***Gigabyte P34W v3 "Phantasus" owner's lounge***

Hello,

I've reinstalled Windows 8.1 64-bit from scratch and now when I try to install the nVidia drivers I get (during the GeForce driver install):

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA nvlddmkm.sys (ntoskrnl.exe+150ca0)

I've tried tons of drivers, including the initial ones. With the shipped OS (+drivers) it did run fine though.

Any ideas ? Please help !

 

Uninstall the intel drivers and the nvidia drivers. Reinstall drivers from scratch from the driver CD. If you keep getting BSODs when trying to install the nvidia driver your card might have died. It wouldn't be the first.

 

Yep, still not working ( It's visible in the Device Manager though.

Is this covered by the warranty ?

 

Did you delete the factory recovery partition when you reformatted?

 

I'd like to get another AC adapter for my p34. It would be a benefit if it were smaller. Can any one with the same voltage specifications and plug work?

 

The Razer blade PSU is a perfect match and crazy tiny, but expensive.

 

Unfortunately razer computers aren't sold in my country. But as long as the amperage meats the minimum and it's 120 w it would be fine, right?

 

150w is ideal but any wattage above 120w is fine, it just won't charge very fast. What really matters is the voltage which I believe is 19.5v.

 

Hi Guys

Thought I would get in on the action as I have recently bought the p34w v3, I got the "base" model from Overclockers UK with the 1tb hdd and 8gb ram. I have since added a Samsung Evo 850 256gb mSATA SSD and swapped out the ram for 16gb of HyperX CL9 (something about not running Dual Channel really bugged me!) which means I have an 8gb stick of the stock ram available if anyone wants it (I'm in the UK).

I must have been real lucky as I have read this whole thread and some of the issues you guys have had is astounding but I have no such problems apart from a slightly wobbly base that was easily sorted by reseating the bottom panel. It would appear I have a near perfect unit!

Apart from the the above upgrades my system is currently running stock however, I have some Liquid Pro on its way and once I have re-pasted I will get to work with XTU. I am currently running the Windows 10 Technical Preview (Build 10162) which in my opinion is the best Windows OS in a long time (though I actually like 8.1!) but does anyone else run W10?

I was also given a code for Batman: Arkham Knight but I'm yet to install (work ) anyone tried this on their system as it looks pretty demanding?!

Once I've re-pasted I'll give some further feedback.

 

I also recently bought this laptop and have had no issues so far and it's a great little machine. The screen works surprisingly well outside as well even in this heat-wave we're currently having in the UK.

You'll have to let me know how the re-pasting goes - I've not had the balls yet to give it a go. All I've done is under-clock the CPU slightly in XTU which seems to help the heat slightly, though the fans still sound like it's about to take-off.

I wouldn't mind getting that RAM off you either as I live in the UK - drop me a PM or something if it's still available.

 

Yeah I'm pretty stunned at how good it is, the noise is not a massive deal for me as I kind of expected it given the size of the thing though its not the worst I've heard! It gives my desktop a good run for its money although I'm running 1440p with a full fat 970 on that.

I'll let you know how the re-paste goes, I'm no stranger to re-pasting as my previous laptops have all been done along with my desktops but it will be the first time I've used Liquid Pro !

As for the RAM, I still have it as I only got my 16gb this morning so I'll PM you now.

 

Arkham Knight is broken, so you can't even run it full-screened. I want to repaste, but I'm terrified that it will kill the GPU. I paid for a diamond repaste by HID and gigabyte told me that the mobo had been damaged when they did that and that's why my card stopped working. If they can **** it up, I'm afraid I will as well.

 

Yeah I saw last night on steam about them trying to fix the game so I won't bother until its patched. I have plenty of other games to play and I'm on another round of Fallout 3 before 4 comes out in Nov! Re-pasting is pretty easy but I suppose I say that because I've done it loads before, if you're not confident then its probably best to leave it!

 

Random tip for this laptop to limit temps:

if you don't vsync (and even if you do), use rivatuner to limit the framerate to 59/60 fps. It makes gameplay smoother and lowers temps a lot.

 

I use v-sync while playing Elite Dangerous on max settings and it seems to do the job. For BF4 I tend to leave FPS unlimited, but it might be something to try out.

I bought a little USB fan for my P34W that blows cool air over the top of the computer towards the vents on the left and right side of the power button. It has been keeping this area noticeably cooler during intense usage. I'm not sure if it has helped to lower temps however.

