Razer Blade (2014) Owner's Lounge

Okay so I ran a whole bunch of tests today trying out a bunch of different set ups.

All results were conducted with an out of the box Razer Blade. The programs used were, 3d mark 11, Intel XTU, GPU-Z, HW Monitor and Nvidia Inspector. Test were conducted on a wooden computer desk using no cooler. Ambient temperature in the room was 24c. The laptop was set to "Highest Performance Mode" before benchmarking. Please keep in mind that actual game play may not be reflected by 3d Mark 11 Scores.

First test (stock no modifications)
3d mark score: 6647
CPU Idle Temps: 50c
GPU Idle Temps: 41c

CPU Load Temps: 92c
GPU Load Temps: 87c
Clock Speeds under load using 3d mark
GPU Max Clock: 966.8Mhz
GPU Min Clock (throttling) 849.2Mhz @ 86c (further observations revealed the GPU starts to throttle around 84c)

Best Test(-95mv CPU and -25mv GPU)
3d Mark 11 Score: 7006
Idle CPU Temps: 48c
Idle GPU Temps: 42c

Load CPU Temps: 85c
Load GPU Temps: 85c
Clock Speeds under load using 3d mark
Max GPU Clock: 966.8Mhz
Min GPU Clock(throttling): 940.2Mhz @85c

All and all I am happy with the results. I gained a little extra performance and dropped some of that pesky heat causing GPU throttling. For long term gaming sessions I do recommend a fps limiter of under 60 which can be done with Nvidia Inspector. As far as Under clocking the CPU goes I did see slightly improved thermals around -2c from load. However, the performance took a hit causing considerable drop in 3d Mark 11 Scores(low 6000's, this may or may not be reflected in actual game play).

 

You must have gotten a faster unit than mine, I wish I could get those scores When applying Intel XTU changes, you dont need to keep the program running to see the changes right? You can apply then close it? I only got a 6500 score with turbo, and 6300 without.

 

This doesn't tell you where the problem is - you need to compare the individual scores. I got 6791 (with graphics: 6835, physics 7348 and combined 5846). However, with limiting the CPU to 2.29GHz I got only about 6500. The important part was that graphics stayed the same and physics went down a lot. So have a look at your scores and see which one is actually the bottle-neck.

Also make sure you are running latest drivers and run hwinfo or something like that to make sure you don't throttle because of heat.

 

Which tests are you guys running fire strike?

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Yeah now comparing my results to other people's, the graphics are within ~+-100 points of change, which is very close, but their physics score was much much higher than mine.

This is my test NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4702HQ,RAZER RAZER

Why is my physics so low? I am not using turbo, but I was told it would be better to leave it off, (99% in power options)

 

By the way if someone living ouside US theres no problems with warranty - just talked to razer guys, u need to ship laptop to US to get it repaired but after that they can send it to you worldwide

 

Interesting - I was told that from Europe, I could just ship it to their center in Munich, Germany and from there they would cover the costs to ship it to US. Also, they plan to release the RB in EU later this year or early next - that would be amazing, because we could potentially get service there.

Thats what I get with turbo off on 99% - enable turbo and you should get higher score. You can also see this in the Physics test - I got about 17 or 18 fps with turbo off and 20-21 with it on.

 

Electric noise/coil whine: Everybody, could you please take a quick look at this video and tell me if you have the same issue? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M-t6pUO-pc My system has this electric noise - it is not very audible, but when you hear it - its there and it makes the system use quite annoying in quiet environments. The noise gets louder at 01:00 and very loud at 01:36.

 

My power supply makes a slight electrical buzz but my RB does not have this issue. I have been hearing a lot of people complaining about it as well as cricket like noises.

 

Does anybody know if there's a way to show all options in the nVidia Control Panel? Right now all I see is "3D Settings" and nothing more.

 

I got my second replacement unit from MS store and the Blade still produces high pitched ticking noises from the keyboard. Is this supposed to happen?

 

No high-pitched noise is supposed to happen. Older computers had some noise due to mechanical hard-drives but with SSD system should be almost completely silent. Is this the same as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M-t6pUO-pc ?

