-13980HX with 5.6 Ghz of turbo frequency, 157 watts of maximum turbo power and 24 cores (eight performance, 16 efficiency). It is, on paper, the most powerful laptop processor in history. So, naturally, I had to get my hands on it.

I’m writing this direct from the MSI Titan GT77 HX. It’s an absurd device. It features a 17.3-inch 144Hz Mini LED display. Inside is a GeForce RTX 4090, 2TB of storage, and 64GB of memory. If anything can show off Intel’s flagship processor at its best, it’s going to be this gigantic thing. Micro Center currently has it listed for, you know, just $4,699.99, a very reasonable and normal price to pay for a computer.

But let me tell you – I deeply envy the 11 people who are going to buy it because the chip inside is an absolute beast. And here’s what’s most surprising: the battery life, while not what I would call “good”, was better than I expected.

These are some of the best gaming results you’ll see on any laptop. In particular, I want to draw your attention to this CS: GO score. CS: GO score is a particularly CPU-intensive title, and this laptop scored higher than any I’ve seen before by a solid margin. I mean, 574 frames per second is just hilarious.

To see just how much this processor adds to the conversation, you can compare the Titan to the recently announced Razer Blade 16. The model of this laptop I just reviewed features the same 4090 GPU with a very slightly less powerful Core i9-13950HX. The Titan showed some form of increase on most settings we ran.

On Cinebench, the Titan scored a 2,098 on a single core and a 28,479 on a multi-core. These are by far the highest scores I’ve seen on any machine, laptop, or desktop I’ve ever run this test on. So if you were waiting for confirmation, this chip is a monster.

How this raw power will translate to the real world will depend on your use case. The Titan took two minutes and 53 seconds on our 4K video export test and scored 1,124 on PugetBench for Premiere Pro. These are good results, but they show just how geared the system is towards gaming. If you want a device primarily for video work – and I’m not sure I’ve ever expected to type that phrase in my life – you are actually going to safeguard money by opting for a 64GB/2TB MacBook Pro with M2 Max, which did better in our Premiere tests.

And then the biggest surprise of the day. Battery life: Surprisingly decent. I spent an average of five hours and seven minutes charging using this device as my primary driver, which involved working in around 20 Chrome tabs, very light photo work and the occasional Spotify stream on top. You know what? I take it.

I expected the battery life of this device to be around nine minutes, so five hours is well over my expectations. The Titan’s size allows for a massive 99.9 Wh battery, sure, but I’m still happy to see that the 16 efficiency cores built into this processor seem to pull their weight. (This was done with the RTX 4090 GPU disabled, of course – I wouldn’t expect you to get this result with this chip running at full speed.)

The chip and its power are the main attraction of the Titan GT77 HX, but if you’re curious about the laptop itself, here are a few things to know about it.

• I am obsessed with this keyboard. The Titan features a Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile mechanical keyboard with a two-piece key structure and a “cross-point contact system”. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is my favorite laptop keyboard I’ve ever used. The keys have a perfect actuation point with just the right amount of click. I easily hit my normal typing speeds with an accuracy rate that I don’t think I’ve ever achieved on a typing test before. I wish I had a keyboard like this in my daily process, and I wish more manufacturers would use it. I’m typing this now on a Razer Blade, having recently left the Titan, and I’m just feeling sad. One caveat: the arrow keys and number pad don’t use mechanical switches, which can feel inconsistent during gameplay.
• It’s flashy and bold. If you’re looking for a product that people will turn to look at in passing, this is the one. The keyboard, rear vents, and lid logo are all RGB-filled. It’s a big device too, at just over 0.9 inches thick and 7.3 pounds. In today’s laptop market, that’s about as thick and heavy as it gets. Take this anywhere, and people will notice, is what I’m saying. Oh, and the 330W adapter is really gigantic – like the size and weight of a big book. (It only charged the Titan up to 49% in 60 minutes, which was slower than I had hoped, given the size.)
• The display is a dream. The Mini LED 144Hz 4K screen of my test model is exceptional. It reached a whopping 885 nits of brightness, which means you shouldn’t have any issues viewing your games in any indoor or outdoor environment. I only needed to keep it between 20-30% brightness during my daily work. Given that many top-tier gaming laptops aren’t the brightest, it’s an impressive spec to behold. Between that brightness, the deep blacks and vivid colors provided by the Mini LED, 144Hz refresh rate and 4K resolution, this is hands down one of the best screens around – if not THE best screen – you can get on a gaming laptop right now.
• The chassis is solid. The build quality is excellent, with very little flex in the keyboard or screen. It has all the ports you need including Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, Ethernet and an SD card reader.

There are two drawbacks to note. For one, it’s a fingerprint magnet (although smudges are easier to wipe away than they typically are on Razer Blades). It’s also quite noisy. I mean, I can’t imagine anyone buying a laptop that’s literally called the “Titan” and expecting it to be discreet and stealthy. But yes, to confirm, the fans of the GT77 HX are quite audible when running at full speed.

Finally, I have to come back to the price here. When a device costs several hundred dollars more than a similar MacBook Pro (a laptop widely criticized as an unattainable luxury), giving buying advice about it seems almost pointless. On the contrary, we can regard this device as a fantasy – a look at gaming technology at its wondrous, once inaccessible height.

If you’re looking for a 17-inch with a high-res screen and cool lights but find the Titan a bit out of your price range, a 4K version of Alienware’s x17 currently costs well over $1,000 less than this Titan unit. . Those looking for something more compact could instead try the Razer Blade 17 UHD 144Hz (currently $3,499.99), which has a colorful (but more understated) keyboard. They’re still expensive laptops, sure, but they’re a bit closer to the ground.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge