Gigabyte P34G

Good to hear re: sound over the headphones. I don't count on laptop speakers to provide much by the way of sound quality anyway, and there's no shortage of quality IEMs/over-ears out there for gaming.

 

It's very light, but the anti-glare coating on this screen is disturbing me, like if my eyes couldn't "focus" the screen correctly, this is most present with white backgrounds (when you stare at it you can see a greyish film). The screen itself is not bad, the colors are good and the viewing angles too, it isn't very bright though. I'm perhaps overly sensitive to the issue I described but I never felt that with other matte screens.

 

Just to clarify some things:
-The blur effect you talk about is the same graininess we were all talking about, it's not another issue, am I right? I agree it's more evident on bright white/gray (big) backgrounds, but I don't notice it unless I try to. It is easy to notice if the area is big, for example I don't notice it in the background of the address bar. I do notice it if I go to google.com. But, to be honest, yes, it is bad in the worst cases. Normaly, I just don't see it (I watch a lot of movies).
- Sound: There is no problem here. I find the speaker sound quite good. Of course you will not get bass from a notebook speaker. And the volume is much more than my last laptops (and many 15-17'' I've seen). The headphone out does seem to have a bug, some kind of driver thing I guess, that simply makes the bass dissapear until you change the sound output setting to whatever configuration. But really, this happened to me twice in a week and I use the headphones 75% of the time. Now I will not say I have any authority to qualify the sound output (like self-proclaimed audiophiles) but I have tested many headphones and a few dacs. I'm currently using it with a Sony MA900. So far I find it great for games, movies and music. I'm used to using a galaxy s3 for music, if that tells you anything.
- Battery life: I don't know who to belive here. Gigabyte told me 11h for light use 30% brightness+wifi. There is NO WAY in the world to get that results. Some people are getting around 4h?. I'm doing a test right now and it seems to give a strong 2h30m at least for 1h 720p video+web (undervolted -97mv). Yesterday I got lag when gamming because some crappy bloatware PMB.exe decided to upload something. Lanoptimizer was really useful in detecting and blocking it BTW. So I guess bloatware could be affecting the battery life I'm getting.

On that topic, I know there's a "recovery partition", but I've never really used one. Would that put my windows 8 installation back to default with all the bloatware or a reset install? and BTW, are you guys using win 8 or have you changed for the battery life?

 

No problems with build quality (are you talking about P35k?)

 

I got mine in today and I really did not have any problems with the screen or some of the other mentions, have not tested battery life.

HOWEVER, the keyboard tray on mine seems very loose with lots of noise and flex. Is anyone else noticing this?

I put a video up on Youtube so you can see what I am seeing. Those who also own one of these, are you seeing this as well? It may not be something that I can live with.



Gigabyte P34G Bad Keyboard Flex - YouTube

 

Thanks for posting. Suggests there's not a lot of quality control or standardization in the builds, and it's weird that it's a problem on one side, but not the other.

 

Found this online, a thread with current owners and they are answering questions.
Gigabyte P34G Only - Gigabyte - Notebooks - Whirlpool Forums

I just realized that this laptop has Realtek audio drivers, uninstall that right now if you value audio and just use windows recommended driver for it.

If you decide to keep it. My fix for no bass.
I don't know if the audio driver has settings on the laptop but on my desktop I did this and it makes audio ALOT better.
uncheck Full-range Speakers and click OK – won't take effect unless you click OK).

Also since there have been a lot of complaints about the screen I'll leave this here.

 

That's definitely bad. Mine is similar on the middle (bottom and top) borders but there is no flex in the corners (where you started the video for example). And it is not at all as bad as in the video while typing, actually it doesn't really flex. I guess the fixed corners help.

 

I definitely second uninstalling the RealTek drivers and using Windows's

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk 2

 

Anyone updated SmartManager to v3.3.4? Just realised brightness control doesn't work anymore.

