New Razer Blade with Notebook 10 series all but announced

In nVidia's reveal of Notebook 10 series GPU event they've hinted hard that a new Blade with a possible 1060. I doubt we'd see a 1070 due to TDP, but we shall see! Wonder when it's coming..

http://videocardz.com/63152/nvidia-launches-geforce-gtx-10-series-for-notebooks

There's a Razer section in that URL, also Razer is mentioned in two slides:

 

Interesting find.

 

And my blade 16 is arriving this week :/

I am probably gonna buy a core when the 970m feels outdated and then go for a core + Volta + cheap laptop with tb3.

 

the best thing: (2:52)

Matte display returns

 

Guess that explains the $400 price drop ....

 

Here's somewhat of an announcement. Still no official word from Razer though ...

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/08/nvidia-pascal-laptop-specs-gtx-1080/

 

It's very likely that this is real and that it will have a GTX 1060 in it. It'll probably go for $2400 for the base model and upwards. All I do know is that it's going to be hilarious watching everyone sell their brand new 2016 Blade 14's to get this thing. It happened with the Blade Stealth when the 2016 Blade 14 was announced and it'll happen again. Razer's product releases are starting to look like Apple's iPhone releases and people just can't be patient.

 

The funniest thing is that some people only just got their pre orders. Still, at least they have a tb3 port. Though, with these laptops, my razer core is starting to look obsolete.

 

This may explain what the laptop has been in such limited supply.

 

The Razer Blade w/1060 shows briefly here at 00:34

 

If the laptop is 2400 It would be 300 over the exact same specced Aorus X3 which ships mid September from Xotic PC. Aorus has the 2 year warranty as well. Tough call but for 400 USD more? I would go with the Aorus, or get the 15' Aorus X5 for 2400 with the 1070.

 

That Aorus x5 really hits the sweet spot - 1070 with GSync. My 2015 FHD blade is off for repair, so I'm not sure what direction I'll go when it comes back.

 

Only problem is gsync = No optimus = 3 hours battery = forget it

 

You don't need Optimus, your laptop can have a switchable iGPU/dGPU ability and get the same extended battery life.

You won't have G-sync on battery with iGPU only running, but you wouldn't have full dGPU performance to support G-sync on battery anyway.

Matrix switchable iGPU/dGPU is so much better

 

Is this a new function with the new X5S? They upped the battery to 92WHr, but the old X5S died after 2.5 hours or so.

 

There's more to the Auros vs Razer Blade debate than just price. Razer still has the best build quality of any thin and light gaming notebook.

I think I'm going to jump on this when it's available, 2014 is still going strong but the jump in performance from the 870M to the 1060 is finally worth it.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

After my old one got heat damage, I'd say heat is more important to me than anything. Don't care if it's sexy and aluminum if it cooks its battery and causes damage to the screen panel. That's the other thing - I'm not buying a razer blade with the same IGZO panel for the third year in a row.

 

Shrug. I love mine. Thousands of hours of gaming and it's still like it's brand new

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Did you put it on your bed, lap, or some other surface that didn't let the fans flow enough air?

I use a bamboo laptop desk with a bunch of holes drilled in the area where the laptop sits... it never even gets warm unless I'm gaming.

This is the desk I use... it's great for couch gaming.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YVGCVS8

 

No- wood table.

 

Hey guys,

Here's another video of the blade with the 1060 -

It seems like the temps go up to 93-94 degree's, I thought it would run cooler and quieter with the new pascal technology. I hope I'm reading the temps wrong because I had my sights on this laptop as my next upgrade

 

I play overwatch at 1600x900 on my 970M and it's just fine and stays below 90C

 

Pascal needs less power but is harder to cool due to the smaller surface. The heat is more concentrated. Blades where never good at cooling though.

 

Yeah... No thanks. Thanks for making it an easy pass on this one!

 

some users reporting around 70 range temps on msi gs43vr
And the bigger brother model also reported similar temp so I give it at most 80 degree for 14inch
Unless the new cooling by msi is really that efficient, there's something wrong here

 

70s during gaming? That sounds pretty damn good.

 

Yup and with over 90% gpu usage running witcher.
But the temps are too low to be true imo, I would wait for more reviews to confirm it.

