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Preview: Aftershock S-15 with new Intel Skylake processor

By Kenny Yeo - 14 Sep 2015

Preview: Aftershock S-15 with new Intel "Skylake" processor

What’s new about Skylake?

Need any proof that local custom notebook specialists Aftershock is going places? How about being one of the first notebook makers in the world to release a machine powered by Intel’s new sixth generation “Skylake” processor? Considering that Aftershock is barely three years into this business, this is quite a feat.

The cool sounding name aside, what’s the big deal about Skylake? For those familiar with Intel’s “tick-tock” cadence, Skylake represents the latter “tock”. This means that it is an architectural update built upon Intel’s tried-and-test 14nm manufacturing process - which really began late last year when the first Broadwell-based Core M processors were launched.

Nothing much to see here, only the Aftershock S-15, one of the world's first notebooks to be powered by Intel's newest Skylake processor.

Intel has really shared in-depth architectural details about their latest processors, but broadly said that its processors will deliver greater performance and have better power and thermal characteristics. As compared to Haswell, Skylake will consume up to 60% less power when playing back HD videos; and will offer up to 60% more performance in certain workloads. These are very big claims, but iven that most games today are bottlenecked by GPU performance, it is unlikely that users will be able to see big jumps in performance when playing their games.

Another big change is support for DDR4 memory. DDR4 offers support for lower voltages, which means power savings. Operating voltages for DDR4 will vary from 1.05V to 1.35V, in other words, a reduction of about 0.3V or 20%. It does not sound like much, but every bit counts if you are trying to squeeze out more battery life from a notebook. Despite the lower operating voltage, DDR4 memory will run at higher frequency, typically 2133MHz. However, latency increases as well, so the net increase in actual bandwidth is not as great as you might think. Furthermore, numerous tests have been done that show that DDR4 does not offer much performance benefit over DDR3.

Intel has also said that its latest processors will provide the best graphics experience ever. Unfortunately, details about Skylake’s integrated GPUs are scarce, but we do know that Skylake processors will be able to drive up to three 4K displays at 60Hz. In comparison, the integrated GPUs in Broadwell processors could only manage a single 4K display tops.

Intel's promises big improvements with Skylake, but the only aspects that we think gamers will be pleased about is improved thermal characteristics and lower power consumption.

But of course these are of little consequence to gamers, especially customers of Aftershock, whose notebooks are fitted with discrete graphics. So what will Skylake bring to the table for gamers? According to Aftershock, gamers will benefit in two aspects: battery life and better thermal characteristics.

In a comparison test between a Skylake and a Haswell notebook with similar specifications, Aftershock found that the notebook powered by Skylake will have around 15% of juice or around 45 minutes of battery life after the Haswell notebook ran out of power - that’s 3/4 of a n hour. And as for thermals, Aftershock has quoted CPU temperatures in region of around 70 degrees Celsius, which is about 15 to 20 degrees Celsius lower - again, a very significant improvement. Lower operating temperatures are always welcomed as it places less stress on components and also means that the fan do not need to spin as quickly which in turns means quieter operation. Now let’s turn our attention to the new Aftershock S-15 notebook.

 

The Aftershock S-15

The S-15 has been Aftershock’s most best-selling model and it is not difficult to see why. A 15-inch display is the sweet spot for gaming notebooks - not too big nor too small. And the S-15 comes in a reasonably compact chassis, and packs features and specifications that will satisfy the needs of all but the most extreme gamers.

But before we begin, we must make known that this is an engineering sample and therefore the photos and performance you see here are not indicative of the final retail unit, which would be more polished and optimized. Even so, it will give readers a good idea of what to expect from the latest S-15 gaming notebook. 

The S-15 has, you guessed it, a 15-inch display. Our test unit outputs Full-HD resolution, meaning a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. But one notable new addition to the refresh S-15 model is the option to upgrade to a G-Sync display. G-Sync on notebooks is relatively new and was introduced only in June. If you are unfamiliar about G-Sync, read this and this. But to put it very briefly, it's a technology that aims to eradicate tearing, lag and stutter from games by aligning the refresh rates of displays to the draw rates of GPUs.

The Aftershock S-15 is outfitted with a Full-HD (1080p) panel by default, but users demanding more can opt to upgrade to a G-Sync display for a better gaming experience. And yes, it is running Windows 10.

The updated S-15 notebook will retain the same full aluminum chassis, which means it comes in at around 25m or 28mm thick - depending on your choice of GPU - and will weigh around 2.43kg. Admittedly, the S-15 is not as compact as say ASUS’ ROG G501 or Aorus X5, but then it doesn’t command the latter two’s high price tags.

