Razer Blade 14"

[Tappy]

Felt sorry for the Laptop area being under-utilized these days. Those pesky smartphones taking all our mobile attention away from them!

The newest addition to the Razer Blade line up looks pretty:
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade

It's a 14" thin gaming laptop. Haswell processor, GTX 765M and all that. I like what Razer are doing with their gaming machines, it's quite brave for a gaming peripherals company, and they're not just going for the obvious power, but getting some sexxeh form going on. Even their tablet with a GT 640M is an interesting idea. Just a shame no one buys them... probably the price, and the nicheness.

[csteff]

their pro tablet also nice specs but huge money

[jurassicjim]

It is a beauty, if I was going to buy something like this I would probably get this one.

j

[scarbunny]

I saw this earlier and if I was wanting a Windows laptop this is the one I would get. Although depending on the price I still might be tempted, but OSX is so much nicer.

I was looking at the larger Blade for my missus but I think that might be too big for her, she only seems to like ~15" laptops, also the extra nerd buttons would probably never get used. This one would just be too small for her I think.

[UKIan]

Damn you beat me to it I think it's swish, although still only a 1600x900 screen ffs. I suppose it makes sense from a pushing pixels around in a game perspective, but I want both hi-res for non games and games.

Edit: Yay, there's a pro version with a proper 1920 screen: here
Edit2: Boo it's 17" :/

[Southwestwall]

If I didn't already have the M17xR3 I would be looking at the Blade 17" with interest. Maybe next time around.

[UKIan]

I assume it's built on a standard chassis from some other manufacturer? Maybe this is the first of a new class of laptops.

[Johnmcl7]

I assume it's built on a standard chassis from some other manufacturer? Maybe this is the first of a new class of laptops.

I assume it's built by some ODM but I don't think it's just a rebadged machine as some of their designs are quite unique, on their larger machines they have a clever design where there touchpad is to the right of the keyboard. They sponsor the achievement hunter guys which is the only reason I'm aware of them, are they available in the UK?

It's a bit annoying as I remember the days when I knew the individual stats of most graphics cards and even the variations offered by different manufacturers but now I don't keep track at all, I find all these rebrands confusing so I've no idea how good or bad this graphics card is? It's a bit concerning how small and thin it is to cool anything of decent power.

John

[UKIan]

I assume it's built on a standard chassis from some other manufacturer? Maybe this is the first of a new class of laptops.

I assume it's built by some ODM but I don't think it's just a rebadged machine as some of their designs are quite unique, on their larger machines they have a clever design where there touchpad is to the right of the keyboard. They sponsor the achievement hunter guys which is the only reason I'm aware of them, are they available in the UK?

It's a bit annoying as I remember the days when I knew the individual stats of most graphics cards and even the variations offered by different manufacturers but now I don't keep track at all, I find all these rebrands confusing so I've no idea how good or bad this graphics card is? It's a bit concerning how small and thin it is to cool anything of decent power.

John

I know the feeling. I always have to refer to the Toms hardware (?) list to work out what is fast and that's not always up to date :/ Razor are a bit cack in the UK, they seem to be one of those american companies that thinks Tulsa is exotically foreign :/

Speaking of fast, Haswell has landed. Nice write up here

[Fodder]

I found this informative. I knew laptop versions of CPUs were hobbled a bit, but not to this extent:-

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2013/05/25 ... ptop-cpus/

[Johnmcl7]

I found this informative. I knew laptop versions of CPUs were hobbled a bit, but not to this extent:-

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2013/05/25 ... ptop-cpus/

I think that article is misleading as it exaggerates the difference by choosing the best of the quad core i5 and i7 parts with the weakest of the mobile quad core i7's and a benchmark which hurts the mobile i7 but not the i3, hence the odd choice of an irrelevant image editing benchmark.

I'm not saying gaming notebooks are good value for money as they aren't, you'll pay far more for the performance which isn't as good as the desktop parts which is understandable given the mobile parts are using half or even a quarter of the power. It's nothing new though as it's the reason I switched to desktops for performance a few years back as I could get workstation class performance with the i7 940 for quite a bit less than a gaming laptop with a Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz - the i7 was a whopping 130W part with the laptop processor just 35W meaning the processor alone in the desktop was using more power than the entire laptop including its screen. I could have built a machine for less than £400 that would have outpaced the £1600+ laptop but that's what we're all used to.

John

[Johnmcl7]

Speaking of fast, Haswell has landed. Nice write up here

I'm finding the Haswell articles I've read pretty odd as I thought the ground breaking feature was its transactional memory system which was meant to significantly increase multicore performance but it barely gets a mention and suddenly it's all about power consumption. Even if the TSX instructions will take time to get support you'd think there would be at least synthetic benchmarks to show the potential as they had before Haswell was launched.

John

[UKIan]

Speaking of fast, Haswell has landed. Nice write up here

I'm finding the Haswell articles I've read pretty odd as I thought the ground breaking feature was its transactional memory system which was meant to significantly increase multicore performance but it barely gets a mention and suddenly it's all about power consumption. Even if the TSX instructions will take time to get support you'd think there would be at least synthetic benchmarks to show the potential as they had before Haswell was launched.

John

Transactional memory = complicated, power consumption = understandable by consumers. Consumers = dim.

[Tappy]

I don't know if I missed it before, but it's listed as having a Core i7-4702HQ Quad Core processor.

According to benchmarks (although as we see above, they can be deceptive) that's better than a stock i5-2500K and the equivalent of a Desktop i5-3550. That power saving technology on the Haswell really boosts its multicore performance...

I see the BBC article on Haswell today was really watered down.

$2000 for that laptop. As expected! I don't know if the 17" Blade ever went on sale in the EU, it was listed as "Coming Soon" for ages. Think it's all a bit too small volume compared to their accessories to make it available elsewhere.

[EviL Ras]

17" MSI GS70 stealth sale coming up on Friday. So i7 2,4ghz processor, GTX 765m graphics, 8gb ram, single 128gb SSD, 1tb HDD for £1049 from major resellers!

But check out this beauty too! its a concept, but 2cm thin 15.6" gaming laptop. assume its a GTX 765m but we're waiting to see if they've put a GTX 770m in it.. could be interesting!

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXdTPoMyiLg[/yt]