The END of Ryzen Laptop Domination Intel 11th Gen H-series is HERE! - Related to review, end, core, 5, gen

Core i5-11600K vs Ryzen 5 5600X – Intel Desperation

Even before Rocket Lake launched it has been like watching a slow motion dumpster fire from Day 1. First, there was Intel’s being curb stomped by Zen 3 last year, then because of a totally broken roadmap they admitted to being forced to use a bizarre mashup of a 2019 microarchitecture with an ancient 14nm manufacturing process.

Not only that, but. Because of excess heat and power Intel’s flagship CPU – the Core i9-11900K – is back to an 8-core layout. It just doesn’t make any sense. Oh, and then there are some retailers that ended up showing Intel their middle finger and started selling these these chips a few weeks ago. Overall it’s been a disaster so far, but it might not be all bad news though.

While Intel might be looking really weak with their Core i9 and Core i7 range. I actually want to focus this review on the Core i5-11600K. It’s a lot more affordable, sticks to the 6-core/12-thread design, and availability should be much advanced so there is a real chance that it could put out some of that dumpster fire… maybe.

I mean look the Rocket Lake architecture does show some flashes of really good improvements on the Core i9-11900K. So much so that it can beat the 5900 X in a bunch of real-world applications. However, when it comes to real-world multi-core workloads it just gets beaten like a lazy donkey, even by the previous i9-10900K. Its insane $600 USD street price is even harder to justify in gaming where results are all over the place, and. It gets owned by AMD in esports titles as well. And yes there is going to be times where the older i9-10900K comes out on top as well. Now does this look like a $600 processor? Absolutely not, but maybe retailers are hoping that people will buy anything these days since Ryzen 5000 series are just still very difficult to buy. Now all the negative coverage of the i9-11900K might make you think that Intel’s entire lineup is a failure, but it really isn’t, which is exactly why I think the i5-11600K is so critical.

To set the stage. Let’s take a quick look at Intel’s new Core i5/i7/i9 lineup, along with the approximate street prices we have seen so far. Based on this list you can already see why the i9-11900K is in a bit of a tough position. While it generally has higher clock speeds than the i7-11700K. The core count is identical ad like I expressed a huge step back from the 10900K. Meanwhile, the other two K series chips fare just a bit enhanced since they haven’t been down a lot. The main problem is pricing, but then again when hasn’t that been an issue for Intel.

You see because of AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series spanking them so hard, Intel had to drastically cut the costs for the i7-10700K and especially the i9-10900K. Which leads to a massive price gap between the current and new CPUs. Remember those results I showed you at the beginning of this review? Yeah, Intel is asking $170 USD more for their new flagship with 2 cores less cores, which makes the i9-11900K a complete waste of money. But the new i5-11600K is still close to the i5-10600K’s current price, because it has the same number of cores and the new Cypress core architecture. Which should bring some pretty good performance uplifts.

Now I may as well talk about this new architecture. Cypress Cove is Intel’s first new core design for desktops since Skylake was released almost 6 years ago. Now to create it Intel took the 10nm Sunny Cove architecture – which we have seen on Ice Lake laptop chips – and. Then backported it to their 14nm manufacturing process. On the positive side, it finally allows Intel to move towards something other than an evolved half-decade old design. But, and this is crucial, Sunny Cove was a bit of a disaster on the performance side. Which is why Intel moved so quickly to the Willow Cove design last year.

So with this new architecture spicing things up is there anything else to be excited about? Well I think the biggest changes to have been the new native PCIe Gen4 for storage and discrete GPUs, Thunderbolt 4, and then an updated iGPU that uses Intel’s new XE graphics engine. And that’s pretty much it.

Looking at how the i9-11900K lines up with the 5900X makes it super evident why Intel needs a reality check. If you can actually find one the AMD processor can deliver more cores, more performance, and lower power levels for less money. However, AMD’s main problem is that they can’t seem to produce enough CPUs. So if Intel can jump in with actual stock they might actually win by default. This is exactly why we think the i5-11600K could be a real gem. It costs less than the 5600X, still offers 12 threads, and our retail contacts tell us that it will be mostly widely available as well.

