Yeah, I'm not sure why we can't have half a tb in the qhd model. I wouldn't want uhd in such a small screen. You'd end up doing 9:1 scaling to get back to a usable 720p-like interface.
4k is 350 DPI. Depending on your preferences you'd only need 3 or 4:1 scaling. 3:1 is 117:1 and would only be slightly smaller than a 27" 1440p screen; combined with the extra sharpness from high DPI that's more readable than you might think. I have my XPS13 at 2:1 for 140DPI equivalent and find it generally is slightly easier to read than 100DPI on a standard screen at the same distance despite the smaller text which was pleasant surprise; since I bought the laptop expecting I'd need to leave the scaling at 250%. If you need bigger text 4:1 is an 88 DPI equivalent and gives you an actual 720p equivalent resolution.
I misspoke. I meant to say "3:1" scaling where 9 (3x3) physical pixels help display one logical pixel. That conveniently takes you from uhd to exactly 720p (eg 2160/3=720), which is probably perfect at 12.5", as you mentioned.
If you want higher resolution displays, several companies are promising thunderbolt 3 hubs with dual 4k support in the near future. Dell is supposed to have theirs out sometime this quarter.
well then that's a change for razer. usually their notebooks are stupidly overpriced.. looks like they want some market share, or the storage upgrade options will be expensive.
Look at the price for the mini leviathan bluetooth speaker ($199 for a small BT Speaker similar in size to beats pill), or razer blade 14" notebook with 256GB SSD. $2400. Now i see they have a new GShock Like Watch for $200 with no heart-rate sensor
I read no mention of a dGPU in the Stealth. That coupled with the release of the Core makes me think it is Intel GPU only internally. If that is true, it lost all my interest. It is not interesting to me with only an Intel iGPU. I liked all I saw and am thinking it is too good to be true. It is priced similar to the MS Surface stuff.
This just makes me wonder where the third party manufacturer agnostic Thunderbolt GPU boxes are. Every generation of Thunderbolt, Intel has promised it, and 3 was looking promising for many reasons, but here we are with still nearly nothing.
AIUI the problem has been at the driver/OS level. TB is external PCIe; and PCIe graphics cards coming and going while the system is powered on has been something that Windows didn't play nicely with.
I looked into the eGPU over Thunderbolt stuff back in the first generation. People were able to get a functional eGPU using an inexpensive thunderbolt to pcie adapter at that time, but then Intel asked the company to stop selling them. Apparently it is difficult to get thunderbolt chips unless Intel approves of your product and even then the chip costs are high enough to discourage development of these kinds of adapters. I think when the second generation chips came out you could get enclosures but they started at around 400 USD and that did not include any graphics card.
Just now, in the fourth generation are they are delivering on the promise of Thunderbolt as a true PCIE interface. I think they added some technologies to make graphics adapters work without rebooting in this gen.
Sadly, I'd be willing to pay that. It's still cheaper than having a laptop and a desktop. Don't get me wrong, I think $200 is what I should be paying, but I'm willing to pay $400 if I have to.
The main caveat is that you'd only have a 2 core CPU at about 2/3rds the speed of a desktop chip.
I wonder if it'd be possible to use a 45W mobile chip, but disable 2 cores and cap the max clocks heavily when it's running on battery power. Combined with a GPU dock it'd come much closer to best of all worlds. Near desktop performance at home, and weight/runtime much closer to an ultrabook while on the go.
He's saying take a 45W mobile quad core, and when on battery power turn off two of the cores and drop voltage + clocks on the remaining two. That may not even be possible to do dynamically. So really heat isn't your primary impediment in this case. A slightly different chassis design and a special dock designed to force more air would do the trick.
Dynamic frequency/voltage scaling already based on battery/wall power is an option so at least half of it is doable. I don't know if changing the number of available cores is possible via a driver or would need OS changes to implement. If the latter a hardware level fudge might still be possible with the low power state being dual core and hyperthreaded, and the high power on quadcore non-HT. To the OS the chip would always have 4 cores; the performance gap on battery would just be larger than the clock reduction would indicate. Do Arm's big/little core setups need OS support for changing the core config, or is the magic all done in drivers/firmware? If the former, adding it to desktop Windows probably would be strait forward even if it's currently compile flagged for W10 mobile at present.
When in 45 watt mode, you don't magically get a bigger chassis. To handle the kind of heat, you need more heat sink space. Airflow can only do so much.
You can pick up an asus ux305 ultrabook for $700 ($600 sales are common) with 8gb ram and a 256gb ssd. Then you can build an admirable 1440p60 gaming desktop for $800-$1200. There are decent 1440p monitors out there for $300 (or less). Decent peripherals and an OS are perhaps another $200 (or less).
That's something like $1900-2400 assuming you can't poach any free parts.
