Razer Blade (2014) Owner's Lounge

vsync matches your frame rate to the refresh rate of your monitor. It will reduce screen tearing, but some people are able to perceive increased input lag.

 

If you enable vsync, also enable triple buffering in the nvidia control panel. This should help minimize the lag/performance decrease associated with vsync, at the cost of increased vram usage (but with 3gb, this isn't likely to be a problem).

 

Has anyone noticed that the middle of the keyboard is noticeably warmer than the sides? I get the fans on the bottom make the sides cooler, but even when just web browsing and looking through steam I can feel warm in the middle. Sliding my hand flat across the keyboard from right to left makes it very obvious after browsing for an hour or so. There's no GPU activity and it isn't hot, only noticeable. I always have it flat on a table. Anyone else notice this?

 

Hey guys, I'm thinking about getting the blade but the only one that is available is in the Microsoft store - do you know how it works with warranty? If something went wrong do they deal with Razer or do in-house check/fix? Also - could I then purchase extended warranty for Razer (through their store) even if I purchase through Microsoft?

The one at Razer store is said to be shipping in 1-2 weeks -but I need it by July 5th and I have followed the thread long enough to know that Razer can be unreliable with that. Does anybody have any input on this? Ie - has that changed now since the "rush" is over? Thanks!

 

256 won't ship for like 2 weeks, but 512 is shipping immediately (as of this afternoon, anyway) Just talked to someone on the phone today.

There's a warranty they offer for a few hundred which is like accident protection, but the normal one is the Razer manufacturer warranty for a year. This is what the CS rep told me, at least.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Thats for microsoft store,yes, but - are you talking about Razer store?

 

I'd asked this a while ago but does anyone game with the blade hooked up to an external monitor? I'd like to use the Blade as my primary system. I have a 5 year old mid-tower system that I'd like to replace since I'm in NY and space is at a premium. I also hate dealing with all the cables. Regardless, I have a U2312HM that I'd like to hook the blade up to when at home potentially with the lid closed. Are there any issues with temps when the lid is closed? I ask because I know the area above the keyboard is a radiating zone and it might get blocked if the screen is closed.

Also, just to clarify, is it correct that 1080p is the highest standard resolution supported at 60hz over the HDMI 1.4a connection?

 

Actually, if you can add the 256 to cart, it will ship the next day even though it said 2 weeks on the website. I ordered mine yesterday at 10am, with next day shipping and it came today. Also be sure to cash in on the Educational Discount. Google: Microsoft Store Educational. Hope it helps.

 

vsync doesn't work for all people. some people can't stand the input lag and if your frame rate fluctuates then you'll get some stuttering. g sync is developed due to the inefficiency of vsync

 

I usually just use the laptop display because most games I play can utilize the 1800p quality. However, for games like Titanfall and ESO, I've plugged it in to my 27" 1080p monitor and it looks great. I only do this occasionally though, as you mentioned the rail above the keyboard gets dangerously hot and I don't know how I would feel leaving it like that all the time with the lid closed during gaming session. What I did was crack the lid open just slightly so that the glass wasn't in contact with the rail. You should be fine if you leave it like this. As for the HDMI 1.4a, I believe you're correct in the statement you made. Wikipedia only mentions 1.4a in regards to 3D content. Maybe someone with a little more knowlege on the subject can say for certain?

 

How is the viewing angle guys? I had mine for roughly 5 days and since I bought it I thought the viewing angle of the panel wasn't that great (compared to my macbook pro 2011 which has a TN panel.) I am a casual user and am noticing color washing when I am browsing (white background and texts wash out) at bout 135 degree angle.

 

The viewing angles seem fine to me, and I'm coming from a fantastic panel on Sammy gamer 7.

