MSI Creator 17

Laptops designed for creative work can be collectively referred to as design laptops. Many manufacturers have quickly followed suit, updating several generations of products. The MSI Creator series stands out among these products. Today, I received the high-end version of the new generation MSI Creator 17—MSI Creator 17 A10SGS, with the following specifications:

As a laptop aimed at designers, the appearance of the MSI Creator 17 cannot be conventional.

MSI Creator 17

The color scheme of the Creator 17 is space gray, made of aluminum with a sandblasted finish, exuding a sense of technology while also conveying elegance and nobility. The aluminum material also offers the advantage of a lighter body; this 17-inch model weighs only 2.4KG, with a thinnest point of just 20.25mm. Considering its almost top-tier specifications, such weight management is remarkable.

Slim body

The design of the Creator 17 perfectly illustrates the principle of simplicity; the lid is a flat surface with no excessive lines or cuts, and the corners are sharp. The iconic Dragon Shield logo of MSI is located towards the upper part of the lid, treated in a dark color, giving the entire lid a high-end yet understated appearance.

Creator 17 Lid

Moving to the Creator 17’s keyboard area, the first thing that catches the eye is the large ventilation holes above the keyboard, enhancing the internal airflow. Thanks to the 17-inch screen, the Creator 17 features a full-sized keyboard, with keys slightly larger than those on standard laptops, improving typing accuracy. The Ctrl and Shift keys on the left are noticeably larger for quick access. The function keys also include the F7 key for adjusting performance modes and the F12 key for flipping the screen 180 degrees. Additionally, the keycaps have an oil-resistant coating, and after over a week of heavy use, there are virtually no fingerprints or oil marks on the keycaps, maintaining their pristine condition.

MSI Creator 17 Keyboard Area

Touchpads on Windows laptops often receive criticism for being too small, difficult to operate, and feeling cheap. However, the touchpad on the Creator 17 is impressive; made of glass, it feels incredibly smooth and is quite large, providing excellent control. Above the left side of the touchpad is a fingerprint recognition module, and this Creator 17 also supports Windows Hello facial recognition.

Large Touchpad

As a design laptop, the Creator 17’s expandability is crucial. On the left side, there is a power port, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a UHS-III compatible MicroSD slot, and a set of audio input/output ports; on the right side, there is an HDMI port, a USB 3.2 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, and a Thunderbolt 3 port.

Left Side Ports

Right Side Ports

The MSI Creator 17 features a micro-edge display design, with a significantly narrowed bottom bezel, achieving an impressive 85% screen-to-body ratio. For design professionals, color accuracy is paramount; even slight color deviations can lead to misjudgments by designers, resulting in issues with final design outcomes.

85% Screen-to-body Ratio

The MSI Creator 17’s display utilizes the most advanced Mini-LED technology, which is significantly smaller than standard LED diodes, allowing for tighter spacing between pixels. This “mini” feature results in higher image clarity and contrast, lower power consumption, and longer lifespan.

According to MSI, this display boasts a DCI-P3 color gamut of 100%, a maximum brightness of 1000 nits, and a color accuracy of △E less than or equal to 2. In our tests, the display achieved 98% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, a maximum brightness of 930 nits, and an average color accuracy of △E 1.24, indicating exceptional display quality that fully meets creative work requirements.

Color Gamut

Brightness

Color Accuracy

The Creator 17 supports multiple color spaces, including sRGB, AdobeRGB, DCI-P3, and Display P3. DCI-P3 is commonly used in the film industry, while Display P3 is Apple’s standard based on DCI-P3, only supported by Apple products, making it incompatible with other computers. The MSI Creator 17 can handle all color spaces, making it versatile.

MSI TRUE COLOR Supports Multiple Color Spaces

In summary, the Mini-LED display offers higher brightness, contrast, and color accuracy, serving as a super-enhanced version of OLED screens, amplifying OLED’s advantages while eliminating flickering and burn-in issues. Besides its perfect color gamut, the 4K resolution is another feature of this display, providing clear and detailed visuals, perfectly catering to the needs of creative professionals.

For example, the Mini-LED display produces deeper blacks, avoiding the gray or dark blue hues of other panels, thus enhancing detail in darker areas of images. The high contrast and color reproduction of Mini-LED left me in awe.

I compared my standard IPS screen laptop with the Creator 17 while watching the same documentary, showcasing the power of this 4K Mini-LED display. Both laptops had HDR enabled in the player.

In the image above, the IPS screen (left) displays the fish as a dark blur, with all colors merging, while the Creator 17 (right) reveals more skin details with brighter colors.

