WEBVTT

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external graphics cards dead or dormant

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stillborn or still relevant well we've

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got two identically speced laptops and

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both of the top external Graphics docks

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that are ready to battle it out each

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armed with a top-of-the-line NVIDIA GTX 1080 TI but will The Identical specs

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yield identical results for

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once no no they

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won't the be quiet! purebase 600 features

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a versatile design noise insulation and

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optimization for different liquid cooled radiator configurations learn more at

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the link below first we need to explain why we're using

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such op graphics cards the goal here was

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to expose any weaknesses or efficiency

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differences between these two by eliminating the graphics card itself as

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a bottleneck and also to make sure that

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both of them can keep even the power hungriest cards safely fed each are

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equipped with plenty of power power the Razer core sports a custom 500 W power

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supply while the Alienware Graphics amplifier has a hunt key 460 W ATX power

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supply that was clearly made for a full system and repurposed for this the cor's

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aluminum chassis feels solid and opening

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it up to insert the graphics card only takes a couple of minutes whereas the

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graphics amplifier well everything about that setup frankly felt a little janky

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the build is all plastic and although I

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had the right idea for opening it I actually ended up having to consult the

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user manual because it felt like I was going to break it oh God when it got

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stuck halfway I mean there isn't even RGB Lighting on this one for crying out

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loud and if you thought the poor ease of

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use for the amplifier was over think again the connectors on the proprietary

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cable that carries a PCI Express 3.0 X4

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signal from the computer to the dock

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have these latches that can actually get caught if you're not careful when you're

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removing them not to mention that Alienware solution requires a restart of

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the laptop whenever you connect or disconnect it so that the internal

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dedicated graphics card can be activated or disabled razor on the other hand

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keeps up their strong performance in this area just plug in a Thunderbolt 3

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cable into the blade notebook of your choice they don't officially support

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thirdparty laptops but we'll discuss that more later install the NVIDIA

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drivers and you're good to go every part

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of the process felt smoother and more

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polished on the Razor side though if its

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performance can hold up I suspect many will forgive the Alienware Graphics

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amplifier for its lack of uh spit and

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shine given that retails for 200 bucks a

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whopping $300 less than the core though in

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razer's defense with the purchase of a blade laptop you do get $100 off so I

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guess it's only twice the cost of the graphics

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amplifier let's get to the test every

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game Benchmark was Run 10 times in a row

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to reward strong thermal performance and we recorded both the average and and the

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minimum frame rate that was maintained 97% of the time we used identical

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drivers and settings and ausa's 240 HZ

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gaming display for both systems

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everything between them was equal except for one thing gaming

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performance for Rise of the Tomb Raider and for honor the Alienware pulled out a

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bit ahead of the core while the core

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actually pulled slightly ahead in the all important minimum FPS metric but

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where things really got interesting was in Ghost Recon wildlands and DX mankind

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divided where the Alienware Graphics amplifier showed that it has the

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potential to absolutely spank the core

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delivering buttery visuals compared to the questionably playable performance on

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Razer solution and as a troubleshooting

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step then we tried comparing them using the built-in laptop display rather than

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an external monitor but this changed

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nothing for Alienware and then generated even slightly lower performance for

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Razer due to the extra display signal

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data being carried back to the blades display something that we actually

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tested more thoroughly in the Razer core Deep dive which you can check out here

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so what gives well we could only think

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of two differences between these solutions that might affect performance

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one thermals either of the CPU in the

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laptop or the graphics card in the enclosure and two the connection to the

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graphics card so to see if thermal throttling was the issue we booted up

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Ida 64 and monitored temperatures on our

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blade while gaming it got hot but it was

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nowhere near overheating then to rule out the laptop

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entirely we gave our 7600 100 HQ

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equipped Blade Pro a shot but it performed nearly identically within our

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margin of error no dice let's move on to

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that connection then the theoretical bandwidth of the two should be equal in

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GPU Z both have the same number of PCIe

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lanes and the same reported 40 gbit pers second

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bandwidth is there some way that we could pin this on Thunderbolt

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3 what if the gigabit ether controller

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on the core is sucking up resources we used disabling device

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manager and it was not very effective so

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it was time to go spelunking deep into the depths of the specs searching for a

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single difference between the two and finally we found one in the dark

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crevices of the device manager on the Alienware amplifier the GPU gets

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connected directly to the PCI controller

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on the CPU so the lanes that it gets are

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solely devoted to Graphics the razor

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core on the other hand gets connected through the motherboard chipset meaning

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that the graphics card has to share its PCI El lanes and perhaps more

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importantly the DMI interface with things like networking USB ports and

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probably the biggest bandwidth sucker

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storage but can we prove once and for all that the lanes are causing the

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bottleneck NE for a complete Apples to

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Apples comparison we needed to be able to connect the core to the Alienware 13

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something Dell doesn't want you to do in spite of the 13th's higher-end four-lane

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implementation of the Thunderbolt 3 standard good news though it turns out

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that if you disable enough Alienware Services it will begrudgingly let you

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use a Razer core and in games the

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Alienware 13 connected to the core recorded results within our margin of

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error proving then that the bottleneck wasn't in the laptop but in the

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connection itself so final pros and cons list then

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Razer has some big advantages they simple setup and hot swapability will

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definitely win over customers who value ease of use and the excellent

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compatibility enabled by using a standard Thunderbolt 3 Connection in

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spite of advertising the core as only working with their own blade and blade

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stealth makes them the default winner for many but if you're willing to look

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the other way on build quality a little bit you're willing to Shell out for a

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matching Alienware laptop and you want the best no compromises performance out

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of your graphics stock at a much lower price the amplifier comes out way

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ahead Fiverr is totally unique it's this

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it done at a price that fits your budget so check out some of the gigs that we'

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use through our landing page at the link below and the first 300 viewers who use

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getting it done today so thanks for watching guys if you

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dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get

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subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also

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down there is our merch store where you can buy cool shirts like this one as

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well as a link to our community Forum where you can discuss all kinds of Great

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Tech things like could you run both of them in SL on the Alienware 13 to which

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the answer is unfortunately no we did try