Razer Blade (2014) Owner's Lounge

What size SSD, when did you place your order?

 

Sadly, Razer didn't see fit to install HDMI 2.0, which is crucial to support UHD on external displays at any refresh better than 30Hz.
A lot of early UHD TV's are also delivered without HDMI 2.0. My recommendation would be not to buy any UHD display without it.

I read a lengthy article outlining the details of UHD and HDMI 2.0, and I also run a 40" UHD TV off my Sony Vaio Pro 11, which works great for desktop apps like Excel or Cakewalk's Sonar audio recording software. The Vaio Pro's integrated GPU has some issues with switching and such, I imagine anything from Nvidia or AMD wouldn't have those issues.

At any rate, 30 Hz refresh obviously stinks for games, hence the need for HDMI 2.0, cause HDMI 1.4 has absolutely sorry transfer rates, that can't even handle 3D in 1080p beyond 24Hz refresh.

 

2 days after announcement, 128gbytes.
By the way -> d3 ros at native + aa and vsync -> always 60fps.
No drop! I expected 40-45

 

Given this information, great job by the way, is anyone aware of faster M.2 M keyed drives that might be surfacing in the future? Furthermore, it seems like they'll probably be relatively expensive ($500+), thoughts on that? I'm trying to find a good balance between performance, size, and cost... The M550 seems alright. Is the following inference correct: Because we have a M key drive we can use B keyed drives as well because our socket can accept the PIN layout? I might be way off base and you still need some sort of adapter, but that's how I interpreted the information. Thanks in advance...

 

nice!

What date was the announcement 2 days before your order btw?

 

I ordered on march 12th.

 

Not really up to Razer, it's up to Intel and nVidia to support it first.

 

On highest quality settings? I get 30-40 on native with everything on highest settings in d3 ros.

 

Yes, that s what i had before to play with my battery settings. Also it was an inside dungeon of act v

 

Thanks

So you were among the first to order one, and you got it 63 days after placing your order by the looks of it. Roughly 2 months rather than 3-4 weeks.

I guess their speed might pick up with time, but I probably won't be getting mine on May 6th then...

 

Since HDMI 2.0 are not offered by ANY current mobile graphics cards, I'd lay the blame on NVidia, not Razer. It's possible they may offer a firmware update down the line, as sony is doing with their receivers.

 

Thanks for the info!

Now, I'm wondering if Nvidia will also fail to deliver HDMI 2.0 for the Maxwell based desktop line...

Nice to know about Sony's firmware updates, but afaik, HDMI 2.0 requires new silicon to manage the fairly massive increase in throughput...

Seems to me, that a firmware update could at best provide a subset of the HDMI 2.0 spec.

 

I don't know enough about the existing HDMI specs to provide any more analysis on that front.

I am wondering, though, what sort of application higher than 30hz would have on 4K when the screen is powered by a laptop GPU. You definitely cannot game at 4K, and movies are at 24K. If you're just looking to use Word, 30hz should be adequate...

 

I'm sure you meant movies at "2k" That is exactly how I am looking at it. I know I can't game (well not a proper 3D game anyway) at 4k, so 30 hz will be fine for surfing and productivity stuff for me. I look at it as a nice way to get 4 x 1920x1080 screens off the Blade 14. Which is more than the 3 screens on my desktop currently. And if I want to game on it I can still use lower resolutions of course, just like the internal laptop display at 3.2k. Purists may not like running non-native though, but that's their problem

 

May I ask what you changed in battery settings? I would love to see 60fps. Thanks man.

 

I was also getting solid 60fps on beginning of act V d3ros. Battery profile I used was high performance.

 

Hmmm interesting.. I was getting 40ish on native with settings on high and high (smooth). Maybe I should do more tests or benchmarks to make sure nothing is wrong. Also what's your battery life like? I played d3 ros maxed out with high performance profile and I lasted right at one hour.

 

Was playing on outlet...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

 

I actually meant 24fps; i.e. films don't need more than 30hz. So there doesn't seem to be any reason to see 4K at 30hz as a deal breaker unless you are watching sports or playing games (but, of course, you aren't gaming at 4K off a laptop).

