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

hairworks?

 

I have turned it off. I first had it on Geralt only but in some situation is could cause a framedrop. Without it is like 10fps on average more. Rather have everything else on high with around 60 fps than hairfworks on with sometimes dips from around 50 to the 30s.

 

Ohhhh I see. Thought it was figurative.

 

Hi there... I live in Taiwan (home of Gigabyte don't-cha-know) and am thinking of investing in a P34W. I have read all 41 pages of this thread with some interest and knew exactly what I was looking for when I went into the store to discuss a few things with them today. So thanks to everyone here who has contributed.

I am looking for a few words of advice about what to do with the SSD and choosing RAM.

1. I was planning to strip out the 128gb and 1tb disks and put in one 512GB Samsung EVO as that is more than enough for me (I have a desktop at home). Does anyone here have any experience with Samsung EVO as the mSATA?

2. Is it still the case that larger SSD's are faster, and is that a major factor to consider?

3. One SSD should be better for power consumption, but would the difference be negligible if I were to stick another 512 EVO in there later?

4. What RAM pairs best with the motherboard in the P34W? They have offered a set of paired (2x8) 1866Mhz. I know RAM is always the bottleneck for CPU's nowadays, but is faster always better? I seem to remember something about cycles and limitations of RAM frequency when paired with a motherboard/chipset.

Just one point of interest, the Broadwell chipset that is available online from Xotic and one or two other places is not yet available over here. I am planning to pull the trigger once it hits the stores.
I have the luxury of being able to walk in and check the thing over before I buy it, with all the pieces I want in it. So thanks again for the (lengthy) list of stuff to look out for.

 

1. The Samsung EVO is basically the go-to high capacity mSATA. That's the one to get.
2. See above, no problem
3. The difference between HDD and SSD is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. 15-20 minutes at most. I suspect you're looking at something similar with adding a 2nd one.
4. The memory is dual channel so it doesn't need to be paired (2 sticks) for best performance. AFAIK, anyway. Just get the fastest memory you want for the relative price. The bottleneck for the P34, as you should know after reading this thread, is the heat at sustained load. At stock you will get 9300+ on 3dmark11, but that's only for the first few minutes of gaming. After that you're going to get thermal throttling because of the CPU heat, which is why we all underclock our CPUs to x30-26 and disable HT.

 

Thanks Eason... decision made. Now all I'm waiting on is those last couple paychecks, Broadwell to come available here, then time to tote up and go shopping!
Time for an upgrade!

 

It's a great machine. I wish it had a displayport and maybe longer battery life, but other than that it's really a fantastic laptop. Once you're an adult you just can't have an ugly/bulky glowing alienware or a neon green razer, it's embarrassing and not cool-- no 2000 USD piece of tech should do anything other than make you look awesome.

 

Interesting, I ran comparison tests with HT off/on at x20.

Off: 8086 points (2011)
On: 8799

Both peak at 88C for CPU.

Will try witcher 3 later and see if the temps can remain stable @ x20 with HT.

edit: CPU maxes at 90, GPU at 88 after 2 hours. This is with Throttlestop profile 1 at x26 and profile 2 at x20, triggered at DST 12 (98C)

 

Anyone here who is comfortable taking the keyboard off?
Instructions here:

I am looking for the serial number of a US layout keyboard for the P34W.
Where I live I can only buy a UK, French or German layout and I am looking for a US version. When I buy from the US I will have to pay VAT of about 25% of the total price of the laptop.
So I am looking to buy a separate keyboard from a supplier on the internet, but they want to have a serial number.
So I would appreciate it if anyone could provide me with the serial number of this keyboard and frame.
Any tips on where to get the keyboard are also highly appreciated.

 

I am also one of the many that are considering this laptop as my next platform. I am coming from a Sony Vaio S 14" SVS13A, and I am using this laptop as a true "lap top". I am able to game on this system while it physically sits on my lap, and there is very little heat. The vent blows out the back so it does not blow physically on me. Can anyone tell me if it is possible for this unit to game while sitting on a lap, or do I risk the chance of catching my legs on fire ?

 

Thanks Vinny3, but I am asking if the unit can physically sit on my lap without an additional table or cooler.


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The P34W can definitely be used on your laptop while performing non-intensive tasks and operating in a power saver mode. It won't get very warm this way at all.

 

I don't think you can game on it that way, though. The GPU/CPU will hit the high 80's under modest load, and the heat pipe is right against the bottom cover in the rear. You definitely don't want that touching skin.

 

Yeah of course you wouldn't want to use it on your lap while gaming. Although in my experience the laptop gets hotter on top by the vents on either side of the power button.

 

I replaced the stock 128GB SSD with the 500GB EVO 850 mSATA in mine. It works fine.

The sweet spot right now is in fact 500/512 GB. 1 TB tends to be a bit slower because it uses the same number of lanes as the 500 GB drives, but takes a split second longer to locate and access a specific flash memory address. 256 GB is slower because it usually uses fewer lanes.