 

At the risk of sounding like a noob, which settings exactly in XTU are you tweaking? Also, out of curiosity, which version are you using? I'm trying v4.4.0.4 but it freezes regularly.

N

 

Yes, exactly the same deal!

 

BTW today I have done some battery testing.

- Started at 75%
- -88mV dynamic CPU voltage offset, -11mV on procesor cache, -35mV on iGPU
- very light usage (some browsing, word, 2 restarts, about 20m screen off, 1hour basically inactive)
- brightness to minimum
- turbo off (99% limit -> 2.29GHz)
- custom balanced mod (balanced, but with all the possible tweaks in the advanced power management - aside from maximum saving on connectivity)
- dGPU forced off
- sound off
- no multimedia

Rundown time until the screen turned off was 3h58m (from 75%). This means that full rundown would be 5h33m with max undervolt, minimal brightness, turbo off, and light usage. Not absolutely terrible, but definitely was expecting at least a little more. 6h with light usage without underclock/volt would be nice. I think one of the big issues is the minimal brightness that is way too bright.

 

I'm sorry to report that I sent my Razer back to Microsoft today. I reported on the forum a few days ago that I had to reset my machine due to some software issues I was having. It turns out, I don't really think there were any software issues at all, but a slowly accelerating hardware problem, which has now led to my Blade being unusable, even to the point of being unable to reset it to factory state.

I had noticed a few weeks ago that on rare occasions, I would wake up the machine to what I call a "gray screen" state. That is, the machine is obviously booted and running, but no video display other than a gray screen, and no way to restore a correct video image.

This has been happening more and more frequently, and over the last few days, it was pretty much the only state the machine would ever be in upon waking up.

In addition, the machine began to gray-screen on power-up - rarely at first, and then more and more frequently, to the point where, now, the machine gray-screens about 9 out of 10 times on boot-up (soft-boot or hard-reset boot, doesn't matter), and gray-screens about 7 out of 10 times on wake-up. Also, on one occasion I woke the machine to a video image that was visible, but slightly color-shifted towards green or blue, and another time to a set of colors which I at first mistook for having accidentally set a high-contrast color scheme, but that turned out not to be the case, and a reboot was required.

I tried resetting the machine to factory, which I thought had helped for awhile, but the gray screens returned within a day or two, and were worse than before.

This morning, I decided to reset the machine to factory once again, and could not get the machine to boot up at all through a few power cycles. Then it booted and I ran the reset, but Windows needs to reboot a time or two during its installation, and, each time the power-up occurs, the machine was gray-screening to the point where I think it messed up the Windows install (since the gray-screen state requires me to hard-reset the machine in hopes of avoiding the gray-screen state on the next boot).

I called Microsoft, described the problem, and the tech (Microsoft Signature Support tech) agreed with me that the machine was toast. He said if I wanted to send it in for repair, it would likely end up going back to Razer itself for repair, and it would take as long as one month for me to get it back. He then checked for any retail store stock at the nearest store to me (St. Louis - a nearly 3-hour drive), but they only had the 256gig machines in stock, and mine is a 512.

He then said he would arrange for an exchange through the online store, but I would have to wait until they got the machine before sending the new one out, so I asked about just buying another one online, and getting a refund, which he immediately agreed to, even though I've had the machine about two weeks longer than the normal 30-day return period.

So, I've got a replacement coming tomorrow, which I am going to give a very, very thorough going-over in the following 30 days. If there is even a hint of a problem, this one will be going back for refund instead of replacement, and I'll probably just use my 2011 MacBook Pro until the Broadwell MacBook Pros come out towards the end of the year, and buy one of those.

 

I've had that problem too but nowhere near that frequently. I'd say 10% on wake, but only once or twice on cold boot. Let us know if the replacement is any better.

One thing I did find in my testing is to leave the factory installed Intel video driver alone. I had a lot of wake problems and traced it to installing a newer Intel video driver. I even blocked Windows Update from installing the one it tries to. I'm currently on nvidias latest beta with the factory Intel and the grey screens are minimal.