With the Stealth and Core, you're looking at $1600 for the laptop (you need the extra storage if it's your only machine). Then an estimated $200-$500 for Core. Then at least $300 for a 1440p-worthy gpu.
That's $2100-$2500 without an external monitor (yay, gaming on a 12.5" screen!) or any peripherals (mouse?!).
I think they are close and there certainly nice features the Stealth that might be attractive (touch screen, chroma keyboard, etc). However, it's not a clear victory for the Stealth+Core.
Alienware's implementation from a year ago is very similar to the Razer Core but uses a proprietary connector, I doubt very much it sold well but it was 300 USD: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8653/alienware-graph...
At that price it probably didn't sell well; but if I could only have a single computer the Alienware 13 + external GPU would probably be my choice over a traditional high end gaming laptop because the AW 13 is a reasonable option for a carry around laptop as opposed to something that was only used on a desk and lugged to lan parties like traditional gaming laptops.
the reason it did not sell well was because it used a proprietary connector.. This razer core will sell well so long as it's compatible with all laptops with thunderbolt 3.
I don't know the price of the dock separately, but an <a href="http://affordablelaptops.com.au/contents/en-us/p27... site</a> offers a package deal with laptop (13.3" 1080p, 16GB, i7-4870HQ, Iris Pro 5200, 2x128GB M.2 SSD) and dock (PCIE3 x16, 3.5"SATA, USB3, Killer Gb LAN, speakers/woofer) with GTX980 dGPU for AU$3350 (US$2350).
It is a model that's been out awhile (i7-4870HQ), but maybe there's an upgraded version in the works?
Price seems quite good including a GTX980, but of course, buying the dGPU from the laptop seller (AU$799 in this case) is more expensive than buying your own card separately.
Well, before TB 3 Intel hadn't pledged support for external GPU support. Now that we have support. And widespread thunderbolt adoption thanks to its integration into the USB Type C port, we can see things really progress.
THIS one is manufacturer-agnostic. It isn't like the Alienware Amplifier. This will work with ANY computer with a TB3 port that supports intel graphics switching in the BIOS.
On windows 10 anyway, it's unclear if OSX will support it. I sure hope so.
It doesn't have to be Thunderbolt. If you're willing to sacrifice your laptop's wifi slot, or if it has a mini PCIe WLAN card slot with enough lanes, or an ExpressCard slot (really sad these have been phased out of notebooks), there's an adapter you can buy. It just maps the mPCIe connects into a regular PCIe slot. Pop in a regular graphics card and you're in business.
Wow this is amazing! I feel like a lot of people have been interested in something very similar to this. I hope it sells really well so that the rest of the industry takes a hint
I almost would've preferred a dock for the laptop that contains additional cooling equipment (just fans against the chassis) and the gpu in one package.
Firstly, you don't waste time with thus kind of complex setup unless you're looking to pair a big gpu with your laptop.
Therefore, If I'm gonna try to power 375W of gpu muscle with a 15W cpu, I want that cpu to be able to maintain an aggressive turbo during extended gaming. You need some kind of supplementary cooling to enable that.
I trust that two Skylake cores are enough, but they have to be able to maintain an aggressive clock speed to keep up with a beefy gpu.
Since they're not using a proprietary connector I think making it something that should work with any TB3 device (including whatever their next laptop chassis looks like) is the right option. You can always buy $20 cooling pad if you need it separately. You might not though; my XPS13 is able to maintain max turbo on its 15W skylake running Einstein@Home 24/7 on the CPU. (Buggy openCL drivers mean I'm not running anything on the GPU; but E@H's GPU tasks only occasionally dropped the clock down 100mhz when I tested them.)
Other companies already made such external-GPU with Thunderbolt connectivity, but non actually made it to the market.. the only option was a workstation grade enclosure designed mainly for Mac, to use pro-level expansion cards ( mainly, Audio, Video, Network, etc... ) officially it does not support VGA's but some users report success.. though no hot P&P feature.. and as a professional product.. it's expensive...
I hope this Razer Core will actually make it to market, and have a good cost & be compatible with other laptops ( sure they must have Thunderbolt 3 over Type-C port )
In some gaming tests I saw, this CPU was even a bottleneck to the Surface Book GPU (between 940m and 950m) so, while it very much depends on the game, this CPU will definitely be a bottleneck especially for a GPU like the 980ti (necessary to play at native resolution). Also the screen is a bit too small for gaming IMO. I see this as a much more interesting idea for a next gen of the razor blade 14, with a quand core i7 that can keeo up with the top of the line GPUs and a better screen for gaming (and an integrated GTX 970 or even just 960 to game on the go....)
"With a single cable connection, the laptop can power an external display, all of the docking connections with four USB 3.0 ports and Gigabit Ethernet, and support for a 375W GPU" Could you explain this a bit? Is the laptop powering it all or is it the Razer Core providing the power? I think that the external display and the laptop need to be connected to the Core. I wonder how the signals are flowing through 1 cable, say in the case when we use both displays..
