The 2014 Razer Blade Review
by Brett Howse on October 10, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Gaming
- Laptops
- Razer Blade
Gaming Performance
The Razer Blade is first and foremost a gaming laptop, and the GTX 870M inside is a substantial upgrade over the previous Blade’s GTX 765M. With 1344 CUDA cores, 3GB of GDDR5, 941 MHz clock, and a 192-bit memory bus, the 870M packs a punch, but with four times the number of pixels to drive in this year’s Blade, will it be enough?
To test this, we will run it through our normal suite of benchmarks to see where it stands. As our benchmarks top out at 1920x1080, I will also run it through a couple of the games at 3200x1800.
This is marketed and sold as a gaming system, and there are no complaints here. The step up to the GTX 870M over the last model’s GTX 765M means a massive increase in performance. The Razer Blade obviously cannot keep up with the likes of the Alienware 18 with its two GTX 780M cards in SLI, but that laptop is also a 12 pound behemoth. In fact, the Razer Blade outperforms all of the 15.6 inch laptops currently in Mobile Bench, and only loses to the 17 inch gaming machines.
However the obvious point has to be made that while the GTX 870M is much more powerful, it also has to drive four times the number of pixels as on the previous version of the Razer Blade. If you are looking at buying one of these, it is very likely you would want to game at the native resolution of the panel. In order to find out what the gaming experience would be for gaming at the native resolution, I used the GeForce Experience to customize the game settings for 3200x1800. If you are curious as to the number of options you can enable for 3200x1800, it is fairly impressive. Here's what GFE ended up recommending for two games:
So, yes, you can game at the native panel resolution. You may not be able to enable every feature, but with GeForce Experience, you can custom tailor the settings quickly to get reasonable performance. GeForce Experience also has a slider where you can opt for more performance if you find the frame rate too low for your liking. By default, the slider is almost completely over to the Quality setting.
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heybrandons - Monday, October 13, 2014 - link
I agree, I've been using it as my primary computer for everything from work to play and it's been great. The only thing I can complain about is that they put the air intakes at the bottom; would have much preferred them on the sides so that they don't get block when sitting on my lap.Connoisseur - Monday, October 13, 2014 - link
I don't think that's going to change in future iterations, even with more efficient CPU/GPU combos. With the amoutn of power this draws, I don't see how a side intake could suck in enough air to cool all the components. I also don't mind the look. Very clean looking on all the visible surfaces.kallogan - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
no maxwell in slim chassis = failConnoisseur - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
The 2014 Blade was released back in May. How do you propose they integrate Maxwell when the parts didn't exist yet? Razer is on a 1 year release cycle so I'd expect a Maxwell/Broadwell machine to come out April/May 2015.Jon Tseng - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Nice review but wasn't this machine released like, over six months ago??I know you take your time to get the most through reviews out there, but not much point reviewing it now. Especially as 970M notebooks are changing the whole purchasing decision all over again.
By that rationale you should also be getting your Galaxy S5 review up soon, right? :-p
Yorgos - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
I bought a Y410p Lenovo 6 months ago:i7-4700 qm
14" 900p
replaced the 1TB hdd with a 150 CHF 840 PRO 256 GB
w/ 3 years warranty
somewhere 70 Wh battery
Total price: 898.0 $ + 150 chf = 1050 $ (1 $ is nearly 1 chf)
Connoisseur - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Why even list this machine? It's got a vastly inferior graphics card, screen and CPU. I'd understand if you're comparing value vs. build quality (although I think that's still a dumb comparison), but these two machines don't even share the same internals.Kutark - Sunday, October 12, 2014 - link
I just paid $1340 for an Acer VN7 Aspire Black Edition. Its just a hair less than 1/3" thicker, weighs about 2/5 of a lb more, has an IPS screen, 16gb Ram, 860m Maxwell, so it runs nice and cool and quiet. 256gb SSD, and is almost as good build quality. Now, before you go off, yes, Acer's traditionally had crap build quality, but go read the reviews, this thing is really well made. I can open the screen from the corner and it flexes maybe 1/3". Its very solid. The keyboard is amazing. Oh, and its literally half the price.tipoo - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
There wasn't yet a full review of that Haswell 15" rMBP you had for comparison, was there?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
No, there wasn't. That review was unfortunately canceled when Anand retired.