While Intel has worked really hard to make all the CPUs appear different. They are actually identical in one big way: Every Rocket Lake has chip comes with the same 8 core die with 2 cores disabled for the 6 core models. That means that every one of them has the same huge die. We know the die is huge because user MoeBen on the forums delidded his i7-11700K and well it’s very, very big or about 33% larger than the 10-core i9-10900K Comet Lake die, and over 50% bigger than the 8-core i9-9900 K.

Now all of that space and. Intel’s failure to move past the 14nm manufacturing process should lead to some higher power consumption and heat output, right? Well we actually found something really interesting while testing the i5-11600K. You see Intel’s long duration PL1 and short-term PL2 ratings are pretty well known, and. We are seeing them here with the i5-11600K hitting nearly 160W for 80 seconds during an all-core load. It then falls to Intel’s 125W spec. That is a whole lot more than the 10600K and in an other world versus the 5600X. With a Noctua NH-U12S running at 75% fan speed the i5-11600K’s temperature does increase, but. It cuts down to more manageable levels over the long run. It’s only 5°C hotter than the 5600X, which isn’t all that bad when you consider the rumors that had these chips putting out gobs of heat.

So this one’s interesting, even though it consumes a lot more power and. Produces more heat then the i5-10600K the new Rocket Lake CPU actually levels out at much lower all-core frequencies. That short frequency spike at the beginning of the test is meant to make Intel CPU’s look much advanced in shorter synthetic benchmarks, and obviously that has no impact on longer renders.

Before moving on to benchmarks. I need to mention that we are sticking to mostly real-world testing with workloads that have been submitted by people who work with these applications on a daily basis. The only synthetic benchmarks we use is Cinebench, and these multi-core tests show a really, really impressive improvement over the previous generation. It could be due to the fact that the i5-10600K boosts for a shorter period of time, but. Even then Intel still has some catching up to do versus AMD. Now when it comes to single core performance, Rocket Lake’s Cypress Cove cores are well-designed for single core workloads, but Zen 3 dominates here too.

Moving on to actual real-world use cases. And the i5-11600K starts off really strong. I should also mention Premiere’s latest revision doesn’t use Intel’s graphics anymore, but rather pushes the NVIDIA GPU to do all the encoding and decoding. Meanwhile programs like Reality Capture and Metashape use a combination of lightly and heavily threaded workloads to process scenes. They show the i5-11600K to be really well-positioned against the 5600X. As a matter of fact, Intel runs away with this sometimes. Our Mozilla compiler test displays that entails actually been able to cox a good amount of improvement from Rocket Lake, and. That’s all it took to beat AMD by a narrow margin. Now what really surprised me was even in heavy multithreaded situations the i5-11600K ended up being competitive all. While running at lower speeds than the i5-10600K. Remember this CPU actually costs less than the 5600X, and in most situations it either matches or beats it. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this might be the gem in Intel’s lineup right now.

But what about gaming performance? Well that’s a tough one, because the i5-11600K is all over the place. It does give some tangible benefits over the previous generation, which is a good thing, but. The Ryzen 5 5600X is able to stay pretty far out front in some cases. There are two huge concerns for Intel. First of all, the benefits of Rocket Lake we saw in productivity are nowhere to be seen here, and secondly AMD just clobbers them in some popular competitive shooters.

Now moving on to overclocking and I need to mention that Rocket Lake’s clock speeds have come down a little bit compared to the previous generation… and. Voltages have gone up. The great thing about Intel’s amazing 14nm process is that it’s really durable and resistant to damage from voltage. The bad news is that it really needs a lot of it to hit higher clock speeds, especially with this new architecture. And given how Intel so desperate to close the gap to AMD Ryzen 5000 series it should come as no surprise that Intel is pushing these new processors to the limit right out of the factory. That means a ton of voltage is being pumped through them. To prove that here are the stock voltage and frequency curves Intel programmed, and. You can see that once you reach you need a lot of voltage. And if you want to reach 5GHz on something like the i9-11900K you will need a lot more. So far in our testing it seems like most Rocket Lake processors will be able to hit . On some chips that is going to be only on 1 or 2 cores like on our i5-11600K.