 

Does anyone else experience the "Close programs to prevent memory loss" popup while playing games in full screen? I hate it so much. It happens mostly when playing PAYDAY 2, and task manager claims that 53% of my memory is being used by it. Playing the game windowed reduces it to around 35%, but I hate it because it cuts off a portion of the bottom of the screen. Any fixes? Thanks

 

So why would one buy the Razer Blade 14 over the much cheaper MSI GS60 GHOST ? Very similar specs, but the ghosts gives you a 1TB 7200 HD with a SSD, A bigger screen, only .7 thicker and a programmable keyboard all for $5-$700 less. Theres also a 3k display with raid 0 256SSD for $400 less.

I am only asking, Because im stuck between the 2.


Also, What is the battery life like for just web browsing?

 

Personal preference, better build quality, smaller, better trackpad, don't care about the money, better battery life.

At the end of the day you have to get what's better for YOU. It's all personal opinion. If anyone is arguing about it or telling someone they are wrong about their choice, it's just not their call. It's up to the person who bought it to say what's good for them.

If that's the gs60, you should buy it.

 

Exactly. For me, I really never seriously considered the MSI because I just didn't like the look and feel. But I imagine other people think I am crazy.

 

Yeah I'd say the RB is a lot more subtle looking than the GS60...that's pretty important to a lot of people who might want to use it in a more professional setting.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Agree with all above. There are number of good reasons why go with RB over MSI (and vice versa), but really - people make emotional decision and then just use the facts to support whichever laptop they want. I was seriously considering MSI GS60, but I really didn't like the feel - it was mostly that logo on the back which was utterly unacceptable in the professional settings (granter, razer has one too, but while it screams gaming, it does not say it) and the keyboard. Keyboard you ask? Yes, I'm very detail oriented and I absolutely hated the way that keyboard is put into the chasis (sort of gradually sinking?). The reasons that I used to support the decision:

- Battery life (I will be using it for professional things and you do get more on RB)
- Screen quality, resolution and touchscreen (I like having features even if I dont use them a lot - I hate being restricted to not to do something - ie. touch)
- Better thermals -> the GS60Pro overheats like crazy. RB runs very hot too, but not as much.
- Overall build quality
- Overall design (this thing is sleek!)

But honestly - even if GS60 had those, I still couldnt go over the logo and keyboard. I like sleek things like RB, XPS15, Asus NX500, Asus GX500 etc. The same reason why I didn't go for gigabyte, clevo or any other such thing (weight would also come in when considering these other).

 

So today I got my Blade 14 - and couple of issues and I'm wondering if you can give me any advice:

1) The idle temps: CPU 50-60 (never under 48) and when there is a program running that takes about 20% it goes to 70s and then hover between 60-65; GPU sits on around 50-52. The fans usually don't kick in much - only if CPU goes over 70 and/or has above 30% usage. I think this is high - I understand that it will get hot under load, but this is not under load and especially the area under right palm gets quite hot even with virtually 0-5% load. It makes typing very uncomfortable compared to the XPS 15 I had before. Somebody mentioned that factory reset solved that issue, but I had the system brand new. Q: Any advice/comparison?

2) Lower bench-marking scores: I know, I know, every system is different, but it seems my system is underperforming. I got 13278 in Sky Diver (Graphics Score 15267, Physics Score 7801, Combined Score 14374) and 4150 in Fire Strike with re-run of 4193 (Graphics Score 4566, Physics Score 7917, Combined Score 1732). I think this may be related to the next point. Q: How much do you guys get?

3) Nvidia Driver: When I was upgrading Nvidia Driver through GeForce Experience, the application crashed when about 97% complete. When I restarted it, it shows that I have the new driver 337.88. Q: This shouldn't be a problem, right?

4) Cricket noise from the CPU: There is a cricket noise from the CPU - when under load (especially when it starts - then the fans are louder). I think something might be in the fan, but can't be sure if its actually the fan or the cpu itself. Q: Has anybody experienced the same?

5) Minor scratch on the bottom chassis: There is a minor scratch on the bottom chassis that can't be cleaned. It looks like a dent in the aluminium. No question here, just a coment.

Honestly I am a little disappointed with this especially given the price. Any advice on the questions highlighted in the text would be helpful! Thanks!

 

What kind of help are you looking for?

 

Edited it in the last post. Thanks for reminder!

