MSI Stealth GS77 Review (i9-12900H, RTX 3080Ti)

There is no doubt that MSI is one of the most well-known brands in computer history, and it has a wide lineup of laptops. The company also has a lineup called Stealth GS, which is mainly known for its rare characteristics that cover both gaming and business segments. The advantage of covering both segments is that you get a gaming-grade specs laptop with a slim and lightweight body. We’ve seen many manufacturers sacrifice weight and appearance when designing gaming laptops.

The laptop we are reviewing is one of them, called the MSI Stealth GS77, which is the latest addition to the MSI Stealth GS series. The laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i9 12th Gen processor and an RTX 3000 series graphics card, ensuring that it can handle all its games. It also boasts a higher specification display and a slim body. It is worth mentioning that this laptop is the successor to the MSI GS76, so many similarities between the two models may be found during the review.

The notebook we received comes with a Core i9-12900H processor and an RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. There are also higher-end options for graphics cards, such as the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti. The laptop also supports the latest DDR5 memory and PCIe 4.0 SSD.

MSI Stealth GS77: Specifications

MSI Stealth GS77: Body, Appearance, and Build

As mentioned earlier, the MSI Stealth GS77 is also a business laptop, so good portability is also important. The dimensions and weight of this laptop are as follows: 397.6 x 283.5 x 20.8 mm and 2.8 kg. Compared to the Stealth GS76, we find that its weight has increased quite a bit (2.45 kg for the Stealth GS76).

The laptop still maintains its clean and airy design. However, compared to the previous models in the GS series, this one has a different design, which cuts a specific arc next to the hinges. The rear air vents are designed to be more effective and dissipate heat better.

The MSI Stealth GS77 has an all-metal body with a delicate matte texture that feels very satisfying in the hand. Compared to other gaming laptops on the market today, most of them use plastic as the main material and do not have a premium feel.

On the display cover, there is MSI’s classic Dragon Shield logo, which is darker than the other areas. It is worth mentioning that the entire body is painted in matte black, which is the only color option available for this laptop. Since this laptop has a 17-inch display, its body is comparatively large, which is acceptable for a gaming laptop, as playing games on a large display is a common need of gamers today.

MSI Stealth GS77: Display and Webcam

Before we discuss the display in detail, we’d like to mention some basic specs of this screen. The model we reviewed has a 17.3-inch IPS thin-bezel display with a UHD 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution, which also supports a 120Hz refresh rate. Buyers can also opt for a screen with a higher refresh rate but lower resolution, depending on their needs.

When testing the screen, we found that the display has 100% sRGB color gamut, 88% Adobe RGB color gamut and 99% DCI-P3 color gamut. The maximum brightness was 458.6 nits. The average Delta-E value measured was 1.42 (maximum 2.25, minimum 0.27).

The company also offers a pre-installed software called MSI Center, which allows users to switch between various color settings depending on the scenarios. On the top bezel of the body, there is a webcam, and users can also turn the camera off with an electronic switch. The webcam also supports 1080p video recording at 30 fps, and the infrared feature supports face recognition.

MSI Stealth GS77: Keyboard and TouchPad

The MSI Stealth GS77 comes with a Per-Key RGB gaming keyboard. We also noticed that the area of the frequently used keys has increased by 8% compared to the GS76. The control keys on the left side have also been enlarged. In addition, the key travel has been reduced to 1.7 mm (1.99 mm on the MSI Stealth GS76).

Below the keyboard is a large touchpad. Compared to the touchpad on its predecessor, its size has increased by 50%. The laptop also has a fingerprint scanner on the right side of the touchpad to make logging in safer and faster.

MSI Stealth GS77: Ports and Speaker

On the left side, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a webcam switch. On the right side, there are two USB Type-C ports (one is a Thunderbolt 4 port that supports PD Charging, the other is a standard USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 port) and an SD card reader slot. At the rear, there is an RJ45 port, an HDMI port, and a charging port.

The laptop comes with a six-speaker surround sound system that includes a set of woofers and a set of tweeters to ensure that users get a good audio experience while gaming or working.

MSI Stealth GS77: RAM and SSD

The laptop comes with two 32GB DDR5 memory sticks for faster performance via dual-channel. The memory is clocked at 4800MHz, and with the Core i9-12900H CPU and DDR5 memory, the laptop won’t suffer from latency issues in high-end games at all.

To test the performance of the RAM, we used AIDA64’s cache and memory benchmarks. It delivered a read speed of 68652 MB/s, a write speed of 67,343 MB/s and a copy speed of 68,692 MB/s. As you can see, the latency is slightly higher than with DDR4 RAM, but the read, write, and copy speeds are all doubled.

This laptop comes with a 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD that supports the NVMe protocol. It has two M2 SSD slots, and users can also add another SSD to increase storage space.

