Ah that’s good news, I may give it a try then.
Worst case I can return it if it does give me headaches
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2019 Razer Blade "Base" 15
- Thread starter Thysanoptera
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Worst case I can return it if it does give me headaches
The new 15" base was nice. Played with it and the 17" at the Microsoft store this a.m.
I'd consider the 17" if there was more RAM in the $3200 model, but I feel the 15" Razer has the best build quality.
It's official though the 5th Avenue Manhattan store sucks as far as staff: No one knew what RTX chips were, and would rather dance to some crappy music than work.
TBH, there was only one good rep in that store; everyone else does not want to be there.
I'd consider the 17" if there was more RAM in the $3200 model, but I feel the 15" Razer has the best build quality.
It's official though the 5th Avenue Manhattan store sucks as far as staff: No one knew what RTX chips were, and would rather dance to some crappy music than work.
TBH, there was only one good rep in that store; everyone else does not want to be there.
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So a couple of days ago I exchanged my 2019 Stealth for the 2019 Advanced (16gb/512gb/RTX 2070) at Microsoft (the small right shift key on the stealth just wasn't doing it for me). I'd be happy to run whatever tests you'd like.
I did run 3D Mark and the results (6,7xx) while not bad at all were...interesting. The fans didn't kick on at all until the CPU Test.
Edit: I should note that this model comes with what amounts to the Samsung 860 EVO, whereas my Stealth came with a Lite-On SSD.
If you want to check for any heat related issues you could repeat the stress test from my earlier post
You should get on the Advanced almost identical results, the average over 15 minutes should be the same, or better. I've found another person with Advanced, looks like in steady state Base heatpipes and Advanced vapor chamber produce same results. Overall I'm really surprised this thing has such a good cooling system.
I just ran Cinebench on my system. . . 1907. Not even close to yours. Once again the fans didn't spin up at all, and it looks like the processor was running @ 2.45ghz the entire time. I'm not sure what Windows is doing that is preventing the machine from boosting, but the results are not good.
Edit: Went into Synapse and Performance and cranked everything up (cpu and gpu) and the score was 2146. Sooo It's slowly getting there. Still no fans though, unless I change the balanced mode and crank them manually.
Edit: Went into Synapse and Performance and cranked everything up (cpu and gpu) and the score was 2146. Sooo It's slowly getting there. Still no fans though, unless I change the balanced mode and crank them manually.
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Set Windows to high performance and in all fairness you need to unlock the CPU PL1 45W limit to see 3K plus results in Cinebench R20.
i7-8750H on 2018 ASUS Stix
Q-6
Interesting. Thanks for that. I'll do some research on how to do that. Other than the benchmarks and such, will I notice a big difference in performance? One of the utilities that Razer recommended was Intel XTU (or something like that). It showed that my computer wasn't thermal throttling, but was power limit throttling.
Edit: Wanted to toss on here that the Razer Advanced is factory undervolted by .1
You can opt to edit the BIOS, or use SW like Intel XTU. I opted for ThrottleStop as it's far less problematic in my experience, being just an app and does not write to the BIOS (don't run both on the same system as they conflict, XTU app not the service). As for performance much depends on your usage and the 45W limit is there for reason. Upping PL1 to say 90W to match PL2 limit may or may not induce issue as your going to consistently be pulling higher wattages for longer periods.
I wouldn't be overly concerned about the CPU however other components may not fair so well if not up to spec. My own ASUS Strix is fine, equally I only unlock PL1 if I have a specific need and want to accelerate the workflow. To me the likes of ROG & Razer are performances systems and designed to operate at high loads for extended periods of time. This ROG GL703GS is set to max performance vast majority of the time barring the PL1 limit and it's never had issue even with the power limits unlocked.
Undervolt you might get a little more, this i7-8750H is set to -140mV and will go far deeper (-175mV), however I also need to consider ROG's TDP down feature (silent mode), running on battery etc. this notebook is used professionally so last thing I want is to Blue Screen due to an overly aggressive undervolt. In my experience on the H series CPU's once your past -125mV the returns tend to diminish significantly.
TBH it's not an issue to change PL settings and undervolt as long as you know what your getting into. With CPU power limits there's a couple of options; increasing PL1 wattage and or extend the PL2 time period. Undervolting is very safe, however I would recommend your backed up or willing to reset the system, as a hard crash at the wrong point in time may corrupt the OS i.e. during Windows update etc.
I suspect the PL2 limit on your notebook is set lower than my Strix (90W) as the R20 scores are lower with stock PL settings. XTU should reveal both P1 & PL2. There will also be a thermal ceiling for the chassis, this notebook it's around 70W sustained so no real point in setting PL1 beyond that point or the CPU will simply throttle anyway. If I didn't use the TDP down feature I'd likely leave PL1 unlocked and set it to around 55W with PL2 timing at the default 28 seconds, and fully unlock to 70W as required.