 

Repasting is crazy easy if you take your time. Follow this YouTube video and you'll be fine. Gigabyte P34Gv2 Disassembly and Thermal Re-Pasting:

 

So here's a fun question...

Say you swapped out your primary drive with a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSD and your storage drive with standard a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD.

On the P34W v3/4 could you run them in RAID 0?
Has anyone tried to do this?
More Generally, even if you could, would you want to?

Thanks!

 

Alright guys I've been browsing this thread for about a week now.

I am thinking of getting this beast for uni, i'll get the base model and add an extra ram sodimm and an ssd. However after that, I don't want to have to tinker with anything and I want it to be reliable. Is this machine reliable enough or will I have to tinker with it every couple of weeks? This thread has scared me with all the faulty machines... I probably won't re-paste, will I get good enough performance? I'm also wondering, do you think i'll be able to run the new mirrors edge on it? As that's why i went for something with a 970.

Thanks

 

Hi, I thought about this too and I do vaguely remember seeing a RAID option in the bios but in my experience raid was really only good for transfer rates on platter drives. Since you propose 2 SSD's I doubt there would be any benefit from running RAID if it were possible as SSD's are fast anyway.

Personally I'm quite the fan of having a fast boot drive and a separate storage/app drive which could also be an SSD, which is currently how I'm set up and it's a beast!

 

Hi,

All I can say is that I managed to get a good unit (from OCUK) and I have not yet re-pasted so I am running your proposed setup and I have no problems. Performance is astonishing for the size of the laptop however it will thermally throttle so a re-paste is a good idea but not essential. I see no reason why this wouldn't be able to play Mirrors Edge when it comes out.

 

1. use XTU to undervolt maybe 50mv
2. recommend you use throttlestop. Set up 1 profile at x26 and another profile at x20 which triggers at 88C. Your laptop will generally run at x26 unless it's really being taxed at which point it will drop to x20 until the temp drops. Your GPU will stay at max clocks this way.
3. use vsync or a framerate limiter to reduce unnecessary heat generation.

With this setup I get 8760 on 3dmark 2011. After a few hours of gaming (KF2, witcher 3, dota 2) I check the temp records and find that the CPU maxed at 89C and the GPU at 87C. Those are temperatures that are solid for long-term I think, considering that the blade 2015's CPU regularly stays at 95C.

 

Hi

Is there any disadvantage to throttling other than loss in performance? Will it last for 5 years do you think?
Thanks

 

Well performance loss is the big one really, in stock trim when the laptop throttles it tends to be both the CPU and GPU as the they share the same heatpipe and that can be a noticeable hit on performance whereas the tweaks noted by Eason are pretty much spot on. Most games are GPU heavy so lowering the performance of the CPU so that the GPU doesn't throttle is much better than having both throttle and will give better performance overall.

 

Well, I think i'll go for it then and hope for the best, thanks for your help

 

Great name, btw.

 

Hello, I can't remember however I see there is a recovery partition:

 

Thats a standard recovery partition created by the windows setup, unfortunately that is not your original recovery partition as that's around 15gb. Looks like you got rid of it.

 

Lol ffs. Pre-mx4 my cpu temps peaked at 83C running 3dmark11.

Cleaned and repasted... 84c. Maybe needs to settle in?

 

I'll add ya! Don't play often either but just got a code for premium and its now the weekend!!

 

I do not reocmmend it. I am looking to get rid of mine and get a refund trough amazon.

I find the build quality to be horrible and the worst I ever had in this price range.

Lately I noticed the lower base is constantly bending while traveling. Making the machine wobble on a flat table. I have to slightly bend it back for it to stay stable on a table.

This is unacceptable. Not mentioning the other problems I had with this machine. It just doesnt feel solid and I dont feel it will me last for years to come.

Disapointed and it is my last Gigabyte product for a while. Was looking at some Gigabyte graphics cards for my game PC but went to others brands as well.

 

Oh, do you have any other laptop suggestions of similar size and spec?

 

The only other 14" laptops with similar specs are the razer blade and the aorus X3+. Aorus is still gigabyte and both of those are 500 USD more and also less professional looking.

 

You could give the MSI GS60 a look. It's 15.6" but very light.

 

I saw one yesterday. Honestly it looks big, garish, and cheap. Wouldn't consider it after handling it in person.

