Best Desktop Graphics for your Laptop - Proprietary vs. Thunderbolt!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,434 words · ~7 min read
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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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getting it done today so thanks for watching guys if you
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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