"Being a desktop processor, the maximum memory supported is also increased from 64 GB to 128 GB. MSI offers four DDR5 slots for users to upgrade their memory in the Titan GT77. The review sample came with 4 x 16 GB of DDR5-4800 system RAM for 64 GB total, running at DDR5-4000 speeds in quad-channel."
This seems to be a little misleading because it makes it sound like the 4 DIMMs are needed for quad channel and this has a very wide memory bus but that isn't the case. DDR5 makes each DIMM into 2 channels half the width of DDR4 so the overall bus width is still the same. EG four 32bit channels instead of two 64bit channels. This is not four 64bit channels as that is still limited to HEDT/Workstation/Server products.
The whole thing is 3.3 KG, so I assume it's 2.5KG of heat pipes and copper/alu to get rid of it. it's like 400W total of heat dissipation and yes I think thermals were excluded on purpose, forced by intel, or anandtech would not be able to post the review otherwise before full cpu release and NDA's expiration. what I see is that it's just a hair above 5900hx, probably because it's not heat soaked all of that copper when tested. This thing is a burst monster, and otherwise gaming crapware, not worth 5000$ at all. 100% it will be heat soaked in 5 min, and rest of the gaming session you will have both 50'C on your keyboard, and lower FPS. If we comare that to 7'th gen AMD that is teased by AMD to be 60% higher than current series at 65W (so gaming laptop level) I expect 12900HX to be smeared on the ground like a biker who crashed at 300km/h.
I cannot redact my previous comment, but I think you can get to the point i was making. What I see is you can make that point from battery life and charging, Massive battery and short lived on web, means it's a very power hungry setup. 3h to fill, 3h to discharge, comparing to AMD 2 hours to charge and 6h to discharge respectively. (with very similar 220W-250W bricks I am sure of it)
It’s a pretty decent benchmark to measure relative perform between processors, but almost no software uses the engine making it not “real world”. Cinebench is not a very good predictor for gaming performance because it scales poorly with additional cache. It is a decent predictor of productivity differences since it is a rendering workload, but you can always use “real world” tests like blender or adobe. I wouldn’t say it’s terrible — as it can provide decent insight into a processor with a single benchmark — but it provides no insight into workloads that a micro architecture can be very good at.
I expected at least several pictures of laptop internals. Considering the type of laptop tested, this would probably be interesting for many anandtech readers.
I am sure anandtech with its reputation and history can get a permission to open and close desktop replacement laptop from manufacturer without problems. Peek inside it the least you readers expect.
No they really can't do that if they expect to get more review samples in the future. Reviewer sites of yore used to buy their hardware off the shelf, but in a age where landing benchmarks first is going to generate competitive page views, reviewers can't realistically wait until a laptop/phone/desktop lands on the shelves (especially now with supply problems, scalpers, and gray market reseller markups) so this is the world we live in. If you want internals, you just have to wait until someone rips one apart and that probably won't be very early in the hardware life cycle.
Does AnandTech typically return laptops not-intact? :)
It's a fair request, one of the things I look for in laptops is upgradeability. Being able to add more RAM or storage or perhaps upgrading the WiFi card down the road is an important consideration.
Although as an owner of an MSI, I'm well aware of their "opening this area voids the warranty" sticker. Not that it's ever stopped me, but they seem to be more of a stickler for that than most.
Personally I have fewer complaints than for most laptop keyboards. It doesn't have half-height arrow keys, which is my top requirement (although it's not quite full-size, let's give it a B grade). The Cherry MX probably hash decent key feel/travel, which is also lacking on some laptops.
I'd personally slightly prefer dedicated page up/down/home/end buttons, versus the NumPad-off variant, but that's a small quibble and from someone who's learned to touch-type numbers quickly without a NumPad, and who usually only uses NumPads for directional movement in grid-based games.
So, yeah, overall I think they did a lot better job on the keyboard than most manufacturers do these days...
This is how I know my 2018 MSI has poor battery life: a hulking DTR like this has twice the battery life, and my laptop has never had much more battery life than it does now.
Props to MSI for finally putting a properly-sized battery in their laptop. But I'm also rather impressed that it can get over 6 hours of battery life in general. The rest of the specs are a bit overkill for what I need, but hopefully they've stopped putting 42 WHr batteries in their dGPU laptops in general. Or at least propagated their recent power efficiency improvements.
