Like other laptop brands, MSI has a few families of gaming laptops. The Titan series offers the most impressive performance numbers and striking designs and today we're looking at the 2023 refresh with 13th Gen Intel processors. These Titan laptops have always promised desktop-like performance in a compact package and the latest MSI Titan GT77 HX is no exception.

We're going to run through the design, performance, and why you should consider buying this machine as your next gaming rig. It's powerful, bold, and perfectly suited for long gaming sessions at home or your favorite LAN event. It's without a doubt one of the best gaming laptops you can buy in terms of performance.

MSI Titan GT77 HX
MSI Titan GT77

Made for users who want power above all else, the MSI Titan GT77 has incredible performance at the cost of portability.

MSI Titan GT77 HX: Price, availability, and specs

MSI Titan GT77 HX
Source: XDA-Developers
  • MSI offers three versions of the Titan GT77 HX.
  • Specifications between the three models differ in the RAM, storage, and GPU.

Intel provided XDA with a review unit of the MSI Titan GT77 HX. The model we received will not be available for purchase as it has a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13950HX instead of the Core i9-13980HX, so you can expect to see a slight boost in performance over what we're able to achieve with this laptop.

All the other specifications match the $4,599 model, including the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, 64GB RAM, and M.2 PCIe 4TB SSD. The MSI Titan GT77 HX starts from $4,299 and is configurable as three models. All three share the same specifications aside from the RAM, SSD, and GPU. It's possible to choose up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, and a 4TB PCIe SSD, depending on how much you wish to spend.

MSI Titan GT77 HX

OS

  • Windows 11 Pro

CPU

  • 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13980HX

Graphics

  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

Memory

  • 64GB, 128GB DDR5-4000

Storage

  • 2TB, 4TB, M.2 PCIe x4 NVMe SSD

Display

  • 17.3 inches, 16:9 aspect ratio
  • 3840x2160 (4K), IPS, glossy, 1,000 nits

Ports

  • 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2
  • 2x Thunderbolt 4
  • HDMI 2.1
  • Mini DisplayPort
  • Audio jack
  • SD reader
  • 2.5Gb Ethernet

Networking

  • Killer WiFi 6E AX1690i
  • Bluetooth 5.3
  • Killer E3100G

Audio

  • Dynaudio, 2x2 Speakers 2W, 2W Woofer

Keyboard

  • SteelSeries Cherry MX mechanical, per-Key RGB

Battery

  • 99.9Wh

Camera

  • IR 720p HD, shutter

Chassis

  • 15.63 x 12.99 x 0.91 inches (397 x 330 x 23 mm)
  • 7.28 pounds (3.30kg)

Color

  • Black

Price

  • From $4,299

MSI Titan GT77 HX: Design and features

MSI Titan GT77 HX
Source: XDA-Developers
  • The MSI Titan GT77 HX is bulky, heavy, and powerful. It's not designed for portability.
  • MSI kept the same look and feel as the previous generation, which isn't a bad thing.
  • To get online, MSI makes good use of Killer wired and wireless networking stacks.

The MSI Titan GT77 HX is designed around its performance. The Intel processor and NVIDIA GPU take center stage and the laptop is effectively designed around both components with some considerably beefy cooling, with a heatsink that almost spans the entire width visible on the rear of the chassis. That's not to say this is a bad-looking notebook, it's simply designed for gaming and that's clear to see with the various elements and dose of RGB lighting.

It's not as outlandish as many other gaming laptops, however, and you could enjoy using the GT77 HX in an office environment without turning too many heads. The RGB lighting can also be configured (or even disabled) using the included software. Interestingly, a strip of RGB lighting can be found on the rear nearby the aforementioned heatsink and you won't really notice it when using the laptop unless you're in a dark room with the lights off.

Being a 17.3-inch desktop-replacement laptop, the MSI Titan GT77 HX is actually relatively compact and lightweight, even though it measures 21mm thick and 3.30kg. Compared to competitor gaming laptops with such power, including MSI's own GT80, this is a well-designed and packaged notebook. Build quality is excellent, as is expected from brands such as MSI with decades of experience making such hardware.

