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

the only stuttering I get is starting fresh after dying, panning the camera around quickly. or with lots and lots of orcs all at once. to be fair I got a lot more stuttering using the 6gb 970m card with everything at ultra than I ever got with the aorus. and I can play with textures at ultra using my x7 pro. but when I switch to high textures I never, ever get slowdown. just can't tell much of a difference between high and ultra textures to be honest. having fun playing skyrim right now.

 

So looking at previous remarks by Aorus reps, during the prototype phase, they created two versions of the X7 Pro. One with 6GB and one with 3GB. After testing both, they decided to go with the 3GB version. Now they could have done this for one of two reasons (or both). 1) 6gb of VRAM takes up more space (height) on the GPU. Since they have to have two GPUs with this, it creates more of a problem for them than other thin laptops that could probably fit in 6GB of VRAM in a thin form factor. And they probably didn't want to remake the chassis for this. 2) The most important one and the most likely, Heat. As many already know, this system runs hot. With more VRAM in there, it would run hotter and they probably didn't have a proper way to keep it cool for long periods of time on its own (without outside cooling devices). They would have probably also needed a thicker chassis to accommodate the extra heat.

Now I wish they took the extra time to make a thicker chassis. I don't think many would have complained if Aorus hit 1" or so for the laptop if we had a quieter or better cooling system in a still thin package, but they didn't. Of course being thin makes cooling hard for any laptop. And it's probably one of the reasons why Apple uses such weak cards in their systems. So they don't get too hot. But we PC gamers want more power!

Also, for the record. Nvidia specs the VRAM as follows for each card:
980 and 980m: 4GB or 8GB
970 and 970m: 3GB or 6GB
965 and 965m: 2GB or 4GB

So they could only choose between 3GB or 6GB for the 970m. Do you need more VRAM? Well, at this point, it's more of a want than a need. Its like having more than 8GB of RAM currently in a computer. 16GB sounds better, so does 32 GB. You can always have/want more. And eventually, you will need it. With VRAM, and the Aorus, it will go down to what you think you need more. More graphical power or more texture memory for your gaming. They both will make your laptop last longer (playing games 3 - 4 years from now), but you have to choose which compromise you can live with today or when you purchase.

 

I can't. Every QA checklist is the confidential data of each company.
And I'm so lazy to create a new list.

Basically, I don't recommend anyone to choose product base on an "Issue List".
Because each issue have their own reasons. Maybe design to be or the limitation for other reasons.
You can request for excellent product, but may not exist in normal retail market.

So that's why I said issue means nothing.
The only point for choice is if the product can fit your personal requirement or not.

980M-SLI? That's not in my plan list. (But in my dream list maybe)
Because it's so expensive. I don't have enough budget to purchase it.:cry:

 

Interesting!!! Ultra Preset should take more resources than High Preset.
Did you ever try restart game after you change preset?

 

Because it gets hotter! More memory would require a better and more expensive cooling system, perhaps even larger.

 

That's unfortunate!
Could you recommend a place/website that offers such lists?
I'm lazy too and sometimes I forget to check some of the things I need.
There are so many laptops offerings theses days. 10 years ago I would stop my search in a day or two. Now it takes weeks!
My requirements have been met by some products but there's always something "overlooked" and I'm doing my best not to fall on that trap again.
That's why I like this forum. You get very good information about the products and technologies before buying.

 

I don't think you can find the list about how to check issues...
And I do not suggest you choose laptop with such list either.

I know there are lot of laptops can be found in retail market.
OK, I can't tell you the issue check list. But I can share some point of me.

1. I will think where I will use this laptop?
2. I will think what's the purpose I buy this?
3. Do I really have those need in point#2?
4. If yes, I will start to choose which is my priority performance? CPU or GPU.
5. The system have enough peripheral interface for me?
6. Size and Weight
7. Can I upgrade by myself? If not, do I have enough budget to buy the SKU level I need?
8. The network connection spec. RJ-45 is the basic I use LAN more than WLAN. If I need WiFi, 5GHz must be supported.
9. Default Storage: SSD type is more important than disk space. But should larger than 256GB.
10. Audio, no noise from speaker and Headphone jack. Especially Headphone jack.
11. Keyboard and Touchpad: Personally I don't care about this. Because I already have lot of KB and Mouse... My criteria of internal KB and TP is "can be use". Usually I use USB Mouse not TP. If I need make some small test utilities, I will connect my USB KB too.

 

I've just found this[1] checklist. Would you change something?
That's the only company I've found that publishes what they do.