 

Mine is the same, the bottom centre of the tray seems loose and you can push it down, I've only just noticed this now after seeing the video. The corners are completely solid though.

The only times when I notice some flexing whilst typing is pressing centre keys, 'Y H N T G B'

 

Just wanted to post an update to my video above. I was able to fix the problem.

On the bottom of the laptop there are several screws that are labeled with the keyboard icon. Interesting two of the screws actually fell out of the bottom and the others were very loose. I simply tightened them all and it is much better now with minimal flex.

This points to very bad quality control. How could they not notice how bad the KB tray was and that there were screws hanging loose.

 

Again, I have a few other matte screens around that I compare this one to and I find this is worse. I already explained what I think so I won't repeat it. Others may think otherwise and like it, I don't want to scare any potential buyers, I said multiple times that the screen is good otherwise and that it's a personal point of view.

 

I always used to have the same problem. I use a wireless mouse and set the mouse settings to disable the trackpad when a mouse is detected. Trackpad is always a backup plan at best.

 

Don't get me wrong. I was really asking if you were talking about the same thing. Just wanted to offer a second opinion.

 

No worry I just didn't want to explain it again, I'm short of words

And I certainly don't want to make a big deal of it since I really spend 3 days wondering why to do with i, it's really light and I'm certainly over sensible to this.

 

Yes, and mine still works.

 

Hmmm, you may want to use lock tight on those screws if they keep falling off.

 

Take a look at the thinkpad x models. The thinkpad X230 or the up and coming x240.

 

When you just look at the colors of the screen (particularly areas of white like on this web page) and stare at it, yes, it's there. When you're looking at the shapes or text on a screen it's not as noticeable. Kind of like those trick graphics where you see one thing, but if you stare at it long enough you see something else. Or when you get too close to your plasma or LCD FHD TV's screen.

That being said, the "graininess" on this unit's LCD is substantially more than on my Sony Vaio S15. But then that's an IPS screen and the one on this P34G is AHVA. I myself don't notice it that much except for when I'm specifically looking for it.

 

Anybody getting more than 3 hrs battery out of this unit yet? If so, at what display brightness, on which power scheme? With what undervolting if any?

 

Lol 6 hours tops for me. Undervolted at -130mV at 0% brightness in airplane mode with balanced profile (on a plane to work on an essay).

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk 2

 

0% brightness? Doesn't that turn the screen off

Doesn't undervolting under -100 start to hurt the laptop?

But 6 is amazing if your strategy works for everyone else.

 

Undervolting is unlikely to hurt your laptop. That being said, it's not impossible to do so. Either way 130 has been perfectly stable for me. Just depends on your chip. To be fair it was in airplane mode, so no web browsing. Also 0% is not off, just the lowest brightness level.

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk 2

 

Oh, I was under the impression that the max you could safely undervolt was -100. But if -130 is safe, then why not?

Airplane mode just turns off all wifi-related programs right? Could those really take 3 hours off of the battery life?

 

Here are my early takes so far, in addition to my video on the loose keyboard tray.

The Good

• The screen is quite good to me. No it is not as good as my 27" IPS screen sitting on my desk, but I have no issues with it. I have not found it overly grainy for a matte screen.You can tell it is matte, but to me it is not bad at all.
• Nice and thin.
• Light weight for a gaming PC.
• Looks pretty nice.
• Good performance when plugged in CPU wise.

The Bad

• Poor Quality Control. Loose screws, really?
• Even with tightening the screws, this keyboard has too much flex and feels cheap. It is noisy,primarily due to the flexing tray.
• The speakers suck with the installed driver. All kind of popping in the sound. Changed to the default Windows and it made them adequate.
• The Video performance is not as good as I had hoped. It is not horrible, just not as good as I had hoped. For example in 3DMark Fire Strike Benchmark it gets 2263 compared to a low end desktop that I had with an older Core i3 and ATI 7770 which got 2631. I know desktop and laptop video cards are not the same, but this was a bit farther behind than I expected. My fault on that.
• The Screen / Lid is very flexible and feels like I am going to bend it every time I open the lid. Does not seem to have much structure to it and it would not take much for it to be ruined.
• Battery is just poor.