 

People lie about their purchases all the time, we'll have to wait for real reviews. MSI are using fans with more blades than before, though, in order to push 30% more air, they claim.

 

been doing more research, looks like the MSI bigger brother gets to high 80s with overwatch.
no way the 14inch handles it that much better.

Probably going to wait out razer blade because I am going oversea to meet customers starting next year and MSI just looks way too gamer.

hopefully a cooling pad can make them temps ok

 

I don't really care about high 80s as long as the fans are as quiet as possible for a thin and light. Seriously considering the gs63vr 4k after hearing the new Razer Blade fan in high gear during that video of overwatch. We shall see.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Fans don't annoy me so much because of external speaker or I will be wearing headphones.

I am also thinking the msi 63vr (not the 4k), it gives so much more features as well like high quality dac.

I will just wait for some reviews of the blade though, I might need the business look.

 

When I first read this, I was skeptical of a release anytime soon, given it has only been a few months since the current Blade started shipping in earnest. However, as I mentioned in another post, I know someone who knows someone... and there should be an announcement in September.

It also occurs to me that the very first Blade notebook (the 17") was announced at PAX West in 2010 (though it didn't ship until spring 2011).
This year, PAX West starts the end of next week. Keep your ears peeled...

 

I would be so pissed if I had ordered a 2016 and they announced a new one like that.

 

The 2016 was not even really an upgrade, it had the same panel and same gpu.

I'm hearing some reports that the fan noise level on the new MSI gs63vr is pretty low for a thin and light. That's my primary tick on my checklist due to my wife proximity while gaming. This is going to turn into an interesting decision that was pretty easy when i bought the blade in 2014. Can't wait to see reviews start flooding in.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

So the newest iteration has a different panel as well? If so, I would really consider it as I can't stand my 2014 panel.

 

No idea. There is zero information outside of the fact there's a 1060. I'm imagining it's just a cpu + gpu upgrade. But we'll have to wait for an official announcement.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

What the heck is "blade 16"?
edit: Nevermind. You're using a (confusing) abbreviation for "2016 Razer Blade."

Well no, it doesn't. The $400 price drop happened at the very launch of the 2016 Razer Blade; most likely because their manufacturing costs have gone down over the past 3 years of making laptops; and to boost sales volume, by being closer in price to its competitors (e.g. Gigabyte, Aorus, Dell, etc).

I agree about the 1060 being highly likely, simply due to TDP.
The nVidia 970m was a 100W TDP part.
The nVidia 970m was a 100W TDP part.
The nVidia GTX 1060 desktop is rated at 120W TDP. But I'd bet that the mobile GTX 1060 runs closer to ~100W. That's probably the reason that the mobile GTX 1060 has a lower clock speed**.

** - Power consumption goes up exponentially as you increase clock speed. So a small drop in clock speed will result in a disproportionally large drop in power consumption.

As for people always getting the latest-and-greatest... hey, it happens! You get some people that love a product, and always want the "best" version of that product. And some people are very willing to pay $2000 per year to make that happen (~$1000 per year, if they sell their used equipment). That's a lot of money, but not an un-achievably high amount of money as disposable income.

It's probably in limited supply because it's a limited-run product from a boutique vendor. I'm sure the Razer Blade sells in very low volume, compared to other laptops out there.

I'm with you. I understand that battery life is important.

But I also understand the flip-side argument: I want this portable laptop (Razer Blade) to be a gaming machine, first-and-foremost. I also plan on keeping it plugged in most of the time. So non-gaming productivity work on battery is far less important; and I'm willing to trade battery life, if it means my gaming experience will be significantly improved (G-Sync).

Yes, The 14nm (vs. 28nm) manufacturing process does result in a smaller GPU die, concentrating the heat. But it also puts out a lot less heat, because 14nm transistors use a lot less power.

And die shrink doesn't affect a laptop's cooling system (heatsink and fan) at all; because there's a heat spreader between the actual GPU die and the laptop's cooling system, which only needs to worry about total TDP cooling capacity. CPU / GPU manufacturers intentionally design the heat spreader to have approximately the same area (size), specifically for this reason.

