Razer Blade 14 Review: Zen 4 Ryzen-Powered Mobile Powerhouse
Razer Blade 14 (2023) Review: System Benchmarks, Game Performance And Battery Life
The Razer Blade 14, however, adds an additional wrinkle. This machine gives users the option to run the CPU and GPU in higher performance boost modes when on AC Power, so we tested the system both in its default Balanced mode and with the CPU and GPU unconstrained, except for our battery life tests where where only the "Balanced" hybrid mode was available.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO disk benchmark is a fairly quick and simple test which measures read/write bandwidth and IOPS across a range of different data sizes. While we don't typically compare these results across multiple machines, it's useful to gauge whether a particular notebook's storage subsystem is up to snuff.Our Razer Blade 14 sample features a single 1TB Samsung PCI Gen 4 NVMe SSD, which performed well. We saw peak reads of over 6.2GB/s, with writes of over 4.6GB/s. While this drive may not be the fastest SSD we've seen in a notebook, it is still plenty fast for gaming and for everyday computing tasks.
Speedometer 2.0 Browser Benchmark
In all fairness, browser updates can, and often do, result in increased performance in this benchmark. Unfortunately, we don't have all of these notebooks on hand perpetually to re-run these tests when necessary. That said, we don't expect the overall standings to be all that different. The Razer Blade 14 with its Ryzen 9 7940HS jumped out in front of all of the other more mainstream laptops and trails only the top-end models based on higher-power HX series processors.
Cinebench R23 Rendering Benchmark
This is the latest 3D rendering benchmark from Maxon, based on the Cinema 4D R23 rendering engine. We tested both single-threaded and multi-threaded tests on all of the notebooks represented here...The higher-power mode on the Razer Blade 14 had a significant impact on the multi-threaded score in Cinebench. With it enabled, the Ryzen 9 7940HS hangs with the 12900HH here. In Balanced mode, however, the Ryzen 9 7940HS is about 10% faster than the 6900HS, when it too is running in Balanced mode. When the 6900HS is operating in its equivalent Turbo mode, the chips' multi-threaded scores are about on par with each other.
Geekbench 5 Benchmarks
Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics scenarios. We tested the notebooks featured here in Geekbench's single and multi-core workloads. It measures single-threaded performance allowing a single core to stretch its legs, and multi-threaded throughput to put all cores under a heavy load.The Ryzen 9 7940HS-powered Razer Blade 14 outguns the previous-gen 6900HS in Geekbench's multi-threaded test, but it can't quite catch the higher core count processors. In the single-threaded test, however, the Razer Blade 14 performs among the best overall.
PCMark 10 Whole System Benchmarks
PCMark 10 uses a mix of real-world applications and simulated workloads to establish how well a given system performs productivity tasks, including image and video editing, web browsing, and OpenOffice document editing. While these scores appear to be all over the place, the systems are sorted by their overall PCMark score, which is the third (gray) bar in each cluster.3DMark Graphics And GPU Tests
3DMark has several different graphics tests which focus on different types of systems. We start with Time Spy, which was 3DMark's headline benchmark until just recently. This test presents a pretty significant challenge for the system's CPU and GPU using DirectX 12's API...The GeForce RTX 4070 in the Razer Blade 14 performs about on par with the previous-gen GeForce RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti mobile GPUs, according to 3DMark Timespy. The different power modes had minimal impact on performance, but the 140w available to the GPU paid huge dividends. Compare the XPS 15's performance with the Blade 14 and the advantages of the additional power headroom become obvious.
Next up, let's take a look at the Extreme preset for the punishing 3DMark Fire Strike test. This DirectX 11 test has been around for a while, but it's still pretty challenging for mobile GPUs.
We saw a similar performance trend in Fire Strike. The Razer Blade 14's GeForce RTX 4070 outguns the RTX 3070 Ti and hangs with the RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti.
Lastly, the Port Royal test uses DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) along with traditional rasterization techniques to illuminate a scene...
DXR hardware is a requirement for this test, so we don't have quite as many machines represented. Still, the Blade 14 lands in a similar position, outperforming the other more mainstream laptops and trailing only the much larger, higher-power devices.
Middle Earth: Shadow Of War Tests
Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a fun and and beautiful title set in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings universe. To test the game's performance relative to other systems, we set the resolution to 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 and turned the visuals up to the High preset. The frame rates here are the average reported by the built-in benchmark.Note as you peruse the other game tests that 1440p (2560x1440) was not available to test, without manually altering game files. It simply wasn't an option in the game menus.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Benchmarks
The Tomb Raider benchmark has the Blade 14 performing about on par with previous-gen GeForce RTX 3080 Ti-powered laptops, which is to say the Blade 14 is performing exceptionally well considering its much more compact and portable form factor.
F1 2021 Benchmarks
F1 2021 supports DirectX 12 with ray tracing, and it incorporates support for a number of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and NVIDIA technologies (like DLSS). We tested the games with its Ultra High graphics preset, with ray-tracing and TAA enabled at a couple of resolutions to see what the Razer Blade 16 could do...Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an action-adventure game where you play as Star-Lord and lead the rest of the Guardians from mission to mission. The game’s minimum requirements call for a Radeon RX 570 or GeForce GTX 1060-class GPU, but it also supports some of the latest graphics technologies, including DXR and DLSS.Battery Life And Power Tests
We run a 1080p HD video loop that's part of the PCMark 10 suite, to prove out battery life with our test group of machines. In all tests, Windows Quiet Hours / Focus Assist has been enabled and the displays are calibrated with lux meters on pure white screens to as close to 115 lux as possible. For the average laptop this is somewhere between a 40-60 percent brightness setting.When running a simulated gaming workload where the Razer Blade 14's CPU, GPU, memory and storage are getting taxed simultaneously, battery life is obviously lower, but it still relatively strong. The Blade 14 ran for nearly 2 hours on battery which isn't bad at all, relative to other high-performance gaming laptops.