***Aorus X7 Pro owner's lounge***

Okay I am really close to pulling the trigger on this laptop.

Last concern is the battery life.

Is there any way to go into the bios and turn off the nvidia gtx video card and have only the intel run?

The reason I ask is because if I wanted to take notes in class with this laptop I could boot into intel only video card and could possibly get 5-6 hours of battery life.

Does this laptop have intel graphics?

Also what do you think about carrying this laptop around campus? Is it possible? It is slim. Might weight a little more but seems doable.

 

I don't know what's going on in this thread, but there seem to be all sorts of deleted and out of order posts.... I got a bit lost

Plus, I have to say, cookiesowns, I've noticed it from the start and thanks for all your posts, but for other's sake that don't know better, in your signature you do not actually have SLI 980m's unless you truly have a different laptop than the rest of us are talking about... only 970m

 

@Cookieowns Why is the thread looks so confusing, what happen?

 

Does anyone know if you can boot only into the Intel graphics from the BIOS or something?

 

It looks like the posts from Garbage man got deleted. No idea why.....

Good catch on the signature. It was probably 3-4 in the morning when I made the signature, should be fixed now..

 

Does anyone have any trouble with display brightness not changing after getting it out of sleep on battery? This has happened to me twice now. I wake up in the morning and try to get the brightness back to full and it doesn't change at all. The function keys don't work and the command center doesn't work. I have to restart it to get my settings back.
Besides this, to the people asking about the laptop impressions so far:

- It plays BF4 at 60 FPS with everything set at ultra.
- I also play Dota and it kicks with the display and fps.I wanted to use the new DSR feature to get even more out of the card but right now DSR does not work with SLI. So know that if you are going to try to get old games to look better.
- I haven't had a chance yet to try Flac (lossless) audio on it but I dint notice any static or noise on my UE 900 or my V-Moda M100. Only gripe is that it does not switch audio volume levels between headphones and speakers even though realtek seems to acknowledge that I connected headphones. So far they sound good. If you are an audiophile, maybe you look up a USB DAC or sound card. But that's a big "maybe".
- have to yet watch movies on it but the display has been quite adequate so far.
- I played BF4 and Dota 2 with the laptop keyboard instead of my mechanical one and it did not dissapoint me at all. Once you get used to the shallow travel, its all fine.
- the laptop is a finger print and stain magnet. Oily finger? Your laptop will have the smudges of it. But it looks great (without all the smudges) so it's a compromise.
- Touch pad looks cool et all with its reflections but it sucks with non dry fingers. Hopefully I can buy some screen protector for it and it'll fix the issue. Otherwise it will always looks like I attempted body painting on it with my fingers.
- I was glad that it didn't have much bloatware. Whatever it had seemed reasonably useful. The driver update tool is good but very slow. The command center is a great place to manage the system.
- The fans. OK. They are noisy. I didn't expect them to have such a punch. I barely noticed them with my headphones on but they are a bother without them. So, my advice is - get a laptop cooler and put the X7 on quite profile. But headphones are the way to game on a laptop anyway and you won't hear them with headphones on.
That's it for me so far. I'm typing this on a phone so expect some crazy auto corrects. I'll wrote more when I get more time. And thanks to the other guys who took time.
PS: A question to all the buyers from XoticPC - Did you get a free laptop bag with your purchase? I remembered that there was a bag deal for all Aorus laptops then. Was wondering if this laptop also got one.

 

I got my review sample yesterday and managed a few tests. I´m on 344.77, no repaste, no undervolt. Apart from some Windows updates this is out-of-the-box results.

It´s sleek and beautiful. I haven´t used a 17-incher for a long time, this is a pleasant experience and I´m seriously considering going 17 for my next purchase.
P150HM to the left, Auros X7 Pro to the right:

Spoiler

Spoiler

The touchpad is glossy. Not my favorite but ok to use.


Fire Strike
Score 10 706
Graphics 14 601
Physics 9 556
Combined 3 797

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4870HQ Processor,GIGABYTE X7V3

CPU stayed at 3.4-3.5 GHz except for a single instance during the Physics test where it dropped to 3.2-3.3 GHz.




Battlefield 4
Ultra preset, 1080p. Golmud Railway 64p.
Min fps 80. Avg fps 112.