 

Your card is going to throttle on battery. No way around that.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Anyone have word that their Blade is shipping/en-route? If so, when did you order?

Would be nice to monitor the date the Blade's leave relative to their date of order so we can know when we are next!

 

My first post in the Razer forum! Thanks user mturkel99 for the invite to join the discussion.

That's mostly true, with the exception that the XP941 is bootable in the Sony Vaio Pro 13. In addition, it's bootable in a Mac Pro, although that's under OSX. So, even though the drive isn't configured with an on-board bios like the Plextor M6e, there must be something else going on which Sony are doing to allow the drive to boot.

According to the Razer press release, the 2014 model has a M.2 SATA SSD. World's Thinnest Gaming laptop Now Features The World's Highest Resolution 14-inch Laptop Display | Razerâ„¢ | For Gamers. By Gamers.â„¢

I highly doubt that the M.2 socket will be configured to accept both PCIe and SATA based SSD's, although that's only because no other notebook manufacturer has released a machine with that feature (yet). For this machine at least, the Crucial M500, M550 or Intel M.2 SATA SSD's are your only upgrade options. We've just seen a Samsung PM851 SATA M.2 in a customers machine too, so they might also be an option some time in the near future.

Thanks a lot for pointing that out. We've now fixed the images in the table so that they match they way they appear in a top-down view of a notebook. They also now make sense in terms of the pin numbers going 0-66 from left to right.

I'm inclined to agree with your point when referring to PCIe x2 SSD's. 30% more performance for twice the price hardly seems worth it, unless you have an occupation where you can be a lot more productive with the additional speed. However, with PCIe x4 SSD's delivering more than double the performance of the fastest SATA SSD's at a similar price point to the PCIe x2 units, that's more compelling. Now we just need the manufacturers to support this in their new models!

 

Anyone know how to fix the "No battery is detected" problem in the windows taskbar? Already uninstalled and reinstalled drivers...
Laptop still runs fine btw.

 

Yeah I understand that, the fps I was getting was on outlet... I just tested the battery one night to see how long it would last. I just started a new campaign on Act V in d3 ros with max everything and fraps is putting me at 25-35 fps. Not sure how you guys are getting 60fps.

EDIT: Just turned on vertical sync in the game display options... boosted my fps to 60 in most occasions... guess that was my problem.

 

Well, welcome to the discussion!

I was also looking into that. I figure Sony must have worked with Samsung for boot drivers for windows. I assume they are OEM only as no one seems to have anything like it as far as I can find.

I'm a little disappointed at our lack of options, but I am impatient. I'm sure if I were willing to wait 6 months, we will have plenty of high-performance drives available in M.2. I'm just looking to slap an M550 in there and forget about it.

Thank you for fixing that article. I had planned on contacting someone about the images but I had not gotten around to it yet.

You're only looking at part of the big picture. PCI-e SSD's like the Samsung XP941 only have a significant advantage for sequential reads and writes. In nearly all other metrics they are average. For example, the 4k and smaller read/write of the XP941 is inferior to the M550 and Samsung 840 EVO.

Also comparing the Evo 840 to the 941: my Samsung Evo 840 500GB scores 97,207 IOPS random read and 86,516 IOPS random write in the Samsung Magician benchmark, while the 512GB XP941 scores 79,032 IOPS random read and 54,897 IOPS random write.

I don't do anything that would require sequential read/write speeds that the PCI-e x4 drives offer. I understand that something such as game loading time may be improved, but I feel the difference is not nearly worth more than twice the price unless you absolutely have to do something like stream uncompressed 4k video.

Edit: I would like to clarify that I'm not saying PCI-e is inferior to SATA in any way, but it appears current generation PCI-e drives are nowhere near worth the price premium over SATA drives, especially since in some cases their performance is worse. I do know that PCI-e is the future of solid state storage, where the boundaries the SATA standard placed on them are no longer a consideration. I'm sure that soon PCI-e will be superior in every way to SATA, just not today in my opinion.