 

Alright guys, I've looked at every possible laptop, i don't think anything beats the p34w in terms of my needs (other than the razer but its a shame that they don't sell it in the uk). However there's only one problem... Since i'm going to uni, I don't think I'll be able to afford it... I know this sounds desperate and it's essentially begging, but if you have some bitcoins you wish to donate, maybe then I'll be able to get this baby. uhmmm please?

1PxvPu5M8XfHvD6t7iMMqasTrv7HWnBPjt

 

Do you mean the DC tip on the Razer Blade AC adapter is a perfect match for the P34W? Or just that the voltage and wattage specs are a match? If the tip is a match, you wouldn't have to do an ugly splice job and the $130 Razer is asking becomes somewhat palatable.

Unless you do a lot of work with large files (e.g. real-time video editing), there's very little to be gained by using RAID-0, and it can even potentially be slower.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

The problem is threefold:

1) Storage speeds are measured on MB/s. We don't perceive speed in MB/s. We perceive it as time spent waiting, or sec/MB. The game needs to read 1 GB to load. How many seconds does it take? MB/s is a more appropriate measure if you've got a fixed amount of time and you want to read as much data as possible in that time.

Consequently, each doubling of MB/s only gives you half the reduction of wait time. Say you need to read 1 GB.

125 MB/s HDD = 8 sec
250 MB/s SATA 2 SSD = 4 sec
500 MB/s SATA 3 SSD = 2 sec
1 GB/s RAID-0 SSDs = 1 sec

See how each time MB/s is doubled, the amount of wait time reduction is half the previous doubling? The bigger MB/s gets, the less difference it makes. So unless you're doing something like real-time video editing, the vast majority of data you want to read is only going to be a few dozen MB, and the speedup from RAID-0 is nearly imperceptible. In fact the speedup from SATA 3 over SATA 2 outside of benchmarks is pretty marginal as well (look at the real-world tests times).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110.html

2) The big MB/s figures are for sequential read/writes. Those really only come into play when you're doing something like real-time video editing, or if you're copying large media files files from one SSD to another (or for RAID-0 speeds, from one RAID-0 SSD array to another RAID-0 SSD array) on the same computer.

Because we perceive speed as wait time, the biggest waits are actually caused by the slowest speeds. On both HDDs and SSDs, this is the 4k read/write speeds. 4k read speeds are about 1 MB/s for a HDD, 30 MB/s for a SSD. If a drive had to read both 1 GB of sequential data and 1 GB of 4k data (small files):

1 GB @ 500 MB/s (sequential) = 2 sec
1 GB @ 30 MB/s (4k) = 33.3 sec
Total time = 35.3 sec

The vast majority of the time you spend waiting is for the 4k reads. If we switched to a PCIe SSD, the 4k read speeds are unchanged and we get:

1 GB @ 1 GB/s (seq) = 1 sec
1 GB @ 30 MB/s (4k) = 33.3 sec
Total time = 34.3 sec

A whopping 1 sec reduction (3% speedup) . Now say instead that you get a different SSD which is still SATA 3 but can do 40 MB/s 4k reads. Then the time becomes:

1 GB @ 500 MB/s (seq) = 2 sec
1 GB @ 40 MB/s (4k) = 25 sec
Total time = 27 sec

A 8.3 sec reduction (24% speedup). So really, from the standpoint of reducing wait times on your storage devices, you should be concentrating of the drive's smallest MB/s stats and making sure they're big. You can pretty much ignore the sequential speeds.

The vast majority of the speedup you get switching from a HDD to SSD is from the 4k speeds. A modern HDD can hit 125 MB/s sequential speeds. So a 500 MB/s SSD is only 4x faster. But a HDD can only manage 1 MB/s 4k speeds, while a SSD can hit 30 MB/s 4k reads, 70 MB/s 4k writes. Or 30x-70x faster than a HDD. If you have NCQ (part of AHCI) enabled and do multiple queued 4k read/writes, these speeds can reach or exceed 300 MB/s. And the SSD is hundreds of times faster than a HDD. The 4k speeds matter a whole lot more than the sequential speeds!

3) But wait! Won't RAID-0 double the 4k read speeds from 30 MB/s to 60 MB/s? As it turns out, no. Since the smallest file size is 4k, reading a 4k file on RAID-0 is essentially reading an 8k file split into two 4k files. The speed is the same as the 4k speeds on a single drive. Add in the software overhead of RAID-0 (taking the two pieces of the file and combining them into one), and RAID-0's 4k speeds are actually slower than a single drive. If you read through the first link I posted, you'll see this in the benchmarks.

