Gigabyte P34G

Just got mine from OCUK with a little surprise


First impressions:
The good:
-Nice contrast and colors
-Thin and light.
-Almost completely silent 40%+ of the time, the second speed is already noticeable, but bereable.
-Sound volume is nice, which concerned me more than the quality, you can't expect much from a laptop anyway.


The bad/or so and so:
-Brightness, maby it's just me, but it seems to fall short. I mean, less than 50% just seems unreasonable.
-Chiclet keyboard, I'm not used to yet, but it is much more flexible than my last mechanical keyboard (laptop also)
-Hate win 8

 

Awesome! :thumbsup:

A German reseller said it is going to be available starting 18th October. I hope they are going to get the version with FreeDos. Please post about your battery-time. Especially with office.

Anyone managed to install linux? I thought I read about a guy but he got trouble with bumblebee/ prime...

 

Yeah I agree with all of the above, also try StartIsBack - real start menu in Windows 8 30 day trial and it's 3 USD after. Also my powerbrick gets very warm or hot, it has no fan or vents...

 

Ran into my first big problem, it'll only boot UEFI GPT USB operating systems, it won't pick up my normal old MBR Linux install I use for testing linux on laptops. That's a huge kick in the teeth

 

can´t you turn on the options "legacy boot" and turn off the "secure boot" in the BIOS?

 

Secure boot comes off fine, but only UEFI as a choice of OS booting type. Hope gigabyte notice this is terrible...

 

Actually you just need to clear the secure boot keys or whatever is called. Try loading the Windows 7 defaults, that'll get you into legacy mode.

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Can it continue booting Win8 after or do I need to enter the bios each time?

Edit: can confirm win7 defaults enable MBR booting, windows seems to boot after. What a strange situation.

 

Windows 8.1 goes live on October 17th and it has the ability to go straight to the desktop. As for hating it, I'd wager the clarification is "I hate Metro." Blow past it if you don't have or don't use touch and configure program groups as per normal.

 

Afaik it brings back a start button which just loads metro, I value the old start/run/etc in the menu.

 

For anyone interested in getting two-finger and three-finger tapping to work, I've found that the following method works:

• Download the Samsung Series 7 Elan Touchpad Drivers (Windows 7, 64-bit version works fine on Win8)
• Install it and reboot
• Go to Mouse Settings (Control Panel > Mouse > Touchpad > Settings) and enable two-finger tap
• Open up regedit.exe and go to key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay
• Set all DWORDs to 1
• Find the driver that you downloaded and run DRIVER_PATH\x64\ETDAniConf.exe
• Enable three-finger tap
• Reboot and you're good to go!

 

If you want the classic Win7, WinXP start, menu, program groups, then StartIsBack as per above or I myself use Start8 from Stardock.

 

Just figured I should dump this here... Speccy report dump of the P34G

 

Thanks for that what is your ambient temperature?

 

Can someone who received his p34g from OCUK tell me if he received the Gigabyte branded sleeve like those who ordered in Australia?

 

The sleeve comes in the manufacturer's box itself so it should be included as long as it's the same model number

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Anybody started looking for a second power supply for this yet? Looking at buying this.

 

Hey guys,

Could P34G owners do some battery life tests (low and medium settings/use) ? That's the only thing that pulls me off right now, damn the battery has such a small capacity!
Thanks

 

I've been running BatteryBar Pro on my notebooks for a couple of years now. High Performance on battery only yields 2:30 hours. Will run in Power Saver mode this evening when I knock off for the day, let you know numbers for that.

 

Was 22c at the time of the speccy report. But unlike previous laptops I've owned the temp varies wildly, like you can go from full 100% cpu use @ 90c down to 45c in 5-6 seconds when the fan fires up like a mini hurricane. I really enjoy the fact it cools itself down instead of lingering ambient warmth after use. It's well worth the noise.

