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

Can you run games on native resolution on the blade?

 

Haven't really tried, I run all games at 1600 x 900. I tried Dota 2 at 4k and it would drop below 60 occasionally so I changed it back.

Sure, if you pay 1150 + shipping +

 

Why run it at 1600x900? I'd recommend running native res (1920 x 1080). Both of those laptops can run every single game out there at that res.

I was considering the Razer, but after reading about the louder noise, and the fact that it has a green light on the lid, I decided not to get it. The price didn't exactly make it more attractive either, and also the lack of storage sucked.

I think the next generation of GPUs will be the one that allowed 4k gaming to take place on laptops.

 

1600 x 900 is exactly half of the native resolution of the 4k razer, so I figure it will scale a bit better than 1080p.

btw the razer is much, much quieter than the P34. It's shocking how quiet it is. The fan noise is more higher pitched, though.

 

Aha, well, then it's not really 4k though. 4k is 2160p. But I guess it's close enough.

Have you tried higher resolutions? I mean, a game in 1600x900 will undoubtedly look worse than in higher res. I haven't seen that res on a screen for 5 years or so.

Have you tested in more intense games, at full HD res? All the reviews I read recorded a higher dB noise level.

 

I can't tell 1600 x 900 from 1080p on this screen. On my 1080p p34 I can barely tell, but not on this display. The p34 is set to auto-high fan and goes up to 89C and it loud. The razer doesn't allow control of fans, but it is about 10+C cooler across the board, only occasionally going up to a fan speed that compares to the P34.

 

Yeah well the P34w is lighter But then again the weight of the PSU makes of it.

 

You tried just setting it to stealth, or auto low?

According to the various tests I saw, the Razer runs hotter, and makes more noise, while giving worse performance.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Face-Off-Aorus-X3-Plus-vs-Gigabyte-P34W-vs-Razer-Blade-14.142980.0.html

This seems to be because of thermal throttling. But I guess if you are just playing at 1600x900, it doesn't really matter.

Then I just wonder, if you're playing at low resolution, why spend so much on a high performance laptop? You might as well have gotten the P34K, or the Razer Blade 2014. Or a variety of other 13"-14" that have far more focus on battery life, weight, and noise.

 

Did you read the comparison?
"Stress test: The Gigabyte is the unfortunate loser in this round as GPU clock steadily drops over time due to thermal limits."


Now, regarding the noise, I'm not sure why the blade shows up as so loud. Perhaps it's because I've never gotten the blade above 85C while gaming, so the fans only step up to 3/5 or something. Maybe I should enable turbo OC on the razer just so I can see what this fan noise thing is about. It's a bit baffling.

I've tried setting the gigabyte it to auto-low. It still makes more noise than the blade while hitting the thermal ceiling and throttling earlier. Again, none of these laptops can be used without throttling if you let the CPU turbo. However, I can tell you that simply, objectively, at the same x26 clocks, both repasted with IC7, the razer runs 10c cooler than the P34 and makes less noise. I am running comparisons on them for an article I'm writing.

You don't get a 4k screen for native res gaming, since for me, anything less than 60 fps is unacceptable performance. I got the 4k because I wanted a touch screen.

edit: I hypothesize that maybe the unibody aluminum chassis allows the blade to become a giant heat sink which can bleed off the heat at sustainable rate at x26, whereas the p34 has plastic which is not going to have the same effect. Enabling 3.6ghz turbo and the blade hits 90C pretty quickly.

 

Yeah, I noticed. There's a few other tests that show the same thing we've seen on the forum here, enabling high performance profile keeps the CPU at 100%, which throttles the gpu.
I have a tiny bit of thermal throttling in GTA-V, but I haven't repasted, or used the XTU tool.

Yeah, it's probably due to only playing games in lower resolution. Doesn't put as much load on the GPU & CPU.

The alu body probably does transfer heat faster, but it wouldn't make a 10c difference. There's an extra HDD in the P34w, that definitely creates heat in the chassis. But what I gathered was that the Razer made more noise, and became hotter (if you repasted both of them). Not sure why you're getting different results.

They are both great machines though. If the cost of the Razer 2015 1080p was lower, I might have gone for it. Ultimately, the professional look of the Gigabyte, the lower cost, and the extra storage, all made the choice easy.

But if you have both laptops, I'm sure that money wasn't a huge concern.

