Gigabyte P34G

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Could you please play a song from youtube and video this to check audio quality and then upload the video?

 

Hey if you can, try out the battlefield 4 open beta.
Tell me how it runs it.

 

No need. The sound is not good at all, zero bass, no way to sugar coat it. Also have had no time to look at settings, but can't imagine there's anything that will change it. Will check with headphones later, as honestly don't really care about laptop speaker quality. If headphone sound is bad, then I'll be a bit pissed.

 

This is a reply I received from CBSA regarding self-clearing.

"You may have the option of refusing the brokerage services offered by the courier company, choosing instead to clear the goods yourself at the local Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) office.



It is recommended that prior to receiving your shipment you contact the courier company and inform them of your wish to "self-clear" the shipment. The company will explain their procedures to you.



If you did not advise the courier before the attempted delivery of the shipment, you may refuse delivery and advise the courier of your intention to self-clear. You must record the ‘unique shipment identifier number’, which is the number the courier assigns each shipment. The courier may advise how you can prove that the shipment has been accounted for by the CBSA, or that you have paid any applicable duties and taxes. The shipment may be returned to the courier's warehouse to await your clearance. Please be aware that the courier may refuse this option, and return the shipment to the country of export.



In either case, you must go to the local CBSA office to account for the goods. You will need to provide the courier's name, the unique shipment identifier number, and an invoice from the exporter that clearly gives both a description of the goods and the value. When you have paid the applicable duties and/or taxes to the CBSA, you will be given a receipt indicating that the goods have been accounted for. The courier company must have a copy of this receipt before they release the goods.



A list of CBSA inland offices can be found on our Web site at:

Inland Office"

 

Thanks for the info David7.

I did not know that the courier company has the right to 'refuse' the shipment. Hopefully that won't be an issue considering it fits into the 'low value' category being under $1600 (CAD or USD), there usually isn't any duties on notebooks, and that the package only weighs 5-6 lbs.

The plan still is to contact UPS as soon as shipment has been processed, and work out the details with them.

Will let you guys know how it goes.

 

Gentechpc now has the p34g in stock. Free thermal compound upgrade and 2% discount for students/military.

 

What about mic and camera quality?

 

Guys, can anyone who owns one/knows about this stuff comment on the Wireless Card? I'm really new to all of this and I'm not sure if its worth paying extra to get GenTech/XoticPC to upgrade it, and if so which one to go for I'm so lost! I rely entirely on Wireless (no Ethernet connection at home).

 

Seconded. From what I've heard, sound quality is pretty bad - headphones or not (crap sound card? What a shame, I don't know a single person who isn't crazy about music in this day and age).

But I'd like to hear about the microphone and camera quality! Although I do have a gaming headset, it would be nice if I didn't have to use it for Skype calls. Also would be good if I didn't look like one large pixel in Skype calls.

 

Apologies for the spam - but also wanted to ask if anyone was aware of any XoticPC/GenTech discount/coupon codes asides from the cash rebate? Thanks!

 

The Intel 7260-N is a decent wireless card. It is good quality and has decent range. If you have a more than a couple of walls between you and your wireless access point, then it would not hurt to upgrade.

Not knowing what the layout, walls, a day distance where you are primarily using this it is hard to say.

 

Thank you clintre, that's really helpful! I have just the one wall and ten meters or so between my laptop and my router. However, I live in an old building which reduces Hong Kong's 'fastest average internet peak speed in the world' to...absolute turd. So any boost would be noticeable, or so I assume. I was considering the Killer Wireless-N 1202 (only $55 at GenTech, compared to the others), but now will look into the 7260-N. I wonder if I'll need Bluetooth in this day and age...hmm. Thank you again!

 

We still want to know what the default wireless cards that comes with the p34g. We need some straight answers from real owners/users.

 

I know there's two other people up here who have received theirs yesterday. I receive mine today and got the stock card (for starters; will upgrade to an Intel dual-band 7260 myself later, take my chances with the warranty, ooooh.... "scary"), will post later this afternoon or evening as to particulars, including a speed test.

 

Haha let them take their time man, they don't owe us a thing.

Could you please let us know if you cross any 'tape boundaries'? Some users have reported adding HDDs without having to disturb their warnings, thus keeping their warranty intact. Congrats on the new machine!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

The standard wi-fi card is the Intel Centrino Wireless-N 7260, which you can find out on the Gigabyte driver page. If you are in Indonesia then it is a different card (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230), but only there.

You can find out about the card here. Just keep in mind that this is the "N" version of the card not the "AC" version. Since most have "N" it may or may not be a big deal to you. There is also a "dual band" and non dual band. I am guessing but I believe this is the non dual band.

 

Yes, of course. First thing I'm doing is swapping the 1TB HDD for a 512GB Crucial M4. As I do that, bump the memory to 16GB (Corsair Vengeance) and, later, the Intel 7260, if I cross any "boundaries" I'll provide feedback. Also, FTR, I'm reaching out to Excaliber and Gigabyte directory and asking for the full warranty with fine print, will go through it meticulously and say "legally" what it does and doesn't say we can do. Too much mis-communication on this to-date IMHO. Hard drives and memory should be a non-event.

 

"On FedEx vehicle for delivery." [woot]

 

You're a star. Do post the results! Also, I'd be really grateful if you could be so kind as to measure the dimensions of the delivered box. Thinking of getting a forwarding company in the US to ship it straight to me and need the sizes. L x W x H in inches would be great if you could, B'midbar

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

My FedEx tracking shows "Dimensions: 18x16x5 in"

EDIT: Also, 8 lbs if that matters.

 

Woah, can anyone that already has theirs confirm this?! Dimensions seem about right but that weight is 2kg more than the laptop itself! Thank you though Kiswa

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

Woah that seems pretty okay going by the website. Man. This is some confusing stuff though haha

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

What brand/company or model # is your stock wifi card?