Let’s take a closer look at the CPU overclock. With , it can run at on 2 cores for lightly threaded applications, 5GHz on 3 cores, on up to 5 cores. And then on all cores for fully multi-threaded applications. That is only a 200MHz overclock, and it was able to push the package power from 125W to 192W. Temperatures went all the way up to 89°C in AutoDesk Maya, and we were using a Noctua NH-U12A with 2 fans running at full speed. This means you are going to need an excellent cooling solution to keep this chip running under 90°C when it’s overclocked. Now we are going to get into more detail about overclocking and memory tweaking and all that stuff in an upcoming article, but here is a little teaser so stay tuned for that.

I guess that pretty much wraps things up with the i5-11600K. And well I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one. My thoughts are a lot more positive than the i9-11900K, because while that processor is overpriced and underperforming and. Just an all around dumpster fire, I think the i5-11600K is a pretty decent chip. It improves big time over the i5-10600K and it either equals or beats the Ryzen 5 5600X in a lot of apps while costing a lot less. It’s a great all around option that shouldn’t have any of the supply issues that AMD’s unfortunately facing right now with their Ryzen 5000 series.

The problem is with gaming, and I never thought I would say this but. Intel actually still needs to work on their gaming performance, especially when it comes to competitive shooters. In new AAA games that are GPU bottlenecked the i5-11600K is just as good as the 5600X, but move to something like Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant. And CS:GO and the tires just fall right off. Those aren’t unpopular like Tomb Raider, Hitman, and other games that everyone else loves benchmarking. Those competitive esports titles host hundreds of thousands of concurrent customers that AMD found this secret sauce for them, and. Now Intel needs to pull up their pants and work really fast to do the same. Either way, given its price I would say the i5-11600K is a great alternative to the 5600X in almost every situation. I’m just going to hope that it stays in stock long enough for people to actually buy one.

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The END of Ryzen Laptop Domination Intel 11th Gen H-series is HERE!

Competition is good for everyone because that way we can avoid monopoly on performance, have enhanced choices, and hopefully lower prices. While AMD Ryzen’s domination is great to see the last thing that anybody wants is for Intel to keep losing over and over and. Over again. Hopefully that slide is about to stop – maybe – and that’s what this article is about. We all know that Intel is having a lot of trouble competing with Ryzen CPUs for a while now. If you look on the desktop side, they tried hitting back with Rocket Lake, which was a weird mashup of an old manufacturing process with a new architecture, and I think that ended up landing with a solid ‘meh’, but when it comes to gaming laptops the situation has actually been a lot, lot worse.

Intel’s 10th gen Comet Lake processors have had to compete with the unbeatable Ryzen Mobile 4000 and. 5000 series from AMD for a while, and they didn’t have a replacement until now. The only thing that is keeping AMD from complete domination was the fact that they couldn’t produce enough CPUs, so finding a Ryzen based laptop right now wasn’t easy and. It still isn’t. That shortage sort of gives Intel an opportunity right now if they can get an architecture that beats the Ryzen 5000 series before those chips become widely available it will be a big win.

That is where the new Tiger Lake series, which is codenamed H45. Comes into play. Now this isn’t the super efficient Tiger Lake you know from the ultrabooks or the H35 model that performed pretty well in the TUF Dash F15. This is like a mutation of those that has been scaled up to 8 cores and 16 threads along with some seriously high clock speeds. And you know what? While I have been pretty critical of Intel in the past, this is the only time in a long time that I’m actually excited to see what Intel have for in store consumers with their new 11th gen lineup.

So what exactly is Tiger Lake? Well, you can find out my explained article right over here, but let’s just say that there are a lot of new elements. This isn’t the refreshed 14nm+++++ process, it actually uses a new 10nm SuperFin process, a new Willow Cove architecture, and. New Xe graphics, a completely top to bottom new approach. And you know what Intel delivered because after testing a few Tiger Lake notebooks it turns out that their lightly threaded performance was excellent, IGP gaming performance was hugely improved. And power efficiency has gotten a lot improved. Then came this year’s CES that introduced Tiger Lake H35 and a little peak at something else lot more significant for gaming laptops. You see back then Intel teased 3 big numbers that caught everyone’s attention: 5GHz, 8 cores, and 20 PCIe Gen4 lanes. And that’s exactly what they have delivered now.