To test the performance of the SSD, we used the CrystalDiskInfo, which showed a sequential read speed of 6599.52 MB/s, a sequential write speed of 4998.12 MB/s, a 4K random read speed of 928.42 MB/s, and a 4K random write speed of 665.24 MB/s. Judging by the results, the MSI Stealth GS77’s SSD performance is satisfactory.

MSI Stealth GS77: Battery and Wi-Fi

The MSI Stealth GS77 comes with a 99Whr 4-cell Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 6,250 mAh. The company also provides a 240W AC adapter for fast charging.

The laptop comes with a Killer wireless card that supports Killer Gigabit LAN connectivity (up to 2.5Gbps), Wi-Fi 6E protocol and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity.

MSI Stealth GS77: CPU and its Benchmark

The MSI Stealth GS77 is powered by Intel’s 12th Gen Core i9-12900H processor, which has 14 cores, 20 threads, and 24MB L3 cache. This CPU has a TDP of 45W. Here are the benchmark results for some popular applications:

Cinebench:  In the Cinebench benchmark, we have three different test results, which are as follows:

• Cinebench R15: 262cb on single-core, 2689cb on multi-core
• Cinebench R20: 731cb on single-core, 6956cb on multi-core
• Cinebench R23: 1855 points on single-core, 16107 points on multi-core

3DMark CPU:  The laptop scored 1,042 single-core points and 8,121 multi-core points. The overall performance results are relatively good and comparable to other laptops with the same CPU.

V-Ray: This test is usually used to test the rendering capabilities of a CPU. In this test, the MSI Stealth GS77 scored 11,763 Vsamples, which is more than enough.

MSI Stealth GS77: GPU and its Benchmark

The model we reviewed comes with an RTX 3080Ti graphics card, which is one of NVIDIA’s latest and best graphics cards. There are also higher options on the market, such as the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti. The RTX 3080 Ti comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, a 256-bit bus width and 7,424 stream processors. Compared to the RTX 3080, there are 1280 more stream processors. It has a power consumption set at 105W (80W + 25W Dynamic Boost) with a base frequency of 585MHz and a Boost frequency of 1125MHz. Here are some benchmark results for this graphics card:

• 3DMark Fire Strike: 27,008 points
• 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme: 13,261 points
• 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra: 6,796 points
• 3DMark Time Spy: 10,622 points
• 3DMark Time Spy Extreme: 5,211 points
• V-Ray GPU Test: 1,292 vpaths.

In the GPU test, we would like to mention that all Fire Strike tests are done with DirectX 11, while Time Spy tests are done with DirectX 12.

MSI Stealth GS77: Gaming Test

It’s time for the gaming test, which is what gamers want most in a gaming laptop review. Here are the performance test results for a few popular games:

DOTA 2: The image quality was set to the highest, and the resolution was set to 4K (3840 x 2160). During gameplay, the FPS was around 110-118fps. We didn’t notice any lag or FPS drop during longer gameplay.

FIFA 22: During the test, the resolution was set to 4K, MSAA was set to 4x, and the frame rate was locked at 60. During 30 minutes of gameplay, we didn’t notice any fluctuations.

These gaming results show that the MSI Stealth GS77 can easily handle all the latest high-end games available today.

MSI Stealth GS77: Heat Dissipation and Stress Test

Heat dissipation is one of the main factors that should never be compromised, especially in gaming laptops. Otherwise, your gaming experience will be terrible. However, for this laptop, buyers don’t have to worry about that. The Stealth GS77 comes with the Cooler Boost 5 cooling system that consists of dual fans and six copper pipes. The laptop also has air vents on different sides in order to maintain a good cooling system. In order to test the performance of this cooling system, we also did a stress test, which we’ll discuss below:

CPU Stress Test: We performed this test using AIDA64 Stress FPU. After almost 30 minutes of testing, the CPU temperature had risen to 94°C with a power consumption of 75W (68W for the IA core).

GPU Stress Test: For this test, we used the FurMark Benchmark application, the resolution set to 1080p (Full HD), and MSAA set to 8x. After 30 minutes of testing, the GPU temperature was 84°C. The power consumption was between 94W and 100W, and the frequency stabilized at 1350MHz.

According to the results, the performance release is not as good as other gaming laptops, but as an all-around laptop, this is negligible. Additionally, the dual stress test results were quite conservative compared to the separate stress tests for the CPU and GPU.

Summary

At the end of the review, we got some of the main highlights of this laptop, based on which we have written this summary. The MSI GS77 maintains all the advantages of the MSI Stealth GS series. The robust texture design makes it easy to use in various scenarios. The performance of this laptop is at the level of high-end laptops. It can easily handle a variety of high-load jobs and high-end games. This is especially thanks to the high-bandwidth DDR5 RAM, which takes the performance of the Core i9-12900H CPU to another level.

It is worth mentioning that the model we reviewed is currently priced at $4,800. However, if you’re on a budget, you can opt for a lower-configured model with the same appearance but lower performance.