Gaming laptops may become the main workhorse in the office: Thor ST Pro review

IT168? Review With the complete lifting of the ban on NVDIA 10-series Pascal graphics cards, the first batch of gaming notebooks equipped with the new GTX 10-series gaming graphics cards have finally been announced to the public, including ASUS Republic of Gamers, Shenzhou Ares, MSI, and Thor Many game manufacturers, including Samsung, have launched mid-year masterpieces, and high-end game notebooks equipped with numerous top- and sub-top 10-series graphics cards have been unveiled to the public one after another. What the editor brings to you today is a high-end gaming laptop from the well-known domestic gaming brand Raytheon that will be launched in the near future - Raytheon ST Pro. What exactly will the newly upgraded Raytheon ST Pro based on the Raytheon Cannon ST bring? Inheritance and change, let us officially start today’s evaluation to witness the performance improvement brought by the 10 series graphics cards to notebooks.

Features: JD purchase page

1. The first batch of gaming laptops equipped with NVDIA 10 series GTX 1060 graphics card;

2. Seven-color DIY keyboard backlight to highlight players Personality;

3. The gaming notebook is business-oriented, suitable for both work and entertainment;

4. Dual cooling air outlets, excellent heat dissipation performance.

Disadvantages:

The lower edge of side A has a slight scratchy feel.

Direct link to the review: (Click on the picture Rieter)

Thor ST Pro: The advanced small steel gun ST creates a new trend for gaming and office use

Evaluation highlights : Packaging, top cover, screen, introduction to gaming and office dual-use trends, interface

Friends who are familiar with Thor must know that 3 months ago Thor just released its annual new product Thor Cannon ST - a By installing the GTX 965M independent gaming graphics card into a 14-inch laptop, the full release of the Thor Cannon marks that gamers can truly own a 14-inch gaming notebook with strong performance, just like when the Thor Cannon ST was released. The slogan is the same, "It's hard to wait, but never give up."

(Packaging) The first time I got the Thunderbolt ST Pro, the editor knew that it was definitely an upgraded version of the Thor ST Pro. The identical packaging box still left a deep impression on me, "Can't wait." "It's hard, but I never give up." These four words still come to mind; but compared to the Thor Cannon ST three months ago, our wait is not too painful this time, at least the time between exposure and official release is not too long. Not far away, and the period when Nvidia blocked news about the 10-series graphics cards may have become the best buffer period.

(Top cover) From the appearance of side A, Thor ST Pro is undoubtedly a continuation of the previous generation product, but the top surface of side A adopts a smooth plane instead of the usual slightly raised design style. , but the three tough ridges, Thor’s iconic logo, and the slightly sloping angular frame still show the world the classic shape of the Thor game notebook. The frosted gray body surface feels more comfortable to the touch, and the black composite material area directly under the top cover of the A cover ensures good transmission of wireless network signals such as WiFi.

(Screen) Opening the top cover, we can see that the Thor ST Pro uses a 15.6-inch 1080P full HD matte display. The picture quality is good and the clarity is very impressive. Although it is now equipped with GTX 1070 Or gaming laptops with 1080 graphics cards are all pursuing 4K display. However, judging from the comprehensive results of the editor’s recent test of gaming laptops with 10-series graphics cards, the 10-series mobile graphics cards are better equipped with 1080P screens, both in terms of the smoothness of the game screen and the player’s Economic cost, although one of NVDIA’s main selling points this time is indeed 4K games.

(Introduction to the trend of gaming and office use) Before introducing the keyboard surface, we will first show you the interface design of this machine: According to IDC market research, most ordinary gamers only have 30 hours per week to Games, and the remaining 70% of the time is spent for office or home use. Therefore, as a high-performance gaming notebook, office work is also one of its essential functions. This is also what ThinkPad and Thor have recently shown to users about the future development of gaming PCs. One of the trends is that gaming and office use is undoubtedly an important development trend in the PC industry in the future. A single product feature may not be highly recognized in the future, and the interface is undoubtedly one of the necessary hardware conditions for the commercial use of game laptops.

In terms of (interface) interfaces, Raytheon ST Pro has a relatively complete interface design. The left side of the fuselage includes an HDMI interface, USB 3.0, and two mini DP interfaces.

The right side of the fuselage is relatively more, including a notebook lock, a network cable socket, a USB 3.0 interface, two USB 3.1 TYPE C interfaces, an SD card socket, a SIM card socket, and three audio inputs output interface.