Inside, the S-15 features Intel’s newest sixth generation Core processor, specifically the Core i7-6700HQ. This is a quad-core processor that runs at 2.6GHz and a has 6MB L3 cache. We also found out that it supports Hyper-Threading and features Intel’s new Intel HD Graphics 530 integrated GPU. Rated TDP according to Intel is 45W, which is 2W down from Core i7-4720HQ processor that is used in the older S-15 models. The 2W does not sound like much, but it is the way that the new Skylake processor manage its various P-states that allow it to achieve much lower power consumption that its predecessors. The H-suffix also indicates mobile processors designed for high performance mobile applications, such as gaming notebooks.

Elsewhere, the S-15 can be spec'ed with either NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 970M or GeForce GTX 980M mobile GPUs. Ours came with the former. Our prototype also came with 8GB of DDR4 2133MHz RAM, a 120GB M.2 Samsung SSD 850 Evo drive and a 1TB HDD. Connectivity comes in the form of Intel’s AC-3165 Wi-Fi adapter, which supports wireless 802.11ac and a maximum data transfer rate of up to 433Mbps and Bluetooth 4.0.

On the left there's a single HDMI port, USB 3.0 port, and two Mini-DisplayPorts.

On the right are the various audio jacks, SD card reader, two USB 3.0 ports and an Ethernet LAN jack.

The USB 3.0 and eSATA combo port is located behind next to the DC-in jack.

Ports remain unchanged from last year’s S-15 and so this model gets three USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 and eSATA combo port, headphones and microphone audio jacks, an Ethernet port, two mini-DisplayPorts and a single HDMI port. For users demanding the absolute latest in connectivity, USB Type-C ports supporting USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3 ports are being considered and could be offered in future models.

 

Performance Preview 

Before we begin, we must emphasize that the results collected here was from an engineering sample, and so they are not indicative of the final retail product. But having said this, they should give a pretty good idea of what users can come to expect from the new Skylake-powered S-15 notebook.

We begin with a quick look at CPU performance on Cinebench. The Aftershock S-15 is powered by a fairly powerful Core i7-6700HQ processor and its scores were not that far off from a Core i7-4770K - about 12.8% off. Mind you, the Core i7-4770K is a desktop processor with a rated TDP of 84W and was one of the most powerful Haswell processors available when it was launched. The Core i7-6700HQ, on the other hand, is a mobile processor with a rated TDP of just 45W, or nearly half that of the Core i7-4770K.

Now, let’s move on to the usual benchmarks that we use for evaluating gaming notebooks. We have included results of the prototype Aftershock S-15 that we used when previewing the launch of NVIDIA’s new GTX GeForce 900M series mobile GPUs. Scores on PCMark 8 showed some irregularities, but we also noticed the same happening for last year’s S-15 notebook as well. Elsewhere on 3DMark and our gaming benchmarks, results were more in line with our expectations. As expected, there’s only a very small difference in performance between the new Skylake-powered S-15 unit and last year’s Haswell-powered S-15 unit.

Battery Life & Power

Unfortunately, we didn't manage to see the improvement in battery life that we were expecting. The refreshed S-15 also packs a 60Wh battery and in our tests, we managed a respectable time of 216 minutes. It's significantly better than other comparable notebooks, but it's not much longer than the S-15 unit that we previewed last year. We expected more and hopefully the final retail unit will fare better.

 

Final Thoughts

Much as we had expected, Skylake does not bring all that much to the performance table especially where games are concerned. Bearing in mind that most games today are still bottlenecked by GPU performance, it is not a big surprise. Still, we managed to see slight gains on Tomb Raider and this should be promising to notebook gamers. That said, compute performance seems promising at this point as the Core i7-6700HQ processor in S-15 posted a Cinebench score that was quite comparable to a high-end Haswell desktop processor. The high compute performance could possibly benefit games where heavy physics calculation or intensive computation is required. 

As for battery life, we didn't see the improvements that we were hoping to get. While this new Skylake-powered S-15 did last slightly longer, the difference was negligible. Hopefully that's because our unit is an early prototype and that there are battery and power optimization issues still waiting to be sorted out. We will certainly be paying close attention to battery life when we do a full review of the final retail unit of the S-15.

Priced attractively and equipped with latest hardware, the latest Aftershock S-15 looks like it will offer great value for money.

As for the new and refreshed S-15, the exact model that we previewed here with its new Core i7-6700HQ processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 8GB DDR4 RAM and M.2 SSD and HDD combo will retail for just S$2198. For those of you who have been toying around with Aftershock’s configurator a lot, you’d probably realize that this is even less than a comparably equipped last generation S-15 notebook. As such, the new Skylake-powered S-15 looks like it continue in the great Aftershock tradition of offering great bang for buck. Stay tuned for the full review of the new S-15 coming soon.

Meanwhile, you can read a lot more about Skylake in the following articles:-

 

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