Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware unboxed earlier on this channel you might have seen my review of the Auris gtx 1070 gaming box which provides the power of a fully fledged desktop graphics card to a laptop or other PC through Thunderbolt 3 if you haven't checked out my thoughts on the unit yet we'll put some links around the play so you can check it out but my main point in that video is that this external graphics box does have the capability to turn a low-power device like an ultraportable into a genuine gaming machine while the gaming box was capable of playing modern games and good framerate and detail levels I did have a few issues with the overall experience the biggest wasn't due to the gaming box at all but due to the laptop I connected it to the Lenovo ThinkPad x1 carbon I tested with had just an Intel Core i5 7200 u inside a dual core process of slower than the pentium g 4560 we recommend for budget gaming builds this CPU is simply too slow to keep up with the power of the gtx 1070 in the gaming box often leading to a cpu bottleneck the cpu bottleneck caused a few problems firstly I noticed some frame pacing issues in a couple of games like The Witcher 3 which led to consistent stutters despite an average frame rate that pushed well above 50 fps in this game the CPU was consistently pegged at 100% utilization while the GPU was often underutilized the CPU bottleneck also appeared to reduce the performance relative to what we normally see from a gtx 1070 games err would normally be playable at 1440p ultra detailed settings on a gtx 1070 were only playable at 1080p on the gaming box due to these bottlenecks in this video I'll be exploring the impact of these bottlenecks further and comparing the gtx 1070 gaming box to a true gaming laptop with the gtx 1070 inside so before I jump into the numbers let's talk about the test setup and put the gtx 1070 gaming box connected to the ThinkPad x1 card through my usual suite of gaming laptop benchmarks and compared it to a number of other laptops i've tested over the last year I'll primarily be discussing the gaming box up against new soos ROG gl 502 vs which is a gtx 1070 laptop with a 1080p display and a quad-core intel core i7 7700 HQ inside in other words the cpu is much more powerful but the GPU is largely the same you'll see some results from other laptops in the charts as well I'm going to start by looking at 3d marks times by benchmark which is the most GPU intensive 3d mark workload here we can see an overall score from the GTX 970 gaming box system there's just 17 percent higher than the GTX 1060 gaming laptop but it falls 21% behind the GTX 970 powered GL 502 vs normally a gtx 1070 system would be about 48 percent faster than gtx 1060 system in time spy so it's clear the gtx 1070 gaming box is being limited by the slower CPU in the laptop i was testing with moving to games now and starting with some older titles the tomb raider was one of the best performing games on the gtx 1070 gaming box falling just 2% behind a GTX 970 laptop one-percent low frame rates couldn't match the gtx 1070 though at 42 FPS we're seeing roughly the same minimum results as a gtx 1060 laptop however the gaming box struggled with Metro last light falling 40% behind a GTX 10 serving laptop and recording a sub 30fps one percent low result this results place the ultra portable set up below a GTX 1060 laptop in terms of performance which is a disappointing result here BioShock Infinite performance from the gaming box was similar to a GTX 1060 laptop but those 24% behind a GTX 970 laptop the game was very smooth to play but unfortunately our capture tools didn't work properly in this title so I don't have any frame rate data Middle Earth shadow of Mordor is another game where the GTX 1070 gaming box Falls closer to GTX 1060 performance are performing some 1060 laptops but falling 24% behind the GL 502 vs 1% low data was consistent with the GTX 1060 experience in this title Grand Theft Auto 5 is another title where the game Reeboks are closer to gtx 1060 laptops again falling 29% behind the gel 502 vs stuttering and Texas streaming issues were present in this game with 1% lower result of 36 FPS lower than 10 60 laptops game work settings really tax the gtx 1070 gaming box playing batman arkham knight but the game is actually very playable with these settings disabled in any case our test users game works and here the game you box is a good 41% slower than the gel 502 vs its minimum FPS results are awful as well falling around the 23 FPS mark which is unacceptable turnoff game works and this improves massively rise of the Tomb Raider is a very GPU intensive title at maximum settings so here we're seeing the gaming box fall closer to gtx 1070 performance than gtx 1060 here it's 18% slower than our 1070 gaming laptop with a similar reduction in 1% low performance move to high detail settings and rise of the Tomb Raider Falls much closer to the gtx 1060 but with poor 1% lower results which is disappointing Deus Ex mankind divided is a title where the gaming box performs better than a 1060 laptop in average frame rates but is roughly equivalent when looking at 1% low results we're looking at a 24% lower average FPS than a gtx 1070 laptop here hitman and this is a big surprise he actually runs awfully on the timing box using DirectX 12 and oxford details with a 1% low under 20 FPS much slower than even a GTX 1060 laptop the game is pretty much unplayable with these sorts of results unless you use lower quality settings civilization 6 is another game that suffers from the CPU bottleneck the gaming box it does achieve an average framerate above 30 FPS but it's 1% low is sub 30 which is not the case with GTX 260 laptops not a huge surprise here considering even in GTX 10 7 laptop isn't much better than 1060 laptop in terms of minimum frame rate in this game it's pretty much CPU bottlenecked watchdogs to continues the trend of CPU intensive titles and the gaming box struggles at ultra detail settings with a sub 20 fps 1% low that falls well behind 1060 laptops the game isn't much more playable at medium quality settings still producing a sub 31 percent low wear GTX 10 6 laptops are well into the 40s here at 1080p you want a true gaming laptop with the gtx 1070 inside to play this game in all its glory Mass Effect Andromeda is the last title I tested with and the section I tested with inside The Tempest is surprisingly demanding the ultra portable struggles to stream data during the run and as such falls massively behind gtx 1060 laptops with the 1% low in the 20s while gtx 1060 laptops push this into the 30 FPS range of ultra detail settings the experience on actual planets is much better but the templates punishes the slow cpu and limited bandwidth over syrup here the end result here is that the gtx 1070 gaming box connected to an ultra portable with a dual-core CPU mostly acts like a gtx 1060 gaming laptop rather than a more powerful gtx 1070 machine in some cases like watchdogs - the system actually performs significantly worse than a gtx 1060 machine due to the severe cpu bottleneck and other tiles like rise of the Tomb Raider the gaming box was closer to a gtx 1070 system for those looking to use a thunderbolt through GPU like the horas gaming box here with an ultraportable it's clear that you won't be getting the same experience as an actual gtx 1070 gaming laptop the Zeus GL 502 vs was 30 to 50 percent faster for the most part and that's almost entirely down to the fastest CPU inside actual gaming laptops despite the lower performers provided by the gaming box there are still advantages to using this type of setup with an ultra portable / purchasing a true gaming laptop Ultra portables as the name suggests are far more portable than even the slimmest and lightest gaming laptops available including invidious new max-q stuff my ThinkPad x1 carbon is just 1.1 kilograms heavy and 16 millimeters thick while max-q gtx 1070 laptops were more like 1.9 kilograms heavy and 19 millimeters thick those that don't want to carry around the extra bulk of a gaming laptop are better off buying an ultra portable along with an external graphics dock when you're out and about you're only carrying around the slimming light laptop but when you return home to your desk you can plug the system into an external graphics box to try form it into a gaming machine there are still some issues to iron out with this sort of thing I think driver tweaks could improve frame pacing and of course faster 15 what CPUs in the future would be nice but it's a good start for a relatively immature product category anyway I hope you guys learned something from a look at the Auris gtx 1070 gaming box up against the true gtx 1070 gaming laptop if you're interested in any of the products we were talking about you'll find links to that in the description below support us on patreon as always and I'll catch you in the next one