Now these newest 11th gen Core H-series processors will come in both 6-core/12-thread and 8-core/16-thread variants. They are all 45W parts, but the flagship HK model can be configured up to 65W. Meanwhile the H35 CPUs will stick around for lower end devices and yes Intel is still using their alphabet soup naming scheme. Which I still think is just ridiculous. I think they really need to get it together and refine it. Now the star of the show is obviously the i9-11980HK model, which is an 8-core/16-thread chip that can boost up to on 2 cores and. Can hit on all 8 cores. That is extremely impressive, in fact on paper it’s almost equal to the Rocket Lake i7-11700K desktop CPU that has a 125W+ TDP. This HK model is also fully unlocked so it can be overclocked using the Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) for full manual control or with the Speed Optimizer feature for an easy automatic overclock.

Below the i9-11980HK are the processors you will probably end up seeing in most gaming laptops, starting with the i9-11900H and. The i7-11800H. Both share the same 8-core/16-thread layout, but the i7-11800H looks to be a pretty nice sweet spot. It’s only 7% to 9% slower than the HK, so don’t think of it as a lower end CPU.

What is identical across all three 8 core Tiger Lake CPU’s is the 24MB of L3 cache. Which is even more than what’s available in desktop Rocket Lake CPUs. Technically this should allow for much higher performance in most applications. One interesting thing you will see here is this “Frequency at cTDP” column where Intel is also trying to highlight 35W base frequency of the non-HK models. Also the native memory support has been bumped up from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200 on all of these new these Tiger Lake Chips, which is a nice bump.

All those chips can have their wattage configured downwards so they can fit into the thin enthusiast category that is starting to be more widely available and. Also a lot popular these days. It will allow them to be used in sub-20mm thick chassis while also being paired up with higher end GPUs. A great example of this is the ROG Zephyrus G15 I looked at, and if we can get laptops like that at an affordable price range that is going to be really exciting.

Moving on to the two Core i5 models, they are both 6-core/12-thread models with very good clock speeds across the board, but. Intel took a chainsaw to L3 cache and cut it in half. That 12MB of L3 cache is equal to some of the quad-core Tiger Lake chips, so Intel are clearly trying to distance these 2 chips from the higher-end and. Pricier 8-core models. Core clock speeds aside, the only other difference between these two models is that the 11260H has a 50MHz lower maximum integrated GPU frequency, but I don’t think anybody would care about that.

While we are on the topic of the IGP, despite featuring the “UHD Graphics” name, these 5 processors do have the same Xe-LP graphics architecture as the rest of the Tiger Lake lineup. But cut down to only 32 EUs. That is a large decrease compared to the 48/80/96 EUs variants on the quad-core chips. This is a little disappointing since a 6 or 8-core/96 EU processor would be awesome in an affordable thin-and-light without a discrete GPU, but. I understand the decision. First because an 8-core die with 96 EU IGP section would require a HUGE die size, and second because based on their conversations with their OEM partners Intel knows that these higher-end Tiger Lake processors will all be paired with higher performance discrete GPUs anyway.

Where things start to get really interesting is with the platform since it’s completely new. Intel has moved to a complete top to bottom PCIe Gen4 architecture with 8 lanes dedicated to the discrete GPU. That is pretty big news since even AMD’s latest Ryzen Mobile 5000 series is limited to PCIe Gen3 lanes to save on power. Even for storage solutions. Intel is also supporting Resizable Bar at launch so this functions combo points towards Tiger Lake being super competitive for gaming. Now these processors have 20 PCIe Gen4 lanes coming from the CPU. So while 8 goes to graphics the other 12 can be used for high-speed storage in RAID if necessary. I think that will actually open up some interesting options, imagine a PCIe Gen4 RAID array on a gaming laptop. For example, it could benefit Microsoft Direct Storage, which is an upcoming Windows API that promises lower CPU usage during the tens of thousands of I/O operations or requests that modern games can send to a fast NVMe SSD.

