***Gigabyte P35X owner's lounge***

No I did not underclock.
Is the ODD bay bootable? I just spend 3 days installing all my programs, would cough blood to start over.

Regards

 

I can't say for sure, but I would think it is bootable.

Hah, I had to go through it 4 times or so until I finally got everything working good, took a complete clean install from Windows disc to get things fixed. Good luck!

 

We'll see how it goes after install 58 windows updates. Would really love to be able to just recover from my old Alienware's backup, then installing all the gigabyte drivers.

Regards

 

I resisted doing a full clean install initially since I had already restored the factory image a few times. It was mentioned to me early on but I refused and really tried to get the stock install working (as I had on every previous laptop and not had issues).

In the end, I had too many issues that had no apparent resolution and instead of troubleshoot it for days and days and possibly not ever find a fix, I spent an evening reinstalling from scratch. It actually took several tries because I kept installing the wrong version of windows with no way to know until I tried activating and it failed.

 

Did you just say you're gonna use (or have used) an Alienware backup image to restore onto your Gigabyte?! Don't do that, definitely do fresh install rather than that.

 

I've done both: using backup of my Alienware system made by EaseUS backup software, as well as clean install from an OEM disc. The Alienware version won't even boot, and the clean install still freeze within 10 mins. Looks like I'll have to do another complete wipe and clean install.
And if everything failed, I might go back to use that tiny 128GB mSATA SSD as boot drive (which I left the OS intact).

Regards

 

Yep, using an old Alienware image is a really poor idea in my eyes (it's an entirely different model of laptop!) - can only cause problems. A clean install is the best, try & install the drivers in the right order after you've installed Windows - there's guides on the internet that can tell you the best order to install drivers, I followed this guide when I did a clean install on my laptop (you might be able to use it to give you some ideas about the best order for yours):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

 

Battery-wise, this is a very impressive laptop. I've been use ot on and off for little more than 3 hours in the campus, and it still holds about 40% battery. Even though I didn't do any heavy loading such as gaming, it's still bettery than most laptop's battery life.

Regards

 

5.5 Hrs when I did idle tasks. OCUK just got my RMA today though.

 

I've actually quite enjoy the trouble shooting...and it will be less frustrating if I didn't have impending coursework at the time.

Regards

 

I enjoy troubleshooting as well, but my only issue is performance headroom. The P35x is great as is and after seeing the temp drops from liquid ultra, seems to be much better. The rest of the quirks I stated before were more personal issues with the feel of the PC. If the keyboard could be replaced with something sturdier, that would be great. Not to mention, I did shred the battery cable and had to do a quick splice to fix it.(something I didnt report in RMA)

Edit: I got full refund... awesome.

 

From your experience, what can be replaced in the internals of the p35? Keyboard, speakers, battery... I ask because I always enjoy open and try to improve things my laptops

Edit: by headroom did you mean oc potential ?

 

Yeah I enjoyed it too after I proved it was just software issues and nothing wrong with the hardware. I HATE hardware issues, but luckily I haven't had any warranty issues in 10 years I bet. Small things that I can replace I am ok with (drives, memory, wireless card, screen etc), but motherboard(and CPU and GPU) issues suck.

 

You can boot from hot swappable bay, yes. I did while troubleshooting/cloning drives.

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

I finally got the free game code after asking my retailer for it.

I bought Assassin's Creed til AC3, this series is dead to me (the upcoming Chinese-setting downloadable is quite interesting, though. In fact, all female assassins are intersting).

Never dig the Far Cry series, not a fan of FPS.

That left me with Crew. Is it online only? Does it have single player content? Don't care about with computer games with other real person.

Regards

 

Yes, OC potential.

What can be replaced? Not sure yet. I dont know many keyboards that can be used. Speakers are kinda forced there. Battery is superb though.

 

Correct, 4860. I had the same question - the CPU was limited by available power, and if I understand our colleagues on this board correctly, it's normal behaviour. You can modify this behaviour using apps like throttlestop. This is not something I've pursued, it was sufficient re-assurance for me to understand that the result was as-expected (albeit not what I expected! I expected thermal throttling!)

