Blade Stealth Hobbled by Firmware | Razer Insider

Blade Stealth Hobbled by Firmware

  • 12 February 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 16 views
F
Userlevel 6
I've got a Blade Stealth on the way, and of course I'm researching what I can do to get the most performance out of it. Just found this excellent video by Brad Ling.

Apparently the processor is being hard limited to just under 3.0Ghz under load. Even tweaking power settings in the BIOS can't circumvent this because Razer has hard-coded certain power limits into the firmware.

"There's no way this laptop is actually going to deliver the performance it's meant to deliver. Very disappointing... this is the first laptop I've seen that doesn't have to throttle due to it's actually adequate cooling solution, but they just had to make it throttle."

Someone in the comments claims that there's a way to 'trick' the CPU into thinking it's receiving less power than it's getting and circumvent those power limits. Wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this, and/or has been able to try it out?

code:
Advanced/CPU VR Settings/Core IA VR settings/
IMON Slope = 50 IMON
Offset = 31999
IMON Prefix = -
Blade Stealth: The 2020 Blade Stealth Bible (Optimization and Troubleshooting Guide) The 2019 Blade Stealth Bible 2017 Blade 14: Razer Blade 14 Optimization Guide (Undervolting CPU & GPU) Blade 14 Temperatues: Open vs. Closed
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4 Replies

S
Before the shills get here...

I personally owned one of these before refunding. I can confirm that under load the CPU *did* hit its claimed speed of 4.6GHz (single-threaded). I'd try not to stress too much till the thing is in your hands and you can test it for yourself.
F
Userlevel 6
Skeith_0x5B
Before the shills get here...

I personally owned one of these before refunding. I can confirm that under load the CPU *did* hit its claimed speed of 4.6GHz (single-threaded). I'd try not to stress too much till the thing is in your hands and you can test it for yourself.


Curious why you returned it?

I've had it for a couple days now and I'm noticing some really inconsistent performance from the CPU. Firestrike gave it an 11,450 physical score out of the box, but it had terrible coil whine coming from the chassis and the speakers, with the battery discharging during benchmarks. After running windows updates and updating the BIOS and EC, the coil whine went away but the physical scores plummeted to ~9000, sometimes lower.

With some undervolting those scores have improved a little bit, but I haven't been able to get them back to what they were before all of the updates that eliminated the coil whine. I'm curious if the BIOS/EC updates solve the coil whine by further limiting the CPU.
Blade Stealth: The 2020 Blade Stealth Bible (Optimization and Troubleshooting Guide) The 2019 Blade Stealth Bible 2017 Blade 14: Razer Blade 14 Optimization Guide (Undervolting CPU & GPU) Blade 14 Temperatues: Open vs. Closed
S
figrin1
Curious why you returned it?

I've had it for a couple days now and I'm noticing some really inconsistent performance from the CPU. Firestrike gave it an 11,450 physical score out of the box, but it had terrible coil whine coming from the chassis and the speakers, with the battery discharging during benchmarks. After running windows updates and updating the BIOS and EC, the coil whine went away but the physical scores plummeted to ~9000, sometimes lower.

With some undervolting those scores have improved a little bit, but I haven't been able to get them back to what they were before all of the updates that eliminated the coil whine. I'm curious if the BIOS/EC updates solve the coil whine by further limiting the CPU.


You've unknowingly answered your own question. :)

The coil whine plus speaker crackling was enough for me to return mine. My left fan was also making a strange sound (different in pitch and it sounded as though it was clipping on something).

It sounds like you're having some issues/second thoughts imho. If that's the case I'd advise you just refund yours, at this price point you should be no less than 100% satisfied with your purchase and don't let any shill tell you otherwise.
F
Userlevel 6
Skeith_0x5B
You've unknowingly answered your own question. :)

The coil whine plus speaker crackling was enough for me to return mine. My left fan was also making a strange sound (different in pitch and it sounded as though it was clipping on something).

It sounds like you're having some issues/second thoughts imho. If that's the case I'd advise you just refund yours, at this price point you should be no less than 100% satisfied with your purchase and don't let any shill tell you otherwise.


I think it's an amazing computer and I'm grateful to have eliminated the coil whine issue. If I'm not able to solve the battery discharge with Razer Support and figure out why the CPU is being limited, then I'm going to very reluctantly return it.



Here's an example of a stress test I ran today. CPU started at 25W, with temperatures at 68 (which is great, tons of thermal headroom), then inexplicably decided to throttle down to 20W and 2.7Ghz. This is in Creator Mode.
Blade Stealth: The 2020 Blade Stealth Bible (Optimization and Troubleshooting Guide) The 2019 Blade Stealth Bible 2017 Blade 14: Razer Blade 14 Optimization Guide (Undervolting CPU & GPU) Blade 14 Temperatues: Open vs. Closed
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