Whenever AMD or Intel announces a new processor line, their hardware partners are quick to announce new systems with the latest silicon; Razer and Intel are no different, with the former having just upgraded its Blade 15 Advanced laptop line with the latter's The former just upgraded its Blade 15 Advanced laptop line with the latter's Tiger Lake-H CPUs.

Intel released five Tiger Lake-H chips yesterday, including two 6-core/12-thread Core i5 models and three 8-core/16-thread Core i7 and Core i9 chips. In the latest refresh, Razer chose two high-end options, the Core i7 11800H (8C16T, 2.3GHz-4.6GHz, 24MB L3 cache) and the Core i9 11900H (8C16T, 2.5GHz-4.9GHz, 24MB L3 cache).

The entire Tiger Lake-H stack features Intel UHD graphics, but if you're avoiding discrete GPUs, the Blade 15 won't be crowned the best gaming laptop. Razor's Blade 15 Advanced uses a discrete GPU from Nvidia's mobile GeForce RTX 30 series (Ampere). [Core i7 11800H with GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, 1TB NVMe SSD, and a 1080p display with a fast 240Hz refresh rate and 100% DCI-P3 color space coverage.

Note that in the Razer spec sheet above, the refresh rates are reversed for the $2,599 and $2,699 models. Both models have a GeForce RTX 3070 GPU and the same storage and RAM as the $2,299 model.

Other models ($2,999 and up) upgrade to Nvidia's flagship mobile GPU, the GeForce RTX 3080, and double the RAM to 32GB. They also add an M.2 slot for expandable storage.

Oddly enough, the i9 11900H option is only available on the 4K model. On the plus side, the performance difference with the i7 11800H should not be too great, with the higher-end CPU having a 200 MHz faster base clock and a 300 MHz faster maximum boost clock. While this is not significant, the performance of the i7 11800 should be within striking distance of its i9 sibling.

Even with all this firepower, it is difficult to take full advantage of the high refresh rates (240Hz and 360Hz). The high refresh rates are mostly beneficial for competitive gaming on less demanding titles, where triple-digit frame rates can be achieved. That said, when it comes to refresh rates on Razer laptop screens, we would prefer to overshoot rather than undershoot.

All of the upgraded models are available for pre-order on Razer's website and will be available in late June (currently, when you add the laptop to your cart, it shows an estimated ship date of June 21).