Razer Blade Pro 17" (1080 GPU/late 2016) Owner's Lounge

Mine still showing me BIOS RAID0 issue, I just left it turn on and going sleep, and when I came again its always BIOS on my screen.

Shut downs I have in BLIZZARD games by now, d3 hots and overwatch

 

Is there any RBP out there functioning the way it should?? Sorry, but I had to ask this. Unbelievable what Razer did here...

 

Aren't you overreacting a bit. I have yet to game on mine, though I will this week, but so far so good. What evidence do you have that Razer has done anything here but produce a beautiful and unique machine?


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Because 7 out of 10 machines seem to have serious issues.
My friends RBP worked fine for a week and now it's having the RAID and GPU issues.

 

Don't you think that this is subjective as I am sure that Razer has sold more than 10 of these laptops. I would guess that they have sold thousands by now. So 7 machines that are brand new out of say 5,000 is not really so bad for a new model. Car dealers would kill for that ratio.

 

Umm, that was just a generalization.
There many many many reports of the same issues everywhere. heck in this thread as well.

 

Well I played overwatch on it today for hours and no problems, well except for getting killed allot, lol.


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Latest firestrike graphics score is 20,751. Overall score was low at 13,748 due to having turbo disabled. At 80c max temp while gaming the fan noise is greatly reduced.

 

Wait a few more days if he has got a lucky unit indeed. What strikes me the most about these issues the unit has: no word from Razer...

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Why in god's name disable Turbo on a from before very weak i7 ? And 80C degrees max temp with @2.5GHz is terrible.

 

Games typically use more GPU than CPU, in my case the CPU demand is very light and I have yet to see a laptop stay under 80c while under use including Asus, Alienware, etc...

 

Want to see one? Maybe several? Mine runs at about 75*C max in AAA titles currently. I can provide video, screenshots or whatever you may desire. @D2Ultima also had his machine at about 70*C max IIRC. Plenty of machines run cool under load - it's not that hard to achieve with clever engineering.

EDIT: I looked it up - the new AW15R4 runs at 66*C max with LM and the CPU clocked at 4GHz. It's on this very forum. Enjoy.

Also - modern games are MUCH more CPU demanding than you might believe. My 6700HQ usually is under 60-70% load with a 970M. Now Imagine what it would be like with a 1070 which is about 2-3 times faster. The 6700HQ is a massive bottleneck for the 1080 and at 2.5GHz it's even worse.

 

I've yet to see any performance issues, care to explain how the CPU is a bottleneck to the GPU?

 

It's completely unnecessary to disable Turbo - a laptop should be able to cool the CPU under full load, or it's got problems.

This is a trend I've noticed, people are overly concerned with CPU heat / temperature to the point of OCD behavior - it becomes a focus of effort to lower the heat to unreasonably low numbers using ridiculously overreaching methods - reducing MAX CPU % to 99% or less - disabling CPU Turbo speeds, running at Base frequency or less.

It's completely useless, and steals performance the owner has paid good money to get - shaving the top end off their CPU performance is silly.

Undervolt if you have to, if you still can't keep the CPU under 93c in games, then get another laptop, and complain to the vendor and let them know you are rejecting this laptop due to overly hot CPU temperatures under usage - causing thermal throttling.

Another contributing factor is more people are actually looking at their CPU temperatures using monitoring tools that they don't understand how to use correctly.

They see a high temp of 93c for example, perhaps with 1 or more cores showing Red ink - thermally throttled - but don't realize that might have been a fleeting reading only reached once briefly during an entire run - hours of gaming - and don't realize that most of the time the CPU was well under 90c, even under 80c during the session.

When I see this I recommend turning on logging so they can see the actual readings second by second (or every 2 seconds is likely enough), and after reading this log file they do realize that their CPU isn't running hot *all the time* and is only briefly seeing that high temperature.

Often that temperature peak is what triggers the fan curve to hit higher rpm's, cooling off the CPU and keeping it cool the rest of the time. I also suggest after loading and running the game, as the fans spin up - click the readings reset button on the hwinfo64 dialog window - then all the readings showing are under full cooling - usually without seeing any "red ink" or thermal throttling.

Rather than kill the CPU performance, understand the problem a bit better, and find a solution that lets you maintain and keep all the performance you paid for in the first place

 

Well, if an overclocked 6820HK is getting better performance than a 6700HQ with the same GPU - then the 6700HQ is a bottleneck. Elementary my dear Watson.

