Razer Blade 17 Review: A Slim RTX 3080 Ti Mobile Gaming Weapon
Razer Blade 17 Review: System Benchmarks, Game Performance And Battery Life
Before running any of our benchmarks, we apply all of the latest Windows and driver updates to the system we are testing. Our particular Razer Blade 17 sample shipped with Windows 11 Home 21H2 and needed very little updating, save for the latest Game Ready GeForce drivers and some THX / Audio related updates. Other than applying updates (like most consumers would), we run all of our tests with out-of-the-box settings. Our goal is to test the system as it ships, but after auto-updating, to accurately reflect what buyers can expect from a retail experience.
The Razer Blade 17 has an additional wrinkle in that it gives users the ability to configure the discrete GPU to operate in a hybrid mode (NVIDIA Optimus), which switches between the Core i7-12800H's integrated Iris Xe iGPU and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti dGPU depending on the workload, or in an always-on mode that keeps the GeForce powered up and directly connected to the display to provide the best performance. All of our benchmarks were run with the always-on discrete graphics mode enabled, except for our battery life tests where we evaluated both modes.
The Razer Blade 17 with its Core i7-12800H lands in the upper quadrant, clearly outrunning all of the AMD-powered rigs, but it can't quite catch the top-end Alder Lake systems, which have higher boost clocks. We also suspect Razer tuned the power profile on this system to favor the GPU, which will become clear in a just a bit.
Once again, the Razer Blade 17 lands in the upper echelon, but it actually trailed the Alienware x14, which technically has a "lower end" Core i7-12700H processor (The same was true in Speedometer above). Performance is still very good, but this is a trend we saw throughout our testing.
The Razer Blade 17 once again finishes in the upper quadrant with Geekbench, trailing the Core i9 systems, but outgunning the Ryzen-based rigs.
The Razer Blade 17 lands about in the middle of the pack in PCMark 10. This benchmark is affected by all aspects of the system, including the SSD, memory, CPU and GPU. There isn't a huge spread separating the systems in terms of overall score, however. The Razer Blade 17 may not have finished near the top, but its performance was still very good nonetheless. The scales tip in Razer's favor once we focus on this system's intended use case, however...
The Razer Blade 17 put up the best Time Spy score of the bunch and even managed to outrun the MSI GE76 Raider and Alienware x17, despite both systems having higher-end processors and higher rated GPU boost clocks. We suspect Razer's power profile favors the GPU in the Razer Blade 17 and the system's elaborate cooling hardware allows the GPU to operate at a higher average frequency throughout the benchmark run.
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.
We saw more of the same in Fire Strike. The Razer Blade 17 is once again able to top the charts and outpace all of the other gaming notebooks we've tested.
Lastly, the Port Royal test uses DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) to illuminate a scene...
DXR hardware is a requirement for this test, so we don't have quite as many machines represented. Still, the Razer Blade 17 puts up the best score of the bunch, albeit by the tiniest of margins.
The Razer Blade 17 returned to its winning ways in Tomb Raider. The system put up the best average and second best minimum framerate of the bunch. At 1440p, the Razer Blade 17 was still able to achieve a triple digit frame rate of 113 FPS.
We don't have quite as many results in F1 2021, but we again see strong performance from the Razer Blade 17 that leads the pack. This is expected here, however, since its also the most powerful system represented. The frame rate at the system's native 1440p resolution was 111 FPS.
The same rings true in the Guardians of the Galaxy benchmark. The Razer Blade 17 leads the pack by a wide margin. (104 FPS @ 1440p)
The Razer Blade 17 falls somewhere below the mid-point in our custom battery life test, nearly achieving 4 hours of untethered uptime. Let's see how it handles gaming battery life via PCMark's Gaming test, though...
When everything is spun up and the Razer Blade 17's CPU and GPU are getting hit with a heavy-duty graphics / gaming workload, battery life is very shot. With hybrid graphics enabled, we couldn't quite hit the 1 hour mark. And in its highest performance mode, the Razer Blade 17 only offered 46 minute of uptime on battery. That was enough to outrun the Alienware x17 R2, but its not a particularly strong showing. That said, powerful gaming notebooks aren't geared for maximum battery life, so this is par for the course.