The 1TB SSDs should become faster once PCIe or SATA Express becomes more commonplace. Right now due to the SATA interface, there is little point adding more lanes than in the 500 GB SSDs.

But really, the main bottleneck on SSD speeds right now is 4k read speeds. Most SSDs can only manage 25-30 MB/s (no NCQ queue). The better ones manage 30-40 MB/s.

I kept the 1TB HDD, but I'm thinking of replacing it with a cheap 1TB SSD at some point. Most power save modes spin down the HDD when it isn't used in a while. If this happens and you try to access data on it, the computer pauses for a couple seconds while it waits for the HDD to spin up.

Broadwell is a die shrink of Haswell. The architecture (layout of the circuitry on the CPU) is exactly the same as Haswell, aside from a few bug fixes and a revamed integrated GPU (which you don't care about if you're buying a gaming laptop). So the only benefit of the Broadwell CPU is slightly lower power consumption and temperatures.

 

heat is a big problem in these laptops though so this is a big deal. If it removes throttling completely or just a little bit is a big deal.

 

I did not see a good power consumption comparison of Broadwell yet, do you have some sources?

 

Is anyone has tried liquid metal pad ?

I use it on P34G (760M) and temps are good especially for gpu : 80 ° overcloked at 890 Mhz and with fan at high, not highest, speed.

 

I use Gelid Thermal Extreme and it seems to work well for my CPU and GPU. I never did any strict testing, but it seems to keep things cooler by about 6-8c.

 

Unbelievably craptastic: I was doing some rendering on sony vegas of a recording a did, from an SD card.
I suddenly get a massive crash and BSOD.
After rebooting, my SD card reader no longer works.
I uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers, did a system recovery, tried switching SD cards just in case, nothing will do it. I don't know if it is a software or hardware problem (I can't find the device anywhere on the device manager), but here it is: a new laptop, that only has a few months, and the SD card reader is totally, 100% dead! I am using an old cleco M860TU at the moment to recover all the footage from the card and saving it on an external hard drive.
I am tempted on just resetting the factory settings, again, but I am simply too lazy to do it (having to reinstall most programs, plus backing up all my saved games...Don't feel like doing that right now, but I might have to).
Who knows, the problem might fix itself...Now I am just worried the same might happen with the GTW 970m (which is exactly what I got with the P35W that I first received): anyone else had a problem with the card reader?

 

Anyone else notice that Gigabyte seem to have stopped updating the drivers page for the P34v3 ?

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5325#dl

I'm miles ahead of what "smart update" says either by getting DL's from manufacturer or from other P -series pages that have the same hardware.

Strange, you would have thought they'd be keeping things up to date....

 

And in an odd twist of events, after my external hard drives stopped working and the laptop refused shutting down (forcing me to press the power button), the SD card reader works again.
...
I don't think I am going to try to figure out what is happening here

 

Recently I have the issues that 2 times the base became even and I had to gently pull it back to a straight condition.

Others encountered this?

 

Wow, it would almost be sad to rma such an interesting specimen. Seriously though, it sounds like a defect in the motherboard.

 

After returning my laptop back for countless attempts to sign a "good" p34w i decided against it and miss its redicoulously good perfomance with 970m. it was all that i wanted aswell besides its horrible touchpad.
I decided to get something closer to "my roots" using a thinkpad with the new buttons and got the 840m inside. i was fairly impressed with it compared to my other laptop with a 8750m and they are on the same level but its way better strangely. but the 840m is only "just" enough depending on your settings to play at 1080p. but that wasnt the problem. it was build issues that saddened me with it. that was the thinkpad yoga 14. very nice and easy machine to get on with.

decided and ordered me a cheap customised w230SD with 960m inside at more than HALF the cost of the p34w. all i need to do is find me a cheap i7 quad from ebay and im good. I just want it for a bit till pascal and skylake versions laptops are out in a sub 14" form factor. hopefully they refresh the p34w v5 (or vi lol) the laptop and make better even touchpad even if it is integrated.
i was so spoilt with the 970m that i just had to give the 840m a miss as the 960m will be nearly 3x better syntheically, so i guess thats good enough for a short term plan and cost effective for me till the refresh is here. and ill be back

i do however miss this thread and still read it.

 

I considered the W230SD but ultimately decided I didn't want anything with a thick, plastic case. Interested to know how the build quality is and whether it feels like a "premium" product or not.

 

I never considered this laptop. I saw it but wanted something else because I've already owned this laptop with the w230ST with the 765m. It's quite solid. But a bit underwhelming compared to the build compared to the p34w. Yea it is thicker but in the end when I compare what I spent on a p34w it's a fair trade off. My configured w230Sd came in at £515 with no codes used. I got my own windows 8.1 I actually bought FOR the w230st and will buy my own i7.
I got 1tb msata already which I bought for the p34w so the 500gb supplied will be just a back up storage drive. And also have 8gb ram and killer 1202 wifi for which I bought for the p34w to go in the W230SD.
I just hope I like it a lot more this time around. Infact it was just the touchpad that I didn't like in it because it would stop taking registering the track movement. But apparently I read on here that's supposed to "improve" over time from that point, when I felt like it actually degraded over time and wasn't gonna get better and I had it 3 months. But will see when it comes over time how it goes. But I know what to expect and can live with that. Warranty will cover that anyway if it just stays bad


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Has anyone had any performance problems with BF4 or other games where the 970M should be performing better than expected? I've having trouble getting smooth gameplay on an external monitor over HDMI at 1920 x 1080 with Ultra settings on multiplayer. When I set the settings lower, there is no change in performance even though the game looks crappier so something is clearly off here.