 

1. Mine doesn't get noticeably hot unless I'm doing intensive jobs.

2. I got 13579 with 15 something graphics.. Sounds about right what were you expecting?

3. Try reinstalling, there's an option for it.

4. My AC adapter made cricket noises at first but I haven't heard it lately.

5. I have no physical damage at all.. Yet..

 

Not even under the right palm (just right of the touchpad)? That is the problem I'm having - I don't really care if the core is at 40 or 50, but the typing is uncomfortable.

 

I know this was asked already, but what tools do you guys use to measure temps and fanspeed etc?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I believe that's where the battery's at. When mine's low on battery I'll feel heat from that area, but never when plugged in. Your idle temps may be the result of the GPU being in use. By default, things like Steam and Geforce Experience are set to use the GPU. Switch those, along with anything else that might use the dedicated graphics, to integrated graphics.

 

So I just got my new RB 14 a few days ago(From the Microsoft store. Student discount FTW) and I'm really enjoying it. I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed what appears to seem like greasy finger smudge on the screen. I mostly only see it on white backgrounds. I've wiped the screen clean several time but this sort of "effect" seems to still linger, Idk maybe it's just me? I've never used an IPS screen before I've always had TN panels so maybe I'm adjusting? Games look great and video playback is fine. It's mostly just white backgrounds. There wasn't some super thin plastic sheet protecting the screen in shipping that I haven't peeled off yet was there? lol. Also anyone else having issues with google chrome looking kind of ruff and jaggy? like it's not scaling properly to a 3200x1800 resolution I'm assuming chrome doesn't play well with high res displays? because internet explorer looks fine but I obviously prefer chrome. I'm so deep into googles ecosystem that it's hard to switch browsers.

 

The screen does have a weird looking texture to it at first, yeah. It might have something to do with it being touch screen, as my other monitors definitely don't have it. You'll get used to it pretty quickly.
Also, yeah, Chrome looks a little funky with the high res. I'm sure they'll update it soon enough but my eyes are already becoming use to that as well.

 

The chrome dev channel now defaults to enabling high DPI support. However, there are still serious issues with extensions that use external windows (such as hangouts) and there are currently rendering bugs that cause most of the gmail interface to disappear.

 

Agreed. 64 bit chrome canary is the best option right now.

 

Microsoft store just went back in stock with the Blade so I ordered one with my student discount. I intend for one of the first things I do to be under volting the cpu as well as frame rate capping with Nvidia Inspector. Has anyone tried this as a way to stave off high temps if so what were your results? I am not a big fan of laptop coolers as I have never really noticed a big difference but may be up to try one again, any suggestions?

 

Someone recommended to use RTSS (Riva Tuner Statistics Server). That was the only app that worked consistently. It does help, I couldn't even tell it was running. A solid 30FPS is plenty. Of course when my wife isn't next to me I turn it off.

 

Hey thanks! I had no clue there was a developer version of chrome called canary. I've downloaded it and it looks great! no more jaggy edges and blurred text. It scales properly now to 3200x1800. tyty!

 

I will probably get used to the screen. It does look fantastic and I have no issues with it. Maybe it's just so good and I'm used to 1080p TN panels that this is something brand new to my eyes and they haven't adjusted yet But yea it could be the glass touch screen b/c to me this effect is something I've noticed on larger touchscreen devices before so that would make sense.

 

so I'm curious about everyone else s battery life experience. I've been lying in bed watching netflix with about 0-50% brightness and the windows power setting set to "power saver" and it seems like from a full battery I'm only averaging about a couple hours. I feel like it should be lasting longer. Now im thinking...maybe i got a defective battery? or is that just the norm. I also may have calculated times wrong so it may be more like about 3 hours. Anyways what are other owners experiencing?

 

No such problem on my screen - and I have experienced many TN screens. The RB screen is terrific. As for Chrome - download the 64bit version. That one should have the high DPI scaling on by default. I'm running it now and it works perfectly, but I have downloaded the normal one before and it was all blurred . I was really glad chrome came up like this because before that, IE was the best browser for 8.1. I loved firefox, but it just started stuttering so much that I had to give it up.