It may be that others could chime in here with a better explanation to help improve our collective knowledge

I went through the same deliberations. I know ACU has received a panning from the critics and what-not, but I'll stick my neck out and say it's a good game, with absolutely stunning graphics. And this machine provides a very playable experience on ultra settings at 1080p once you dial back the AA. We hooked it up to a plasma, linked a controller to the laptop and off we went. Didn't experience any major bugs, and they haven't delivered the patch to optimise the game frame rate properly yet either. There's also a (gimmick?!) nifty little ipad app that syncs with your character so you can track where he is on the map... not much use to the person driving, but if you've got someone watching they can ping a place on the map and it puts a marker into the game.

It's a personal choice, I guess I had low expectations - one way to ensure you're not disappointed!

 

For those of you who have used liquid ultra:
Is it better IC Diamond Paste?
And how much did it drop temps?

Thanks

 

Then it seems that a stable cooling solution exists for this cpu that prevents throttling, correct?

Did you play with the fan speed? Mrnajsman had roughly the same results with fans on stealth and max, I am curious how your setup will behave. I assume you would see higher temps and throttling on low speed fans, since your high speed settings seems to cool efficiently the laptop.

Edit: quotefail

 

I could be wrong, as I haven't specifically tested this myself, but I don't think the fan setting will change the max temps at all. It could make the average temps slightly higher though on the lower settings.

I think the settings only delay the ramping up of the fans, they still hit the max setting if needed through all four settings (stealth, low, high, and max). I don't think you're reducing the max cooling ability going with the lower setting, only lessening the midrange cooling at the cost of higher temps in exchange for quieter fan levels if that makes sense.

*edit*
This is nothing new and revolutionary I know, but I've never really done all of this before at least combined on the same system.

One thing I have found is by repasting CPU & GPU(ICD), undervolting CPU, disabling CPU turboboost, and capping the FPS to 55 I dropped my CPU & GPU temps by a great margin. I wasn't logging data, but I was seeing a lot of upper 60's for CPU and GPU where stock it was more like lower 90's. Playing Far Cry 4 ultra at 1080p during all of this testing with no difficulties.

I could then overclock the GPU and still be under 80. There is a lot of tweaking that a person could do to make the machine operate how they want. You could drop the FPS max to 30 or 40 and play in 3k ultra (Far Cry 4), or play with turboboost enabled but will have higher temps. You could set it up for quieter and cooler operation, or go balls out full performance and run hotter. It is simply amazing what a thin and light 15" can do nowadays, amazing.

 

Haven't forgotten about you guys, just been busy

Interesting. At the end, when he removes the backplate, there is no sign of the short speaker cable I had to remove on mine to be able to remove the backplate. Seems like there are different revisions out there already.

 

You should be quite acquainted with Clevo's W230ST/SS as it required you to do all that with its single fan setup. These tweaks work on all PC's for control, so in general you can make any PC run however you want.

 

There is one short speaker cable at the bottom cover, I had to disconnected it too.

 

I think he unplug the cable beforehand, to make the filming easier.

Regards

 

I think I'm the only one on here so far that used liquid ultra for my repaste. Time will tell whether that was a good choice or not, but it does seem to have helped with temps compared to stock settings. I've run only a handful of tests since doing this, they are summarised earlier in this thread, i.e. here

I have no experience with IC Diamond Paste, however Tom's Hardware has a decent group test of different thermal pastes.

Incorrect. If you are referring to thermal throttling, then if you look at the results I referred to above, you will see that there is still thermal throttling on the Heaven benchmark: the cpu temp relentlessly increases over time. One loop through doesn't max it out, but the 2nd test through manages to bring the cpu temp high enough to induce minor throttling. It's a big improvement over the stock situation, though (compare tests 3 and 4 versus 1 and 2). It certainly nails the thermal throttling with the firestrike test though.

Not really experimented - Prime95 test on max fans ran cooler and louder than fans on auto-low.

