MSI Katana GF76 review: Decent gaming performance for a reasonable price

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$1,250

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The MSI Katana GF76 has first rate CPU efficiency for a finances 17-inch gaming laptop computer due to its 12th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU. Plus, its Japan-inspired chassis exudes loads of aptitude. However, the laptop computer’s 3050 Ti GPU efficiency could underwhelm some players. On the one hand, it allows you to get pleasure from video games with cinematic ray-tracing graphics at an inexpensive value, however on the flipside it’s fairly underpowered, even when efficiency sliders are pushed all the best way to the precise in MSI Center.

That being the case, recommending this laptop computer is horses for programs. If you don’t thoughts modest efficiency in some newer video games, the MSI GF76 is an honest choice. On the opposite hand, if nothing lower than tremendous fast framerates will do, you would possibly need to contemplate one of many step-up fashions with RTX 3060 or RTX 3070 GPUs.

MSI GF76 Specifications

You can discover seven configurations of the GF76 Katana listed on the MSI web site. All function 12th-generation Intel Core i7-12700H CPUs, however totally different RTX 30 collection GPUs or storage capacities. Only 4 have been out there on the time of penning this assessment: two configurations with RTX 3050 Ti beginning at $1,250 (presently $1,099) and two with RTX 3060 beginning at $1,399. A configuration with RTX 3070 and one other with RTX 3070 Ti have been marked ‘coming soon,’ as has a 3rd configuration with RTX 3060. Pricing is but to be revealed for these items. The specification for our assessment unit is as follows:

• CPU: Core i7-12700H
• RAM: 16GB DDR4/3200MHz
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050Ti
• Display: 17.3-inch FHD (1920 x 1080), non-touch, IPS-Level panel, 144Hz refresh price, 45 p.c NTSC
• Storage: 512GB PCle 4 SSD
• Ports: 1 x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen1, 2 x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen1, USB Type-A 2.0, HDMI 2.0 (4K @ 60Hz), 3.5mm Combo jack, RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax 2×2), Bluetooth 5.2
• Dimensions: 15.67 x 10.75 x 0.99 inches
• Weight: 5.73 lbs (2.25kg); the ability brick weighs 0.9 lbs (400g)
• Operating system: Windows 11 Home
• Color: Black
• Battery capability: 53Whr

Design and construct

Those aware of the 2021 GF76 Katana will discover that the design hasn’t modified a lot within the 2022 version. The GF76 Katana nonetheless has a touch of samurai about it, like an instrument of struggle or well-made go well with of armor from medieval Japan. It sports activities a particular all-black chassis, pink illuminated keys, and raised curved edges. We’re advised this design is the brainchild of Japanese illustrator Tsuyoshi Nagano, who has gained some notoriety for his work as the unique cowl artist for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms video games.

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Design pedigree apart, the samurai katana theme makes it an actual looker and one I used to be completely satisfied to play on at any alternative. The laptop computer’s most distinguished function is a stable backbone with curved edges, situated on the base of the show which, from the again at the least, resembles the blade of a katana. This function makes it fairly straightforward to hold. The entrance of the bottom has convex curves that resemble a katana as properly. These match corresponding curves on the highest of the lid to suit snugly down like a clam shell. This compactness makes the laptop computer straightforward to scrub.

Looking on the construct high quality, the 2022 GF76 Katana feels largely plastic however not the type of flimsy plastic you’ll see in another finances gaming laptops. Make no mistake, it is a strong laptop computer with a stable really feel across the keyboard and base the place it’s prone to see probably the most battering in fast-paced video games. Measuring 15.67 x 10.75 x 0.99 inches, it’s fairly giant, so that you’ll want loads of area to set it down.

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The hinges, that are steel, maintain the show tightly in place at any place you would possibly select. However, the highest’s slenderness means you’ll nonetheless see some flex in the event you apply stress. It additionally wobbles a bit in the event you bump it, but it surely received’t bounce in a light-weight breeze, which makes the GF76 appropriate for gaming al fresco.

All the plastic within the chassis means the GF76 is on the sunshine aspect for a 17-inch gaming laptop computer. It weighs simply 5.73 lbs. In comparability to rivals, it’s lighter than the Asus Rog Zephyrus (6.06 lbs) and Gigabyte Aorus 17G (5.95 lbs), however heavier than the Dell XPS 9710 (5.34 lbs). This makes it a bit extra moveable than some. Still, it’s heavy sufficient that you just received’t need to carry it round in all places you go.

Eyeballing the 16:9 show reveals very skinny left and proper bezels. The high bezel takes the form of the aforementioned entrance lid, however doesn’t distract out of your viewing expertise.