 

I have for precisely those reasons. I can get stable undervolt of about 90mV. 100mV is pushing it for me. It does make a few degrees difference.

Also here is a trick to lower you CPU (and since GPU is in one chasis, those temps too) temps dramatically WITHOUT sacrificing ANY framerate:

You can go to power options (way at the end of this post) and limit your CPU max performance. Even if you select 99% instead of 100% it makes 0.8GHz differnece, because the core won't go above 2.2GHz. I don't know why this is, but it works. This will allow you to undervolt even more! I have set the core on 80% and the max it went was 1.8GHz (its 0.1GHz per each 3-4% aside from that initial jump from 3.09GHz at 100% to 2.29GHz at 99%). The best thing is that it literary does not affect your FPS at all. I have tested this yesterday with Witcher 2 and I got exactly the same FPS on 100%, 99%, 90% and 80% (I haven't tested further yet). The only thing that will slightly go up is the responsiveness of the system and the load times. In windows the programs will load a little slower but thats it.

I haven't tested how far I could under-volt with this, but I imagine anywhere between 200-300mV could be possible - which further reduces your temps.

I ran XTU stress-tests with that and the core went to 70degrees but only after 5 minutes and with no fan noise at all. The problem with keeping the temps under that is the fan profile that Razer uses - they just dont kick in before the 60s/70s. I'm probably going to put this in a stand-alone post as many people are not aware of it.

How to do this:

More power options (when clicking on the battery icon) -> Choose when to turn off the display -> Change advanced power settings -> Scroll down to: "Processor power management -> Select: "Maximum processor state" -> input the value

Also - if you are adjusting the "High performance" profile , you have to go to "Minimum processor state" and adjust that because by default it is 100% so your clock is running like crazy

 

Getting this with borderlands 2. Pretty annoying.

 

I read this error is caused by running games at a different resolution than the desktop. Match them up before playing, I haven't had an issue since

 

I have been matching them both to 1080p the entire time.

 

Are you watching via a web browser or the metro app?

 

Excellent thanks for the info and tips. It makes perfect sense to me as most games use very little processing power as apposed to GPU, so you would see little to no drop in frames unless you really kicked it down. Now if you were doing video editing or 3d modeling I would expect worse results. I will probably set up a separate profile to do this as well as doing some fps capping maybe around 40 or so, this combined should have a significant decrease in temps or at least what you were saying steady in the 70c range (fingers crossed).

 

Exactly - for 3d editing or anything CPU intensive you can just go back to default settings. Actually I just found even an easier way to do this (will include in the original post) - in the XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility - by Intel) you can play around with your core multipliers that determine the speed of your CPU. So instead of guessing what will 80% limit on the CPU mean (using the previous method) you will be able to instantly see it (you can run stress test and then play with the multipliers and you will instantly see how it effects the CPU).

The other advantage is that you can go step by step - so instead of the drop by 0.8Ghz from 100% to 99%, you can go by 0.1GHz by lowering the multiplier by 1 or 2.

Lastly, you can lover the multipliers depending on how many cores are running. Meaning you can leave the single core multiplier high (x32 by default) which will mean that in windows it will run very snappy and then lover the default one for 4 cores from 31 to, say, 26 and this will effect the time under heavy load - ie. gaming .


See the attached picture. You can also extremely easily overclock using the multipliers - but I think that would void the warranty (if you told Razer that is). I just dont see a situation where I would need more CPU power so I'm not going to. But underclocking is awesome - you can basically make this into i5 or i7 -> or into 4712HQ by increasing the clock speeds .

I wholeheartedly recommend the program. You can grab it here: Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU)

 

1. I played with the under-volting and now it seems fine. The only problem is that the right palm-rest area doesnt cool very fast so after gaming or intensive CPU load it stays hot and makes typing kind of uncomfortable.