[1] Quality Control

 

Do your own personal checklist of preferences. No perfect laptop, but for me my priorities were in order of importance:

1. Gaming capability
2. Large Screen
3. Upgradeable
3. Portable
4. Aesthetically pleasing
5. Value
6. warranty
7. battery life

The only big letdown for this laptop is the battery life (or lack thereof). Value matters too (affordability), and still think $2599 is too steep. I think this thing should have been priced new around $2250. It does everything else I want it to do, and is pretty darn futureproof. That said, I will likely still sell it within a 12 month timeframe since I'm an early adopter for all things latest and greatest.

 

Good news about throttling.

It looks like Gigabyte released a new BIOS on Jan 19th. Bios version FD07 for windows 8 people and FC07 for Windows 7 people. Fan profile got tweaked. The fan is more noticeable now, but not necessarily louder as the profile will ramp up sooner, and hold that ramp for awhile. I wish gigabyte had more granular control over the fan so it isn't like jumping all over the place, instead of ramping up and down smoothly like on Macs.

Here comes the good news, THEY TWEAKED TURBO BOOST POWER LIMITS! I haven't tested games just yet, but so far under desktop use cases, it will allow it to maintain higher boost bins just that much more.

They also seem to have fixed the memory speed reporting on Windows 8.1 task manager. So now windows reads the RAM as 1867Mhz.

 

I really don't understand what you're trying to achieve here. QA/QC is only relevant to the manufacturing process, not to the end user's purchasing process.

 

Duplicate post.

 

I preliminarily purchased this laptop from Memory Express just over a week ago. At the time they said it would take 3-4 weeks to get. I wasn't thrilled about it but it was what it was.
Today they emailed me that it will take an additional 4-5 weeks from now.
What the hell? I finally am committed to this thing and they can't get one before its half way to obsolete.

 

My guess is that he just wants a checklist to help him determine what he wants in a future laptop. I think the list he linked to, while it could be useful, is way to overkill for his search. But I also think that one of the fun parts of looking for a new laptop is determining your criteria, doing the research, asking questions, creating impossible goals to achieve, then figuring out what compromises you can live with. And then, at the end of that process, you find the laptop you want.

I'm almost at the end of my search (after almost a month) and it looks like the Aorus X7 Pro is still standing. It fits my criteria of:

1) 970m and up, but the higher the better so I can keep the laptop longer
2) Under 1" thick
3) Great looking chassis
4) IPS display or a really bright TN display
5) 2 SSD drives for OS and 1TB+ for storage
6) Some user expandability.

The Aorus X7 Pro hits most of these. Of course, I can't replace the CPU or GPU. I wish I could upgrade the CPU in there... I also wish that it was quieter and cooler. But as long as it is relatively quiet when I'm at work or in a meeting, I'm ok with that. Everything else, the Aorus hits it.

Of course, the biggest factor for me is not the SLI in the system (but power is awesome!) but keeping the laptop thin. If not, I would probably go for the Asus G751 or the Alienware 17 (because of the Amplifier).

 

I hate when an online store advertises they sell something that they don't currently have in stock. They should say "Currently out of stock but shipping soon." At least that way you know you have a wait.

 

Hey guys! Just received my x7pro today!

I spent quite a bit of time setting it up so I didn't get to test it too much. I did get to play BF4 for about 30 minutes, though.

BF4 maxed out on metro I was hovering around 125 fps. With a repaste, no cooler: gpu temps were roughly 70-75c and the cpu temp was around 86-89c. I'm probably going to get a cooler soon - those cpu temps make me worry a bit.

 

hope you enjoy your aorus pro as much as i am. you will want to update your bios using the driver update utility, it does improve cpu performance for gaming. took a break from nba2k15 and have been playing sleeping dogs definitive edition maxed out all the way. silky smooth gaming.

 

I'm gathering the information needed to make a facts based decision.
If I miss one of the possible issues in my criteria I may get a bad surprise.
That list didn't really change the criteria I'm using at the moment though.

 

its interesting that some of the reviews for the new Aorus Pro only came with SSD but no 1TB drive, but more importantly a TN panel as opposed to the IPS panel the retail models ship with.

If the TN panel is the same one from the v1 and v2 Aorus, its not much to write home about. As I said, this panel is the same one the ASUS gaming series is now using, and its fantastic. As for the 1TB mechanical HDD, I'll be swapping it out for a 1TB SSD some day (after I pay this thing off probably).

 

Just wondering if anyone here has had build issues with the Aorus. I am seriously considering purchasing one of these in it's next iteration, but after seeing a thread on another website where the back section lifted away from the sides and Aorus wouldn't cover it under warranty it got me wondering how fragile are these laptops. Does anyone here carry the laptop with them on a semi-regular basis and what are you feelings about the solidity of the frame?

