Razer Blade 14 5900HX

Really all I did was update AMD and Nvidia drivers, max out all power settings I could find, then find the highest possible stable overclock in Afterburner. This probably took longer than it really needed to because I'm cheap and didn't buy 3DMark, so the demos had to play every time before the benchmark tests. If we could bump up the power, we could probably go higher, but power and heat are where we're limited.

As mentioned above, you have to connect to an external monitor to get everything out of this system. Nvidia Optimus is awesome for battery life, but bottlenecks performance while using the internal display. The way it works is that the Nvidia GPU can do all the graphics processing, but sends everything through the Ryzen APU/Radeon iGPU before it gets to the screen. This causes overhead and I think draws power that would otherwise be available for CPU-only tasks.

This is why some laptops have multiplexers (MUX). MUX is like having multiple internal input connections and being able to switch input on the display, just like an external monitor or TV can do. But MUX requires hardware that takes space on the motherboard, and it may not currently be possible to fit MUX in the 14" form factor. It's worth noting that MUX can also come with some disadvantages, so it's not an end-all, be-all solution.

Fortunately, the video outputs on the Blade 14 come straight from the Nvidia GPU, so it physically bypasses Nvidia Optimus. Realistically, although a bit hampered on the internal display, performance in this little beast is amazing. It leaves my desktop with Core i7 8700 and GTX 1070 in the dust. I've been playing games at qHD on that thing for four years now. The Blade 14 does the same thing, but better on higher in-game settings.

 

Which are?

 

Which makes 14 bulkier. Adding mux adding hardware adding size, means won’t fit on 13 inch sleeve anymore. Second Addition performance maybe bring extra heat that already no room more for this especially on 3070 and 3080 class (maybe answers why they copied Alienbook to throttle the performance for better cooling for having unibody cassis with less heat exhaust) even potato 80watt tgp on g14 with heat exhaust everywhere, users already complaining the heat aka maybe avoid infamous battery bloat. Third…forgot but I’ll back later when remember

 

Extra hardware, which isn't necessary for everyone. Added complexity - an additional feature that can malfunction/break.

Having to remember manual control, or else the one time you need battery life and don't have access to power, 30 minutes in you realize you're down to 60% battery.

Requirement to reboot when switching.

Additional factor in possibly bricking BIOS/EC during flash update because something wasn't set properly before starting the flash.

Even with Advanced Optimus, having to rely on Nvidia to not screw up driver updates. Or not being able to update drivers because a certain machine runs best on its own flavor of driver.

Other software issues causing screen tear or flickering, causing the MUX switch to not function to begin with, or things like I/O ports not working when in discrete mode.

MUX is not an industry standard feature. Software has to tie everything together, including BIOS, EC, PCH, CPU, the MUX, display adapters, keyboard/interface device, and the display. This of course has to be a proprietary solution and has to be compatible with the OS, several other manufacturers' drivers and applications. One simple example of all of this going wrong are the common issues caused by sleep mode, like reverting settings and/or breaking features, coming back from sleep with no display, or not coming back from sleep at all, usually leading to more reboots, hard resets, or sometimes even CMOS reset.

Or maybe I should've just said "Windows Update". If someone has a system several years down the road and a Windows update breaks MUX, will the manufacturer fix it?

Laptops are laden with compromise for the sake of portability. But things get better and better every year. Nvidia is trying to improve things with Advanced Optimus. The industry is slow to adapt, but standardization would give us a huge improvement in function and performance.

MUX was/is a justified requirement for built-in GSYNC panels, but in the case of the Blade 14 and a few others now, FreeSync is maintained while Optimus is enabled. Personal opinion? That is so much more important to me than having 350 FPS instead of 280 FPS (which I would limit anyway), or 165 FPS instead of 150 FPS, or even 60 FPS instead of 55 FPS.

I'm not saying Optimus is better than MUX. Just saying that MUX isn't the requirement that a lot of people are making it out to be. If 5-15 FPS and 3ms of latency are that critical to someone, they should probably be on an external screen or desktop to begin with.

