Razer's Second-Generation Blade Notebook Review: Focusing On The Z

Mists of Pandaria, Skyrim, And Shogun 2

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria offers a lush expansion with highly-detailed new worlds. One of the most demanding sections of the game is in Honeydew Village. Placing a character directly in-between the guards at the entrance to the city when it is raining, then panning the camera to just above the grassy hill beside them brings a very high number of moving objects into view. It is one of the worst-case scenarios that we have found in the game.

The GeForce GTX 660M averages more than 100 FPS in older sections of the game at Ultra settings, but only manages 33 FPS in this specific test. We had no trouble questing or raiding with the Blade R2 set to Ultra at 1920x1080, though.

The High preset brings average frame rates up, but doesn't necessary make the experience any smoother. We're comfortable operating the Blade R2 at WoW's Ultra detail preset.

At the Medium preset, a platform bottleneck once again hurts AMD's APU, putting the Blade's GeForce GTX 660M ahead of the Radeon HD 7970M. 

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Benchmark settings for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are the same as those in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: PC Performance, Benchmarked.

The Blade R2 has no problems playing Skyrim at its highest settings. 

The average frame continues going up as detail settings are dropped, although we don't think is necessary on the Blade or our comparison machines.

Total War: Shogun 2

The built-in benchmark for Shogun 2 takes the Blade's GeForce GTX 660M under 20 FPS. This is mainly due to the game's anti-aliasing. 

Turning off anti-aliasing doubles average frame rates to a very playable 38 FPS.  

Running the built-in 720p benchmark yields 46 FPS. We prefer to leave AA turned off and play the game at 1080p with everything else maxed-out.