By the way. There is also an additional 24 PCIe Gen3 lanes coming from the PCH for a grand total of 44 platform PCIe lanes. This opens up the possibility for a lot of connectivity and storage options, but it’s ultimately up to laptop manufacturers to take advantage of them. Even when using a single PCIe SSD Intel is claiming up to 80% higher bandwidth and 75% faster access times in real-life workloads compared to their previous high-end Comet Lake mobile platform. Which makes sense since that platform only supported PCIe Gen3 SSDs. Intel’s other pride and joy is native support for Thunderbolt 4, which debuted on Tiger Lake. Now obviously the 40Gbps speed is a huge selling point because it can support multiple high resolution screens. Also, supposedly every laptop with a Thunderbolt 4 port will be able to be charged from that port, but I hope that won’t lead to losing the only port that has high-speed access like we are starting to see with some laptops these days.

Tiger Lake H-series laptops will also have a native support for Killer WiFi 6E. Which is cool since it opens up the 6GHz band for WiFi. This new spectrum has 4 times the amount of space available for routers and other devices which means a lot more bandwidth and less interference. No more having to deal with a bunch of congestion if you’re on the 5GHz WiFi band, at least until all of your neighbors switch over to 6E too. Which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon.

So what do all these improvements lead to? Well ’s numbers, some very impressive gaming performance gains compared to their previous generation and also AMD’s best Ryzen 5000 Mobile chips. The fact that the new i9-11980HK can beat the previous i9-10980HK is no surprise, but how much their new flagship i9 trounces the Ryzen 9 5900HX is quite impressive. Especially given that the i9’s companion RTX 3080 Mobile GPU is running a 10W lower TGP. AMD does have an even higher-end Ryzen 9 5980HX but it’s only advantage is a 200MHz Max Boost Clock. So that wouldn’t really change these results. Intel were perhaps most enthusiastic to show that their new Core i5-11400H could trade blows with the higher-end Ryzen 9 5900HS, despite having 2 less cores and. An RTX 3060 GPU running at 15W less. It’s not a flawless victory, but it definitely demonstrates that 11400H will be a much enhanced gaming CPU than the mainstream-oriented Ryzen 5 5600H.

In terms of content creation and productivity. Well this is somewhere Intel avoids talking about specific benchmark numbers and instead focuses on averages across a bunch of apps. Either way, they are claiming some more big increases over their own 10th gen chips. And you know what? I believe them since these percentages are about what I saw with Tiger Lake ultrabooks. Now when you put them against AMD though, I’m going to have to see myself to believe any of these numbers. However, even if they are half true it’s great news for competition.

In the end these numbers don’t mean anything since Intel’s success or failure is going to be determined by a few points. First, the price of these new laptops. Ryzen Mobile is ultra-competitive these days, and it is finally being hooked up to higher end GPUs. So they can’t continue selling Intel-based systems for a premium. If Intel actually tries that they are definitely going to fail. Also great specs aren’t worth anything if a laptop’s design is fighting with you. I mean look at what happened at something like the MSI Bravo 15 and the Dell G5 15 SE. They were amazing on paper, but neither was a device that I actually want to use. Intel needs to work with their partners to avoid slip-ups like those. Performance is another big one, and it looks like Tiger Lake’s architecture and the 11th gen processors are a big step in the right direction. However, like I have been saying for a while now, because of how much variation there is in laptop CPU and GPU wattages you can’t just judge an entire CPU lineup based on its specs.

Finally. There is another big one: Availability. You see if Intel can actually work on hitting those points that I just mentioned earlier, and. Also get a ton of chips right before the usual surge of Ryzen gaming laptops during the summer well I think AMD might be in a spot of trouble. Either way, the next few months is really going to be interesting for anyone looking for a gaming laptop. As I mentioned in the very beginning of this article, competition is good for everyone so I’m not trying to pick sides between Intel or AMD. I’m just really excited to see what Team Blue can bring to the table. The back and forth is a win for clients.

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Razer Blade 15 Advanced (2021) Review – SURPRISINGLY Fast Gaming!

What we have here is the 2021 model of the Razer Blade 15, and. Obviously they have made a few changes on the inside in terms of hardware. You now get the new RTX 3000 series GPU paired with Intel’s 10th Gen processors, a faster screen, expanded connectivity, and that’s pretty much it.

What I’m going to do in this review is actually walk you through the different SKUs that Razer is offering with the Blade 15 Advanced series, discuss pricing. And then a few concerns that I have about this model. And of course I’m going to show off this laptop’s performance, because that’s the most surprising part about this machine and the whole team were impressed by what the Blade 15 Advanced (2021) has to offer.