N

 

I thought the new Intel driver was to blame too, at first, but before the first reset I tried rolling the driver back to no avail. After the first factory reset, the drivers were left as present on the factory image. On my third try this morning, the gray screens persisted through a re-format of the Windows partition, and even through Windows' attempts to install itself. I'm not sure this can be blamed on an Intel driver, since the gray screens are happening before the Windows driver is even loaded, after a full power off and hard reset.

 

TJ you have described my situation to a T. I have had precisely the same thing happen. I, like you, thought this was a software issue, and like you the factory reset only has made the issue worse. I called Razer today and will be sending my machine back.

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I don't know if hearing of your situation has made more worried as this may be a systemic issue.

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Just out of curiosity, how long did you let it sit on the grey screens? A couple of times, I let it sit and almost exactly 60 seconds later it would continue booting.

N

 

I use the "dynamic voltage offset slider" under all controls. I have the latest version and it does tend to lock up on me from time to time but I just wait it out and it fixes itself. For my GPU I am using Nvidia Inspector to undervolt the card. The max allowed undervolt on the 870GPU is -25mv. You would need to mod the VBIOS to go any further than this.

 

Had no idea about Chrome Canary. Thanks for the tip!

 

Well, at this point I've experienced the problem so frequently that I doubt there's much I haven't tried. Like you, on occasion during boot I have noticed that the machine seems to detect after some period of time that something isn't right, and it reboots by itself again, sometimes successfully. However, the gray screens are now so frequent (as I said in my post, about 9 out of 10 times on both a Windows fastboot and after a hardware reset), that using the machine is just an exercise in frustration and misery. I'm awaiting delivery of the replacement today (so far, I'm pretty impressed with my Microsoft Signature Support purchase, but, as we all know, a single sample isn't necessarily representative of the entire population, and I sure hope I'm not going get the opportunity to gather statistically relevant sampling...).

I'm very sorry to hear that others are seeing this behavior, as it has greatly increased my anxiety that there could possibly be a significant issue with the model rather than a rare problem with a few individual units.

I wonder if others would chime in who have used their machines for a month or more and let us know if they have *not* seen this problem at all. I think I'd feel better if I knew some people had never experienced the problem after some extended use of the machine.

BTW, one thing I didn't mention in my original post is that I have suspected that waking the machine by opening the lid produces the "gray screen on wake" a lot more frequently than leaving the lid up and using the power switch to sleep and wake the machine. However, this has not appeared to increase or reduce the frequency of "gray screen on boot" issues, which is, for me, the bigger problem.

 

I have found that if you get the boot "grey screen" and wait a while the screen will turn black and activating it will sometimes bring it to the lock screen.

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Lately I'm having this issue when I start the computer that it seems to minimize all the windows I open while Windows is booting.

Say, I click on the Steam icon, or File Explorer, and as soon as the window opens it minimizes. Has anyone experienced this?

 

Now that I've been using Chrome Canary for a day, I'm wishing that other programs would look as good on this great screen. I didn't notice how poorly fonts displayed on Chrome until I installed Chrome Canary! What other programs do you all know of that are optimized for high DPI displays? I'm hoping that more programs will catch up soon!

 

Most of the windows 8 apps look great. I tried using the desktop client of viber and the text and ui was so tiny. I uninstalled it and replaced it with the metro version and it's so much better.


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Do you ever find it uncomfortably small to be using the 14-inch Razer Blade, especially those coming from 15-17 inch screens? Is there a big difference in user experience compared to 15.6 inches? If you use Photoshop, does it feel comfortable on that screen? I would have already purchased the Blade but 14 inches just feels so small ...

 

14 inch is not as small as you think it might be. I had MSI GT780 which had a 17" display. I game and work just find with the 14" but I find myself bringing the laptop closer to my eyes.

 

No problem at all - I'm coming from XPS 15 - actually I have the two laptops next to each other and there is no problem. 14" is actually great sweetspot. Will it be a little more cramped that 15.6"? Yes, is that an issue? No unless you really want it

 

Okay. If needed, you can always connect an external display down the road.

Three more questions:
1. This is available only in the US, correct?
2. Can you take out the 128 GB SSD and replace it with a larger capacity? What is the pricing for the 256 GB model?
3. What is the color accuracy of the display?

