I’ve been reviewing laptops for nearly 20 years, and dozens—if not more—have passed through my hands. I’ve reviewed laptops of every kind and type—big, small, expensive, and cheap. But rarely do I get to review exceptional machines packed with the very best components, like MSI’s Titan 18, which I received on loan courtesy of Intel. It features Intel’s most powerful consumer-grade processor currently available—the Intel Core Ultra 9 285 HX. This is a gaming laptop, a desktop replacement that’s large and powerful, paired with insane hardware, offering some of the strongest capabilities on the market right now. The price reflects that—the previous year’s model(!) sold for NIS 34,000, and the unit that landed on my desk is priced at around $6,800 on Amazon. That equals approximately NIS 26,805 at the current (low) dollar exchange rate, before adding local VAT.
But this won’t be a regular laptop review. Since we don’t get the chance to test Intel’s most powerful processor every day, this review will focus mainly on… performance. Still, a few words about the computer itself, because it’s truly impressive and impossible to ignore:
As its name implies, Titan, this machine is a beast—but a very elegant one. This is a heavy 18-inch laptop, not the kind you toss in a backpack and take for a stroll. Clearly, this machine is meant to sit on a desk.
Its chassis is a clean black-gray with MSI’s familiar dragon shield logo. On the sides and underside, you’ll find blue grilles set in a gray body, and the bottom panel is a light gray with sky blue accents. In terms of looks, it’s a very striking laptop that definitely grabs attention. Once opened, the elegance continues with RGB lighting, a large touchpad, and a massive AMLED screen (Adaptive MiniLED) with a resolution of 3840x2400 pixels and a refresh rate of 120Hz. The cherry on top—literally—is a mechanical Cherry keyboard (MX Ultra model) with gold contacts—something rarely seen in laptops. As for ports, it has everything: Thunderbolt 5, two USB 3.2 ports, a card reader, HDMI out, Ethernet and audio jacks. The battery is a large 100Wh pack charged with a chunky white power brick. As mentioned, the Titan is large, heavy, and not very portable.
Hardware-wise, it’s impressive—not just the processor. At this gaming level, manufacturers like MSI don’t skimp and throw in everything, including the kitchen sink: Intel’s monstrous CPU packs 24 cores—8 performance cores running up to 5.5GHz(!) and 16 efficiency cores running at “only” 4.6GHz, with a 36MB cache. Alongside it is equally beastly hardware: NVIDIA’s latest-gen GPU, the RTX 5090, with 24GB of GDDR7 VRAM. These are joined by 64GB of DDR5-6400MHz RAM, and last but not least, an SSD drive array with four PCI-E Gen. 5 expansion slots and a monstrous 6TB capacity in RAID configuration.
Now that we’ve described the horsepower, let’s see how fast it runs...
<br>Performance tests of Intel’s most powerful processor
Before diving into tests simulating intense gaming and 3D graphics, I want to start with more general performance benchmarks to evaluate the Titan 18’s overall capabilities—not just as a gaming machine.
PassMark is a long-standing benchmark and still one of my favorites for its broad scope. It tests each system component (memory, SSD, CPU, etc.) and aggregates them into a final system score. The Titan 18 shattered the ceiling here: the CPU scored 67,402 points, in the 99th percentile; 3D performance got 41,885 points, also in the 99th percentile; 2D performance scored 1536, again in the 99th percentile of all systems tested. The disk and memory lagged slightly behind but still earned very respectable scores: The memory got 3,398 points (87th percentile), and the SSD scored 33,091 points (97th percentile). The overall system score was 11,437, placing it in the 99th percentile—meaning, according to PassMark, there are very few, if any, systems stronger than this one.
In the well-known Cinebench test, the Titan 18 also crushed it, outperforming Apple’s (admittedly older) M1 chip and Intel’s Xeon server processor. While the M1 scored 1,625 and the Xeon 1,579, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285 HX scored 2,034 points in the multi-core test—a clear performance winner.
Now, let’s dive into my main testing suite—3DMark, which has become the de facto standard for benchmarking heavy graphics and gaming performance.
In the Time Spy Extreme test (the bread-and-butter of gaming PCs), the Titan 18 scored 12,493 points. The best score for this test is 12,975. While that doesn’t place the Titan 18 at the very top (probably due to overclocked systems—note that I tested it straight out of the box with no overclocking), it still landed in the 77th percentile of all systems tested. That puts it solidly in the High-End Gaming PC category, just below the Premium Gaming PC tier.
In the Port Royal test, which evaluates ray tracing performance—a 3D graphics technique that simulates realistic lighting—the Titan 18 scored 16,457 points, outperforming 85%(!) of all systems tested. Its average frame rate here was insane: 76 frames per second, despite this test putting heavy stress on the GPU. Very impressive.
In the Steel Nomad test—a more modern general benchmark—the Titan 18 scored 6,326 points with a solid 63.27 FPS. And in the newest Speedway test, where competition is tighter among modern systems, it scored 6,554 points and ranked higher than 71% of tested systems.
To top off the section of general gaming performance tests, just for fun and just to see this processor burn rubber—I ran the classic Night Raid benchmark on it. Making a monstrous computer like this run Night Raid, which was designed for integrated (non-discrete) and relatively weak graphics processors—is like bullying the helpless… It scored 91,827 points—above 98 percent of all systems tested in the benchmark. But honestly, it wasn’t even a fair fight.
<br>Specialized benchmarks
To round out the performance tests, I ran some additional advanced benchmarks that assess specific graphic capabilities—tests I normally skip because most consumer laptops can’t even run them. But the Titan 18, with its elite hardware, handled them easily.
First, the CPU Profile test, which maps the capabilities of the CPU cores (and I almost forgot to mention—it also includes an NPU for AI tasks). This test runs across decreasing clusters of cores: all 24, then 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1. The results:
17,732 points for all cores
14,570 points for 16 cores
9,251 for 8 cores
5,046 for 4 cores
2,587 for 2 cores
1,304 for a single core
3DMark’s Ray Tracing test under DirectX checks how many frames per second the system can render under lighting and shadow calculation loads. Once again, the Titan 18 didn’t disappoint: It scored 83 FPS at full 4K resolution—more than enough to satisfy any self-respecting gamer. Just to show how rare this system is, 3DMark found only 18 similar systems worldwide. Only 18.
Lastly, I ran a test for Intel’s XeSS feature, a unique AI-based image enhancement and frame-rate boosting technology. This benchmark runs a complex graphics scene once with XeSS off, and once with it on, to measure performance gain. The results were crystal clear:
Without XeSS: 71.71 FPS
With XeSS: 155.37 FPS(!)
That’s a 116% improvement. Very impressive.
<br> <br>Conclusion
MSI’s Titan 18 is a technological marvel that offers the crème de la crème—the best that Intel and NVIDIA currently have to offer. It’s a crazy gaming laptop that will run any game in 4K with maxed-out effects, and it’s also suited for heavy workloads like 8K video editing or demanding 3D design software. The only problem is the price. This machine costs as much as a used small car—an unusual investment for a computer, for most of us. But if you have NIS 30,000 lying around in today’s economic climate... go for it. This performance monster is highly recommended.