They're using the word "power" to mean "work with", rather than supplying electrons. A bit confusing, definitely.
A single TB3 cable can do all that stuff-- power/charge the laptop, export pci-e channels to the dock, USB 3.1, and even displayport too. With this little external dock, you will only need to plug a single cable to your laptop and you'll be good to go.
Well, the data transmission ALSO uses electrons ;)
How about: "the single cable provides the data link for the GPU, USB and ethernet ports, with the Core providing it's own built-in powersupply and cooling"
Perfect timing. I was just able to click the buy button on an inferior laptop, but this is exactly what I wanted in terms of price and performance. I can't wait to buy. I hope to see it for sale soon
Okay maybe not quite as much gaming power on the go as Alienware's classic, but enough to run titles at low detail at a downscaled 720p (I can get GTA V to run on my Atomx7 Surface 3...).
Drop in a GTX 970 and 1080p / ultra high detail should be the sweet spot when plugged in back at base.
Questions for me would be a) battery life and b) whether the same Core module could be reused with future laptop releases.
The ultrabook side isn't a gaming notebook at all, it doesn't even have intel iris graphics. If you want mobile gaming, this isn't the notebook for you.
I suggest looking at the Dell XPS 15, which comes with a GTX 960M, which is quite capable of 1080p gaming. It also has Thunderbolt 3 so it should (eventually) work with the Razer Core for enthusiast-level 4k gaming at home.
Yeah, the m11x was so cool. I wish we could get a proper successor, but the combination of recent pixel race and the expectation that a laptop has to be able to game at its native resolution combine to make a modern m11x into abb impossible effort.
I dunno, 2560x1440 means you can run games at 720p and get decent performance *and* a native resolution (effectively quadding your pixels). This seems fairly close to the mark...
What a POS. Huge bezels. Overpriced. 6650 i7 not 6650 i7 with Iris like SP4. From a gaming company. An i7 SP4 would blow this away in gaming performance
Interested to see socres on this, will the 4x PCI-Link to the CPU hamper it? will it get better performance on a external screen as thats going GPU - Screen rather than GPU to laptop screen?
It's generally minimal. The most recent results I found were Tech Power Up testing 18 games with a GTX 980 a bit over a year ago. The average impact from 4x PCIe3 lanes was 4-6% at normal resolutions. Only 2 games - Wolfenstien: New Order and Ryse - suffered badly enough (10-30% depending on resolution) that you might need to turn settings down significantly to keep acceptable FPS. 4 lanes only being problematic for a handful of titles has been the pattern I've seen since the first tests were done on PCIe 1.0 systems many years ago.
Can't believe I'm saying this about a razer product, but the laptop by itself is actually pretty good value. Ironically, the Razer core will probably cost as much as the laptop itself, and undoubtedly more with the GPU installed.
I'm not a fan of Razer peripherals, but they never fail to impress with their laptops. Now, let's hope this gets heaps of competition. Also, I love the use of TB3 for the dock - this should make it more or less universal, opening the door for use with other PCs too.
PCI-Express bandwidth: 15.75 GB/s each direction (PCI-E 3.0 x16) DDR3-1866 bandwidth: 14.93 GB/s Thunderbolt 3: 5 GB/s (using 2 links over PCI-E 3.0 x4)
That is, you are going to be driving a screen and passing data from the gpu to the computer and vice-versa using the equivalent of a PCI-E 3.0 x4 link. Why then would be putting a Geforce Titan (or similar high performance gpus) inside of that thing?
If you are trying to play in high resolutions or high detail you are transferring lots of data from memory to the graphics card in that case the link speed will force you to play in lower detail or resolution so the larger card is moot. And in any case the cpu part is still on the anaemic side (on par with a desktop core i3).
The GPU shouldn't be doing any large scale transfers too/from system memory while gaming. If all your graphic assets won't fit in VRAM you're going to have a severe performance impact, if they all do then the worst case impact is that it takes you slightly longer to load when entering a new area. 4, or even 2 lanes is generally enough bandwidth to avoid any serious performance degradation.
if that were the case then nvidia wouldn't be going crazy and developing their own NVLINK interface. Pascal is around the corner, and it will need that Bandwidth.
That's needed for Cuda/OpenCL compute. You don't want to be loading textures/etc only at the moment of first need; that way leads to stuttering frame times and brief freezes in gameplay. If you're doing it right and loading them well in advance of need, burst speed doesn't matter.
That's a big part of why throttling the PCIe bus by 50 or 75% only has a negligible real world performance impact in almost all games.
I'm fascinated to see if it causes any substantial bottlenecking because it isn't clocked very high, but the concept of gaming with a 2C/4T Skylake cpu is sound.
