The Cheapest RTX 4080 Gaming Laptop! MSI GP68 Review

This is the cheapest RTX 4080 gaming laptop I’ve ever seen! And although it is priced very nicely for the high FPS it delivers in games, the simple fact is, the cost savings have to come from somewhere. Unfortunately there is one big problem with this otherwise great deal of a laptop. On sale, this laptop goes for $1700 USD. I am not saying that this is budget friendly or affordable to everyone. What I am saying is it’s the lowest price I’ve ever seen for an RTX 4080 gaming laptop, because they’re normally more than $2000. Right now on

our gaminglaptop.deals website, the next best 4080 deal we have is $400 more for Lenovo’s Legion Pro 7i. But deals change every day, so check out current sales with the link below. MSI are not cheaping out on build quality, the gray metal lid and metal interior feel good, and there’s only minor flex to the keyboard and lid when pushing way harder than you ever would normally. There’s nowhere on the front for your finger, but one finger opening was still fairly easy. The hinges feel sturdy, even when ripping the lid open hard, and this means there’s pretty

much no screen wobble when typing – good stuff so far. It’s a little thicker compared to other 16” gaming laptops, but I suppose the full powered RTX 4080 needs

space for cooling. It almost weighs the same as Lenovo’s more expensive Legion Pro 7, but MSI’s 330 watt power brick is way bigger and heavier, resulting in a less portable total package. Slimmer GaN chargers just cost more money. The GP68 uses a last gen processor, one if its cost saving measures, but as you’ll see soon this still offers great performance. The keyboard has per-key RGB backlighting, despite

cheaper models usually missing out on this. All keys and secondary functions get lit up, and there are 4 brightness levels controlled with the function and F8 shortcut. The WASD keys are clear, which makes the text difficult to read depending on the light effect, and effects are controlled and customized through the included Steel series software, with quite a few built in templates. The power button is clear too, and although it’s part of the keyboard, an accidental press doesn’t do anything. You have to hold it for quite a while before Windows asks if you want to shut

down. I found the keyboard good to type with, the keys have a clicky feel and sound. The touchpad is smooth, large, and works alright, but doesn’t click down at the upper left and right corners. As for ports, the left side has a Type-C Thunderbolt 4 port, SD card slot, and 3.5mm audio combo jack, while the right has two USB Type-A ports, the one closer to the front is slower USB 3.2 Gen 1, while the other Type-A and Type-C ports are faster Gen 2. The rest is on the back. I didn’t expect 2.5 gigabit ethernet from

a cheaper laptop, but here we are. This bit of plastic on the back sticks out preventing you from easily seeing where the ports are when you’re sitting in front of the laptop and trying to look, it would have been nicer if they had some port icons instead, like Lenovo does. I like that there’s a Type-C port on all three sides, but it might get a bit annoying that there’s only Type-A’s on the right if you’re connecting a mouse and you’re right handed. The Right Type-C port can be used to charge the laptop with up to

100 watts, and all 3 Type-C ports have DisplayPort support for connecting external screens. The back and right ones Type-C ports connect directly to the Nvidia graphics bypassing the integrated graphics whether optimus is on or off. But the left Thunderbolt port on the other hand connects to the Intel integrated graphics and only works if optimus is on. So if you turn optimus off and reboot, then this port does not have any DisplayPort output. HDMI always connects directly to the Nvidia graphics, and we confirmed it could run our LG B9 TV at 4K 120Hz 12-Bit with G-Sync.

Getting inside requires removing 13 Phillips head screws, all the same length. Opening it was almost impossible due to the bottom panel wrapping around the left, right and front sides of the laptop. It was extremely difficult even with pry tools, good luck without them. I’ll leave a link to these ones I use below the video. If you’re ever able to get inside, we’ve got the battery down the front, two memory slots just above near the middle, two M.2 slots to the left of that, and Wi-Fi 6E card on the far left. Wi-Fi speed was surprisingly good

