The MSI GT83VR Titan Review: 1080 Times 3
by Brett Howse on April 13, 2017 8:00 AM EST
About two years ago, we looked at the latest creation from the minds of MSI. The GT80 Titan was their boldest move yet, and set the bar for performance, featured the world’s first fully mechanical keyboard on a gaming laptop, and packed in one of the largest displays available, with the 18.4-inch FHD panel. This was the only Broadwell quad-core laptop we tested, since the mobile quad-cores were very short lived, and were quickly replaced by Skylake. It featured two NVIDIA GTX 980M graphics cards in SLI, and sat atop our Notebook Bench with the highest performance we’d seen, at least until NVIDIA’s Pascal came along.
MSI updated the GT80 Titan as a mid-cycle refresh, adding Skylake and the GTX 980 (non M) in SLI as well, so the Titan series has not sat idle. Today we are taking a look at the latest incarnation from MSI, dubbed the MSI GT83VR Titan. The GT80 Titan was one of the best notebooks of its time, and surprised us with the quality and capabilities that it had. The mechanical keyboard was a fantastic addition, and the titanic size (pun intended) meant that despite the powerful components inside, it ran cool, and relatively quiet, even under load. Today we’ll see if the GT83VR Titan can live up to those high expectations.
When looking at a gaming laptop, performance is obviously one of the keys. MSI does not disappoint here, with Kaby Lake quad-core Core i7-7920HQ, which is 3.1-4.1 GHz with 8 MB of cache, in a 45-Watt package. Graphics are now Pascal based, with SLI GTX 1070 or GTX 1080, up to 64 GB of DDR4, and up to 1 TB of PCIe SSD storage, along with 1 TB of SATA HDD storage. Being a large gaming laptop, the RAM and storage can be upgraded by the end user. MSI shipped us the top of the line unit, with SLI GTX 1080, 64 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of SSD.
| MSI GT83VR Titan 7RF | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-7920HQ 4C/8T 3.1-4.1 GHz 8MB Cache 45W TDP |
| GPU | NVIDIA GTX 1080 SLI 2560 CUDA Cores, 8GB GDDR5X Per Card 1557-1734 MHz |
| Memory | Up to 64 GB Dual-Channel DDR4 |
| Display | 18.4" 1920x1080 IPS 60 Hz |
| Storage | Up to 2 x 2TB PCIe NVMe (RAID 0) 1 TB HDD |
| I/O | 5 x USB 3.0 1 x USB 3.1 w/Thunderbolt 3 1 x HDMI 2.0 1 x mini DisplayPort 1 x SPDIF Microphone Input Audio Output Headphone Jack |
| Dimensions | 429 x 315 x 43.2-63.5 mm 16.9 x 12.4 x 1.7-2.5 inches |
| Weight | 5.94 kg / 13.1 lbs |
| Battery | 75 Wh, 2 x 330W AC Adapter |
| Networking | Killer Doubleshot Pro Killer Wireless-AC 1535 2x2:2 MU-MIMO Killer E2500 Gigabit NIC |
| Price | $4399+ USD As Tested: $5200 USD |
The rest of the laptop has pretty much been carried over from the GT80. There’s still a mechanical keyboard, but the keyboard now features Cherry MX Speed Silver switches and per-key lighting. There’s a Type-C USB 3.1 with Thunderbolt 3, and one without Thunderbolt, five USB 3.0, RJ45 with Killer networking, HDMI 2.0, SD, and Mini-DisplayPort.
The MSI GT83VR Titan definitely qualifies as a desktop replacement, with plenty of performance, a desktop keyboard, and lots of IO. But has the design held up to time? That’s the real question. For those looking for a bit less power, and a bit less cost, MSI also sells the GT83VR Titan 7RE with GTX 1070 SLI.
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HollyDOL - Saturday, April 15, 2017 - link
I rather suspect it would be nightly LAN party :-)Lord-Bryan - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
Right, how many of these do you think msi will sellBrokenCrayons - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
I'm not going to hazard a guess on their sales numbers since I'm not very familiar with what the modern consumer market segment for high end gaming laptops looks like. However, since this is MSI's third refresh of this particular product, it's a very safe bet to argue they're making enough money from sales to make keeping the line updated worth the investment. Or MSI is getting enough benefit back from having a halo product that the publicity drives the sales of their other offerings and makes the venture worthwhile. Either way, they're not soaking up a loss on these things.I'm surprised you didn't reach a similar conclusion on your own by performing a bit of critical thinking before you started typing. It's pretty obvious if you just spend a few moments in thought before diving for the keyboard to ask me.
keeepcool - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Over 10 Titans a week in Spain alone, doesn't seem a lot, but dont forget that's 50k € on a single SKU.fanofanand - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
I don't think the R&D cost on devices like this are as high as people think. For the most part they take an existing clevo (or sager or similar) case, slap their decal on it, fill it with components from their shelf and charge an astronomical price. The component list is quite high-end, but they would still likely make $1k+ per unit sold, it wouldn't take many sales to recoup the costs.SquarePeg - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
I think you're right on about off the shelf parts keeping costs down. So if they made a $1500 profit and could sell 50,000 across the planet that would certainly be a good money maker for MSI. That screen should have been 2K and a single 1080ti would have made more sense.Murloc - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
they must also be willing to carry all this weight around.Glock24 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
That's one fugly "laptop". I think you'll be better with something like this:https://www.quietpc.com/mono-aio
shabby - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Lol that's one ugly aio.Glock24 - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link
Sure, just as ugly as the laptop, but you'll spend 1/5 and get mostly the she functionality