2014 Razer Blade initial review day 1

This is a quick, honest, not so technical review. Just my opinions on my first few hours with the device. I ordered the 128GB on March 20, it shipped April 23, and received it today April 28. I only tested 2 games so far, with a 128GB drive, you only have 78GB free so I am limited what I can test and don't really want to uninstall and reinstall a bunch of games.

Build Quality:
The unit feels and looks almost exactly like the 2013. Very sturdy and cool to the touch while off like you'd expect a metal case to be. It is fairly heavy for how small it is, I assume because of the amount of metal inside and out, and the large battery. It's slightly heavier than the 2013 was. My neoprene case (Incase Neoprene 13" Mac Book Pro case) fits just like the 2013 did. It is a tight fit, which may push some people away but I haven't heard of any case that fits it as good. Most are way too large with tons of extra space.

Screen:
I'll start by saying that I thought the 2013 screen wasn't that bad, no where near as bad as what most people called it. I just called it "ok", not great but not bad either. With that said I would call the 2014 display good, but not great, so one step up from the 2013 as far as quality. Obviously the resolution is much better but I'm talking color, brightness, viewing angles and overall look. The glossy display looks nice but I normally prefer matte to reduce the reflections. Colors look really good compared to the 2013 TN panel. Viewing angles are better than the 2013 for sure, but still not the "wow" I was hoping for.

I have noticed black "smearing" or "ghosting" while playing games. I have this same issue on my cheap 70" Sharp TV too. It is annoying and I am disappointed to be sure. Hopefully the positives (colors, sharpness, better quality overall) make up for it in the end, I am just not sure yet. I have never had or seen an IPS display, so my expectations were super high, but honestly it looks like any quality TN panel I've ever seen. Nothing pops out and says this is a super duper display to me.

Windows usage:
Default the unit ships with the icon and text set to max (largest). I tried it at smallest and it was laughable, I could barely even read the text but you could fit a lot of icons or test on screen for sure. I settled on the next setting down from largest, so I could fit more on screen but still be readable.

Gaming and temps:
Basic windows usage the unit is very quiet, just like the 2013 was. I can't hear any fans in the room and the only noise is my desktop pc fans which are fairly quiet. At one point during this review I looked over and saw the screen blank, and thought maybe it shutdown from heat or something. Nope, just screen blanking screensaver, and it was so quiet I didn't even realize it was still on. Idle temps while just surfing and using windows a but are about 40C CPU and 32C GPU(870m) average over a 20 min period after it was booted up for a while already.

About P6800 3dmark, stock out of the box, on all stock settings, which is to be expected. All 3 runs were within 50 points which is great, although not super taxing, it shows no obvious throttling at this point. No driver tweaking or overclocking or anything for this, just installed some software and ran it 3 times in a row. Drivers are 332.78. Ave temps for the 3 runs are 69C CPU and 63C GPU, and max temps are 92C CPU and 83C GPU.

The fan noise ramped up noticeably during the 3 runs above, and were not overly loud (like say my MSI gt60 or Alienware m18x was), I would guess about what the 2013 levels were. You wouldn't want it to do that in a meeting or in a quiet room and trying to play a game IMO.

Borderlands 2:
Below are rough FPS at the same spot in game fighting a few bad guys, just eyeball, nothing scientific but should give you an idea. I have a desktop with 120hz displays, so I am used to that and appreciate 120 over 60, that being said, I can still play on 60hz displays and enjoy it, especially on a portable system I am much much more forgiving. I turned off the fps cap in game for all of these tests. Normally I plan to just set the cap to 60, unless I have heat issues then I would lower it to 50.