The Razer Blade 17 has an additional wrinkle in that it gives users the ability to configure the discrete GPU to operate in a hybrid mode (NVIDIA Optimus), which switches between the Core i7-12800H's integrated Iris Xe iGPU and the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti dGPU depending on the workload, or in an always-on mode that keeps the GeForce powered up and directly connected to the display to provide the best performance. All of our benchmarks were run with the always-on discrete graphics mode enabled, except for our battery life tests where we evaluated both modes.
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.The 1TB SSSTC CA6-8D1024 (formerly Lite-On) PCI Gen 4 NVMe SSD in the Razer Blade 17 performs very well. We saw peak reads of over 6.4GB/s, with writes of over 4.2GB/s. It may not be the absolute fastest SSD we've seen in a notebook, but the SSSTC CA6 is still plenty fast for gaming for everyday computing tasks.
Speedometer 2.0 Browser Benchmark
We use BrowserBench.org's Speedometer test to gauge our web experiences, which takes a holistic look at web application performance. This test automatically loads and runs several sample web apps from ToDoMVC.com using the most popular web development frameworks around, including React, Angular, Ember.js, and even vanilla JavaScript. This test is a better example of how systems cope with real web applications, as opposed to a pure JavaScript compute test like JetStream. All tests were performed using the latest version of Chrome.
The Razer Blade 17 with its Core i7-12800H lands in the upper quadrant, clearly outrunning all of the AMD-powered rigs, but it can't quite catch the top-end Alder Lake systems, which have higher boost clocks. We also suspect Razer tuned the power profile on this system to favor the GPU, which will become clear in a just a bit.
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...
Once again, the Razer Blade 17 lands in the upper echelon, but it actually trailed the Alienware x14, which technically has a "lower end" Core i7-12700H processor (The same was true in Speedometer above). Performance is still very good, but this is a trend we saw throughout our testing.
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 Razer Blade 17 once again finishes in the upper quadrant with Geekbench, trailing the Core i9 systems, but outgunning the Ryzen-based rigs.
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 is 3DMark's headline benchmark. This test presents a pretty significant challenge for the system's CPU and GPU using DirectX 12's API...
The Razer Blade 17 put up the best Time Spy score of the bunch and even managed to outrun the MSI GE76 Raider and Alienware x17, despite both systems having higher-end processors and higher rated GPU boost clocks. We suspect Razer's power profile favors the GPU in the Razer Blade 17 and the system's elaborate cooling hardware allows the GPU to operate at a higher average frequency throughout the benchmark run.
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.
We saw more of the same in Fire Strike. The Razer Blade 17 is once again able to top the charts and outpace all of the other gaming notebooks we've tested.
Lastly, the Port Royal test uses DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) to illuminate a scene...
DXR hardware is a requirement for this test, so we don't have quite as many machines represented. Still, the Razer Blade 17 puts up the best score of the bunch, albeit by the tiniest of margins.
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 turned the visuals up to the High preset. The frame rates here are the average reported by the built-in benchmark.
The Razer Blade 17 lands just behind the Core i9-12900K-powered MSI and Alienware notebooks in this game, but offers a buttery smooth 181 FPS. Note, we also tested this game at the system's native 2560x1440 resolution and it put up 141 FPS with similar graphics settings.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Benchmarks
The finale in the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is easily the best-looking of the bunch. It's also brimming with Tobii eye-tracking hardware support, and leading edge graphics technologies. To test this game out, we again turned the visuals up to High and tested at the Full-HD resolution of 1920x1080.
The Razer Blade 17 returned to its winning ways in Tomb Raider. The system put up the best average and second best minimum framerate of the bunch. At 1440p, the Razer Blade 17 was still able to achieve a triple digit frame rate of 113 FPS.
Battery Life And Power Tests
We run a custom 1080p HD video loop test developed in-house, 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 everything is spun up and the Razer Blade 17's CPU and GPU are getting hit with a heavy-duty graphics / gaming workload, battery life is very shot. With hybrid graphics enabled, we couldn't quite hit the 1 hour mark. And in its highest performance mode, the Razer Blade 17 only offered 46 minute of uptime on battery. That was enough to outrun the Alienware x17 R2, but its not a particularly strong showing. That said, powerful gaming notebooks aren't geared for maximum battery life, so this is par for the course.