Despite its distinctive curved edges, the GF76’s styling is modest. There are solely two logos and so they’re each fairly small – a sublime black-on-black MSI Dragon seems on the highest entrance of the lid like an engraving. The different, gray MSI lettering, sits on the decrease bezel beneath the show. It replaces the black-on-black model within the 2021 version, which regarded a bit like an erased phrase.

While most laptops function utilitarian undersides, MSI has made a method assertion there. Flipping the unit over reveals an array of honeycomb-shaped air vents that, judging by the dearth of warmth we seen whereas enjoying, are as sensible as they’re trendy.

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Four giant rubber ft situated at the back and front give it loads of carry off a tabletop, so you may relaxation assured its fan blades are ventilated.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard and trackpad left a optimistic impression on me, regardless of needing a little bit of time to regulate to them. For typing on, the keys didn’t really feel too mushy or sluggish, with sufficient key journey to reply shortly after I hit them. The trackpad additionally labored properly. It registered clicks instantly and regarded fairly aware of my finger actions.

MSI has stored the keyboard and trackpad positioning roughly the identical as final yr. However, one noticeable change is that some keys that beforehand had simply symbols on them now have textual content on them. This appears higher and will make them simpler to find.

Some would possibly bemoan a single pink coloration for the backlighting, however I discovered it gave the keyboard a fierce look that regarded spectacular when the lights went out. You may even say it helps rev you up a bit, subtly encouraging you to remain fierce in your sport.

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MSI has ensured you may toggle by three brightness ranges or flip backlighting off fully if you wish to save energy. Doing this removes the illumination, however for higher or worse, the keys nonetheless look fairly pink with the backlighting off.

An occasional cling up with typing is the keyboard font, which is kind of totally different to what we’re accustomed to. It threw me off for some time, though I’m a assured contact typist. It confuses you for only a break up second while you peek down at your palms and end up considering… Did I simply hit a G or an O? It could be a little distracting at instances, as some keys simply look too comparable.

Display and audio

The MSI GF76’s 17-inch FHD show supplies you with loads of visible real-estate to actually get immersed in your video games. It additionally has a key factor that I search for in a gaming laptop computer – an honest refresh price. In this case, it’s 144Hz.

For probably the most half, the quick show stored video games and video wanting fairly clean with none observable micro stuttering. There was simply the mildest trace of ghosting seen when the pixel price struggled to maintain up with fast paced photos.

Looking on the coloration and distinction, it’s completely positive for a finances laptop computer. You received’t see the type of coloration depth you would possibly discover in a extra premium panel and a few photos seem a bit washed out, particularly in the event you’re accustomed to 4K. But the show does solely have a 45 p.c NTSC coloration gamut. For a sub-$1300 laptop computer, that is completely cheap protection. If you’re not doing pictures or design work, you’ll barely discover.

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The greatest disadvantage is the show’s brightness. We measured 270 nits peak brightness, which isn’t nice lately even for a less expensive unit. It’s sufficient for first rate viewing indoors, however you’ll in all probability need to keep away from enjoying open air in daylight.

In regards to the GF76’s audio, the 2 2 watt audio system are situated beneath the entrance left and proper of the laptop computer’s base. Despite being on the underside, they produce sound with surprisingly good mid and excessive vary tonal constancy. That mentioned, the bass vary is lacklustre, significantly for a laptop computer of this dimension.

Connectivity

The GF76 supplies you with complement of ports, together with each USB Type-A and Type-C ports. A HDMI 2.0 port permits you to hook up an additional show or TV and stream 4K photos at as much as 60 frames-per-second. It additionally has an ethernet port for players that need the quickest community speeds.

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Unfortunately, the MSI GF76 Katana isn’t outfitted with a Thunderbolt 4 port, which is a helpful function that allows you to switch hefty sport recordsdata at information speeds of as much as 40Gbps. Despite this, the laptop computer does assist the newest Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 know-how for quick connectivity unplugged.

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Performance

The GF76’s Katana’s efficiency actually is a double-edged sword (pardon the pun). It packs loads of CPU energy due to its 12th-gen Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, which proved too fast for older chipsets in our take a look at group. However, its RTX 3050 Ti GPU confirmed lackluster efficiency at instances, particularly in newer 3D video games. It stood in stark distinction to the laptop computer’s CPU efficiency.

We pitted the $1,250 GF76 Katana towards a choice of gaming laptops from a line-up of latest PCWorld evaluations. These laptops range in dimension and {hardware} configurations, however most have older CPUs and all of them have extra highly effective RTX 30 Series GPUs. That checklist included different 17-inch gaming laptops just like the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, the Dell XPS 17, and the Asus ROG Zephyrus S17. The line-up additionally included the 16-inch HP Victus 16 with a Core i7-11800H CPU. Although this final laptop computer is smaller in dimension, its starter configuration sits inside the identical finances gaming class as our assessment unit.