Now where's the all-AMD variant that gets battery life figures similar to that Asus? I want the Asus's hardware with the MSI's design.
Why aren't 120hz OLED or 144hz OLED displays more common on high end gaming laptops? Who is hitting 240hz or 360! hz on a laptop. I can't imagine paying 3000 dollars for a screen with the ubiquitous grey "blacks" of an IPS panel.
The multitasking testing only really shows that more threads (& more power) = better at multitasking which seems a bit obvious.
The 12900HX is 24 threads (8P, 8E), the 12900HK is 20 threads (6P, 8E), and the 11980HK / 5900HX are both 16 threads so it's hard to discern architectural advantages from Alder Lake.
Adding a 12th gen part with a similar core count to the 11980HK / 5900HX like the 12600H (4P, 8E) or 12650H (6P, 4E) with 16 threads would make this comparison much more useful? Or possibly adding a test of the 12900HK limited to 16 threads by disabling the E cores (8P, 0E)?
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meacupla - Thursday, September 1, 2022 - link
DDR5-4000 is really disappointing, even with 4x16GB.Does it at least work in 4800 if you only use 2x16GB sticks?
BlakLanner - Thursday, September 1, 2022 - link
Disappointed at the 2.5G wired networking. My GT75 Titan had a 10Gb Aquantia NIC and I had a lot of use for that in my line of work.Darnassus - Thursday, September 1, 2022 - link
It sucks there's no 1440p version..kpb321 - Thursday, September 1, 2022 - link
"Being a desktop processor, the maximum memory supported is also increased from 64 GB to 128 GB. MSI offers four DDR5 slots for users to upgrade their memory in the Titan GT77. The review sample came with 4 x 16 GB of DDR5-4800 system RAM for 64 GB total, running at DDR5-4000 speeds in quad-channel."This seems to be a little misleading because it makes it sound like the 4 DIMMs are needed for quad channel and this has a very wide memory bus but that isn't the case. DDR5 makes each DIMM into 2 channels half the width of DDR4 so the overall bus width is still the same. EG four 32bit channels instead of two 64bit channels. This is not four 64bit channels as that is still limited to HEDT/Workstation/Server products.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 1, 2022 - link
Thanks. That's an unforced error on our part. That should (and now does) read "2 DPC configuration" rather than "quad-channel".Technically, a 128-bit DDR5 memory bus is quad channels. But that's not the point we were trying to make.
shabby - Thursday, September 1, 2022 - link
Are the temperature charts missing on purpose? loldeil - Tuesday, September 6, 2022 - link
The whole thing is 3.3 KG, so I assume it's 2.5KG of heat pipes and copper/alu to get rid of it.it's like 400W total of heat dissipation and yes I think thermals were excluded on purpose, forced by intel, or anandtech would not be able to post the review otherwise before full cpu release and NDA's expiration.
what I see is that it's just a hair above 5900hx, probably because it's not heat soaked all of that copper when tested.
This thing is a burst monster, and otherwise gaming crapware, not worth 5000$ at all.
100% it will be heat soaked in 5 min, and rest of the gaming session you will have both 50'C on your keyboard, and lower FPS.
If we comare that to 7'th gen AMD that is teased by AMD to be 60% higher than current series at 65W (so gaming laptop level) I expect 12900HX to be smeared on the ground like a biker who crashed at 300km/h.
deil - Tuesday, September 6, 2022 - link
I cannot redact my previous comment, but I think you can get to the point i was making.What I see is you can make that point from battery life and charging, Massive battery and short lived on web, means it's a very power hungry setup.
3h to fill, 3h to discharge, comparing to AMD 2 hours to charge and 6h to discharge respectively. (with very similar 220W-250W bricks I am sure of it)
lemurbutton - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
Anandtech lost a lot of good CPU review talent when Andrei and Ian left. Now we get the same old Cinebench benchmarks that Youtubers run.Cinebench is a terrible CPU benchmark.