Apart from a few cases of dipping down to around 1 GHz, which wasn´t noticed ingame, the CPU hovered around 3.0-3.1 GHz.. Hwinfo reports thermal throttling but nothing is noticeable during gaming, no stuttering or freezes.




GPUs are running 1037 MHz, max temp 72 degrees.




Here are pictures of the two 970Ms:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Because pushing 100+ fps in BF4 at 1080p Ultra barely breaking 70 degrees is that cool.

 

Incredible.

Thank you so much.

Also.

So basically the laptop does stay cool because it's barely working?

So in BF4, on Ultra running 100 FPS, everything is running cool because it is not working that hard right?

Where does the Thermal Throttling come onto play?

I mean I thought BF4 was super taxing and would thermal throttle the CPU? How is the CPU not being Thermal Throttle in BF4 but being throttled in Stress Tests?

 

Can anyone tell me if this will fit in a normal book bag for carrying around campus?

 

Thanks for all the reviews, guys! It's looking more and more likely that I'm going to eBay my Alienware 17 w/780m (not happy at all with the build quality) and pick one of these up in the near future!

 

I order this one. Should get it in a couple of days.

I think I might keep this one as long as it fits in my bag.

 

Something I haven't seen yet: Has anybody run a read/write test on the SSD's? I'm curious how they do in Raid 0. Also, has anybody opened it up to see the brand of SSD and RAM they're using? I think Hexus and Tom's Hardware both reported Lite-On and Ballistix respectively, but I'm hoping they went with a little nicer SSD for the production version compared to the pre-production model those two got. I have a 256GB Plextor M5M that I plan to add into the Raid 0 mix. Mostly I just want the increased storage, but will gladly accept the improved performance from 3xMSATA SSDs. Thanks in advance!

 

Seriously,The Plextor SSDs are all made by Lite-On.
Plextor M6M( BETTER THAN M5M) is definitely same thing to Lite-On L9M which is the demo use for.
And there are a common knowledge is the brand from Taiwan like MSI ASUS ROG and Gigabyte would like to use the Lite-On SSDs(except PCI-E/M.2 for G751JY)
So please think again...

 

Hey Bud.

The laptop comes with Lite-ON L9M SSD's. I highly inadvise running different types of SSD's in a RAID together. The m5m or m6m for that matter both run different firmwares vs the L9m. I rather suggest you running a 2.5" SSD to replace that 1TB HDD like I did. The area where the SSD lies gets toasty, I can't imagine if a traditional HDD is there.

That said, the SSD's are quite quick. If you want sequential performance I suggest reformatting them in a 128KB stripe array. You'll be able to get 1.0GB/s reads and 900MB/s writes in 128KB. I personally run them at 64KB now, good balance between sequential and random 4K performance.

Also over provision them for bettter performance consistency.

 

Good to know! I just saw the Hexus review and they were only doing about 800MB/s, which I would have expected more since the previous X7 did 1400MB/s with 3 SSD's in RAID 0. I guess it could be the striping that cookiesowns was talking about.

 

Thanks, but I'm pretty set on running 3xMSATA drives and putting a 2TB HDD in the regular bay. I want the extra storage for my Steam library on the SSD's and I put all my Windows libraries on the HDD because I don't need great read performance to watch a movie or whatever. Maybe I'll sell the M5M with the Alienware and pick up an 256GB M6M to go in the Aorus. I can't find a 256GB Lite-On L9M anywhere.

 

I just bought this laptop and it will be here on Monday.

I'm very excited.

My only question at the moment is what do you think about keeping it vs returning it for the Alienware 18 that will come out. Like why do you owners want to keep this one?

Also

Does anyone have any experience carrying this laptop in a bag? Is it to big or is is it just a little longer than normal?

I can't wait to play BF4 on it!

 

About benchmark that you won't worry about that. Because the Lite-on is only for OEM, so you can just assume it is Plextor M6M.
So you can just buy a M6M 256G for raid 0.
And the about HDD , the HGST 7200RM is the fast HDD for laptop,(around 120mb/s) The 2T HDD is only 5400rm (around 80mb/s)
So if you want to exchange the HDD driver ,you would better choose a SSD ,If you want raid 0 *4(MSATA*3+SATA3), you would better choose Plextor M6S(same chip inside as M6M).
if not for raid 0,the samsung 850 pro 1T would be the best performance

 

Thanks for the input. Really not concerned about speed for the standard laptop drive slot. I just want cheap storage for movies, pictures, etc. The OS, games, and other programs will all be on the 3xMSATA Raid 0 drives.