compared to other laptops, and I was surprised to see the newer 6E given the laptop’s lower price tag. But I guess WiFi cards are pretty cheap. The speeds from the installed 1TB SSD were quite good, no problems there. The SD card slot was fairly average, but my card maxes out at more than double this. The card does not click in, but it sits most of the way into the machine, making it harder to bump. One of the M.2 slots is limited to PCIe Gen 3, so not even Gen 4, however the other is Gen 5

compatible, which is nice for future upgrades. The upgradeability score would have been good, as we can change both RAM slots, the Wi-Fi card, and both M.2 slots, which could both fit a 4TB SSD with chips on both sides. I took off a full point for how difficult it was to open and get inside to do any upgrades. It’s just way more painful than it needs to be, and I hope I never have to do it again. The speakers are found towards the front on the left and right sides. I thought they sounded average overall. There

is some bass, but they’re also just not very clear. They can get quite loud though. The latencymon results were bad, but that’s the case with most laptops this year. The GP68 is powered by a 4-Cell 90Wh battery. The MSI Center software has a super battery performance mode, which we’ve used for testing battery life. The software also has the Display Power Saver option on by default, which lowers the screen’s refresh rate down to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save power. The screen flashes black as the refresh rate changes, and it automatically goes back up

when you plug back in. Battery life was ok compared to other Intel based laptops, but not amazing, almost lasting for 5 and a half hours in the YouTube video playback test. This is a better result compared to the higher tier GE68 which has a larger battery, while last year’s GP66 had a smaller battery, same as this year’s GP77, so this is an area where the GP68 improves on. The GP68 also has this message from our sponsor, Pulseway! Managing IT systems can be tough, trust me, I used to be a system administrator. But Pulseway’s remote monitoring

and management software makes it easy. Pulseway gives you a real time view across your entire network, lets you automate repetitive tasks, alerts you to issues and allows you to fix problems. All from your phone or tablet, anywhere! You can even run commands with your voice. Make your life easier and start your free trial with the link below. And now back to the laptop review. Let’s check out thermals next. It’s got two fans with three heatpipes shared between the CPU and GPU with MSI’s phase change thermal pad used on both. There are plenty of holes underneath

directly over the fans for air intake, and air gets exhausted out of both sides towards the back, and out the back on the left and right sides. The MSI Center software allows us to change between different performance modes, which from lowest to highest are silent, balanced and extreme performance. Extreme performance mode allows us to enable cooler boost, which sets the fans to full speed, or customize the fans in advanced mode. We can also overclock the GPU, but we left this on default, which applies a 100MHz overclock to GPU core. You can also hold function and

press the up arrow key at any time to max out the fan. This does not require any special software, so it even works in Linux. The internal temps were fine when just sitting there idle, even though the fans were off. The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU stress tests which aim to represent a worst case full load scenario. Temperatures get higher in the higher performance modes, as expected, but closing the lid and docking the laptop wasn’t much different compared to running with the lid open. The cooling pad I test with, linked

below the video, was able to drop CPU and GPU temps by around 6 degrees Celsius. The cooling pad doesn’t improve the clock speeds, because there wasn’t any thermal throttling in this workload. And running with the lid closed performed the same as lid open, so no problems docking the laptop. The CPU was limited to 55 watts with the GPU maxing out around 165 watts. It can go to 175 watts with dynamic boost, but that’s not the case with the CPU also loaded up, which is completely normal behavior for a full powered 4080. Given there is thermal

headroom and we’ve got a 300 watt charger, you could probably increase power limits through the BIOS for additional performance. We’re only testing stock results here without custom tuning. FPS in a game is higher in the higher performance modes, as expected. All our upcoming game benchmarks were done in extreme mode, as it was clearly performing the best, and it’s not any louder than the lower modes – more on that shortly. The CPU can use way more power if the GPU is idle, like in Cinebench. Up to 130 watts was possible in extreme mode, resulting in excellent

performance for a 12th gen CPU. It’s not as good compared to the newer 13th gen HX processors because those have double the E cores, granted Dell’s G16 was very close as it has lower CPU power limits compared to the others. The GP68 has actually broken our record for a 12900HX in this test, scoring 12% higher compared to MSI’s Titan GT77 at stock from last year. CPU Performance lowers if we unplug the charger and instead run purely off of battery power. Now last year’s GE67 with lower tier CPU was a little ahead, but it’s still able

