The Razer Edge Review
by Vivek Gowri on March 28, 2013 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Mobile
- Razer
- Razer Edge
Thermals
The thermal story here is pretty interesting. Obviously, with a huge thermal envelope for such a small form factor, the first concern I had was for heat. Razer has a fair bit of experience shoving a lot of hardware in tight spaces, though with the Blade the problem construction was different. The Blade chassis is very thin, but has a lot of room in terms of footprint. The sheer amount of surface area top and bottom, as well as all the venting on the bottom and sides, help the Blade (especially the 2nd generation one) effectively cool itself even though there’s relatively little volume available.
The Edge, by comparison, has a tiny footprint and hence needs to be much thicker than competing tablets; it’s actually also thicker than the bottom casing of the Blade, so there’s that too. Airflow is extremely key here, since there’s very little surface area to let heat dissipate convectively. The heat pipe, too, is key, as tablets have far more orientations that need to be designed for when compared to notebooks. Orientation matters for heat pipes, as their effectiveness depends on how much working fluid can be transported from the condenser to the evaporator. Operating against gravity is always a losing proposition, and as such there’s an inverse correlation between transport capacity and operation against gravity (ie, as the angle of operation against gravity increases, the transport capacity of the heat pipes typically decrease.)
At some point in the future I’ll do a much more thorough article on how heat pipes and the cooling systems in mobile computers work, but for now this will have to suffice. The TL;DR version as pertinent to this article: if you have enough compute horsepower in a tablet to require active cooling, you’re in for a hell of a time. Tablets are much harder to cool actively than notebooks.
Which is why thermal performance was, for me at least, the major concern with the Edge prior to launch. The 0.8” thickness helped alleviate my fears somewhat, because that gets you a significant amount of volume to work with compared to something like the Surface Pro. Ivy Bridge ULV and Kepler are also pretty good as far as thermal performance goes, so I wasn’t concerned at all about how it would behave under light usage cases, particularly ones that didn’t have the GPU turning on. But when the system is stressed, what then?
To find out, I fired up my 100% system load test – Furmark 1080p and wPrime 1024M (4 threads) looping, which maxes CPU and GPU – and let it run for a sustained period of time. I saw GPU temps hit 85C with ease, while CPU got up to 95C. The GPU temperature stabilizes in the 87F region at 0.887V (the voltage at 500MHz). CPU temp stabilizes in the low 90s, which is interesting because we typically see CPU temperatures that are lower than the GPU temps. CPU power draw hovers around 14.7W when both cores are loaded. The Edge reaches thermal equilibrium before it starts throttling the GPU, which is a good sign.
I also ran my real-world gaming situation with the Dirt 3 benchmark, and like last time, ran it 50 times in a row, this time on high settings with 2xMSAA at 1366x768, my graphics setup of choice for playing the game when the Edge was plugged in. The results were pretty interesting – while average framerates stayed in the 52-56 fps range for a majority of the tests, the minimum framerate told a good bit of the story. There are three primary speeds and voltages the GPU runs at: the default 500MHz (0.887V), 570MHz (0.912V), and 405MHz (0.813V). In many of the runs in the 55-57fps range, the minimum framerate would be around 45-46fps, while some of the runs that had average fps on the low end (51-52fps), the minimum framerate would be below 40, sometimes as low as 35 fps. This happened every three or four runs, with consistency, with the GPU clocking down to the lower voltage performance state when necessary in order to maintain thermal equilibrium. At no point was there an extended period of throttling, which is why performance remained mostly constant for the roughly two and a half hours it took to go through 50 runs of the benchmark. That’s pretty impressive, considering the amount of thermal stress the GPU puts on a system of this size.
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randomlinh - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
This is how I envision a Steam box. Pick up and play anywhere... and if I have the time, dock it to a TV for big screen fun.Now I just need the price to cut in half....
SR81 - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
... except Valve has the intention of it being a $99 set top box that streams your games from your PC, just like the NVIDIA Shield without a screen.Mumrik - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
I have to assume this thing is for people looking to replace their normal stationary/laptop.Havor - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
Yeah still, but for a starting price of $999, this is actually NOT pretty good value.Come on $1000 for a heavy tablet, with only a 64GB SSD ware a big chunk will be used by the Win8 OS, and then $250 for the gaming grip.
Even the Razor Edge Pro with a 128GB SSD and a i7 instead of a i5 would be at $1000 to high to be useful!
Not saying that the price is to high for what it cost to make the tablet, I say the price is way to high for the real world value of the tablet, think whit a efficient Haswell CPU they could make something lighter and more useful.
But unless they get the price down to around $500~600 with a included game controller grip, i dont see lots of people buying this overpriced tablet.
And I wonder if the reviewer was smoking pot, or is this is a Infomercial, instead of a real review, because even do its a wonder of engineering, i don't see the appeal, and a product like this would only find buyers if it had the Apple logo on it!
perry1mm - Saturday, March 30, 2013 - link
I don't understand how you can say this is not good value. $1000 is not much if you're in the market for a laptop/tablet and are on the go enough to make it worth it...plugging in and playing games in a small profile for easy packing, carrying, and just general versatility, this is a dream come true.There are other options out there that I personally think are more feature rich and fit my personal use better in the same price-range and versatility, but even so the Edge fits the same type of device I'd want...and for comparable laptop performance you'd pay the same.