 

For me personally, I travel a lot. I currently have an Alienware 17 and it's pretty unwieldy for me. The X7 should be much easier for me to lug around (it's much thinner and lighter) without requiring me to give up on the 17" screen and has what I feel to be a perfect storage solution with 3 MSATA drive slots and 1 slot for an HDD (or SDD if you want) for storing the stuff that doesn't need fast read speeds. I've also been very unimpressed with my first foray into Alienware. I expected their products to be built better since they're such a well-known, seemingly respected brand. It came to me (brand new from Alienware) with one of the keys broken, the power cable is starting to separate because they wanted to put a light on it (I guess they were running out of other places to put lights), and the webcam/mic stopped working very shortly after I got it, which is suspected to be a problem with the hinge design. Again, very unimpressed.

 

I used to be an alienware fanboy but since about 4 to 5 years ago I think they have really fallen behind. I wouldn't ever buy them again. I am really interested in this Aorus. Gonna watch the thread for a while and if no huge issues pop up I'll probably take the plunge.

 

WOW. Thank you so much for this information. This helps me a lot. I definitely do not want to pay 5K for a laptop and get subpar quality.

I will definitely help you. I will be playing BF4 on Ultra with XTU running on the background. This should give me a lot of information.

From what I hear you can run it on VSYNC and get 60 FPS no problem and run super cool. This will be dream.

 

again i'd recommend not putting in a different ssd. the m6m and L9M is NOT the same drive. You can find OEM L9M's around on various sellers. That would be your best bet.

 

Can you post a direct link of the exact ssd drive that is in the Aorus X7 Pro so I can purchase a third one and have raid 0 with 3 drives?

Also if I reformat with 128 stripping. What happens to my recovery partition for resetting everything? I do not want to lose any of that.

 

You will need to wipe your drive, even if you add in another SSD to put them into RAID. Whenever you change the stripe or add in an additional drive to a RAID, you will need to wipe the entire array. I highly suggest secure erasing all 3 of the SSD's before remaking the array also. You can do this by running parted magic, or any UNIX/LINUX distro with hdparm. But you need to put the laptop into sleep which is a PITA. So having another maching handy SSHing into the laptop after sleep will net you success.

You can get back the recovery partition if you use the USB backup tool, that will allow you to reformat everything as if it came out of the factory.

New 256 GB mSATA Solid State Drive Lite on It LMT 256L9M | eBay

There's an ebay link of a seller selling the LMT-256L9M 256GB L9M SSD.


EDIT: Let me contact my gigabyte rep to see if they can help us source the exact LMT-256L9M as used on the Aorus. If you don't feel confident in ordering that from the ebay seller, just get any SSD you'd like, and don't put in RAID, or put it in RAID and just live with the potential that you could have random quirks from the drives behaving differently.


In other news, has anyone tried out the beta v3.0.0 of power control? There's an easter egg hidden =) ( Aorus's take on the Windows 8.1 Start Menu )

 

I can't believe this. My X7 just came in. I received an open box one when I bought a brand new one.

The seal was kind of opened and the bags holding the power stuff was missing. There was a screw missing from the back and the keyboard looks like it was taking out.

I really got someone's demo or returned.
Already created an RMA.

 

No Thanks!

 

Full 30 Minutes! I'll Pass!

 

About M6M and L9M,they are the samething,The hardware is same.the only differece is the label and Firmware(I will mention below)
You can use web translator to open the link(original language is simple Chinese)
[ÉϺ£]³ö2¸ö ½¨ÐË 128G MSATA¹Ì̬£¬Í¬ÆÖ¿ÆÌØM6M_½»Ò×ÂÛ̳
the lite-on is only for OEM.
for sure is batter use Lite-on L9M
but most of lite-on SSD is sold by Chinese dealer.which is remove by other laptop, so basically is cannot guarantee they provide the brand new one.
And there are a differece in there Firmware.
Which the OEM ssd cannot check the using hours (charge time could be)
So thats why I didn't mention him to buy a lite-on L9M on ebay.
By the way I am Chinese work in GOME(store like Futureshop).with experienced on Chinese online shopping especially for the electronic devise.As I know the most Chinese sellers on ebay are also post their goods on Alibaba and Taobao which they are usually lack of credibility...
By the way for the rain 0, I suggest to use the same Firmware as well.