 

Overruled! Gimme!

 

All valid points. Though the issues you mentioned (Windows updates, bsod, sleep issues, blank screens, wonky driver issues…) can and do all happen on MUX-less laptops. One reason why I sold my G14 was the sleep issue. The laptop would never sleep no matter what setting I adjusted or registry edit I made. A laptop that won’t sleep is worthless to me. Likely an AMD driver issue because that’s AMD.

My G14 would not boot using the stock Asus nvidia driver from a system restore. I had to disable internet, remove driver, run DDU, boot into safe mode, and install the latest official nvidia driver. That’s a real pain in the butt. Good riddance to that laptop.

The vast majority don’t need a MUX I agree. But it is a game - changing feature for those who appreciate it. You get the advantage of g-sync while using the dGPU and no latency from running display through the iGPU. I don’t mind a simple reboot or using advanced optimus. I still think g-sync plays better than FreeSync, but that’s way off topic haha.

My current laptop has a MUX but can’t use adaptive sync while in dGPU mode which is annoying but not a deal breaker.

 

I agree, a lot of these software issues occur throughout the vast range of hardware out there. That's why I'm a fan of this kind of thing being standardized throughout the industry. When one manufacturer creates a solution that they want everyone else to adapt, it really holds their feet to the fire and motivates them to get it right! I really hope Advanced Optimus takes off. Ideally, it will become cheap and easy for the manufacturers to implement.

Sorry to hear things didn't go well with the G14. The G15 was the first machine that caught my eye, along with the G14 and M16. I was almost dead set on the G15. I actually traveled to the next city to buy one, and they sold it on my way there. I spent a couple of weeks doing research before going with the Blade 14. I think this is the first time I didn't buy on impulse with only 10 minutes of research

I had MUX in the AW 17 R4 GSYNC. Back then, I had no idea that MUX helped unlock higher frame rates. But that panel was my first for both high refresh rate and GSYNC. The increased smoothness of something as simple as moving the mouse on the Windows desktop and the sudden elimination of screen tear from my life made a huge impact on me. I haven't gamed on the Blade much yet, but I can already tell FreeSync is at least acceptable. I only had an old HDMI 1.4 cable laying around to hook up to external monitor last week. The screen tear at 60Hz was a shocking five year step back

 

Cant agree more advance optimus and mux is a game changer. So for big lappy it’s a must imo, like 2021 is qhd time for laptops. Asus just being Asus, with their software like Razer being Razer with their CS or battery. About that sleep issue recently saw on x15, it drives Josh nuts (ca 11:25) I think someone links made my Youtube algorithm catching his videos
Just love and enjoy my/your laptop, in my experience when you loving them they will love and feed well your needs back. I remember when I wanted to sell my old car or laptops it was not rarely they suddenly give me trouble lmao.

I’d like to time leap to the future and bring back a with Tim Cook quality sound and 120Hz mini led Applebook air m7x that running windows games at max 60degrees cpu temperature with an 5070 super maxq 100 watt, not sure if I’m still alive when that product comes.

 

You know it's funny you mention that as everytime I pull out my iPad I always wonder how the heck does this sound better than any laptop I've ever used? Like can I please get these on a normal gaming laptop?

 

Yes true, that’s why I still preferred Tim pad pro 2018, for travel instead bringing windows laptops especially in cheap noisy hostel (wish I work in company that can afford Hilton LoL) the sound is just crazy. Well I’m just afraid 2k laptop being stolen

 

I think most people would probably go for the iPad since they likely don’t know the brand on laptop. Lol. Same iPad Pro as mine. If they had the mini led for the 11” I would’ve grabbed one. I don’t do any work on my iPad though so the M1 chip didn’t make any sense. The blade 14 could cover that easily if need be.