 

For my tests I'm looping 3dmark2011, so the resolution is uniform across the two. I've been thinking of what would happen if I took my razer into work. The kids in the classroom would probably freak out. Last week, though, I lent my p34 to a student to do work as his had run out of battery. Not a peep; it went entirely under the radar.

 

You can download the ISO from Microsoft directly using the Media Creation Tool.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/media-creation-tool-install

With the upgrade you will obtain a key, which (according to what I've read) will be automatically applied once you do a clean install of Windows 10.

 

Re: The key... Not quite, you keep your existing key but the Microsoft servers are updated so that key is registered with Windows 10 and after 30 days its permanent.

Dishing out new keys would be a nightmare and an unnecessary measure, it would alienate OEM users as you can't change keys that are embedded into the BIOS/hardware (not legally anyway) so it makes sense to simply re-use existing keys and update what OS they are registered to. You have to complete the upgrade first though to trigger the update on MS servers, if you try to use a Windows 7 or 8.1 key without doing the upgrade first the Activation will fail.

 

So I installed an 850 Evo SSD, Windows 10 and re-pasted using Liquid Pro the other night and finally got around to doing some benchmarking. I think I may have re-pasted incorrectly as it seems to be idling around 45-50 degrees centigrade and when I do a CPU stress test via XTU the processor gets up to around 95 degrees with thermal throttling showing around 40%.

Does this sound similar to what others have experienced? Not sure if it's due to doing a stress test rather than a 'real life' test of gaming etc. or if it means I did re-paste wrong and need to take it apart to do it again?

Edit: Also forgot to mention that this is without under-volting or anything.

 

I idle between 45-48C with IC7. That's with undervolt.

Has anyone here tried the TPL function in throttlestop 8? It allows you to set a wattage limit on your CPU after a given grace period. Could be used to allow turbo speeds for a given amount of time before reducing the TDP to whatever you like (you could set it to 23W to make it turn off turbo, for example). For me, I got higher temps and slightly less performance (70 less 3dmarks) than simply turning off turbo on my blade, but maybe you guys will have different results.

 

Anybody had any issues after installing windows 10?

I have a slightly annoying problem:

When I power on the PC, after I log in, the fans will blaze up for a second, then turn back down. This is with stealth mode activated.
It almost seems as if the fan control doesn't boot up until later, and windows just turn the fans automatically up. This wasn't an issue in Windows 8,1 though?

 

Anyone having an issue with the HDD spinning down, and the computer freezing for a second or two while it waits for the drive to spin back up? I tried changing the Windows power settings so the HDD never spins down, but it still happens. I know the WD SSHDs had this problem, and the P34W uses a 1TB WD HDD. I wonder if this is a general WD problem - where their drives ignore the spindown time setting in Windows. It seems to spin down after about 10-15 seconds, which means the freezes happen a lot.

I have a spare 1TB Seagate laptop drive. I'll try cloning it and swapping drives when I have some free time.

 

Just install a program that prevents the drive from spinning down and see what happens.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

I know this question has been asked a couple of times, but I did not see an answer. I am looking for a 2nd Power Adapter for this laptop (preferably something smaller for travel). I see someone mentioned Razer Blade's adapter, but it was not clear if it would support the same barrel connector used on the P34W.

Has anyone else purchased a spare AC adapter?

 

Yes the Razer AC adapter works. ASUS adapters work as well (though they're giant), just make sure it's 120W at least.

 

Good idea. I wrote a batch file with the following:

:repeat
@echo %RANDOM% > tmp.txt
ping -n 8 127.0.0.1 > NUL
goto repeat

It writes a random number (to thwart any caching) to a file tmp.txt every 8 seconds. With it running on HDD, the freezing completely disappears. So yeah the WD is going to sleep, and is ignoring Windows settings to not go to sleep. Guess I'll try the drive swap this weekend.

 

Let us know how it goes!

 

There's got to be a way to turn this off. Maybe there's a utility on the hard drive's support page to tweak the settings. I remember using something called widdle utility to back in the day.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

Hmm, looked up wdidle on Google. Apparently the problem is the heads auto-parking after 8 seconds of inactivity. That would certainly make more sense than spinning the drive down.

I found a post suggesting using CrystalDIskInfo to change the drive's APM settings. I've done that and changed the APM setting to maximum performance (FEh). That seems to have taken care of the problem, probably at the cost of a few minutes of battery life. I can live with that.
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

 

Yeah that was the software I was talking about in my first post, I couldn't just remember the name. Awesome that everything worked.