30 fps ave, dips into 20s a lot and high action even teens - 1800 res, max settings except no AA, physx high
low 30s ave, dips into 20s a lot, smoother play than above - 1800 res, max settings except no AA, physx medium
mid 40s ave, dips into 30 a lot, very smooth - 1800 res, max settings except no AA, physx low

about 40 ave, ranged between 30-70 - 1080 res, max settings except no AA, physx high
about 50 ave, ranged between 40-80 - 1080 res, max settings except no AA, physx medium
about 80 ave, ranged between 60-120 - 1080 res, max settings except no AA, physx low

Ave temps for this session were 82C CPU and 76C GPU, max were 98C CPU and 86C GPU. That CPU temp surprised me but without logging temps over a period of time, I don't know if it maybe only hit 98 one time for just a few seconds or for minutes at a time. The keyboard was warm after above testing (30 mins) but not uncomfortable. The "no touch" zone above the keyboard was very hot, and while I didn't burn myself holding my fingers there, I wouldn't want to hold them there for very long. I would say it's at least as hot as the 2013 was, if not maybe even a little hotter.

I did barely notice the black smearing/ghosting I mentioned above in game, but it wasn't bad here. 1080p looked great, and I would not even have known it wasn't non-native resolution. I would have zero issues playing the game at 1080 if I decide to, although I would be tempted to play at 1800 on low physx since it looked very smooth even to me.

Skyrim:
All tests, same spot, just running around causing havoc in Whiterun casting spells and fighting the guards.

ave 50, 45-60 during play, very smooth - 1800 res, default ultra settings except no AA
pretty much locked at 60, hit 55 once and low 60s a few times - 1800 res, default high settings except no AA

pretty much locked at 60, hit 55 once and low 60s a few times - 1080 res, default ultra settings except no AA
no reason to test, see above - 1080 res, default high settings except no AA

Ave temps for this session were 63C CPU and 62C GPU, max were 87C CPU and 83C GPU.

Smearing/ghosting was more noticeable here. Anywhere where black contrasted against bright areas you could see trailing. I am not a videophile but if I notice this, I can't help but many other will too and not be happy.

Other thoughts:
All above testing was done with the unit sitting flat on a TV stand with internal display, brightness cranked, using a wired mouse. It is 64 degrees F in the room.

Sound was good for such a small laptop, honestly I will use my headset more often especially if I want better audio. I did all my testing with built in speakers just so I could get a feel for them.

I have not had time to look into the M2 2nd slot hiding although I think we assume there is none from the few pics we've seen. I do have an msata drive and M2 adapter on the way where I will attempt to see if I can get a 1TB drive installed and working. My test drive is just a cheap 32Gb msata.

I haven't done battery testing yet.

I have not found anyone with a display higher than 1080p where I can test the HDMI output, I may make a trip to Best Buy this weekend just for this purpose.

I may test BF4 for those that care since it is about the most demanding game I own. I haven't played it in months though. Ironically I played Bf4 the entire time on low on my 680 SLI desktop, not because I couldn't play on ultra, but because it made little difference looks wise in game to me and because I preferred to be 120fps+ anyway. It's a surround setup at 5760x1080. Going to a super high res single display is exciting and quite a change at the same time.

What little wireless testing I've done, I'm not impressed with the AC card. I also had bad luck with installing the same model AC card in my Edge when I had it. The connect speeds are much lower than the killer wireless on my 2013, and the throughput is lower too. I kind of expected this, and will have to look into drivers or anything else I can do to get the speeds back up to where they should be. If I have to, I will get a killer card and install it since I have had great experience with them.

**added below 6pm on 4/29** (there may be several small updates here tonight, so check back later if I haven't addressed a request)

Windows
I ran my desktop at both 1080 and 900, and it looks better at 1080. I took screenshots and put them side by side, 1080 is definitely sharper. I am guessing that the Win 8 scaling is causing this as I believe the 900 should look sharper, albeit slightly lower resolution. Both are completely usable and considering the scaling going on I really shouldn't be comparing text anyway. I tried turning the text/icon scaling options up and down but in every case, 1080 was sharper.