Really confused by this product. I have a cheap games machine that has a GTX 950 with a Core i3 6100 - and I'm often hitting CPU limits. The ultrabook looks great, but the CPU is much weaker, so unless you're playing Tomb Raider or other older CPU-light games, I'm not really sure whether you'd want to hook this up with anything better than a 950 or even a 750 ti.
And if that's the case, surely you'd be better off buying an ultrabook and building an i3/950 gaming PC and presumably saving a fair amount of cash?
I can tell you why you're confused. By having presented both the laptop and the GPU enclosure together at the same event, Razer (and, in a way, Anandtech) has provoked somewhat of a misunderstanding that their design intent is to pair these two pieces together. Whereas it's only one of the possible options; they DON'T HAVE TO be paired. You can use the Stealth as you would use any other Ultrabook-type laptop, and you can use the Core with any laptop that has a TB3 interface available.
Civilization? CPU intensive? Nah! I play CIV V on my desktop with an AMD Phenom II x4 965 (which isn't that great). My PC also only has a GTS 250 and 4GB of 1333mhz ddr3 ram.
The razer blade stealth could probably CIV V without the core.
Mind you CIV V occasionally crashes but I think it's got more to do with the fact that I'm only using DirectX 9.0 with such a low spec graphics card. Windows XP for the win.
They missed a trick there by not having 3.5" HDD bays (bonus points if multiple and RAID capable) - even if it required another say USB3 connection - then its truly an all-in-one enclosure
that bus is already going to be bandwidth limited, the more stuff you put in there, the more it has to share over a PCIe x4 bus. Gigabit Ethernet, USB Devices, etc.. you can always use a external SSD or 4TB HDD and use one of the USB 3 ports on the HUB.
With a little modding you could add it inside and make your own enclosure.
Nice to see Razer expand their generally great notebook line, and offer competitive pricing at the same time. The UHD model sounds great; the ability to dock to an external video card is great, the Skylake 6500U should already be as fast as a quad-core Sandy Bridge like the 2500 in DX9-DX11 games, and DX12 should only improve things. I just wish the display was 16:10.
I'm not trying to make an argument for another company, but saying the Razer Stealth undercuts all competition is a bit far-fetched. For a $100 more you can get a much better quality display at the same resolution, a significantly lighter chassis, and a more practical, taller display with the New MacBook.
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mkaibear - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
This is... almost exactly what I want in a laptop... Hrm. 256Gb isn't quite enough though, if it had a 2nd drive bay it would be perfect!ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Yeah, I'm not sure why we can't have half a tb in the qhd model. I wouldn't want uhd in such a small screen. You'd end up doing 9:1 scaling to get back to a usable 720p-like interface.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
4k is 350 DPI. Depending on your preferences you'd only need 3 or 4:1 scaling. 3:1 is 117:1 and would only be slightly smaller than a 27" 1440p screen; combined with the extra sharpness from high DPI that's more readable than you might think. I have my XPS13 at 2:1 for 140DPI equivalent and find it generally is slightly easier to read than 100DPI on a standard screen at the same distance despite the smaller text which was pleasant surprise; since I bought the laptop expecting I'd need to leave the scaling at 250%. If you need bigger text 4:1 is an 88 DPI equivalent and gives you an actual 720p equivalent resolution.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I misspoke. I meant to say "3:1" scaling where 9 (3x3) physical pixels help display one logical pixel. That conveniently takes you from uhd to exactly 720p (eg 2160/3=720), which is probably perfect at 12.5", as you mentioned.I appreciate the clarification.
dsumanik - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Damn razer! If only it did dual displays!!! Id swap out my workstation for this in a heartbeatReflex - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Use DisplayPort and daisy chain your LCD's. That's what I do, with 3xDell U2415'sDanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
If you want higher resolution displays, several companies are promising thunderbolt 3 hubs with dual 4k support in the near future. Dell is supposed to have theirs out sometime this quarter.jasonelmore - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
it'll cost $2000 to $2600 just for the ultrabook..Stuka87 - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Did you not read the article? It starts at $999, or $1599 for the loaded up QHD model.jasonelmore - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
well then that's a change for razer. usually their notebooks are stupidly overpriced.. looks like they want some market share, or the storage upgrade options will be expensive.Are the SSD's PCIe? guessing not
jasonelmore - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Look at the price for the mini leviathan bluetooth speaker ($199 for a small BT Speaker similar in size to beats pill), or razer blade 14" notebook with 256GB SSD. $2400. Now i see they have a new GShock Like Watch for $200 with no heart-rate sensorukw - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Yeah they are PCIe.eanazag - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I read no mention of a dGPU in the Stealth. That coupled with the release of the Core makes me think it is Intel GPU only internally. If that is true, it lost all my interest. It is not interesting to me with only an Intel iGPU. I liked all I saw and am thinking it is too good to be true. It is priced similar to the MS Surface stuff.khanikun - Friday, January 8, 2016 - link
Except the whole part you can attach an external GPU. I'd love that capability on my Surface Pro 3.tipoo - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
This just makes me wonder where the third party manufacturer agnostic Thunderbolt GPU boxes are. Every generation of Thunderbolt, Intel has promised it, and 3 was looking promising for many reasons, but here we are with still nearly nothing.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
AIUI the problem has been at the driver/OS level. TB is external PCIe; and PCIe graphics cards coming and going while the system is powered on has been something that Windows didn't play nicely with.MadDuffy - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I looked into the eGPU over Thunderbolt stuff back in the first generation. People were able to get a functional eGPU using an inexpensive thunderbolt to pcie adapter at that time, but then Intel asked the company to stop selling them. Apparently it is difficult to get thunderbolt chips unless Intel approves of your product and even then the chip costs are high enough to discourage development of these kinds of adapters. I think when the second generation chips came out you could get enclosures but they started at around 400 USD and that did not include any graphics card.Just now, in the fourth generation are they are delivering on the promise of Thunderbolt as a true PCIE interface. I think they added some technologies to make graphics adapters work without rebooting in this gen.
