Aorus X7 v3

Any idea when this will debut? Saw it in the Maxwell slide in another thread, but is it going to be the early-mid October like most are shooting for?
With 970M SLi I think this is the laptop for me. I was dead set on getting SLI this time around, and a slim form factor to boot it looks to be what I want.

 

Stolen from the Maxwell thread;



ID Bench Date GPU Score Core/Memory Driver CPU Mobo
8780026 10/01/2014 GTX 970M (2x) 19741 924/1,253 9.18.13.4400 i7 GIGABYTE X7V3

 

I'm holding out for this too, hopefully they also address the screen, keyboard and track pad and the Maxwell chips would probably address the heat and noise. This will be my next system.

 

I got the Aorus X7 V2 three week ago. I held out for the V2 to get the triple RAID 0, better processor and the 860M SLI. And then I wanted to check out the MSI GT72 before buying the X7 V2.

It gets to the point though that you could be holding out forever... there is always something better just around the corner. If you truly need to get a new laptop (I use mine for work too), you have to pull the trigger sooner than later.
Of course, if you don't really have the funds to make the purchase now, it is easy to show wisdom through patience, waiting for the elusive Maxwell GPU in SLI to make an appearance...

Any power/heat management prowess performed by the Maxwell chipset will probably be negated by the 970M's higher clock speed and greater number of shading units and render output processors. It was the same hype with the Haswell processors, yet my X7 V2 when stressed is still showing the same 90+ degree Celsius results as my previous generation laptop (Dell XPS 17z). There is also the question of the price tag of the X7 V3. With two 970M, it will probably be pushing the sticker price near or over the 3000$ CDN mark.

 

But to answer the OP's question, my guess would be the X7 V3 available by Q1 2015.

Sandwiching the CPU between two 970M might require Aorus to do some tweaking of the heat pipes and fans to keep heat under control. I mean, they can only keep pushing the envelope so far. Not necessarily worried about the 970M heat management, but a CPU when stressed that is already showing numbers in the high 90s with two 860M is going to require some heat management tweaks to stay under the throttle threshold. I also heard that there were issues with the Maxwell M-series in a SLI configuration, so Aorus might need to fully test a custom driver from Nvidia before they can launch the V3. For those reasons, I think MSI, Razer and Asus will be out to market with 970M and 980M single GPU laptops before Aorus can deliver the V3. Nobody has seen a X7 V3. No V3 demo machines seen at Chinese tech fairs so far. When one will be shown, expect at least a month minimum before decent stock make its way to online stores. So, my bet would be the V3 available in online stores (for next day delivery) by end of November 2014 at the earliest, but more realistically in January or February 2015.

 

That image stolen from the Maxwell thread actually misspells Aorus. Kind of fishy. I can't find this image anywhere on the NVIDIA site. Searched on the What's New | GeForce site for 970M and 980M and came up with nothing (while 880M produces 1330 results). All Maxwell info on the NVIDIA site is about the desktop edition of the 980 and 970 cards.

 

Aorus x7 Pro

X7 Pro
OS Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 Pro
CPU 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4870HQ (2.5GHz-3.7GHz)
Display 17.3" Full HD 1920x1080 Wide Viewing Angle LCD
System Memory 4GB/8GB DDR3L 1866, 4 slots (Max 32GB)
Chipset Mobile Intel® HM87 Express Chipset
Video Graphics NVIDIA® GTX 970M SLI GDDR5 3GB*2
Storage *Supports Quadruple-Storage System
mSATA 128GB/256GB/512GB, 3 slots
2.5” HDD 500GB/750GB/1TB/1.5TB/2TB 5400/7200rpm , 1 slot

*The storage capacity may differ by country and region. Please contact your local dealers or retailers for the
Keyboard Type Backlit Keyboard
Optical Disk Drive N/A
I/O Port USB 3.0 x3, USB 2.0 x2, HDMI, mini-Display port, Surround port, D-sub, RJ45, SD card reader,microphone-in, earphone-out(SPDIF)
Audio 2 watt speaker*2, woofer*2, Microphone, AORUS Acoustic+ technology
Communications LAN: Killer LAN Chip
Wireless LAN: 802.11ac
Bluetooth: Bluetooth V4.0
Webcam HD Camera
1.0 Megapixel
Security Kensington Lock
Battery Li Polymer 73.26Wh
Dimensions 428(W) x 305(D) x 22.9(H)mm
Weight 3kg

 

There is always a small detail keeping this laptop from being perfect.

V2 had Kepler version of the 860m (I know that the Maxwell version couldn't be SLI'ed) and now v3 brings the 3GB version of the 970m...

It's a small detail that probably won't matter much for performance, but it annoys a bit.

 

Despite this product being seemingly perfect for me, I fear it's heat and (more-so) price tag. I think I'd rather go with a single Clevo 980m solution.

 

I guess they did all these imperfections for internal cost cutting and external pricing. Aorus is not the "perfect" Jobs style but the normal commercial style after all.

 

Yeah but when they are already charging 2700 or 2699 whatever it was, they should flesh it out with 6gb 970m's. At least that is my opinion.

I won't be getting this laptop. I saw it as overpriced.

 

sigh....Okay I have to reply to this whole 3GB thing.

