The 2015 Razer Blade Review
by Brett Howse on February 11, 2015 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Razer
- Razer Blade
- Notebooks
- GTX970M
Gaming Performance
The move to the GTX 970M should bring a substantial increase in graphics performance. Although the 2014 Blade was powerful, the GTX 870M could struggle if gaming at the native resolution of the panel. We will compare it against last year’s model at that resolution, as well as against other laptops in our standard gaming benchmarks.
We will start with our synthetic tests, and then move on to the game benchmarks.
On the 3DMark tests, Fire Strike is the most potent. Here we see a 53% jump in performance over the 2014 Blade with 870M. We ran Cloud Gate several times, and could not get a better score. It is difficult to explain what is going on with that particular benchmark as it seems to be an outlier.
As you can see, the new CPU and GPU combination bumps up the performance quite substantially, with some of our real world benchmarks around 50% faster on the 2015 Blade. This is a good step over last year’s model in all of the tests. But, one area where the 2014 Blade could struggle was high resolution gaming. When you buy a laptop with a 3200x1800 display, you tend to want to take advantage of that if possible. We showed with last year’s model, that using the GeForce Experience menu, you could pretty easily achieve a balance of speed and features that would allow for gaming.
3200x1800 Gaming Testing
GeForce Experience on last year’s Blade gave us the following settings for Tomb Raider at 3200x1800.
This let us achieve a frame rate of 38.4 frames per second in the built in benchmark for Tomb Raider on last year's model. Certainly playable, especially in this genre of game, but not the 60+ FPS preferred for smoother gameplay. GeForce Experience does allow you to customize the framerate for performance versus quality, and we stuck with the default for 3200x1800.
Going through the GeForce Experience for the 2015 Blade actually resulted in a lower framerate. Our benchmark this year with the default 3200x1800 GFE was actually only 33.8 frames per second. However, due to the extra graphics power available, Post Processing was enabled by default for this year. Disabling Post Processing to get to the same settings as the 2014 Blade used resulted in just over 50 frames per second. Almost six million pixels is a lot of pixels to process, even for the latest single GPU mobile parts. However, if 50 frames per second is still not enough, you can easily adjust the slider towards performance and try again.
Really, to take this laptop to the next level for gaming, G-Sync would be a perfect fit since the GPU is plenty powerful, but could use a bigger safety net when the framerates do dip. This is not something we have seen officially on any laptops yet, but with the desktop monitors trickling out, it will only be a matter of time before it ends up in a laptop as well.
As a gaming laptop, this section is likely the most important to prospective buyers. The new CPU and GPU combo both add quite a bit more punch to the Razer Blade, and make for a better gaming experience at the high resolution of this display.
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tipoo - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I'm guessing it would be the same as the internal display - the discreet GPU just poops its output into the integrated GPUs memory so it can be output to the monitor, which only has one physical connection to the internal GPU.voicequal - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
This would be great for my application, except the Intel mobile chipsets don't support the number of devices I need from the USB3 controller. You'd be lucky to get more than 10 external devices working off the xHCI controller before the dreaded Not enough USB controller resources error. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/s...For what it's worth, I find DisplayPort preferable over HDMI because DP is more flexible for splitting to multiple monitors.
DanNeely - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
The accepted answers on that link cite the problem as one of maximum power the port can put out; just because the port can address 127 devices doesn't mean it can provide them all with power. Non-charging USB3 ports are limited to 0.9 amps of 5v current; which ports (if any) get extra power for charging stuff is upto the motherboard OEM to decide if they want to provide extra power to it or not.voicequal - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Unfortunately the accepted answer on that thread isn't the issue. The error is due to the limited number of USB devices/endpoints supported by the Intel xHCI controller. I'm curious if more devices are supported on the Broadwell chipsets, but don't have one to test yet.ruthan - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I dont believe whole conclusion.. if this is truth:" When the fans are running though, the laptop is very loud. We measured 55.0 dBA at 1 inch from the system after one hour of gaming. It is very loud, and very noticeable. In my opinion, any gaming on the Razer Blade would necessitate headphones.."
For me it means that whole laptop design failed - too much hoursepower for cooling system, good experience and performance only on paper or for deaf people..
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
agreed. They should have stuck with the 37 watt i7 and put the 965m in instead.ingwe - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
This looks so great. I wish they would have actually gone with a lower power CPU to get better battery life. I also wish that there would be DP in addition to HDMI. These are relatively minor gripes. Now to come up with $2700 for this...HiTechObsessed - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Again, why don't y'all ever look at Sager laptops? The Sager NP8651 is less than an inch thick, packs a dual-fan-cooled 970m, the same quad-core i7 CPU, but has a starting price of $1,225 as opposed to $2k. Essentially, the Sager offers the same performance, while only spending a little over 60%?Even when adding an SSD to the Sager and Windows, you're still substantially cheaper.
awlllwa - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
I have had my NP8652 (980m model) for about a month now and it is awesome. All said an done, the same price as this here Razer, but with a 4k Sharp screen, 2x 512gb SSDs, 1tb HDD, and the chaise is not that thick. Like .2-.3" more, for way better internals, and I still have one more m.2 slot and 2 empty sodimm slots.I did strongly consider the 2014 Blade, but couldn't swallow the 870m for that price, this new one feels much of the same.
DanNeely - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Because neither Sager, nor anyone who rebadges Sager laptops and sells them under their name is willing to send a review sample.