MadDuffy - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Furthermore, the price hasn't been announced for the razer Core. I'd expect it to be at least 400 USD without a card if history is any predictor.Flunk - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Sadly, I'd be willing to pay that. It's still cheaper than having a laptop and a desktop. Don't get me wrong, I think $200 is what I should be paying, but I'm willing to pay $400 if I have to.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
The main caveat is that you'd only have a 2 core CPU at about 2/3rds the speed of a desktop chip.I wonder if it'd be possible to use a 45W mobile chip, but disable 2 cores and cap the max clocks heavily when it's running on battery power. Combined with a GPU dock it'd come much closer to best of all worlds. Near desktop performance at home, and weight/runtime much closer to an ultrabook while on the go.
ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Dynamically jumping from 15W to 45W provides a decent about of heat. How do you dissipate that much heat from a scrawny laptop chassis?Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
He's saying take a 45W mobile quad core, and when on battery power turn off two of the cores and drop voltage + clocks on the remaining two. That may not even be possible to do dynamically. So really heat isn't your primary impediment in this case. A slightly different chassis design and a special dock designed to force more air would do the trick.DanNeely - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Dynamic frequency/voltage scaling already based on battery/wall power is an option so at least half of it is doable. I don't know if changing the number of available cores is possible via a driver or would need OS changes to implement. If the latter a hardware level fudge might still be possible with the low power state being dual core and hyperthreaded, and the high power on quadcore non-HT. To the OS the chip would always have 4 cores; the performance gap on battery would just be larger than the clock reduction would indicate. Do Arm's big/little core setups need OS support for changing the core config, or is the magic all done in drivers/firmware? If the former, adding it to desktop Windows probably would be strait forward even if it's currently compile flagged for W10 mobile at present.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
When in 45 watt mode, you don't magically get a bigger chassis. To handle the kind of heat, you need more heat sink space. Airflow can only do so much.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
That's not entirely correct.You can pick up an asus ux305 ultrabook for $700 ($600 sales are common) with 8gb ram and a 256gb ssd. Then you can build an admirable 1440p60 gaming desktop for $800-$1200. There are decent 1440p monitors out there for $300 (or less). Decent peripherals and an OS are perhaps another $200 (or less).
That's something like $1900-2400 assuming you can't poach any free parts.
With the Stealth and Core, you're looking at $1600 for the laptop (you need the extra storage if it's your only machine). Then an estimated $200-$500 for Core. Then at least $300 for a 1440p-worthy gpu.
That's $2100-$2500 without an external monitor (yay, gaming on a 12.5" screen!) or any peripherals (mouse?!).
I think they are close and there certainly nice features the Stealth that might be attractive (touch screen, chroma keyboard, etc). However, it's not a clear victory for the Stealth+Core.
MadDuffy - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
(wishing AT would let me edit comments)Previous AT coverage:
MSI had a working prototype of an external GPU box in 2012: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5352/msis-gus-ii-ext...
DIY eGPU coverage from 2014:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvid...
Alienware's implementation from a year ago is very similar to the Razer Core but uses a proprietary connector, I doubt very much it sold well but it was 300 USD:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8653/alienware-graph...
DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
At that price it probably didn't sell well; but if I could only have a single computer the Alienware 13 + external GPU would probably be my choice over a traditional high end gaming laptop because the AW 13 is a reasonable option for a carry around laptop as opposed to something that was only used on a desk and lugged to lan parties like traditional gaming laptops.jasonelmore - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
the reason it did not sell well was because it used a proprietary connector.. This razer core will sell well so long as it's compatible with all laptops with thunderbolt 3.eldakka - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
MSI have a G30 and gaming dock.I don't know the price of the dock separately, but an <a href="http://affordablelaptops.com.au/contents/en-us/p27... site</a> offers a package deal with laptop (13.3" 1080p, 16GB, i7-4870HQ, Iris Pro 5200, 2x128GB M.2 SSD) and dock (PCIE3 x16, 3.5"SATA, USB3, Killer Gb LAN, speakers/woofer) with GTX980 dGPU for AU$3350 (US$2350).
