Intel Alder Lake-H Core i9-12900HK Review: MSI's Raider GE76 Goes Hybrid
by Brett Howse on January 25, 2022 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- MSI
- Laptops
- Alder Lake
- GE76 Raider
- 12th Gen Core
- Alder Lake-H
The Test Platform: MSI's Raider GE76
For 2022, MSI has not updated the underlying chassis for the new Alder Lake product, and as such our review of the GE76 Raider from 2021 with Tiger Lake does not fundamentally change in terms of chassis design and cooling. This is still a big, relatively heavy desktop-replacement system. It features an aluminum surface where you will be touching it, and a polycarbonate base.
MSI generally builds a very solid product, and for 2022 they have upgraded the cooling with a new phase-change thermal pad which allows them to wick heat away from the processor and GPU quicker, without some of the negatives of a pure-liquid thermal compound and crystallization that can occur.
The system offers a per-key RGB backlit keyboard from SteelSeries. There is a 1080p webcam as well, and the system now offers an AI-based setting to let the system automatically switch the power levels for the user without having to manually do it, although the manual options are still there. MSI has updated their Silent mode to now leverage the microphones on the system to match the noise floor of the room, which lets them extract more power from the processor, and more fan speed, while still being inaudible.
The Raider GE76 offers lots of connectivity, including a single Thunderbolt 4 port, an additional USB Type-C port, and several USB Type-A ports. There is also a SD card reader which is still convenient when uploading from a camera.
The system offers Wi-Fi 6E support thanks to the Killer AX1675 Wi-Fi adapter, and also includes the Killer E3100G 2.5 Gbps Ethernet adapter.
MSI offers a range of display options, with a 1920x1080 144 Hz panel on their least expensive Raider GE76, a 1920x1080 360 Hz panel which is in the sampled unit, a 2560x1440 240 Hz panel, and a 3840x2160 120 Hz offering.
On our Tiger Lake sample we reviewed late last year, the display accuracy was not up to par with typical MSI offerings. Thankfully that appears to have been a one-off, which we do see from time to time even on devices that are hardware calibrated at the factory. MSI does allow you to use a built-in tool to calibrate the display, but you do need a supported colorimeter.
Thanks to Portrait Displays for the use of their Calman software so we can continue to accurately measure displays for our reviews.
As you can see, the color accuracy of this sample is much improved over the Tiger Lake model from last year that we received.
Brightness and Contrast
Grayscale
Gamut
Saturation
Gretag Macbeth
The MSI Raider GE76 is a fantastic test bed for Intel's Alder Lake system, with a powerful cooling system, and a great build quality.
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Netmsm - Tuesday, January 25, 2022 - link
"High? not at all" said Patrick Gelsinger.:)))
maroon1 - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
115w is max power for shot period. sustained power consumption is 85w in extreme performance modeAnd 75w when using balanced mode but you lose 3% in cinebench
undervolted_dc - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
... and spec sheet says 45w, but probably during bench are using the full power boost.. and gets benchmarked against 45w ( with boost at 54w) in performance..e cores seems to no help in low performance tasks also.. seems less efficient than amd despite having the complexity to manage hybrid cores in the OS
Spunjji - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
It's Intel's strategy ever since they got stuck on 14nm. Prior to that, they kept dropping power while incrementing performance, leading to a progressively improving overall experience (better sustained power, less bulky devices, etc.)Then AMD got back in the game and Intel had to compete somehow, so they started raising their TDP ratings to get benchmarks that look good. The results are easy to see when you look at sites like Notebookcheck that measure performance of large groups of devices: Intel get good benchmarks, but performance drops quickly under sustained use in anything other than a DTR, and there's a massive error bar around the average performance of an Intel mobile CPU because it's dependent on how well the chassis can remove 45W+ of heat (even the Ultra Mobile ones).
sandeep_r_89 - Monday, January 31, 2022 - link
Higher battery capacity doesn't help win benchmarks........bogamia - Tuesday, January 25, 2022 - link
wonder how it would perform against Rembrandt which will presumably offer 30% better mt uplift.Spunjji - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
I wouldn't expect to see an increase like that in practice. Rembrandt may be a little faster than Cezanne, but probably not a lot.If you're one of the majority of people who buy a device that's designed to cool 45W sustained, though, then it'll be less of a disappointment than Alder Lake.
vlad42 - Friday, January 28, 2022 - link
Maybe, maybe not. The base clock does appear to have gone up from 1.9 GHz in the 5800U to 2.7 GHz in the 6800U, a 42% increase! Granted, it is possible the 2.7 GHz base clock is only when the chip is in 28W mode - it really was not clear from the slide.We also do not know how much benefit RDNA2 is bringing over Vega in terms of energy efficiency (there may be more thermal/power budget available to the Zen 3 cores), the improvements in 6N vs 7N, or the yield improvements/better binning now that the process is even more mature - 6N is still just a variant of 7N after all.
While I would normally agree with you, we clearly need more information to know for certain. The Ice Lake to Tiger Lake improvements were pretty significant and the changes Intel made look to be fairly similar to what AMD has done here.
Samus - Saturday, January 29, 2022 - link
I agree. I don't think AMD is going to take the IPC performance crown back here unless they can considerably scale up clock speed at the cost of efficiency like a Black Edition part.The fact is all these new CPU's are SO fast that it's Lamborghini's vs Ferrari's. I think people are going to prefer the one that has double the MPG at a virtually unnoticeable performance penalty.
FwFred - Wednesday, February 2, 2022 - link
How does higher clock speed help IPC exactly? Let's just call it single thread performance and leave IPC to microarchitectural discussions.