Blade Stealth Performance

The key upgrade to performance is the Intel Cadre i7-8550U, which I've covered a couple of times earlier. Compared to previous 7th-gen U-serial CPUs, the 8550U bumps the states upward from two cores and four threads to 4 cores and eight threads in the same 15W ability envelope, which is a huge improvement for these sorts of systems. Clock speeds for this chip range from 1.8 GHz base to 4.0 GHz boost, plus at that place's integrated UHD 620 graphics.

One of the key things to notation with the Core i7-8550U is its configurable TDP, allowing manufacturers to cull a power limit anywhere from 10 to 25 watts depending on the cooling capabilities and battery requirements. The Razer Bract Stealth uses the default xv watts here, which we too saw with the HP Spectre x360.

However unlike the Spectre x360, the Blade Stealth really has a reasonable cooler, and so it can sustain higher clock speeds. In a typical Cinebench run, core clocks are approximately 300 MHz college with the Blade Stealth and temperatures more manageable. Every bit a outcome, operation is almost ever superior.

Looking at the actual Cinebench results, the Razer Blade Stealth ends upwards iii percent ahead of the Spectre x360 in the multi-threaded workload and 9 percent faster when looking at the unmarried-threaded test. However, the laptop does fall 18 percent behind the Dell XPS thirteen in the multi-threaded test, every bit the XPS 13 uses the maximum 25W cTDP up state and every bit a consequence, sustains higher clock speeds.

In x264 video encoding, nosotros're once again 18 percent slower than the Dell XPS 13, however we are at least 5 percent alee of the HP Spectre x360, and fall closer to what we expect for the 15W variant.

In the Excel Monte Carlo workload, the Blade Stealth beats the Spectre x360 past eight percent and even outperforms the XPS 13 past 4 pct. The Bract Stealth does sustain the maximum all-cadre turbo frequency of three.seven GHz for slightly longer than the same CPU in the XPS 13, which is why nosotros're seeing the XPS thirteen go beaten narrowly in this short workload.

Premiere is another great issue for the Blade Stealth, beating the Spectre x360 by thirteen percent with Lumetri effects and outperforming the XPS 13 by 5 percent, which is a surprise. Nonetheless looking at Photoshop with the Iris Blur effect, the Blade Stealth is 5 percent backside the XPS 13 and equal to the Spectre x360.

Blender is probably non a workload you'd commonly run on an ultraportable merely results are interesting nonetheless. Here the Blade Stealth is 6 percent faster than the Spectre x360 but 16 pct behind the XPS 13.

MATLAB favors loftier clock speeds and high, quick boost speeds. Here the Bract Stealth delivers roughly the same functioning as the XPS xiii and a narrow 3 percent more than than the Spectre x360. Among laptops, in that location's not a lot of variance betwixt these results and of course we're talking most run times in the miliseconds.

The Blade Stealth also performs well in 3DMark, delivering 9 percent more performance than the Spectre x360 and effectually iv percent less than the XPS 13 in the GPU-limited Sky Diver examination. You won't desire to play many titles on the integrated UHD 620 graphics, though at that place is a clear deviation in performance between unlike models depending on their cooling solutions.

Perhaps the worst results for the Bract Stealth are the PCMark tests, which autumn behind both the Spectre x360 and the Dell XPS 13. As a more general organisation benchmark, it's disappointing to encounter the Blade Stealth not perform a bit ameliorate here, peculiarly considering the other workloads nosotros benchmark with.

On average, the Blade Stealth is four pct faster than the HP Spectre x360, though this is skewed slightly by the PCMark results. In longer workloads, especially encoding, the Blade Stealth holds a decent 9 percent functioning lead and that's the product of its superior libation nether the same TDP.

The results compared to the Dell XPS 13 are interesting, falling three per centum behind on boilerplate, though this balloons to 11 per centum in longer workloads. As the Razer Blade Stealth boosts higher for longer in shorter workloads, it actually outperforms the XPS 13 on average in these shorter tests.

Of course information technology'due south also worth discussing how the Razer Blade Stealth with the i7-8550U compares to the previous model with the i7-7500U. On average we're seeing a 30 percentage functioning comeback, which is huge for a single generation, with improve functioning seen in shorter workloads though still very impressive gains in longer and multi-threaded workloads.

Similar a lot of ultraportable manufacturers, Razer has opted to apply a Samsung PM961 PCIe NVMe SSD, which is a top-terminate drive capable of outstanding performance. Sequential reads and writes are well above 1 GB/south, while random operation is very skillful, falling towards the top of the charts.