 

All right, I did not indeed check that... That being said, on 5 and 6 how was the cpu behaving? I assume it would throttle more, because of the more intense gpu activity

 

I returned mine yesterday, before that I managed to squeeze in Battlefield 4 as well.
2880x1620, preset High, 64p Siege of Shanghai.
CPU capped at 2.7 GHz, GPU oc +135/500 MHz.

It felt really good, but 1-2 times a minute my mouse froze for a second. It seems I´m not alone with this problem, some have fixed it by deactivating Origin ingame, I didn´t try that.

* Even at 2.7 GHz the CPU throttled alot. Unkown if that caused the mouse freeze.
* GPU between 1173-1262 MHz, max temp 86, load 90-95%
* Min fps 40, avg fps 54. Apart from the occasional mouse freeze it felt smooth.


FPS

Spoiler

CPU

Spoiler

GPU

Spoiler

 

Good test Mr Najsman, I think there's a good chance of the mouse freeze being a result of the throttling CPU. You said 1-2 times per minute you got the freeze, that corresponds quite well to your CPU frequency throttling to 2Ghz or below, throttling to that mark happens 1 to 2 times per minute according to your graphs (roughly!). Good GPU performance though, CPU unfortunately has issues, an undervolt would help a little (but I know you weren't allowed to do that).

EDIT: also your GPU usage shows that usage was higher in the first third of the test, which corresponds to the period of time where CPU throttling was at it's least, therefore you can see the throttling CPU is generally bottlenecking the GPU for the rest of the test.

 

Do you find it normal that Gigabyte sell a computer that is clearly not working properly for over 2000 bucks ? What you call tweaking is more like fixing a broken stuff, is it that hard for them to test their cooling system ? I mean what the point of putting a 4860HQ ? Price ? because the IRIS pro is known for its increased heat (optimus mux).
Limiting FPS to 30 / 40 is not a viable fix/workaround for a 980M gamer....

They did a horrific job designing the computer. it's a gaming laptop that throttles like hell....the CPU thermal management was NOT conceived properly and, honestly i think they put a 4860 only to increase the retail price.

In my opinion, all of you tired of Those throttle should return your laptop and write the same email to Gigabyte, look at the MSI GS60, the CPU in the 2014 version does NOT throttle. and its the same form factor than the P35X....just with a 4710HQ, what a surprise...

 

Wickette nailed it.

 

It just goes to show you that qa testing is dead. Developers would rather release a buggy program quicker than take the time (or money) to do a true test. Just look at acu. Gigabyte needs to up their game

On the cpu throttling, the p35x does have to deal with a gtx 980m instead of a 970m. While cooling should be better, it isn't an exact comparison.

To switching, to most people I think that the entire reason to buy this laptop was for the 980m. I personally wouldn't settle for a 970m, so it's either this or that Clevo whose model number I always forget. But you do bring up a valid point.

 

Good points about the 4860HQ, and from what I understand, since you are limited in terms of overclocking CPU in any slim form factor notebook, there is not going to be much difference in performance between the 4710HQ vs 4860HQ anyways.

In the US so far the P35x is not available with 4860HQ, only 4710HQ. If it would result in slightly better performance with 64-bit creative applications, I'd be willing to pay more for 4860HQ, but it seems it would make almost no difference.

At any rate, regardless of whether you do thermal repaste or not, the P35x performance blows the GS60 out of the water, yet they are both around the same retail price point. If I were going to buy laptop with 970M, I suppose I'd get something less expensive like Clevo P650SE for $1200.

 

Updating the "Smart" Manager to the latest version will apparently sent my laptop to Driver Power State Failure after one single mouse right click, or on its own after a short period of time (minutes).
After uninstall it and reinstall from the driver disc, everything's fine so far.

Regards

 

It really looks like you should stick to stock for this laptop right now. Any news from gigabyte on these issues?

 

The Iris Pro is the main problem.. It adds 25-35W to the overall TDP...

 

Thermal issues wasnt a problem for the guy using liquid ultra. Only issue left is power throttling.

 

Well, the 4710 is also tricky hot here, as shown by MrNajsman 's plots earlier in this thread

 

4860
Bad industrial paste used
BADLY designed cooling fan+heatsink.
Throttle security offset -10°C

Period.

