Today is a good day, as we can finally talk about Intel's 12th-gen laptop processors and Nvidia's new RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti Laptop graphics cards. We've been testing the MSI GE76 Raider, a high-spec machine that includes each company's flagship parts for this generation, and the performance on tap is nothing short of incredible. The 12900K and RTX 3080 Ti remain some of the best gaming hardware available in desktop PCs - despite frustrating pricing and availability issues - so it's been fun to see how the mobile versions perform. In this first look, we put the GE76 through its paces against its 2021 counterpart, with both gaming tests and content creation benchmarks.
First, let's briefly introduce you to the star of today's show - the GE76 Raider. It's a tremendously powerful machine, especially in the top spec configuration we're testing today. As well as the Core i9 12900HK and RTX 3080 Ti 175W Laptop GPU, there's 32GB of dual-channel DDR5-4800 RAM, a 17.3-inch 360Hz display and two 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs. All of this hardware is housed inside a generously-sized chassis, allowing the components within to stay relatively cool without resorting to jet-grade fan noise. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this chonky machine retails for $4199 when paired with an even fancier 4K 120Hz screen - we presume that the 360Hz option we're testing isn't much cheaper.