We change very few settings before testing in an effort to ensure that a laptop performs at the same level for us that it will for readers who buy it. That said, many factors affect performance, so benchmark comparisons between notebooks and laptops are a guide rather than a guarantee. We kicked off our performance benchmarks with several well-known tests, including the hard drive-specific ATTO Disk Benchmark, the JavaScript browser benchmark Sunspider, and the CPU/GPU tests in Cinebench.
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ATTO Disk Benchmark |
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Peak Sequential Storage Throughput |
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The
ATTO Disk benchmark gives us a look at how the Razer Blade’s SSD performs. It is a quick and dirty test of raw disk speed which we run with different transfer sizes ranging from .5 KB up to 8 MB with a Queue Depth of 10.
The NVMe drive inside the Razer Blade delivers good read speeds here which settle in around 1500 MB/second for larger transfers. This is close to three times the read performance an older SATA SSD can provide, which is great, though far from the fastest on the market. On the write side, however, the Samsung PM951 is only capable of about 300MB/second which is disappointing for a drive in this class. Higher capacity options for the Razer Blade include the PM961 instead which ought to deliver much faster speeds. Ultimately, we are nitpicking here as any SSD will deliver more than satisfactory results - we just expect better at this price point.
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SunSpider Javascript Benchmark
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Javascript Processing Performance
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Next up, we have some numbers from the
SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. According to the SunSpider website:
This benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other. Unlike many widely available JavaScript benchmarks, this test is real-world, balanced and statistically sound.
We should note that this is more of a platform test, in that different browser versions, associated with different OS types can and do affect scores. However, among the Windows 10-powered machines here, all things are relatively equal.
All the lead results here are very closely packed. As such, with variance from one run to the next we can safely say the Razer Blade is performing within expectations.
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Cinebench R11.5
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3D Rendering On The CPU And GPU
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Cinebench is developed by Maxon, which is better known for its Cinema 4D software. We use both of Cinebench’s tests. The CPU test uses thousands of objects to stress the processor, while the GPU test puts your system’s graphics chip to work with a short, animated 3D scene involving a car chase. The CPU test is measured in points, while the GPU test is measured by the framerate. In both tests, higher numbers are better.
Cinebench brings our first real glimpse of overall performance and what we find is very promising. It does lose out to the similarly spec'ed MSI GE62 Apache Pro in the OpenGL test, but keep in mind the MSI machine is over an inch thick which affords it some literal breathing room for heat dissipation.
For its part, the Razer Blade does resist thermal throttling fairly well. In the CPU test, it maintained a clockspeed of 3.4 GHz for the duration and in the less CPU-intensive
OpenGL test it was able to pin itself at 3.6GHz. Of course, the price paid here is volume. With the throttle pinned to the floor, our Razer Blade exceeded fan volumes of 60dB. You will want to bring along a good set of headphones for gaming.
Now let's step up the load with Futuremark's PCMark 8 and 3DMark tests...