 

I think it's been qHD time for almost five years already! The AW 17 R4 GTX 1070 is well-aged compared to current machines, but it still plays well for my brother. But now the technology is matured and better than ever even in our 14" laptops (so much better than 2017 Blade 14). Maybe another five years and 4K laptops will become ubiquitous... hopefully even "cheap".

Depending on how the market is next year or perhaps when RTX 4000 cards release, I think we'll make the switch to 4K for the desktops in my home. Hopefully, the 4070 will be up for it, but we could possibly splurge on the 4080.

 

Sorry I meant for laptop gaming.

 

Me too. My 17 R4 was qHD 120Hz with GSYNC. There have been a good number of qHD screens available since then, but the offerings were weird. Only Alienware and Gigabyte offered qHD with GTX 1070, but then there were a lot of smaller laptops with GTX 1060 or no dGPU that had qHD, qHD+, or 4K options, including the Razer Blade 14 and Blade Stealth, Alienware 13 R3/Dell XPS 13, Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Asus Zenbook. I'm glad qHD is gaining traction. I never like working on 1080p laptops at work anymore.

 

I see, didn’t know AW had qhd on 1070. Yes Razer had also qhd+ for content creators even with old 870m, 970m. I’ve also 1070 blade 15 all it can do on my titles was 1080p can do 1440p through external screen but it plays like console with turing 2080 and ampere 3070 upper i don’t get why gaming laptops manufacturer still produce 1080p, yes maybe for CSGo valorant players (they should stick with 1070ish imo) but 1080p wasting the performance due cpu bottleneck on this resolution for open world gamers like me imo.

 

It was a TN panel. So it had pretty meh view angles. And they didn’t sell it with it for that long if I remember correctly. But it made me hope future laptops would adopt qhd soon. Took em a few years.

I actually miss that old Razer screen. Think it was 3200x1800 or something like that? I have some fond memories of playing games at 1600x900 on that machine and being impressed how well it worked.

 

Yes 1800p qhd plus touch, missed it as well had it on 2015 blade, freaking 5 years (last time (2020) I checked the buyer from me sell it without any hardware defect) great machine, I directly returned late 2016 FHD when upgrading it, tons of downgrade, the screen, fans noise, but Razer exchanged it with newer model (2017 that solved the problem) after months fight with CS who recommending reinstall windows to solve the fans issue lmao. After several months finally they fixed the fans behavior issue on late 2016 through bios update, so you get the point .
TN panel? I see never tried any of those kind panel but it’s great isn’t it you don’t have to buy screen privacy cover Anyway they can’t see well from side, saved 20 bucks
I did mention missed that screen but to be clear not the Kim K’s bezels and refresh rate The tearing on shooter games like Dishonored made my eyes seeing on bottom areas where the tearing occurs.

 

TN panels came a long way. It was the vertical viewing angle that seemed to matter. Color was decent too. But with OLED being a thing I wouldn’t go back if I was going for a non gaming panel. But even those come in high refresh rates these days.

I never really noticed response times, but I definitely don’t miss screen tearing. I swore off of sli even before it died because how some games just didn’t work well with it and caused screen tearing.

 

Keeps getting better and better. I returned my Blade in mid July back to Razer, ongoing bank disputes for 1) the laptop and 2) the warranty purchased after sale. I received an email today from Razer confirming my warranty purchase / contract details. What a joke.

 

Sounds like you’re going through something similar to what I dealt with when I returned the original blade stealth with the mx150 gpu. Took them almost two months to return my money and part of the reason was they claimed that since I opened a claim they couldn’t refund me. I more or less raged on Reddit and Razer fixed my issue THAT day because they didn’t want the bad PR. Shame to hear they’re still doing the same thing all these years later.

 

Yeah, this is a case where the best of an older technology is at least better than the worst of the newer technology. For TN panels, the 2017 AW 17 R4 and the Dell S2716DG are great! But it was all about 120/144 Hz and GSYNC with those panels. In terms of color they don't hold a candle to even my 2014 Omen 15 IPS panel (that panel is still beautiful). Despite that, I prefer the higher refresh rate and elimination of screen tear.