I wouldn't need anything but the keyboard dock if I did get one of these, though I personally have the Vaio Duo 11 that play games great and is much better out-of-the box feature-wise, port-wise, and display-wise. Plus I got the highest spec'd one with 256GB SSD for $1300 after a promo and $100 credit back with the Sony Card.
The main issue would be regular on-the-go battery life but if you can stretch it on power mode to get 4-6hrs, I think that is suitable, since anyone who is getting this should already expect to plug in for heavy game usage unless they're on a flight and want a couple hours of it.
If they packaged the keyboard dock when it is available with the Pro i7, 256GB, 8GB RAM model, for $1500, it would probably be one of the best value gaming laptops for portability on the market.
The Surface Pro with it's i5 and 4GB RAM is sorely lacking in performance. The only real downside for me is the resolution, as my Vaio Duo has spoiled me in that department and all the games I've played (DmC, HL2, Dota 2, WoW, Borderlands 2, Bastion, SC2, Portal 2, L4D2, FC2, and numerous others) all ran smoothly at 1080p if I turned down most settings and looked great at solid 30+FPS if not better.
Havor - Saturday, March 30, 2013 - link
" $1000 is not much"I am very well off, I am a supervisor in the offshore, and my wife is a deputy director of a local part of the national institute.
Still i think $1000 is way to mouths for what you get in return, like i said, not saying that the price is to high for what it cost to make a device like this, saying if you wait 1~2 generations, you get way more for a lot less.
This tablet falls in the category as the first LCD TVs, they ware around $5000 for a 40", and just like this tablet, the asking price was not to high for what it cost to make one, I am saying, you have to be a idiot to pay $1000~$1500 for something that will be outdated in 2 years by way better devices.
"for $1500, it would probably be one of the best value gaming laptops for portability on the market."
Got a ASUS G75VX for work, and a Transformer for on the road, ware i depending on use use the dock with, nut yeah i cant play FPS games on the Transformer, still there are lots of other fun games other the Angry Birds that i can also play on it.
The G75 is a real desktop replacement, i can use when i am @work, I am "on the go enough" about +50% of the year, but i cant really see any real benefits over a normal tablet.
"The Surface Pro with it's i5 and 4GB RAM is sorely lacking in performance."
I never said the Surface Pro was a good deal, I say your a idiot or have to mouth money if you if you buy this, as you can be a early adopter of tech that is not ready for prime time, if you buy it anyway i and many others will think something of you, if you tell the total price of what you got in your hands.
"you must be the one smoking pot if you think this would be $500-600 with a controller grip"
Read correctly, i did not say the device was was overprices for the tech you get, i say the its just not worth it, as in 2 years from now you get the same for half the price and weight, whit 50% more powerk
rviswas11 - Tuesday, April 2, 2013 - link
i don't think you realise that the only in this thing that is going to get outdated in the next 2-3 years is the battery. as far as the performance goes even you anus will be outdated in the same time framerviswas11 - Tuesday, April 2, 2013 - link
sorry i ;meant asus.truthbeacon - Saturday, April 6, 2013 - link
Again, it still depends on your perspective - As a consultant in a field where I am working the same places as you (and at the slope among other places which are out of touch with the world) and I never go anywhere without my $1400 (two years ago) SB slate.What you are glossing over with regards to value is that even when flying at the front, it is infinitely easier to get more work done with a tablet or slate pc because they take up so much less space (even this chunk). If you throw in the ability to do a good job of playing games for those exceedingly rare occasions when you don't have reporting or bureaucratic nonsense to deal with, you don't want to have to pull out a 15" {even ultrabook although they suck for gaming compared to ones with discreet cards} to do anything.
Where the slate PCs come in at far handier than a tablet is that when I am leaving a site with a 6 hour flight to my next destination, I can pull out my slate and begin working on reports and generate graphs using the same proprietary software that I just collected data on. I am not limited to almost-office software, at the mercy of what is (or more appropriately what is not) available for my ARM-based device and can even bring along a full ergonomic keyboard if I wish. Further, when I am flying out, I can prepare my data collection software so that when I arrive I am not scrambling to meet the always over-optimistic "we're going to start up this afternoon" hopes, because you know how bad critical path is during a startup.
perry1mm - Saturday, March 30, 2013 - link
Oh, and to add with your last couple of comments...you must be the one smoking pot if you think this would be $500-600 with a controller grip. Are you f***ing serious, lol. That barely gets you an iPad, Surface RT, Nexus 10, or a laptop with s*** specs. To say it should be that price WITH the controller grip is absolutely asinine.And YOU don't see the appeal, but for someone like myself that travels regularly, is on-the-go for work almost everyday where I spend an hour or two sitting down in various locations, travel regularly for family, vaca, or just to get away with my wife for the weekend, it is perfect. The tablet versatility, performance when needed and I can plug in, plus the small profile for easy carrying/storing/space-use constraints, it really is awesome.