Laptops that can play games while hiding in an office are becoming increasingly popular and that’s what we’ve come to expect from MSI’s Vector range. Only recently we reviewed the 17-inch Vector GP77 and were very impressed with it. But, MSI has another, supercharged version: the MSI Vector GP78 HX and MSI has commissioned High Performance Laptops to tell you all about it.
The styling will be familiar to those already familiar with the range. It takes its design cues from the Metallica, Spinal Tap, Kiwi and Space Odyssey schools of design by being the laptop equivalent of a cool, all-black monolith.
However, once opened-up, you’re greeted with the excellent, per-key, RGB-lit, keyboard with its attractive, contrasting bright lights and translucent WASD keys. It’s a good way of waking you up after a day of office work.
Above it is the amazing screen. The matte, 17-inch display has a UHD, 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. It doesn’t just offer a fine resolution and vibrant colours but it has a fast 240Hz refresh rate to keep even the fastest-moving FPS objects rendered silky smooth. On top of all that, it supports 100 per cent of the difficult DCI-P3 colour gamut to suit professional designers… boosting its creator laptop credentials.
Multimedia performance is rounded-out by twin, 2-Watt speakers with Nahimic 3 Audio Enhancer enhancement. It all makes the MSI Vector GP78 HX sound loud, punchy with high fidelity when dialed-up to the max.
Above the screen is an HD webcam which sits adjacent to IR sensors for Windows Hello, facial-recognition log-on. It also has a bright-orange privacy shutter to provide peace of mind against potential snoopers.
MSI Vector GP78 HX: Processor and GPU
However, it’s inside where the magic really happens. The MSI Vector GP78 HX wields Intel’s very best 13th-Gen processor, the 4.0 – 5.6GHz Core i9-13980 HX with its eight Performance cores and 16 Efficiency cores which run across 32 threads.
It’s flanked by 32GB of speedy DDR5-5600 RAM plus two, very-fast, NVMe, 1TB hard drives – one of which is a very very fast PCIe 5.0 unit.
3D Performance comes via Nvidia’s very best GeForce RTX GPUs: the 4080 (with 12GB of GDDR6 RAM) and the 4090 (with 16GB of GDDR6 RAM).
Now, MSI isn’t alone in packing the best components into laptops but, at this end of the market, how you pack them in is particularly important. Power delivery and cooling prowess is important and these are key areas in which the MSI Vector GP78 HX particularly excels.
The 330-Watt power supply powers MSI’s OverBoost Ultra technology which ensures that the maximum, 250-Watts can be reliably delivered to both the CPU and GPU at the same time – 175W to the GPU and 75W to the CPU. It’s an area where many laptops fall down and performance degrades.
On top of this, there’s the MSI Vector GP78 HX’s Cooler Boost 5 technology – with its two fans and six heat pipes. The latter are shared by the CPU and GPU for extra, heat-dissipating efficiency. It keeps the Vector cool and stable without sounding like it’s going to take off. It’s so efficient that there’s plenty of headroom for further overclocking and this is all facilitated by the well-featured MSI Center app.
It’s not completely un-portable, either. While there’s only so light that a 17-inch, tricked-out, gaming laptop can be, the MSI Vector GP78 HX has a 90Wh battery which, in conjunction with a MUX switch, means you can work on the laptop for the best part of a day, on the battery alone.
It’s also worth noting the connectivity complement of the MSI Vector GP78 HX. Inside there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connections but almost every port you might want can be found somewhere on the chassis. On the left there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port, SD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack while on the right there are two USB-A 3.2 ports (Gen 1 and Gen 2) plus a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. At the rear, there’s a 2.5GbE LAN port, an HDMI 2.1 port and another USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. You won’t want for fast connections.
There are a couple of different versions of the MSI Vector GP78 HX, one with the Nvidia GeForce 4080 and the other with a 4090. Both are available right now. Best of all, if you’re quick, you can buy it and get a free gift. Oh, and you can find it and other bargains in MSI’s End of Year sale, so check that out right now!