 

lol.. how is it getting better performance?? I have yet to see a 1070 get a 21,000 graphics score on FireStrike.

 

Look at something other than Razer then

Fire Strike is not remotely accurate in predicting bottlenecks - it tests the GPU and CPU mostly on their own - and it has no complex AI or similar. That means, while it does judge hardware capability quite well, it's next to useless for testing bottlenecks.

 

One benchmark score is not enough to understand the CPU / GPU interrelationship or performance behavior limitations of a slower CPU vs a faster CPU running the same GPU.

There are plenty of game sessions, side by side, with different CPUs and the same GPU's to understand this interaction, and it varies with game - just the same as it would vary by benchmark or application.

There is a corelation between 1080 high frame rate being starved for CPU, and 4k maximum GPU being starved for GPU - CPU is more idle on 4k than on 1080p.

There are lots of considerations involved to understand this interaction, again, one benchmark is not validation.

Play some games with CPU turbo on, High Performance CPU Windows power plan, then run that same game path with you Balanced Windows Power plan and CPU turbo off - watch FPS and game smoothness.

You aren't doing anything helpful by recommending to others to disable CPU Turbo; it's the same as sending people off into the cornfields on a Snipe Hunt

Spoiler: What's a Snipe?

http://hoaxes.org/animals/comments/snipe

Spoiler: What's a Snipe Hunt?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt

 

The RBP has great performance for my gaming needs (1440p/144fps/144hz) and is a nice compact size for traveling. My normal CPU config. with no undervolt and turbo on usually runs at 85c. By undervolting and disabling turbo my performance is the same but the fans run much less and in some cases not at all with a high of 80c.

 

Try limiting FPS to refresh rate, that would reduce the overall load on CPU and GPU, while keeping Turbo on so the CPU speed remains high improving response and reducing interframe latency.

 

That's what I am doing already, 144hz/144fps.

 

Apples and oranges. Your firestrike score is calculated from the graphics and physics scores. The physics score is limited to something around 9000 because of your CPU. If you had any other CPU, it would be a lot higher and your final score would be as well.

You're right, a lot of games are GPU bound. But with the CPU in the RBP, you're going to see a lot more games being limited by the CPU. Maybe not today but certainly in the next year or two. There are a lot more games coming that utilize higher clocked CPUs and benefit from them.

BTW, are you really getting a 21000 Firestrike score on your RBP? Or is that just the graphics score?

 

There's your CPU load, running at 144 fps, that's a large load on the CPU, but don't reduce the CPU speed with such a crude method as turning off Turbo.

Adjust the application CPU load with the 6700HQ and reduce the multiplier on the 6820HK - shave a little off the top on all 4 cores top end, but don't lock it to base frequency by disabling Turbo - that's too much of a CPU performance hit.

 

Graphics, last run was 20,7xx. The main point of undervolting and disabling turbo was to lessen fan noise which has worked out great.

 

If you want a quiet machine, why buy a RBP and cripple it beyond what Razer has already done to the 1080? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

Well, I do understand the desire to quiet the fans, and if it's annoying enough, for long enough, any method to shut them the hell up will be tried

I'd get a laptop cooler stand, at least lift the rear up an inch or so from the desk - that helps more than you might think to cool off the laptop.

Some finesse is possible with detuning - reducing - the core multipliers on the 6820HK - but that's really going in reverse of the point of the 6820HK - you really want to OC it to 4.0ghz.

But, those darned fans do get annoying. Thats why for me it's the #1 consideration for a laptop I need to live with for 12 hours a day - it's gotta be fast but cool quietly and completely at the limits I run it to.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11324399
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...enix-has-arisen.781814/page-866#post-10434827

 

Enabled turbo and getting about 81c max, looks like the -85 mv undervolt is all you need to reduce temps 4-5c.

 

That's excellent news, kudo's to the undervolt solving the heat problem, and given typical results, you might try for a bit more, up to -200mV has been reported, and most are over -100mV

 

I don't really see any issue with the temps on the RBP as-is, just wanted to limit the fans from full throttle and undervolting has helped quite a bit. Gaming at 4k the fans tend to run higher, switching to 1440p/1080p has cut the fans down to mid-low usage.