Overall
I am a bit dissapointed. Especially for the price, you would think they would have a bit more solid of a machine. I have a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook that I had hoped this might replace so that I could get a little more than just business. However the build quality is night and day. The XPS 13 is a very solid feeling system as opposed to the flimsy feel of the P34G. The flex of the KB tray and the screen is just horrible.

If this system would have cost around $1000 US, then I might not feel cheated. However at the price of this laptop I expected a much better build quality. I could live with the hiccups in the sound driver and maybe a little less video performance than I had hoped for.At least those can be corrected somewhat with drivers. However the keyboard is there to stay and software can't fix that. The screen stability is there and can't be fixed by an update. The fact that the P35K is having QC issues as well with bending and such,does not make me feel very positive about the future of these systems. I love GB video cards and motherboards and I may have to stick to just those. Seriously if they want to compete with the big boys they need a better quality system than this.

 

^
Making me have second thoughts on the P35K now, due to QC / structural problems.
Then again what other laptop has the specs and thinness of this laptop without a major price increase? (Clevo is just as flimsy as it comes, and bulky)

The AMD 7770 is one of the best price per performance GPU ever, so I'm not surprised that $100 GPU can run BF3 on ultra with decent fps.
Your GTX760m is actually out performing the average score of other GTX760m by 200 points, I'd imagine if you'd over clock you can surpass the 7770.

But meh this just sucks.

 

I hear you Retroceded. Honestly the biggest concern I have is the structural and QC stuff. I don't want to get down the road a bit and this thing starts falling apart. I use this for business as much as anything and that is not always kind to laptops. I am really on the fence right now and I am giving it a day or two to make a final decision whether to return it or not.

 

I saw this a while ago, but thought it was too expensive. I stumbled across it again and realized that it's the same price as this Gigabyte, but with more RAM and a 7200rpm HDD. MSI GE40 2OC-245US NV GTX760M, Intel 4th Gen Haswell CPU - GenTech PC (this is the 1080p model)

I tried looking through the owner's thread, and I think the main problem is heat...? The GPU is apparently under the left palm rest, which is possibly the worst spot MSI could have placed it. The GE40 owner's thread is pretty much dead compared to this thread, so if anyone else has more information on this model, that would be great.

 

What's bad

1) TN screen
2) Thick (1.14")
3) Runs hot when gaming ( MSI GE40 2OC-009US Review | Notebook Reviews, MSI GE40 2OC-009US Review & Rating | PCMag.com)

What's good

1) Speakers
2) Dedicared navigation keys (home, end, pgup, pgdn)
3) Battery life

I'd go with p34g because it's cool under load and because it has an awesome screen

 

Yeah I checked the specs out before I posted and it is thicker/heavier. Honestly though, I think the heat factor itself would cause me not to buy it.

The screen is personal preference according to everyone else here, but ANYTHING is going to be better than this 768 one

 

Definitely a variability in build quality. Other than the slight dip on the clickpad rocker on my machine it's been good. No loose screws. Agreed on the keyboard. I'm coming from ten years of ThinkPads, nothing compares. Durability would probably be my main concern. Different purpose rig, but now watching the HP Zbook 14 to see if I maybe jump in a month or two.

Then again, watching the travesties that have unraveled in the W740SU and P35K forums with keyboard and build respectively, this appears to be about as good as it gets at this time.

 

Does anyone else have an issue where wifi refuses to play ball after standby until airplane mode is enabled and disabled?

 

I've been waffling back and forth between the P34G and the GE40 for over a month now. After seeing everything about the P34 battery life, and some of the other minor issues, I think I may end up passing on it. Kinda makes me sad as I thought this would finally be my next laptop.

