The Infinity S7-9G6-88 gaming laptop uses the popular tongfang chassis like many others,
such as the Eluktronics mech 17, so let’s find out how this new 17 inch model goes with
latest specs in this detailed review.
The Infinity laptop brand started up last year, and they’re currently selling in Australia
and New Zealand, though the information should still apply to the same models sold around
the world by other companies.
Starting with the specs my unit has an Intel i7-9750H CPU, Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti graphics,
a 17.3” 1080p 144Hz screen, 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD, and 16gb of memory running in single
channel. There’s a gigabit ethernet port, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5. There are quite
a few options available though, you can find examples and updated pricing linked in the
description.
Before we get any further I want to note that the single channel memory is going to result
in reduced performance. The websites selling this model don’t list whether they use single
channel or dual channel memory, so I can only assume this means they’re using single channel
like the unit I’ve got here. You can check the card in the top right where I’ve compared
single and dual channel memory, it can make a big difference to performance depending
on the game.
The lid of the laptop is brushed metal, while the interior is all matte black with a rubberised
material. All edges and corners were smooth and overall it felt quite well built.
The weight of the laptop is listed at 2.25kg, though despite not having a 2.5” drive installed
mine was still closer to 2.5kg. With the 180 watt power brick and cables for charging the
total weight rises to over 3kg.
The dimensions of the laptop are 39.5cm in width, 26cm in depth, and under 2.7cm in height,
so on the thicker side which should aid cooling. This is still quite small for a 17” machine,
giving us thin screen bezels.
The 17.3” 144Hz 1080p IPS-level screen looks quite good, all viewing angles were fine though
was no G-Sync available here. You might notice that it appears to be flickering on camera,
I didn’t notice this in person, and after looking up the panel model it seems to use
PWM to adjust brightness, which results in flickering that may cause eye strain for some
people, however the frequency is apparently high enough with this panel that it shouldn’t
bother most people, I had no problems with it in any case.
I’ve measured the current colour gamut of the screen using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my
results returned 98% of sRGB, 69% of NTSC and 74% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness I
measured the panel at 338 nits in the center, and with a 860:1 contrast ratio, so overall
above average results for a gaming laptop.
There was a bit of backlight bleed, I could occasionally notice the patch down the bottom
left while viewing darker content, but this will vary between laptops and panels.
There was only a little screen flex, the metal lid seemed quite sturdy, and most the length
of the panel was the hinge which helped further.
I couldn’t quite open it up with one finger, it was noticeably heavier towards the back,
however no problems using it on my lap.
Despite the thin screen bezels the 720p camera is found above the display in the center.
Both the camera and microphone are nothing special, they work fine but not excellent.
The mechanical keyboard in my unit has per key RGB backlighting with a few different
effects available. In case you missed that, that’s a mechanical keyboard, a seemingly
rare option for a laptop. Overall I thought it was great to type with, here’s how it
sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There was minimal keyboard flex while pushing down hard, it was pretty solid. Next to the
power button is a button to easily let you boost the fan speed and performance, but you
can do this through the software too.
The touchpad has precision drivers and it worked alright, it’s quite large and presses
down when you click, though it was pretty much impossible to press down towards the
top.
Fingerprints and dirt are easy to see on the black interior, and is it’s some sort of
rubberised material they were a little harder than normal to clean off.
On the left there’s a Kensington lock, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port, USB 2.0
Type-A port, bit odd for a 2019 machine, and 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks.
On the right there’s a full size SD card slot, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and air exhaust
vent, so not much to get in the way of your mouse hand if you’re right handed.
On the back there are more air exhaust vents towards the corners, then from left to right
there are two Mini DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, HDMI 2.0 output, USB 3.1 Type-C port and the
power input, no mention of Thunderbolt support here though. The front is just smooth plastic
with a light bar, which can be controlled through the included gaming center software.
On the brushed metal lid there’s just the Infinity logo in the center.
Underneath it looks like there are a few air vents, thick rubber feet, and the speakers
towards the front left and right corners. The speakers sounded alright, about average,
not really any bass though and they didn't get too loud at maximum volume with music
playing, and the latencymon results weren’t looking too good.
The bottom panel can be removed by taking out 9 screws with a Phillips head screwdriver.
There’s actually a metal heatsink on the bottom of the panel for keeping the M.2 drives
cool, something I don’t often see.
Once inside, from left to right we’ve got access to the two M.2 slots, single 2.5 inch
drive bay, two memory slots, battery and WiFi card.
Powering the laptop is a smaller 3 cell 41 Watt hour battery, and with a full charge
and just watching YouTube videos with the screen on half brightness, keyboard lighting
off and background apps disabled, I was able to use it for 3 hours and 57 minutes. The
Intel integrated graphics were in use during this test, thanks to Nvidia Optimus.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS
the or battery lasted for 1 hour and 11 minutes, however the battery didn’t seem capable
of providing enough power, as the game was running at 17 FPS the entire time rather than
the usual constant 30. At 13% remaining, or after the first hour and 4 minutes, this lowered
further to 4 FPS and was no longer usable, so overall the battery wasn’t great, you’ll
definitely want to stay plugged in where possible. It’s worth noting that I didn’t notice
any battery drain during any of my testing with the included 180 watt power brick in
use.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different temperatures in different environments. Also keep in mind there are
heatpipes shared between processor and graphics, so a change in one of these will affect the
other. All testing was completed with the game mode enabled for best performance, though
better performance generally equals more heat. Out of the box the CPU also came with a -0.05v
undervolt, so that’s the stock setting, where I’ve noted UV on the graph that’s
my further -0.15v undervolt to improve this more.