All ports are located on both sides of the laptop. On the left side, you'll find DC input, two of the three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, SD reader, and an audio jack. On the right are the remaining USB-A port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, Mini DisplayPort, Ethernet, and HDMI 2.1. You'll have no trouble hooking up all your favorite gaming peripherals and even an external monitor to this thing. The mechanical keyboard is, like other MSI laptops, provided by SteelSeries and uses low-profile Cherry MX switches.

It's an absolute joy to type on. The actuation point is spot on and even though it uses low-profile switches, the typing and gaming experiences on the GT77 HX are leagues above what you'd find elsewhere. The touchpad is also pretty good. It's made of glass, is more than large enough, and you'll likely be using a mouse more than not.

MSI Titan GT77 HX: Display

MSI Titan GT77 HX
Source: XDA-Developers
  • The same gorgeous 17.3-inch UHD (4K) display is available across the MSI Titan GT77 HX range.
  • It's an IPS panel with full support for HDR 1000 and is capable of running up to 144Hz.

The 17.3-inch screen attached to the MSI Titan GT77 HX is huge and can easily make this notebook a contender for replacing an aging workstation. Even though this is a 4K panel with a resolution of 3840x2160, the bezels are relatively thin on the sides and top. What you may find strange coming from other laptops is where the lid hinge is positioned on the main chassis. MSI brought the screen forward slightly to aid in venting out all the hot air the CPU and GPU are capable of emitting.

The panel itself is rated for HDR 1000. We measured 483 nits with our own tools and 748 nits with HDR enabled. The dimmest reading we were able to capture was 33 nits. Being able to turn down the brightness is important for anyone wanting to use this laptop at night in a dark room and the MSI Titan GT77 HX panel can get really dim. Color accuracy is great with 99.4%, 84.2%, and 95.1% for sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3, respectively.

Whether you're working with hundreds of tabs open (this machine can easily handle that if not more) or playing your favorite games, this LED panel is stunning. It's also matte, which is a nice touch to combat reflections from brighter environment light sources.

MSI Titan GT77 HX: Performance and battery

MSI Titan GT77 HX
Source: XDA-Developers
  • The mighty Intel Core i9-13950HX offers incredible performance with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
  • Temperatures hit TjMax and thermal throttling takes place, but the chassis remains cool enough.
  • Battery life isn't terrible when everything isn't under load running games and heavier software.

The MSI Titan GT77 HX is about as good as you can get with a notebook. The Intel Core i9-13950HX is a monster of a processor. We're talking 24 total physical cores, eight of which are P-cores joined by a further 16 E-cores. This results in a total thread count of 32, which is impressive for a notebook. This isn't a simple H-series notebook processor from Intel. It's more like a chip you'd find inside a desktop PC.

Usually, we'd find low-power chips inside notebooks that suck little power, but the 13980HX found in retail versions of the GT77 HX is capable of boosting up to 5.6GHz, drawing up to 157W of power. Because of how capable this processor is, MSI only allows the choice between an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 for the dedicated GPU.

Regardless of which graphics card you go for, either will be able to deliver stable gameplay to the 17.3-inch 4K panel. This impressive combination of CPU and GPU is helped by either 64GB or 128GB of DDR5 RAM, running at 4000MT/s. It's not the fastest DDR5 memory around, but the desktop-class RAM offers plenty of capacity to work with.

Benchmark

MSI Titan GT77 HX

Intel Core i9-13900K

GeekBench 5.0

2,008 / 18,853

2,154 / 24,997

CPU-Z

880 / 14,001

868 / 16,886

7-Zip

139 GIPS / 184 GIPS

169 GIPS / 229 GIPS

Cinebench R23

2,089 / 29,460

2,114 / 38,610

HandBrake

979 s

Corona 1.3

45 s

37 s

The Intel Core i9-13950HX is an absolute unit of a repackaged desktop processor. Comparing our CPU-focused benchmark results against the desktop-class Core i9-13900K and it only comes in slightly behind. A score of 5,773 in PCMark 10 is respectable and you'll have absolutely no problem using this machine for work and play. Windows 11 Pro runs well and the system response is as good as your typical fresh installation on a desktop PC.

All these tests were carried out with the MSI Titan GT77 HX connected to a power outlet, allowing the laptop to drive up the power draw. Still, that's incredibly impressive and represents what you can expect to see when gaming on this thing at a LAN event where access to the power grid isn't an issue. Battery use is almost as good, especially when you keep a high power profile applied though these internal components can drain the 99.9Whr pack in a matter of a few hours.