Overall I think the cooling in this machine is top notch, additionally the core differential is very close and usually within 1-2c which was a big problem for some other 1080gtx laptops I looked at prior to the RBP.

Recommend using Throttlestop as Intel XTU would not startup automatically without issues.

 

Final firestrike score of 14,739 (Graphics 20,809 - Physics 9,919 - Combined 5,995)

 

What oc?

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160/318

 

And people ask why Razer skipped 6820hk. Quite obvious, Do not you agree? Run 4.0Ghz in this Apple similar laptop is the same as ask for trouble

 

Quite a feat to cram the 1080 and i7 into this chasis and after using other laptops with 6820/1080 I don't see any difference in games, apps, etc.. not sure what the need for the extra CPU would be.

 

Not really a feat - both are TDP-crippled and fan noise is well beyond most other 17' behemoths.

 

The alienware 17r4 with 1080 is quite a bit louder, although I really like the fan design on the new revision it's just loud and huge.

 

Is it? I'm pretty sure the RBP's fans are close to 60dB. As far as I can remember off the top of my head, AW17's fans hover around 48dB

 

I've had them both and the Alienware is much loutder, in fact I have yet to see a laptop with a 1080 that wasn't louder than the RBP. As most are twice as thick they also have much larger/louder fans.
Another benefit of the RBP is that it runs the fans only when gaming, the AW would go on and off while working in 2d with low usage. It's also nice to have the fans shut off immediately after going to the game menu or exiting the game as with headphones you barely notice the fans were on at all.

 

Are the other 1080 laptops locked at a reduced TDP though? I mean, it's common knowledge that the 1080 in the RBP is severely limited so as to not cause issues. It's still a factor to consider. Also, which AW17 model was it - the one with the fixed thermal contact or the older one? Cause that also affects things.

At any rate - after testing out a few fan settings, I've come to the conclusion that for me, anything above 45dB is just not pleasant. I can deal with fan noise but once you start climbing higher, it really becomes obtrusive.

 

The aorus is definitely louder as I had the x7 v6 for a couple weeks

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Pretty similar to my Alienware which is currently limited to 170W:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/17218424?

Ran at 4.2GHz GPU +200+750, GPU max temp during this test was only 59C so plenty of headroom. I've seen that Alienware have confirmed the TDP is being unlocked / upped in Feb. Looking forward to benchmarking then!

 

This is easily fixed on some AWs using HWinfo fan profiles, sure they'll fix this properly soon anyway through BIOS

 

Really liked the 2016 revisions from Alienware, the RBP performs just as well as the AW17r4 for games I tested and the graphics score looks to be very close.

 

Yep close enough I agree, just that the alienware is £1200-1300 cheaper. I think the 17 has more thermal headroom and a guarantee now that the GPU TDP will be increased in early Feb. Build quality is awesome also although it is quite heavy

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Honestly, the price point of the RBP is the biggest drawback - it's beyond any resonable amount. I just don't view it as worthwhile. If you want a low-profile mech keyboard, the Y910 is half the price and still has a 1070 which, once OCed, is only 10-15% behind the crippled 1080 in the RBP.

 

But you would have to admit that your point is subjective and has nothing to do with performance. I have owned Alienware laptops since 2006 and enjoyed the performance along with the style. I cannot tell you how many times I heard the same thing that price was the drawback. For me the Acer 21 inch curved screen's price of $9K, now that is a drawback, however Bill Gates probably wouldn't think that, right . My point is that when someone purchases the RBP2016 version, it is obvious that price is irrelevant. I do not care for how people base reviews around the cost as that is really irrelevant to the laptops build quality (though usually an indicator of it being well built) and performance, along with style. This is what drew me to purchasing the RBP. If you don't have the money to purchase something than that is fine but it should have nothing to do with the computer's review IMO.

 

Thing is - it almost certainly costs a lot less to manufacture. Honestly, I don't mind the top end config with a 1TB SSD being 4000$ but at least give people an option of a 1080p screen and a 256GB SSD with maybe even a 1070 for something like 3000$ - that would not only make the overall machine more appealing but really get people talking more positively about it.

 

The price isn't the problem with razer's laptops, it's the poor QC, non-existent support, denial of problems in general, poor battery life, poor screen (qhd+), and chassis heat. I would pay 2700 usd for a Windows notebook with the build and support of a macbook 15, only with proper cooling.