In the image above, the IPS screen (left) shows the fish as overall pale, failing to highlight the red spots on its body, lacking contrast; however, on the Creator 17 (right), the bluish-green skin is accurately rendered, and the red spots are clearer, with much higher contrast.

In this image, the difference in water color should be very apparent; the Creator 17 (right) accurately reflects the true color of the water.

After watching the entire documentary on both laptops, it was clear that the Creator 17 outperformed the standard IPS screen, which appeared washed out, as if veiled by a thin layer of white cloth. In contrast, the Creator 17’s visuals were clear and vibrant, with excellent color reproduction and contrast, clearly surpassing the standard screen by a significant margin. The Mini-LED display greatly enhances the visual experience, which will undoubtedly be amplified in design work.

The MSI Creator 17 is powered by the Intel Core i7-10875H processor, built on the Comet Lake architecture with a 14nm process, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads, a base frequency of 2.3GHz, and a maximum turbo frequency of 5.1GHz, with a 16MB cache.

CPU Basic Information

The system’s built-in Creator Center offers four performance modes: Power Saving, Silent, Balanced, and High Performance. Before testing, I set the performance mode to “High Performance”.

Performance Mode Adjustment

In CINEBENCH R15, its single-core score is 196cb, and multi-core score is 1667cb. In CINEBENCH R20, the single-core score is 467cb, and multi-core score is 3783cb.

CINEBENCH R15

CINEBENCH R20

This CPU is Intel’s first 8-core i7 standard pressure processor, and based on paper data and CINEBENCH tests, its single and multi-core performance is very close to the i9-10885H, offering i9-like performance at i7 pricing.

In terms of GPU, the Creator 17 I received is equipped with the RTX 2080 Super Max-Q version, featuring 8GB GDDR6 memory, 3072 stream processors, a memory bus width of 256 bits, a base frequency of 735 MHz, and a boost frequency of 1080 MHz, supporting ray tracing.

GPU Basic Information

Using 3DMARK to test this GPU, I scored 7548 points in Time Spy mode, 3528 points in Time Spy Extreme mode, 4706 points in Fire Strike Ultra mode, and 4534 points in Port Royal mode.

Time Spy Mode

Time Spy Extreme Mode

Fire Strike Ultra Mode

Port Royal Mode

This RTX 2080S Max-Q performs well, achieving excellent scores, especially in creative fields, significantly enhancing the speed of professional software and improving work efficiency. This GPU is also suitable for gaming scenarios, providing considerable smoothness in large AAA games.

With powerful graphics computing capabilities, laptops are becoming lighter and thinner, thanks not only to manufacturers’ efforts in mold design and cooling modules but also to Nvidia’s introduction of Max-Q GPUs, which significantly reduce power consumption and heat generation while sacrificing a small portion of performance. These combined efforts have resulted in today’s lightweight high-performance laptops.

For design work, memory is also crucial. The Creator 17 is equipped with two 16GB DDR4 2666 MHz memory sticks, forming a dual-channel configuration, and supports a maximum expansion of 64GB. We tested these memory sticks using AIDA64’s Cache & Memory Benchmark, achieving read, write, and copy speeds of 37726MB/S, 37881MB/S, and 36511MB/S, with a latency of 59.6ns. Although the memory frequency is not particularly high, the test results are quite good.

Cache & Memory Benchmark

In terms of storage, it features a 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen3 M.2 SSD from Samsung, with read speeds of 3420.8MB/S and write speeds of 2429MB/S, providing excellent speed support for loading and transferring files.

Storage Test

In this phase of testing, we updated the graphics driver to the latest NVIDIA Studio driver, version 451.77. The built-in Creator Center software offers a creator mode that optimizes the system for professional software, ensuring priority resource allocation during software operation. For this part of the testing, creator mode was enabled throughout, maintaining high-performance mode.

Creator Mode Activated!

The test items included PCMARK 10, V-RAY rendering tests, X264 FHD Benchmark transcoding tests, and X256 HD Benchmark transcoding tests, with actual test items including PS stack tests, PR 4K video preview tests, and ME transcoding tests.

After updating the drivers, we started with PCMARK 10 and V-Ray, which do not heavily load the system.

Using the extended mode in PCMark 10, which includes many test items, the total score was 7627, with scores of 8011 and 8822 in productivity and digital content creation, respectively. In the V-Ray rendering test, the CPU scored 10907, and the GPU scored 213. From these two relatively simple tests, the scores exceeded those of some models with similar configurations, marking a good start.