Benchmark

MSI Titan GT77 HX

Time Spy

19,585

Fire Strike

34,006

Fire Strike Extreme

24,673

Fire Strike Ultra

13,898

The above figures allow us to see just how good this laptop is in terms of raw graphics power. We've added figures to compare against our AMD Radeon 7900 XTX review to show just how capable this portable gaming machine is. These numbers should translate to fluid 4K gameplay, as we'll showcase below.

Game

MSI Titan GT77 HX

Cyberpunk 2077

  • 2K, RT, DLSS: 69 FPS
  • 4K, RT, DLSS: 53 FPS

DOOM Eternal

  • 2K, Ultra Nightmare, DLSS: 269 FPS
  • 4K, Ultra Nightmare, DLSS: 175 FPS
  • 4K, Ultra, RT, DLSS: 104 FPS

Far Cry 6

  • 2K, Ultra: 79 FPS
  • 4K, Ultra: 61 FPS
  • 4K, Ultra, RT: 34 FPS

The MSI Titan GT77 HX is more than capable of playing the latest games at 4K with ray tracing enabled. We've seen how good NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 series is on the desktop and the laptop version of the RTX 4090 paired with the Core i9-13950HX is a winning combination. It's worth reiterating that these results will not be as good as a retail configuration as those laptops will come with a slightly more powerful Core i9-13980HX. We expect this will improve game performance by a few frames if anything.

The Core i9 processor gets toasty inside such a compact form factor. It's simply the way it goes with laptops as there's considerably less space for manufacturers to work with. Temperatures of the Intel Core i9-13950HX reached TjMax (98C) in quick succession when the chip is pushed hard with synthetic benchmarks or intensive gaming. Thermal throttling does activate and the fans are clearly audible within the chassis when the system attempts to remain cool (we measured 56dBA a couple of feet away), but once everything is stable (and you throw on your favorite headphones), it's an impressive gaming machine.

MSI Titan GT77 HX
Source: XDA-Developers

The processor was able to remain at about 120W under load with the fans running at full speed on Extreme Performance. P-core clock speeds manage to burst up to 5.3GHz but fall down to around 4.1GHz when everything has been slowed down to keep temperatures in check at 73C. Switching to Balanced reduces PL1 to 100W as well as fan noise. The Silent profile should only be used on battery power.

The battery is adequate for such a capable laptop. You won't be able to play high-end games on the MSI Titan GT77 HX for hours at a time, but it's more than enough to get through multiple hours of general use with the screen turned down and power settings adjusted. Intel's 13th Gen processors are great at sipping small amounts of power. And topping up the power plant takes a few hours, so adequate planning will need to be in place before leaving a power outlet.

Should you buy the MSI Titan GT77 HX?

MSI Titan GT77 HX
Source: XDA-Developers

You should buy the MSI Titan GT77 HX if:

  • You're seeking one of the most powerful gaming laptops you can buy.
  • You don't mind spending a small fortune on a "portable" gaming PC.
  • You have frequent access to power outlets for gaming.

You shouldn't buy the MSI Titan GT77 HX if:

  • You want the best portability.
  • You want better battery life when running games and software.
  • You don't have an insane budget to spend.

The MSI Titan GT77 HX is absolutely bonkers. These Intel Core i9 HX processors are seriously powerful, and so too is the mobile version of the GeForce RTX 4090 from NVIDIA. Combining these together makes the GT77 HX a portable PC that can easily beat many gaming desktop PCs out there. If you frequent LAN events and want something you can move around the house — or even take to the office — this is about as good as you can get in terms of laptop performance without going into workstation territory.

For gaming alone, the MSI Titan GT77 HX scores big with positive performances across a range of titles tested. It's also excellent at everything else a Windows 11 laptop can be tasked with and MSI's thermal solution is largely responsible for this, being able to tame the 250W of raw power as well as it can. If you can somehow afford this notebook, you will not be disappointed.

MSI Titan GT77 HX
MSI Titan GT77

Made for users who want power above all else, the MSI Titan GT77 has incredible performance at the cost of portability.