The colors are quite vivid on the display, I really hate to post pictures of a display as my camera isn't going to do it any justice. Pictures always look crappy compared to the real thing, so please don't let these pictures alone sway you on the display colors. I won't even take a black or white picture because my phone doesn't show it correctly how it looks in person, it's not even close. The screen looks good and black for the most part, but when I have the brightness cranked it does have a dark grey look. It doesn't look bad from an angle but I can see a slight color shift. I would consider the backlight one of the most even I've ever seen. I don't have the white edges that I normally see on my TN panels, not even a little bit.






A few more:





BF4
This was all done on the BF4 test range or consistency, so keep in mind multiplayer will likely be lower fps.

3200 ultra max settings 28-30 fps (I wouldn't play like ths)
3200 ultra no deferred AA 40-45 fps (wow, I'm a 60+ fps guy but that looked great!)

1080 ultra max settings 50-60 fps
1080 ultra no deferred AA 70-80 fps

900 ultra max settings 65-75 fps
900 ultra no deferred AA 90-100 fps

Temps after about 30 mins of playing around, CPU 95C max and GPU 85C max

One thing I couldn't figure out, is how to get the panel scaling to work right in Bf4 (works fine in Skyrim and BL2, full screen at any resolution). I always had black borders around centered game, only way I could get it fixed was to run non native on windows desktop then run game at desired resolution.

Skyrim update- I forgot to mention that there was an issue running anything above 2048x1152 (which is the next highest 16x9 available). The words "Level Up" show up about where my right hand is in game, very annoying. From google searches it appears to be a known "bug" when running higher resolutions. Its not there at 1152, but is there on 1800. Also I'm not sure why 2560x1440 isnt available, I was hoping to use that as an intermediate between 1080 and 1800.

BL2 update - going back in to check the resolution scaling worked as I remembered, I was only playing for about 10 mins, and the CPU maxed at 96C! GPU max was 84C. Seems like BL2 really pushes the CPU heat up fast. At least noticeably faster than the other games & tests.

About the temps. Yes I do realize I can use my laptop cooler and additional cooling to help the temps out, my whole point was to do a worse case scenario (think - traveling to work or to family or vacation, and you don't want to carry anything extra). If you use a cooler or stand you should be even better off. I want to know how well I will do when away from home, as that's the reason I got a portable in the first place. I'm really trying to push the limits to make sure its solid before I decide to keep it or send it back.

Quick battery testing in progress now... I will do a 1 hr windows/surfing test with max brightness, and then a 1 hr in game test assuming it lasts that long.

After 1 hr of surfing, max brightness and no idle time, 71% remaining. That's a faster discharge than I would have hoped, but realistically I would reduce brightness and even go to the "power saver" power option. Like the rest of my tests, this is basically a worse case battery use. I will try to follow up with a gaming battery use, and an extended best case battery use, but it may be a couple days. I want to play games now

Cell video of the ghosting. http://youtu.be/atrnSBvyP20

**4/30 update**
Additional temp, battery, and game testing per request:

Screen was on min brightness, power level was balanced, no tweaking or changes made in the video driver settings. BL2 was running at 1080p, max settings except no FXAA, even physx on high too. The FPS was from 40-50 the entire session, with the in game settings capped at 50 fps. It was very smooth and I would have never known I was on battery, which is kind of nice to know.

I was logging everything HWinfo64 can log the entire time, so it may have robbed some CPU time and an FPS or so. There were no reports of CPU thermal throttling from HWinfo in the logs. The CPU maxed in the low 80's C, and was in the high 70's most of the time.

The GPU spent most of it's time between 940-966mhz core and 1002 for memory the entire time in game (I task switched out a few times to check the battery level so the clocks dropped when I did that). GPU memory use was between 18-22% for the session. GPU temps were high 70's and touched 80 just a few times.

It almost seems as though the thermal paste is getting cured and working better than it was new, but it's too early to say that for sure. I am thrilled with this 30 min play session, I will do a longer session but on AC power, to see if after an hour the temps keep getting higher or not.