First up, we ran Maxon’s Cinebench R20 benchmarks. The single-threaded benchmark supplies us with a metric of real-world processor efficiency and the multi-threaded rating signifies how briskly the CPU handles multi-processing duties like rendering and encoding.

As you may see within the graph for our single-threaded take a look at under, the GF76 Katana ranked the best amongst our competitor laptops, proving too good for even the premium Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 with its sporty 11th-gen Core I9 processor.

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Similarly spectacular efficiency was recorded when all 14 Cores of our GF76’s i7-12700H chipset have been put to the take a look at, proving that this laptop computer is suitably highly effective for a variety of CPU intensive duties like 3D gaming and encoding.

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Our subsequent take a look at makes use of the free HandBrake 0.9.9 utility software program to encode a 30GB 1080p MKV file to MP4 utilizing the Android Tablet Preset. Once once more, the MSI GF76 Katana proved a succesful performer, ending the duty quicker than two of its 17-inch rivals. This outcome exhibits us that the GF76 has the legs to maintain working underneath heavy CPU load earlier than it will get too sizzling and must throttle efficiency.

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Both CPU take a look at outcomes additionally demonstrated the prevalence of Intel’s new 12th-gen CPU chipsets over a number of the older Intel and AMD chipsets. These function each Performance and Efficiency Cores that Intel Thread Director splits duties between to optimize efficiency. In the case of our GF76’s Core i7-12700H, it has 6 Performance cores and 8 Efficiency Cores, giving it a efficiency edge over a number of the older Intel CPUs with simply Performance Cores.

Gaming efficiency

When it got here to gaming efficiency, the GF76 Katana carried out constantly properly in older 3D video games however its RTX 3050 Ti GPU set to 60W Total Graphics Power (TGP) underperformed in newer AAA video games that rely closely on the laptop computer’s GPU. This state of affairs performed out in our gaming benchmark outcomes under.

To get a normal thought of 3D gaming efficiency, we ran the 3DMark Time Spy 1.2 benchmark. Our assessment unit’s rating was fairly a bit off the tempo set by rival laptops with extra highly effective GPUs – together with the MSI GE76 Raider outfitted with 12th-gen i9 CPU and RTX 3080 Ti GPU, which isn’t a finances laptop computer however we added only for comparability (in inexperienced).

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In our (circa 2015) Rise of the Tomb raider benchmark, the MSI GF76 confirmed respectable efficiency, beating even the Razer Blade 14 with Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU and GeForce RTX 3080 set at 100W TGP.

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The story was very totally different after we ran the newer and extra GPU dependent Metro Exodus benchmark. Our assessment unit got here in behind the remainder of the sector.

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Switching to Performance Mode within the MSI Center and turning on the CoolerBoost fan setting raised the Katana’s fps in each of those benchmarks. During the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark, it jumped to a decent 96. Running the Metro Exodus benchmark produced a results of 24 fps. However, referring again to the Metro Exodus chart, this rating wouldn’t have modified the positioning of the MSI GF76 Katana amongst our comparisons.

So, what does this final outcome imply? It means we have to take some perspective on the {hardware} capabilities of this laptop computer’s GPU. The MSI GF76 is a finances gaming laptop computer and the RTX 3050 Ti is positioned second from the underside within the RTX 30 Series line-up chart and with much less energy than the GPUs in our take a look at group. This makes an enormous distinction in GPU-skewed video games.

The RTX 3080 has 6144 Nvidia CUDA cores, 192 Tensor Cores, and 48 Ray Tracing Cores. The RTX 3050 TI has solely 2560 CUDA Cores, 80 Tensor Cores, and 20 Ray Tracing Cores. If you need higher efficiency and have a bigger finances, you may all the time go for an MSI GF76 with an RTX 3060 or 3070 GPU.

Our assessment unit continues to be a decent choice, although. Nvidia estimates its GeForce RTX 3050 Ti is 40 p.c quicker than the older GeForce GTX 1650 Ti and 20 p.c quicker than the RTX 3050, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Battery life

The MSI GF76 Katana comes with solely a 3 cell 53Whr battery, which appears a bit small for a laptop computer of this dimension. However, it did handle to final greater than 5 hours in our light-weight battery take a look at. Our benchmark ran the battery down from 100 p.c to standby by enjoying a 4K video on repeat. This outcome suggests you may anticipate roughly 3 hours battery life for an unplugged gaming session, which is about on par with different comparable laptops.

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Conclusion

The MSI GF76 Katana is a finances 17-inch gaming laptop computer with first rate CPU efficiency. The RTX 3050 Ti GPU is a bit underpowered for the newest AAA video games, however you may nonetheless get pleasure from RTX graphics at a fraction of the price of a extra premium laptop computer. Although we anticipated higher gaming efficiency, this laptop computer continues to be price contemplating, particularly in the event you’re on an rigid finances.