When manufacturers make a SSD, the individual flash dies are essentially put together as RAID-0 internally. But here the RAID-ing is handled via hardware, and the minimum file size is picked to be smaller than 4k so that the sector size after RAID-0 is done is 4k. So a single SSD can see speedups in 4k read/writes from running the equivalent of RAID-0 internally.

So there you go. You can try RAID-0 with SSDs just to say you've done it and to generate some impressive sequential benchmarks. But if you try running some real-world benchmarks you're likely to be disappointed (unless you're doing something like real-time video editing). Personally, having used my P34W for a few months with SSD + HDD combo, I'd say the main reason to replace the HDD with a SSD is to get rid of the annoying 2-3 second freeze every time the HDD spins up from power save.

If you're budget-constrained and in love with the P34W's form factor, consider getting a P34G. The 860m is roughly 60% the speed of the 970m on all but the newest titles, and it's considerably cheaper.

 

Really really appreciate that kickass answer, and to respond to your first posit... Sadly No, I'm not currently an aspiring movie director on the verge or releasing the greatest scifi trilogy ever told who deals constantly with large video file renders or anything even remotely related.

But who knows! that too may change one day!

On an unrelated follow-up to a subject referred to earlier...

Followed By...

And concluded with...

So. That got me thinking about the common upgrade that many folks here seem to do with their P34W's. That is to replace the somewhat slim 128GB mSATA SSD with a healthier 500GB-1TB mSATA SSD.

So assuming one were to indeed swap out their primary SSD with a larger SSD but WANTED to retain or create a new identical-ish "Factory Recovery Partition" just like the one that came with the stock OEM 128GB mSATA SSD, how would one go about doing so?

Just so we're all on the same page, I'm talking about when you press F9 (or whatever the key is) during start-up and it gives you the option to return to the original "fresh out of the box" state when you powered up your P34W for the first time.

How would one go about doing that exactly? I've been able to find the following guides here, and here. But to be honest I'm not entirely sure those guides recreate the Factory Recovery Partition as I understand it to be.

Any points in the correct direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank-you.

 

Too bad the partition is deleted. Mine was deleted when I bought it second hand, so I tried to request the disks from gigabyte which led to the worst customer service of all time and no recovery disks.

To answer you later question; if you wanted to save your factory recovery partition after an SSD upgrade you could just temporarily copy it over to your second hard drive, and then copy it over to your new SSD after it's installed.

 

Couldn't you just ghost the whole drive?

BTW is there any way to set the laptop to automatically go to max fans over a certain temp? Like once it hits 88C the jet engine should start?

 

OH FOR ****'S SAKE

running 3dmark when I got a tdr bsod. Trying to start the laptop gave me a page fault in nonpaged area error when logging in. Had to disable the 970m in device manager to boot outside safe mode. Now there is no graphics card detected, just the Intel one. If you recall, I just got the laptop back 1 month ago from having it repaired in Taiwan for the same problem. Fml

P.s. I don't think it's an accident that I was running evga with a slight oc both times my card died. Both times crash while gaming, the comp restarted once but crashed again after evga started. I wonder if evga gets screwed up and tries to set 32766 core/mem clocks or sth.

Anyway, not buying a new laptop until USB C is on them and you can use external gpu docks. **** this noise.

 

I cloned the original 128 GB mSATA SSD to a spare external HDD, installed a 500 GB mSATA EVO 850, and cloned the external HDD back to the EVO 850. So the new SSD had the original OS and restore partition. But all that turned out to be unnecessary because...

I also made a backup of the recovery partition to an external USB flash drive using the Gigabyte Smart USB Backup tool. If you do that, swap the mSATA SSD, boot off the flash drive, and use it to restore, it will recreate the OS drive and recovery partition on the new SSD. This is by far the easiest way to do it. Use the double-clone using an external HDD method only if you've installed a bunch of programs and made customizations, and don't want to do it again on the new SSD.

I also created a custom recovery image after I'd installed all of the programs I use. Figure this way if I ever need to recover, I don't have to waste time reinstalling everything.
http://www.howtogeek.com/167831/eve...creating-custom-recovery-images-for-windows-8

I was hoping to make this custom recovery image the default on the SSD , so I could keep the original recovery on the USB flash drive. But it turns out the custom image cannot be used to repair the system like the stock recovery can, you can only use it to revert the system. So I deleted it from hte SSD, then recreated it on my HDD. I had to use it once, and it mostly works. It lost a lot of customizations for my installed apps (guess it only retains Windows customizations), and a couple apps had to be re-activated. One app was broken and the only way I could fix it was reinstalling it.