 

Don't have any issues with build quality, and didn't before with my first aorus. It feels pretty darn sturdy, like an aluminum machine should The bottom isn't as rock solid feeling as a macbook pro, but i have no worries shoving it in my backpack and taking out on the go.

i did have my first aorus rmaed and they repaired it. also, you can upgrade the internal components and keep your warranty which is nice.

hope this helps.

saw someone in the MSI Titan forum post their 3dmark11 score of 15288, which isn't much higher than what the aorus can produce without overclocking. still like the Titan, and guessing the CPU is the bottleneck keeping the score lower than it ought to be.

 

I have a question about the Aorus' 3dMark score. I've been reading the Alienware 17 forums about their new AW17 r2.

They all have had a problem with their under powered AC Adapter. People have been getting the 180w version instead of a 240w AC Adapter or above (like a 330w version). With the lower, 180w version, they were getting much lower 3DMark scores that they are supposed to with a 980m as a graphics card. When someone finally used a stronger AC Adapter from their old m17x r3, their 3DMark scores were much higher. In otherwords, they weren't giving their systems enough power to really unleash the power of the AW 17.

When a few of the forum posters contacted Alienware/Dell about the issue, some of the engineers/support staff were shocked and sent them a 240w adapter for their systems.

Now my questions about the Aorus. Since this system probably uses or needs more power than the AW 17 because it uses 2 GPUs over the one, would a more powerful adapter than the one included (a 200w adapter) allow us to use more power out of our systems and in turn, produce much higher scores in 3Dmark or allow us to have even higher framerates? And this is without overclocking or anything.

 

On the gigabyte machines, I know the power limits are locked within the BIOS / EC firmwares. Who's to say, that a better AC adapter wouldn't maybe unlock it?

All I know is with the recent bios update, the power limits were slightly increased to allow higher turbo bins vs before. Also we now have better monitoring in Intel XTU for the package power usages.

 

ok, let's see. did thermal repaste with mx--4 and have done lower undervolting (right around -50) for the cpu. running 3dmark11 a couple times the cpu stays at 89 degrees, but that also may include me reinstalling the older official drivers rather than the latest and greatest from nvidia. with the older drivers I can pull mid 14000s in 3dmark, and even overclock to around 15100 too (with cpu keeping at 89 degrees). My concern has been when playing NBA2k15 and sleeping dogs the last two nights, after a couple hours, my framerate was cut down to a third of what it was, from 60 to 19 or 20, and the games played extra extra slow. can't figure out if it was a gpu that got too hot or cpu. sli never disabled according to nvidia. since switching the drivers back haven't had any issues, and gaming seems faster for it as well. the thermal paste redux probably did little or nothing. drivers for the win.

 

So the new drivers are good to keep your gaming fps up. But... one thing I missed. With the new drivers, is your CPU still at 89 degrees with the new drivers and 3Dmark scores still in the 14000+ range?

And does Undervolting have no bad performance effects on your games? I've heard people undervolting their CPUs so that the processors don't run hot, but that just basically means your computing performance goes down as well right?

 

I dunno if it's just the old drivers that are keeping my CPU a little lower, or the thermal repaste job and the undercoating all combbined. Undervolting will allow you to run your CPU cooler as its using a little less power. Will still run at the same speeds too. Just has to be a stable Undervolting is all. It's not under or overcloxking, just tweaking voltage. And it's safe to do. If it's an unstable undervolt, start around -40 and increase it, the pc will just reboot.

 

so some of this thread was deleted I guess. anyway, new bios is out it appears, cpu changes again maybe? I mentioned that after gaming for several hours (sleeping dogs and nba 2k15 its happened with each of these games), my frame rates go from the 60s into the low 20s, and do not recover until I restart my pc completely. even if I close the game and let my temps go back down, and then restart the game, the graphics can't keep up. disabling and re-enabling sli doesn't fix it, only a system reboot. maybe the bios update will help with this issue. haven't been able to duplicate the problem purposefully, and has only happened twice. since running a little cooler with repaste job and undervolting (and official aorus gfx driver), maybe the problem won't repeat at all.

 

hmm, I think you don't need to worry about CPU temp. It never go higher than 91c at default BIOS.

i7-4870 take higher power consumption than i7-47xx especially when it work on a boost clock.
So it cause the CPU temp hotter that 47xx. My suggestion is "NEVER" put this LAPtop on your lap...

But the CPU won't be damaged. If you want improve the temp, change paste may work but best way is find another stand and put it on the bottom side. I use Just Mobile Lazy Couch. It help on Audio too.

Remember put it at the rubber not the fan window.

 

Never had build issues, its been sturdy for me. aluminum will give you some confidence. its not as solid feeling as a macbook pro, but still strong to me. New Bios Update, wish they would include notes to indicate what changes they've made. running the beta nvidia driver from the aorus driver download app, and with bios update, getting 14500s without overclocking. Happy about that. Was able to get 15200 with a 100+ core clock and 120+ mem overclock. Not gonna go higher, just wanted to prove i could break 15000 on 3dmark11 with this thing. for real world gaming mid 14000s is more than enough at 1080p.