 

Interesting! Are these statistics from a website or your own findings? Would you mind posting the source URL, or the benchmark software you used and some screenshots? I only ask because on thessdreview.com they quoted 4K-64-thread IO's at 98779/60429 IO's read/write respectively.

Even taking the higher numbers from thessdreview.com, your point is a good one - there isn't a lot of difference in the IO scores between the XP941 and traditional SATA SSD's. For some readers here (including myself actually), it's a bit of a grey area as to how significant the IOPS numbers are to every-day computer usage. What kind of applications do you use your machine for where IOPS is more important than sheer sequential data transfer speed?

 

Welcome!

Any thoughts on the stopgap measures people seem to be resorting to like this (there was another with a ribbon connector, but apparently no one can find it anymore)? Have you guys ever sold those?

It seems kind of sad that we are basically being forced to "downgrade" our drives so can use drives like the 1TB 840 EVO...

 

I was also looking at thessdreview's benchmarks of the XP941.
XP941 - AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark: thessdreview.com
XP941 - Samsung Magician: thessdreview.com

while the Samsung Evo 840 benchmark is from my desktop.
My 840 Evo - AS SSD, Magician, and CrystalDiskMark

Obviously, the XP941 is significantly faster in sequentials, but when it comes down to random reads and writes, it trades wins against my own benchmarks.

And in answer to your final question, I don't know. Not everything that will be accessed by the disk is going to be sequential, but the extent that random or small file reads are done compared to sequential reads is beyond me. I think my main point was that the PCI-e SSD's aren't just better in every way than SATA SSD's, but how real-world usage of the two drives would compare is something we're lacking data on.

I was at first a bit upset that the SSD in the blade was a SATA drive since it seemed at first glance that there was a whole lot to be gained by using a PCI-e SSD. After a bit of research, it's definitely a gray area as to how much it would really improve usage outside of specific cases.

 

Did anyone has been successful replacing the m.2 drive?

 

Thanks for the welcome!

That's an interesting product as it makes an mSATA SSD fit into an M.2 socket. The only problem I can see is that M.2 drives are typically only 22mm wide, whereas mSATA is 30mm wide. If the available space in the drive bay is designed to accept the M.2 SSD with just a few mm either side to spare, then it's possible the adapter wont actually fit.

 

Completely agree. For most people, they probably wouldn't notice the difference using a PCIe SSD based machine versus a SATA one, and if we talk about the difference in performance, it should be balanced across all measurement aspects, not sequential transfer performance alone. Even so, it's hard not to talk about those big PCIe SSD sequential numbers and get excited about it!

I think it's only human to at least get a little upset about it. After all, the PCIe SSD's aren't just the performance leaders, (only if by a small margin if we take sequential and IOPS numbers together), but they represent a new advancement in storage technology for notebook computers. Having the latest in technology in your machine brings with it a certain grin factor, does it not?

 

I am afraid that Razer has made some weak design choices with the new Razer.

1) M2sata was a poor choice. It suffers against msata in terms of size and even in terms of performance especially against the very poor performing m2sata SSD they are putting in the Blade (see Crystaldisk scores). It suffers against M2PCIE in terms of performance - maybe not so much now but in terms of say 18 months down the road whereby people could always I upgrade their SSD. M2PCIE would add US$50 to the cost of a 128GB Blade but their user base are looking for performance rather than price.

2) I dont understand why they have an HDMI video port as opposed to mini display. Maybe it is cheaper but again I dont think that is the point - the typical Razer user wants the best technology. Obviously many people like to use HDMI but a displayport/hdmi cable costs US$10.

3) And touchscreen is really worth the extra size and weight?

Perhaps as an aside I think their should be two M2 slots. Because this gives the user the ability for either 1) more speed - RAID 0 or 2) more flexibility (ie the ability to have the OS on one slot and data/games on another whereby it is easy to refresh the OS).

 

It definitely does. By the time I retire the blade in 3 or 4 years, I'd bet PCI-e storage is in almost every new laptop and significantly faster than it is today.