The first thing I want to tackle is the different configurations that Razer has for the Blade 15 Advanced lineup. Because they just have a lot going on right now. It starts at $2,500 USD, and for that you get be 10th Gen i7-10875H CPU with 8 cores/16 threads, 16GB of RAM, 1TB NVME SSD. And RTX 3070 GPU, along with a Quad HD 240Hz IPS-type display. Do note that this is the sample that I have over here. Now for an extra $100, you can get a faster 360Hz display, but that is limited to 1080P. Now if you are looking for an RTX 3080 8GB GPU, that is going to cost you $2,900 USD, but. That also doubles the memory and you get the same display as the entry model. And if you really want to pay $3,000 USD you can get the 1080P 360Hz display.

The top of the line spec comes with an RTX 3080 with 16GB of VRAM, a 4K OLED display at 60Hz, the rest of the specs are pretty much identical to the other SKUs. And the price is $3,300 USD, which is it’s a lot of money folks. Now I did compare pricing to last year’s spec and interestingly enough prices have remained the same. Albeit maybe $100 cheaper this time with the entry-level model. But that goes to show that Razer isn’t taking advantage of this whole GPU shortage situation that we are facing right now by jacking up the price of their Blade series. So that’s good news. However, this is still a very, very expensive laptop.

From a design standpoint, absolutely nothing has changed with the new Blade series. It’s the same boxy design with the anodized aluminum chassis. You still get the illuminated green Razer logo on the front lid. They have shaved a few millimeters in terms of thickness with the new Blade 15 Advanced model, but it’s really not that significant. And it weighs pretty much the same.

Even the interior space remains untouched. You still get the same keyboard layout, same switches, and per-key Chroma lighting. The trackpad is still one of the best that you can find on a Windows laptop, so there’s nothing much I can complain about. However, I really wish that the switches were improved this time, especially when it compared to ROG’s offerings because it’s a night and day difference. Take the ROG Zephyrus G15 for instance, it comes with an excellent keyboard with good travel distance and. A very satisfying feel when you bottom out. Even the Dell XPS 15 or XPS 17 series is excellent, they managed to keep it low profile and. Yet it’s just very, very satisfying to type on. When I come back to the Blade 15 it doesn’t meet up to those standards, especially considering the price point.

Also given this boxy design, I find it extremely uncomfortable to use this laptop for longer periods of time. Because the edges around the palm rest area are really, really sharp. They can start leaving marks on your wrists and it does start to hurt a little bit, and. It gets even worse if you use this thing on your lap. The power cable is an absolute nightmare to work with. The braided cable is just really thick, so if you want to pack this up quickly and. Put it in your backpack it’s going to need some work. I’m also just not a fan of the power connector, you always have to make sure that it’s facing the other side where the cable is exiting. Because if you switch it it’s going to cover a USB port. I’ve already mentioned these concerns with my previous Blade 15 laptop, it’s just really unfortunate that Razer hasn’t taken any measure to address them because this design is quite frankly starting to look boring.

This is the webcam test on the Blade 15 Advanced, and. To be honest with you it is one of the worst that I have seen on a Windows laptop, period. It just crushes the shadows and it just doesn’t look good. The front facing speakers sound pretty much the same compared to the last gen, they haven’t really tweaked the drivers with the new series. They sound okay, but you are not going to get the best bass response, especially when you compare it to the XPS 15 and XPS 17 that have more fidelity in the trebles and the bass.

Moving on to the display. And this is an area where I would say Razer has made some improvements. First off you are getting Quad HD in a 15-inch form factor and it looks great. It gives you more screen real estate to work with, but some people might still find it too small if you scale it to 100%. On top of that it has a 240Hz refresh rate, which makes everything from navigating Windows and playing popular AAA titles buttery smooth. The quality of this panel is a noticeable improvement over the last gen. As you can see it covers a 100% sRGB, 88% Adobe RGB, and 99% DCI-P3. So you are really in for a treat if you are editing videos or photos or any sort of content consumption. I think this is one of the best displays that I have come across on a gaming laptop in this caliber, but. There is a catch… It doesn’t get bright enough.