▲In addition, the rear of the fuselage also contains a power charging port and USB 3.0 interface.

Thor ST Pro: Seven-color adjustable backlit keyboard brings extraordinary visual impact

Evaluation focus: keyboard, touchpad, speakers

The following will be shown to you What’s more, one of the distinctive designs of Thor ST Pro is the seven-color keyboard backlight.

(Keyboard) Before officially showing the aircraft’s colorful keyboard backlight, let me first show you some basic performance of the aircraft’s keyboard: Thor ST Pro adopts a chocolate full keyboard design with a numeric keypad design. It provides users with a more comfortable typing environment. The surface of the keycaps is treated with a skin-like coating, which is comfortable to the touch and less susceptible to fingerprints. In terms of key travel, the overall key travel of Thor ST Pro is deeper, full of resilience, and the overall pressing feel is very good. Yes, it is suitable for long-term typing use, which undoubtedly lays the foundation for the commercial use of this machine.

The default backlight color of Raytheon ST Pro is blue, but Raytheon has thoughtfully designed a built-in keyboard setting software for gamers. The software mainly includes two functions: combination function keys and backlight keyboard setting. Next This is the moment to witness the change of color.

▲First of all, I will bring you the combination function key setting function, which will not be described in detail here.

As for the keyboard backlight setting function, users can match the keyboard backlight color according to their own preferences, which is divided into three major areas from left to right. In addition, the machine also provides users with three setting archives, and users can It is very convenient to quickly switch according to your mood. Next, I will show you the editor’s keyboard backlight color matching.

How does it look? None of them are very good-looking. If you like a variety of keyboard backlights, buy them quickly. With so many backlight combinations, there is always one that suits your taste. It is worth mentioning that when the machine is in standby mode, the seven-color backlight automatically changes colors in cycles, which can be said to be a new generation of keyboard protection.

(Touchpad) Thor ST Pro still uses the separated touchpad design commonly used in gaming laptops. Unlike many manufacturers that use smooth touch surfaces and matte-processed buttons, this machine uses a matte surface. The touch surface and smooth button design are exactly the opposite. The overall user experience is relatively good. Both the matte surface and the smooth button are not easy to be stained with fingerprints and are more convenient to use. The overall sensitivity of the touch panel is high, and it is more convenient to use without accidental touches.

(Speaker) Raytheon ST Pro still designs the speaker unit near the C-surface rotating axis, aiming to provide users with a sound experience from the pavement; Raytheon still chooses to cooperate with ONKYO, as a well-known Japanese audio manufacturer, ONKYO has always adhered to the core concept of presenting music to users in the purest way and has provided countless excellent sound solutions for enterprises and individuals. In terms of actual sound effects, whether it is public music or game background sounds, the experience is still very good.

Thor ST Pro: Powerful basic hardware performance, 3D running score is close to GTX 980

Evaluation focus: graphics card, CPU, memory, hard disk

Graphics card: brand new Upgrade GTX 1060

Overview of NVDIA GTX 1060 information: 6G of video memory, and the video memory particles are from Samsung. We will use 3D mark 11 to show more specific performance.

The 3D mark 11 P score is 10164. Can I say that the score is almost the same as the desktop GTX 980! This undoubtedly represents the power of NVDIA's latest Pascal architecture and 16nm process. It is no problem to control most online or stand-alone games on the market with a high score of more than 10,000.

The 3D mark 11 X score of 4979 also proves the above results. We will also show you the specific graphics card performance test through the actual game experience.

CPU:

▲I7-6700HQ processor test score is 6677

Next, we use CineBench? R15 version to test the CPU performance of this machine. CineBench is a very convincing CPU and graphics card testing system, the latest version is R15. Compared with the maximum 16 cores of the R11.5 version, the R15 version can support up to 256 logical cores. In addition, this version also strengthens the inspection of shaders, anti-aliasing, shadows, lights, and reflection blur, etc., and improves CPU performance. Detection is more accurate.

From the test results of CPU-Z and CineBench? R15, we can see that the performance of the i7-6700HQ processor is between the third generation I7-3960K desktop processor with a main frequency of 3.3GHz and the third generation I7-3960K desktop processor. The four generations of I7-4770K desktop processors also prove that Intel's sixth-generation skylake core architecture has great performance improvements. This processor is stress-free for daily office work.