I think there is some sort of conflict between the onboard graphics and 970m. I have even forced the game to use the 970m in the Nvidia Control Panel but still no luck. Does anyone have any suggestions or insight as to why this might be happening? As far as I can tell there is no thermal throttling occurring due to my cooling measures.

 

That sounds like onboard graphics behavior-- where changing res doesn't help. Check your temps and clocks when in game. Make sure the card is being used and that it isn't downclocked.

 

I wonder if there's a way to disable the Intel graphics in the BIOS.

 

You cannot disable intel graphics with this laptop

 

So I've noticed that when I'm getting low FPS in BF4, my GPU load is not where it should be. It's hovering around 50-60% even though the clocks are a stock 970m speeds.


EDIT: Possible solution for low GTX 970m GPU usage. I switched to accessing Battlelog through Firefox instead of Chrome. Something with Chrome and Battlelog seemed to be introducing some poor performance issues. I also enabled Hyperthreading in my BIOS again and now my GTX 970m is performing as expected. I'm not sure which one of the changes it was that did it, but I'm leaning towards the switch to Firefox for Battlelog.

 

Once you unlock the hidden function in your BIOS you can. It's super easy to do, and there's a guide for the original P34G that is the same method for all the other versions. Once you do that, you can also turn off hyperthreading which gives you 3-4 degrees less heat.

 

Do you have a link to this?

 

Takes like 10 minutes. It opens up a whole selection of goodies, although the GPU is still locked by the vbios.

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&sour...e7vvjQk4aIPxgwwZA&sig2=byaHd1wGUq-i6BDZuzbxkA

 

So this will work on the P34Wv3?

 

Yep, as long as you unlock the proper BIOS for the p34w v3 yourself rather than downloading the pre unlocked one for the p34g.

 

hi, all. looking at a laptop. is it worth upgrading the screen from fhd to qhd+ im not looking to max games but initially the upgrade was priced £129. but as i was given the option to upgrade still as it is not built yet. but now the option is £81. if it worth it? need some answers pretty soon. think i got day a day to decide.

thanks

 

If you want this laptop to last more than 2 years, get the 1080p option. You don't want to have to drop the resolution down from the native because it tends to look blurry as there are blank pixels everywhere. Besides, 1080p is more than enough for a 14 inch screen.

 

Thanks for reply. I must confirm the screen is a 13.3 running a 960m. The laptop is only to last for for a year maybe. At least till around pascal. Hence me going the cheap clerk route not to lose a lot of money on resale but still it's something I'm quite keen on the qhd+

At the moment the games I mainly play is gta v and FIFA. I read they were ran at 4k and gta was put on high getting 20fps whilst id be trying it at 3k at normal settings with which should give me at least 30.
So is it still worth the £81?


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I wouldn't buy a laptop with a 4k screen unless it had dual 970m+'s

 

Wouldn't its value hold with a 3k screen?


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Which laptop is this you are talking about?

 

A w230sd which has 3200x1800 option.
Saying that though I'm also eyeing up a x3 with the 2k screen paired with 870m since I did want one


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Honestly, the 960m is just an overclocked 860m at a higher price, and the 870m is a Kepler throttle factory. If you're looking for resale value I would either get a laptop with a 970m or a used 860m and just overclock it. 1800p is a nice resolution though, scales perfectly down to 900p.

 

If this is covered before please let me know. I tried to install 7/64 on a P34W v3 and there was a driver missing. The Gigabyte tech guy said I need to have bios FA04 or FC04, it comes with FB04 which wont work. Something about compatibility with USB 3. He did say it was a bit tricky. Any suggestions where to start? Cant find any bios downloads or instructions for flashing the bios. The Gigabyte website doesn't have P34W v3 drivers, only P34w v4.

The error message I am getting is the "a required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver , floppy disk, CD, DVD or USB flash drive, please insert it now"

What freaking driver are they talking about??? I tried directing it to a USB 3 driver but that was not the trick. This is not hard, right? Lots peeps put 7/64 on these machines?

 

FB04 is for windows 8.1, FA04 is for windows 7. All the drivers and BIOSs are on the gigabyte website. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5325&dl=1&RWD=0#bios

 

OK, not doing that and ruin a $1700 computer "Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction."
Now all I want to do is network it to my 7/64 computer but it says I don't have permission even though they are in the same networking group, and I am using the same user name on both computers and I have everything shared with everyone on the main computer (which supposedly isnt giving me permission).

 

Dude, flash away. They have a BIOS update app that is totally fool proof. They just give the warning because technically it could brick your laptop, but it won't.