Thermal Considerations
Thermal performance has always been an important topic when it comes to mobile processors, but in the past few years, it has become paramount. With the increasing demand from consumers for notebooks to be thinner and lighter, one of the things that grows more difficult to solve is how to dissipate the heat generated from power hungry components such as the CPU and the GPU.
Intel and others have attempted to alleviate this issue by allowing OEMs to configure the power draw of their processors in specific scenarios to make sure that their cooling solutions are adequate to the specifications for the given notebook model.
Taking the dramatically different form-factors of these two notebooks into account, we decided to take a closer look at their thermal solutions.
For our thermal testing, we ran the x264 benchmark. This application uses the popular x264 video encoder to transcode a 1080p video while measuring the average FPS of the process. More importantly for this test, the encode runs the same test four times in a row, allowing us to easily measure scores over time.
Taking a look at Pass 1 (the first of two parts of the encoding workflow), we see that while the ZenBook 3 slightly outperforms the Spectre in the first iteration of the test, the performance quickly drops off in subsequent runs.
We can also see this effect in Pass 2, which is the more CPU-intensive part of the encoding process.
Looking at the benchmark results, it's clear that the thin-and-light design of the ZenBook 3 means that it's struggling to keep up with the Spectre x360 under heavy load over an extended amount of time.
We can see this trend continue by taking a look at the CPU frequency, power consumption, and temperature over this same test, measured using the Intel Power Gadget software.
Taking a look at the CPU frequency throughout the test, we see a high spike in speed during the first 100 seconds or so from both machines, but the ZenBook 3 manages to maintain higher clock speeds for longer than the Spectre. However, as the test continues, the Spectre x360 consistently runs at a higher clock speed than the Zenbook.
This continues throughout the temperature and power consumption measurements. Past its initial burst, the ZenBook 3 consistently is hotter and uses less of the available 15W TDP (as it needs to cool down the components slightly) than the Spectre for lower performance levels.
If you compare this to both our standard notebook benchmark test results and our x264 results, this starts to make sense. The ZenBook 3 Deluxe's cooling system and processor configuration are tuned to deliver a burst of high performance when you begin a workload but eventually succumbs to heat.
Potential thermal design issues were also evident in the relative fan speed and surface temperature differences in using the ZenBook and the Spectre. While the ZenBook's fan was often spinning fast and the device was hot during normal use, the Spectre's cooling system seemed to be better equipped to handle it.
These thermal differences aren't necessarily a negative with the ZenBook design or a positive with the Spectre x360 design; rather it depends on your given workloads. For users who are doing intensive tasks that don't take an extended amount of time to complete, such as image editing in Photoshop or heavy spreadsheet work in Excel, the ZenBook 3 is at an advantage for users looking for a thin-and-light design.
If you are editing video or compiling large applications, the HP Spectre x360 would be a better option. The new quad-core 8th generation CPUs allow you to work done faster than their dual-core predecessors, but you gain the battery life and portability advantages of a notebook with a 15W CPU as opposed to the previous 35W quad-core entry-level processors.
It's clear that with the release of Intel's 8th Generation Core processors and AMD's recent announcement of their Raven Ridge APUs, the thin-and-light notebook market is going through a considerable change.
Stay tuned for more information and testing as we get our hands on more of these machines in the coming weeks!
At $1649 and $1699 these two
At $1649 and $1699 these two SKUs are way overpriced even with 4 cores and 8 threads on the CPU, and I’ll say the same if any of AMD’s Reven Ridge SKUs are utilized in any Thin and Light form factor laptop that’s restricted to only 15 Watts at most for thermal headroom if they come in at above even $800.
My Ivy Bridge quad core i7 HP probbok with discrete Radeon mobile 7650M(Terascale Rebrand) only cost around $760 new and on sale as a last years model at microcenter at the time of purchase. And the only reason that I have not purchased a new laptop in 4+ years is that microcenter is only selling the HP probooks with the dual core i5s ad i7s that are restricted to 15 Watts max. I’ll not pay more for less computing power and my Ivy Bridge based HP probook is light enough that it can be easily held in one hand.
Really if you want thin and light for that much money get and Apple macbook because that’s in the range of what these SKUs are costing. And I’d rather have an AMD APU laptop option with a “Desktop” Reven Ridge 35+ watt APU SKU inside and 35 watts used to be considered a Laptop grade wattage before Intel came up with that Ultrabook branding nonsense in an effort to foist that Apple style overpricing business model onto the larger PC market.
And Intel was relatively sucessiful even though that Ultrbook(TM) branding is no longer pushed, and the entire laptop market has had its price/performance bar artifically minipulated with consumers paying more for underpowered laptop SKUs at 15 Watts than they have been paying for better performing laptops at 35 Watts. Intel sure was able to get quite a few more dual core i7 U series dies on a wafer and charge more for those U series i7 variants than Intel charged for a quad core Ivy Bridge i7 when that was new to the market. The Laptop performance bar has been so artifically lowered with that thin and light market scheme that current laptop performance will still not catch up with previous generation’s laptop price/performance metrics even with the quad core U series Intel variants.
I’m waiting for the desktop Raven Ridge APU variants in 2018 and any laptop OEM that may consider using a 35+ watt desktop Raven Ridge part because there is a gaming laptop shipping with an 8 core Ryzen 7 1700 SKU and Laptops can easily handle 35 Watts if the laptop uses a form factor similar to my Ivy Bridge HP probook. I’ll even hope that maybe there can be a gaming laptop that will make use of a Raven Ridge 35 watt part and a discrete Mobile GPU.
Really, close to 2 grand for such little processing power in that thin and light market and those laptops are more of a fashon statment than anything else. Save your Money and get a Rolex instead it will hold its value better than any thin and light.
Agreed. I also have a 5 year
Agreed. I also have a 5 year old laptop and think that current offering are pathetic. $750 5 years ago got me an i5 model with a budget discrete GPU (think of a GTX 1050 class GPU) and 8GB of memory. Even spending twice as much as my current machine doesn’t get me that today. And how is 8GB of memory on a laptop standard for the year 2017?
I guess I do belong in this
I guess I do belong in this thread. Turns out my refurbished laptop is a 5 year old model. I paid $195 for it over a year ago and just bought a spare for $125. If this one fails, I’ll move over the bits that survived to the other one and carry on.
Seriously don’t want to go laptop shopping with the stuff they make these days. It’s either super expensive thin-and-light junk, zomg-gamerz, or “Wow, they really is cheap.”
There’s some middle ground, manufacturers!
Those sorts of products
Those sorts of products definitely do still exist and are probably what most people should buy who are looking at bang-for-the-buck.
I think I’m going to stick to
I think I’m going to stick to buying refurbished business laptops that are bulkier and have better thermal performance.
And, what’s up with that temp on the Zenbook? Are they on/off cycling the fan instead of trying to find one speed that keeps it at the temp they want? Sheesh, PID loops aren’t rocket science kids. Hire an engineer or two, will you? Oh, while you’re at it, get one that understands cooling better than your current one.
Very poor review. What cpu
Very poor review. What cpu speed is the 7300u at? Why are those thermals not compared? What’s the ram speed? Weak. There’s a reason I haven’t visited this site since m five years. Lol
R7 2700U, 16GB dual
R7 2700U, 16GB dual DDR4-2400, 13.3″ 1080p IPS Touch, 256GB SSD, 60Wh, <1.5KG, <$1200. *That's* an Ultrabook. No idea what these things are supposed to be.