Memory:

Next, we tested the memory and CPU cache performance of the machine through AIDA64. AIDA64 is a tool for testing software and hardware system information. It can display every aspect of PC information in detail. AIDA64 not only provides a variety of functions such as assisting with overclocking, hardware debugging, stress testing, and sensor monitoring, but it can also comprehensively evaluate the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. From the results above, we can see that the ultra-large high-speed memory and CPU cache performance of Thor ST Pro 16G DDR4 are quite good.

Hard drive:

▲The average read speed of the 512G ultra-large solid-state drive is 353.3M/S, which is quite impressive.

▲In the end, I still chose PC mark 7 to test the score. The performance of 5783 shows the power of the GTX 1060 10 series graphics card and I7-6700HQ.

Thor ST Pro: Doubled improvement in game performance to verify NV 10 series graphics cards

Evaluation focus: "Tomb Raider 9", "Far Cry 3"

"Tomb Raider 9"

Game settings: 1080P, the highest quality, vertical synchronization and anti-aliasing at the highest level

In terms of game configuration, "Tomb Raider 9" is relatively Compared with the previous "Assassin's Creed 5: Unity", it is already quite "low-end", which we can easily see from the release time. However, "Tomb Raider 9" had a lot of negative impact on NVIDIA when it was released. "Tomb Raider 9", which was released in March 2013, is the return of Lara Croft for players, a small test of TressFX hair rendering technology for AMD, and a "big deal" for NVIDIA. ” Initially, the average frame rate, minimum frame rate, and picture stability reported by players were very bad, and NVIDIA even officially apologized.

"Tomb Raider 9" is a series of cross-platform action games developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. This game focuses on Laura's youth and abandons the settings of previous Supergirl games. Players can see a more realistic image of Laura in the game. Due to the upgrade of the engine, this game will have better graphics than previous games. It is the most revolutionary game in the "Tomb Raider" series.

The overall operation of "Tomb Raider 9" is very smooth. With 1080P high image quality, vertical synchronization and other special effects fully turned on, the Thor ST Pro game runs with an FPS value of 57.6, and the game quality is clear. , judging from the score, it is higher than the GTX 980M, but still lower than the desktop GTX 980. The performance is worthy of recognition, and it also indirectly affirms the power of the 10-series Pascal architecture and 16nm core.

"Crysis 3"

Game settings: 1080P, highest quality, vertical synchronization, sawtooth on

"Crysis 3" is relatively different from the two previously tested The game was released more than a year and a half earlier and was launched in Europe and the United States on February 19, 2013. It is a first-person shooting game developed by German game developer Crytek. "Crysis 3" is the third and final part of the "Crysis" trilogy. The story of "Crysis 3" takes place after the previous game "Crysis 2". New York has been wrapped in the Nanodome and has become a tropical rainforest, full of trees, dense swamps and rapid rivers, which is divided into seven different and unpredictable environments.

Judging from the game's recommended configuration, the parameter configuration of "Crysis 3" is very close to that of "Far Cry 4". Crytek has developed its own morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA), called "Enhanced Sub-pixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing" (SMAA), which combines AMD post-processing morphological anti-aliasing with multi-sampling (MSAA), super-sampling (SSAA) anti-aliasing, etc. A variety of technologies, including temporal reprojection, are claimed to bring "better overall image quality than previous technologies, very close to MSAA and SSAA, while maintaining extremely fast processing speeds." It is similar to NVIDIA TXAA to some extent, but the latter only supports the Kepler architecture.

"Crysis 3" provides 1x, 2x, and 4x SMAA options for single-GPU systems, while multi-channel GPUs only have 2x SMAA. Comparing different anti-aliasing methods, it can be seen that FXAA is more like a blur filter, TXAA has the best effect but the price is that the texture is very blurry, and SMAA is like a compromise solution. It eliminates aliasing well and maintains the texture better. Therefore, we choose the default SMAA as the test environment.

The first generation "Crysis" can be called a milestone in the history of graphics cards and is an absolute "graphics card killer". The second generation caused a lot of criticism because it landed on the console platform and ignored the PC version. "Crysis 3" has risen again, bringing more outstanding graphics and a consistent combat experience. The highest image quality is also very cruel for high-end hardware, but the good news is that the lowest image quality is not bad, and even looks better than the highest image quality of many other games. At this time, even the mid-range Radeon HD 7750, GeForce The GTX 650 can also run smoothly at 1080p resolution. With the special effects turned on, the Thor ST Pro achieved an FPS value of 38.5, which is already quite high for the mobile terminal.

