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For the last few years, peripheral and laptop company Razer has used CES to prove off its cutting-edge concepts and designs for the PC gaming and peripheral market. Some of these have proven more popular than others (the Blade was interesting, Projection Christine was a flop), merely the visitor has congenital a reputation on pushing the envelope. The simply-announced Razer Stealth, and its accompanying hardware, the Razer Cadre, are no exception.

Razer Stealth: Razer's latest ultrabook

At offset glance, the Razer Stealth is a fairly conventional ultrabook. It's 0.52 inches thick, weighs ii.75 lbs, and offers two brandish options — a 2560×1600 console and a 3840×2160 choice. The display is only 12.5 inches, which means it will exist retina-course at a standard viewing distance, just the 4K display likewise has a full Adobe colour gamut. At a gauge, this means that the 4K option is an IPS display, while the 2560×1600 console is a TN or PVA. Both utilise Precipitous's IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) technology to reduce power consumption. Connectivity is provided via a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support. This terminal is disquisitional to the Razer Stealth's execution, equally nosotros'll talk over shortly.

Razer1The Stealth uses a Core i7-6500U processor (dual-core + HT, 2.5GHz base of operations clock, three.1GHz Turbo)with upwardly to 512GB of PCIe-based storage and 8GB of dual-channel LPDDR3-1866. The ane less-than great feature is the notebook's reliance on Intel HD Graphics 520. While this is a more-than adequate solution for basic work and lower-end gaming, it's far from Intel's highest-end graphics solution. The Intel Cadre i7-6650U has a higher acme-end speed (iii.4GHz) and offers Intel Iris Graphics 540. This solution has an integrated 64MB EDRAM solution, higher clock speed, more execution units, and sells for just $22 more ($393 vs. $415). Given that this is meant to exist a gaming notebook, why would Razer avoid dropping in the best integrated solution in its TDP envelope?

The answer to that question is the Razer Core.

Razer Core: A Thunderbolt-powered external GPU chassis

In and of itself, the Razer Stealth is a capable only not necessarily groundbreaking laptop. Information technology'south the Razer Cadre that theoretically sets the hardware apart. The Razer Cadre is a Thunderbolt 3-equipped chassis for an external GPU, with support for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. According to Razer, the chassis volition support one double-wide GPU from either vendor, with a maximum ability consumption of up to 375W. Thunderbolt three offers a 40Gbps connection (5GB/s of actual bandwidth).

The Razer Core chassis, open at the front.

The Razer Core chassis, open at the dorsum.

Presumably, Razer will use the higher-ability PCIe linkage system, which offers an x4 PCIe 3 connector. This would let for near 4GB/s of sustained bandwidth between the system and the GPU. While this is much less than you'd get from a full-length PCIe 3.0 connector in a motherboard, tests have generally shown that PCIe bandwidth doesn't make a huge difference in game performance.

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Two and a half years agone, nosotros covered news of a custom Macbook Air + Thunderbolt chassis that one user had built. That test limited the GPU to simply 1 lane of PCIe ii.0, for a full of 400MB/due south worth of bandwidth — but the GeForce 680 that user tested lost just 33% of its functioning, while an AMD Radeon Hard disk drive 7970 took a 17% hitting. Keep in mind that both cards were beingness limited to just 5% of their theoretical bandwidth. This solution gives an external GPU about 25% of the bandwidth information technology would otherwise savor, which means the performance hit should be fairly pocket-sized.

The Razer Core too offers 4x USB three.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet support, a Blush lighting solution (allows the end-user to set dissimilar colors for specific areas of the chassis), and will ship with its own 500W power supply. The hands-on reports coming back from CES from various publications are positive, and this could be the external gaming chassis that finally takes the capability from a niche production to something gamers opt for on a more than regular basis.

One of the Core'due south big promises is that it's hot swappable. You'll nevertheless have to quit applications that are using the GPU before you plug or unplug the device, just you won't accept to reboot or sit through a lengthy shutdown process.

The big question here will be price. Manufacturers accept a trend to set extremely loftier price premiums on docks and other products that extend notebook functionality — witness the contempo trend of charging $125 – $150 for a keyboard with a few USB ports. If Razer slaps this chassis with a $600 – $800 price tag, it'south going to severely limit its usefulness. If, on the other paw, the company makes it bachelor for $200 – $300, it could be a valuable way to extend laptop functionality and gaming power. As someone who is always torn between the portability of an ultrabook and the gaming performance of a desktop replacement, a solution like this could neatly bridge the gap.