to beat last year’s Titan. It’s also much closer to many of those newer 13th gen HX chips now. Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees Celsius range on the keyboard at idle, so the GP68 is completely normal and cool when doing nothing. It’s warmer with the stress tests running, but overall it’s barely even warm to the touch. But you’ll see why soon. The higher balanced mode was a little warmer, which is expected as the CPU and GPU are using more power now. The highest extreme mode wasn’t too different, and was only a

little warm feeling, but there’s a problem with the fans. Here, have a listen. The results are quite strange. The fans are basically maxed out regardless of the performance mode set, but this only seems to be the case if the GPU is active, like in a game. In a CPU only workload like Cinebench, silent and balanced modes are much quieter. This seems like an obvious bug that I hope MSI can fix. The screen is usually the first part that suffers when it comes to cost cutting in a laptop, and the GP68 is no different. The screen

is the biggest problem that I’ve got with this laptop. It’s available with either a 16:10 2560 by 1600 240Hz screen, or 1920 by 1200 144Hz, which is what mine has. Seriously, barely more than 1080p for a full powered RTX 4080? The 4080 is capable of gaming at 4K, even without features like upscaling, as you’ll see soon in the game benchmarks. So unless you’re getting the higher resolution screen option or connecting a monitor, this FHD+ screen kind of sucks. The color gamut is kind of pathetic. I know this is the cheapest 4080 laptop, but come on,

this is entry level $600 laptop quality. At least it’s not too dim, and able to surpass the minimum 300 nits I want to see at full brightness. There was some backlight bleed, but I never personally noticed these patches during normal use, but this will vary between every laptop anyway. The response time kind of sucks too, there’s no overdrive mode, so we’re looking at a 17ms grey-to-grey response time. A 144Hz screen needs 6.94ms for transitions to occur within the refresh window, and we’re nowhere near that here, so expect some blur in fast paced games. Again, it’s

similar to far cheaper budget friendly gaming laptops. Not the end of the world if you’re playing single player titles, but not great compared to others if you’re playing competitive first person shooters. The total system latency is the amount of time between a mouse click and when a gunshot fire appears on the screen in CS:GO. The high FPS is able to make up a little for the slower screen, putting it further ahead of those cheaper laptops, but other lower specced laptops available for similar money like the M16 are almost 10ms faster. The GP68 has a classic

MUX switch available in two locations in software, but you need to reboot to make the change. Unfortunately there’s no advanced optimus or G-Sync, and adaptive sync is only available with optimus on. There’s a 720p camera above the screen, it has IR for Windows Hello face unlock, and there’s a physical privacy shutter. Here’s how the camera and microphones look and sound, and this is what it sounds like while typing on the keyboard. Now let’s find out how well MSI’s GP68 performs in games and see how it compares against other laptops. We’ve tested with these settings for

best results. Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all laptops, and I’ve got the GP68 shown by the red highlight. At 1080p it’s close to our best RTX 4080 laptop results, while coming out 8% ahead of Lenovo’s $400 more expensive Legion Pro 7i. The CPU usually matters more at lower resolutions like this, but the 12th gen chip isn’t holding MSI back here compared to other 13th gen models. It’s still in-line with other 4080 laptops tested at the higher 1440p resolution, however the 1% low is higher, so less dips in performance. I’ve suspected for some time

that 13th gen suffers from having too many E cores to power, so perhaps 12th gen actually gets an advantage here. But I haven’t actually tested and confirmed that. It’s a little lower than the other 4080 results at 4K where we’re super GPU bound, but I mean it’s very close to the more expensive and larger 18 inch Acer Helios. Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark. It’s one of the better 4080 results now, and actually ahead of some 4090 laptops, because again these high end GPUs often matter less compared to CPU power at