Another thing I've never had an issue with: IPS glow and/or backlight bleed. Except with a low-spec MSI laptop sold by Best Buy in 2016. That panel was a terrible TN with overly boosted colors, horrible backlight and made my eyes physically hurt. Maybe I've just been lucky with panel lottery... or maybe I learned my lesson to stay away from budget laptops.

I know one thing: whatever monitor I get next I want no motion blur, good contrast and color, 120+Hz, G-Sync, 27-32" OLED and for $800 or less. I may be have to keep dreaming for awhile longer. I would use my OLED TV, but it's too big to use on the desk, and then the wife would want one, too...

 

Finally my dispute of the laptop refund (Blade 14 3060) with Razer is over, credit card / bank sided with me. Two months after returning the laptop. Still waiting on the warranty portion of the dispute.

 

Sad to see Razer still trying to pull this kind of thing. Banks will usually side with you on situations like this, so that’s a relief. I wonder what has to happen for this to not happen anymore? Myself and others have gone through similar issues in the past.

 

Stop buying things from Razer directly, or better yet, stop buying things from Razer all together.

 

Agree 1000% now. Glad I saw the light and acted with my wallet. As much as I love Razer laptops I just can't recommend them to anyone anymore unless they are willing to accept the risks. There are better alternatives (subjectively speaking) if you take the time and look. At these price points no one should settle on a laptop that has soldered (and slow to the point where it hinders CPU performance) RAM and / or SSD. Never again. Swapping the RAM on my laptop (also AMD 5000 series) increased performance and particularly minimum frames to the point where they should be for the specs.

 

Hopefully now that Razer is making 14" laptops again that other manufactures will try to compete with them. The G14 really half tried with this form factor. But, atleast it was cheaper. But, from reviews and friends I've talked to they really dropped the ball. If someone would come out with something like this with a MUX switch and upgradable RAM it would be a very sought after product. I really have no idea what company I would like to see make that happen though. As alot of companies are honestly garbage in the CS department. As much as I agree Razer Support needs alot of work, it's naive to think anyone else is honestly much better. They all suck.

 

Other manufacturers weren't doing similarly sized gaming laptops when Razer made the first Blade 14. Given the limitations on the 2021 model and the rapid cooling of the market for the G14, those companies probably aren't going to be compelled to bring out their own. Acer tried with the Predator Triton 300 SE, but it's received pretty lukewarm reviews.

Enthusiasts are a subset of a subset of the laptop market. You can't say that a product with the features you specifically desire will be sought after, especially since these companies can't simply wave a magic wand and put fully upgradable RAM inside a small form factor.

 

This is where Razer came to, did you ever think they’ll put 3080 and 100watt on this form factor? I didn’t even think about that, considering g14 is already struggled with 80watt? On this, i believe since every review saying suck 16gb soldered ram on v2 they’ll increase it, or maybe even ram slot or mux is even not impossible to get “world first” or “most powerful” marketing stuff. Don’t forget Alienware had also 13 14 inch form factors, from their movement that’s also not impossible they do a x13 the thinnest Alienware laptop ever made…with everything soldered to motherboard including the monitor lmao.

 

If they only made an effort to really improve their customer support, they would really take off I'd think? They are on another level compared to the G14 and Asus laptops which look like toys. There is a market I think, more than just us enthusiasts. I think many people like powerful compact laptops that don't look like alien ships with RGB trash. Lenovo Legion laptops have skyrocketed in popularity for this reason and they launched the "slim" versions this year. MSI has been getting more tame with their designs too. Acer is at least trying, haha.

 

Has anyone tried the Scar 115w 3080 VBIOS? I am very tempted. Can't lose my USB-C ports though, I use them for DP out.

Damnit, the Clevo one kills the USB-C port I use.

 

Anything but a Razer bios will, as far as I've seen.