It is a model that's been out awhile (i7-4870HQ), but maybe there's an upgraded version in the works?
Price seems quite good including a GTX980, but of course, buying the dGPU from the laptop seller (AU$799 in this case) is more expensive than buying your own card separately.
tipoo - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I thought there was some news of them being less draconian about licencing for 3, which was why there was hope for Thunderboxes?WinterCharm - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Well, before TB 3 Intel hadn't pledged support for external GPU support. Now that we have support. And widespread thunderbolt adoption thanks to its integration into the USB Type C port, we can see things really progress.schizoide - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
THIS one is manufacturer-agnostic. It isn't like the Alienware Amplifier. This will work with ANY computer with a TB3 port that supports intel graphics switching in the BIOS.On windows 10 anyway, it's unclear if OSX will support it. I sure hope so.
tipoo - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I'd be using Boot Camp anyways, as under OSX I lose 30-50% of my GPU performance under native OpenGL vs Windows DX11-12.Solandri - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
It doesn't have to be Thunderbolt. If you're willing to sacrifice your laptop's wifi slot, or if it has a mini PCIe WLAN card slot with enough lanes, or an ExpressCard slot (really sad these have been phased out of notebooks), there's an adapter you can buy. It just maps the mPCIe connects into a regular PCIe slot. Pop in a regular graphics card and you're in business.http://www.amazon.com/Laptop-External-PCI-E-Graphi...
ingwe - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Wow this is amazing! I feel like a lot of people have been interested in something very similar to this. I hope it sells really well so that the rest of the industry takes a hintImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I almost would've preferred a dock for the laptop that contains additional cooling equipment (just fans against the chassis) and the gpu in one package.Firstly, you don't waste time with thus kind of complex setup unless you're looking to pair a big gpu with your laptop.
Therefore, If I'm gonna try to power 375W of gpu muscle with a 15W cpu, I want that cpu to be able to maintain an aggressive turbo during extended gaming. You need some kind of supplementary cooling to enable that.
I trust that two Skylake cores are enough, but they have to be able to maintain an aggressive clock speed to keep up with a beefy gpu.
WinterCharm - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Razers cooling design likely takes this into account without the need for additional external cooling.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I hope that's the case. Razer has historically done pretty well with that and I hope the Stealth is no different.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Since they're not using a proprietary connector I think making it something that should work with any TB3 device (including whatever their next laptop chassis looks like) is the right option. You can always buy $20 cooling pad if you need it separately. You might not though; my XPS13 is able to maintain max turbo on its 15W skylake running Einstein@Home 24/7 on the CPU. (Buggy openCL drivers mean I'm not running anything on the GPU; but E@H's GPU tasks only occasionally dropped the clock down 100mhz when I tested them.)ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
That's probably a good point. If this is as versatile as it should be, then I sorta get why Razer wouldn't want to lock into a particular laptop.Xajel - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Other companies already made such external-GPU with Thunderbolt connectivity, but non actually made it to the market.. the only option was a workstation grade enclosure designed mainly for Mac, to use pro-level expansion cards ( mainly, Audio, Video, Network, etc... ) officially it does not support VGA's but some users report success.. though no hot P&P feature.. and as a professional product.. it's expensive...http://www.sonnettech.com/PRODUCT/echoexpressse2.h...
I hope this Razer Core will actually make it to market, and have a good cost & be compatible with other laptops ( sure they must have Thunderbolt 3 over Type-C port )
digiguy - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
In some gaming tests I saw, this CPU was even a bottleneck to the Surface Book GPU (between 940m and 950m) so, while it very much depends on the game, this CPU will definitely be a bottleneck especially for a GPU like the 980ti (necessary to play at native resolution). Also the screen is a bit too small for gaming IMO. I see this as a much more interesting idea for a next gen of the razor blade 14, with a quand core i7 that can keeo up with the top of the line GPUs and a better screen for gaming (and an integrated GTX 970 or even just 960 to game on the go....)T1beriu - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Please asolo use the metric system so other parts of the world can understand the dimensions. Thanks.mkaibear - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Really? It's not that hard to figure out. Just multiply by 2.54 for inches to feet and multiply by .454 for pounds to kg.;)
(I'm English, btw, and I largely agree with you ;)
digiguy - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
best is use both, it's a pain to convert every time for us in Europeaugustofretes - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
"it's a pain to convert every time for us in the rest of the world"Fix that for you.
adityarjun - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
"With a single cable connection, the laptop can power an external display, all of the docking connections with four USB 3.0 ports and Gigabit Ethernet, and support for a 375W GPU"Could you explain this a bit? Is the laptop powering it all or is it the Razer Core providing the power?