 

So, can the storage be switched out at all? Or is the connector not of PCI-e compatibility? Can THAT be switched out?

Someone answer my lamen questions pls & thx

 

The storage can be swapped out with another sata M.2, although nobody has reported it yet. Some are waiting for adapters to convert the m.2 back to msata. No report on that yet. Nobody knows if The connector is pcie compatible yet but it's doubtful. The connector cannot be replaced.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

So, does people think I can swap for an EVO 1TB with an adapter like this:
Amazon.co.jpF M2MS1 :M.2 (NGFF) to mSATA ƒAƒ_ƒvƒ^ (Socket 2 SATA-based , Key B, Å‘吡–@ƒTƒCƒY3042): ƒpƒ\ƒRƒ“EŽü•Ó‹@Ší
Would the SSD boot?
I am really tempted to try this tomorrow..

 

I think that adapter is the wrong way around. I assume you are wanting to be able to install a 1TB SSD, and since there isn't any SATA M.2 SSD's in that capacity, you need to convert an mSATA SSD to fit in your M.2 socket. So what you need is an mSATA to SATA M.2 adapter, like this one.

What isn't known is whether the adapter will fit in the Razer 14 since it will be at a minimum 30mm wide (standard mSATA), versus M.2 which is only 22mm wide.

 

The touchscreen was a good design choice, not a bad one. I'm a firm believer that all "gaming" grade laptops should have them, as often times they are used for more than just gaming. When you pay that much money for a premium product, you want the option. The "extra size/weight" it puts on is negligible... have you seen how touchscreen tech works?

I agree that not having a mini display port was a huge mistake though. Should probably have added an SD or micro SD as well, and perhaps a network port. It's just plain frustrating to see such a premium product without a few basics.

 

Haven't we already been through this?

Sent from my One M8 using Tapatalk

 

Yes. I'm pretty sure we've discussed both the screen and the DisplayPort ad nauseum.

In other news, I've been having a fruitful e-mail exchange with someone over at HIDevolution regarding the SSD. He is going to set the matter to rest once and for all by checking both sides of the mother board for an additional slot and for trying to get the Samsung XP941 (which they have) to work. Notably, he told me that the the bios does allow for RAID configurations, so there's that. He'll post his findings here.

 

The ssd they have won't even fit. Different keys. The m6e will fit but nobody has one to test yet

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

That's awesome! Definitely let us know. I have emailed Razer in an attempt to apply my Orochi voucher elsewhere. I got a reply back saying that they'll see what they can do

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Yeah. I doubt it. The RAID sounds interesting, but might just be carry over.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

If you kept up with the thread, I determined a few pages ago that the M.2 compatibility article that has been going around had the images mirrored. They have since fixed it. The port in the blade is M keyed, which fits the XP941

 

You're right, my bad. I was only looking at the form factor of the installed drive but I thought I saw a tab preventing the extra pins on the other side. There is no tab, so it should fit. Hopefully it works!

 

It would be nice, but the chipset they used only has 8 PCI-express 2.0 lanes. If they're already using 1 or 2 lanes for the wireless card, that only leaves 6-7. I highly doubt they redirected 4 more away from the graphics card, although they might have done 1 or 2. 2 lanes wouldn't be enough bandwidth for an XP941, it would still be limited.

 

So it looks like Razer is going to give me a $79.99 coupon and free shipping on an item I purchase. Now I just have to decide what I actually want... Mamba does seem pretty slick... Sabertooth controller might be nice as well...

 

Big fan of the mamba and the deathadder...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

 

You should try the 2014 Blackwidow Ultimate, I've heard good things about the in-house manufactured mechanical switches.

My DeathAdder broke after about 2-3 years. I had a Copperhead prior to that for about 4 years. The Copperhead lasted longer overall, but the rubber lining on the side degraded very quickly and was unpleasant to look at and feel. Unfortunately, they both died in the same way - the left mouse became incredibly desensitized and took a lot of force to 'click'.


Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

The GPU is connected directly to the CPU, not to the chipset.

Still, I'm doubting that they would run the extra traces to hook up the PCIe to the M2 connector.