Battery life while playing BL2 was from full to 43% for 30 mins full playtime. So that would be about a 45 min time max assuming you didn't want to run the battery all the way down. That sounds a little lower than the 2013 but that is to be expected with the 870m.

Skyrim, ultra and a few settings cranked higher, no AA though, 2048x1152 (because any higher res and you get a "level up" text showing in the hud by your right hand). Capped at 60 fps by default settings.

On AC power, screen was on max brightness, power level was balanced, no tweaking or changes made in the video driver settings. Ran at 60-63 about 80% of the time and dipped into the 50s some.

I was logging everything HWinfo64 can log the entire time, so it may have robbed some CPU time and an FPS or so. There were 3 single reports of CPU therma throttling over 2600 readings. One CPU core maxed at 96C, the other maxed in the lower 90's. I did not know or suspect the CPU of throttling until I read the log.

The GPU spent most of it's time between 940-966mhz core and 1248 for memory the entire time in game. GPU memory use was between 20-40% for the session. GPU temps were from 80-90C most of the time, with it settling around the high 80s and hitting 90 occasionally.

The battery was charging from the previous drain test above, I only mention that because I'm sure that robbed some power from the system.

Battery Run Time 5/9/14
I got 6:03 out of mine today and plugged it back in at 10%. So maybe could have gotten 6.5-7 if I ran it all the way down. This seems comparable to what I had with the 2013, although I only ran the battery down a couple times in the few weeks I had it.

Understand I only did this for the forum, because I never actually use my laptop this way without the screen turning off after a bit, and many times I don’t have the wireless on but that wouldn’t help me get a solid number to compare to. Light usage to me means some office tasks like writing/reading, web browsing or going through files.

The settings for my “light usage” test were as follows:
Screen min dimness
Screen never turned off for any reason
Power saver profile (CPU min/max both set to 5%)
Set to never hibernate or go to standby
Wireless on the entire time
Sound was on but I wasn’t doing anything that made any sound

I am sure I could have gotten quite a bit more if I allowed the screen to turn off after a couple mins like I normally would, and even standby or hibernate after say 10 mins of non-use(like going to restroom, answer the phone etc). These things allow me to “lightly” use the computer all day long and charge at night but for the purposes of this test I was trying to get a number for folks.

 

Thanks so much for this detailed writeup. Very helpful and informative.

Definitely looking forward to finding out whether the mSATA adapter works!

 

That's a little disappointing to hear about the screen. It's not enough to deter me, though, since I'm planning on using the laptop as a mobile workstation and the screen will be static during work most of the time.

I'm curious if you monitored the CPU multiplier while you were playing games, as I would speculate it hit 98 degrees in Borderlands while at maximum turbo or close to it. I don't think it would get that high if it dropped to the sustained 2.2 GHz clock.

 

Nice little review, finally we see more temps and thanks !
CPU temps seem a bit high but at least it seems it didn't throttle, I wonder if others have noticed this "ghosting/smearing" you have.
Would love to see how it handles BF4 with temps .

 

I did another 16 min run in BL2 to log the temps using HWInfo64 and look for throttling. It only reached 91 in this short time, but I had the FPS drop to the teens for about 30 seconds in the middle and I am not locating what happened. The GPU usage dropped from 70-90+% to about 30-40% and I don't see any reason why. CPU clock was fairly steady around 2900mhz and GPU was steady at 966 most of the time, only dropping to 940 very few readings over the 16 mins (I would call that throttling, but minimal in this short test). The memory clocks stayed at 1248. The log shows no CPU cores were under thermal throttling and since the temps weren't high nor the freq dropping I believe it. There were no uploads or downloads, or disk activity noted during that time either. It may have been a simple case of the games fault. I runs great on my desktop but at 120FPS I may not notice a drop to 50 for a few seconds like I would from 40 to under 20.