Q-6
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What @Queen6 wrote is all true, unfortunately doesn't apply fully to Razer. Everything is locked, you have three Synapse settings and that's it, can't change PL1 or TDP, PL2 is not used at all.
1. Your machine doesn't turbo at all, that may be due to some settings in Windows power options ->Advanced plan settings->Processor power management->maximum processor state (100%) and System cooling policy to active. Or may be disabled in Bios, or you messed with this setting in XTU. I don't know.
2. Don't use XTU, use throttlestop to undervolt only. Changing any of the power settings in it (or XTU) doesn't do anything.
3. You should be getting CB20 between 2600 and 2900 in Synapse Performance mode, depending on how long it stays at PL1. If you want more you have to mod the bios to unlock access to advanced options. Honestly it is not needed, that machine is perfectly fine even when limited to 45W. With -125mV undervolt I didn't see more than 55W @4GHz on CPU anyway in normal use, I think only small FFT in Primes kicks it more.
One thing I noticed, this may be a bug or really crappy attempt at 'balancing' load from Razer - out of the box, with Razer provided Nvidia driver, it would artificially add 10W to indicated CPU package whenever anything was using dGPU. Thus the machine would power throttle way sooner. And the CB20 attaches itself to dGPU (unless you force it to use Intel in Nvidia control panel) - you loose 10W immediately, so instead of throttling to 45W it would actually go down to 35. And the same with PL1 limits, 10W lower. I'm using drivers directly from Nvidia now and it is ok.
Check this out - run Intel power gadget and observe PackagePwr when you start CB20. Just start the program, do not run the benchmark. Is the package power magically 10W higher? Also select "Display GPU activity icon" in Nvidia control panel, to check if the CB20 is actually running on Nvidia.
Ok, here we go.
At (what I'm calling Idle) Intel Power Gadget is reporting 19w for Package Pwr0. When I start Cinebench, the power does not increase, so that part seems to be normal. I am running the latest drivers from Nvidia (installed via GeForce Experience). CB20 does attach to the graphics card according to that handy icon.
1 - The machine does seem to turbo. In fact sitting here right now Package Frq0 is reporting 4.1ghz with a base frq0 of 2.6ghz. I haven't messed with anything in the bios, nor did I make any changes in XTU (in fact I uninstalled it).
2 - See above
3 - My Synapse (latest version) only shows 2 power modes. Balanced and Custom. In Balanced, my choices are limited to automatic fan speed and manual. If I set it to manual and say 5500rpm (or whatever the max is) the fans kick on and do their thing. However, if I switch over to Custom, the fans drop back down. In Custom I get two sliders. One for the CPU and one for the GPU. That's it.
I checked the Windows power settings and both are at 100% for the min / max.
My last run in CB20 (5 minutes ago) reached 2100, but that's the most she'll give me, and as I mentioned before, the fans never kick on. The voltage cranks to about 60w (or so) for a few seconds and then drops down just below 45w (44.x) and stays there.
No idea at all.
I'm also wondering where my scores should be for 3d mark with the RTX 2070, as they don't seem too high. My Core X Chroma is being delivered tomorrow morning (Razer replaced my faulty Core V1) so I'll put my GTX 1070 in that and see how the machine fares as well.
Thoughts? Did I lose on the silicone lottery with this machine?
Edit: So it looks like the newest version of Synapse is the reason for the different modes being gone, as it only has Balanced and Custom I'm not the only person seeing this behavior, and Razer isn't saying how to get those modes back (gaming and creator).
I did a 3d mark run in Custom with the CPU and GPU maxxed out and my score was 6,777. Of course, the score says it is invalid because it cannot detect which GPU my computer has in this mode (also others reporting this as an issue because of Synapse).
Further, it seems that some people have said that Razer ships with a modified verison of Windows 10 and that is the reason for some of the performance limitation. There are a few different forum threads that talk about changing the registry and such to get some things back, and others have just wiped their machines and re-installed windows from scratch. That's easy enough to do.
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That’s your problem. It should be 1-2W, not almost 20. Check in task manager what’s loading the CPU and kill it. Do you see anything else in Nvidia panel running on it?
Oddly enough with only the normal system apps open, as well as Synapse and those other "driver" apps, the CPU utilization is only 8%. I have no idea what is causing the machine to act the way it is. I may find a way to create a system image on an external drive as a backup and then wipe the machine. It's the only thing I can think of.
Easily done - Settings Update and Security - Backup and look for the W7 system image works a treat.
Q-6
Thanks, I'm doing that now. I didn't realize that Microsoft left the legacy (ish) tool in Windows 10. I'm surprised they didn't update it. The nice thing is that it looks like it grabs all three partitions from my factory drive (including the two hidden ones).