2. I was expecting more - I mainly checked on the notebookcheck page on the 870m and they got: 3DMark Firestrike 4687 median (avg: 4682; min: 4558); 3DMark 11 Performance: 7089 median (avg: 6639; min: 4831). I know this wasn't a blade though.

Edit: 3Dmark fixed their website so now I can see the results. It seem that my 870m is a little slower, but really not by much. I guess everybody here is getting the same? It's interesting to see that other laptops were able to push the 870m much higher (Firestrike up to 4400-4500; Sky Diver up to 15100 with default clock 941MHz). I wonder if higher-end CPU had anything to do with that; or, if its the rumored throttle due to insufficient power.

3. Will try - is there an option to do that through Nvidia Experience? I thing that I can only do that by downloading that driver new from Nvidia Website and selecting uninstall first.

4. It's always when I do heavy load - I thought it was the fan but it may be some electric interference as well. I'm quite sad about that since I came from XPS that had a horrible coil whine and I was really hoping for quiet laptop . Does anybody have the same problem?

 

Or just use XTU to set your CPU profile, since you can save multiple profiles and create shortcuts to them. It will have to be "tuned" depending on the game. Some games run faster with faster clocks. But I do this too, use XTU to set CPU to 3GHz, and undervolt accordingly.

 

Quick question about Razer Synapse and the fuction kyes.

I'm used to disabling having to press the Fn key (ie instead of pressing Fn + F8 to dimm the brightness I would simply press F8). With Dell I could switch between the two simply by using Shift+Esc / in control panels / bios. However, I can't do that or RB for some reason. I have tried going around it by setting it through Razer Synapse and macros - but it doesn't record the Fn Key at all and the only settings that are pre-defined are volume up and volume down.

Is there a way to either switch the functionality so I don't have to use the Fn key in the first place, or can I somehow manage through the Synapse? Thanks!

 

XTU is a top notch program highly recommend. Now as far as heat goes I am not really to concerned about high temps. Mobile cards will always run hot and that is fine, they are designed for it. On the flip side however high heat will cause throttling and degraded gaming performance. I am still doing some research on the 870m, trying to find its sweet spot when it comes to thermals. At this point I believe that some frame rate capping will help to maintain stable performance on long gaming stints. I will hopefully be able to get some testing in with some benchmarks, thermals, GPU clock speeds and graphics FPS soon. Also correct me if I am wrong but I believe the Razer Blade uses an integrated heat piping system, connecting both GPU and CPU to the fan. If this is true the more heat you can pull of of one the better the other as the thermals will be dependent of each other.

 

I was hoping a fellow Blade 2014 owner could help me out here. If you own this laptop, in device manager, under imaging devices, what does your webcam show up as? Does it just show up as USB Camera? I tried using Skype tonight for the first time on my Blade, and I noticed almost every other time the camera is activated, the video from the webcam is all messed up. It almost looks like 1950s antenna television, with scrolling lines and purple hue. If I end the call and call back it will be fine, and then happen again. Its sounds like a driver issue, but wanted to see what others have. (picture attached)

 

New Blade, picked up at the MS Store in SF last night (in stock, 256MB). Works great out of the box, very impressed with the build quality.

My main box is a MBP Retina 15", but I wanted something for games and native Visual Studio. Machine is subtle, compared to my old ASUS gaming laptop, and frame rates are stellar.

Zero tweaking so far, just working great.

Want: Three-finger drag (instead of tap-and-hold) and two-finger right-click (to match the taps of my MBP).

 

2 finger right click:

1. Open Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\TouchPad...
2. Find 2FingerTapAction and change the value to '2' (or '4' for middle button click)
3. Find MultiFingerTapFlags and check if it is '3'
4. Restart

 

Yes they are designed for it - but like you said, the longevity is a great thing Also, if the laptop feels colder, thats amazing - and it can cool down faster.

I did some testing yesterday with Witcher 2 and with my XTU undervolting profile and limiting the core to 99% (hence to 2.29GHz) I got max temps 80C on CPU and 85 on GPU after about 3 hours. All this with no changes to the GPU. So yes you are right that both temps should affect each other to an extent - which is exactly what I said it the post before .