Gaming Performance

Again, we've reviewed and tested the performance of the GTX 1060 again and again, in a number of laptops before, so the performance in the following sections won't come at a surprise. Great for 1080p gaming for sure.

The results in 3DMark are on par with what I expected from a GTX 1060. It's approximately 29 percent slower than the GTX 1070 in GPU-limited tests, however it provides a significant 44 percent advantage on average over last-generation GTX 970M laptops.

The Razer Blade performs within a few percent of the other GTX 1060 gaming laptops we've tested, within the margin of error. There are no performance issues found here.

Like other GTX 1060 laptops, the Razer Blade is well suited to 1080p 60 FPS gaming at very high to ultra quality settings. In intensive titles like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided you'll need to drop down to high settings to achieve around a 60 FPS average, but many other games are very playable on ultra settings thanks to a decent average framerate and a 1% low framerate around the 40 FPS mark.

I don't have charts for this game just yet, but I was playing a bit of Mass Effect Andromeda on the Razer Blade, and achieved an average framerate of 54 FPS at 1080p ultra settings with a 1% low of 38 FPS while inside the Hyperion, a surprisingly intensive section of the game.

Watch Dogs 2 on ultra settings led to an average of 40 FPS but a 1% low of 29 FPS; reducing the quality to medium bumped the game to an extremely playable state with an average above 60 FPS. And the Razer Blade was just as capable as a GTX 1070 laptop at Civilization VI with maximum quality settings, as the strategy game is highly CPU-bound.

While the Razer Blade has an excellent design, its thermal solution isn't as strong as other gaming laptops. The Blade doesn't throttle under heavy and extended gaming loads, but the device runs hot and loud in the process. The dual-fan cooler, which shoots air into the laptop hinge assembly, has a high-pitched whine to it that's quite audible if you aren't using headphones. When the fans are cranked up to cool a heavy CPU and GPU load, you'll know about it.

Under AIDA64's worst case scenario stress test, the CPU hit 95°C and the GPU sat at 89°C, which is very hot. The metal underside of the laptop is far too hot in these situations to touch or rest on your lap, and the middle section of the keyboard gets toasty. Luckily, the gaming keys on the left of the keyboard are kept cool through clever heatpipe and fan placement, so you won't be uncomfortable while gaming at a desk.

In a more realistic situation, such as playing Watch Dogs 2, the CPU hit 80°C and the GPU hit 81°C. The Blade was still very loud under these conditions, but temperatures weren't as high. You'll see better thermals from a lot of other gaming laptops, though the Blade has no trouble matching its competitors in performance despite running very hot.