PCMARK 10 Extended Mode Test

V-ray Test

The stack function in PS effectively reduces image noise and improves image quality, especially suitable for landscape photos. We used 48 landscape images with a resolution of 5472*3648, totaling 160MB, and after loading, they were automatically aligned and averaged, completing the operation in about 60 seconds, which is very quick.

During the alignment process, the CPU usage was around 30%, with a frequency of 4.3GHz, while during stacking, the CPU usage occasionally spiked to 50%, mostly hovering around 15%. PS stacking does not pose much of a challenge to an 8-core processor.

CPU Status During Layer Alignment

Video transcoding is a demanding task for CPU capabilities. We used X264 FHD Benchmark and X265 HD Benchmark for testing, with higher frame rates being better. The final scores were 48.7FPS for X264 FHD Benchmark and 55.74FPS for X265 HD Benchmark.

X264 FHD Benchmark Test Score

CPU Fully Loaded During Testing

X265 HD Benchmark Test Score

In actual video editing and transcoding tasks, does the Creator 17 still perform strongly? We imported a total of 63.4GB of video files, with a resolution of 4K, frame rate of 24fps, bit depth of 10bit, and bitrate of 35Mbps, into Premiere Pro 2020, cutting it down to a 20-minute segment. There were no noticeable stutters during editing, and dragging the video track was smooth. After editing, we selected full resolution for full-screen preview and recorded the frame rate over a duration of 200 seconds.

The frame rate chart shows almost no fluctuations, remaining stable at 24fps.

Premiere Pro 2020 Frame Rate Preview Test

Next, we imported this video sequence into Media Encoder 2020 for transcoding, targeting HEVC (H.265) 1080P at a bitrate of 16Mbps, and selected CUDA rendering, taking only 3 minutes and 38 seconds.

Media Encoder Encoding Result

Thanks to the i7-10875H + 2080S Max-Q + 32GB configuration, whether you are an amateur photographer, a VLOG video creator, or a professional content creator, or a modeling artist, the Creator 17 can provide you with stable and powerful performance support, helping you efficiently complete content creation and improve work efficiency.

The MSI Creator 17 features a cooling system with 3 fans and 7 heat pipes, with fan thickness of only 0.1mm, each fan having 67 blades, which MSI claims increases airflow by 20%.

First, let’s look at the power consumption during actual work. During the aforementioned ME encoding test, we recorded the power consumption and temperature: CPU usage was around 50%, with full core frequency at 4.25GHz, temperature at 97 degrees, and power consumption at 55W; GPU usage was around 75%, with frequency around 1600MHz, temperature around 75 degrees, and power consumption at 80W.

Load and Temperature During ME Encoding Test

Next, we conducted a single stress test using AIDA64’s Stress FPU mode. After 30 minutes, the CPU temperature reached 97 degrees, with full core frequency at 3.2GHz, and power consumption at 57W.

FPU Single Stress Test

In the dual stress test, we added Furmark to the Stress FPU test, selecting 1920*1080/8x MSAA. After 30 minutes, the CPU temperature reached 97 degrees, with full core frequency at 2.7GHz, power consumption at 40W; the GPU temperature reached 80 degrees, with frequency between 1320MHz and 1350MHz, and power consumption at 80W.

Dual Stress Test

In design work, the CPU and GPU often maintain medium to high loads, and the product’s cooling capability directly impacts work efficiency. In this regard, the Creator 17 performs well, with CPU and GPU power consumption and frequency maintained at high levels, ensuring performance output.

Admittedly, in dual stress mode, neither the CPU nor GPU reached full TDP, but the gap from TDP is minimal, and considering its lightweight design, this performance is entirely acceptable.

Five years ago, or even three years ago, no one would have thought of using a laptop as the main machine for design work. Designers have stringent performance requirements, needing multi-core processors, large memory, and highly accurate displays. In the past, laptops could not meet these demands. However, with the advent of multi-core standard pressure processors and Max-Q version GPUs, everything has changed—Intel and Nvidia introduced the concept of design laptops, and manufacturers actively optimized their products, allowing a “workstation” level experience on laptops.

The MSI Creator 17 features leading hardware configurations, and its Mini-LED display supporting multiple color spaces is currently one of the most advanced screens, making it extremely suitable for creative professionals. Moreover, it achieves extreme lightweight—this high-end 17-inch laptop weighs only 2.4KG. It represents a super high-level laptop product, arguably the ultimate form of laptops today. How can you say no to such a product?

(Source: ZOL)