I think the peak level that I got was 315 nits from my test, which is lower than some competing laptops. Also something that I should mention is that as soon as I unplug this machine there is a weird sort of white boost in the contrast levels. Which make the image look so weird. I tried to troubleshoot this and it turns out then when Intel’s graphics kicks in it adjusts that automatically, so the workaround to this that I found was to disable Optimus and. Switch full-time to the discrete GPU.

Another thing I want to point out is that this display does not run at 240Hz full time. If you are doing regular desktop stuff it sticks to 60Hz, and then if you switch over to a game in . This has to do with NVIDIA’s Advanced Optimus technology, and I find that really odd because with my previous Blade 15 laptop, which had an RTX 2080 and. A 9th Gen CPU, I was able to run the screen at 240Hz full-time whether I was plugged in or unplugged. Now obviously you can run it at 240Hz full time if you choose to run the screen with the discrete GPU full-time through NVIDIA’s control panel, but. That’s obviously going to affect battery life so keep that in mind.

Port selection is pretty much the same as last years, which is totally fine. On the left-hand side you have power-in, two USB Gen2 Type-A ports, and. A USB Gen2 Type-C port that also supports PD charging up to 100W. There is also a audio output. Then if you switch over to the right-hand side you get a Kensington lock, HDMI , another USB Type-A port, a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C port, and. A full-size UHS-III card reader, which I’m sure content creators will love.

Upgradability is pretty flexible on the new Blade 15. Once you get under the hood and you have quick access to two RAM modules. The primary NVME SSD is actually hidden underneath a bracket and the drive speeds are really fast. Now you might be wondering about this bracket and its purpose, well Razer has actually managed to add an additional slot for storage expansion. They have designed this in such a way that you can simply add the second NVMe SSD on top and. Secure it with the pre-installed screw. It’s basically a layered set up, which is pretty cool.

Now in order to creates such a slim chassis, but. Keep good enough cooling for the RTX 3070 operating at 95W, a sacrifice needed to be made somewhere. And unfortunately that had to be the battery capacity. While a lot of their competitors have moved to higher capacity units. Razer needed to stick with a more standard 80Wh cell in the Blade 15. That along with a relatively inefficient Intel architecture means battery life is pretty respectable for a 2020 laptop… but. That hits a bit short of expectations in 2021. That is actually pretty evident when you put this thing under heavier load, because as you can see the battery life plunges to just under hours.

Now before we get too far into the performance results. I do want to quickly talk about the different modes that Razer has built into the Blade 15. You see instead of sticking with the usual 3 or 4 modes – like Eco, Balanced, Performance, and Extreme – that you can find on other gaming laptops, they have actually added a little bit more customization with both the CPU and. The GPU, which I think is pretty cool. First off, there is the Balanced Mode, which basically strikes a balance between performance, temperatures, and acoustics.

When you switch over to the Custom tab there are actually a bunch more options that allow the user to run the CPU from 35W in the Low state all the way up to a constant 55W when you put it to Boost. When the GPU is not being used. The RTX 3070 also gets some love, but this time with a little bit less flexibility. In Low and Medium settings the power limit is set to 85W, while when you switch over to High it’s actually at 95W. I think that is super impressive because for a laptop this size you can’t really find many other laptops pushing the graphics power above 80W. A great example is the Zephyrus G15 that allows for a maximum of 80W even in the highest performance mode. One thing I do need to mention is that the custom medium setting is the default balance mode. Also do keep in mind that all the benchmarks that you are gonna be seeing in this review will be run with the CPU and GPU set to their custom High settings.

Let’s take a look at how this affects the GPU and. Gaming first. In terms of power the Blade 15 does exactly what it proposes to do, which is delivering a constant 85W in Balanced/Medium and Low modes. Meanwhile the High setting is a bit more interesting, because while it did provide a pretty constant 95W there was one area where reading sort of went all over the place. After 3 runs it kept happening so I’m guessing it might have been a game asset load or something that caused more power to be moved to the CPU while sacrificing GPU performance a bit, but that’s just a theory.

Frequencies were super stable too. With Low and Medium hitting an average of 1350MHz, while high capped at about a 100MHz higher than that. It’s weird that the power spikes in the high power mode didn’t really affect clock speeds, but. My theory of game asset loading could explain this as well. One of my biggest concerns over previous generations of Blade 15 laptops was always temperatures, but. It seems like Razer does have things under control… at least in gaming. Even though this laptop has its GPU set higher than a lot of the others that I have come across it actually never made it to 80°C.