And could you do me a favor:
Double check the panel spec of your machine.
Also the spec of audio card.
Because according to Aorus customer service of Taiwan,the first three batch machine is pack with the LG IPS panel(LGD046C LP173WF4-SPD1 75HZ).
http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=238&t=4205888&p=2
And the Audio chips are really confuse me between the notebook check and tom's hardware‘s review (ALC 282 VS ALC892)
Thanks a lot

 

Can you please do the same test and set the max CPU power to 99% via power management? I'm looking to buy the laptop and am more than happy to limit the CPU if it means cooler temps. Would be great to see some more testing with variable conditions for this laptop? I.e. Undervolted temps vs. Stock temps etc.

 

To be honest I'm so tired of all this. I went through this exact same thing with the P35x V3. No matter what you do you will lose performance.

Ofcourse you can undervolt and change max to 99 but it's all the same you net less performance.

What's the point in spending 2.5K if you are not getting max performance?

Laptops have not evolved yet. As far as I am concerned I am going to buy the best portable gaming laptop and forget about the rest.

Best portability and forget about all the throttling and what not. Just play and have fun.

I am going to build a gaming desktop for extreme performance with 0 thermal throttling and power limit throttling.

 

Haha to be fair I do understand what you mean. Unfortunately I'm away from home to often for a desktop and I've noticed that most modern processors give the exact same FPS with and without Turbo boost. Either way, the laws of physics are truly an unmerciful SOB

 

dude... The power limit throttling is a Intel restriction. YOU CANNOT DEFEAT this without a $1000 mobile processor. As for thermal throttling, no problems here after a re-paste and a small cooling pad. I was beating on the laptop also in BF4 and Prime95 running Heaven. Ran at 3.0+ all the time.

Yes, my panel spec is the LG display. If it's a 75Hz model, that would explain why I can run it at 1080P 75Hz just fine =) The EDID seems to run it at 60Hz by default though.

LGD046C LP173WF4-SPD1. It comes with a predefined ICC profile. D6800 2.2 gamma XYZLUT + MTX

Audio codec reported in Realtek control panel is indeed ALC282....

 

Take a look of the screen shots I took.

The thing was limiting all over the place.
I'm sorry bro I'm going to pass. I already returned it. But thanks for all of your help.

I'm just going to get an extremely portable gaming laptop and build a supreme gaming desktop.

 

Hello, My pro should be here by this coming Friday. I wanted to know if the notebook is locked on 1866 mhz bus type of modules. Trying to buy 32gb (4x8gb) G.Skill RipJaw 2133 mhz, not sure if it supports it. Asked Aorus directly but all they say is check the QVL and where in the world is that list at? lol. The default brand ram that comes with the pc based on the vendor site is not specified. was told not to mix different brands even tho they share same specs. Thoughts. Thanks.

link below is the one im interested in getting.

G.SKILL Ripjaws 32GB (4 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3L 2133 Laptop Memory Model F3-2133C11Q-32GRSL - Newegg.com

 

Everything I've seen has shown it having 1866 Crucial Ballistix. I'd say it's probably not worth all that money upgrading to the 2133 and better to just get 16gb more of the Ballistix if you're set on 32gb. If you're really worried, I'd just wait until I get it so you know for sure what memory they're using.

 

I don't think you understand what power limit throttling is. It just means your CPU is unable to turbo boost at it's max bin because it's exceed it 47W TDP or 55W TDP for 30 second boost. Which is 3.7Ghz for 1 core, or 3.5Ghz for all 4 cores. BF4 is EXTREMELY CPU heavy especially after the recent updates. I'm CPU bottlenecked on a 4770K @ 4.2Ghz running 2 R9 280X's @ 1440P........

In fact, a Intel desktop CPU will power limit throttle as well if you run it under Intel spec. This is how turbo boost is designed, to give you extra performance when you aren't exceeding it's thermal and power specifications. Hence power limit throttling.