Thor ST Pro: Dual cooling air outlets create excellent cooling performance

Before the formal temperature and pressure test, let’s take a look at the cooling air outlets of the machine. First of all, we will bring it to you What is visible is the rear cooling air outlet of the Thor ST Pro, which is located on the left side behind the fuselage shaft.

▲The other cooling air outlet is located on the classic left side of the fuselage.

▲Many cooling air inlets on the base of the Thor ST Pro

Next, we use AIDA64 to conduct a "baking machine" test, that is, a temperature stress test or a system stability test. AIDA64 is a tool for testing software and hardware system information. It can display every aspect of PC information in detail. AIDA64 not only provides a variety of functions such as assistance with overclocking, hardware debugging, stress testing and sensor monitoring, but also provides a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of the processor, system memory and disk drives.

▲Before the temperature stress test

▲End of the 30-minute temperature stress test

We use AIDA64 to conduct a "baking machine test". This test equalizes the occupancy of all hardware. Adjust it to 100, and after 30 minutes of testing, we use a thermal imager to test the temperature of the machine. Let's take a look at the specific heat dissipation performance of the machine. It is worth mentioning that the last two hard disk and graphics card options in this test are not checked by default. In actual operation, the heat generation of the graphics card and hard disk is crucial, so we must remember to check them before the actual test. .

▲Thermal imager temperature test distribution results

During the actual test process, we can clearly feel that the air volume of the heat dissipation outlet on the left side of the machine is larger, while the left side outlet behind the rotating shaft The wind speed of the air outlet is slow and the overall heat dissipation effect is excellent. From the test results in the picture above, we can see that the Thor ST Pro has excellent heat dissipation effect. The maximum temperature of the whole machine is only 56.5 degrees Celsius, which is located to the left of the left heat dissipation outlet. In this test, all hardware occupancy rates were adjusted evenly. When it reaches 100, the CPU, graphics card, etc. occupancy rate in actual office work or games is far less than this, so the temperature will be much lower under normal circumstances, and the heat dissipation effect will naturally be better.

Evaluation summary:

As one of the first gaming notebooks equipped with NVDIA 10 series graphics cards, the Thor ST Pro further improves the gaming experience while inheriting the excellent quality of the previous generation Xiaogangpao ST. performance, and its dual-use policy for the commercialization of gaming laptops has pointed the way for the future PC market. At the same time, the 10-series graphics cards have also been verified. I believe that with the popularity of NVDIA 10-series graphics cards in the future, various 4K games, VR Games and cloud games will become popular one after another and will bring higher gaming enjoyment to gamers.

A brief analysis of the trend of gaming and office use:

With the launch of Lenovo ThinkPad series Black S5 and Thor ST Pro, the commercial use of gaming laptops will undoubtedly become the most important development in the PC industry in the future. One of the trends is also in line with today's market trends; above we mentioned that most gamers today only spend 30% on gaming and 70% on office or home use. However, many users may have questions, "Game laptops" Isn’t it already suitable for office work? ”

If this is true in terms of performance, the reason why today’s PC manufacturers segment their product categories is that in addition to hardware, the more critical point is product experience. Regarding the feasibility of office-based gaming notebooks in the future, the editor summarized the following important aspects:

1. Keyboard: As a successful office notebook, typing can be said to be the most basic level, and as a For game notebooks with deeper key travel, typing is still more comfortable than on regular office notebooks;

2. Battery life: Battery life is still the most critical factor affecting office notebooks, and the high-definition large screen of game notebooks , independent graphics card, and high-performance CPU will limit long-term battery life, but I believe that NVDIA and Intel will make the core hardware power consumption lower in the future to improve long-term battery life.

3. Portability: Mobile office will develop more rapidly in the future, so the biggest drawback of gaming laptops for office work will be reflected. The inconvenience of portability will also limit the acceleration of the commercialization of gaming laptops. With the improvement of core hardware, Highly integrated, 14-inch gaming notebooks may become the mainstream of office channels in the future.

In short, the commercialization of game notebooks is feasible in the future. In fact, many users have already done so. However, the official has not given an established statement. Therefore, in the future, with the improvement of the battery life and portability of game notebooks, With gradual enhancement, 14-inch gaming notebooks may become the main force in the future.