 

@jlp0209 tried I think Acer and Clevo vbios on page 39 and 47 this thread, on 3080 apparently left usb C has output problem, you still use right one for DP though and left one maybe for pheriperal? If you want sure you can try it, I think I tried every vbios available on web like from 20 plus different 3070 laptops. The last one I tried is from @jlp0209 blade pro 3070 130 watt (first 130 watt that works properly without resulting graphics glitches nor suddenly closing down the apps/games), but I preferred other vbios for better performance and power consumption.

I tried Lenovo legion keyboard it’s another level. Was in Portugal Zombie Island in vacation and found it on electric store called Worten, zombies doesn’t understand gaming laptops pricing i think that g14 3060 is pretty cheap for EU price here in Germany it’s at least 2K. Maybe if they, Lenovo, go 14 inch gaming market I’d be weak.

Edit: pages links

 

As @Joikansai said earlier there really aren't any vbios that retain 100% functionality with the Blade 14. Combined he and I have tried almost all of them haha. The safest one for the 3080 is from the Clevo laptop. It's 105w so you really gain nothing from it and lose one USB-C / DP port as you know. Whatever you do, don't try the Acer vbios that I tried earlier. It is likely from a shunt modded 3080 and is greater than 130w TGP. I measured the laptop pulling 216w from the wall during gaming with those vbios. It'll drain your battery while gaming on AC power because it sucks so much power. I wouldn't trust Razer's AC adapter to be capable of sustaining that load either, not to mention VRM and spicy pillow issues.

Legion keyboards are fantastic. I actually like the Legion 5 keyboard more than the Legion 7, key travel and feedback just felt better. Looks like a nice shop you were at, lots of toys!

 

Recently received the Blade 14 3080 version and am quite disappointed in its performance.

I mainly play valorant - a competitive shooter that is known to perform well on potato machines.
However, with the blade 14, I am only hitting 130fps on average.

A friend bought at the same time as I did and is also experiencing the same thing.

I currently have a 3080 desktop with 5800x and it runs 400fps on an Samsung Odyssey G9.
Is something wrong for me to expect valorant to run at least 180fps?
Valorant is a CPU heavy game, so it is quite odd with a 5900HX that it is not doing so well.

 

Hi there, replied your Post on Reddit. Yes it seems you’ve performance issue. Since I just tried on default 100 watt 3070 blade 14 vbios on training mode though it can easily hits 220ish (1440p all high default) with lower FPS maybe for seconds rarely 130ish. And it’s on internal screen with optimus bottleneck, on external it should be more, though it’s practice, yesterday with better vbios (blade pro 130 watt) on game Session it was a bit low but still hitting 200ish.
Check on zen timing which kind of ram do you have, since ryzen is quite sensitive on this point and they sell also “Bad“ ram apparently on some batch.
I attached my zen timing for reference, if you got other and other shooting titles like CSgo have similar issue better return it.

 

Thanks for that!
RAM timings are the same and I’ve actually got x2 blade 14 3080 and both hit the same low FPS to isolate the issue

only thing I can think is, are you running the latest GeForce drivers? Someone on reddit mentioned the latest drivers was causing low FPS. May try a rollback

one other thing I noticed from your screenshot was how high your cpu/gpu usage is. For whatever reason, mine only goes to 30-40% usage for both cpu/gpu - does this indicate a RAM issue?

 

I’m on 471.11 not sure if it’s the latest since I don’t use Jensen experience, and update it when it’s needed for my games like fancy Ray tracing or dlss update. CPU is usually on that ranges when gaming shows there’s no cpu bottleneck (when hitting 100% means your cpu holding gpu performance as far I understand) but on gpu on screen shot it’s maybe accidentally not high 90ish% but usually it’s on there (on GPU higher means you’re using it on its max performance). Not sure how to relate the ram speed to the performance from afterburner osd values, know only 16gb more than enough for this usage.

