In the past few weeks we saw a number of indicators that Razer is getting ready to launch an AMD-based Blade gaming notebook. In a rather odd-looking Twitter conversation on Thursday night that went into Friday morning, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan and Frank Azor of AMD suggested the possibility of a collaboration.
"What do you think about making an AMD equipped Razer Blade laptop, @minglintan," asked Frank Azor, AMD's gaming chief in a Twitter post.
"I get a ton of requests all the time to make an AMD gaming laptop," Min-Lian Tan, a co-founder and CEO of Razer, responded shortly. "What do you guys think?" […] FWIW I think we could design/engineer a pretty awesome AMD gaming laptop. The current laptops out there don't really push the limits of what can be done. What would you guys like to see in a Razer Blade with AMD?"
Razer is the last major notebook brands to exclusively offer Intel-based machines, which has frustrated some gamers looking for more choice. Back in 2019, Tan told Tom's Hardware that "we do have quite a number of customers reaching out to us asking us about AMD[.]"
Last month someone submitted benchmark results of two Razer machines, codenamed PI411, featuring AMD's unlocked Ryzen 9 5900HX processor accompanied by Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 or RTX 3070 GPU with an 80W TGP. That's a clear indicator that the PC maker was at least experimenting with AMD's CPU.
The 3DMark submission itself does not mean that a product is coming to the market as some products do not meet certain goals that manufacturers set. But when high-ranking executives start to talk about new products publicly, it certainly suggests that some plans are being set internally.
Tan is a self-described loose cannon on social media, once telling Tom's Hardware that "my PR team and my legal team lives on tenterhooks that I’m gonna say something stupid." But with a partner involved, this seems like it could potentially lead to something real.