1080p. Those lower 4090 models are much closer at the higher 1440p resolution, but the GP68 is still giving us the best FPS from any 4080 laptop tested so far. It’s still on top at 4K, though the difference is much smaller now, and honestly not one you’d be likely to notice when playing. Some of the differences is margin of error stuff. All of the 4090s were now ahead, as this higher resolution really puts the GPU to the test. It’s one of the higher 4080 results in Control at 1080p, but again the 1% lows are notably better

compared to others, especially that bigger Helios 18. The GP68 was just more stable. All of the 4080 results get much closer together at 1440p, and although the 4090s aren’t too far ahead, the 4080 offers a big boost compared to the 4070 below it, or even the best from last gen, the 3080 Ti. Again at 4K the 4090s aren’t much better, but the 4080 is certainly what I’d consider to be capable at 4K gaming. RTX 4070 laptops on the other hand are not. Here are the 3DMark results for those that find them useful, now for some

content creator tests. The older CPU only held it back a little in Adobe Photoshop compared to other 13th gen laptops, as that test prefers single core performance, but the GP68 was otherwise performing well compared to far more expensive models. That said, the low color gamut of the screen mentioned earlier really prevents it being used for serious creator work. MSI’s advanced BIOS provides you with almost unlimited customization once you enter the usual cheat code to access it. You can change things from power limits, temperature limits, memory timings and far more. This is something MSI does better

compared to any other brand, and is an awesome resource if you like tuning your system. Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 23.04 live CD. By default the keyboard, touchpad, camera, speakers, ethernet and Wi-Fi all worked. Keyboard shortcuts for adjusting screen brightness, keyboard brightness, volume, and maxing out the fans all worked too, an excellent result. Pricing and availability will change over time, so check the link below the video for updates and current sales. And if the GP68 does have a good sale, we’ll be sure to add it to our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that everyday

to include all of the latest sales, so check it out regularly to save money on your next gaming laptop. At the time of recording, Newegg has it on sale for $1700 USD, but this is with a 12th gen H series CPU rather than the HX chip in my review unit. So multicore CPU performance won’t be quite as good compared to what we’ve seen in this video, as HX has more cores and threads, but I doubt it will affect the gaming performance too much. Bestbuy have it with a newer 13th gen HX CPU, but at $2100

it’s just not worth it compared to say Lenovo’s Legion Pro 7i for the same price, which has much better features including a nicer screen, advanced optimus, and G-Sync. Alright, so is MSI’s GP68 worth buying? If you want RTX 4080 performance without spending more, then yeah, it might be. For similar money you could get a more premium RTX 4070 laptop, but the 4080 is like 55% faster in games at 1440p, which is a pretty big difference. The main problem with this GP68 is just that you’re limited by the 1920 by 1200 screen. It just makes the

4080 feel a little pointless unless you plan on connecting a 1440p or 4K screen. If you can find it with the higher tier 2560 by 1600 screen then that would probably make better use of the 4080’s power. Plus it probably has better color gamut and screen response time. Honestly I think I’d be willing to pay $100 more to get that better screen, because even at $1800 I think it would still be cheaper compared to other 4080 laptops. The other corners that MSI have cut in order to get the lower price just don’t seem as serious

in comparison. Like the older 12th gen processor which still performs great, and the massive charger. I was going to say that it’s missing features like advanced optimus and G-Sync as a cost cutting measure, but then I remembered that even the higher GE and GT series from MSI don’t have advanced optimus either. It’s just something they completely skipped on this year. Meanwhile pretty much every other brand has started using it even in their mid-range laptops. So missing those features isn’t actually something that’s unique to the cheaper GP series. Otherwise it’s a massive pain in the ass

if you need to open it up to upgrade, and the fans automatically maxing out regardless of performance mode needs to be fixed. But at least the build quality is good, the performance is good, it doesn’t thermal throttle and the price is definitely attractive. So your options are to buy the cheapest RTX 4080 laptop and deal with those compromises just discussed, or you could spend a few hundred dollars more on a different 4080 laptop that has more features, or you can spend a similar amount as this laptop on a more premium model but with a lower

tier RTX 4070 GPU. Check this video next to see just how big the performance difference is between the 4070 and 4080. I’ve compared both GPUs in 25 games at 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions. So definitely check that one out before deciding what to buy, I’ll see you in that one next.