I think that the external display and the laptop need to be connected to the Core.
I wonder how the signals are flowing through 1 cable, say in the case when we use both displays..
digiguy - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I think it's a mistake, as the Core has it's own power supplyschizoide - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
They're using the word "power" to mean "work with", rather than supplying electrons. A bit confusing, definitely.A single TB3 cable can do all that stuff-- power/charge the laptop, export pci-e channels to the dock, USB 3.1, and even displayport too. With this little external dock, you will only need to plug a single cable to your laptop and you'll be good to go.
eldakka - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
Well, the data transmission ALSO uses electrons ;)How about: "the single cable provides the data link for the GPU, USB and ethernet ports, with the Core providing it's own built-in powersupply and cooling"
mrjimorg - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Perfect timing. I was just able to click the buy button on an inferior laptop, but this is exactly what I wanted in terms of price and performance. I can't wait to buy. I hope to see it for sale soonJon Tseng - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
The m11x lives!!! :-) :-)Okay maybe not quite as much gaming power on the go as Alienware's classic, but enough to run titles at low detail at a downscaled 720p (I can get GTA V to run on my Atomx7 Surface 3...).
Drop in a GTX 970 and 1080p / ultra high detail should be the sweet spot when plugged in back at base.
Questions for me would be a) battery life and b) whether the same Core module could be reused with future laptop releases.
schizoide - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
The ultrabook side isn't a gaming notebook at all, it doesn't even have intel iris graphics. If you want mobile gaming, this isn't the notebook for you.I suggest looking at the Dell XPS 15, which comes with a GTX 960M, which is quite capable of 1080p gaming. It also has Thunderbolt 3 so it should (eventually) work with the Razer Core for enthusiast-level 4k gaming at home.
ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Yeah, the m11x was so cool. I wish we could get a proper successor, but the combination of recent pixel race and the expectation that a laptop has to be able to game at its native resolution combine to make a modern m11x into abb impossible effort.mkaibear - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
I dunno, 2560x1440 means you can run games at 720p and get decent performance *and* a native resolution (effectively quadding your pixels). This seems fairly close to the mark...webdoctors - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
This laptop seems awesome. I don't understand why my company keeps buying these big bulky heavy Dell laptops that pump out heat.okashira - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
What a POS.Huge bezels. Overpriced. 6650 i7 not 6650 i7 with Iris like SP4. From a gaming company. An i7 SP4 would blow this away in gaming performance
OligarchyAmbulance - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Yes, go ahead and plug in a desktop GPU to your SP4.I'm waiting.
aznchum - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Anyone else appalled by the 8GB non-upgradeable memory? I think laptops should be coming with 16GB standard nowadays with a 32GB option if needed.Strom- - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Yeah, the lack of a 16 GB option here is what annoys me the most.platinumjsi - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Interested to see socres on this, will the 4x PCI-Link to the CPU hamper it? will it get better performance on a external screen as thats going GPU - Screen rather than GPU to laptop screen?DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
It's generally minimal. The most recent results I found were Tech Power Up testing 18 games with a GTX 980 a bit over a year ago. The average impact from 4x PCIe3 lanes was 4-6% at normal resolutions. Only 2 games - Wolfenstien: New Order and Ryse - suffered badly enough (10-30% depending on resolution) that you might need to turn settings down significantly to keep acceptable FPS. 4 lanes only being problematic for a handful of titles has been the pattern I've seen since the first tests were done on PCIe 1.0 systems many years ago.https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980...
az060693 - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Can't believe I'm saying this about a razer product, but the laptop by itself is actually pretty good value. Ironically, the Razer core will probably cost as much as the laptop itself, and undoubtedly more with the GPU installed.Tylanner - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I love this product. Razer continues to make high-end, high-quality products that cater squarely to the enthusiast market.Valantar - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I'm not a fan of Razer peripherals, but they never fail to impress with their laptops. Now, let's hope this gets heaps of competition. Also, I love the use of TB3 for the dock - this should make it more or less universal, opening the door for use with other PCs too.setzer - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Correct me if I'm wrong, but:PCI-Express bandwidth: 15.75 GB/s each direction (PCI-E 3.0 x16)
DDR3-1866 bandwidth: 14.93 GB/s
Thunderbolt 3: 5 GB/s (using 2 links over PCI-E 3.0 x4)
That is, you are going to be driving a screen and passing data from the gpu to the computer and vice-versa using the equivalent of a PCI-E 3.0 x4 link.
Why then would be putting a Geforce Titan (or similar high performance gpus) inside of that thing?
If you are trying to play in high resolutions or high detail you are transferring lots of data from memory to the graphics card in that case the link speed will force you to play in lower detail or resolution so the larger card is moot.
