Dell G7 15 Gaming Laptop Review: Affordable, Stylish, And Powerful
Dell G7 15 Gaming: Storage, Productivity And Content Creation
Before jumping into our gauntlet of benchmarks, we applied the latest Windows software and driver updates to the G7 15 Gaming. Other than that, we didn't change any settings. Our goal is to test the system as it ships, to accurately reflect what buyers can expect from an out-of-box experience. Our benchmarking kicks off with storage, CPU, and GPU tests to get an idea how the G7 performs in day-to-day tasks.
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Running ATTO allows us to gauge the speed of the storage drive in the G7. The primary storage on this particular configuration is a 128GB M.2 SATA solid state drive built by SK Hynix.
The SSD seems to make full use of the SATA bus when reading data, hitting over 555MB/s, which is on par with higher performing SATA drives. Writes peaked at just under 306MB/s.
We have seen much faster performance figures from NVMe SSDs that have started showing up in laptops, though for gaming, the real-world difference is negligible. While SATA is less sexy than NVMe, it's also less expensive and fits with the affordability goal Dell has been targeting with the G7.
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SunSpider tests JavaScript performance to provide a good idea of what to expect with web browsing. We used the default Edge browser in Windows 10 to run the benchmark.
In SunSpider, the G7 breaks into the 70s range, even if by a hair. It's a bit behind most previous generation gaming laptops, though not by any amount that would give us cause for concern. The grouping of results here is especially tight.
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Cinebench tests the CPU and GPU independently and provides a glimpse of raw performance. The test is based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D modeling software that’s used in move productions.
The G7 fared much better in Cinebench R11.5, shooting up to the top and settling behind only one other laptop, Dell's Alienware 17 R4 with a burly GeForce GTX 1080 inside. And if sorting by CPU score, the G7, driven by a 6-core/12-thread Core i7-8750H, takes pole position.
We have recently begun migrating over to the newer Cinebench R15. Unfortunately, we do not have a large collection of scores from gaming laptops, or even a small collection just yet. In lieu of those comparisons, we ran the Cinebench R15 on the G7 anyway and plotted the score with others that we do have, which is an assortment of ultrabooks, primarily with quad-cores under their hood. As expected, the Dell G7 15, with its 6-core Intel Coffee Lake CPU, came out way ahead.