 

I'm wondering how mature the 870m drivers are. I definitely wouldn't consider borderlands 2 an extremely taxing game compared to say Skyrim, and the performance in Skyrim looked pretty great. It sounds like BL2 was more flakey then throttling. I'd imagine a couple of driver updates over the next 2/3 months to improve performance, possibly for specific titles such as BL2, though most game specific updates tend to be forward facing. Thanks for the great info!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Thank you! It does sound like some possibly thermal throttling going on. I would recommend limiting the FPS to 60 using nVidiaInspector and you should see your temps drop significantly. I would also install Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) as you should be able to drop voltage on your CPU by 50 to 80 mV and drop the clock speed by a few hundred MHz at 3 and 4 cores and see how that fares. Also try popping a couple bottle caps under the back of the unit to tilt it up a bit, that should help with cooling too. All these things I mentioend have done wonders for other laptops. I can run BF4 at high settings pegged at 60FPS limit, 1080p, with CPU at less than 80C and GPU at less than 72C on my Clevo with 860m and i7-4810MQ. I'm sure you can see improved results on the Blade as well. I wouldn't expect 120FPS from a laptop of this size despite its power. IMHO better for 60FPS and cool running than 120FPS and hot as heck.

This is the first and best information I've seen on this machine so far. Thanks!

 

There wouldn't be a reason to run 120FPS, or even anywhere over 60FPS, because it's a just 60Hz screen, right?

 

Thanks for doing this OP, really helpful for people considering switching over from the 2013 model.

 

Correct. I was running unlimited in BL2 just to push the unit to the max and check temps and throttling. I would not expect 120fps on a laptop but with the 1080p tests it easily passed 60 so I wanted to show the capabilities. Skyrim must of been vsync locked because it capped about 60.

I really wanted to do longer tests but it was 1 am and I had to work today.

 

Thanks for the awesome review. Nice to see good frame rates at 1800p. Nothing I see to make me think about canceling the pre-order yet.

Since that dip only lasted a short time and the game then sped back up and didn't dip again I'd say it was probably either drivers, game, or the OS. Especially if you didn't notice a clock drop. No clock drop, no throttling.

 

Pics Pics Pics ! :

 

I realize this is only half on topic but. . is Skyrim really considered "taxing"? It'll run on a Surface Pro 2...

O/P What are your impressions of text in Windows with display scaling adjusted? I've seen a LOT of screens, both 1920 x 1080 and 3800 x 1800 where, once you're larger than 100%, the text becomes blurry [fuzzy]. Just curious as to your take on it on the Blade's screen.

 

I wouldn't consider either super taxing, but BL2 can be more difficult to run with physx on high. They are two of my favorite games that I will continue to play for years until something replaces them, like the next elder scrolls and next borderlands The point was to run BL2 full bore (it went well above 60 for the 1080p tests) just to push it as hard as I could. I really didn't expect the Skyrim one to go so well either and hit 60 so easily, so I need to try it again with no vsync.

Text looks good to me at any scaling, it does not look blurry to me. Maybe the sharpness gained as I go lower is also lost by the size loss so it becomes a wash. I also notice I'm typing larger paragraphs because while it looks like 1 or two lines on the laptop, it's a whole screen on my phone! I'm leaning in to read the screen now, so I may actually bump it back out to where it was initially at the largest setting.

I just realized how tired I am, work is going to be a long day today.

 

Can you try 1600 x 900 1080p would have distortion

 

I sure can, I understand what you mean but if 1080 looks great I would think 900 would as well. I will try this in windows and in games for comparison when I get home tonight.

I know I'm fairly unique in my thinking, but non-native resolutions have never bothered me on any screen. I see it as free antialiasing, I just make sure its the same aspect ratio (16:9)

 

Awesome and thanks!

Need to also ask you, was it worth the wait?