Just a piece of advice if you want to enjoy your games, return/exchange your laptop you'll end up happy and with extra bucks ^^.

I don't pay 2000+ $/£/E for something that will give me headaches trying to undervolt/Metal ultra/MOD so that it will work like a normal laptop...

Both the gs60 and P650SE show that MSI/Clevo learned from their mistakes with the 870M gs60 and the W230 :my advice would be to get a 980M p650SG clevo or an MSI gs60 970M, and if you don't mind the extra 2" and thickness a GT72, they all cost less than a p35X v3.

 

The P35x is not available in Europe with 4710HQ?

 

I think Gigabyte has a crappy stock windows install, that is it. The hardware is by far the best laptop I've had this year, and I'm on #7 at least. From 3x Razer’s, MSI, SLI Clevo, cheapo Lenovo and now a Gigabyte. It has the brute force power (best GPU and a good CPU) and is still thin and light, holds 4 drives, great screen, built well, great battery.

It works great, as intended, with zero throttling noticeable in any of my tests. There is nothing else I would even ask for. I said that I knew my statements were not revolutionary, but I had never attempted all of them before and seen such a great impact (even on larger laptops where you would think it could make even more of a difference).

My comment about the 40 fps was intended towards those that enjoy 30+ which I see all the time on these forums. I am not one of those people normally but have done that on older 3k laptops that were limited by HDMI limit. I usually start at 1080 ultra and ramp up the resolution from there, like in Far Cry 4 I am fiddling with the next step up from 1080. I like options, and this is where the p35x delivers.

Thanks for your interest

 

Same throttling problem with 4710HQ.

 

I think the term "zero throttling" would be misleading, I'm quite certain you can't maintain a full all core turbo on the CPU (3.4GHz for 4710HQ, also 3.4GHz for 4860HQ I think) without it throttling due to temperature (or power), at least not when stressing the GPU at the same time during gaming. None of the results posted in this thread so far have shown that to be even close to a possibility.

 

maintaining turbo isn't that important you know, the most important thing is the "big" throttles : like 2.5-> 800mhz , a lot of laptops can't maintain turbo for a long time.

 

I think my oem 8.1 disc is faulty, my every attempt of clean install on the 2.5" SSD has ended with failure. The stock OS on the mSATA on the other hand, has been stable with updated drivers.
I think I'm gonna have to use the 2.5" as a storage drive for games.

Regards

 

It depends what game you're talking about, and what framerate you want to aim for. In Mr Najsman's tests you can see a correlation between the thermal throttling of the CPU (from one third into the test) corresponds with generally reduced GPU usage thereafter, so it does limit framerate. But, I do agree that throttling below 2.5Ghz is much more detrimental. I still think maintaining turbo is important.

 

Is that some sort of disc that came with the computer? I didn’t think one came with mine. I spent a lot of time finding an OEM disk online that worked with my key so I’ll feel silly if I actually had a disc.

 

Agreed. It definitely throttles - we saw that on the Heaven benchmark results, even with my repaste and an undervolt (no cooling pad). Fine for the first run through as the CPU temps slowly ramped up, but second loop through and I was seeing (minor) thermal throttling.

But... Implications in practical use? None unless I intend to use the machine on the very edge of its limit - and it has enough horsepower for me not to need to do that. Am really impressed by this package - fabulous screen, long battery life, stacks of horsepower, portable, quiet when not being stressed. That's all I was after.

 

Well, there was a disc... it was power dvd 10, but that is all!

 

No, I made a bootable USB drive using the stock ISO file months ago. So technically it's neither OEM nor disc.

Funny thing is, it works fine when I used it to rebuilt my system on Alienware, and I have no idea why it won't work on the P35. It was working fine, passed 3DMark, and after I install a new programs, BANG! Freeze!

Regards

 

Isn't that to do with the different device drivers that are required for different hardware. I know Acronis and suchlike have facilities like universal restore, that pull in the appropriate drivers for the hardware so that you can use an image across different hardware - so there's definitely something at that level that makes it dodgy to apply one image onto another device. I think...