MSI Pulse GL76 Review (i7-11800H, RTX 3060)

In May 2021, MSI launched a new gaming laptop with Intel’s 11th Gen Core processors. These new gaming laptop models are launched in different series. Today, we decided to review one of them.

The laptop we will review in this article is the MSI Pulse GL76. The variant we have chosen is equipped with a Core i7-11800H processor and an RTX 3060 GPU. It is also worth noting that this is the highest-end variant of the Pulse GL76.

Specifications

Appearance, Design, and Portability

Starting from the appearance, we can say that the MSI Pulse GL76 has a unique design. The Pulse GL76 case is made of metal, and the entire body has a titanium gold finish. The contours are designed with metal-like armor, which significantly improves the durability of the laptop. The design has a flavor of e-sports, which we can call a blessing for gamers.

In addition to appearance and design, portability is also one of the most important factors. Many gamers avoid buying that particular laptop if it lacks portability. The MSI Pulse GL76 is acceptable as it weighs 2.6 kg and has a thickness of 24.2 mm. In addition, the Pulse GL76 is only available in one color: Titanium Gray.

Display

The MSI Pulse GL76 comes with a 17.3-inch IPS display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, featuring Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate. For QHD+ and 165Hz screens, buyers will have to pay a bit more. The bezels on both sides of the display are also narrow, which helps provide a wider field of view and attracts the attention of the gamer.

The higher refresh rate of 144Hz in Pulse GL76 brings a smooth gaming experience and almost zero lag. The display also has relatively good color gamut performance. Through testing, we found that the NTSC color gamut in the display is 69%, while the sRGB color gamut is 98%, the Adobe RGB color gamut is 75%, and the DCI-P3 color gamut is 74%.

In addition to gaming, the display also provides an excellent visual experience while watching movies.

Keyboard

The MSI Pulse GL76 features a full-size backlit keyboard (anti-ghost 84 keys) with monochrome and vivid colors in the keyboard area. The keyboard has a compact design and is specifically designed for gamers.

It is worth mentioning that the MSI Pulse GL76 comes with a built-in application called MSI Center. This application enables users to customize the keyboard backlight color according to their needs. Overall, the keyboard will be a breakthrough for gamers who prefer RGB settings.

Ports

The Pulse GL76 has eight ports, five on the right and three on the left.

The five ports on the right are as follows:

1x Type-C USB3.2 Gen 1
1x Type-A USB3.2 Gen 1
1x RJ45 (Ethernet/LAN Cable port)
1x (4K @ 60Hz) HDMI
1x 3.5mm Headphone Jack

In addition to the five ports, there is a CPU status indicator. The right side has the following ports:

1x Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 1
1x Type-A USB 2.0
Charging Port

Battery Life, SSD, RAM, and Wi-Fi:

Regarding the battery, we can say that the MSI Pulse GL76 has performed decently. The Pulse GL76 gaming notebook features a 3-cell, 53 Wh Li-ion Polymer (11.4V) battery having a capacity of 4700mAh. As officials claimed, the battery timing is up to 6 hours, but after testing it, we found that it provides 4 hours of online browsing and video playback.

The Pulse GL76 comes with a 180W (100-240V) AC Adaptor, which seems a perfect combination with this battery capacity.

Another exciting thing we found in this notebook is that it can be charged in four different modes with the help of MSI Center. The four different modes are AI Charge, Best for Mobility, Balanced, and Best for the Battery. It depends on the user which charging mode is best for them.

The MSI Pulse GL76 comes with a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD (Samsung PM981A), which eliminates the problem of running out of space due to too many games. The Pulse GL76 has two M.2 SSD slots (NVMe PCIe Gen3).

The laptop also comes with 16GB of DDR4 3200MHz dual-channel (8GB x 2) RAM. The Pulse GL76 is equipped with two SO-DIMM memory slots that can support up to 64GB of memory.

We also tested the SSD using the CrystalDiskMark application and found that it has a read speed of 3,408.16 MB/s and a write speed of 3026.42 MB/s, which meets the standards of high-end PCIe 3.0 SSDs. It is worth mentioning that users can monitor the status of SSD and RAM through the MSI Center.

To test the RAM, we used a dual-channel performance test with AIDA64, where we found that the 3200MHz DDR4 memory on Pulse GL76 has a 10% and 35% faster performance on read and write operations, respectively (compared to 2666MHz DDR4 memory).

