Benchmarks: Gaming
There's no doubt about it, RTX 2070 Max-Q is a fine fit for a gaming laptop with a 1080p, 144Hz display. Gameplay is fast and smooth, though it's a shame Nvidia hasn't yet found a way to get G-Sync and Optimus working together, as adaptive framerate synchronisation would be the icing on the Blade 15 cake.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is the only title remaining from the gaming suite used to test last year's Blade, and cross-comparing results reveals that the RTX 2070 Max-Q delivers a performance boost of roughly 25 per cent over the outgoing RTX 1070 Max-Q. As a general rule of thumb you can crank quality settings right up to maximum, however ray-tracing support adds another wrinkle to the mix, as our review unit fell below the desired 60fps minimum in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with ray-tracing dialled-up to Ultra.