Razer Blade 14-Inch Gaming Notebook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on July 2, 2013 1:00 PM ESTSystem and Futuremark Performance
Despite being remarkably slim, the Razer Blade 14-inch is afforded remarkable capacity for performance thanks to its well-designed cooling system. The result is that despite fitting squarely in Intel's ultrabook category, there's a tremendous amount of horsepower on tap. Razer benefits from advances in Intel's Haswell design by employing the 37W Core i7-4702HQ, a quad-core processor which moves the chipset on package. Meanwhile, they can leverage the increased parallelism of an NVIDIA GK106 (as opposed to GK107 in the last generation of Blades) without substantially higher thermals.
Just how fast is the Blade 14? Fast enough. The i7-4702HQ is able to meet the last generation i7-3630QM's performance without much issue, and ensures that CPU bottlenecks won't be much of an issue during gaming sessions.
The Razer Blade 14-inch isn't knocking it out of the park in 3DMark, but it doesn't need to. What's impressive is how close it is to the GeForce GTX 675MX; that chip is a full GK106 with 960 CUDA cores and a 256-bit wide memory bus, but the substantially higher clocks on the GTX 765M help make up the difference. What you're going to see as we move forward is that the 765M is actually hampered only by its 128-bit memory bus; shader power is largely present for this chip, and the 1600x900 panel resolution in the Blade 14-inch may actually be the sweet spot for performance.
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aferox - Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - link
Shame about the screen. I for one would be willing to pay more for a great screen at the same resolution. I won't shell out a hefty amount of dollars for almost there, though.Will you be reviewing the Gigabyte P34G when it comes out? That appears to be catering to a similar market.
jason.mcallister - Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - link
The screen size and quality would be too big of a sacrifice, regardless of the internal specs. Even being a gamer who has spend 3k on a system in the past, I could never spend more than 1k on a laptop with a 14" screen. 15.6" is bare minimum, of course my eye sight is not what it used to be and I wear glasses to play games on my PC. I do like this brand however, and it does look cool, just not going to have a primary gaming laptop with that sticky small screen.robco - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
I just checked their website. Not only do they go stingy on the screen, but also the warranty. $299, but it only extends the warranty to two years - excluding the battery. Ouch.xTRICKYxx - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Damn this is so close to being a great notebook!I think I could see myself as a Razer notebook owner in the future. I know Razer will probably fix the display issue in the next revision, include a 256GB SSD for the same price as the current 128GB model, and with Maxwell coming out next year, Gaming ultrabooks will be ever more popular.
Good job Razer!
GuniGuGu - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Great review, would've love to see it compared to the much cheaper, yet similarly specced clevo w230st. I think Anadtech should be able to get their hands on a review unit by now.. demand it :)adamrussell - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
Isnt the 900p kind of a deal breaker? This is supposed to be a top end gaming machine.SpeedyGonzales - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
I think the 900p is ok for 14 inch and given the capabilities of the GTX765.The bigger problem is the 1080p on the Blade Pro, which will not allow you to play the native resolution with a GTX765 for most of the upcoming (and recent) games.
elrui - Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - link
My understanding of the review is that the resolution of the display isn't the largest deal breaker as it was chosen to provide an accurate resolution that the card could perform well at. The deal breaker is the actual quality of the screen. According to the measurements it's color reproduction, viewing angles and lights/darks are abysmaldineshramdin - Thursday, July 4, 2013 - link
For Alienware, I got 14 notched a higher 111fps at the resolution of at 1366 x 768, which is amazing…
zh.aung - Friday, July 5, 2013 - link
"...seriously crippled the notebook with a lousy screen that threatens to undermine the whole operation. I can't fathom what the thought process was behind this decision..."The most perplexing thing since the disappearance of the start button!