 

I came from an alienware m17x R4, and I can say that the reduction in screen size wasn't an issue. If it were 1600x900, then it might feel a little cramped, but since the resolution is so high at 1800p, you can customize it any way you like it. You can scale back the UI scaling and it makes the screen feel HUGE. However, I bought it from the microsoft store, and it came defaulted to 200% UI scaling, which makes it look normal at this resolution. But if you don't mind a slightly smaller taskbar and icons, you can scale it to 150% or even 125%. For me, 200% was the sweet spot. If you do scale it back, I recommend having a high / adjustable DPI mouse because it takes a lot more movement when you reduce the scaling. In summary, the resolution makes up for the screen size.

 

These are all extremely basic questions that you can find answers to if you did at least minimal search through this or any other forum. But let me help this time

1) Yes for now - there are plans for expansion though. I'm also quite sure there are ways of getting it outside of the country.
2) You can, but you will void the warranty. Seriously - the price? Like thats the most basic thing ever - you can just go to their website and its right there $2399
3) It's very good - I compared it to the Dell XPS 15 which has a terrific screen (after calibration) and it held its ground very well. You can also calibrate the display for increased accuracy

 

For those who ordered from the MS store with the student discount, were you able to stack the $100 graduation code? Apparently, you can't stack both the discount and the code on the MS Site. I tried talking to their online chat and they wouldn't do it for me either.

 

1. Just wanted to make sure.
2. Razer's store is bugged out for me. I can't view the price or the page for the item on the store, only the description page. When I click "Buy Now", hoping to find the price, I first see a glimpse of the Razer Blade but then it redirects me to the store home page. The only way I know that the base price is 2199 is because that has been in many reviews.
3. I've found no reviews saying anything about color accuracy.

Trying to decide between the Asus Zenbook NX500, which hasn't been released yet, and the Razer Blade.

 

So, can anyone comment on throttling on battery, one of the main reasons i bought the 2013 version was because it didn`t throttle on battery however the new model seems to, can an owner test cpu throttle and gpu throttle please, thanks.

 

I just did a couple tests - for CPU I tested with Prime95 and it reacted the same as plugged in (Running at a sustained 2.8 GHz with a stress test). While I was playing Bioshock infinite, however, the CPU seemed to try and stay at the lowest clock possible (bounced around between 800 MHz and 1.5 GHz). I would use this to conclude the CPU isn't necessarily throttled on battery but tends to maintain lower clock speeds if possible. (my gaming experience was not affected by the lower CPU clocks).

As for the GPU, on battery the GPU clock bounced around in the 800 MHz neighborhood. Strangely enough, I didn't really notice a difference in the game performance vs. plugged in.

I turned on the battery boost framerate limiter set to 30 FPS and it was able to keep lower clocks around 650-800.

 

Thanks, how`s batterylife?, 6 hours without gaming like the 2013 model, could you measure drain using batterybar?, also is fan noise that bad?, heard it was high pitched and worse than the last years model, thanks again.

 

Yea it does throttle for me. Playing Final Fantasy unplugged, I struggled to maintain 60fps. It hovered around 40-50. When I plugged it in, no problem, Solid constant 60 fps. So from my experience and from other post I have read it does indeed throttle.
To your other reply in this thread. The battery life is meh. I won't game on it unless it's plugged in. #1 It throttles. #2 it just wont last long. Barely over an hour. My experience from general use wasn't much better. I get the best battery life when I set windows to power saver mode and dim all the lighting, Screen Brightness, including the keyboard. I got about maybe 3 hours of general use. Web browsing, watching shows on Netflix(probably increases battery use) I may have got it to last longer but it really only felt like about 3-4 hours of general use. I may have to pull out a stop watch and see. Point is you're going to want to have this baby plugged in a lot. Unless you're in a car ride or in a situation where you don't have access to an outlet but the reality is that you probably will have access to an outlet, at least here in the US. I mean even newer cars have outlets to plug things into(my dads car has a standard US outlet that I could plug my laptop charger into, plus there's always car chargers) At work I have outlets, in my college classes I have outlets on the desks, at the library i have outlets, friends house outlets near tables/couches. At home I have outlets. The list goes on. If you can plug it in just do it. The cord isn't much of a hassle. Easy to keep out of the way and the power brick is super small! and it's not heavy at all. I have no issues plugging it in. I usually only have it unplugged if I'm lying in bed watching Netflix or something(which is rare cause I have a TV for that and my gaming desktop rig) Anyways these are just my personal opinions after a couple weeks of use.