 

yeah don't worry about cpu damage. laptop knows to throttle or shut down if need be. really recommend intel xtu, do a minor undervolt to help keep it a little cooler. I'm still able to get my CPU up to 90 degrees if I keep the laptop poorly ventilated, but usually stays below 89 degrees. For some reason that one degree lower makes me happy... not sure at what temp the cpu will throttle anyway. Broadwell i7 cpus can't come fast enough. for a laptop like this. For that matter, wish they would include a manual switch to disable SLI so you could actually use Nvidia Optimus in extreme cases. Not a huge deal, but it would be nice.

 

About the only thing you can get from QA/QC checklists though, would be to maybe see how thoroughly each company checks their laptops at the manufacturing level, but that would assume you could get the QA/QC checklist from each different manufacturer, which is highly doubtful you'll be able to. As a consumer, your best bet is to read reviews from reputable review sites like NBR here and NotebookCheck. Read their Pros and Cons and decide which Pros you absolutely need and which Cons you can live with.

 

Do you guys think Aorus will be able to add a 980m and maybe a better i7? Want something with a bit of longevity, but don't get me wrong, the one out right now is pretty damn good.

 

Dual 970m's should provide tons of longevity. Personally I'm waiting for the P37x as I'd rather have the battery life of a single 980m than the power of the two 970m's. I don't think the x7 will get two 980m's, though, because the current setup is already pushing the limits.

 

I'd just like to see a single 980m with maybe a better i7. I'm extremely interested in this brand because of the slim chassis they have for their selections. A nice 980m with with maybe a i7-4790s and I'm sold.

 

They will definitely not put a desktop CPU in that chassis.
Edit: I mean CPU not GPU

 

Keep your eye on the Gigabyte P37x then. It's the same manufacturer and will have the same form factor and a 980m. Might be a little disappointed in the i7-4720 though. It's supposed to be out next month.

http://www.computershopper.com/ces-2015/preview-gigabyte-p37x-gaming-laptop/gigabyte-p37x

 

980m is not a desktop GPU.

 

My bad. Edited.

 

The Clevo P750zm/SagerNP9752 is a bit larger (1.4" thick), available with i7-4790K as well as i7-4790S options. I believe notebookcheck.net review suggested the i7-4790S only performed about 10% faster than comparable laptops with 980M and i7-4710HQ.

 

I think overclockers has just got the p37x looks good I just ordered the x3 tho small yet a beast

 

As others have mentioned, the P37X is what you are looking for. Both the P37X and the Aorus X7 Pro are made by Gigabyte. The major differences between the two (besides the obvious CPU, GPU, RAM and the like) the P37X has a more simpler design but it does have the option to swap between a optical drive and a hard drive compared to the Aorus.

By the way, I thought you could turn off SLI on the Aorus? Are you specifically talking about a manual switch. And would that make a difference? With the software switch, are you allowed to use Optimus then?

 

sli disables any type of optimus

 

Has anyone tried a laptop cooler to reduce temps?

 

Even if the SLI is turned off? You are only using one GPU instead of both? If that is the case, then how would a manual switch that turns off SLI allow Optimus to work? Or would it?

 

Yes I believe even if you are using only one GPU because of the fact that the system is sli enabled you are unable to use optimus. Also the manual switch enables integrated graphics so optimus wouldn't be needed

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

I have been messing around with trying to reduce temps.

Fan setting is auto-high speed.
Repaste from XoticPC
-40 mV undervolt
15 min stress test from XTU

temps are 73c-75c.

Has anyone else messed with undervolting? I don't know if I want to take it any further. I'm pretty happy with the temps. Ill try bf4 later with the undervolt and see how hot it gets.

Edit: So I played BF4 for maybe 40 minutes. CPU was 89-91c. Looks like I'll be picking a cooler up some time.

 

Thanks for putting that up. Looks like even with repasting, it strays to the hot side of things. So it looks like a cooler will be necessary, at least at home, with the laptop.

 

For those still deciding whether or not to pick Aorus x7, msi Titan now has the 970m SLI option (GT80 Titan SLI-071) with 6GB for each GPU, price is very close to the aorus x7, the downside of course is that the titan is heavy and thick, but hey, it has an 18" screen .......

 

yeah most of us already knew about the Titan. $2599 vs. $3299 isn't all that close. for that matter, got my Aorus for $2000 open box while $3000+ is out of my budget sadly. Keeping an eye out for an open box MSI Titan though 3dMark11 scores after minor overclock I can get just 200 points shy of the Titan anyway.

 

Titan 970m SLI is actually $2799 not $3299, $3299 is for 980m SLI