My Core X Chroma arrived today, and while I didn't think that the GTX 1070 that I have for it would compare to the RTX 2070 that is in the 15" I certainly didn't expect it to perform so poorly in 3D Mark. Granted, benchmarks aren't everything, but the Windows Central review of the Core X Chroma with a GTX 1080 inside was over 13000 in 3D Mark. Is that card *really* 50% faster than the 1070?
Once this backup is done I'm going to nuke and pave with a base install of Windows 10 from the MS website and then just the basic drivers and such. Here's hoping that changes some things!
TBH that's what I do, if I'm not happy with the OEM install as it tends to save time in the long run. Some OEM's add a lot of "tricks & bells" mostly for market differentiation, nor always benefiting the system.
Q-6
Wiped the machine earlier and installed windows from a base image, leaving my recovery intact should I ever need it. Obviously I had to hunt down drivers and such, but oddly enough, CB20 scores were nearly 300 points higher.
What did you have to hunt down? I'm pretty much by definition loading a fresh Windows on every laptop I own, and everything was there automagically appearing from a stock Windows install. Only loaded Synapse from Razer.
Still low, so it's like 2400. I'm really open to remotely login to your machine and check what's going on, just in the evening hours ET. I'm travelling this week, a little bored in the evenings. Razer has really bad rep, maybe it deserves it for the past, but those 2019 models look really good and you're missing something simple which is difficult to figure out.
On a side note - I'm on my first actual trip with the Blade (two weeks ago I made it only to Atlanta airport before the customer called me that his unit tripped) and I really, really want to do very bad things to the person who came up with this keyboard layout. At home I have it hooked to eGPU/external keyboard so it didn't matter, but now when I have to write something on it, just for crying out loud how many times do I have to end up marking up a line above every time I want to put a question mark. This bloody thing is so close to a perfect laptop for me if not for that right shift and arrow keys.
Oddly enough, Windows didn’t grab the intel WiFi automatically. I also made sure to install the Intel 630 from Razer, and of course GeForce Experience. Took a bit of time, but got the Core X Chroma working as well.
Still surprised by the 1070 being smoked by the RTX 2070 Max-Q. Maybe if my card was a Ti it would fair better?
I have Core X (without chroma) and own rx580, Vega FE, 1080, 1080Ti, 2080Ti and tested all of them. Only 1080 would match the 2060 in my Blade, everything below was slower. There is a handicap associated with running eGPU, the more fps the bigger the gap, so I'm not surprised your 1070 in eGPU is slower than dedicated 2070 Max_Q. Crank up the settings, the bottleneck is PCIe interface, if you have complex scenes (low fps, high settings) that need more GPU time to render (as opposed to data transfer over PCIe) the gap will get smaller.
Thysanoptera will know better than me regarding the "Blade" I do think that my 2018 Strix has a strong CPU as it's very tolerant to undervolting and it passes CB3100. That said your 2019 Blade should be pushing way better numbers. Just ran R20 and hit close to CB2700, the notebook has been up for weeks with 10 virtual desktops and numerous applications open. CPU is at stock 45W PL1 limit with -140.6mV undervolt, power limits unlocked it would be pushing 3K. you could check the intel drivers, equally that's not going to make a big difference, something else has to be off.
FYI
GL703GS, i7-8750H, 32GB RAM @2666, GTX 1070
Q-6
I'm a bit curious. The microsoft store has the Dell XPS 7590 for 1,799 right now, which is about 700 less than I paid for my Razer. The biggest difference between the two is that the dell has a GTX 1650 and a 4k screen vs the RTX 2070 and 1080p 240hz on the razer.
I wonder if the extra 700.00 of the razer is worth that. . . Especially when the Razer is limited to 45w and the Dell isn't.
I wonder if the extra 700.00 of the razer is worth that. . . Especially when the Razer is limited to 45w and the Dell isn't.
I know I've commented on the keyboard layout before, boy do I feel for you.
That keyboard and the fans constantly revving up was exactly why I returned my 15" advanced. Amazing how kiboshed that is.
Yeah, I'm kinda considering the Dell XPS. . . A little more solid, and if I really wanted to spend the same amount of money, the Dell would come with 32gb / 1tb. The only downside is the 1650 that is in it, but really, for what I do it probably wouldn't be that much different.
I really did like the 17" I played with at the MS store recently, but the keyboard layout was still argh.
I take keyboards for granted as I use an external keyboard with the iMac here. So for me to jump over to a laptop, the keyboard has to be comfortable. Seriously comfortable.
I take keyboards for granted as I use an external keyboard with the iMac here. So for me to jump over to a laptop, the keyboard has to be comfortable. Seriously comfortable.