 

I am not sure yet, I need to spend some quality time actually playing my games and using it over the next couple days. The single biggest issue I have is the display ghosting. I've returned TV's for this issue before and been disappointed why some have the problem and some don't. I've never seen it in a laptop display before. I'm not sure if some people just don't notice it or not, but it's easy for me to see, and I can't really ignore it or "unsee" it. My cheap desktop TN LCD's don't have any ghosting.

-Heat seems acceptable so far in my limited testing, as long as it's not throttling much (prefer none of course) I will be happy no matter how hot it gets.
-Sound level is fine for me when fans are full bore, may be too loud for some but its no where near what the larger gaming laptops can sound like.
-The performance is excellent, I will likely play some games at native, and other more demanding ones at some point between 900 and 1800. On a 14" this is great IMO.

 

Thank you for all the info, this has been great!

On the screen, are the colors at least very vivid and the blacks black and not grey? As to the ghosting, does that mean in blacks you see residual images from what was there before it turned black?

 

Stock, no. But there are some high res texture mods out there that can push even my desktop 770 pretty hard.

 

I will do more looking at the colors tonight, they seemed vivid but he two games I chose are fairly bland in colors. Yes, that describes the ghosting I'm seeing. Black areas leave trails when moving around in game.

 

Cool, I'm interested how noticeable the ghosting you're talking about is as well. Guess I'll have to look at it and hope for more reviews.

 

Thank you for the review! Been waiting for some detail like this for a while!

Shame about the screen... I wonder if calibrating the screen will help with the colors. As for the ghosting, I hope it's something I won't notice. I've never seen it before so I don't know what to look for. When you get a chance, cab you check for backlight bleed when looking at a black screen in a dark room?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I'd love to hear how bf4 runs on both full res and 1080p and if you notice the ghosting then too. Thanks for posting your review. Your the first one ive seen.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

Can you do a Crystaldisk speed test of the SSD. The stock msata they put in the 2013 Blade is painfully slow. Hope they have done better this time around.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing your >1080p HDMI results! Thanks for the review.

 

what do you think screen quality is compared to razer blade pro?

 

will we get video or fotos?

 

Someone already ran one, look in the owner and shipping threads. And there's nothing "painfully" slow about any modern SSD...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/razer/747532-razer-blade-2014-owner-s-lounge-54.html#post9636713

 

Any chance you or anyone can get SimCity 5 a try?

 

Will you be adding the battery testing to your front page when/if done? Thank you.

 

I wonder how many times I can refresh this forum, search "razer blade 14 2014 unboxing", visit engaget.com for a possible Razer Blade announcment and get excited over every email that comes in from notebookreview.com, today. Will someone PLEASE post a video review already - pretty please. I've got another month to go so hook a brotha up - I NEED MY FIX!!!

 

Same here, i F5 every 5minutes... since the 24th

 

ha I guess they are happy with their purchase otherwise they would probably be complaining. I guess that's a good sign for us.

 

I'm really trying to give my honest opinion, I will not try to sway anyone towards or away from the laptop. That's for you to decide. I'm basically inviting everyone to see how I work through deciding if I want to keep the laptop or send it back. So far the screen ghosting is still the biggest downside I see. I will start my battery test in game in a while and it will be the first extended chance I will have to actually use the screen for a while and see if it really bothers me. Temps have me a little concerned, but I am doing what I call worse case, really pushing it with minimal air/cooling and no tweaking of any kind.

The biggest outstanding item I have left is the M2/msata adapter - that may be a few days, my msata drive will be here soon but the adapters may take another week or so. I will do a before and after speed test so I can report if it slows t he drive access down in any way. I will need to take into account the expected drive speed of the cheapo 32gb drive I bought for testing.

 

You got a link for that adapter?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Did you get the cable version or the hard one? I'm thinking of getting the cable version but it requires taping down the M.2 adapter. The hard one looks too wide to me. In the short term, I'm just going to use the msata to USB3 adapter MydigitalSSD sells.