Have you tried downloading and installing/running the Smart USB Backup program?
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5325#dl

It's used to copy the default recovery image to a USB flash drive. But Windows 8 already comes with a command to do that, and Smart USB Backup is over 1.5 GB in size. I can't figure out why it's so big for such a simple function. My best guess is that it contains the default Gigabyte apps and settings to recreate the original Gigabyte restore partition from a default Win 8.1 install. It's worth a shot.

Speaking of which, here's how to create a default Win 8.1 restore partition.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media[/QUOTE]

 

You see, **** like this is what I'm worried about, I'm guessing it's not a reliable laptop.

 

The gpu appears and disappears randomly in my device manager. It will work momentarily and then suddenly stop responding leading to page fault in unpaged area. I had it repasted at a shop Friday and this happened 2 days later... I wonder if they broke my mobo or something. It might be worth opening it up and checking the connections.

 

Only the Razer Blade. From what I have seen on the internet, the Aorus X3 has horrible built quality issues as well. The problem is just too much flex in the chassis of both the laptops.

But not sure on the Razer Blade as well. Only if you live in the US i think. If you live outside and have an issuem than you are kinda screwed.

Now probably just going to order an Alienware 15. its larger yes. But I rather have something that will live for 2 or 3 years. The MSI ghost pro is nice but not enough battery life for my uses and I have no idea how the customer support is in the EU.

I really wanted to like this laptop, but even though my common sense already suspected it might be too good to be true. The cutout for the plastic keyboard tray for example is already a problem. Stuff can come between those fairly wide seams and fall on the motherboard tray, it hinders the structural integrity as well and last but not least, because the lack of a mid frame makes it possible the laptop bends in a laptop bag just like it happened to me multiple times. I thought my 2 year old Samsung Ativ Book 8 was not that great. But this is beyond. I hope Gigabyte will come with better laptops in the future which is worth the price.

To all the owners here, really becareful. Those messenger laptop bags are not ideal for this laptop. I hope you guys have more luck with it.

 

I just recently bought this laptop, and have 0 of the issues everybody else has. I'm thinking that either I'm super lucky, or Gigabyte improved their quality control / got rid of the baby step problems.

I'm curious, why not just replace the 1TB HDD in there instead?
If you want mass storage, you can use an external HDD.

Replacing the 1TB HDD with a 500GB SSD will give a few benefits:

You still have a lot of storage space (628GB total)
Less power consumption - which means less heat, and less throttling of the GPU/CPU due to not getting enough power
Less heat - SSDs create far less heat than HDDs.
Lighter - we all bought this laptop because it's powerful AND small/light
No bottle neck - I've noticed that when you want to access the HDD after it's been in "sleep mode", it takes ~1 second for anything to happen.

I was looking at replacing the 128GB SSD, but then though... I don't need all that storage in my laptop anyway.

 

Welp, bought a QHD Razer Blade. I'm not sure if I'll be getting my P34 back or not, as the shop I had repaste it completely needlessly removed the warranty stickers and took out the fans for no reason. One was still intact, but some of the reflective bit on the other one wore off (though they didn't tear). Gigabyte wouldn't be beyond their rights to refuse to service it.

 

Have to say that I've 0 issues with my P34W and think it's a great little laptop. Fans are very loud when gaming but that's the case on most gaming laptops.

I'm hopefully going to have some time to install a 250GB SSD for the OS and keep the 1TB HDD for other data; as well as repaste the CPU and GPU - I've heard that it can help a lot with temperatures and throtttling.

 

Proceed with caution. First repaste was by HIDEvolution when I bought it, and the day I got the laptop the GPU died.

Second repaste I had a shop do. Temperatures were actually slightly worse than before (using MX-4). The GPU died 2 days later. I don't know if the mobo is made of saltine crackers or what, but be very, very careful, and recognize that repasting isn't going to do much.

 

It did do a lot for me. Not sure if MX4 is conductive or not. But only non conductive thermal paste should be used for this laptop.

For me it brought the temps down with more than 5c.

 

Please do before and after benchmarks with temperatures. I might swap out the hdd then