At the bottom of the graph, at idle the temperatures were quite cool. The rest of the results are
combined CPU and GPU workloads. The gaming tests in the upper half were done with Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of CPU and GPU. The stress tests represent
a worst case scenario, and were done by running the Aida64 CPU stress test and the Heaven
GPU benchmark at the same time in order to attempt to fully load the system.
Starting with the stress tests, regardless of the fan speed being left at automatic or
maxed out the CPU was hitting a combination of power limit throttling with a 60 watt CPU
TDP and thermal throttling at 95 degrees Celsius. Honestly I think this is completely reasonable
given the CPU is able to run at 60 watts in this combined stress test, that’s rarely
the case. Anyway if we apply the -0.15v undervolt to the CPU the temperature drops back 6 degrees,
and a couple on the graphics presumably due to those shared heatpipes. By applying the
Thermaltake Massive 20 cooling pad, the CPU temperatures drop by a further 8 degrees,
and 7 less on the GPU, a great result.
The gaming tests weren’t causing the laptop to get that hot even out of the box, but as
you can see here it was possible to get some nice improvements to temperatures with undervolting
and the cooling pad, though the cooler results would to some degree be due to the single
channel RAM configuration.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. These are impressive
results, in almost all cases the full 4.0GHz all core turbo boost speed of the i7-9750H
is being reached. The only times this wasn’t happening was with the combined CPU and GPU
stress tests running prior to undervolting further, and remember I say further as it
was already undervolted by -0.05v out of the box.
We can see that our high clock speeds are due to the high CPU TDP, even under combined
CPU and GPU load this was able to get to the 60 watt PL1 limit which is pretty impressive
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load, even out of the box we’re hitting the 4.0GHz all core turbo boost speed no problem,
so no change here with the extra undervolt. With the temperatures though we can see that
the additional undervolt is lowering the temperature by 10 degrees, so while not needed to improve
performance under this workload it does help it run cooler, and this is because the undervolt
lowers the amount of power needed.
To demonstrate how this translates into practical performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU
benchmarks here. At stock we’re seeing about what we’d expect from the 8750H, but then
with my additional undervolting applied we’re getting closer to 1,300, undoubtedly due to
the higher 60 watt power limit we’ve got here. I’ve also got the results from the
newer Cinebench R20, and again there was a nice boost with the additional undervolting
applied.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low 30s in the center, fairly average. While gaming the wrist rest area was still
cool, and the sides including the WASD keys actually felt cool to the touch, the middle
was only a little warm in the low 40s, and then very similar results with the stress
tests running.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was quiet but there was still audible fan noise. While gaming it was a little quieter
than most other gaming laptops tested in this same test, then a little louder and closer
to average with the stress tests running, and only a little louder with the fans at
maximum.
Overall I was quite impressed with the results from the thermal testing. At stock yes it
will run a bit hot, though the higher clock speeds are there thanks to the higher CPU
TDP which could actually hit 60 watts even under combined CPU and GPU load. Boost the
fans and increase the undervolt and we can further lower the temperatures by a good amount,
however I’d expect higher temperatures when used with a dual channel memory configuration,
as that will unlock the full potential of the CPU and GPU.
Next let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks, I’ve tested these games with these Nvidia
drivers and Windows fully updated with gaming mode enabled. Again keep in mind the laptop
was tested with the stock out of the box configuration, so single channel memory will be reducing
performance, expect better results with dual channel.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. The game was running alright, decent FPS even
with ultra settings, though the 1% lows are on the lower side due to the single channel
memory, a trend we’ll see throughout all games tested.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings at the lowest
possible values as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. Max settings were reaching
around 80 FPS, with a 15% improvement possible with minimum settings.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results were ok, still
above 60 FPS at ultra settings, though as a CPU intensive test not as great as we’d
get from dual channel memory.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and again ok results,
lower than most other machines I’ve tested recently, but still above 60 FPS at highest
settings in this test.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and we’re still getting pretty high frame
rates for this test, with over 100 at max settings, though as a CPU sensitive game I’d
expect dual channel to improve this by a nice amount.
Dota 2 was tested in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on, and
the results were ok, again lower 1% lows which I suspect is due to single channel memory,
but I was still able to get through a whole game at ultra without any problems.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark and tends to favour Nvidia’s
new turing architecture compared to other games, and still over 100 FPS was possible
with ultra settings here.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature, and generally it runs quite well on modern
hardware, with even 100 FPS at epic settings still possible in this test.
Overwatch is another game that is well optimized and runs on pretty much anything. Even with
the single channel configuration the average frame rates are quite high, however 1% low
performance is lower than expected and a bit inconsistent, however it still played great.