This is why you don't need to run out and buy a new desktop CPU heatsink every time there's a new CPU model; or why nVidia and AMD could re-use the same reference cooler design for years, across multiple generations of products. As long as heat spreader area stays consistent, then the only reason you'd need to change cooler designs is in case the TDP heat load goes up.

If you really want your Razer Blade to blend in with work laptops, turn off the keyboard LEDs, and buy a black opaque sticker to cover the Razer logo on the laptop lid. You can buy them on Amazon for a few dollars for a 100-pack of various sizes.

When you do that, your laptop just looks like a plain black laptop. At closer inspection, it looks like a black MacBook Pro 13. At REALLY close inspection, people might be able to tell that they haven't seen anything like that before, and ask you what that is (happens to me about 10% of the time).

If you want them to know you're a gamer: "Yeah, it's a Razer Blade laptop. It's a super-portable gaming beast! I travel a lot for this job, and I'm horribly addicted to PC games, so this is what I do in the hotel at night. It has [list specs here]."

If you don't want them to know you're a gamer: "Yeah, it's a laptop from this boutique shop called Razer. I like their stuff, and the way it looks."

Spoiler alert: If you buy a 2017 Razer Blade, they're going to announce a better / faster stronger 2018 Razer Blade at some point.

It will most likely be just a GPU upgrade, with possibly a related display swap (to support G-Sync).

I don't predict any other upgrades, because the 2016 Razer Blade is already running the most-current generation of hardware in every other area... motherboard chipset, CPU, RAM, NVMe SSD, Thunderbolt 3 (which also means USB 3.1 support, eGPU support, use of USB Type-C connectors, and charging through USB Type C port). There simply isn't anything in the 2016 Razer Blade to upgrade, because none of those components have announced a new-generation product expected to hit in the next few months.

 

Yeah, I completely forgot that the 2016 already had a 6700HQ. With the addition of the GTX 1060 already confirmed there's nothing to really be surprised about. Maybe they'll dump the 1800p IGZO for a true 4K panel, but who knows. Addition of switchable MUX for G-Sync would be nice, but honestly I don't see them doing it. We'll see.

In the end I think I might compromise a little on the weight and step up slightly to the MSI GT62VR w/1070 for my next upgrade. I need quieter fans under load and it's definitely quieter without being 9lb.

 

Laptops in general dont have heatspreaders, the cooling is directly laying on top of the CPU or GPU die. Also the reference coolers did improve the past years as well as the third party coolers.

Pretty much all chipmakers raised the max allowed temperature with a die shrink. Because the chips itself can handle more but are also more hot in general. Desktop heatsinks are in general just overkill but in Laptops it is a different matter. Now the MSI Ghost pro with the 1060 has 2 fans for the GPU alone instead of one while the temps hardly went down.

 

So you dont think they were designing a new Razer Blade earlier this year? I understand your points and dont completely disagree, but Razer has never had an issue being more expensive than those brands. I struggle to believe that all of a sudden they became consumer friendly. If the next Razer with a 1060 comes out at $2K than I'm happy to be wrong. I believe in addition to your points they did it to minimize backlash (minimize, not eliminate).

 

You're right that Razer never competes on price.

And even with the price drop to $2000 / $2200, they still are more expensive among their direct competitors. A 512GB SSD configuration of the Gigabyte P34W v5 is about $1500; and the Aorus X3 Plus v5 would be around $1850. The similarly-configured Razer Blade is $2200.

As for upcoming GTX 1060... my guess is that it will be a straight drop-in replacement for Razer, with no price jump. The desktop GTX 1060 is about the same price as a desktop GTX 970, and those were full video cards (not just the bare GPU). I guess we'll see how it goes, hopefully in the next few weeks

 

Man, I sure hope you're right! For $2K, then I'm back in. If it's significantly more, than I might just wait and keep messing around with other stuff. I didnt realize the Gigabyte was that low ... might have to look into that.

 

The Gigabyte got labaled as either being a gimmick or inaccurate according to Linustech:

 

You could do that. But then you'd be stuck with a Gigabyte laptop... which like the other Taiwanese ODM / OEMs (Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Sager/Clevo), aim to sell products based on low price and what looks good on a spec sheet; rather than designing products that make sense. (but to be fair, the market in Asia is one where people buy based on low price and spec sheets).