 

I can get 3:30 at medium usage at 30% brightness. I'd estimate you could get around 4 to 4:30 on low brightness browsing the web or stuff. I'm undervolted by 120~135 mV

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Echoing the above, I got 3:35 doing 25% brightness but had a few videos playing on VLC. It's reasonable, not amazing but reasonable. Smaller battery volume is the price to pay for having SODIMMS and changable HDDs, if it was all soldered to the board like a macbook we'd have more Wh. I don't mind the battery though.

 

Bump!

Bump!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

I got my P34G from New Egg yesterday. I should be getting the external DVD today (for some old software/games, etc)

I spent most of the time updating drivers using their tool, installing MS Office, installing via steam Dota 2, via blizzard SC2. Oh, and using an external hard-drive to transfer 200GB of photos and music etc.

DOTA 2 played fantastically. Not sure how to do a FPS. Does anyone know? The one thing I noticed and I wasn't sure if it was a problem on my previous machine was that there was some audio & video choppiness when the arena first loads, (the announcers voice cuts in and out) but that after that it was fine.

I can already see how I'm going to rapidly fill the SSD. Does anyone know anything about setting the SSD as smart cache? I thought I read somewhere that I could leave Windows with half of the drive as dedicated boot drive, then set the other half of the drive as cache, load games and data and everything on to 1 drive, and let smart cache deal with speeding up my programs. I really don't want to have to manage programs and data, and could take a small performance hit for letting intel or other deal with that.

I presume if I tried to set the SSD as smart cache, all my installations and copying of files is worthless since I have to reconfigure the drives for raid, etc. Is that true? Not a big deal, I won't lose anything, but it was many hours of updates and copying.

Heat on my lap in front of the TV was noticable, but not scorching. Battery life was surprisingly short for just web browsing, I was down to 50% with just about 1:20 on the couch watching TV with some web surfing and heavy downloading. I did not try and adjust my power settings and I was on Balanced mode and not Eco mode, which I'll have to switch to.

All in all, I'm happy. This is going to be a great improvement to the desktop monstrosity with a million cables and loud fans I have now.

Speakers are quite poor I thought. Not so much that I am displeased with my purchase, since I will use external speakers at my desk and headphones when mobile, but audio was tinny and thin.

Build quality is good, it's very light and durable. The chiclet keyboard keys take a little while getting used to, but the layout works well and I didn't have any adjustment necessary for touch-typing, finding the arrows, etc.

PS Thanks for the activity on the forum, it kept me informed and entertained while waiting to order, and helped me decide to get the P34G.

 

I'm having second thoughts on the screen brightness and noise.
Can it be that blacks are too dark? and we get the impression that the screen is dim? I say this because with 50% colors are already very good and the white is great, blinding indoors great haha
Noise on the other hand, I can't make my mind, it keeps going on and off all the time.
BTW, I'm getting less than 2h battery life in balanced mode 50% brightness (lower doesn't make much sense to me).
Going to try undervolting tomorrow and stressing, how much stress time have you tested? It seems I already get "sound artifacts"(like sound slowing down?) @-100mV from time to time.

Also two questions:
-Anyone noticed the screen graininess, first impression in films: massive.
-Anyone tried to play 24btis@192kHz? it seems to be buggy, the other configs seem ok.

 

Thanks for your inputs tocirahl & spicypixel

 

I would go about trying to install linux but I've yet to get round to making a live USB install of the latest daily ubuntu or something with a vaguely new kernel, my 13.04 kernel panicked on boot over the intel graphics, complained there was more than 8 monitors attached and died in a fire.

 

Use Fraps.

 

Any confirmation?

 

Yes. blabla

 

Ugh I have a single hot pixel. Worth returning?

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As in its brighter than all the other pixels?

They probably won't let you return it if it's only one pixel doing it.

 

idk about that Newegg's pretty awesome. And it's one pixel that's stuck RED.

