A showcase of the latest laptop CPU and GPU champions

Intel’s 12th Gen notebook processorsand the mobile version ofNvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 Tiare now finding their way into gaming laptops, after their respective reveals this January. And both have found their way into the MSI Raider GE76, that top-spec GPU getting paired with a fittingly top-spec CPU: the Core i9-12900HK.

The result is an enthusiastically exclusive laptop; so exclusive, it turns out, that I can’t find the exact model I tested on sale anywhere. Whelp! But to give you an idea of how overdraft-obliterating the Raider GE76 will be, its 4K/120Hz version (the one I used has a 1080p /360Hz screen) is£4400. That’s more than threeRTX 3090s, or seven 512GBSteam Decks, with no reason to believe the 1080p version will go much lower than £4000.

In other words, the new Raider GE76 is all about those internal upgrades. And you can’t get higher-end than a Core i9-12900HK on the CPU side: it’s the overclockable, 14-core pinnacle of Intel’s latest laptop chips, with same hybrid core approach as 12th Gen CPUs like theCore i9-12900KandCore i5-12600K. These are two of thebest CPUs for gamingyou can get, so the Core i9-12900HK’s mix of six high-speed Performance cores and eight power-saving Efficiency cores puts it in good company.

Then there’s the RTX 3080 Ti, on paper the most powerful RTX laptop GPU in Nvidia’s arsenal. Its boost clock speeds are a little lower than those of the RTX 3080, but that’s probably because it’s crammed with nearly 1300 more CUDA cores, with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM as standard. If there’s a mobile GPU that can fill out a 360Hz refresh rate, it’s this one.

I still think, as I did with the last model, that refresh rate is higher than necessary; 144Hz would still look great, and reduce battery drain. But even if you’re not hitting 360fps, you’re usually getting a bit closer than on the RTX 3080. Highest-qualityFinal Fantasy XVproved to be one exception, as both laptops hit the game’s 120fps cap, but enabling TurfEffects and Hairworks gave the more powerful card an advantage. Frame rates landed within the 72-90fps range, up from 54-80fps.

Overall, the RTX 3080 beats the RTX 3080 by enough of a margin to feel worthwhile, even it never truly embarrasses the lower-spec GPU. The fact that it will more consistently stay above 60fps in Ultra-quality AAA games is, alone, enough to make it a good choice for any high-end gaming laptop. Just remember that these results come when it’s matched with the most powerful laptop CPU as well, SO mileage may vary slightly on machines with Core i7s or AMD chips.

Happily, there are other, less obvious ways in which MSI has spruced up this particular notebook, and one is the display. I can only speak for the 1080p/360Hz model, not the 4K/120Hz or the 1440p/240Hz versions (the latter is also hard to find despite MSI’s own site confirming it exists), but there’s a marked brightness and contrast improvement. I measured its peak luminance at 276cd/m2 and its contrast ratio at 1168:1, both up significantly on the older laptop’s respective 184cd/m2 and 772:1. This comes at the essentially imperceptible cost of sRGB gamut coverage dropping from 90.4% to 89.7%, but I’ll take that sub-1% difference in exchange for brighter whites and deeper blacks any day.

In just about every other way, this is the same laptop as the GE76 Raider. It’s hefty but luxurious, with a well-spaced and firm-feeling mechanical keyboard, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, and strong build quality (save for a slight flex to the screen). The webcam is unusually good, as are the speakers, and the only real concession to stereotypical ‘gamer’ design is the RGB light strip on the bottom edge. Which you can turn off.

The new CPU and GPU don’t create any thermal issues either. In fact, my decibel-o-meter recorded the fans at 43 decibels under load, which is slightly quieter than the older model – though still loud enough to require headphones.

Successfully and by design, the Raider GE76 fits into the same role that is predecessor is now vacating: that of the gaming laptop you buy when you’ve just got so much cash to burn that you might as well go for the best of the best. Whether it’s asensiblepurchase is a different matter, and not just because the 1080p model is so damned hard to find, but that’s your call in the end. If the four grand price isn’t an instant dealbreaker, nothing else here will be.

Even if you never savour the Raider GE76 for yourself, though, it provides a valuable service by demonstrating what today’s best gaming laptop components are capable of. Performance-wise, the yardstick is down – now it’s time to see how more affordable hardware can measure up.