They take whatever specs they think look good, and then cram all of that crap into a cheap sh*tty plastic chassis; because spec-sheet shoppers care more about price than chassis material. This is why we have absolutely stupid products that don't make any sense, like the MSI GT80 Titan, or the recently-announced Acer Predator 21 X.

This "spec sheet buyer" mentality is also why for nearly 2 decades, we've seen laptops that will get upgraded with the latest CPU, GPU, larger HDD, etc. but be stuck with an absolute junk 1366x768 TN panel. It was only in the past few years that you started seeing laptops come out with decent IPS panels. Because the three letters "IPS" did not justify a $200+ USD price increase over TN, to buyers just looking at specs on a spec sheet. The major ODM / OEMs in Taiwan (Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Sager/Clevo) were responsible for that worldwide trend, because of their crappy design choices that catered to spec-sheet buyers.


Edit: tl;dr Don't do that! The Gigabyte P34W v5 (similar to the Gigabyte Aero 14) cut corners on chassis design & chassis material choices to lower the price. It's not worth the trade-off; because you'd still be spending $1500 on a laptop that looks great on-paper, but flexes so much that you can bend it into a boomerang.

 

https://twitter.com/NVIDIAGeForce/status/771074918033133569

They're giving out Blades with 1060s!

 

Available for pre order http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade

 

Man, this is a tough upgrade decision. I'm thinking of replacing my 2015 Blade 14 in the near future, and am torn on the matte display vs the IGZO touch. I don't try to game above 1600x900 with my current rig, except for my current passion, which is GTA V (online). The 970m in my 2015 model runs the game (with a few pretty rare drops to the mid 40's) pretty reliably at 60fps at 2048x1152, and I really enjoy that resolution with the still-superb graphics in this 3+ year old game.

But I'm longing for the even more reliable framerates of the 1060, and am really starting to need that 1tb of SSD at this point - I've given up storing music and video on the local drive, due to constraints of the 512gb ssd on my current Blade, in favor of keeping my entire game collection (and a long history of game saves) installed instead. The 1tb would let me relax that discipline, and keep everything fully synced with my cloud storage, which would be great.

So, you'd think the decision would be easy to just stick with the IGZO display on the 2016v2 model. But one thing that really bugs me on my current (and previous 2014 model) rig is the extreme glare from the very glossy IGZO panel. I frequently have to re-adjust the position of my laptop while gaming, because my preferred gaming location has a skylight above and behind me. If I get the screen angle just right, I can mostly eliminate the glare, but it's very easy for me to get right back into a glare-producing situation in just a few minutes of intense gaming.

So, I want the touch features and higher-resolution of the IGZO, and the glare-reduction of the matte display. And the extra pixel-pushing power of the 1060 would just cry out to me for gaming above the matte panel's FHD resolution. Just can't decide.

@hfm - I saw your post above saying you would seriously consider the gs63vr 4k. From pics I've found online, it looks like this otherwise very tempting machine would be spoiled for me by having its power cord exit from the right side of the machine instead of the left. Is this not an issue for you? In fact, the entire port layout of that machine is almost exactly left-to-right reversed from what I would want.

 

Gahh .... is it not available for pre order in Canada? The "Buy Now" button only links to the old 970m model ...

 

I put my initial impressions up here if anyone is interested. Razer said they would send me some review units so hopefully I'll get a full review up soon. I'm welcoming that FHD screen. I think the QHD+ screen is looking a little inferior to the competition. 14" has it's disadvantages in terms to panel availability.

 

I recently reviewed the GS73VR and had a similar complaint. It is kind of annoying but at least the connector is at a 90 degree angle to manage it a little better. I should be getting a 4k GS63VR to review sometime next week to play with. I'm really looking forward to seeing that screen in person because that'll likely be my daily driver from now on. I like the 17" but after messing with the GS63VR in Best Buy, I think I'll like that one better. The FHD screen in Best buy is garbage though. Still though, both MSI units are really nice. I've used the 2016 Razer Blade since it launched and I would totally choose either MSI over the Razer Blade, even with the 1060 in it. The only thing I would really miss is the build quality, where Razer is vastly superior.