The Witcher 3 was tested with hairworks disabled, and it played fine at ultra settings, still
above 60 FPS with the 1% low not too far behind, no problems here.
To get some context let’s see how it compares with some other gaming laptops, use this information
as a rough guide only, as tests were done at different times with different drivers.
Here are the results from Far Cry 5 using the built in benchmark at ultra settings,
with the Infinity laptop shown up the top in red. The results were the lowest out of
all laptops I’ve recently tested, but this is definitely due to the single channel memory
configuration, I don’t think the 1660 Ti is that low, all of the other laptops were
tested with dual channel.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the built in benchmark at highest settings the Infinity
laptop is tied for last place with the thermally throttling Alienware m15, granted that’s
more expensive and it does have dual channel memory. In any case about 60 FPS at max settings
is alright for this test.
In Battlefield 5 with ultra settings we’re seeing decent averages, around the same level
as other laptops like the Dell G5, granted that one does thermal throttle on the CPU.
The 1% low for the Infinity laptop is the lowest out of all results, but again that’s
just due to the single channel memory.
Overall the gaming performance was ok, modern games still played without issue with decent
settings, just don’t take these results as best case numbers for the 1660 Ti, as again
it’s running single channel memory which will negatively affect performance, but you
could of course upgrade this.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy, Port Royal and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video
if you want a detailed look at these results.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of overclocking the graphics and undervolting
the CPU to increase performance, so let’s see how this actually helps in gaming.
Far Cry 5 was retested using the built in benchmark at 1080p, and with the GPU overclock
and additional CPU undervolt there was quite a big performance boost at higher setting
levels. At ultra settings the tweaks were giving a 16% performance boost to average
FPS, with a larger 18% improvement to 1% lows, though I’d expect a smaller difference with
dual channel memory.
As mentioned before it’s also got Turbo mode, and this lets you specify how much power
from the CPU you want to send to the GPU instead which could help performance where we’re
GPU bound. I didn’t find this to help as much as I expected here, which I’m thinking
may again be due to single channel memory limitations. In any case I tested Fire Strike
with gaming mode and turbo mode on the maximum 40% and saw a 5% boost to the graphics score,
so there was some improvement possible. I’ll also note that neither of these modes outright
overclocked the core or memory clock speeds of the GPU, they seem to affect power limitations.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and my 512GB M.2 Nvme SSD was performing
well for the reads, but lower on the writes, and keep in mind you can add a second M.2
drive or a 2.5 inch drive. I’ve tested the SD slot with a V90 rated card, and the results
were decent.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in Australia this model is going for $2400 AUD. For my international
viewers, without our tax and converting the price that’s under $1500 USD.
Compared to many other options from larger brands here in Australia, that’s not too
bad, however at the same time you can get the same specs in a 17 inch Clevo unit for
significantly less, granted it is currently on sale, though you do have the option of
paying more for dual channel memory. To be fair though the infinity 15 inch version with
same specs is $400 AUD less than the 17 inch one I’ve got here.
So what do you guys think about the Infinity S7-9G6-88, apart from the long name? Let’s
conclude with the good and the bad. Overall the laptop itself is quite good, as I’d
expect, it’s a popular Tongfang chassis and built well, the materials feel good and
build quality is above average. It’s got a mechanical keyboard, an uncommon feature
for a laptop, and it was great to type with. The screen was decent in terms of colour gamut
and brightness while still being 144Hz, however the flickering may be an issue for some, and
there was some backlight bleed detected.
While under combined CPU and GPU load I was seeing excellent performance in terms of clock
speeds, it’s great that they’ve got a little undervolt on the CPU out of the box.
It did run on the hotter side by default when under heavy load, but with some small tweaks
it was possible to significantly reduce temperatures. Even under full load the keyboard area was
noticeably cooler, the WASD keys still felt cold even while gaming. This would likely
change when going to a dual channel configuration though, I can’t say by how much without
testing, unfortunately I don’t have spare memory at the moment.
That brings us to the biggest downside, despite having a decent CPU and GPU combination it’s
hampered by single channel memory. While you can of course upgrade to dual channel later
yourself, personally I’m of the opinion that a laptop advertised as a gaming laptop
should come with dual channel out of the box for optimal performance if it’s not specifying
what it’s got, I don’t think most people buying would be aware of it and they could
be missing out on higher performance. While the Dell G5 for example is available with
single and dual channel configurations, at least they tell you which you’re getting
on the website.
The battery was on the smaller side and seemed a little weak, as the games I were testing
weren’t able to hit the standard 30 FPS cap of Nvidia battery boost, so I’d want
to stick to being plugged in while gaming if possible for better performance. I’m
not sure if an upgrade is possible, the 15 inch tongfang chassis does have a larger battery
available, that may be possible here too.
Assuming dual channel memory doesn’t raise the temperatures too much, I think this would
be an excellent performing gaming laptop, though I can’t ignore that you can get the
same specs for less money in a Clevo unit, granted this one does have some nice extras
like the mechanical keyboard.
Let me know what you guys thought about the Infinity S7 gaming laptop down in the comments,
and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for future tech videos like this one.