#1: What in the world do you need for 12GB of GDDR5 vram?? I don't know any game at max settings at 4k that need that much vram. Anyways you'll be bottleneck by the CPU before you need that much.
#2: In this thin form factor....you want 2x3GB vram since more vram will need more power, and I think the Aorus power brick is only 180w, and obviously will generate more heat. The cons of having 2x6GB vram far outweigh the pros.
#3: The Aorus Pro with its 3gb gtx 970M SLI already outperforms a DESKTOP GTX 980 with current drivers!!! Here's 2 reviews of GTX 980m SLI.

GTX 980m vs GTX 970m sli vs desktop GTX 980
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGF5_vZJDI

Chinese review
GeForce GTX 970M SLI 配置，17 吋 Aorus X7 Pro 遊戲ç†é›»å¯¦æ¸¬ - VR-Zone ä¸æ–‡ç‰ˆ

 

When you run two cards in SLI, or even a single card with dual GPUs, the frame buffer is mirrored on both cards. So you must always divide the VRAM by number of GPUs.

Because of the choice the manufacturer made to go with cheaper 3GB card, Aorus X7 Pro is quite powerful for games that scale well in SLI, but always limited to 3GB VRAM, below recommended specs for a couple of games already, and probably more in the future. There are not many games that can make use of more than 3GB VRAM, but there are a few.

 

Yea, my mistake-- for some odd reason I was thinking vram in SLI stacked. Though I'm still trying to wonder when 3GB will be an issue if right now its above GTX 980, I can only think 4k will be its limits.

 

Aorus just posted this on their Facebook page:

 

Well it's been a while since I upgraded. I'm leaning towards this beast. I'm coming for a Asus G46VW which I still love but am letting go. The G46 was a silent power sipper...and I fear this X7 with 970m sli will be great as far as performance goes, I'm positive it's not going to be silent like the G46. At idle, would you say the aorus is silent. I want that 970m sli...and I don't think the Vram is going to be a problem for me because I am fine playing at 1080p.

And anyone hear anything about availability in the United States?

 

I have the Aorus X7 v2 and i would say that it is silent when idle, there is even an option in the fan controller to set the profile to silent.

Also for those that are getting 90oC+ Temps (i got up to 98oC), i got the same on my first benchmark run (3d Mark Vantage) and came out with a score around 27000, i then disabled turbo boost by setting the max CPU state to 99% and the temps stayed around 80oC and the score went down to around 24700 ish. I tried Watch Dogs on it hooked up to TV with HDMI and a wired XBOX pad and it played that with everything on Ultra really smooth and the fans hardly even kicked at all, certainly not so i could hear them above the game.

 

Aorus X7 Pro V3 full review:



Enjoy.

 

Thanks! Can you explain about swapping the battery? It looks like you have to open the entire chassis to do this. So it would not be convenient to carry a second battery to use on a long trip, for example, right?

 

First, thanks for the excellent video review!

So, I have a question about the screen. Your video shows it being an AUO159D. This seems to be a TN screen - a high quality TN to be sure, but not IPS. Digging around on the net, it seems to translate to this model: AUO B173HW01 V5 Overview - Panelook.com

Reviews seem to indicate very good horizontal viewing angle, but at the end of the day it is actually TN.

Can you verify?

N

 

Do you have availability times on the X7 pro V3?

Also, do you happen to know if it's possible to connect 3 monitors, of which 2 are on HDMI and one is on DP in desktop individual monitor mode? ( Not surround/spanning )

Do I need both GPU's active or can SLI be disabled with 3 monitors?

Looks like the sample they used was a media sample. So maybe we are getting real IPS displays on production samples? Could explain why it's taking so long to market.


Also, it appears based off that sample, Gigabyte runs the raid-0 at 16KB stripe sizes. That KILLS performance on SSD's with Intel RST. Expect at least 10% gains all around in speeds, especially in 4K, if the stripe sizes are at 128KB.

Could also explain why the performance on the X7 V2 with the 3 ssd's was mediocre at best too.

Update 2: Wow, looks like they upgraded to the Liteon L9M series ssd's too.

http://www.liteonssd.com/index.php?option=com_zoo&view=item&layout=item&Itemid=196

There's definitely more in the SSD's forsure if configured properly and over provisioned. First thing I will do if I pick up this lappy, given that it does indeed have an IPS display, and doesn't overheat on pure CPU loads.

 

Most of the new laptops battery nowaday are internal. It becomes rare to see that you can just swap the battery without remove entire bottom panel.

 

Jackpot. I just downloaded the driver Aorus posted for the X7 pro. And guess what they included in the 1.8GB download. VBIOS for both the slave GPU, and the primary. There are several versions and there's one specifically for N16E-GT_970_EDP_LG. Date modified was 10.26.2014 vs 8.10.2014 on the other one.

I'm guessing that's for the eDP LG display. Maybe specific timings?


So according to this, it's VERY, VERY likely we'll be getting the LG 1080P IPS display as seen in the GT72 dominator =)


More fun facts, there's one for the N16E-GX. Which is GTX980M. N16E-GX-8404110019.rom

 

I double check it , The EDP display may real come.
But the GTX980M （N16E GX）is working for P35X V3 according to device id 10DE-13D7
The Aorus x7 pro Device ID is 10DE-13D8

 

Hoped for at most a 965M or 960M SLI on this machine..

 

"Also, it appears based off that sample, Gigabyte runs the raid-0 at 16KB stripe sizes. That KILLS performance on SSD's with Intel RST. Expect at least 10% gains all around in speeds, especially in 4K, if the stripe sizes are at 128KB."

16KB stripes are actually recommended for SSD's. Anything higher than 64KB stripes can and will negatively impact performance.