PC Magazine - USA (2019-12)

(Antfer) #1

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an
early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series
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operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. As with Handbrake,
lower times are better here. The Photoshop test stresses CPU, storage
subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up
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may see a boost. Our Stealth test unit took last place, with a score of 174.


These results puzzled me somewhat, as it seemed like an outlier given the
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this number, though, so I took the middle result. This indicates slower
performance on these types of tasks than some of the competition, even if the
gulf isn’t huge compared with the other 13-inchers. I would be inclined to credit
this to the Ice Lake architecture, but the XPS 13 performed notably better with
the same chip (150). Regardless, this laptop doesn’t excel on more strenuous
CPU tasks, and I wouldn’t recommend it as a content creation tool or
workstation replacement.


SYNTHETIC GRAPHICS TESTS
We usually include two synthetic 3DMark tests, but they would not run on the
Blade Stealth. Razer made me aware of this issue in advance; it believes there’s
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everything else ran smoothly and it seemed perhaps a driver-related crash, I’m
willing to accept that explanation. In any case, we still have another synthetic
graphics test, Superposition, which renders and pans through a detailed 3D
scene and measures how the system copes. It’s rendered in the company’s
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3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine’s graphical prowess. We present
two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets: 93 and
32, respectively.


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The full-on gaming laptops have a clear leg up on both versions of the test, but
the Stealth is in turn markedly better than the laptops with integrated graphics
and an MX150, which also scale appropriately. As with the CPU tests, I don’t
think this should be a media creation system or be leaned on too heavily for
GPU-accelerated tasks, but it is better than an integrated GPU. Likely more

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