Noise isn’t a problem either, even in the High and. Boost settings the fans do pick up speed but they never became annoyingly loud. Honestly, this is one of the first laptops that I have come across that doesn’t sound like a jet fan when set to the highest setting, so that’s definitely a positive.

Now there is also something that I want to mention. And that is while the fans don’t get really loud there is a constant sort of whining noise with the Blade 15 underload. I couldn’t normally hear it, but if you are sensitive to higher frequencies it’s certainly something to take note of. Surface temperatures aren’t that bad either, but there are a few places that do tend to get a bit warm to the touch. Now are any of them uncomfortable? No, and to make matters even more effective Razer doesn’t exhaust the Blade’s hot air out of your mouse hand like some other gaming laptops.

So what do you get when you combine an RTX 3070 operating in 95W in the highest setting with an Intel Core i7-10857H? Well it’s one of the fastest gaming laptops that I have come across so far. It overcame the ROG Zephyrus G15 and that thing had an RTX 3080. That goes to show that the name of the GPU isn’t everything, give a mobile RTX 3070 enough power and. It can match or beat a lower wattage RTX 3080. Just remember this though, the G15 is also a good $500 cheaper… provided you can actually find one of those rare laptops. Even at 1440P the Blade 15 advanced powers ahead in most cases, which should really get you thinking about which model you end up buying from any laptop these days.

Now that we have established that this thing is a super impressive choice for gaming. What about real-world usage? Well let’s dive into that and see how the processor behaves in Razer’s various modes. Starting with power over time, and this is something we love seeing. Every single mode brings something different to the table. Low hits a constant 25W, Medium/Balanced is 35W, High is 45W, and finally Boost nails that claimed 55W mark without any problem. So expect pretty different performance results from each of them.

The frequency curves follow the power readouts perfectly. Would I use the Low setting for creative tasks? Absolutely not since it tops out under 2GHz, but it does give the lowest surface temperatures and noise so it’s perfect for light loads like web browsing and. General office work. Then there is some serious jumps to in Balanced mode or in High, and then finally about 3GHz in that Boost setting. Taking look at temperatures, they are once again super well managed across every single setting. It feels like Razer’s engineers spent a ton of time refining their design, fan curves, and power limits so they could get the Blade 15 to behave so differently depending on which setting you choose.

And now let’s take a look at some real-world benchmarks, and. Right away you can see the challenge that Intel’s partners face when using 10th gen Comet Lake chips in their laptops. While single thread performance is competitive, there is just no way the CPU’s can match what AMD is bringing to the table. And remember the Blade 15 Advanced costs more than any of the Ryzen-based laptop in these charts. The i7-10857H just gets steamrolled again and again and again, and again. The only real thing saving the situation is performance in creative apps that are GPU accelerated, like Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolved. Here the RTX 3070 and a very good lightly threaded output from the processor combine to make a really interesting solution, but. That’s actually a pretty typical result for Intel laptops these days. AMD is catching up though.

While the exterior hasn’t changed all that much. Razer has improved every aspect of the Blade 15 Advanced since the last time we looked at it. You now get a improved display, higher CPU, RTX 3000 series GPU operating a 95W, and that results in amazing gaming performance. The numbers really do speak for themselves. The temperatures are under control, no overheating, and acoustic performance is also respectable. And the best part is they haven’t actually increased the price.

But I do have to mention that they still need to make some improvements with this laptop in terms of keyboard switches, maybe redesign that power connector to make it more convenient, and. Also give us a slightly bigger display, maybe a 16×10 because I think that’s becoming the trend these days. Also this design is starting to get boring, give us a different color, like gunmetal gray, and maybe take off that Razer green logo that is LED lit and give us something that’s laser etched.

At this time when price gouging is everywhere, which is a sad reality. It’s really getting harder and harder to build a gaming PC. But it’s good to see something like the Blade 15 Advanced resisting those price increases at least right now. Keep in mind that you still have to pay a premium for it, and if you are looking for cheaper alternatives the Zephyrus G15 is $500 cheaper, but good luck finding any high-end Ryzen laptop in stock.

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