The Pulse GL76 is equipped with Intel Wi-Fi 6 Gig+ (IEEE 802.11ax WLAN standard) and Bluetooth v5.2. It’s safe to say that the Pulse GL76 complies with today’s networking standards. It has a 75% lower latency (compared to standard 802.11ac), which contributes to faster, smoother gaming, higher quality streaming, and immersive communications experiences.

The Pulse GL76 also supports MU-MIMO, which allows a Wi-Fi router to communicate with multiple devices simultaneously.

Cooling System

The MSI GL76 uses the well-known Cooler Boost 5 cooling system with dual internal fans and six heat pipes to better suppress the heat generated by the CPU and GPU.

It further enables the laptop to achieve near-perfect thermal performance, allowing the Pulse GL76 to release the full performance of gamers for an extraordinary gaming experience.

The inner diameter of the heat pipes has been enlarged, and MSI has also used its special thermal grease. All these factors ensure that the cooling system will be excellent during heavy gaming.

CPU and GPU

The MSI Pulse GL76 is powered by Intel’s latest 11th Gen Core i7-11800H processor. The processor has a total of eight cores, sixteen threads, and 24MB of L3 cache memory. The single-core frequency can reach up to 4.6GHz.

It is worth mentioning that this 11th-generation processor is based on the Tiger Lake-H microarchitecture and is manufactured using the 10nm SuperFin process. As a result, the processor achieves a perfect balance between performance and power consumption.

In addition to the Core i7-11800H CPU, the MSI Pulse GL76 also has an RTX 3060 GPU,  which comes with 6GB of GDDR6 memory and a maximum frequency of 1,425 MHz.

The RTX 3060 has the following highlights: 8nm manufacturing process, 192-bit bus width, and GA106 core. This GPU can smoothly run almost all major games on the market (currently available) at 1080p resolution.

CPU Performance:

In this test, we used two software programs, AIDA64 FPU (for CPU) and Furmark (for GPU), together for a 25-minute dual-stress test on an MSI Pulse GL76. The CPU (Core i7-11800H) can be maintained at around 40 watts, while the GPU’s power consumption can be controlled at approximately 80W with no significant frequency drops. Overall, this phenomenon has proven to be highly reliable.

We also completed the performance testing of the Core i7-11800H with a few test applications. The names of these applications and their results are as follows:

CPU-Z: In this app, we performed the classic V17 test, achieving a single-core score of 605.5 and a multi-core score of 5,435.

Cinebench R20: In this test, the single-core score was 576 points, while the multi-core score was 4345 points.

Cinebench R23: In this test, the single-core score was 1511 points, while the multi-core score was 11529 points.

GPU Performance:

After the CPU test, we also did a short GPU performance test. For the GPU test, we used the 3DMark application. Here are the results:

Time Spy: The overall score was 7,689, while the graphics score was 7,481.

Fire Strike: The overall score was 18,213, while the graphics score was 19,921.

Fire Strike Extreme: The overall score was 9,063, while the graphics score was 9,351.

Gaming Test:

Since the MSI Pulse GL76 is a gaming laptop, a gaming test is required. As we mentioned above, this gaming laptop can efficiently run the games currently available on the market at 1080p resolution.

For gaming testing, we’ve selected four of the most popular games on the market right now.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey: In this game, we set the resolution to 1080p (Full HD) and turned on the special effects. The Pulse GL76 has an average frame rate of 63 FPS.

Far Cry 5: In the Far Cry 5 gaming test, we set the resolution to 1080p and enabled special effects. It was found that the Pulse GL76 can give us an average frame rate of 119 FPS.

Tomb Raider: Shadow: When testing this game, we enabled the effects option, and it turned out that this gaming laptop could achieve an average frame rate of 108 FPS, which is quite a bit smoother. We conducted another test with the effects still enabled, but this time we also turned on ray tracing and set the image quality to high. As a result, we achieved an average frame rate of 66 FPS, which is still reasonable.

Summary:

As a gaming notebook for mainstream gamers, the MSI Pulse GL76 meets the performance requirements of mainstream gamers. In terms of visual experience, a higher refresh rate and a wide color gamut can give players an excellent gaming experience. Some standout highlights, such as 16GB DDR4 dual-channel memory, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and special keyboard lighting effects, allow the Pulse GL76 to meet the needs of gamers in various ways. Also, the overall experience is quite good. It is an excellent option for gamers who prefer large screens.