 

3dMark11 Numbers (for anyone interested)
GTX 760M clocked at +135/+1086
HD 4600 clocked at 14x on AC Power, 11x on Battery

760M on battery (P3871): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700HQ,GIGABYTE P34
760M on AC Power (P4322): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700HQ,GIGABYTE P34

HD 4600 on battery (P1088): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700HQ,GIGABYTE P34
HD 4600 on AC Power (P1511): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700HQ,GIGABYTE P34

 

Also, for anyone experiencing poor audio quality through the headphone jack, set the bit rate to 24-bit, 192kHz. Makes bass exist in the speakers and headphones.

 

Curious... I thought exactly the opposite.
I get no bass from the headphones at 24b@192kHz.
I don't see how you could notice a change in bass for the speakers...but anyway.

edit: just tried the sound config again. There's something erratic, sometimes it doesn't have any bass, and once you change the setting it comes back :S

for the undervolting, which one do you change? I'm guessing not the IOD/IOA voltage?

 

This is exactly the reason why I never buy laptops from Amazon/Newegg/Excaliber/etc. (actually Amazon is not so bad and allows you to return refurbished laptops (only refurbished!) with no restocking fee).

Xotic/Gentech/Bestbuy/etc. have very good return policies

I would return, eat the restocking fee and order it in a store with a good return policy.

 

Have you tried to fix the stuck pixel by using a program yet?

If not try massaging it with a pen with some pressure and then there's always the apply heat method. You may want to read up on those before trying,

 

I get the same thing. I get bass when I do the change.

Undervolted the core, cache and graphics core voltages

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You can also show FPS by enabling the console and using net_graph 1 or cl_showfps 1. Easier than downing Fraps.

 

Can this laptop run a 27" 2560x1440 monitor over HDMI? Haswell + HDMI 1.4 should allow that, right? But it seems like most of the cheap 27" Korean LG panel displays only have DVI in. Any way to run one of those off this machine with a converter or something? I'm not even sure if the monitors that do have HDMI are set up to run over 1080 on HDMI. I want to use this laptop as a mobile graphics/video workstation, and then plug in a hi-resolution monitor when at home. The 14" Clevo has displayport, but it looks like a flimsier laptop.

 

Get an HDMI to DVI cable and you can run 1440p ~35-40Hz. Follow instructions here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/608550-wqxga-2560x1600-z1-without-vidock-works-but-i-need-some-help.html
and here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/602724-success-2560x1440-support-new-vpc-z2-dell-u2711.html

It takes some hacking, but you can get it working, I promise.

 

Temporary fix for the audio through headphones issue, uninstall and delete drivers for the Realtek device from Device Manager and use the default Windows drivers (for Win8). It actually ends up sounding better than Realtek + Dolby (even when it IS working properly).

 

Cool, thanks for that. Glad I went for the P34 based on depth alone. That extra 1" deep would have made it a squeeze in the backpack. W740SU still looks like a great machine, that display looks a lot glossier for some reason?

 

Can anyone confirm this?

 

Looks like a factory screen protector

 

Can you tell me exactly what you changed? I don't see any cache options...
I put:
dynamic core voltage -100mv
ring voltage -100mv
IOA/IOD votage -30mv

so far stable, but I still get 2h20m battery with 30% brightness...

edit: temps are ~71c, is the intel stress tool reliable? orthos prime doesn't seem to put the cpu to 100% use

 

Is it posiible to disable hd4600 in bios? And set a ahci hdd mode?

Anyone tried install and run macos?

 

That's correct. Screen itself was matte and actually less grainy than the p34g.

What tool are you using to undervolt? I'm using Intel XTU. The voltages might be the same just with different names.

No since the display is hooked up to the HD4600, that would be a bad idea.

Yes you get a choice between ahci, raid and, ide.

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What is the timing of the ram used? I want to upgrade to 16GB but don't know what to buy CL11, CL9?