On a side note, I can chip in on the GE40. One of the guys in my office has a GE40 he got a few weeks ago. For reference he has the 20C-009US model. He uses it at 100% screen brightness and easily pulls close 6 hours of battery from it, I imagine turning the brightness down would definitely get more. Also, I have looked his over pretty thoroughly and it has no build quality issues, and in some tests we did (gaming, benchmarks etc) the thing never really got hot at all. He told me he has never had any overheating issues at all with it, so maybe the overheating is something that got fixed? I will agree that the speakers are pretty horrible on his GE40, and we both had a good laugh over them (they get very loud but there is absolutely zero bass in them). In terms of thickness/weight, I haven't seen a P34G in person, but the GE40 with the battery in it was so light and slim I could easily balance it on 3 fingers, the thing is unbelievably light, at least compared to any of my laptops.

I am now really considering getting one of the GE40s and maybe getting Gentech to replace the thermal paste with Arctic Silver since its a free upgrade, as well as adding some ram and the 7260AC wireless card. I really wanted the P34G because I like the look and the keyboard backlight a lot, but if it comes down to battery or backlight and I have to choose one, I'm gonna have to go with battery. I'm still hoping that maybe before the Thanksgiving specials, Gigabyte will release some software or BIOS update to improve battery life, but I'm beginning to lose hope in that. But yea, maybe it wasn't true of early models, but at least from what I have seen in person the GE40 doesn't seem to have any overheating problems from what we could tell. Just my 2 cents

 

Have you considered that the overheating problems were hidden by the throtling?

 

Just read that the ZBook is priced from $2445. Oy.

 

Those uninstalling realtek audio drivers, are you still running the dolby software?

 

It won't run without the official realtek drivers from the Gigabyte site. Even the latest drivers from the Realtek site are not compatible with the Dolby software.

 

No. However the sound quality is all better than with Dolby, especially for properly amplified music.

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk 2

 

Really? I noticed the opposite... Perhaps I should try again.

Btw, are you talking about headphones or speakers or both?

 

Honestly i can't say. We tested it plugged in to the wall and it seemed to run the handful of games/programs we tried pretty smoothly with no lag. It wasn't my PC though, and we didn't install fraps to check the FPS, but the notebook itself was only a little warm after a few minutes. Outside of gaming it was silent and cold. It is possible they implemented some sort of throttling, but it didn't seem to diminish the performance. I wish I had the spare cash lying around to get both and do a full comparison! That would be really helpful for me haha

 

Both for me. Might be a personal taste thing. Try enabling loudness equalization and bass boost if you want something louder/bassier

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk 2

 

My Intel 7260 from Rakuten shows out for delivery, will be throwing it in the machine later today when I knock off for the day. Anybody have any recommendations for a good wireless AC router? I've been looking at Asus RT-AC68R and RT-AC66U units, but they're pricey.

 

Well that makes a big difference... I don't whink you would notice a difference even if you were with a 4500U+GT750 because most games are not really cpu demanding. Also, if it overheats, it will throtle and thus reduce temperature, and that's the real "overheat" problem with the MSI.

 

Just uninstalled realtek. Tried it for a bit and result is that I ended up reinstalling it. Volume dropped quite a bit and more importantly headphone jack would not auto switch when headphones plugged in and out? Couldn't really tell any sound difference, maybe a tiny a bit, but not worth the tradeoff.

 

For what it's worth I don't think there's a real difference in quality.
But mine does do the auto switch between headphones and speakers. Even uninstalled Dolby hometheater.
I'm trying to see if it solves all the bugs.

 

I have the Asus rt-n66u. I like it. I get 300mbit on my Intel 6235 with it.

 

Looks like a good unit. Asus always makes good hardware, but only up to 450Mbps on 802.11n on this one. I'm after 802.11ac at this time.

 

There's also the Apple Airport Extreme (or Time Machine). It looks pretty good and Apple usually has good firmware updates. Not sure how it compares to the Asus models though as I couldn't find enough info through google.

 

check the new model: ASUS RT-AC68U