tamalero - Saturday, September 3, 2022 - link
Wut? how the hell its a bad benchmark?Otritus - Sunday, September 4, 2022 - link
It’s a pretty decent benchmark to measure relative perform between processors, but almost no software uses the engine making it not “real world”. Cinebench is not a very good predictor for gaming performance because it scales poorly with additional cache. It is a decent predictor of productivity differences since it is a rendering workload, but you can always use “real world” tests like blender or adobe. I wouldn’t say it’s terrible — as it can provide decent insight into a processor with a single benchmark — but it provides no insight into workloads that a micro architecture can be very good at.bogda - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
I expected at least several pictures of laptop internals. Considering the type of laptop tested, this would probably be interesting for many anandtech readers.Ryan Smith - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
Unfortunately, we are typically prohibited from disassembling laptops these days. The manufacturers like to get them back intact.bogda - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
I am sure anandtech with its reputation and history can get a permission to open and close desktop replacement laptop from manufacturer without problems. Peek inside it the least you readers expect.PeachNCream - Saturday, September 3, 2022 - link
No they really can't do that if they expect to get more review samples in the future. Reviewer sites of yore used to buy their hardware off the shelf, but in a age where landing benchmarks first is going to generate competitive page views, reviewers can't realistically wait until a laptop/phone/desktop lands on the shelves (especially now with supply problems, scalpers, and gray market reseller markups) so this is the world we live in. If you want internals, you just have to wait until someone rips one apart and that probably won't be very early in the hardware life cycle.IBM760XL - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
Does AnandTech typically return laptops not-intact? :)It's a fair request, one of the things I look for in laptops is upgradeability. Being able to add more RAM or storage or perhaps upgrading the WiFi card down the road is an important consideration.
Although as an owner of an MSI, I'm well aware of their "opening this area voids the warranty" sticker. Not that it's ever stopped me, but they seem to be more of a stickler for that than most.
sheh - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
Why are bad keyboard layouts the norm?Plenty of unused space horizontally (and also vertically).
meacupla - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
What are you talking about? The keyboard layout is fineThe sides are filled with speakers, the rear is filled with cooling, and the front has a giant track pad.
IBM760XL - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
My guess is sheh prefers full-width NumPads?Personally I have fewer complaints than for most laptop keyboards. It doesn't have half-height arrow keys, which is my top requirement (although it's not quite full-size, let's give it a B grade). The Cherry MX probably hash decent key feel/travel, which is also lacking on some laptops.
I'd personally slightly prefer dedicated page up/down/home/end buttons, versus the NumPad-off variant, but that's a small quibble and from someone who's learned to touch-type numbers quickly without a NumPad, and who usually only uses NumPads for directional movement in grid-based games.
So, yeah, overall I think they did a lot better job on the keyboard than most manufacturers do these days...
logoffon - Saturday, September 3, 2022 - link
Given that MSI is kind of a king of that, I'm honestly not really surprised. But they did get to new low with this layout.IBM760XL - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
This is how I know my 2018 MSI has poor battery life: a hulking DTR like this has twice the battery life, and my laptop has never had much more battery life than it does now.Props to MSI for finally putting a properly-sized battery in their laptop. But I'm also rather impressed that it can get over 6 hours of battery life in general. The rest of the specs are a bit overkill for what I need, but hopefully they've stopped putting 42 WHr batteries in their dGPU laptops in general. Or at least propagated their recent power efficiency improvements.
Now where's the all-AMD variant that gets battery life figures similar to that Asus? I want the Asus's hardware with the MSI's design.
garblah - Friday, September 2, 2022 - link
Why aren't 120hz OLED or 144hz OLED displays more common on high end gaming laptops? Who is hitting 240hz or 360! hz on a laptop. I can't imagine paying 3000 dollars for a screen with the ubiquitous grey "blacks" of an IPS panel.iranterres - Sunday, September 4, 2022 - link
I gotta love this new batch of stoves that Intel's put to market LOL.Oxford Guy - Monday, September 5, 2022 - link
Titanic tinnitus.snowdrop - Wednesday, September 7, 2022 - link
The multitasking testing only really shows that more threads (& more power) = better at multitasking which seems a bit obvious.The 12900HX is 24 threads (8P, 8E), the 12900HK is 20 threads (6P, 8E), and the 11980HK / 5900HX are both 16 threads so it's hard to discern architectural advantages from Alder Lake.
Adding a 12th gen part with a similar core count to the 11980HK / 5900HX like the 12600H (4P, 8E) or 12650H (6P, 4E) with 16 threads would make this comparison much more useful? Or possibly adding a test of the 12900HK limited to 16 threads by disabling the E cores (8P, 0E)?