 

Well ebay says they removed the listing but the sale should go through, so I'm not sure what the heck that means. Almost looks like a seller issue since their store is now EMPTY.

One of them was like this Minerva AD912A M 2 NGFF Golden Finger to mSATA SSD Adapter M 2 NGFF to mSATA | eBay and the other had a ribbon cable where you could mount the drive in a different position as space allows. There is a post about it somewhere on here, another poster mentioned it and I decided to grab one. Glad I did as now I can't even find it.



That is the only picture I have on it. I have tracking so they are sending me "something".

 

This is one of the ones I was looking at.
Minerva AD912A M 2 NGFF Golden Finger to mSATA SSD Adapter M 2 NGFF to mSATA | eBay

There was another one but it's gone now...crap

 

Can you please PM me the sellers name so I can message them?

 

Strickzilla in the owner's lounge reports zero ghosting with his Blade. So it's either your eyes not being used to IPS panels, or the unit itself. So thankfully I can't see this an issue most of us need worry about.

 

It's in multiple threads that are reporting ghosting. We will have to wait and see.

 

I can only report on what I see. I notice the ghosting, others may not. I have no desire to misdirect anyone, I am trying to review the unit the fairest way possible. I would hate to have not mentioned what I noticed, only to have others get their units and ask why didn't I say anything about it.

I do find it hard to believe someone can't see it at all, especially since I'm on the generous end of displays (I thought he 2013 display was ok while most hated it!). That said, I've been playing games for over an hour now and haven't gone mad with the issue, so it will likely not keep me from keeping the laptop. I still feel it was important to mention in a first impression review.

 

can u make a video?

one week has passed and still not a single video

 

I don't think anyone doubts your word. I will say that I hope it's an isolated problem with quality control on the panels. I wish the specs of notebook displays were advertised as is done with their desktop counterparts.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Like pictures of a display, it just doesn't show up well on a video. Here is the first video, the second video is uploading but I'm not sure it will be any more noticeable (youtude is taking hours for these low quality videos unfortunately). I had to lower the quality or else it was too low framerate to even see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UR4lPFaXB4&feature=youtu.be

 

Dajohu,

When you are testing the msata slot I would be pretty wary about reading too much into the speeds you get out of a cheapo 32gb msata. For a start msata speeds do vary a lot according to the product and small SSDs are noticeably slower.

Just to give you a basic example. Here is the Crystaldisk scores for the c: drive that came with my 2013 Razer.



These are pretty poor on the write side (especially in real life) (I have USB 3 sticks that are faster).

Here is the Crystaldisk score for my newly installed 1TB msata Samsung.



The first score is with rapid mode 'off' and the second score with rapid mode 'on'. There are drawbacks to rapid mode so people should think carefully about enabling it. (When you consider you can put 2 of these into your Razer and run them in RAID 0 you have to wonder about not adding a second msata in the 2014.) In real life use the Samsung is 3x faster to write than the stock Razer msata (and its write speeds may actually likely constrained by the read speeds of the stock Razer msata.)

The good news is that if your adapter works I think you will get a considerable performance boost out of the Samsung EVO but then I havent actually seen speed scores for the m2sata yet.

 

Could you copy and paste the other posts that say this? I believe I've kept caught up with most posts and don't remember seeing any other reports of it.

 

Agreed. So far this is the only one where I've seen ghosting. I'll play with mine today and see if I notice.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

When running those tests I would recommend dropping the test data size to 100MB and maybe 3 runs so you don't put a lot of added wear on your SSD. Obviously your choice, but it will run quicker, have similar results, and result in less wear.

It wouldn't show up with a FRAPS video because it's just recording what's provided from the GPU going on the screen. The ghosting would be a result of the display itself, you need a video (i.e. camcorder) of the screen itself. Could it just be texture tearing? Try limiting the FPS to 60 and/or enabling vsync and see if the issue goes away. Perhaps the refresh of the screen is low at the native resolution?