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Did anyone have problems upgrading to windows 10?

 

nope

 

I noticed you switched to a Razer blade. I'm coming from a 2015 blade to a p34w to save some money. Anything to be aware of?

 

have anyone got an uneven touchpad or trackpad in your notebook?

like this one..

 

- Thicker bezel, less solid construction, can't run at as high clocks without throttling (x22 playing the Witcher 3 is as far as I'll go, I don't like to see CPU temps above 95C). Not as flashy (could be a positive). Trackpad clicker is a single piece which cannot be depressed in the middle. Very, very annoying until you get used to it.
+ lighter (not including AC adapter), vga port, SD slot, 4 USB instead of 3. Ethernet. Despite higher temps while gaming, the surface temps are much lower than the blades. More expandable storage. Much more control over the laptop using smartmanager. You can control fan speeds, brightness, color balance, power profiles etc with gigabyte's software.

 

Those are bent touchpad buttons, and yeah it's the most common flaw in this notebook. If that's the least of your concerns then it's best not to RMA, or you might end up with an even worse replacement.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

well, i have already contacted GIGABYTE HQ in Taiwan via ILLEGEAR (Malaysia). They will send spare part (touchpad) to GIGABYTE service center in my country and fix it. I hope my notebook wouldn't get any new problem after getting fix in future.

It didn't give any malfunction but that flaw really annoy me.

 

Upgraded to Windows 10 and downloaded all of the drivers direct from the Gigabyte site (Smart Update is ridiculously slow in downloading/installing). Anyone else now have a different Smart Manager? My fan settings are now "quiet", "normal", "gaming" and "customise" instead of the auto-low, auto-high etc.

Smart Manager also says "Windows 7 64-bit" at the bottom which I thought was a bit odd. Not sure whether it's worth just installing the Windows 8 version and seeing if that's better?

 

Interesting. Would like to try this.

 

That's helpful.

I wonder if anyone has tried to mod the clicker by cutting it into two distinct buttons. I can see that being pretty annoying.

Can the Razer Blade charger be used on the P34W? I thought I read that somewhere.

 

Yes it's a perfect fit, expensive though.

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Yes it can. One more thing, though! The gigabyte's speakers are pathetic

 

Xotic is selling the P34Wv3-CF1 for $1405 (with cash discount) and a $100 rebate. Comparing to the P34Wv4-BW1 for $1551 (with cash discount). There is essentially a $250 delta between the V3 and V4. Besides the CPU upgrade, is there anything else that would be worth the $250 upgrade?

EDIT:
I should have been comparing the P34W v3-CF2 since that includes the 128GB mSATA that the P34Wv4-BW1 includes. So the delta is actually $150

 

I was considering buying a P34W V3, does re-pasting make a difference in thermal performance?

 

I have repasted mine (which is for sale, btw ) with both MX4 and IC7. IC7 is superior. MX4 was similar to the factory paste, IC7 dropped temps 3-5C. It idles in mid 40's and light loads between 50-60C. At x26 it's low-mid 80's for lighter games like Dota 2, but will peak around 90C playing the Witcher 3 on high settings. No paste job will stop this laptop from overheating at turbo clocks (nor the Blade).

 

The new smart manager has a "customize" option for the fans with a slider from 45-100%. This is potentially AWESOME, however I can't get any slide values to stick. Anyone have better luck?

 

You cant, its being hold in place from the middle.

 

So if I buy this laptop use throttlestop or XTU and limit turbo boost correct?

 

Yup. x26 or less.

 

I imagine the Razer Blade isn't much better in terms of thermals.

 

Actually, it runs a fair amount cooler internally (without turbo). But interestingly, it's much hotter externally, like 5-10C hotter surface temps, even though it's 5-10C cooler internally.

 

Although for 1500 I'm probably getting a very good deal considering the form factor.

 

The Razer Blade is a sweet machine, no doubt about it. But the question in my mind is whether or not it's worth the $1000 premium. Of course, the answer to that varies from person to person...

 

That's a question I'm going to try to answer in my comparison article

spoilers: not really. especially since it's actually relatively bare-bones in terms of storage and IO

 

That's why I opted for a P34 instead. 1080P is good enough and can be used without scaling.