 

When you say gray screen do you literally mean its gray? Cause I'm trying to determine if I have this issue. Once and only once(last night exactly) I had my laptop plugged into my TV via the HDMI and i left it afk for a bit. It went to sleep mode(lid open) I came back moved the mouse and the keys lit up but the screen was black(TV and laptop) when i unplugged the HDDMI cable the laptop still had a black screen. I had to hold the power button for like 10 seconds to reset/reboot it and it worked fine. So is this the same issues as you? My screen was not gray. I'm reading a lot of these issues and they upset me as I'm sure they upset a lot of people because we all made an investment in this product. Mine was 2600$ and most people paid the same or less depending on the model so it's scary to think that our new expensive toy is broken and we will have to wait to get replacements

 

I'm watching Netflix via the web browser. I'm starting to think that I actually get about maybe 3 1/2 hours if I'm constantly watching episode after episode. as well as some general browsing.

 

Yes, that is the issue. I have found it is dramatically worse if you use any video drivers other than the ones that come with the factory. What I have found though is that Windows Update will automatically update the Intel drivers without asking you. After it did that I had to uninstall and then I used Driver Fusion ( Driver Fusion | Update, manage and monitor drivers & devices | Treexy ) to completely remove the new intel drivers and only then could I successfully install the original Intel drivers.

With the factory drivers I have the issue very rarely. With the newest I had it almost every time the computer slept.

N

 

Well it's only happened once for me so I'm not going to worry about it unless it starts to happen a lot. It could have just been an isolated issue. It seems to me like maybe a driver issue from intel or do you think it's faulty hardware? Also I've only had my RB 2014 for a little over a week and I just did initial windows updates when I got it and no intel drivers have caused any screen issues for me outside the one time last night when I had it hooked up via hdmi.

 

From my experiences (and I've had my blade 14 for 6 weeks now) I'm almost 100% certain its driver related. There may be an underlying hardware bug that newer drivers trip up on or something, but hopefully if that is the case, Razer will issue a BIOS or VBIOS fix.

The user earlier in the thread who had non-stop problems sounded like his was truly defective. He has not yet reported back on the replacement he was sent, AFAIK.

For now, I'd leave things alone. If you start getting regular hang ups all of a sudden its due to the auto update by Windows.

N

 

I've taken some steps and just now disabled auto updates for windows. I have it set to tell me there are updates. This way I can look through them and then opt out of any updates for onboard intel drivers. At least until we hear that this was a driver issue and it has been resolved. I'll probably check around on razers website for any info on this issue. Maybe razer will push an update via synapse 2.0

 

so I watched that video and realized that I have the same high pitch noise but for me here is the reality. I literally had to put my ear up against the keyboard to hear it. Fans on or off I had to put my ear right next to the keyboard to hear it. So maybe mines not super high pitch where you can hear it when normally using it or the people who are complaining about this must literally have their head on the keyboard. I don't know who plays games with their ear on the keyboard but I surely don't. Therefore I'm not going to claim this as a big issue. If it gets to the point where I can hear it over fans noise + game sounds or through headphones then I'll consider asking for a replacement. Also to point out the noise seems to only com from the cpu. I tested putting the gpu under load not using the cpu and there was no high pitch buzz. when I put the cpu under load the buzz started up. Again my ear had to be right on the keyboard to notice it.

 

Just to save you some time, I've already tried the very newest Intel beta drivers and the latest NVidia drivers. I had immediate issues with the latest intel beta and reverted to factory.

 

okay thanks. Yea I haven't done any updates outside of initial windows updates and an nvidia update. So I won't get any intel drivers unless i really NEED to have them in order to continue further operation of the laptop. What immediate issues did you have? Gray screen again? I attempted to try and replicate this issue and i closed my laptop(sleep mode) and reopened it. I did this a couple times and have no issues.

 

I'm not having this issue at all. The only driver I have not updated is that USB LAN adapter one since.. You know.. There is no LAN port