 

Hmm thanks for clarifying - the only other difference i can see is that i'm running BIOS 1.06 rather than 1.01

 

I’m on 1.06 as well (updated once), 1.01 was first batch bios (like first batch/earlier units and YouTuber samples, some review unit comes apparently with 1.05) i think later models comes with it by default not sure though, seems it lower a bit cpu performance compared to 1.01, but fixed some other bugs like charging while on off condition etc.

 

I think I have found the answer - it is simply the iGPU.

I ran it with external monitor and hit 200fps and I can see that the 3080 is doing the heavy lifting. However without a MUX to switch off the iGPU, i'm seeing split utilisation between the iGPU and dGPU.

If only razer made a way to turn off the iGPU

 

Yes optimus bottleneck performance more especially on shooting titles like that. Maybe update the Radeon Software and Windows as well, those i updated manually. Not sure on 3080 version but on 3070 the difference between internal and external isn’t that huge on my titles but not sure in valorant since I tested it only on internal, my external refresh rate is worse than blade 14.

 

tried updating drivers and didn't change a thing unfortunately

 

Hmm, yes there’s something wrong there. Does it happen with other titles and how about your timespy score?
I applied back blade pro 3070 130 watt and checked valorant FPS on external monitor that was crazy 400 FPS same 1440p setting on train mode though still scared got headache when doing session, but it can reach almost 500ish, sure with extra heat comes due higher FPS.

 

Wow... Am stumped to be honest! As mentioned, a friend bought at the same time as myself and has the exact same results, it hopefully this indicates possibly a driver issue (we both updated to the latest nvidia drivers)

 

At first month owning it I tried also newest driver but it wasn’t better compared to oem that comes with blade so I sticked to that, forgot how I came to 471.11, but I usually keep older driver on separate folder when upgrading see if the old performs better. However it was comparison on 3DMark as the measurement point, so in real gaming maybe it won’t be that huge. Personally I’d take a look other titles and make sure if that’s that specific game, driver or hardware issue.

 

Seems game specific - any esports title from Dota2, CS go, valorant etc will have crap FPS

I just tried replicating the exact same scenario that you've got 400 FPS and I end up with 200 FPS

My 3Dmarks have been decent scores

Have you got 100w VBIOS 3070 to test? Greatly appreciate your help!

 

I would do a complete wipe of all your GPU drivers and reinstall them in the method specified by the user in this reddit post:

Max-15 has a weird OS level stutter... do Driver updates for hardware come through the windows update process? : eluktronics (reddit.com)

 

I tried latest driver like you, nothing special installing it, using GeForce experience express install. And it’s default vbios 100 watt. It’s on internal and external screen with attached setting (damn it’s like double FPS on external).
However your cpu looks like runs cooler, which synapse profile is it? And try set also on nvidia control panel image setting to performance instead quality like mine, and on 3D setting texture filtering from quality to high performance, and see.
Btw your Timespy I think a bit lower (I think it was 10,4K on 3080) , not sure how is it now with default vbios, Razer is being Razer maybe they lower the performance for better temperature? I’ll check it how it performs on Timespy (default 100 watt).
Edit: Timespy score on default ssd on internal screen. A bit lower now but that won’t put valorant down to 130fps average, on some scene might be drop on that on play session, but can get definitely over 165 refresh rate.

 

Doesn't seem I can get more than 10k on timespy but i think it might be the default vbios doing that.

Regardless at this point, have given up and just accepted that it won't pull great FPS on competitive esports titles.

I think it's a mix of Optimus, game optimisation (cpu heavy games), and the size footprint of the Blade 14.

 

From your screenshots you’ve better cpu temperatures than mine, so yours probably protected by Razer conservative cooling bios while mine maybe there’s something I forgot to set to default that make Razer bios confused even on default bios, for example even on games the cpu temperature usually between 70 and 80ish on cinebench it’s right away 100 and sometimes on synapse balance mode after waking when playing games it’s straightly to 90ish, have to toggle to costum high which actually giving better FPS and it runs back to normal 70ish FPS. Let’s see if other 3080 owner having similar FPS with you.