 

Couple quick observations. The wifi card is good. My desktop is wireless and sitting next to it I got basically the same test results. I'm about 16 feet from router and on 25mbit service I got 23.8 on both desktop and P34. Then I walked to the far end of my house, probably 30+ feet from router and got 21mbps, very happy with stock wifi.
Headphone sound is much much better than the sh*t speakers, so that's good. In a 20C room, I'm idling on battery in the low 40C temp range. Just basic browsing is pretty quiet, very acceptable. But any kind of cpu load, like even 9% and the fan ramps up. It's still fine, but once you get into anything semi demanding it's not going to be quiet.

 

I've got 18" x16" x 4" and 9# for mine.

 

I get the feeling they don't actually weigh the things.

FedEx Guy: Yeah, that feels like... 9 pounds. We'll go with that.

EDIT: Now if I could just get them to update the tracking information!

 

Did you guys go with XOTICPC or EXCALIBER?

 

Actually, I've always thought they were pretty good with that. I watched mine move from Newark, CA to Sacramento to City of Industry to Bloomington, CA over the span of 18 hours Wednesday, then watched it move here this morning and then to the "On FedEx vehicle for delivery."

 

Cancelled a September 23rd pre-order with Xotic this past Tuesday, ordered from Excaliber that same morning. My Excalibur order is arriving this afternoon; FedEx guy usually shows up between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon.

 

Quick compare in size to a 4 yr old Vaio 13.3 and the speaker sound:

<iframe width='640' height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/L_no0JXtYz0" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Ordered from EXCALIBER Monday afternoon, and it's scheduled for tomorrow.

 

Depressing watching all these despatches and my order was delayed a month and a bit

 

Is Windows installed on the SSD? If so, then how much available space left?

Thank you for checking audio quality! Actually it's not so bad. I owned a Sony Vaio S15. It was a pretty decent laptop with a good IPS screen but audio was just horrible. Much worse than in your video.

 

it's the trackpad that's a show-stopper on the Sony Vaio S15.

 

Didn't use the trackpad too much so can't comment here but listened to speakers everyday and hated them.

 

Looking forward to the P34G for sure, definitely a sexy looking machine at a reasonable price with great features.
Almost glad that my Clevo W740SU never made it passed the 'building' phase after 20 business days.
Hope the extra $400 will be worth it, considering similar internal specs (CPU/GPU, resolution) can be found on the Clevo W230ST for $300 less (stock pricing).

 

Having owned 3 Sager/Clevo laptops I can say while I love the price per performance, the look and feel would never be considered premium. This is a system I can use for business and some fun as well.

 

For some reason the desktop sound just doesn't come through on the video and the youtube makes the P34 sound better than it is, but anyway, at least the headphone sound is decent enough.

Yes, windows is installed on SSD including all programs. The HDD is empty. I uninstalled a couple things and added a few small programs, it's roughly about 50GB free space on the SSD. Of course at 128GB its shows a capacity of just 98.5GB!! I wish they'd advertise the damn things as 98GB and not 128.

I've just run a preliminary real world video render test and I have to say I am blown away with the speed of this P34. I'll try to make a video of it compared to my overclocked 4770K desktop.

 

Isn't it smaller due to having an image of the windows install in a hidden partition? You can gain that space back by deleting the hidden partition and then extending your main partition.

 

Have read on the Whirlpool forum that the recovery software for burning DVDs sucks swampwater so I'd be more inclined to shrink the partition(s) as much as possible and leave it there. Then again, with an OEM Windows 8 license could always just make a bootable jump drive, save serial #'s and Gigabyte drivers, save that for (hopefully not) a rainy day.

 

First thing I generally do is dump the recovery partition all together. While sure, if done right, they could be useful. I would much rather have better use of that space.

 

Yeah as soon as I posted that, I realized I had forgotten about any recovery partition etc. Haven't looked at anything in disk management yet. Been too busy setting up and testing stuff. Going to post a video of a real world render test shortly...specific to video render.
Just looked and yeah there's a 20GB, 300MB recovery and 260MB EFI recovery, whatever that is. I can't remember how to get this space back.

 

I use Easeus Partition Manager, the free version.

 

Unit just arrived. On a conference call for another 40 minutes, but then will start digging in to it, engage my normal drill of firing up, loading a new machine.

 

If any one can try out BF4 on this little beast, that would be great.

 

I think this video speaks pretty well about the power of mobile processors and how far they've come. If the desktop was running at stock clock, I think things would be much closer, but I'm very impressed with the upgrade over a 4 year old Vaio.

<iframe width='640' height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lHQ-6NE3iKE" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Nice! Seems that the fans are not too loud.

What about the laptop's surface temperature while idle and under full load?

Do you have any games to check whether it throttles when both the CPU and GPU are active?

 

Fans aren't too bad considering. Interestingly the surface temps are incredibly cool?? Even after minutes of running at what core temp shows as high 80's, the whole laptop is totally cool. Even sticking my finger right on the cpu vent I would call it just warm. I'm almost wondering if the temps reported are even accurate? I picked up the laptop from the bottom with my fingers curled over the rear vents and after 6+ minutes I would just call it warm.
I'm not much of a gamer anymore. I might try Far Cry 2, that's about the only game. I've got Battlefield3 but I just can't be bothered to go through that nightmare install.

 

You know a good way to test the temperature?
Download Orthos (a CPU stress test tool) and FurMark, set Orthos to "Stress test CPU and RAM", and then launch FurMark's Burn-In test and leave it for an hour. That would give you an idea of how high the temperatures would go during intense gaming.
I'm pretty sure it would throttle, though