And in any case the cpu part is still on the anaemic side (on par with a desktop core i3).
DanNeely - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
The GPU shouldn't be doing any large scale transfers too/from system memory while gaming. If all your graphic assets won't fit in VRAM you're going to have a severe performance impact, if they all do then the worst case impact is that it takes you slightly longer to load when entering a new area. 4, or even 2 lanes is generally enough bandwidth to avoid any serious performance degradation.https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980...
jasonelmore - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
if that were the case then nvidia wouldn't be going crazy and developing their own NVLINK interface. Pascal is around the corner, and it will need that Bandwidth.jasonelmore - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
and the bus still has to transfer textures, Poly's and such between the SSD and the GPU/CPUDanNeely - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
That's needed for Cuda/OpenCL compute. You don't want to be loading textures/etc only at the moment of first need; that way leads to stuttering frame times and brief freezes in gameplay. If you're doing it right and loading them well in advance of need, burst speed doesn't matter.That's a big part of why throttling the PCIe bus by 50 or 75% only has a negligible real world performance impact in almost all games.
ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Skylake desktop i3s are kinda nice.I'm fascinated to see if it causes any substantial bottlenecking because it isn't clocked very high, but the concept of gaming with a 2C/4T Skylake cpu is sound.
OrphanageExplosion - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Really confused by this product. I have a cheap games machine that has a GTX 950 with a Core i3 6100 - and I'm often hitting CPU limits. The ultrabook looks great, but the CPU is much weaker, so unless you're playing Tomb Raider or other older CPU-light games, I'm not really sure whether you'd want to hook this up with anything better than a 950 or even a 750 ti.And if that's the case, surely you'd be better off buying an ultrabook and building an i3/950 gaming PC and presumably saving a fair amount of cash?
moozooh - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
I can tell you why you're confused. By having presented both the laptop and the GPU enclosure together at the same event, Razer (and, in a way, Anandtech) has provoked somewhat of a misunderstanding that their design intent is to pair these two pieces together. Whereas it's only one of the possible options; they DON'T HAVE TO be paired. You can use the Stealth as you would use any other Ultrabook-type laptop, and you can use the Core with any laptop that has a TB3 interface available.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
What kind of games are you playing that are too much for a 6100?I'm always fascinated by the idea of CPU load in a gaming situation.
Techspot did a neat review on the 6100 and it definitely kept up with the competition on cpu-heavy games like civilization.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1087-best-value-des...
And then they did an update once they could overclock it to a monstrous 4.7ghz and it wasn't even close.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1108-intel-locked-s...
WinglessDwarf - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
Civilization? CPU intensive? Nah! I play CIV V on my desktop with an AMD Phenom II x4 965 (which isn't that great). My PC also only has a GTS 250 and 4GB of 1333mhz ddr3 ram.The razer blade stealth could probably CIV V without the core.
Mind you CIV V occasionally crashes but I think it's got more to do with the fact that I'm only using DirectX 9.0 with such a low spec graphics card.
Windows XP for the win.
Stig995 - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
The BIG question is can you officially buy either of these outside the US?The rest of the world sti can't buy a Blade without resorting to a Gray import :-(
mobutu - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
razer blade STEALTH with VISIBLE bezels from the moon. 2016?the real star is that external vgabox. the rest is not worth it.
wintermute000 - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
They missed a trick there by not having 3.5" HDD bays (bonus points if multiple and RAID capable) - even if it required another say USB3 connection - then its truly an all-in-one enclosurejasonelmore - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
that bus is already going to be bandwidth limited, the more stuff you put in there, the more it has to share over a PCIe x4 bus. Gigabit Ethernet, USB Devices, etc.. you can always use a external SSD or 4TB HDD and use one of the USB 3 ports on the HUB.With a little modding you could add it inside and make your own enclosure.
Haldane - Thursday, January 7, 2016 - link
The only thing that's stopping me from buying this is the RAM... 8GB of RAM is the min req for many games nowadays...yhselp - Friday, January 8, 2016 - link
Nice to see Razer expand their generally great notebook line, and offer competitive pricing at the same time. The UHD model sounds great; the ability to dock to an external video card is great, the Skylake 6500U should already be as fast as a quad-core Sandy Bridge like the 2500 in DX9-DX11 games, and DX12 should only improve things. I just wish the display was 16:10.I'm not trying to make an argument for another company, but saying the Razer Stealth undercuts all competition is a bit far-fetched. For a $100 more you can get a much better quality display at the same resolution, a significantly lighter chassis, and a more practical, taller display with the New MacBook.
WinglessDwarf - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
???Which laptop are you talking about?
WinglessDwarf - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
The Macbook 12"?Practical?
The Macbook Pro Retina?
Lighter?
The Macbook Air?
Same resolution?
WinglessDwarf - Friday, February 5, 2016 - link
For me it will come down to its price in Australia.