You are actually getting higher turbo bins than me even with power limit throttling. The thermal throttling is sort of inexcusable but I'm sure a re paste would have helped you there.

The CPU is speced at 2.5Ghz, in this laptop it will never ever go below 2.5Ghz.

Everyone's needs are different. I just don't want false information being spread here.

Laptop comes with 2x8GB of Crucial 1866.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...al_ballistix_1866_16GB-_-20-148-729-_-Product

That set of G.SKILL seems interesting. I think it's plausible that the laptop will honor the XMP settings of that specific set, but you never know. You want to be the first to try?

 

Thanks a lot ！:thumbsup:
The audio chips is not good enough ~
My maching would be come to me in 6 days

 

Well you are the only one on this entire site because everyone says otherwise. Every single thread says these thin laptops are over heating and underperforming.

It's okay because the laptop was just a little too big to fit into my bag anyway.

But the main thing was the SLI problems that I had. I had the latest driver from Aorus installed and when I played BF4 there were all the kinds of little glitches and things with the graphics.

I guess I just don't want to be an early adopter of a larger slim sli notebook

If i want to have the perfect SLI right I will build a Desktop.

 

I believe what cookiesowns is trying to say is that the CPU does not go below it's rated stock CPU speed, but it will not Turbo Boost to its full potential due to power limit throttling. Turbo Boost is, in short, a technology that allows your CPU to allocate extra power to individual cores to maximize performance on applications which do not gain much from extra cores, i.e. single or dual threaded applications (most games fit in this category). A game does not usually require more than one physical core to be running at above 100% of its clock speed on most modern mid to high end processors. Battlefield 4 is a special case in that it is very CPU dependant. (I feel like I made a mistake somewhere in that ramble; could someone verify this information?)

 

You are absolutely correct. The CPU is rated for 2.5Ghz. If you encountered severe thermal throttling, and power limit throttling it could drop below 2.5Ghz. On the Aorus, this NEVER occurs.

As long as you are within the 47W TDP window your CPU will almost always turbo boost at the 3.5Ghz bin. The only game so far that doesn't allow this is really BF4... It gobbles up cores like crazy. But for me in most 64 player servers, I turn up resolution scale to 140% on the Aorus to shift back to GPU dependency from being CPU limited.


The metric to look at is thermal throttling, core clock speed. This laptop doesn't power limit throttle below 2.5Ghz from what I can tell, unless you run a severe power virus such as Prime95 AVX.

 

BF4 gameplay at 1080p Ultra from my benchmarks before:



Avg fps 112
Min fps 80
Max gpu temps 72
Max cpu temp 90-91

The cpu throttles some and stays around 3.0-3.1 GHz. This is not noticed ingame, it´s smooth.

I´m on 344.77 and a cooler, no repaste or undervolt.

 

Beastly.

Do you own an external monitor? I'd love to see gameplay or even just benchmarks at 1440p+. Pretty please?

 

Just in-case anyone is planning on ordering from XoticPC: I ordered mine almost a month ago and apparently they ran out of stock and have no ETA as to when there will be new shipments...-_-...

 

Sorry no, I don't have any external displays.
But I could run at 133% resolution scale to see how it behaves?

 

What kind of gameplay do you want to see? I can do a 1440P demo, along with resolution scale if you want.

 

Bummer. I was planning to order from them so I could have them do the repaste for me.

 

I am sorry but you are still delusional and want to justify your purchase.

It's okay.

I have found the ultimate laptop.

Thus m.2 raid 0 is a dream. I boot up in 3 seconds and have loaded BF4 on ssd.

Here is what a proper healthy machine reports when working properly.

This is BF4 on full ultra with 4xmaa!



Absolutely unbelievable with plenty of room for overclocking.

From what I hear you can get the 970M overclocked to the 980M. I do not care because I would rather keep everything cool.

The game runs perfect like this. I do not notice a difference with SLI or 980M.

Thanks for all your help though. Enjoy!

 

what laptop is this???

 

I actually ordered it from them with the repaste, too. So on top of them having no stock, I'd still have to deal with the customization time which is causing me to consider canceling my order. I was shooting for mid Jan at the latest. But I don't know how realistic that is.